(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