Therefore I doubt not but children, by the exercise of their
senses about objects that affect them in the womb, receive some few
ideas before they are born, as the unavoidable effects, either of
the bodies that environ them, or else of those wants or diseases
they suffer; amongst which (if one may conjecture concerning things
not very capable of examination) I think the ideas of hunger and
warmth are two: which probably are some of the first that children
have, and which they scarce ever part with again.
6. The effects of sensation in the womb. But though it be reasonable
to imagine that children receive some ideas before they come into
the world, yet these simple ideas are far from those innate principles
which some contend for, and we, above, have rejected. These here
mentioned, being the effects of sensation, are only from some
affections of the body, which happen to them there, and so depend on
something exterior to the mind; no otherwise differing in their manner
of production from other ideas derived from sense, but only in the
precedency of time. Whereas those innate principles are supposed to be
quite of another nature; not coming into the mind by any accidental
alterations in, or operations on the body; but, as it were, original
characters impressed upon it, in the very first moment of its being
and constitution.
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