the hand from which he received it, will be but leaves and dust when it comes to use.

24. Whence the opinion of innate principles.-When men have found some general propositions that could not be doubted of as soon as understood, it was, I know, a short and easy way to conclude them innate. This being once received, it eased the lazy from the pains of search, and stopped the inquiry of the doubtful, concerning all that was once styled innate; and it was of no small advantage to those who affected to be masters and teachers, to make this the principle of principles, that principles must not be questioned; for, having once established this tenet,-that there are innate principles, it put their followers upon a necessity of receiving some doctrines as such; which was to take them off from the use of their own reason and judgment, and put them upon believing and taking them upon trust, without farther examination; in which posture of blind credulity, they might be more easily governed by, and made useful to, some sort of men who had the skill and office to principle and guide them. Nor is it a small power it gives one man over another, to have the authority to be the dictator of principles, and teacher of unquestionable truths; and to make a man swallow that for an innate principle which may serve to his purpose who teacheth them. Whereas had they examined the ways whereby men came to the knowledge of many universal truths, they would have found them to result in the minds of men from the being of things themselves, when duly considered; and that they were discovered by the application of those faculties that were fitted by nature to receive and judge of them, when duly employed about them.

25. Conclusion.-To show how the understanding proceeds herein, is the design of the following discourse; which I shall proceed to, when I have first premised, that hitherto, to clear my way to those foundations, which I conceive are the only true ones whereon to establish those notions we can have of our own knowledge, it hath been necessary for me to give an account of the reasons I had to doubt of innate principles: and since the arguments which are against them do, some of them, rise from common received opinions, I have been forced to take several things for granted, which is hardly avoidable to any one whose task it is to show the falsehood or improbability of any tenet; it happening in controversial discourses, as it does in assaulting of towns; where, if the ground be but firm whereon the batteries are erected, there is no farther inquiry of whom it is borrowed, nor whom it belongs to, so it affords but a fit rise for the present purpose. But in the future part of this discourse, designing to raise an edifice uniform and consistent with itself, as far as my own experience and observation will assist me, I hope to erect it on such a basis, that I shall not need to shore it up with props and buttresses, leaning on borrowed or begged foundations; or, at least, if mine prove a castle in the air, I will endeavour it shall be all of a piece, and hang together. Wherein I warn the reader not to expect undeniable cogent demonstrations, unless I may be allowed the privilege, not seldom

assumed by others, to take my principles for granted; and then, I doubt not, but I can demonstrate too. All that I shall say for the principles I proceed on, is, that I can only appeal to men's own unprejudiced experience and observation, whether they be true or no; and this is enough for a man who professes no more than to lay down candidly and freely his own conjectures concerning a subject lying somewhat in the dark, without any other design than an unbiassed inquiry after truth.

NOTE.-Page 40.

On this reasoning of the author against innate ideas, great blame hath been laid; because it seems to invalidate an argument commonly used to prove the being of a God; viz. universal consent; to which our author answers: 未 "I think that the universal consent of mankind, as to the being of a God, amounts to thus much,-that the vastly greater majority of mankind have, in all ages of the world, actually believed a God; that the majority of the remaining part have not actually disbelieved it; and, consequently, those who have actually opposed the belief of a God have truly been very few. So that, comparing those that have actually disbelieved, with those who have actually believed, a God, their number is so inconsiderable, that, in respect of this incomparably greater majority of those who have owned the belief of a God, it may be said to be the universal consent of mankind.

"This is all the universal consent which truth or matter of fact will allow; and therefore all that can be made use of to prove a God. But if any one would extend it farther, and speak deceitfully for God; if this universality should be urged in a strict sense, not for much the majority, but for a general consent of every one, even to a man, in all ages and countries; this would make it either no argument, or a perfectly useless and unnecessary one. For if any one deny a God, such a perfect universality of consent is destroyed; and if nobody does deny a God, what need of arguments to convince atheists?

"I would crave leave to ask your lordship, Were there ever in the world any atheists or no? If there were not, what need is there of raising a question about the being of a God, when nobody questions it? What need of provisional arguments against a fault from which mankind are so wholly free; and which, by an universal consent, they may be presumed to be secure from? If you say, (as I doubt not but you will,) that there have been atheists in the world, then your lordship's universal consent reduces itself to only a great majority; and then make that majority as great as you will, what I have said in the place quoted by your lordship leaves it in its full force; and I have not said one word that does in the least 'invalidate this argument' for a God. The argument I was upon there, was to show that the idea of God was not innate; and to my purpose it was sufficient, if there were but a less number found in the world who had no idea of God, than your lordship will allow there have been of professed atheists; for whatsoever is innate must be universal in the strictest sense: one exception is a sufficient proof against it. So that all that I said, and which was quite to another purpose, did not at all tend, nor can be made use of, to 'invalidate the argument' for a Deity, grounded on such an universal consent as your lordship, and all that build on it, must own; which is only a very disproportioned majority: such an universal consent my argument there neither affirms nor requires to be less than you will be pleased to allow it. Your lordship, therefore, might, without any prejudice to those declarations of good-will and favour you have for the author In his Third Letter to the Bishop of Worcester, p. 447, &c.

of the Essay of Human Understanding, have spared the mentioning his quoting authors that are in print, for matters of fact, to quite another purpose,' as going about to invalidate the argument for a Deity from the universal consent of mankind;' since he leaves that universal consent as entire and as large as you yourself do, or can own or suppose it. But here I 'have no reason to be sorry that' your lordship' has given me this occasion for the vindication of this passage of my book;' if there should be any one besides your lordship who should so far mistake it, as to think it in the least 'invalidates the argument for a God from the universal consent of mankind.'

"But, because you question the credibility of those authors I have quoted, which, you say, 'were very ill chosen,' I will crave leave to say, that he whom I relied on for his testimony concerning the Hottentots of Soldania, was no less a man than an ambassador from the king of England to the Great Mogul. Of whose relation Monsieur Thevenot (no ill judge in the case) had so great an esteem, that he was at the pains to translate it into French, and publish it in his (which is counted no injudicious) Collection of Travels. But to intercede with your lordship for a little more favourable allowance of credit to sir Thomas Roe's relation: Coore, an inhabitant of the country, who could speak English, assured Mr. Terry that they of Soldania had no God.* But if he, too, have the ill luck to find no credit with you, I hope you will be a little more favourable to a divine of the church of England, now living, and admit of his testimony in confirmation of sir Thomas Roe's. This worthy gentleman, in the relation of his voyage to Surat, printed but two years since, speaking of the same people, has these words: They are sunk even below idolatry; are destitute of both priest and temple; and, saving a little show of rejoicing, which is made at the full and new moon, have lost all kinds of religious devotion. Nature has so richly provided for their convenience in this life, that they have drowned all sense of the God of it, and are grown quite careless of the next.'†

"But, to provide against the clearest evidence of atheism in these people, you say, that the account given of them makes them not fit to be a standard for the sense of mankind.' This, I think, may pass for nothing, till somebody be found that makes them to be a standard for the sense of mankind.' All the use I made of them was to show, that there were men in the world that had no innate idea of a God. But, to keep something like an argument going, (for what will not that do?) you go near denying those Caffers to be men. What else do these words signify?- A people so strangely bereft of common sense, that they can hardly be reckoned among mankind; as appears by the best accounts of the Caffers of Soldania,' &c. I hope if any of them were called Peter, James, or John, it would be past scruple that they were men: however Courwee, Wewena, and Cousheda, and those others who had names that had no places in your nomenclator, would hardly pass muster with your lordship.

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My lord, I should not mention this, but that what you yourself say here may be a motive to you to consider, that what you have laid such stress on, concerning the general nature of man,' as a 'real being, and the subject of properties,' amounts to nothing for the distinguishing of species; since you yourself own that there may be 'individuals wherein there is a common nature, with a particular subsistence proper to each of them,' whereby you are so little able to know of which of the ranks or sorts they are, into which, you say, 'God has ordered beings,' and which he hath distinguished by essential properties,' that you are in doubt whether they ought to be reckoned among mankind or no.'"

* TERRY'S Voyage, pp. 17, 23.

† MR. OVINGTON, p. 489.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

OF IDEAS IN GENERAL, AND THEIR ORIGINAL.

1. Idea is the object of thinking.-Every man being conscious to himself that he thinks, and that which his mind is applied about, whilst thinking, being the ideas that are there, it is past doubt that men have in their mind several ideas, such as are those expressed by the words, "whiteness, hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drunkenness," and others. It is, in the first place, then, to be inquired, How he comes by them? I know it is a received doctrine, that men have native ideas and original characters stamped upon their minds in their very first being. This opinion I have at large examined already; and, I suppose, what I have said in the foregoing book will be much more easily admitted when I have shown whence the understanding may get all the ideas it has, and by what ways and degrees they may come into the mind; for which I shall appeal to every one's own observation and experience.

2. All ideas come from sensation or reflection. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, From experience: in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation, employed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring.

3. The object of sensation one source of ideas. First. Our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways wherein those objects do affect them; and thus we come by those ideas we have of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet, and all those which we call sensible qualities; which when I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean, they from external objects convey into the mind what produces there those perceptions. This great source of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I call "sensation."

4. The operations of our minds, the other source of them.Secondly. The other fountain, from which experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas, is the perception of the operations of our own minds within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got; which operations, when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of ideas which

could not be had from things without; and such are perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds; which we, being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings as distinct ideas, as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called "internal sense." But as I call the other "sensation," so I call this "reflection;" the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself. By reflection, then, in the following part of this discourse, I would be understood to mean, that notice which the mind takes of its own operations and the manner of them, by reason whereof there come to be ideas of these operations in the understanding. These two, I say, viz. external material things as the objects of sensation, and the operations of our own minds within as the objects of reflection, are, to me, the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings. The term "operations" here, I use in a large sense, as comprehending not barely the actions of the mind about its ideas, but some sort of passions arising sometimes from them, such as is the satisfaction or uneasiness arising from any thought.

5. All our ideas are of the one or the other of these. The understanding seems to me not to have the least glimmering of any ideas which it doth not receive from one of these two. External objects furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those different perceptions they produce in us; and the mind furnishes the understanding with ideas of its own operations.

These, when we have taken a full survey of them, and their several modes, combinations, and relations, we shall find to contain all our whole stock of ideas; and that we have nothing in our minds which did not come in one of these two ways. Let any one examine his own thoughts, and thoroughly search into his understanding, and then let him tell me, whether all the original ideas he has there are any other than of the objects of his senses, or of the operations of his mind considered as objects of his reflection; and how great a mass of knowledge soever he imagines to be lodged there, he will, upon taking a strict view, see that he has not any idea in his mind but what one of these two have imprinted, though perhaps with infinite variety compounded and enlarged by the understanding, as we shall see hereafter.

6. Observable in children.-He that attentively considers the state of a child at his first coming into the world, will have little reason to think him stored with plenty of ideas that are to be the matter of his future knowledge. It is by degrees he comes to be furnished with them; and though the ideas of obvious and familiar qualities imprint themselves before the memory begins to keep a register of time and order, yet it is often so late before some unusual qualities come in the way, that there are few men that cannot recollect the beginning of their acquaintance with them: