f men may be well
supposed to want one or both those ideas to-day. For, if we will allow
savages, and most country people, to have ideas of God and worship,
(which conversation with them will not make one forward to believe,)
yet I think few children can be supposed to have those ideas, which
therefore they must begin to have some time or other; and then they will
also begin to assent to that proposition, and make very little question
of it ever after. But such an assent upon hearing, no more proves the
IDEAS to be innate, than it does that one born blind (with cataracts
which will be couched to-morrow) had the innate ideas of the sun, or
light, or saffron, or yellow; because, when his sight is cleared, he
will certainly assent to this proposition, "That the sun is lucid, or
that saffron is yellow." And therefore, if such an assent upon hearing
cannot prove the ideas innate, it can much less the PROPOSITIONS made
up of those ideas. If they have any innate ideas, I would be glad to be
told what, and how many, they are.

21. No innate Ideas in the Memory.

To which let me add: if there be any innate ideas, any ideas in the mind
which the mind does not actually think on, they must be lodged in the
memory; and from thence must be brought into view by remembrance; i. e.
must be known, when they are remembered, to have been perceptions in
the mind before; unless remembrance can be without remembrance. For, to
remember is to perceive anything with memory, or with a consciousness
that it was perceived or known before. Without this, whatever idea comes
into the mind is new, and not remembered; this consciousness of
its having been in the mind before, being that which distinguishes
remembering from all other ways of thinking. Whatever idea was never
PERCEIVED by the mind was never in the mind. Whatever idea is in the
mind, is, either an actual perception, or else, having been an actual
perception, is so in the mind that, by the memory, it can be made an
actual perception again. Whenever there is the actual perception of any
idea without memory, the idea appears perfectly new and unknown before
to the understanding. Whenever the memory brings any idea into actual
view, it is with a consciousness that it had been there before, and was
not wholly a stranger to the mind. Whether this be not so, I appeal
to every one's observation. And then I desire an instance of an idea,
pretended to be innate, which (before any impression of it