Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 01.djvu/148

72 capable to receive so incomprehensible and infinite an object. But our minds being at first void of that idea, which we are most concerned to have, it is a strong presumption against all other innate characters. I must own, as far as I can observe, I can find none, and would be glad to be informed by any other.

§ 18. I confess there is another idea, which would be of general use for mankind to have, as it is of general talk, as if they had it; and that is the idea of substance, which we neither have, nor can have, by sensation or reflection. If nature took care to provide us any ideas, we might well expect they should be such as by our own faculties we cannot procure to ourselves; but we see, on the contrary, that since by those ways, whereby our ideas are brought into our minds, this is not, we have no such clear idea at all, and therefore signify nothing by the word substance, but only an uncertain supposition of we know not what, i. e. of something whereof we have no particular distinct positive idea, which we take to be the substratum, or support, of those ideas we know.

§ 19. Whatever then we talk of innate, either speculative or practical, principles, it may, with as much probability, be said, that a man hath 100l. sterling in his pocket, and yet denied, that he hath either penny, shilling, crown, or other coin, out of which the sum is to be made up, as to think that certain propositions are innate, when the ideas about which they are can by no means be supposed to be so. The general reception and assent that is given doth not at all prove that the ideas expressed in them are innate: for in many cases, however the ideas came there, the assent to words, expressing the agreement or disagreement of such ideas, will necessarily follow. Every one, that hath a true idea of God and worship, will assent to this proposition, "that God is to be worshipped," when expressed in a language he