Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/514

504 to think that people have grown up of their own accord to be what they are. We do not, indeed, go so far as to suppose that a man who from his infancy had lived in solitude would, either in his moral or intellectual manifestations, bear any close resemblance to ourselves. Still, I think that we naturally tend to approximate to such a supposition. We entertain a half-conscious impression that we and our friends should have been tolerably like what we now are, and should have demeaned ourselves very much as we now do, even though the external agencies to which we have been subject had not been brought to bear upon us. In a word, it appears to the unthoughtful observer as if our manners, our morals, our social sentiments, our modes of thought, and ways of life, came to us from nature, and were part and parcel of our original selves.

12. The doctrine of an innate morality, which is founded on the doctrine of innate ideas, thus seems to be still further reinforced by the natural sentiments of mankind. But whatever support it may receive from this quarter, or from the psychology on which it rests, it is an hypothesis which must be pronounced highly unsatisfactory in any form in which it has hitherto appeared. I do not say that the doctrine is in the main, or in itself, untrue. I am quite of a contrary opinion. I believe that, like the psychological doctrine of innate ideas, this doctrine, under due limitations and accompanied by proper