be enough to satisfy us that
they are not original characters stamped on the mind.

3. Impossibility and Identity not innate ideas

"It is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be," is certainly
(if there be any such) an innate PRINCIPLE. But can any one think, or
will any one say, that "impossibility" and "identity" are two innate
IDEAS? Are they such as all mankind have, and bring into the world with
them? And are they those which are the first in children, and antecedent
to all acquired ones? If they are innate, they must needs be so. Hath a
child an idea of impossibility and identity, before it has of white or
black, sweet or bitter? And is it from the knowledge of this principle
that it concludes, that wormwood rubbed on the nipple hath not the same
taste that it used to receive from thence? Is it the actual knowledge of
IMPOSSIBILE EST IDEM ESSE, ET NON ESSE, that makes a child distinguish
between its mother and a stranger; or that makes it fond of the one and
flee the other? Or does the mind regulate itself and its assent by
ideas that it never yet had? Or the understanding draw conclusions
from principles which it never yet knew or understood? The names
IMPOSSIBILITY and IDENTITY stand for two ideas, so far from being
innate, or born with us, that I think it requires great care and
attention to form them right in our understandings. They are so far from
being brought into the world with us, so remote from the thoughts of
infancy and childhood, that I believe, upon examination it will be found
that many grown men want them.

4. Identity, an Idea not innate.

If IDENTITY (to instance that alone) be a native impression, and
consequently so clear and obvious to us that we must needs know it even
from our cradles, I would gladly be resolved by any one of seven, or
seventy years old, whether a man, being a creature consisting of soul
and body, be the same man when his body is changed? Whether Euphorbus
and Pythagoras, having had the same soul, were the same men, though they
lived several ages asunder? Nay, whether the cock too, which had the
same soul, were not the same, with both of them? Whereby, perhaps, it
will appear that our idea of SAMENESS is not so settled and clear as to
deserve to be thought innate in us. For if those innate ideas are not
clear and distinct, so as to be universally known and naturally agreed
on, they cannot be subjects of universal and undoubted truths, but will
be the un