ng certain truths to be perceived. For to imprint
anything on the mind without the mind's perceiving it, seems to me
hardly intelligible. If therefore children and idiots have souls, have
minds, with those impressions upon them, THEY must unavoidably perceive
them, and necessarily know and assent to these truths; which since they
do not, it is evident that there are no such impressions. For if they
are not notions naturally imprinted, how can they be innate? and if
they are notions imprinted, how can they be unknown? To say a notion is
imprinted on the mind, and yet at the same time to say, that the mind
is ignorant of it, and never yet took notice of it, is to make this
impression nothing. No proposition can be said to be in the mind which
it never yet knew, which it was never yet conscious of. For if any one
may, then, by the same reason, all propositions that are true, and the
mind is capable ever of assenting to, may be said to be in the mind, and
to be imprinted: since, if any one can be said to be in the mind, which
it never yet knew, it must be only because it is capable of knowing it;
and so the mind is of all truths it ever shall know. Nay, thus truths
may be imprinted on the mind which it never did, nor ever shall know;
for a man may live long, and die at last in ignorance of many truths
which his mind was capable of knowing, and that with certainty. So that
if the capacity of knowing be the natural impression contended for, all
the truths a man ever comes to know will, by this account, be every one
of them innate; and this great point will amount to no more, but only to
a very improper way of speaking; which, whilst it pretends to assert the
contrary, says nothing different from those who deny innate principles.
For nobody, I think, ever denied that the mind was capable of knowing
several truths. The capacity, they say, is innate; the knowledge
acquired. But then to what end such contest for certain innate maxims?
If truths can be imprinted on the understanding without being perceived,
I can see no difference there can be between any truths the mind is
CAPABLE of knowing in respect of their original: they must all be innate
or all adventitious: in vain shall a man go about to distinguish them.
He therefore that talks of innate notions in the understanding, cannot
(if he intend thereby any distinct sort of truths) mean such truths
to be in the understanding as it never perceived, and is yet wholly
ignorant of. F