by their ignorance, laziness, education, or precipitancy to take them upon truft...

$25.

THIS is evidently the cafe of all children and young folk; and cuftom, a greater power than nature, feldom failing to make them worship for divine, what the hath inured them to bow their minds, and submit their understandings to, it is no wonder that grown men, either perplexed in the neceffary affairs of life, or hot in the pursuit of pleasures, fhould not seriously fit down to examine their own tenets, especially when one of their principles is, that principles ought not to be questioned. And had men leifure, parts, and will, who is there almost that dare shake the foundations of all his past thoughts and actions, and endure to bring upon himfelf the fhame of having been a long time wholly in mistake and error? Who is there hardy enough to contend with the reproach which is every where prepared for those who dare venture to diffent from the received opinions of their country or party? And where is the man to be found, that can patiently prepare himfelf to bear the name of Whimsical, Sceptical, or Atheift, which he is fure to meet with, who does in the leaft fcruple any of the common opinions? And he will be much more afraid to question those principles, when he fhall think them, as most men do, the standards fet up by God in his mind, to be the rule and touchstone of all other opinions. And what can hinder him from thinking them facred, when he finds them the earliest of all his own thoughts, and the most reverenced by others?

§ 26.

It is easy to imagine how by these means it comes to pafs, that men worship the idols that have been fet up in their minds; grow fond of the notions they have been long acquainted with there; and ftamp the characters of divinity upon abfurdities and errors; become zealous votaries to bulls and monkeys; and contend too, fight, and die in defence of their opinion. Dum folos credit habendos effe Deos, quos ipfe colit. For fince the

reafoning faculties of the foul, which are almost conftantly, though not always warily nor wifely employed, would not know how to move for want of a foundation and footing in moft men, who through laziness or avocation do not, or for want of time, or true helps, or for other causes, cannot penetrate into the principles of knowledge, and trace truth to its fountain and original; it is natural for them, and almost unavoidable, to take up with fome borrowed principles, which being reputed and prefumed to be the evident proofs of other things, are thought not to need any other proof themselves. Whoever shall receive any of these into his mind, and entertain them there with the reverence ufually paid to principles, never venturing to examine them, but accuftoming himself to believe them, because they are to be believed, may take up from his education, and the fashions of his country, any abfurdity for innate principles; and by long poring on the fame objects, fo dim his fight, as to take monfters lodged in his own brain, for the images of the Deity, and the workmanfhip of his hands.

$27. Principles must be examined.

By this progrefs, how many there are who arrive at principles, which they believe innate, may be eafily obferved, in the variety of oppofite principles held and contended for by all forts and degrees of men. And he that fhall deny this to be the method, wherein moit men proceed to the affurance they have of the truth and evidence of their principles, will perhaps find it a hard matter any other way to account for the contrary tenets, which are firmly believed, confidently afferted, and which great numbers are ready at any time to feal with their blood. And, indeed, if it be the privilege of innate principles to be received upon their own authority without examination, I know not what may not be believed, or how any one's principles can be queftioned. If they may, and ought to be examined and tried, I defire to know how first and innate principles can be tried; or, at leaft, it is reafonable to demand the marks and characters, whereby the genuine innate principles may be

distinguished from others, that fo, amidst the great variety of pretenders, I may be kept from mistakes in fo material a point as this. When this is done, I fhall be ready to embrace fuch welcome and useful propofitions; and till then I may with modefty doubt, fince I fear univerfal confent, which is the only one produced, will fcarce prove a fufficient mark to direct my choice, and affure me of any innate principles. From what has been said, I think it paft doubt, that there are no practical principles wherein all men agree, and therefore none innate.

CHAP. IV.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING INNATE PRINCIPLES, BOTH SPECULATE AND PRACTICAL.

HA

1. Principles not Innate, unless their Ideas be Innate. AD those who would perfuade us that there are innate principles, not taken them together in grofs, but confidered feparately the parts out of which thofe propofitions are made, they would not perhaps have been fo forward to believe they were innate, fince, if the ideas which made up thofe truths were not, it was impoffible that the propofitions made up of them fhould be innate, or our knowledge of them be born with us; for if the ideas be not innate, there was a time when the mind was without thofe principles; and then they will not be innate, but be derived from fome other original; for, where the ideas themfelves are not, there can be no knowledge, no affent, no mental or verbal propofitions about them.

§ 2. Ideas, especially those belonging to Principles, not born with Children.

If we will attentively confider new-born children, we fhall have little reason to think that they bring many ideas into the world with them; for, bating perhaps fome faint ideas of hunger, and thirst, and warmth, and some pains which they may have felt in the womb, there is not the least appearance of any settled ideas at VOL. I. C

all in them, especially of ideas anfivering the terms which make up thofe univerfal propofitions that are efteemed innate principles. One may perceive how by degrees afterwards ideas come into their minds, and that they get no more nor no other than what experience and the obfervation of things that come in their way furnifh them with; which might be enough to fatisfy us that they are not original characters ftamped on the mind.

$3.

It is impoffible for the fame thing to be, and not to be, is certainly (if there be any fuch) an innate principle. But can any one think, or will any one fay, that impaffibility and identity are two innate ideas? Are they fuch as all mankind have, and bring into the world with them? And are they thofe that are the firft in children, and antecedent to all acquired ones? If they are, innate, they must needs be fo. Hath a child an idea of impossibility and identity before it has of white or black, Sweet or bitter? And is it from the knowledge of this principle that it concludes, that wormwood rubbed on the nipple hath not the fame taste that it used to receive from thence? Is it the actual knowledge of impoffibile eft idem effe, et non effe, that makes a child diftinguish between its mother and a ftranger, or that makes it fond of the one, and fly the other? Or does the mind regulate itself and its aflent by ideas that it never yet had? or the understanding draw conclufions from principles which it never yet knew or understood? The names impoffibility and identity ftand for two ideas, fo far from being innate, or born with us, that I think it requires great care and attention to form them right in our understandings. They are fo far from being brought into the world with us, fo remote from the thoughts of infancy and childhood, that I believe, upon examination, it will be found that many grown men want them,

§4. Identity an Idea not Innate. IF identity (to inftance in that alone) be a native im preffion, and confequently fo clear and obvious to us,

that we must needs know it even from our cradles, would gladly be refolved by one of feven, or feventy years old, whether a man, being a creature, confifting of foul and body, be the fame man when his body is changed? Whether Euphorbus and Pythagoras, having had the fame foul, were the fame man, though they lived feveral ages afunder? Nay, whether the cock too, which had the fame foul, were not the fame with both of them? Whereby, perhaps, it will appear, that our idea of fameness is not fo fettled and clear as to deferve to be thought innate in us; for if thofe innate ideas are not clear and diftinct, so as to be univerfally known, and naturally agreed on, they cannot be fubjects of univerfal and undoubted truths, but will be the unavoidable occafion of perpetual uncertainty; for I fuppofe every one's idea of identity will not be the fame that Pythagoras and thoufands others of his followers have; and which then fhall be the true? Which innate? Or are there two different ideas of identity both innate?

$5.

NOR let any one think that the questions I have here propofed about the identity of man are bare empty fpeculations; which, if they were, would be enough to fhow, that there was in the understandings of men no innate idea of identity. He that fhall, with a little attention, reflect on the refurrection, and confider that divine justice shall bring to judgment, at the last day, the very fame perfons, to be happy or miferable in the other, who did well or ill in this life, will find it perhaps not eafy to refolve with himself what makes the fame man, or wherein identity confifts; and will not be forward to think he and every one, even children themselves, have naturally a clear idea of it.

§ 6. Whole and Part not Innate Ideas. LET us examine that principle of mathematics, viz. That the whole is bigger than a part. This, I take it, is reckoned amongst innate principles. I am fure it has as good a title as any to be thought so, which yet nobody