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