with
their lives, than suffer the truth of their opinions to be questioned.

We can see from our experience how the belief in principles grows up.
Doctrines, with no better original than the superstition of a nurse, or
the authority of an old woman, may in course of time, and by the
concurrence of neighbours, grow up to the dignity of first truths in
Religion and in Morality. Persons matured under those influences, and,
looking into their own minds, find nothing anterior to the opinions
taught them before they kept a record of themselves; they, therefore,
without scruple, conclude that those propositions whose origin they
cannot trace are the impress of God and nature upon their minds. Such a
result is unavoidable in the circumstances of the bulk of mankind, who
require some foundation of principles to rest upon, and have no means
of obtaining them but on trust from others. _Custom is it greater power
than Nature_, and, while we are yet young, seldom fails to make us
worship as divine what she has inured us to; nor is it to be wondered
at, that, when we come to mature life, and are engrossed with quite
different matters, we are indisposed to sit down and examine all our
received tenets, to find ourselves in the wrong, to run counter to the
opinions of our country or party, and to be branded with such epithets
as whimsical, sceptical, Atheist. It is inevitable that we should take
up at first borrowed principles; and unless we have all the faculties
and the means of searching into their foundations, we naturally go on
to the end as we have begun.

In the following chapter (IV.), he argues the general question of
Innate Ideas in the case of the Idea of God.

In Book II., Chap. XXI., Locke discusses the freedom of the will, with
some allusions to the nature of happiness and the causes of wrong
conduct. Happiness is the utmost pleasure we are capable of, misery the
utmost pain; pleasure and pain define Good and Evil. In practice, we
are chiefly occupied in getting rid of troubles; absent good does not
much move us. All uneasiness being removed, a moderate portion of good
contents us; and some few degrees of pleasure in a succession of
ordinary enjoyments are enough to make happiness. [Epicurus, and others
among the ancients, said as much.]

Men have wrong desires, and do wrong acts, but it is from wrong
judgments. They never mistake a present pleasure or pain; they always
act correctly upon that. They are the victims of