Page:An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding - Locke (1690).djvu/38

RV 22 (Chap III.) so far from finding any such innate Moral Principles in themselves, that by denying freedom to Mankind; and thereby making Men no other than bare Machins, they take away not only innate, but all Moral Rules whatsoever, and leave not a possibility to believe any such, to those who cannot conceive, how any thing can be capable of a Law, that is not a free Agent: And upon that ground, they must necessarily reject all Principles of Vertue, who cannot put Morality and Mechanism together; which are not very easie to be reconciled, or made consistent.

§. 15. When I had writ this, being informed, that my Lord Herbert had in his Books de Veritate, assigned these innate Principles, I presently consulted him, hoping to find, in a Man of so great Parts, something that might satisfie me in this point, and put an end to my Enquiry. In his Chapter de Instinctu naturali, p. 76. edit. 1656. I met with these six Marks of his notitiae Communes, 1. Prioritas. 2. Independentia. 3. Vniversalitas. 4. Certitudo. 5. Necessitas, i. e. as he explains it, faciunt ad hominis conservationem. 6. Modus conformationis, i. e. Assensus nullâ interpositâ morâ. And at the latter end of his little Treatise, De Religione Laici, he say this of these innate Principles: Adeo ut non uniuscujusvis Religionis confinio arctentur quae ubique vigent veritates. Sunt enim in ipsâ mente coelitùs descriptae nullisque traditionibus, sive scriptis, sive non scriptis, obnoxiae, p. 3. And veritates nostrae Catholicae, quae tanquam indubia Dei effata in foro interiori descripta. Thus having given the marks of the innate Principles or common Notions, and asserted their being imprinted on the Minds of Men by the Hand of God, he proceeds at last to set them down; and they are these: 1. Esse aliquod supremum numen. 2. Numen illud coli debere. 3. Virtutem cum pietate conjunctam optimam esse rationem cultùs divini. 4. Rescipiscendum esse à peccatis. 5. Dari proemium vel poenam post hanc vitam transactam. These, though I allow them to be clear Truths, and such as, if rightly explained, a rational Creature can hardly avoid giving his assent to: yet I think he is far from proving them innate Impressions in Foro interiori descriptae. For I must take leave to observe,

§. 16. First, That these Five Propositions are either all, or more than all, those common Notions writ on our Minds by the finger of God, if it were reasonable to believe any at all to be so written. Since there are other Propositions, which even by his own Rules, have as just a pretence to such an Original, and may be as well admitted for innate Principles, as, at least, some of these Five he enumerates, viz. Do as thou wouldst be done unto: And, perhaps, some hundreds of others, when well considered.

§. 17. Secondly, That all his Marks are not to be found in each of his Five Propositions, viz. his First, Second, and Third Marks, agree perfectly to neither of them; and the First, Second, Third, Fourth, and Sixth Marks, agree but ill to his Third, Fourth, and Fifth Propositions. For besides that, we are assured from History, of many Men, nay, whole Nations who doubt or disbelieve some or all of them, I cannot see how the Third, viz. That Vertue joined with Piety, is the best Worship of God, can be an innate Principle, when the name, or sound Vertue, is so hard to be understood; liable to so much uncertainty in its signification; and the thing it stands for, so much contended about, and difficult to be known. And therefore this can be but a very uncertain Rule of Humane Practice, and serve but very little to the conduct of our Lives, and is therefore very unfit to be assigned as an innate practical principle.