Volume I Part 2 (1/2)
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 a.s.sented to as soon as proposed, wherein they are distinguished from these maxims and other innate truths. I shall have occasion to speak of a.s.sent 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 a.s.sent; but the other, as soon as understood, are, without any the least reasoning, embraced and a.s.sented 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 a.s.sent 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 a.s.sent to these maxims, if by saying, that ”men know and a.s.sent to them, when they come to the use of reason,” be meant, that the use of reason a.s.sists 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 a.s.senting 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 a.s.sent 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 a.s.signed 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 pa.s.s 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 n.o.body 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 a.s.sent 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 a.s.sented 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 a.s.sented 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 const.i.tution, because it comes first to be observed and a.s.sented 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 a.s.sented 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 a.s.sent 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 'a.s.sent 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 a.s.senting 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. a.s.sent 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 a.s.sents to, or rather perceives the truth of that proposition. But neither does he then readily a.s.sent because it is an innate truth, nor was his a.s.sent 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 a.s.sent 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. a.s.senting as soon as proposed and understood, proves them not innate.
This evasion therefore of general a.s.sent 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 a.s.sent to those they call maxims, by saying, they are generally a.s.sented 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, a.s.sent 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 a.s.sents to, and after that never doubts again.
18. If such an a.s.sent 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 a.s.sent 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 a.s.sent 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 a.s.sented to as soon as heard, whereby they will find themselves plentifully stored with innate principles. For upon the same ground, viz. of a.s.sent at first hearing and understanding the terms, that men would have those maxims pa.s.s 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 mult.i.tude of other the like propositions in numbers, that everybody a.s.sents 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 a.s.sent as soon as they are understood. That ”two bodies cannot be in the same place” is a truth that n.o.body 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 a.s.sent to. If these men will be true to their own rule, and have a.s.sent 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 a.s.sent 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 a.s.sent 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 n.o.body was yet so extravagant as to pretend to be innate.