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