Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 01.djvu/103

Ch. 2. it was innate, but because the consideration of the nature of the things contained in those words, would not suffer him to think otherwise, how or whensoever he is brought to reflect on them: and if whatever is assented to, at first hearing and understanding the terms, must pass for an innate principle, every well-grounded observation, drawn from particulars into a general rule, must be innate; when yet it is certain, that not all, but only sagacious heads, light at first on these observations, and reduce them into general propositions, not innate, but collected from a preceding acquaintance, and reflection on particular instances. These, when observing men have made them, unobserving men, when they are proposed to them, cannot refuse their assent to.

§ 22. If it be said, "the understanding hath an implicit knowledge of these principles, but not an explicit, before this first hearing," (as they must, who will say, "that they are in the understanding before they are known") it will be hard to conceive what is meant by a principle imprinted on the understanding implicitly, unless it be this; that the mind is capable of understanding and assenting firmly to such propositions. And thus all mathematical demonstrations, as well as first principles, must be received as native impressions on the mind; which I fear they will scarce allow them to be, who find it harder to demonstrate a proposition, than assent to it when demonstrated. And few mathematicians will be forward to believe, that all the diagrams they have drawn were but copies of those innate characters which nature had engraven upon their minds.

§ 23. There is, I fear, this farther weakness in the foregoing argument, which would persuade us, that therefore those maxims are to be thought innate which men admit at first hearing, because they