I see no reason, therefore, to believe that the soul
thinks before the senses have furnished it with ideas to think on; and
as those are increased and retained, so it comes, by exercise, to
improve its faculty of thinking in the several parts of it; as well
as, afterwards, by compounding those ideas, and reflecting on its
own operations, it increases its stock, as well as facility in
remembering, imagining, reasoning, and other modes of thinking.
21. State of a child in the mother's womb. He that will suffer
himself to be informed by observation and experience, and not make his
own hypothesis the rule of nature, will find few signs of a soul
accustomed to much thinking in a new-born child, and much fewer of any
reasoning at all. And yet it is hard to imagine that the rational soul
should think so much, and not reason at all. And he that will consider
that infants newly come into the world spend the greatest part of
their time in sleep, and are seldom awake but when either hunger calls
for the teat, or some pain (the most importunate of all sensations),
or some other violent impression on the body, forces the mind to
perceive and attend to it;- he, I say, who considers this, will
perhaps find reason to imagine that a foetus in the mother's womb
differs not much from the state of a vegetable, but passes the
greatest part of its time without perception or thought; doing very
little but sleep in a place where it needs not seek for food, and is
surrounded with liquor, always equally soft, and near of the same
temper; where the eyes have no light, and the ears so shut up are
not very susceptible of sounds; and where there is little or no
variety, or change of objects, to move the senses.
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