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I., by John Locke
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Title:
An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I.
MDCXC,
Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4)
Author:
John Locke
Release
Date: January 6, 2004 [EBook #10615]
Language:
English
Character
set encoding: ASCII
***
START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUMANE UNDERSTANDING, V1 ***
Produced
by Steve Harris and David Widger
Quam
bellum est velle confiteri potius nescire quod nescias, quam ista effutientem
nauseare, atque ipsum sibi displicere.
·
Cic. De Natur.
Deor. 1. i.
Printed
by Eliz. Holt, for Thomas Basset, at the George in Fleet Street, near St.
Dunstan’s Church.
[Based
on the 2d Edition]
I.
NO INNATE SPECULATIVE PRINCIPLES
II.
NO INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES
III.
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING INNATE PRINCIPLES, BOTH
I.
OF IDEAS IN GENERAL, AND THEIR ORIGINAL
II.
OF SIMPLE IDEAS
III.
OF SIMPLE IDEAS OF SENSATION
IV.
IDEA OF SOLIDITY
V.
OF SIMPLE IDEAS OF DIVERS SENSES
VI.
OF SIMPLE IDEAS OF REFLECTION ...
VII.
OF SIMPLE IDEAS OF BOTH SENSATION AND REFLECTION
VIII.
SOME FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING OUR SIMPLE
IX.
OF PERCEPTION
X.
OF RETENTION
XI.
OF DISCERNING, AND OTHER OPERATIONS OF THE MIND
XII.
OF COMPLEX IDEAS
XIII.
OF SIMPLE MODES:--AND FIRST, OF THE SIMPLE MODES OF
XIV.
IDEA OF DURATION AND ITS SIMPLE MODES
XV.
IDEAS OF DURATION AND EXPANSION, CONSIDERED TOGETHER
XVI.
IDEA OF NUMBER AND ITS SIMPLE MODES
XVII.
OF THE IDEA OF INFINITY
XVIII.
OF OTHER SIMPLE MODES
XIX.
OF THE MODES OF THINKING
XX.
OF MODES OF PLEASURE AND PAIN
XXI.
OF THE IDEA OF POWER
XXII.
OF MIXED MODES
XXIII.
OF OUR COMPLEX IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES
XXIV.
OF COLLECTIVE IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES
XXV.
OF IDEAS OF RELATION
XXVI.
OF IDEAS OF CAUSE AND EFFECT, AND OTHER RELATIONS
XXVII.
OF IDEAS OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY
XXVIII.
OF IDEAS OF OTHER RELATIONS
XXIX.
OF CLEAR AND OBSCURE, DISTINCT AND CONFUSED IDEAS
XXX.
OF REAL AND FANTASTICAL IDEAS
XXXI.
OF ADEQUATE AND INADEQUATE IDEAS
XXXII.
OF TRUE AND FALSE IDEAS
XXXIII.
OF THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS
TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THOMAS, EARL OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY, BARON HERBERT OF
CARDIFF LORD ROSS, OF KENDAL, PAR, FITZHUGH, MARMION, ST.
QUINTIN, AND SHURLAND;
LORD
PRESIDENT OF HIS MAJESTY’S MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNCIL; AND LORD
LIEUTENANT OF THE COUNTY OF WILTS, AND OF SOUTH WALES.
MY
LORD,
This
Treatise, which is grown up under your lordship’s eye, and has ventured into
the world by your order, does now, by a natural kind of right, come to your
lordship for that protection which you several years since promised it. It is
not that I think any name, how great soever, set at the beginning of a book,
will be able to cover the faults that are to be found in it. Things in print
must stand and fall by their own worth, or the reader’s fancy. But there
being nothing more to be desired for truth than a fair unprejudiced hearing,
nobody is more likely to procure me that than your lordship, who are allowed
to have got so intimate an acquaintance with her, in her more retired
recesses. Your lordship is known to have so far advanced your speculations in
the most abstract and general knowledge of things, beyond the ordinary reach
or common methods, that your allowance and approbation of the design of this
Treatise will at least preserve it from being condemned without reading, and
will prevail to have those parts a little weighed, which might otherwise
perhaps be thought to deserve no consideration, for being somewhat out of the
common road. The imputation of Novelty is a terrible charge amongst those who
judge of men’s heads, as they do of their perukes, by the fashion, and can
allow none to be right but the received doctrines. Truth scarce ever yet
carried it by vote anywhere at its first appearance: new opinions are always
suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are
not already common. But truth, like gold, is not the less so for being newly
brought out of the mine. It is trial and examination must give it price, and
not any antique fashion; and though it be not yet current by the public stamp,
yet it may, for all that, be as old as nature, and is certainly not the less
genuine. Your lordship can give great and convincing instances of this,
whenever you please to oblige the public with some of those large and
comprehensive discoveries you have made of truths hitherto unknown, unless to
some few, from whom your lordship has been pleased not wholly to conceal them.
This alone were a sufficient reason, were there no other, why I should
dedicate this Essay to your lordship; and its having some little
correspondence with some parts of that nobler and vast system of the sciences
your lordship has made so new, exact, and instructive a draught of, I think it
glory enough, if your lordship permit me to boast, that here and there I have
fallen into some thoughts not wholly different from yours. If your lordship
think fit that, by your encouragement, this should appear in the world, I hope
it may be a reason, some time or other, to lead your lordship further; and you
will allow me to say, that you here give the world an earnest of something
that, if they can bear with this, will be truly worth their expectation.
This,
my lord, shows what a present I here make to your lordship; just
such
as the poor man does to his rich and great neighbour, by whom the
basket
of flowers or fruit is not ill taken, though he has more plenty
of
his own growth, and in much greater perfection. Worthless things
receive
a value when they are made the offerings of respect, esteem, and
gratitude:
these you have given me so mighty and peculiar reasons to
have,
in the highest degree, for your lordship, that if they can add a
price
to what they go along with, proportionable to their own greatness,
I
can with confidence brag, I here make your lordship the richest
present
you ever received. This I am sure, I am under the greatest
obligations
to seek all occasions to acknowledge a long train of favours
I
have received from your lordship; favours, though great and important
in
themselves, yet made much more so by the forwardness, concern,
and
kindness, and other obliging circumstances, that never failed to
accompany
them. To all this you are pleased to add that which gives yet
more
weight and relish to all the rest: you vouchsafe to continue me in
some
degrees of your esteem, and allow me a place in your good thoughts,
I
had almost said friendship. This, my lord, your words and actions so
constantly
show on all occasions, even to others when I am absent, that
it
is not vanity in me to mention what everybody knows: but it would be
want
of good manners not to acknowledge what so many are witnesses of,
and
every day tell me I am indebted to your lordship for. I wish they
could
as easily assist my gratitude, as they convince me of the great
and
growing engagements it has to your lordship. This I am sure, I
should
write of the UNDERSTANDING without having any, if I were not
extremely
sensible of them, and did not lay hold on this opportunity to
testify
to the world how much I am obliged to be, and how much I am,
MY
LORD,
Your
Lordship’s most humble and most obedient servant,
JOHN
LOCKE
2
Dorset Court, 24th of May, 1689
THE
EPISTLE TO THE READER
READER,
I
have put into thy hands what has been the diversion of some of my idle and
heavy hours. If it has the good luck to prove so of any of thine, and thou
hast but half so much pleasure in reading as I had in writing it, thou wilt as
little think thy money, as I do my pains, ill bestowed. Mistake not this for a commendation of my work; nor conclude,
because I was pleased with the doing of it, that therefore I am fondly taken
with it now it is done. He that hawks at larks and sparrows has no less sport,
though a much less considerable quarry, than he that flies at nobler game: and
he is little acquainted with the subject of this treatise—the UNDERSTANDING—who
does not know that, as it is the most elevated faculty of the soul, so it is
employed with a greater and more constant delight than any of the other. Its
searches after truth are a sort of hawking and hunting, wherein the very
pursuit makes a great part of the pleasure. Every step the mind takes in its
progress towards Knowledge makes some discovery, which is not only new, but
the best too, for the time at least.
For
the understanding, like the eye, judging of objects only by its own sight,
cannot but be pleased with what it discovers, having less regret for what has
escaped it, because it is unknown. Thus he who has raised himself above the
alms-basket, and, not content to live lazily on scraps of begged opinions,
sets his own thoughts on work, to find and follow truth, will (whatever he
lights on) not miss the hunter’s satisfaction; every moment of his pursuit
will reward his pains with some delight; and he will have reason to think his
time not ill spent, even when he cannot much boast of any great acquisition.
This,
Reader, is the entertainment of those who let loose their own thoughts, and
follow them in writing; which thou oughtest not to envy them, since they
afford thee an opportunity of the like diversion, if thou wilt make use of thy
own thoughts in reading. It is to them, if they are thy own, that I refer
myself: but if they are taken upon trust from others, it is no great matter
what they are; they are not following truth, but some meaner consideration;
and it is not worth while to be concerned what he says or thinks, who says or
thinks only as he is directed by another. If thou judgest for thyself I know
thou wilt judge candidly, and then I shall not be harmed or offended, whatever
be thy censure. For though it be certain that there is nothing in this
Treatise of the truth whereof I am not fully persuaded, yet I consider myself
as liable to mistakes as I can think thee, and know that this book must stand
or fall with thee, not by any opinion I have of it, but thy own.
If thou findest little in it new or instructive to thee, thou art not
to blame me for it. It was not meant for those that had already mastered this
subject, and made a thorough acquaintance with their own understandings; but
for my own information, and the satisfaction of a few friends, who
acknowledged themselves not to have sufficiently considered it.
Were
it fit to trouble thee with the history of this Essay, I should tell thee,
that five or six friends meeting at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject
very remote from this, found themselves quickly at a stand, by the
difficulties that rose on every side. After we had awhile puzzled ourselves,
without coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it
came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course; and that before we set
ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own
abilities, and see what OBJECTS our understandings were, or were not, fitted
to deal with. This I proposed to the company, who all readily assented; and
thereupon it was agreed that this should be our first inquiry. Some hasty and
undigested thoughts, on a subject I had never before considered, which I set
down against our next meeting, gave the first entrance into this Discourse;
which having been thus begun by chance, was continued by intreaty; written by
incoherent parcels; and after long intervals of neglect, resumed again, as my
humour or occasions permitted; and at last, in a retirement where an
attendance on my health gave me leisure, it was brought into that order thou
now seest it.
This
discontinued way of writing may have occasioned, besides others, two contrary
faults, viz., that too little and too much may be said in it. If thou findest
anything wanting, I shall be glad that what I have written gives thee any
desire that I should have gone further. If it seems too much to thee, thou
must blame the subject; for when I put pen to paper, I thought all I should
have to say on this matter would have been contained in one sheet of paper;
but the further I went the larger prospect I had; new discoveries led me still
on, and so it grew insensibly to the bulk it now appears in. I will not deny,
but possibly it might be reduced to a narrower compass than it is, and that
some parts of it might be contracted, the way it has been writ in, by catches,
and many long intervals of interruption, being apt to cause some repetitions.
But to confess the truth, I am now too lazy, or too busy, to make it shorter.
I am not ignorant how little I herein consult my own reputation, when I
knowingly let it go with a fault, so apt to disgust the most judicious, who
are always the nicest readers. But they who know sloth is apt to content
itself with any excuse, will pardon me if mine has prevailed on me, where I
think I have a very good one. I will not therefore allege in my defence, that
the same notion, having different respects, may be convenient or necessary to
prove or illustrate several parts of the same discourse, and that so it has
happened in many parts of this: but waiving that, I shall frankly avow that I
have sometimes dwelt long upon the same argument, and expressed it different
ways, with a quite different design. I pretend not to publish this Essay for
the information of men of large thoughts and quick apprehensions; to such
masters of knowledge I profess myself a scholar, and therefore warn them
beforehand not to expect anything here, but what, being spun out of my own
coarse thoughts, is fitted to men of my own size, to whom, perhaps, it will
not be unacceptable that I have taken some pains to make plain and familiar to
their thoughts some truths which established prejudice, or the abstractedness
of the ideas themselves, might render difficult. Some objects had need be
turned on every side; and when the notion is new, as I confess some of these
are to me; or out of the ordinary road, as I suspect they will appear to
others, it is not one simple view of it that will gain it admittance into
every understanding, or fix it there with a clear and lasting impression.
There are few, I believe, who have not observed in themselves or others, that
what in one way of proposing was very obscure, another way of expressing it
has made very clear and intelligible; though afterwards the mind found little
difference in the phrases, and wondered why one failed to be understood more
than the other. But everything does not hit alike upon every man’s
imagination. We have our
understandings no less different than our palates; and he that thinks the same
truth shall be equally relished by every one in the same dress, may as well
hope to feast every one with the same sort of cookery: the meat may be the
same, and the nourishment good, yet every one not be able to receive it with
that seasoning; and it must be dressed another way, if you will have it go
down with some, even of strong constitutions. The truth is, those who advised
me to publish it, advised me, for this reason, to publish it as it is: and
since I have been brought to let it go abroad, I desire it should be
understood by whoever gives himself the pains to read it. I have so little
affection to be in print, that if I were not flattered this Essay might be of
some use to others, as I think it has been to me, I should have confined it to
the view of some friends, who gave the first occasion to it. My appearing
therefore in print being on purpose to be as useful as I may, I think it
necessary to make what I have to say as easy and intelligible to all sorts of
readers as I can. And I had much rather the speculative and quick-sighted
should complain of my being in some parts tedious, than that any one, not
accustomed to abstract speculations, or prepossessed with different notions,
should mistake or not comprehend my meaning.
It
will possibly be censured as a great piece of vanity or insolence in me, to
pretend to instruct this our knowing age; it amounting to little less, when I
own, that I publish this Essay with hopes it may be useful to others. But, if
it may be permitted to speak freely of those who with a feigned modesty
condemn as useless what they themselves write, methinks it savours much more
of vanity or insolence to publish a book for any other end; and he fails very
much of that respect he owes the public, who prints, and consequently expects
men should read, that wherein he intends not they should meet with anything of
use to themselves or others: and should nothing else be found allowable in
this Treatise, yet my design will not cease to be so; and the goodness of my
intention ought to be some excuse for the worthlessness of my present. It is that chiefly which secures me from the fear of censure,
which I expect not to escape more than better writers. Men’s principles,
notions, and relishes are so different, that it is hard to find a book which
pleases or displeases all men. I acknowledge the age we live in is not the
least knowing, and therefore not the most easy to be satisfied. If I have not the good luck to please, yet nobody ought to be
offended with me. I plainly tell all my readers, except half a dozen, this
Treatise was not at first intended for them; and therefore they need not be at
the trouble to be of that number. But yet if any one thinks fit to be angry
and rail at it, he may do it securely, for I shall find some better way of
spending my time than in such kind of conversation. I shall always have the
satisfaction to have aimed sincerely at truth and usefulness, though in one of
the meanest ways. The commonwealth of learning is not at this time without
master-builders, whose mighty designs, in advancing the sciences, will leave
lasting monuments to the admiration of posterity: but every one must not hope
to be a Boyle or a Sydenham; and in an age that produces such masters as the
great Huygenius and the incomparable Mr. Newton, with some others of that
strain, it is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing
the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to
knowledge;--which certainly had been very much more advanced in the world, if
the endeavours of ingenious and industrious men had not been much cumbered
with the learned but frivolous use of uncouth, affected, or unintelligible
terms, introduced into the sciences, and there made an art of, to that degree
that Philosophy, which is nothing but the true knowledge of things, was
thought unfit or incapable to be brought into well-bred company and polite
conversation. Vague and
insignificant forms of speech, and abuse of language, have so long passed for
mysteries of science; and hard and misapplied words, with little or no
meaning, have, by prescription, such a right to be mistaken for deep learning
and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to persuade either those
who speak or those who hear them, that they are but the covers of ignorance,
and hindrance of true knowledge. To
break in upon the sanctuary of vanity and ignorance will be, I suppose, some
service to human understanding; though so few are apt to think they deceive or
are deceived in the use of words; or that the language of the sect they are of
has any faults in it which ought to be examined or corrected, that I hope I
shall be pardoned if I have in the Third Book dwelt long on this subject, and
endeavoured to make it so plain, that neither the inveterateness of the
mischief, nor the prevalency of the fashion, shall be any excuse for those who
will not take care about the meaning of their own words, and will not suffer
the significancy of their expressions to be inquired into.
I
have been told that a short Epitome of this Treatise, which was printed in
1688, was by some condemned without reading, because INNATE IDEAS were denied
in it; they too hastily concluding, that if innate ideas were not supposed,
there would be little left either of the notion or proof of spirits. If any
one take the like offence at the entrance of this Treatise, I shall desire him
to read it through; and then I hope he will be convinced, that the taking away
false foundations is not to the prejudice but advantage of truth, which is
never injured or endangered so much as when mixed with, or built on,
falsehood. In the Second Edition I added as followeth:--
The
bookseller will not forgive me if I say nothing of this New Edition, which he
has promised, by the correctness of it, shall make amends for the many faults
committed in the former. He desires too, that it should be known that it has
one whole new chapter concerning Identity, and many additions and amendments
in other places. These I must inform my reader are not all new matter, but
most of them either further confirmation of what I had said, or explications,
to prevent others being mistaken in the sense of what was formerly printed,
and not any variation in me from it.
I
must only except the alterations I have made in Book II. chap. xxi.
What
I had there written concerning Liberty and the Will, I thought deserved as
accurate a view as I am capable of; those subjects having in all ages
exercised the learned part of the world with questions and difficulties, that
have not a little perplexed morality and divinity, those parts of knowledge
that men are most concerned to be clear in.
Upon a closer inspection into the working of men’s minds, and a
stricter examination of those motives and views they are turned by, I have
found reason somewhat to alter the thoughts I formerly had concerning that
which gives the last determination to the Will in all voluntary actions. This I cannot forbear to acknowledge to the world with as
much freedom and readiness; as I at first published what then seemed to me to
be right; thinking myself more concerned to quit and renounce any opinion of
my own, than oppose that of another, when truth appears against it.
For it is truth alone I seek, and that will always be welcome to me,
when or from whencesoever it comes. But what forwardness soever I have to
resign any opinion I have, or to recede from anything I have writ, upon the
first evidence of any error in it; yet this I must own, that I have not had
the good luck to receive any light from those exceptions I have met with in
print against any part of my book, nor have, from anything that has been urged
against it, found reason to alter my sense in any of the points that have been
questioned. Whether the subject I have in hand requires often more thought and
attention than cursory readers, at least such as are prepossessed, are willing
to allow; or whether any obscurity in my expressions casts a cloud over it,
and these notions are made difficult to others’ apprehensions in my way of
treating them; so it is, that my meaning, I find, is often mistaken, and I
have not the good luck to be everywhere rightly understood.
Of
this the ingenious author of the Discourse Concerning the Nature of Man has
given me a late instance, to mention no other. For the civility of his
expressions, and the candour that belongs to his order, forbid me to think
that he would have closed his Preface with an insinuation, as if in what I had
said, Book II. ch. xxvii, concerning the third rule which men refer their
actions to, I went about to make virtue vice and vice virtue, unless he had
mistaken my meaning; which he could not have done if he had given himself the
trouble to consider what the argument was I was then upon, and what was the
chief design of that chapter, plainly enough set down in the fourth section
and those following. For I was there not laying down moral rules, but showing
the original and nature of moral ideas, and enumerating the rules men make use
of in moral relations, whether these rules were true or false: and pursuant
thereto I tell what is everywhere called virtue and vice; which “alters not
the nature of things,” though men generally do judge of and denominate their
actions according to the esteem and fashion of the place and sect they are of.
If
he had been at the pains to reflect on what I had said, Bk. I. ch.
ii. sect. 18, and Bk. II. ch. xxviii. sect. 13, 14, 15 and 20, he would
have known what I think of the eternal and unalterable nature of right and
wrong, and what I call virtue and vice. And if he had observed that in the
place he quotes I only report as a matter of fact what OTHERS call virtue and
vice, he would not have found it liable to any great exception. For I think I
am not much out in saying that one of the rules made use of in the world for a
ground or measure of a moral relation is—that esteem and reputation which
several sorts of actions find variously in the several societies of men,
according to which they are there called virtues or vices. And whatever
authority the learned Mr. Lowde
places in his Old English Dictionary, I daresay it nowhere tells him (if I
should appeal to it) that the same action is not in credit, called and counted
a virtue, in one place, which, being in disrepute, passes for and under the
name of vice in another. The taking notice that men bestow the names of ‘virtue’
and ‘vice’ according to this rule of Reputation is all I have done, or can
be laid to my charge to have done, towards the making vice virtue or virtue
vice. But the good man does well, and as becomes his calling, to be watchful
in such points, and to take the alarm even at expressions, which, standing
alone by themselves, might sound ill and be suspected.
‘Tis
to this zeal, allowable in his function, that I forgive his citing as he does
these words of mine (ch. xxviii. sect. II): “Even the exhortations of
inspired teachers have not feared to appeal to common repute, Philip, iv. 8;”
without taking notice of those immediately preceding, which introduce them,
and run thus: “Whereby even in the corruption of manners, the true
boundaries of the law of nature, which ought to be the rule of virtue and
vice, were pretty well preserved. So that even the exhortations of inspired
teachers,” &c. By which words, and the rest of that section, it is plain
that I brought that passage of St. Paul, not to prove that the general measure
of what men called virtue and vice throughout the world was the reputation and
fashion of each particular society within itself; but to show that, though it
were so, yet, for reasons I there give, men, in that way of denominating their
actions, did not for the most part much stray from the Law of Nature; which is
that standing and unalterable rule by which they ought to judge of the moral
rectitude and gravity of their actions, and accordingly denominate them
virtues or vices. Had Mr. Lowde considered this, he would have found it little
to his purpose to have quoted this passage in a sense I used it not; and would
I imagine have spared the application he subjoins to it, as not very
necessary. But I hope this Second Edition will give him satisfaction on the
point, and that this matter is now so expressed as to show him there was no
cause for scruple.
Though
I am forced to differ from him in these apprehensions he has expressed, in the
latter end of his preface, concerning what I had said about virtue and vice,
yet we are better agreed than he thinks in what he says in his third chapter
(p. 78) concerning “natural inscription and innate notions.” I shall not
deny him the privilege he claims (p. 52), to state the question as he pleases,
especially when he states it so as to leave nothing in it contrary to what I
have said. For, according to him, “innate notions, being conditional things,
depending upon the concurrence of several other circumstances in order to the
soul’s exerting them,” all that he says for “innate, imprinted,
impressed notions” (for of innate IDEAS he says nothing at all), amounts at
last only to this—that there are certain propositions which, though the soul
from the beginning, or when a man is born, does not know, yet “by assistance
from the outward senses, and the help of some previous cultivation,” it may
AFTERWARDS come certainly to know the truth of; which is no more than what I
have affirmed in my First Book. For I suppose by the “soul’s exerting
them,” he means its beginning to know them; or else the soul’s ‘exerting
of notions’ will be to me a very unintelligible expression; and I think at
best is a very unfit one in this, it misleading men’s thoughts by an
insinuation, as if these notions were in the mind before the ‘soul exerts
them,’ i. e. before they are known;--whereas truly before they are known,
there is nothing of them in the mind but a capacity to know them, when the ‘concurrence
of those circumstances,’ which this ingenious author thinks necessary ‘in
order to the soul’s exerting them,’ brings them into our knowledge.
P.
52 I find him express it thus: ‘These natural notions are not so imprinted
upon the soul as that they naturally and necessarily exert themselves (even in
children and idiots) without any assistance from the outward senses, or
without the help of some previous cultivation.’ Here, he says, they ‘exert
themselves,’ as p. 78, that the ‘soul exerts them.’ When he has
explained to himself or others what he means by ‘the soul’s exerting
innate notions,’ or their ‘exerting themselves;’ and what that ‘previous
cultivation and circumstances’ in order to their being exerted are—he will
I suppose find there is so little of controversy between him and me on the
point, bating that he calls that ‘exerting of notions’ which I in a more
vulgar style call ‘knowing,’ that I have reason to think he brought in my
name on this occasion only out of the pleasure he has to speak civilly of me;
which I must gratefully acknowledge he has done everywhere he mentions me, not
without conferring on me, as some others have done, a title I have no right
to.
There
are so many instances of this, that I think it justice to my reader and myself
to conclude, that either my book is plainly enough written to be rightly
understood by those who peruse it with that attention and indifferency, which
every one who will give himself the pains to read ought to employ in reading;
or else that I have written mine so obscurely that it is in vain to go about
to mend it. Whichever of these be the truth, it is myself only am affected
thereby; and therefore I shall be far from troubling my reader with what I
think might be said in answer to those several objections I have met with, to
passages here and there of my book; since I persuade myself that he who thinks
them of moment enough to be concerned whether they are true or false, will be
able to see that what is said is either not well founded, or else not contrary
to my doctrine, when I and my opposer come both to be well understood.
If
any other authors, careful that none of their good thoughts should be lost,
have published their censures of my Essay, with this honour done to it, that
they will not suffer it to be an essay, I leave it to the public to value the
obligation they have to their critical pens, and shall not waste my reader’s
time in so idle or ill-natured an employment of mine, as to lessen the
satisfaction any one has in himself, or gives to others, in so hasty a
confutation of what I have written.
The
booksellers preparing for the Fourth Edition of my Essay, gave me notice of
it, that I might, if I had leisure, make any additions or alterations I should
think fit. Whereupon I thought it convenient to advertise the reader, that
besides several corrections I had made here and there, there was one
alteration which it was necessary to mention, because it ran through the whole
book, and is of consequence to be rightly understood. What I thereupon said
was this:--
CLEAR
and DISTINCT ideas are terms which, though familiar and frequent in men’s
mouths, I have reason to think every one who uses does not perfectly
understand. And possibly ‘tis but here and there one who gives himself the
trouble to consider them so far as to know what he himself or others precisely
mean by them. I have therefore in most places chose to put DETERMINATE or
DETERMINED, instead of CLEAR and DISTINCT, as more likely to direct men’s
thoughts to my meaning in this matter. By those denominations, I mean some
object in the mind, and consequently determined, i. e. such as it is there
seen and perceived to be. This, I think, may fitly be called a determinate or
determined idea, when such as it is at any time objectively in the mind, and
so determined there, it is annexed, and without variation determined, to a
name or articulate sound, which is to be steadily the sign of that very same
object of the mind, or determinate idea.
To
explain this a little more particularly. By DETERMINATE, when applied to a
simple idea, I mean that simple appearance which the mind has in its view, or
perceives in itself, when that idea is said to be in it: by DETERMINED, when
applied to a complex idea, I mean such an one as consists of a determinate
number of certain simple or less complex ideas, joined in such a proportion
and situation as the mind has before its view, and sees in itself, when that
idea is present in it, or should be present in it, when a man gives a name to
it. I say SHOULD be, because it is not every one, nor perhaps any one, who is
so careful of his language as to use no word till he views in his mind the
precise determined idea which he resolves to make it the sign of. The want of
this is the cause of no small obscurity and confusion in men’s thoughts and
discourses.
I
know there are not words enough in any language to answer all the variety of
ideas that enter into men’s discourses and reasonings. But this hinders not
but that when any one uses any term, he may have in his mind a determined
idea, which he makes it the sign of, and to which he should keep it steadily
annexed during that present discourse. Where he does not, or cannot do this,
he in vain pretends to clear or distinct ideas: it is plain his are not so;
and therefore there can be expected nothing but obscurity and confusion, where
such terms are made use of which have not such a precise determination.
Upon
this ground I have thought determined ideas a way of speaking less liable to
mistakes, than clear and distinct: and where men have got such determined
ideas of all that they reason, inquire, or argue about, they will find a great
part of their doubts and disputes at an end; the greatest part of the
questions and controversies that perplex mankind depending on the doubtful and
uncertain use of words, or (which is the same) indetermined ideas, which they
are made to stand for. I have made choice of these terms to signify, (1) Some
immediate object of the mind, which it perceives and has before it, distinct
from the sound it uses as a sign of it. (2) That this idea, thus determined,
i.e. which the mind has in itself, and knows, and sees there, be determined
without any change to that name, and that name determined to that precise
idea. If men had such determined ideas in their inquiries and discourses, they
would both discern how far their own inquiries and discourses went, and avoid
the greatest part of the disputes and wranglings they have with others.
Besides
this, the bookseller will think it necessary I should advertise the reader
that there is an addition of two chapters wholly new; the one of the
Association of Ideas, the other of Enthusiasm. These, with some other larger
additions never before printed, he has engaged to print by themselves, after
the same manner, and for the same purpose, as was done when this Essay had the
second impression.
In
the Sixth Edition there is very little added or altered. The greatest part of
what is new is contained in the twenty-first chapter of the second book, which
any one, if he thinks it worth while, may, with a very little labour,
transcribe into the margin of the former edition.
ESSAY
CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.
INTRODUCTION.
1.
An Inquiry into the Understanding pleasant and useful.
Since
it is the UNDERSTANDING that sets man above the rest of sensible beings, and
gives him all the advantage and dominion which he has over them; it is
certainly a subject, even for its nobleness, worth our labour to inquire into.
The understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all other
things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires and art and pains to set it
at a distance and make it its own object. But whatever be the difficulties
that lie in the way of this inquiry; whatever it be that keeps us so much in
the dark to ourselves; sure I am that all the light we can let in upon our
minds, all the acquaintance we can make with our own understandings, will not
only be very pleasant, but bring us great advantage, in directing our thoughts
in the search of other things.
2.
Design.
This,
therefore, being my purpose—to inquire into the original, certainty, and
extent of HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, together with the grounds and degrees of BELIEF,
OPINION, and ASSENT;--I shall not at present meddle with the physical
consideration of the mind; or trouble myself to examine wherein its essence
consists; or by what motions of our spirits or alterations of our bodies we
come to have any SENSATION by our organs, or any IDEAS in our understandings;
and whether those ideas do in their formation, any or all of them, depend on
matter or not. These are speculations which, however curious and entertaining,
I shall decline, as lying out of my way in the design I am now upon. It shall
suffice to my present purpose, to consider the discerning faculties of a man,
as they are employed about the objects which they have to do with.
And I shall imagine I have not wholly misemployed myself in the
thoughts I shall have on this occasion, if, in this historical, plain method,
I can give any account of the ways whereby our understandings come to attain
those notions of things we have; and can set down any measures of the
certainty of our knowledge; or the grounds of those persuasions which are to
be found amongst men, so various, different, and wholly contradictory; and yet
asserted somewhere or other with such assurance and confidence, that he that
shall take a view of the opinions of mankind, observe their opposition, and at
the same time consider the fondness and devotion wherewith they are embraced,
the resolution and eagerness wherewith they are maintained, may perhaps have
reason to suspect, that either there is no such thing as truth at all, or that
mankind hath no sufficient means to attain a certain knowledge of it.
3.
Method.
It
is therefore worth while to search out the bounds between opinion and
knowledge; and examine by what measures, in things whereof we have no certain
knowledge, we ought to regulate our assent and moderate our persuasion. In
order whereunto I shall pursue this following method:--
First,
I shall inquire into the original of those ideas, notions, or whatever else
you please to call them, which a man observes, and is conscious to himself he
has in his mind; and the ways whereby the understanding comes to be furnished
with them.
Secondly,
I shall endeavour to show what knowledge the understanding hath by those
ideas; and the certainty, evidence, and extent of it.
Thirdly,
I shall make some inquiry into the nature and grounds of FAITH or OPINION:
whereby I mean that assent which we give to any proposition as true, of whose
truth yet we have no certain knowledge. And here we shall have occasion to
examine the reasons and degrees of ASSENT.
4.
Useful to know the Extent of our Comprehension.
If
by this inquiry into the nature of the understanding, I can discover the
powers thereof; how far they reach; to what things they are in any degree
proportionate; and where they fail us, I suppose it may be of use to prevail
with the busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with things
exceeding its comprehension; to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its
tether; and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things which, upon
examination, are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities. We should not
then perhaps be so forward, out of an affectation of an universal knowledge,
to raise questions, and perplex ourselves and others with disputes about
things to which our understandings are not suited; and of which we cannot
frame in our minds any clear or distinct perceptions, or whereof (as it has
perhaps too often happened) we have not any notions at all. If we can find out
how far the understanding can extend its view; how far it has faculties to
attain certainty; and in what cases it can only judge and guess, we may learn
to content ourselves with what is attainable by us in this state.
5.
Our Capacity suited to our State and Concerns.
For
though the comprehension of our understandings comes exceeding short of the
vast extent of things, yet we shall have cause enough to magnify the bountiful
Author of our being, for that proportion and degree of knowledge he has
bestowed on us, so far above all the rest of the inhabitants of this our
mansion. Men have reason to be well satisfied with what God hath thought fit
for them, since he hath given them (as St. Peter says) [words in Greek],
whatsoever is necessary for the conveniences of life and information of
virtue; and has put within the reach of their discovery, the comfortable
provision for this life, and the way that leads to a better. How short soever
their knowledge may come of an universal or perfect comprehension of
whatsoever is, it yet secures their great concernments, that they have light
enough to lead them to the knowledge of their Maker, and the sight of their
own duties. Men may find matter
sufficient to busy their heads, and employ their hands with variety, delight,
and satisfaction, if they will not boldly quarrel with their own constitution,
and throw away the blessings their hands are filled with, because they are not
big enough to grasp everything. We shall not have much reason to complain of
the narrowness of our minds, if we will but employ them about what may be of
use to us; for of that they are very capable. And it will be an unpardonable,
as well as childish peevishness, if we undervalue the advantages of our
knowledge, and neglect to improve it to the ends for which it was given us,
because there are some things that are set out of the reach of it.
It will be no excuse to an idle and untoward servant, who would not
attend his business by candle light, to plead that he had not broad sunshine.
The Candle that is set up in us shines bright enough for all our purposes. The
discoveries we can make with this ought to satisfy us; and we shall then use
our understandings right, when we entertain all objects in that way and
proportion that they are suited to our faculties, and upon those grounds they
are capable of being proposed to us; and not peremptorily or intemperately
require demonstration, and demand certainty, where probability only is to be
had, and which is sufficient to govern all our concernments. If we will
disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall
do much what as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and
perish, because he had no wings to fly.
6.
Knowledge of our Capacity a Cure of Scepticism and Idleness.
When
we know our own strength, we shall the better know what to undertake with
hopes of success; and when we have well surveyed the POWERS of our own minds,
and made some estimate what we may expect from them, we shall not be inclined
either to sit still, and not set our thoughts on work at all, in despair of
knowing anything; nor on the other side, question everything, and disclaim all
knowledge, because some things are not to be understood. It is of great use to
the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all
the depths of the ocean. It is well he knows that it is long enough to reach
the bottom, at such places as are necessary to direct his voyage, and caution
him against running upon shoals that may ruin him. Our business here is not to
know all things, but those which concern our conduct. If we can find out those
measures, whereby a rational creature, put in that state in which man is in
this world, may and ought to govern his opinions, and actions depending
thereon, we need not to be troubled that some other things escape our
knowledge.
7.
Occasion of this Essay.
This
was that which gave the first rise to this Essay concerning the understanding.
For I thought that the first step towards satisfying several inquiries the
mind of man was very apt to run into, was, to take a survey of our own
understandings, examine our own powers, and see to what things they were
adapted. Till that was done I suspected we began at the wrong end, and in vain
sought for satisfaction in a quiet and sure possession of truths that most
concerned us, whilst we let loose our thoughts into the vast ocean of Being;
as if all that boundless extent were the natural and undoubted possession of
our understandings, wherein there was nothing exempt from its decisions, or
that escaped its comprehension. Thus men, extending their inquiries beyond
their capacities, and letting their thoughts wander into those depths where
they can find no sure footing, it is no wonder that they raise questions and
multiply disputes, which, never coming to any clear resolution, are proper
only to continue and increase their doubts, and to confirm them at last in
perfect scepticism. Whereas, were the capacities of our understandings well
considered, the extent of our knowledge once discovered, and the horizon found
which sets the bounds between the enlightened and dark parts of things;
between what is and what is not comprehensible by us, men would perhaps with
less scruple acquiesce in the avowed ignorance of the one, and employ their
thoughts and discourse with more advantage and satisfaction in the other.
8.
What Idea stands for.
Thus
much I thought necessary to say concerning the occasion of this inquiry into
human Understanding. But, before I proceed on to what I have thought on this
subject, I must here in the entrance beg pardon of my reader for the frequent
use of the word IDEA, which he will find in the following treatise. It being
that term which, I think, serves best to stand for whatsoever is the OBJECT of
the understanding when a man thinks, I have used it to express whatever is
meant by PHANTASM, NOTION, SPECIES, or WHATEVER IT IS WHICH THE MIND CAN BE
EMPLOYED ABOUT IN THINKING; and I could not avoid frequently using it. I
presume it will be easily granted me, that there are such IDEAS in men’s
minds: every one is conscious of them in himself; and men’s words and
actions will satisfy him that they are in others.
Our
first inquiry then shall be,--how they come into the mind. BOOK I
NEITHER
PRINCIPLES NOR IDEAS ARE INNATE
CHAPTER
I.
NO
INNATE SPECULATIVE PRINCIPLES.
1.
The way shown how we come by any Knowledge, sufficient to prove it not
innate.
It
is an established opinion amongst some men, that there are in the
understanding certain INNATE PRINCIPLES; some primary notions, KOIVAI EVVOIAI,
characters, as it were stamped upon the mind of man; which the soul receives
in its very first being, and brings into the world with it. It would be
sufficient to convince unprejudiced readers of the falseness of this
supposition, if I should only show (as I hope I shall in the following parts
of this Discourse) how men, barely by the use of their natural faculties may
attain to all the knowledge they have, without the help of any innate
impressions; and may arrive at certainty, without any such original notions or
principles. For I imagine any one will easily grant that it would be
impertinent to suppose the ideas of colours innate in a creature to whom God
hath given sight, and a power to receive them by the eyes from external
objects: and no less unreasonable would it be to attribute several truths to
the impressions of nature, and innate characters, when we may observe in
ourselves faculties fit to attain as easy and certain knowledge of them as if
they were originally imprinted on the mind.
But
because a man is not permitted without censure to follow his own thoughts in
the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the common road,
I shall set down the reasons that made me doubt of the truth of that opinion,
as an excuse for my mistake, if I be in one; which I leave to be considered by
those who, with me, dispose themselves to embrace truth wherever they find it.
2.
General Assent the great Argument.
There
is nothing more commonly taken for granted than that there are certain
PRINCIPLES, both SPECULATIVE and PRACTICAL, (for they speak of both),
universally agreed upon by all mankind: which therefore, they argue, must
needs be the constant impressions which the souls of men receive in their
first beings, and which they bring into the world with them, as necessarily
and really as they do any of their inherent faculties.
3.
Universal Consent proves nothing innate.
This
argument, drawn from universal consent, has this misfortune in it, that if it
were true in matter of fact, that there were certain truths wherein all
mankind agreed, it would not prove them innate, if there can be any other way
shown how men may come to that universal agreement, in the things they do
consent in, which I presume may be done.
4.
“What is is,” and “It is possible for the same Thing to be and
not to be,” not universally assented to.
But,
which is worse, this argument of universal consent, which is made use of to
prove innate principles, seems to me a demonstration that there are none such:
because there are none to which all mankind give an universal assent. I shall
begin with the speculative, and instance in those magnified principles of
demonstration, “Whatsoever is, is,” and “It is impossible for the same
thing to be and not to be”; which, of all others, I think have the most
allowed title to innate. These have so settled a reputation of maxims
universally received, that it will no doubt be thought strange if any one
should seem to question it. But yet I take liberty to say, that these
propositions are so far from having an universal assent, that there are a
great part of mankind to whom they are not so much as known.
5.
Not on Mind naturally imprinted, because not known to Children, Idiots,
&c.
For,
first, it is evident, that all children and idiots have not the least
apprehension or thought of them. And the want of that is enough to destroy
that universal assent which must needs be the necessary concomitant of all
innate truths: it seeming to me near a contradiction to say, that there are
truths imprinted on the soul, which it perceives or understands not:
imprinting, if it signify anything, being nothing else but the making certain
truths to be perceived. For to imprint anything on the mind without the mind’s
perceiving it, seems to me hardly intelligible. If therefore children and
idiots have souls, have minds, with those impressions upon them, THEY must
unavoidably perceive them, and necessarily know and assent to these truths;
which since they do not, it is evident that there are no such impressions. For
if they are not notions naturally imprinted, how can they be innate? and if
they are notions imprinted, how can they be unknown? To say a notion is
imprinted on the mind, and yet at the same time to say, that the mind is
ignorant of it, and never yet took notice of it, is to make this impression
nothing. No proposition can be said to be in the mind which it never yet knew,
which it was never yet conscious of. For if any one may, then, by the same
reason, all propositions that are true, and the mind is capable ever of
assenting to, may be said to be in the mind, and to be imprinted: since, if
any one can be said to be in the mind, which it never yet knew, it must be
only because it is capable of knowing it; and so the mind is of all truths it
ever shall know. Nay, thus truths may be imprinted on the mind which it never
did, nor ever shall know; for a man may live long, and die at last in
ignorance of many truths which his mind was capable of knowing, and that with
certainty. So that if the capacity of knowing be the natural impression
contended for, all the truths a man ever comes to know will, by this account,
be every one of them innate; and this great point will amount to no more, but
only to a very improper way of speaking; which, whilst it pretends to assert
the contrary, says nothing different from those who deny innate principles.
For nobody, I think, ever denied that the mind was capable of knowing
several truths. The capacity, they say, is innate; the knowledge acquired. But
then to what end such contest for certain innate maxims?
If truths can be imprinted on the understanding without being
perceived, I can see no difference there can be between any truths the mind is
CAPABLE of knowing in respect of their original: they must all be innate or
all adventitious: in vain shall a man go about to distinguish them.
He therefore that talks of innate notions in the understanding, cannot
(if he intend thereby any distinct sort of truths) mean such truths to be in
the understanding as it never perceived, and is yet wholly ignorant of. For if
these words “to be in the understanding” have any propriety, they signify
to be understood. So that to be in the understanding, and not to be
understood; to be in the mind and never to be perceived, is all one as to say
anything is and is not in the mind or understanding. If therefore these two
propositions, “Whatsoever is, is,” and “It is impossible for the same
thing to be and not to be,” are by nature imprinted, children cannot be
ignorant of them: infants, and all that have souls, must necessarily have them
in their understandings, know the truth of them, and assent to it.
6.
That men know them when they come to the Use of Reason answered.
To
avoid this, it is usually answered, that all men know and assent to them, WHEN
THEY COME TO THE USE OF REASON; and this is enough to prove them innate. I
answer:
7.
Doubtful expressions, that have scarce any signification, go for clear
reasons to those who, being prepossessed, take not the pains to examine even
what they themselves say. For, to apply this answer with any tolerable sense
to our present purpose, it must signify one of these two things: either that
as soon as men come to the use of reason these supposed native inscriptions
come to be known and observed by them; or else, that the use and exercise of
men’s reason, assists them in the discovery of these principles, and
certainly makes them known to them.
8.
If Reason discovered them, that would not prove them innate.
If
they mean, that by the use of reason men may discover these principles, and
that this is sufficient to prove them innate; their way of arguing will stand
thus, viz. that whatever truths reason can certainly discover to us, and make
us firmly assent to, those are all naturally imprinted on the mind; since that
universal assent, which is made the mark of them, amounts to no more but
this,--that by the use of reason we are capable to come to a certain knowledge
of and assent to them; and, by this means, there will be no difference between
the maxims of the mathematicians, and theorems they deduce from them: all must
be equally allowed innate; they being all discoveries made by the use of
reason, and truths that a rational creature may certainly come to know, if he
apply his thoughts rightly that way.
9.
It is false that Reason discovers them.
But
how can these men think the use of reason necessary to discover principles
that are supposed innate, when reason (if we may believe them) is nothing else
but the faculty of deducing unknown truths from principles or propositions
that are already known? That certainly can never be thought innate which we
have need of reason to discover; unless, as I have said, we will have all the
certain truths that reason ever teaches us, to be innate. We may as well think
the use of reason necessary to make our eyes discover visible objects, as that
there should be need of reason, or the exercise thereof, to make the
understanding see what is originally engraven on it, and cannot be in the
understanding before it be perceived by it. So that to make reason discover
those truths thus imprinted, is to say, that the use of reason discovers to a
man what he knew before: and if men have those innate impressed truths
originally, and before the use of reason, and yet are always ignorant of them
till they come to the use of reason, it is in effect to say, that men know and
know them not at the same time.
10.
No use made of reasoning in the discovery of these two maxims.
It
will here perhaps be said that mathematical demonstrations, and other truths
that are not innate, are not assented to as soon as proposed, wherein they are
distinguished from these maxims and other innate truths. I shall have occasion
to speak of assent upon the first proposing, more particularly by and by. I
shall here only, and that very readily, allow, that these maxims and
mathematical demonstrations are in this different: that the one have need of
reason, using of proofs, to make them out and to gain our assent; but the
other, as soon as understood, are, without any the least reasoning, embraced
and assented to. But I withal beg leave to observe, that it lays open the
weakness of this subterfuge, which requires the use of reason for the
discovery of these general truths: since it must be confessed that in their
discovery there is no use made of reasoning at all. And I think those who give
this answer will not be forward to affirm that the knowledge of this maxim,
“That it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be,” is a
deduction of our reason. For this would be to destroy that bounty of nature
they seem so fond of, whilst they make the knowledge of those principles to
depend on the labour of our thoughts. For all reasoning is search, and casting
about, and requires pains and application. And how can it with any tolerable
sense be supposed, that what was imprinted by nature, as the foundation and
guide of our reason, should need the use of reason to discover it?
11.
And if there were this would prove them not innate.
Those
who will take the pains to reflect with a little attention on the operations
of the understanding, will find that this ready assent of the mind to some
truths, depends not, either on native inscription, or the use of reason, but
on a faculty of the mind quite distinct from both of them, as we shall see
hereafter. Reason, therefore, having nothing to do in procuring our assent to
these maxims, if by saying, that “men know and assent to them, when they
come to the use of reason,” be meant, that the use of reason assists us in
the knowledge of these maxims, it is utterly false; and were it true, would
prove them not to be innate.
12.
The coming of the Use of Reason not the Time we come to know these
Maxims.
If
by knowing and assenting to them “when we come to the use of reason,” be
meant, that this is the time when they come to be taken notice of by the mind;
and that as soon as children come to the use of reason, they come also to know
and assent to these maxims; this also is false and frivolous. First, it is
false; because it is evident these maxims are not in the mind so early as the
use of reason; and therefore the coming to the use of reason is falsely
assigned as the time of their discovery.
How many instances of the use of reason may we observe in children, a
long time before they have any knowledge of this maxim, “That it is
impossible for the same thing to be and not to be?” And a great part of
illiterate people and savages pass many years, even of their rational age,
without ever thinking on this and the like general propositions. I grant, men
come not to the knowledge of these general and more abstract truths, which are
thought innate, till they come to the use of reason; and I add, nor then
neither. Which is so, because, till after they come to the use of reason,
those general abstract ideas are not framed in the mind, about which those
general maxims are, which are mistaken for innate principles, but are indeed
discoveries made and verities introduced and brought into the mind by the same
way, and discovered by the same steps, as several other propositions, which
nobody was ever so extravagant as to suppose innate. This I hope to make plain
in the sequel of this Discourse. I allow therefore, a necessity that men
should come to the use of reason before they get the knowledge of those
general truths; but deny that men’s coming to the use of reason is the time
of their discovery.
13.
By this they are not distinguished from other knowable Truths.
In
the mean time it is observable, that this saying that men know and assent to
these maxims “when they come to the use of reason,” amounts in reality of
fact to no more but this,--that they are never known nor taken notice of
before the use of reason, but may possibly be assented to some time after,
during a man’s life; but when is uncertain. And so may all other knowable
truths, as well as these which therefore have no advantage nor distinction
from other by this note of being known when we come to the use of reason; nor
are thereby proved to be innate, but quite the contrary.
14.
If coming to the Use of Reason were the Time of their Discovery, it
would not prove them innate.
But,
secondly, were it true that the precise time of their being known and assented
to were, when men come to the use of reason; neither would that prove them
innate. This way of arguing is as frivolous as the supposition itself is
false. For, by what kind of logic will it appear that any notion is originally
by nature imprinted in the mind in its first constitution, because it comes
first to be observed and assented to when a faculty of the mind, which has
quite a distinct province, begins to exert itself? And therefore the coming to
the use of speech, if it were supposed the time that these maxims are first
assented to, (which it may be with as much truth as the time when men come to
the use of reason,) would be as good a proof that they were innate, as to say
they are innate because men assent to them when they come to the use of
reason. I agree then with these men of innate principles, that there is no
knowledge of these general and self-evident maxims in the mind, till it comes
to the exercise of reason: but I deny that the coming to the use of reason is
the precise time when they are first taken notice of; and if that were the
precise time, I deny that it would prove them innate. All that can with any
truth be meant by this proposition, that men ‘assent to them when they come
to the use of reason,’ is no more but this,--that the making of general
abstract ideas, and the understanding of general names, being a concomitant of
the rational faculty, and growing up with it, children commonly get not those
general ideas, nor learn the names that stand for them, till, having for a
good while exercised their reason about familiar and more particular ideas,
they are, by their ordinary discourse and actions with others, acknowledged to
be capable of rational conversation. If assenting to these maxims, when men
come to the use of reason, can be true in any other sense, I desire it may be
shown; or at least, how in this, or any other sense, it proves them innate.
15.
The Steps by which the Mind attains several Truths.
The
senses at first let in PARTICULAR ideas, and furnish the yet empty cabinet,
and the mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in
the memory, and names got to them. Afterwards, the mind proceeding further,
abstracts them, and by degrees learns the use of general names. In this manner
the mind comes to be furnished with ideas and language, the MATERIALS about
which to exercise its discursive faculty. And the use of reason becomes daily
more visible, as these materials that give it employment increase. But though
the having of general ideas and the use of general words and reason usually
grow together, yet I see not how this any way proves them innate. The
knowledge of some truths, I confess, is very early in the mind; but in a way
that shows them not to be innate. For, if we will observe, we shall find it
still to be about ideas, not innate, but acquired; it being about those first
which are imprinted by external things, with which infants have earliest to
do, which make the most frequent impressions on their senses. In ideas thus
got, the mind discovers that some agree and others differ, probably as soon as
it has any use of memory; as soon as it is able to retain and perceive
distinct ideas. But whether it be then or no, this is certain, it does so long
before it has the use of words; or comes to that which we commonly call “the
use of reason.” For a child knows as certainly before it can speak the
difference between the ideas of sweet and bitter (i.e. that sweet is not
bitter), as it knows afterwards (when it comes to speak) that wormwood and
sugarplums are not the same thing.
16.
Assent to supposed innate truths depends on having clear and distinct
ideas of what their terms mean, and not on their innateness.
A
child knows not that three and four are equal to seven, till he comes to be
able to count seven, and has got the name and idea of equality; and then, upon
explaining those words, he presently assents to, or rather perceives the truth
of that proposition. But neither does he then readily assent because it is an
innate truth, nor was his assent wanting till then because he wanted the use
of reason; but the truth of it appears to him as soon as he has settled in his
mind the clear and distinct ideas that these names stand for. And then he
knows the truth of that proposition upon the same ground and by the same
means, that he knew before that a rod and a cherry are not the same thing; and
upon the same ground also that he may come to know afterwards “That it is
impossible for the same thing to be and not to be,” as shall be more fully
shown hereafter. So that the later it is before any one comes to have those
general ideas about which those maxims are; or to know the signification of
those generic terms that stand for them; or to put together in his mind the
ideas they stand for; the later also will it be before he comes to assent to
those maxims;--whose terms, with the ideas they stand for, being no more
innate than those of a cat or a weasel he must stay till time and observation
have acquainted him with them; and then he will be in a capacity to know the
truth of these maxims, upon the first occasion that shall make him put
together those ideas in his mind, and observe whether they agree or disagree,
according as is expressed in those propositions. And therefore it is that a
man knows that eighteen and nineteen are equal to thirty-seven, by the same
self-evidence that he knows one and two to be equal to three: yet a child
knows this not so soon as the other; not for want of the use of reason, but
because the ideas the words eighteen nineteen, and thirty-seven stand for, are
not so soon got, as those which are signified by one, two, and three.
17.
Assenting as soon as proposed and understood, proves them not innate.
This
evasion therefore of general assent when men come to the use of reason,
failing as it does, and leaving no difference between those supposed innate
and other truths that are afterwards acquired and learnt, men have endeavoured
to secure an universal assent to those they call maxims, by saying, they are
generally assented to as soon as proposed, and the terms they are proposed in
understood: seeing all men, even children, as soon as they hear and understand
the terms, assent to these propositions, they think it is sufficient to prove
them innate. For, since men never
fail after they have once understood the words, to acknowledge them for
undoubted truths, they would infer, that certainly these propositions were
first lodged in the understanding, which, without any teaching, the mind, at
the very first proposal immediately closes with and assents to, and after that
never doubts again.
18.
If such an Assent be a Mark of Innate, then “that one and two are
equal to three, that Sweetness if not Bitterness,” and a thousand the like,
must be inate.
In
answer to this, I demand whether ready assent given to a proposition, upon
first hearing and understanding the terms, be a certain mark of an innate
principle? If it be not, such a general assent is in vain urged as a proof of
them: if it be said that it is a mark of innate, they must then allow all such
propositions to be innate which are generally assented to as soon as heard,
whereby they will find themselves plentifully stored with innate principles.
For upon the same ground, viz. of assent at first hearing and understanding
the terms, that men would have those maxims pass for innate, they must also
admit several propositions about numbers to be innate; and thus, that one and
two are equal to three, that two and two are equal to four, and a multitude of
other the like propositions in numbers, that everybody assents to at first
hearing and understanding the terms, must have a place amongst these innate
axioms. Nor is this the prerogative of numbers alone, and propositions made
about several of them; but even natural philosophy, and all the other
sciences, afford propositions which are sure to meet with assent as soon as
they are understood. That “two bodies cannot be in the same place” is a
truth that nobody any more sticks at than at these maxims, that “it is
impossible for the same thing to be and not to be,” that “white is not
black,” that “a square is not a circle,” that “bitterness is not
sweetness.” These and a million of such other propositions, as many at least
as we have distinct, ideas of, every man in his wits, at first hearing, and
knowing, what the names stand for, must necessarily assent to. If these men
will be true to their own rule, and have assent at first hearing and
understanding the terms to be a mark of innate, they must allow not only as
many innate proposition as men have distinct ideas, but as many as men can
make propositions wherein different ideas are denied one of another. Since
every proposition wherein one different idea is denied of another, will as
certainly find assent at first hearing and understanding the terms as this
general one, “It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be,” or
that which is the foundation of it and is the easier understood of the two,
“The same is not different”; by which account they will have legions of
innate propositions of this one sort, without mentioning any other But, since
no proposition can be innate unless the ideas about which it is be
innate, this will be to suppose all our ideas of colours, sounds, tastes,
figure, &c., innate, than which there cannot be anything more opposite to
reason and experience. Universal and ready assent upon hearing and
understanding the terms is, I grant, a mark of self-evidence; but
self-evidence, depending not on innate impressions, but on something else, (as
we shall show hereafter,) belongs to several propositions which nobody was yet
so extravagant as to pretend to be innate.
19.
Such less general Propositions known before these universal Maxims.
Nor
let it be said, that those more particular self-evident propositions, which
are assented to at first hearing, as that “one and two are equal to three,”
that “green is not red,” &c., are received as the consequences of
those more universal propositions which are looked on as innate principles;
since any one, who will but take the pains to observe what passes in the
understanding, will certainly find that these, and the like less general
propositions, are certainly known, and firmly assented to by those who are
utterly ignorant of those more general maxims; and so, being earlier in the
mind than those (as they are called) first principles, cannot owe to them the
assent wherewith they are received at first hearing.
20.
One and one equal to Two, &c., not general nor useful answered.
If
it be said, that these propositions, viz. “two and two are equal to four,”
“red is not blue,” &c., are not general maxims nor of any great use, I
answer, that makes nothing to the argument of universal assent upon hearing
and understanding. For, if that be the certain mark of innate, whatever
propositions can be found that receives general assent as soon as heard
understood, that must be admitted for an innate proposition as well as this
maxim, “That it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be,”
they being upon this ground equal. And as to the difference of being more
general, that makes this maxim more remote from being innate; those general
and abstract ideas being more strangers to our first apprehensions than those
of more particular self-evident propositions; and therefore it is longer
before they are admitted, and assented to by the growing understanding. And as
to the usefulness of these magnified maxims, that perhaps will not be found so
great as is generally conceived, when it comes in its due place to be more
fully considered.
21.
These Maxims not being known sometimes till proposed, proves them not
innate.
But
we have not yet done with “assenting to propositions at first hearing and
understanding their terms.” It is fit we first take notice that this,
instead of being a mark that they are innate, is a proof of the contrary;
since it supposes that several, who understand and know other things, are
ignorant of these principles till they are proposed to them; and that one may
be unacquainted with these truths till he hears them from others. For, if they
were innate, what need they be proposed in order to gaining assent, when, by
being in the understanding, by a natural and original impression, (if there
were any such,) they could not but be known before? Or doth the proposing them
print them clearer in the mind than nature did? If so, then the consequence
will be, that a man knows them better after he has been thus taught them than
he did before. Whence it will follow that these principles may be made more
evident to us by others’ teaching than nature has made them by impression:
which will ill agree with the opinion of innate principles, and give but
little authority to them; but, on the contrary, makes them unfit to be the
foundations of all our other knowledge; as they are pretended to be. This
cannot be denied, that men grow first acquainted with many of these
self-evident truths upon their being proposed: but it is clear that whosoever
does so, finds in himself that he then begins to know a proposition, which he
knew not before, and which from thenceforth he never questions; not because it
was innate, but because the consideration of the nature of the things
contained in those words would not suffer him to think otherwise, how, or
whensoever he is brought to reflect on them. And if whatever is assented to at
first hearing and understanding the terms must pass for an innate principle,
every well-grounded observation, drawn from particulars into a general rule,
must be innate. When yet it is certain that not all, but only sagacious heads,
light at first on these observations, and reduce them into general
propositions: not innate but collected from a preceding acquaintance and
reflection on particular instances. These, when observing men have made them,
unobserving men, when they are proposed to them cannot refuse their assent to.
22.
Implicitly known before proposing, signifies that the Mind is capable
of understanding them, or else signifies nothing.
If
it be said, the understanding hath an IMPLICIT knowledge of these principles,
but not an EXPLICIT, before this first hearing (as they must who will say “that
they are in the understanding before they are known,”) it will be hard to
conceive what is meant by a principle imprinted on the understanding
implicitly, unless it be this,--that the mind is capable of understanding and
assenting firmly to such propositions. And thus all mathematical
demonstrations, as well as first principles, must be received as native
impressions on the mind; which I fear they will scarce allow them to be, who
find it harder to demonstrate a proposition than assent to it when
demonstrated. And few mathematicians will be forward to believe, that all the
diagrams they have drawn were but copies of those innate characters which
nature had engraven upon their minds.
23.
The Argument of assenting on first hearing, is upon a false supposition
of no precedent teaching.
There
is, I fear, this further weakness in the foregoing argument, which would
persuade us that therefore those maxims are to be thought innate, which men
admit at first hearing; because they assent to propositions which they are not
taught, nor do receive from the force of any argument or demonstration, but a
bare explication or understanding of the terms. Under which there seems to me to lie this fallacy, that men
are supposed not to be taught nor to learn anything DE NOVO; when, in truth,
they are taught, and do learn something they were ignorant of before. For,
first, it is evident that they have learned the terms, and their
signification; neither of which was born with them. But this is not all the
acquired knowledge in the case: the ideas themselves, about which the
proposition is, are not born with them, no more than their names, but got
afterwards. So that in all propositions that are assented to at first hearing,
the terms of the proposition, their standing for such ideas, and the ideas
themselves that they stand for, being neither of them innate, I would fain
know what there is remaining in such propositions that is innate. For I would
gladly have any one name that proposition whose terms or ideas were either of
them innate. We BY DEGREES get ideas and names, and LEARN their appropriated
connexion one with another; and then to propositions made in such, terms,
whose signification we have learnt, and wherein the agreement or disagreement
we can perceive in our ideas when put together is expressed, we at first
hearing assent; though to other propositions, in themselves as certain and
evident, but which are concerning ideas not so soon or so easily got, we are
at the same time no way capable of assenting. For, though a child quickly
assents to this proposition, “That an apple is not fire,” when by familiar
acquaintance he has got the ideas of those two different things distinctly
imprinted on his mind, and has learnt that the names apple and fire stand for
them; yet it will be some years after, perhaps, before the same child will
assent to this proposition, “That it is impossible for the same thing to be
and not to be”; because that, though perhaps the words are as easy to be
learnt, yet the signification of them being more large, comprehensive, and
abstract than of the names annexed to those sensible things the child hath to
do with, it is longer before he learns their precise meaning, and it requires
more time plainly to form in his mind those general ideas they stand for. Till
that be done, you will in vain endeavour to make any child assent to a
proposition made up of such general terms; but as soon as ever he has got
those ideas, and learned their names, he forwardly closes with the one as well
as the other of the forementioned propositions: and with both for the same
reason; viz. because he finds the ideas he has in his mind to agree or
disagree, according as the words standing for them are affirmed or denied one
of another in the proposition. But if propositions be brought to him in words
which stand for ideas he has not yet in his mind, to such propositions,
however evidently true or false in themselves, he affords neither assent nor
dissent, but is ignorant. For
words being but empty sounds, any further than they are signs of our ideas, we
cannot but assent to them as they correspond to those ideas we have, but no
further than that. But the showing by what steps and ways knowledge comes into
our minds; and the grounds of several degrees of assent, being; the business
of the following Discourse, it may suffice to have only touched on it here, as
one reason that made me doubt of those innate principles.
24.
Not innate because not universally assented to.
To
conclude this argument of universal consent, I agree with these defenders of
innate principles,--that if they are innate, they must needs have universal
assent. For that a truth should be innate and yet not assented to, is to me as
unintelligible as for a man to know a truth and be ignorant of it at the same
time. But then, by these men’s own confession, they cannot be innate; since
they are not assented to by those who understand not the terms; nor by a great
part of those who do understand them, but have yet never heard nor thought of
those propositions; which, I think, is at least one half of mankind. But were
the number far less, it would be enough to destroy universal assent, and
thereby show these propositions not to be innate, if children alone were
ignorant of them.
25.
These Maxims not the first known.
But
that I may not be accused to argue from the thoughts of infants, which are
unknown to us, and to conclude from what passes in their understandings before
they express it; I say next, that these two general propositions are not the
truths that first possess the minds of children, nor are antecedent to all
acquired and adventitious notions: which, if they were innate, they must needs
be. Whether we can determine it or no, it matters not, there is certainly a
time when children begin to think, and their words and actions do assure us
that they do so. When therefore they are capable of thought, of knowledge, of
assent, can it rationally be supposed they can be ignorant of those notions
that nature has imprinted, were there any such? Can it be imagined, with any
appearance of reason, that they perceive the impressions from things without,
and be at the same time ignorant of those characters which nature itself has
taken care to stamp within? Can they receive and assent to adventitious
notions, and be ignorant of those which are supposed woven into the very
principles of their being, and imprinted there in indelible characters, to be
the foundation and guide of all their acquired knowledge and future
reasonings? This would be to make nature take pains to no purpose; or at least
to write very ill; since its characters could not be read by those eyes which
saw other things very well: and those are very ill supposed the clearest parts
of truth, and the foundations of all our knowledge, which are not first known,
and without which the undoubted knowledge of several other things may be had.
The child certainly knows, that the nurse that feeds it is neither the cat it
plays with, nor the blackmoor it is afraid of: that the wormseed or mustard it
refuses, is not the apple or sugar it cries for: this it is certainly and
undoubtedly assured of: but will any one say, it is by virtue of this
principle, “That it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be,”
that it so firmly assents to these and other parts of its knowledge? Or that
the child has any notion or apprehension of that proposition at an age,
wherein yet, it is plain, it knows a great many other truths? He that will
say, children join in these general abstract speculations with their
sucking-bottles and their rattles, may perhaps, with justice, be thought to
have more passion and zeal for his opinion, but less sincerity and truth, than
one of that age.
26.
And so not innate.
Though
therefore there be several general propositions that meet with constant and
ready assent, as soon as proposed to men grown up, who have attained the use
of more general and abstract ideas, and names standing for them; yet they not
being to be found in those of tender years, who nevertheless know other
things, they cannot pretend to universal assent of intelligent persons, and so
by no means can be supposed innate;--it being impossible that any truth which
is innate (if there were any such) should be unknown, at least to any one who
knows anything else. Since, if they are innate truths, they must be innate
thoughts: there being nothing a truth in the mind that it has never thought
on. Whereby it is evident, if there be any innate truths, they must
necessarily be the first of any thought on; the first that appear.
27.
Not innate, because they appear least, where what is innate shows
itself clearest.
That
the general maxims we are discoursing of are not known to children, idiots,
and a great part of mankind, we have already sufficiently proved: whereby it
is evident they have not an universal assent, nor are general impressions. But
there is this further argument in it against their being innate: that these
characters, if they were native and original impressions, should appear
fairest and clearest in those persons in whom yet we find no footsteps of
them; and it is, in my opinion, a strong presumption that they are not innate,
since they are least known to those in whom, if they were innate, they must
needs exert themselves with most force and vigour. For children, idiots,
savages, and illiterate people, being of all others the least corrupted by
custom, or borrowed opinions; learning and education having not cast their
native thoughts into new moulds; nor by superinducing foreign and studied
doctrines, confounded those fair characters nature had written there; one
might reasonably imagine that in THEIR minds these innate notions should lie
open fairly to every one’s view, as it is certain the thoughts of children
do. It might very well be expected that these principles should be perfectly
known to naturals; which being stamped immediately on the soul, (as these men
suppose,) can have no dependence on the constitution or organs of the body,
the only confessed difference between them and others. One would think,
according to these men’s principles, that all these native beams of light
(were there any such) should, in those who have no reserves, no arts of
concealment, shine out in their full lustre, and leave us in no more doubt of
their being there, than we are of their love of pleasure and abhorrence of
pain. But alas, amongst children, idiots, savages, and the grossly illiterate,
what general maxims are to be found? what universal principles of knowledge?
Their notions are few and narrow, borrowed only from those objects they have
had most to do with, and which have made upon their senses the frequentest and
strongest impressions. A child knows his nurse and his cradle, and by degrees
the playthings of a little more advanced age; and a young savage has, perhaps,
his head filled with love and hunting, according to the fashion of his tribe.
But he that from a child untaught, or a wild inhabitant of the woods, will
expect these abstract maxims and reputed principles of science, will, I fear
find himself mistaken. Such kind of general propositions are seldom mentioned
in the huts of Indians: much less are they to be found in the thoughts of
children, or any impressions of them on the minds of naturals. They are the
language and business of the schools and academies of learned nations
accustomed to that sort of conversation or learning, where disputes are
frequent; these maxims being suited to artificial argumentation and useful for
conviction, but not much conducing to the discovery of truth or advancement of
knowledge. But of their small use for the improvement of knowledge I shall
have occasion to speak more at large, l.4, c. 7.
28.
Recapitulation.
I
know not how absurd this may seem to the masters of demonstration. And
probably it will hardly go down with anybody at first hearing. I must
therefore beg a little truce with prejudice, and the forbearance of censure,
till I have been heard out in the sequel of this Discourse, being very willing
to submit to better judgments. And since I impartially search after truth, I
shall not be sorry to be convinced, that I have been too fond of my own
notions; which I confess we are all apt to be, when application and study have
warmed our heads with them.
Upon
the whole matter, I cannot see any ground to think these two speculative
Maxims innate: since they are not universally assented to; and the assent they
so generally find is no other than what several propositions, not allowed to
be innate, equally partake in with them: and since the assent that is given
them is produced another way, and comes not from natural inscription, as I
doubt not but to make appear in the following Discourse. And if THESE “first
principles” of knowledge and science are found not to be innate, no OTHER
speculative maxims can (I suppose), with better right pretend to be so.
CHAPTER
II.
NO
INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES
1.
No moral Principles so clear and so generally received as the
forementioned speculative Maxims.
If
those speculative Maxims, whereof we discoursed in the foregoing chapter, have
not an actual universal assent from all mankind, as we there proved, it is
much more visible concerning PRACTICAL Principles, that they come short of an
universal reception: and I think it will be hard to instance any one moral
rule which can pretend to so general and ready an assent as, “What is, is”;
or to be so manifest a truth as this, that “It is impossible for the same
thing to be and not to be.” Whereby it is evident that they are further
removed from a title to be innate; and the doubt of their being native
impressions on the mind is stronger against those moral principles than the
other. Not that it brings their truth at all in question. They are equally
true, though not equally evident. Those speculative maxims carry their own
evidence with them: but moral principles require reasoning and discourse, and
some exercise of the mind, to discover the certainty of their truth. They lie
not open as natural characters engraved on the mind; which, if any such were,
they must needs be visible by themselves, and by their own light be certain
and known to everybody. But this is no derogation to their truth and
certainty; no more than it is to the truth or certainty of the three angles of
a triangle being equal to two right ones because it is not so evident as “the
whole is bigger than a part,” nor so apt to be assented to at first hearing.
It may suffice that these moral rules are capable of demonstration: and
therefore it is our own faults if we come not to a certain knowledge of them.
But the ignorance wherein many men are of them, and the slowness of assent
wherewith others receive them, are manifest proofs that they are not innate,
and such as offer themselves to their view without searching.
2.
Faith and Justice not owned as Principles by all Men.
Whether
there be any such moral principles, wherein all men do agree, I appeal to any
who have been but moderately conversant in the history of mankind, and looked
abroad beyond the smoke of their own chimneys. Where is that practical truth
that is universally received, without doubt or question, as it must be if
innate? JUSTICE, and keeping of contracts, is that which most men seem to
agree in. This is a principle which is thought to extend itself to the dens of
thieves, and the confederacies of the greatest villains; and they who have
gone furthest towards the putting off of humanity itself, keep faith and rules
of justice one with another. I grant that outlaws themselves do this one
amongst another: but it is without receiving these as the innate laws of
nature. They practise them as rules of convenience within their own
communities: but it is impossible to conceive that he embraces justice as a
practical principle who acts fairly with his fellow-highwayman, and at the
same time plunders or kills the next honest man he meets with Justice and
truth are the common ties of society; and therefore even outlaws and robbers,
who break with all the world besides, must keep faith and rules of equity
amongst themselves; or else they cannot hold together. But will any one say,
that those that live by fraud or rapine have innate principles of truth and
justice which they allow and assent to?
3.
Objection: though Men deny them in their Practice, yet they admit them
in their Thoughts answered.
Perhaps
it will be urged, that the tacit assent of their minds agrees to what their
practice contradicts. I answer, first, I have always thought the actions of
men the best interpreters of their thoughts. But, since it is certain that
most men’s practices, and some men’s open professions, have either
questioned or denied these principles, it is impossible to establish an
universal consent, (though we should look for it only amongst grown men,)
without which it is impossible to conclude them innate. Secondly, it is very
strange and unreasonable to suppose innate practical principles, that
terminate only in contemplation. Practical
principles, derived from nature, are there for operation, and must produce
conformity of action, not barely speculative assent to their truth, or else
they are in vain distinguished from speculative maxims. Nature, I confess, has
put into man a desire of happiness and an aversion to misery: these indeed are
innate practical principles which (as practical principles ought) DO continue
constantly to operate and influence all our actions without ceasing: these may
be observed in all persons and all ages, steady and universal; but these are
INCLINATIONS OF THE APPETITE to good, not impressions of truth on the
understanding. I deny not that
there are natural tendencies imprinted on the minds of men; and that from the
very first instances of sense and perception, there are some things that are
grateful and others unwelcome to them; some things that they incline to and
others that they fly: but this makes nothing for innate characters on the
mind, which are to be the principles of knowledge regulating our practice.
Such natural impressions on the understanding are so far from being confirmed
hereby, that this is an argument against them; since, if there were certain
characters imprinted by nature on the understanding, as the principles of
knowledge, we could not but perceive them constantly operate in us and
influence our knowledge, as we do those others on the will and appetite; which
never cease to be the constant springs and motives of all our actions, to
which we perpetually feel them strongly impelling us.
4.
Moral Rules need a Proof, ERGO not innate.
Another
reason that makes me doubt of any innate practical principles is, that I think
THERE CANNOT ANY ONE MORAL RULE BE PROPOSED WHEREOF A MAN MAY NOT JUSTLY
DEMAND A REASON: which would be perfectly ridiculous and absurd if they were
innate; or so much as self-evident, which every innate principle must needs
be, and not need any proof to ascertain its truth, nor want any reason to gain
it approbation. He would be thought void of common sense who asked on the one
side, or on the other side went to give a reason WHY “it is impossible for
the same thing to be and not to be.” It carries its own light and evidence
with it, and needs no other proof: he that understands the terms assents to it
for its own sake or else nothing will ever be able to prevail with him to do
it. But should that most unshaken rule of morality and foundation of all
social virtue, “That should do as he would be done unto,” be proposed to
one who never heard of it before, but yet is of capacity to understand its
meaning; might he not without any absurdity ask a reason why? And were not he
that proposed it bound to make out the truth and reasonableness of it to him?
Which plainly shows it not to be innate; for if it were it could neither want
nor receive any proof; but must needs (at least as soon as heard and
understood) be received and assented to as an unquestionable truth, which a
man can by no means doubt of. So that the truth of all these moral rules
plainly depends upon some other antecedent to them, and from which they must
be DEDUCED; which could not be if either they were innate or so much as
self-evident.
5.
Instance in keeping Compacts
That
men should keep their compacts is certainly a great and undeniable rule in
morality. But yet, if a Christian, who has the view of happiness and misery in
another life, be asked why a man must keep his word, he will give this as a
reason:--Because God, who has the power of eternal life and death, requires it
of us. But if a Hobbist be asked why? he will answer:--Because the public
requires it, and the Leviathan will punish you if you do not. And if one of
the old philosophers had been asked, he would have answered:--Because it was
dishonest, below the dignity of a man, and opposite to virtue, the highest
perfection of human nature, to do otherwise.
6.
Virtue generally approved not because innate, but because profitable.
Hence
naturally flows the great variety of opinions concerning moral rules which are
to be found among men, according to the different sorts of happiness they have
a prospect of, or propose to themselves; which could not be if practical
principles were innate, and imprinted in our minds immediately by the hand of
God. I grant the existence of God is so many ways manifest, and the obedience
we owe him so congruous to the light of reason, that a great part of mankind
give testimony to the law of nature: but yet I think it must be allowed that
several moral rules may receive from mankind a very general approbation,
without either knowing or admitting the true ground of morality; which can
only be the will and law of a God, who sees men in the dark, has in his hand
rewards and punishments, and power enough to call to account the proudest
offender. For, God having, by an inseparable connexion, joined virtue and
public happiness together, and made the practice thereof necessary to the
preservation of society, and visibly beneficial to all with whom the virtuous
man has to do; it is no wonder that every one should not only allow, but
recommend and magnify those rules to others, from whose observance of them he
is sure to reap advantage to himself. He may, out of interest as well as
conviction, cry up that for sacred, which, if once trampled on and profaned,
he himself cannot be safe nor secure. This,
though it takes nothing from the moral and eternal obligation which these
rules evidently have, yet it shows that the outward acknowledgment men pay to
them in their words proves not that they are innate principles: nay, it proves
not so much as that men assent to them inwardly in their own minds, as the
inviolable rules of their own practice; since we find that self-interest, and
the conveniences of this life, make many men own an outward profession and
approbation of them, whose actions sufficiently prove that they very little
consider the Lawgiver that prescribed these rules; nor the hell that he has
ordained for the punishment of those that transgress them.
7.
Men’s actions convince us, that the Rule of Virtue is not their
internal Principle.
For,
if we will not in civility allow too much sincerity to the professions of most
men, but think their actions to be the interpreters of their thoughts, we
shall find that they have no such internal veneration for these rules, nor so
full a persuasion of their certainty and obligation. The great principle of
morality, ‘To do as one would be done to,’ is more commended than
practised. But the breach of this rule cannot be a greater vice, than to teach
others, that it is no moral rule, nor obligatory, would be thought madness,
and contrary to that interest men sacrifice to, when they break it themselves.
Perhaps CONSCIENCE will be urged as checking us for such breaches, and so the
internal obligation and establishment of the rule be preserved.
8.
Conscience no Proof of any innate Moral Rule.
To
which I answer, that I doubt not but, without being written on their hearts,
many men may, by the same way that they come to the knowledge of other things,
come to assent to several moral rules, and be convinced of their obligation.
Others also may come to be of the same mind, from their education, company,
and customs of their country; which persuasion, however got, will serve to set
conscience on work; which is nothing else but our own opinion or judgment of
the moral rectitude or gravity of our own actions; and if conscience be a
proof of innate principles, contraries may be innate principles; since some
men with the same bent of conscience prosecute what others avoid.
9.
Instances of Enormities practised without Remorse.
But
I cannot see how any men should ever transgress those moral rules, with
confidence and serenity, were they innate, and stamped upon their minds. View
but an army at the sacking of a town, and see what observation or sense of
moral principles, or what touch of conscience for all the outrages they do.
Robberies, murders, rapes, are the sports of men set at liberty from
punishment and censure. Have there not been whole nations, and those of the
most civilized people, amongst whom the exposing their children, and leaving
them in the fields to perish by want or wild beasts has been the practice; as
little condemned or scrupled as the begetting them? Do they not still, in some
countries, put them into the same graves with their mothers, if they die in
childbirth; or despatch them, if a pretended astrologer declares them to have
unhappy stars? And are there not places where, at a certain age, they kill or
expose their parents, without any remorse at all? In a part of Asia, the sick,
when their case comes to be thought desperate, are carried out and laid on the
earth before they are dead; and left there, exposed to wind and weather, to
perish without assistance or pity. It is familiar among the Mingrelians, a
people professing Christianity, to bury their children alive without scruple.
There are places where they eat their own children. The Caribbees were wont to
geld their children, on purpose to fat and eat them. And Garcilasso de la Vega
tells us of a people in Peru which were wont to fat and eat the children they
got on their female captives, whom they kept as concubines for that purpose,
and when they were past breeding, the mothers themselves were killed too and
eaten. The virtues whereby the Tououpinambos believed they merited paradise,
were revenge, and eating abundance of their enemies. They have not so much as
a name for God, and have no religion, no worship. The saints who are canonized
amongst the Turks, lead lives which one cannot with modesty relate. A
remarkable passage to this purpose, out of the voyage of Baumgarten, which is
a book not every day to be met with, I shall set down at large, in the
language it is published in.
Ibi
(sc. prope Belbes in Aegypto) vidimus sanctum unum Saracenicum inter arenarum
cumulos, ita ut ex utero matris prodiit nudum sedentem. Mos est, ut didicimus,
Mahometistis, ut eos, qui amentes et sine ratione sunt, pro sanctis colant et
venerentur. Insuper et eos, qui cum diu vitam egerint inquinatissimam,
voluntariam demum poenitentiam et paupertatem, sanctitate venerandos deputant.
Ejusmodi vero genus hominum libertatem quandam effrenem habent, domos quos
volunt intrandi, edendi, bibendi, et quod majus est, concumbendi; ex quo
concubitu, si proles secuta fuerit, sancta similiter habetur. His ergo
hominibus dum vivunt, magnos exhibent honores; mortuis vero vel templa vel
monumenta extruunt amplissima, eosque contingere ac sepelire maximae fortunae
ducunt loco. Audivimus haec dicta
et dicenda per interpretem a Mucrelo nostro.
Insuper sanctum ilium, quern eo loco vidimus, publicitus apprime
commendari, eum esse hominem sanctum, divinum ac integritate praecipuum; eo
quod, nec faminarum unquam esset, nec puerorum, sed tantummodo asellarum
concubitor atque mularum. (Peregr. Baumgarten, 1. ii. c. i. p.
73.)
Where
then are those innate principles of justice, piety, gratitude, equity,
chastity? Or where is that universal consent that assures us there are such
inbred rules? Murders in duels, when fashion has made them honourable, are
committed without remorse of conscience: nay, in many places innocence in this
case is the greatest ignominy. And if we look abroad to take a view of men as
they are, we shall find that they have remorse, in one place, for doing or
omitting that which others, in another place, think they merit by.
10.
Men have contrary practical Principles.
He
that will carefully peruse the history of mankind, and look abroad into the
several tribes of men, and with indifferency survey their actions, will be
able to satisfy himself, that there is scarce that principle of morality to be
named, or, rule of virtue to be thought on, (those only excepted that are
absolutely necessary to hold society together, which commonly too are
neglected betwixt distinct societies,) which is not, somewhere or other,
slighted and condemned by the general fashion of whole societies of men,
governed by practical opinions and rules of living quite opposite to others.
11.
Whole Nations reject several Moral Rules.
Here
perhaps it will be objected, that it is no argument that the rule is not
known, because it is broken. I grant the objection good where men, though they
transgress, yet disown not the law; where fear of shame, censure, or
punishment, carries the mark of some awe it has upon them. But it is
impossible to conceive that a whole nation of men should all publicly reject
and renounce what every one of them certainly and infallibly knew to be a law;
for so they must who have it naturally imprinted on their minds. It is
possible men may sometimes own rules of morality which in their private
thoughts they do not believe to be true, only to keep themselves in reputation
and esteem amongst those who are persuaded of their obligation. But it is not
to be imagined that a whole society of men should publicly and professedly
disown and cast off a rule which they could not in their own minds but be
infallibly certain was a law; nor be ignorant that all men they should have to
do with knew it to be such: and therefore must every one of them apprehend
from others all the contempt and abhorrence due to one who professes himself
void of humanity: and one who, confounding the known and natural measures of
right and wrong, cannot but be looked on as the professed enemy of their peace
and happiness. Whatever practical principle is innate, cannot but be known to
every one to be just and good. It is therefore little less than a
contradiction to suppose, that whole nations of men should, both in their
professions and practice, unanimously and universally give the lie to what, by
the most invincible evidence, every one of them knew to be true, right, and
good. This is enough to satisfy us that no practical rule which is anywhere
universally, and with public approbation or allowance, transgressed, can be
supposed innate.—But I have something further to add in answer to this
objection.
12.
The generally allowed breach of a rule proof that it is not innate.
The
breaking of a rule, say you, is no argument that it is unknown. I grant it:
but the GENERALLY ALLOWED breach of it anywhere, I say, is a proof that it is
not innate. For example: let us take any of these rules, which, being the most
obvious deductions of human reason, and conformable to the natural inclination
of the greatest part of men, fewest people have had the impudence to deny or
inconsideration to doubt of. If any can be thought to be naturally imprinted,
none, I think, can have a fairer pretence to be innate than this: “Parents,
preserve and cherish your children.” When, therefore, you say that this is
an innate rule, what do you mean? Either that it is an innate principle which
upon all occasions excites and directs the actions of all men; or else, that
it is a truth which all men have imprinted on their minds, and which therefore
they know and assent to. But in neither of these senses is it innate. FIRST,
that it is not a principle which influences all men’s actions, is what I
have proved by the examples before cited: nor need we seek so far as the
Mingrelia or Peru to find instances of such as neglect, abuse, nay, and
destroy their children; or look on it only as the more than brutality of some
savage and barbarous nations, when we remember that it was a familiar and
uncondemned practice amongst the Greeks and Romans to expose, without pity or
remorse, their innocent infants. SECONDLY, that it is an innate truth, known
to all men, is also false. For, “Parents preserve your children,” is so
far from an innate truth, that it is no truth at all: it being a command, and
not a proposition, and so not capable of truth or falsehood. To make it
capable of being assented to as true, it must be reduced to some such
proposition as this: “It is the duty of parents to preserve their children.”
But what duty is, cannot be understood without a law; nor a law be known or
supposed without a lawmaker, or without reward and punishment; so that it is
impossible that this, or any other, practical principle should be innate, i.e.
be imprinted on the mind as a duty, without supposing the ideas of God, of
law, of obligation, of punishment, of a life after this, innate: for that
punishment follows not in this life the breach of this rule, and consequently
that it has not the force of a law in countries where the generally allowed
practice runs counter to it, is in itself evident. But these ideas (which must
be all of them innate, if anything as a duty be so) are so far from being
innate, that it is not every studious or thinking man, much less every one
that is born, in whom they are to be found clear and distinct; and that one of
them, which of all others seems most likely to be innate, is not so, (I mean
the idea of God,) I think, in the next chapter, will appear very evident to
any considering man.
13.
If men can be ignorant of what is innate, certainty is not described by
innate principles.
From
what has been said, I think we may safely conclude that whatever practical
rule is in any place generally and with allowance broken, cannot be supposed
innate; it being impossible that men should, without shame or fear,
confidently and serenely, break a rule which they could not but evidently know
that God had set up, and would certainly punish the breach of, (which they
must, if it were innate,) to a degree to make it a very ill bargain to the
transgressor. Without such a knowledge as this, a man can never be certain
that anything is his duty. Ignorance or doubt of the law, hopes to escape the
knowledge or power of the law-maker, or the like, may make men give way to a
present appetite; but let any one see the fault, and the rod by it, and with
the transgression, a fire ready to punish it; a pleasure tempting, and the
hand of the Almighty visibly held up and prepared to take vengeance, (for this
must be the case where any duty is imprinted on the mind,) and then tell me
whether it be possible for people with such a prospect, such a certain
knowledge as this, wantonly, and without scruple, to offend against a law
which they carry about them in indelible characters, and that stares them in
the face whilst they are breaking it? Whether men, at the same time that they
feel in themselves the imprinted edicts of an Omnipotent Law-maker, can, with
assurance and gaiety, slight and trample underfoot his most sacred
injunctions? And lastly, whether it be possible that whilst a man thus openly
bids defiance to this innate law and supreme Lawgiver, all the bystanders,
yea, even the governors and rulers of the people, full of the same sense both
of the law and Law-maker, should silently connive, without testifying their
dislike or laying the least blame on it? Principles of actions indeed there
are lodged in men’s appetites; but these are so far from being innate moral
principles, that if they were left to their full swing they would carry men to
the overturning of all morality. Moral laws are set as a curb and restraint to
these exorbitant desires, which they cannot be but by rewards and punishments
that will overbalance the satisfaction any one shall propose to himself in the
breach of the law. If, therefore,
anything be imprinted on the minds of all men as a law, all men must have a
certain and unavoidable knowledge that certain and unavoidable punishment will
attend the breach of it. For if men can be ignorant or doubtful of what is
innate, innate principles are insisted on, and urged to no purpose; truth and
certainty (the things pretended) are not at all secured by them; but men are
in the same uncertain floating estate with as without them. An evident
indubitable knowledge of unavoidable punishment, great enough to make the
transgression very uneligible, must accompany an innate law; unless with an
innate law they can suppose an innate Gospel too. I would not here be
mistaken, as if, because I deny an innate law I thought there were none but
positive laws. There is a great deal of difference between an innate law, and
a law of nature between something imprinted on our minds in their very
original, and something that we, being ignorant of, may attain to the
knowledge of, by the use and due application of our natural faculties.
And I think they equally forsake the truth who, running into contrary
extremes, either affirm an innate law, or deny that there is a law knowable by
the light of nature, i.e. without the help of positive revelation.
14.
Those who maintain innate practical Principles tell us not what they
are.
The
difference there is amongst men in their practical principles is so evident
that I think I need say no more to evince, that it will be impossible to find
any innate moral rules by this mark of general assent; and it is enough to
make one suspect that the supposition of such innate principles is but an
opinion taken up at pleasure; since those who talk so confidently of them are
so sparing to tell us WHICH THEY ARE. This might with justice be expected from
those men who lay stress upon this opinion; and it gives occasion to distrust
either their knowledge or charity, who, declaring that God has imprinted on
the minds of men the foundations of knowledge and the rules of living, are yet
so little favourable to the information of their neighbours, or the quiet of
mankind, as not to point out to them which they are, in the variety men are
distracted with. But, in truth, were there any such innate principles there
would be no need to teach them. Did men find such innate propositions stamped
on their minds, they would easily be able to distinguish them from other
truths that they afterwards learned and deduced from them; and there would be
nothing more easy than to know what, and how many, they were. There could be
no more doubt about their number than there is about the number of our
fingers; and it is like then every system would be ready to give them us by
tale. But since nobody, that I know, has ventured yet to give a catalogue of
them, they cannot blame those who doubt of these innate principles; since even
they who require men to believe that there are such innate propositions, do
not tell us what they are. It is easy to foresee, that if different men of
different sects should go about to give us a list of those innate practical
principles, they would set down only such as suited their distinct hypotheses,
and were fit to support the doctrines of their particular schools or churches;
a plain evidence that there are no such innate truths. Nay, a great part of
men are so far from finding any such innate moral principles in themselves,
that, by denying freedom to mankind, and thereby making men no other than bare
machines, they take away not only innate, but all moral rules whatsoever, and
leave not a possibility to believe any such, to those who cannot conceive how
anything can be capable of a law that is not a free agent. And upon that
ground they must necessarily reject all principles of virtue, who cannot put
MORALITY and MECHANISM together, which are not very easy to be reconciled or
made consistent.
15.
Lord Herbert’s innate Principles examined.
When
I had written this, being informed that my Lord Herbert had, in his book De
Veritate, assigned these innate principles, I presently consulted him, hoping
to find in a man of so great parts, something that might satisfy me in this
point, and put an end to my inquiry. In his chapter De Instinctu Naturali, I
met with these six marks of his Notitice Communes:--1. Prioritas. 2.
Independentia. 3. Universalitas. 4. Certitudo.
5. Necessitas, i. e. as he explains it, faciunt ad hominis conservationem. 6.
Modus conformationis, i.e. Assensus nulla interposita mora. And at the latter
end of his little treatise De Religione Laici, he says this of these innate
principles: Adeo ut non uniuscujusvis religionis confinio arctentur quae
ubique vigent veritates. Sunt enim in ipsa mente caelitus descriptae,
nullisque traditionibus, sive scriptis, sive non scriptis, obnoxiae, p.3 And
Veritates nostrae catholicae, quae tanquam indubia Dei emata in foro interiori
descriptae.
Thus,
having given the marks of the innate principles or common notions, and
asserted their being imprinted on the minds of men by the hand of God, he
proceeds to set them down, and they are these:--1. Esse aliquod supremum
numen. 2. Numen illud coli debere. 3. Virtutem cum pietate conjunctam optimum
esse rationem cultus divini. 4. Resipiscendum esse a peccatis. 5. Dari
praemium vel paenam post hanc vitam transactam. Though I allow these to be
clear truths, and such as, if rightly explained, a rational creature can
hardly avoid giving his assent to, yet I think he is far from proving them
innate impressions in foro interiori descriptae. For I must take leave to
observe:--
16.
These five either not all, or more than all, if there are any.
First,
that these five propositions are either not all, or more than all, those
common notions written on our minds by the finger of God; if it were
reasonable to believe any at all to be so written. Since there are other
propositions which, even by his own rules, have as just a pretence to such an
original, and may be as well admitted for innate principles, as at least some
of these five he enumerates, viz. ‘Do as thou wouldst be done unto.’ And
perhaps some hundreds of others, when well considered.
17.
The supposed marks wanting.
Secondly,
that all his marks are not to be found in each of his five propositions, viz.
his first, second, and third marks agree perfectly to neither of them; and the
first, second, third, fourth, and sixth marks agree but ill to his third,
fourth, and fifth propositions. For, besides that we are assured from history
of many men, nay whole nations, who doubt or disbelieve some or all of them, I
cannot see how the third, viz. “That virtue joined with piety is the best
worship of God,” can be an innate principle, when the name or sound virtue,
is so hard to be understood; liable to so much uncertainty in its
signification; and the thing it stands for so much contended about and
difficult to be known. And
therefore this cannot be but a very uncertain rule of human practice, and
serve but very little to the conduct of our lives, and is therefore very unfit
to be assigned as an innate practical principle.
18.
Of little use if they were innate.
For
let us consider this proposition as to its meaning, (for it is the sense, and
not sound, that is and must be the principle or common notion,) viz. “Virtue
is the best worship of God,” i.e. is most acceptable to him; which, if
virtue be taken, as most commonly it is, for those actions which, according to
the different opinions of several countries, are accounted laudable, will be a
proposition so far from being certain, that it will not be true. If virtue be
taken for actions conformable to God’s will, or to the rule prescribed by
God—which is the true and only measure of virtue when virtue is used to
signify what is in its own nature right and good—then this proposition, “That
virtue is the best worship of God,” will be most true and certain, but of
very little use in human life: since it will amount to no more but this, viz. “That God is pleased with the doing of what he commands”;--which
a man may certainly know to be true, without knowing what it is that God doth
command; and so be as far from any rule or principle of his actions as he was
before. And I think very few will take a proposition which amounts to no more
than this, viz. “That God is pleased with the doing of what he himself
commands,” for an innate moral principle written on the minds of all men,
(however true and certain it may be,) since it teaches so little. Whosoever
does so will have reason to think hundreds of propositions innate principles;
since there are many which have as good a title as this to be received for
such, which nobody yet ever put into that rank of innate principles.
19.
Scarce possible that God should engrave principles in words of
uncertain meaning.
Nor
is the fourth proposition (viz. “Men must repent of their sins”) much more
instructive, till what those actions are that are meant by sins be set down.
For the word peccata, or sins, being put, as it usually is, to signify in
general ill actions that will draw punishment upon the doers, what great
principle of morality can that be to tell us we should be sorry, and cease to
do that which will bring mischief upon us; without knowing what those
particular actions are that will do so? Indeed
this is a very true proposition, and fit to be inculcated on and received by
those who are supposed to have been taught WHAT actions in all kinds ARE sins:
but neither this nor the former can be imagined to be innate principles; nor
to be of any use if they were innate, unless the particular measures and
bounds of all virtues and vices were engraven in men’s minds, and were
innate principles also, which I think is very much to be doubted. And
therefore, I imagine, it will scarcely seem possible that God should engrave
principles in men’s minds, in words of uncertain signification, such as
VIRTUES and SINS, which amongst different men stand for different things: nay,
it cannot be supposed to be in words at all, which, being in most of these
principles very general names, cannot be understood but by knowing the
particulars comprehended under them. And in the practical instances, the
measures must be taken from the knowledge of the actions themselves, and the
rules of them,--abstracted from words, and antecedent to the knowledge of
names; which rules a man must know, what language soever he chance to learn,
whether English or Japan, or if he should learn no language at all, or never
should understand the use of words, as happens in the case of dumb and deaf
men. When it shall be made out that men ignorant of words, or untaught by the
laws and customs of their country, know that it is part of the worship of God
not to kill another man; not to know more women than one not to procure
abortion; not to expose their children; not to take from another what is his,
though we want it ourselves, but on the contrary, relieve and supply his
wants; and whenever we have done the contrary we ought to repent, be sorry,
and resolve to do so no more;--when I say, all men shall be proved actually to
know and allow all these and a thousand other such rules, all of which come
under these two general words made use of above, viz.
virtutes et peccata virtues and sins, there will be more reason for
admitting these and the like, for common notions and practical principles.
Yet, after all, universal consent (were there any in moral principles) to
truths, the knowledge whereof may be attained otherwise, would scarce prove
them to be innate; which is all I contend for.
20.
Objection, Innate Principles may be corrupted, answered.
Nor
will it be of much moment here to offer that very ready but not very material
answer, viz. that the innate principles of morality may, by education, and
custom, and the general opinion of those amongst whom we converse, be
darkened, and at last quite worn out of the minds of men.
Which assertion of theirs, if true, quite takes away the argument of
universal consent, by which this opinion of innate principles is endeavoured
to be proved; unless those men will think it reasonable that their private
persuasions, or that of their party, should pass for universal consent;--a
thing not unfrequently done, when men, presuming themselves to be the only
masters of right reason, cast by the votes and opinions of the rest of mankind
as not worthy the reckoning. And then their argument stands thus:--“The
principles which all mankind allow for true, are innate; those that men of
right reason admit, are the principles allowed by all mankind; we, and those
of our mind, are men of reason; therefore, we agreeing, our principles are
innate”;--which is a very pretty way of arguing, and a short cut to
infallibility. 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. Let them
take which side they please, they will certainly find it inconsistent with
visible matter of fact and daily observation.
21.
Contrary Principles in the World.
I
easily grant that there are great numbers of opinions which, by men of
different countries, educations, and tempers, are received and embraced as
first and unquestionable principles; many whereof, both for their absurdity as
well oppositions to one another, it is impossible should be true. But yet all
those propositions, how remote soever from reason are so sacred somewhere or
other, that men even of good understanding in other matters, will sooner part
with their lives, and whatever is dearest to them, than suffer themselves to
doubt, or others to question, the truth of them.
22.
How men commonly come by their Principles.
This,
however strange it may seem, is that which every day’s experience confirms;
and will not, perhaps, appear so wonderful, if we consider the ways and steps
by which it is brought about; and how really it may come to pass, that
doctrines that have been derived from no better original than the superstition
of a nurse, or the authority of an old woman, may, by length of time and
consent of neighbours, grow up to the dignity of PRINCIPLES in religion or
morality. For such, who are careful (as they call it) to principle children
well, (and few there be who have not a set of those principles for them, which
they believe in,) instil into the unwary, and as yet unprejudiced,
understanding, (for white paper receives any characters,) those doctrines they
would have them retain and profess. These being taught them as soon as they
have any apprehension; and still as they grow up confirmed to them, either by
the open profession or tacit consent of all they have to do with; or at least
by those of whose wisdom, knowledge, and piety they have an opinion, who never
suffer those propositions to be otherwise mentioned but as the basis and
foundation on which they build their religion and manners, come, by these
means, to have the reputation of unquestionable, self-evident, and innate
truths.
23.
Principles supposed innate because we do not remember when we began to
hold them.
To
which we may add, that when men so instructed are grown up, and reflect on
their own minds, they cannot find anything more ancient there than those
opinions, which were taught them before their memory began to keep a register
of their actions, or date the time when any new thing appeared to them; and
therefore make no scruple to conclude, that those propositions of whose
knowledge they can find in themselves no original, were certainly the impress
of God and nature upon their minds, and not taught them by any one else. These
they entertain and submit to, as many do to their parents with veneration; not
because it is natural: nor do children do it where they are not so taught; but
because, having been always so educated, and having no remembrance of the
beginning of this respect, they think it is natural.
24.
How such principles come to be held.
This
will appear very likely, and almost unavoidable to come to pass, if we
consider the nature of mankind and the constitution of human affairs; wherein
most men cannot live without employing their time in the daily labours of
their callings; nor be at quiet in their minds without SOME foundation or
principle to rest their thoughts on. There is scarcely any one so floating and
superficial in his understanding, who hath not some reverenced propositions,
which are to him the principles on which he bottoms his reasonings, and by
which he judgeth of truth and falsehood, right and wrong; which some, wanting
skill and leisure, and others the inclination, and some being taught that they
ought not to examine, there are few to be found who are not exposed by their
ignorance, laziness, education, or precipitancy, to TAKE THEM UPON TRUST.
25.
Further explained.
This
is evidently the case of all children and young folk; and custom, a greater
power than nature, seldom failing to make them worship for divine what she
hath inured them to bow their minds and submit their understandings to, it is
no wonder that grown men, either perplexed in the necessary affairs of life,
or hot in the pursuit of pleasures, should not seriously sit down to examine
their own tenets; especially when one of their principles is, that principles
ought not to be questioned. And had men leisure, parts, and will, who is there
almost that dare shake the foundations of all his past thoughts and actions,
and endure to bring upon himself the shame of having been a long time wholly
in mistake and error? Who is there hardy enough to contend with the reproach
which is everywhere prepared for those who dare venture to dissent from the
received opinions of their country or party? And where is the man to be found
that can patiently prepare himself to bear the name of whimsical, sceptical,
or atheist; which he is sure to meet with, who does in the least scruple any
of the common opinions? And he will be much more afraid to question those
principles, when he shall think them, as most men do, the standards set up by
God in his mind, to be the rule and touchstone of all other opinions. And what
can hinder him from thinking them sacred, when he finds them the earliest of
all his own thoughts, and the most reverenced by others?
26.
A worship of idols.
It
is easy to imagine how, by these means, it comes to pass that men worship the
idols that have been set up in their minds; grow fond of the notions they have
been long acquainted with there; and stamp the characters of divinity upon
absurdities and errors; become zealous votaries to bulls and monkeys, and
contend too, fight, and die in defence of their opinions. _Dum solos credit
habendos esse deos, quos ipse colit_. For, since the reasoning faculties of
the soul, which are almost constantly, though not always warily nor wisely
employed, would not know how to move, for want of a foundation and footing, in
most 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 some borrowed principles; which
being reputed and presumed 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 usually paid to principles, never venturing to
examine them, but accustoming himself to believe them, because they are to be
believed, may take up, from his education and the fashions of his country, any
absurdity for innate principles; and by long poring on the same objects, so
dim his sight as to take monsters lodged in his own brain for the images of
the Deity, and the workmanship of his hands.
27.
Principles must be examined.
By
this progress, how many there are who arrive at principles which they believe
innate may be easily observed, in the variety of opposite principles held and
contended for by all sorts and degrees of men. And he that shall deny this to
be the method wherein most men proceed to the assurance 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
asserted, and which great numbers are ready at any time to seal 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 questioned. If they may and
ought to be examined and tried, I desire to know how first and innate
principles can be tried; or at least it is reasonable to demand the MARKS and
CHARACTERS whereby the genuine innate principles may be distinguished from
others: that so, amidst the great variety of pretenders, I may be kept from
mistakes in so material a point as this. When this is done, I shall be ready
to embrace such welcome and useful propositions; and till then I may with
modesty doubt; since I fear universal consent, which is the only one produced,
will scarcely prove a sufficient mark to direct my choice, and assure me of
any innate principles.
From
what has been said, I think it past doubt, that there are no practical
principles wherein all men agree; and therefore none innate.
CHAPTER
III.
OTHER
CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING INNATE PRINCIPLES, BOTH SPECULATIVE AND PRACTICAL.
1.
Principles not innate, unless their Ideas be innate
Had
those who would persuade us that there are innate principles not taken them
together in gross, but considered separately the parts out of which those
propositions are made, they would not, perhaps, have been so forward to
believe they were innate. Since, if the IDEAS which made up those truths were
not, it was impossible that the PROPOSITIONS made up of them should 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 those principles; and then they
will not be innate, but be derived from some other original. For, where the
ideas themselves are not, there can be no knowledge, no assent, no mental or
verbal propositions about them.
2.
Ideas, especially those belonging to Principles, not born with children
If
we will attentively consider new-born children, we shall have little reason to
think that they bring many ideas into the world with them.
For, bating perhaps some 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 all in them; especially of IDEAS ANSWERING
THE TERMS WHICH MAKE UP THOSE UNIVERSAL PROPOSITIONS THAT ARE ESTEEMED INNATE
PRINCIPLES. One may perceive how, by degrees, afterwards, ideas come into
their minds; and that they get no more, nor other, than what experience, and
the observation of things that come in their way, furnish them with; which
might be enough to satisfy us that they are not original characters stamped on
the mind.
3.
Impossibility and Identity not innate ideas
“It
is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be,” is certainly (if
there be any such) an innate PRINCIPLE. But can any one think, or will any one
say, that “impossibility” and “identity” are two innate IDEAS? Are
they such as all mankind have, and bring into the world with them? And are
they those which are the first in children, and antecedent to all acquired
ones? If they are innate, they must needs be so. 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 same taste that it used to receive
from thence? Is it the actual knowledge of IMPOSSIBILE EST IDEM ESSE, ET NON
ESSE, that makes a child distinguish between its mother and a stranger; or
that makes it fond of the one and flee the other? Or does the mind regulate
itself and its assent by ideas that it never yet had? Or the understanding
draw conclusions from principles which it never yet knew or understood? The
names IMPOSSIBILITY and IDENTITY stand for two ideas, so 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 so far from being brought into
the world with us, so 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 instance that alone) be a native impression, and consequently so
clear and obvious to us that we must needs know it even from our cradles, I
would gladly be resolved by any one of seven, or seventy years old, whether a
man, being a creature consisting of soul and body, be the same man when his
body is changed? Whether Euphorbus and Pythagoras, having had the same soul,
were the same men, though they lived several ages asunder? Nay, whether the
cock too, which had the same soul, were not the same, with both of them?
Whereby, perhaps, it will appear that our idea of SAMENESS is not so settled
and clear as to deserve to be thought innate in us. For if those innate ideas
are not clear and distinct, so as to be universally known and naturally agreed
on, they cannot be subjects of universal and undoubted truths, but will be the
unavoidable occasion of perpetual uncertainty. For, I suppose every one’s
idea of identity will not be the same that Pythagoras and thousands of his
followers have. And which then shall be true? Which innate? Or are there two
different ideas of identity, both innate?
5.
What makes the same man?
Nor
let any one think that the questions I have here proposed about the identity
of man are bare empty speculations; which, if they were, would be enough to
show, that there was in the understandings of men no innate idea of identity.
He that shall with a little attention reflect on the resurrection, and
consider that divine justice will bring to judgment, at the last day, the very
same persons, to be happy or miserable in the other, who did well or ill in
this life, will find it perhaps not easy to resolve with himself, what makes
the same man, or wherein identity consists; 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 sure it has
as good a title as any to be thought so; which yet nobody can think it to be,
when he considers the ideas it comprehends in it, WHOLE and PART, are
perfectly relative; but the positive ideas to which they properly and
immediately belong are extension and number, of which alone whole and part are
relations. So that if whole and part are innate ideas, extension and number
must be so too; it being impossible to have an idea of a relation, without
having any at all of the thing to which it belongs, and in which it is
founded. Now, whether the minds
of men have naturally imprinted on them the ideas of extension and number, I
leave to be considered by those who are the patrons of innate principles.
7.
Idea of Worship not innate.
That
GOD IS TO BE WORSHIPPED, is, without doubt, as great a truth as any that can
enter into the mind of man, and deserves the first place amongst all practical
principles. But yet it can by no means be thought innate, unless the ideas of
GOD and WORSHIP are innate. That the idea the term worship stands for is not
in the understanding of children, and a character stamped on the mind in its
first original, I think will be easily granted, by any one that considers how
few there be amongst grown men who have a clear and distinct notion of it.
And, I suppose, there cannot be anything more ridiculous than to say, that
children have this practical principle innate, “That God is to be
worshipped,” and yet that they know not what that worship of God is, which
is their duty. But to pass by this.
8.
Idea of God not innate.
If
any idea can be imagined innate, the idea of GOD may, of all others, for many
reasons, be thought so; since it is hard to conceive how there should be
innate moral principles, without an innate idea of a Deity. Without a notion of a law-maker, it is impossible to have a
notion of a law, and an obligation to observe it. Besides the atheists taken
notice of amongst the ancients, and left branded upon the records of history,
hath not navigation discovered, in these later ages, whole nations, at the bay
of Soldania, in Brazil, and in the Caribbee islands, &c., amongst whom
there was to be found no notion of a God, no religion? Nicholaus del Techo, in Literis ex Paraquaria, de Caiguarum
Conversione, has these words: Reperi eam gentem nullum nomen habere quod Deum,
et hominis animam significet; nulla sacra habet, nulla idola.
And
perhaps, if we should with attention mind the lives and discourses of people
not so far off, we should have too much reason to fear, that many, in more
civilized countries, have no very strong and clear impressions of a Deity upon
their minds, and that the complaints of atheism made from the pulpit are not
without reason. And though only some profligate wretches own it too
barefacedly now; yet perhaps we should hear more than we do of it from others,
did not the fear of the magistrate’s sword, or their neighbour’s censure,
tie up people’s tongues; which, were the apprehensions of punishment or
shame taken away, would as openly proclaim their atheism as their lives do.
9.
The name of God not universal or obscure in meaning.
But
had all mankind everywhere a notion of a God, (whereof yet history tells us
the contrary,) it would not from thence follow, that the idea of him was
innate. For, though no nation were to be found without a name, and some few
dark notions of him, yet that would not prove them to be natural impressions
on the mind; no more than the names of fire, or the sun, heat, or number, do
prove the ideas they stand for to be innate; because the names of those
things, and the ideas of them, are so universally received and known amongst
mankind. Nor, on the contrary, is the want of such a name, or the absence of
such a notion out of men’s minds, any argument against the being of a God;
any more than it would be a proof that there was no loadstone in the world,
because a great part of mankind had neither a notion of any such thing nor a
name for it; or be any show of argument to prove that there are no distinct
and various species of angels, or intelligent beings above us, because we have
no ideas of such distinct species, or names for them. For, men being furnished
with words, by the common language of their own countries, can scarce avoid
having some kind of ideas of those things whose names those they converse with
have occasion frequently to mention to them. And if they carry with it the
notion of excellency, greatness, or something extraordinary; if apprehension
and concernment accompany it; if the fear of absolute and irresistible power
set it on upon the mind,--the idea is likely to sink the deeper, and spread
the further; especially if it be such an idea as is agreeable to the common
light of reason, and naturally deducible from every part of our knowledge, as
that of a God is. For the visible marks of extraordinary wisdom and power
appear so plainly in all the works of the creation, that a rational creature,
who will but seriously reflect on them, cannot miss the discovery of a Deity.
And the influence that the discovery of such a Being must necessarily have on
the minds of all that have but once heard of it is so great, and carries such
a weight of thought and communication with it, that it seems stranger to me
that a whole nation of men should be anywhere found so brutish as to want the
notion of a God, than that they should be without any notion of numbers, or
fire.
10.
Ideas of God and idea of Fire.
The
name of God being once mentioned in any part of the world, to
express
a superior, powerful, wise, invisible Being, the suitableness of
such
a notion to the principles of common reason, and the interest men
will
always have to mention it often, must necessarily spread it far and
wide;
and continue it down to all generations: though yet the general
reception
of this name, and some imperfect and unsteady notions conveyed
thereby
to the unthinking part of mankind, prove not the idea to be
innate;
but only that they who made the discovery had made a right use
of
their reason, thought maturely of the causes of things, and traced
them
to their original; from whom other less considering people having
once
received so important a notion, it c