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.