For otherwise it will be very hard to understand how
there be some principles which all men do acknowledge and agree in;
and yet there are none of those principles which are not, by
depraved custom and ill education, blotted out of the minds of many
men: which is to say, that all men admit, but yet many men do deny and
dissent from them. And indeed the supposition of such first principles
will serve us to very little purpose; and we shall be as much at a
loss with as without them, if they may, by any human power- such as
the will of our teachers, or opinions of our companions- be altered or
lost in us: and notwithstanding all this boast of first principles and
innate light, we shall be as much in the dark and uncertainty as if
there were no such thing at all: it being all one to have no rule, and
one that will warp any way; or amongst various and contrary rules, not
to know which is the right. But concerning innate principles, I desire
these men to say, whether they can or cannot, by education and custom,
be blurred and blotted out; if they cannot, we must find them in all
mankind alike, and they must be clear in everybody; and if they may
suffer variation from adventitious notions, we must then find them
clearest and most perspicuous nearest the fountain, in children and
illiterate people, who have received least impression from foreign
opinions.
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