Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 01.djvu/107

Ch. 2. with, nor the blackmoor it is afraid of; that the wormseed or mustard it refuses is not the apple or sugar it cries for; this it is certainly and undoubtedly assured of: but will any one say, it is by virtue of this principle, "that it is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be," that it so firmly assents to these, and other parts of its knowledge; or that the child has any notion or apprehension of that proposition, at an age, wherein yet, it is plain, it knows a great many other truths? He that will say, children join these general abstract speculations with their sucking bottles and their rattles, may, perhaps, with justice, be thought to have more passion and zeal for his opinion, but less sincerity and truth, than one of that age.

§ 26. Though therefore there be several general propositions that meet with constant and ready assent, as soon as proposed to men grown up, who have attained the use of more general and abstract ideas, and names standing for them; yet they not being to be found in those of tender years, who nevertheless know other things, they cannot pretend to universal assent of intelligent persons, and so by no means can be supposed innate; it being impossible, that any truth which is innate (if there were any such) should be unknown, at least to any one who knows any thing else: since, if there are innate truths, they must be innate thoughts; there being nothing a truth in the mind that it has never thought on. Whereby it is evident, if there be any innate truths in the mind, they must necessarily be the first of any thought on; the first that appear there.

§ 27. That the general maxims we are discoursing of are not known to children, because they idiots, and a great part of mankind, we appear least, have already sufficiently proved; whereby where what it is evident, they have not an universal assent, nor are general impressions. But there is this farther argument in it against their being innate; that these characters, if they were