universally, and with public approbation or allowance, transgressed,
can be supposed innate.--But I have something further to add in answer
to this objection.


12. The generally allowed breach of a rule proof that it is not innate.

The breaking of a rule, say you, is no argument that it is unknown. I
grant it: but the GENERALLY ALLOWED breach of it anywhere, I say, is
a proof that it is not innate. For example: let us take any of these
rules, which, being the most obvious deductions of human reason, and
conformable to the natural inclination of the greatest part of men,
fewest people have had the impudence to deny or inconsideration to doubt
of. If any can be thought to be naturally imprinted, none, I think, can
have a fairer pretence to be innate than this: "Parents, preserve and
cherish your children." When, therefore, you say that this is an innate
rule, what do you mean? Either that it is an innate principle which upon
all occasions excites and directs the actions of all men; or else, that
it is a truth which all men have imprinted on their minds, and which
therefore they know and assent to. But in neither of these senses is it
innate. FIRST, that it is not a principle which influences all men's
actions, is what I have proved by the examples before cited: nor need
we seek so far as the Mingrelia or Peru to find instances of such as
neglect, abuse, nay, and destroy their children; or look on it only as
the more than brutality of some savage and barbarous nations, when we
remember that it was a familiar and uncondemned practice amongst the
Greeks and Romans to expose, without pity or remorse, their innocent
infants. SECONDLY, that it is an innate truth, known to all men, is also
false. For, "Parents preserve your children," is so far from an innate
truth, that it is no truth at all: it being a command, and not a