Page:An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding - Locke (1690).djvu/47

RV 31 (Chap IV.) hath furnished Man with those Faculties, which will serve for the sufficient discovery of all things requisite to the end of such a Being; and I doubt not but to shew, that a Man by the right use of his natural Abilities, may, without any innate Principles, attain the knowledge of a God, and other things that concern him. God having endued Man with those Faculties of knowing which he hath, was no more obliged by his Goodness, to implant those innate Notions in his Mind, than that having given him Reason, Hands, and Materials, he should build him Bridges, or Houses; which some people in the World, however of good parts, do either totally want, or are but ill provided of, as well as others are wholly without Idea's of God, and Principles of Morality; or at least have but very ill ones. The reason in both cases being, That they never employ'd their Parts, Faculties, and Powers, industriously that way, but contented themselve with the Opinions, Fashions, and Things of their Country, as they found them, without looking any farther. Had you or I been born at the Bay of Soldania, possibly our Thoughts, and Notions, had not exceeded those bruitish ones of the Hotentots that inhabit there: And had the Verginia King Apochancana, been educated in England, he had, perhaps, been as knowing a Divine, and as good a Mathematician, as any in it. The difference between him, and a more improved English-man, lying barely in this, That the exercise of his Faculties, was bounded within the Ways, Modes, and Notions of his own Country, and never directed to any other, or farther Enquiries: And if he had not any Idea of a God, it was only because he pursued not those Thoughts that would have led him to it.

§. 13. I grant, That if there were any Idea's to be found imprinted on the Minds of Men, we have reason to expect, it should be the notion of his Maker, as a mark GOD set on his own Workmanship, to mind Man of his dependence and Duty; and that herein should appear the first instances of humane Knowledge. But how late is it before any such notion is discoverable in Children? And when we find it there, How much more does it resemble the Opinion, and Notion, of the Teacher, than represent the True God? He that shall observe in Children, the progress whereby their Minds attain the knowledge they have, will think, that the Objects they do first, and most familiarly converse with, are those that make the first impressions on their Understandings: Nor will he find the least footsteps of any other. It is easie to take notice, how their Thoughts enlarge themselves, only as they come to be acquainted with a greater variety of sensible Objects, to retain the Idea's of them in their memories; and to get the skill to compound and enlarge them, and several ways put them together. How by these means, they come to frame in their minds an Idea of a Deity, I shall hereafter shew.

§. 14. Can it be thought, that the Idea's Men have of God, are the Characters, and Marks of Himself, engraven in their Minds by his own finger, when we see, that in the same Country, under one and the same Name, Men have far different, nay, often contrary and inconsistent Idea's, and conceptions of him? Their agreeing in a name, or sound, will scarce prove an innate notion of Him.

§. 15. What true or tolerable notion of a Deity, could they have, who acknowledged, and worshipped hundreds? Every Deity that they owned above one, was an infallible evidence of their ignorance of Him, and a proof that they had no true notion of God, where Unity, Infinity, and Eternity, were always excluded. To which if we add their gross Conceptions of Corporiety, expressed in their Images, and Representations of their Deities; the Amours, Marriages, Copulations, Lusts, Quar-