ertainly find assent at first hearing and understanding the terms as
this general one, "It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to
be," or that which is the foundation of it and is the easier understood
of the two, "The same is not different"; by which account they will have
legions of innate propositions of this one sort, without mentioning any
other But, since no proposition can be innate unless the _ideas_ about
which it is be innate, this will be to suppose all our ideas of colours,
sounds, tastes, figure, &c., innate, than which there cannot be anything
more opposite to reason and experience. Universal and ready assent
upon hearing and understanding the terms is, I grant, a mark of
self-evidence; but self-evidence, depending not on innate impressions,
but on something else, (as we shall show hereafter,) belongs to several
propositions which nobody was yet so extravagant as to pretend to be
innate.

19. Such less general Propositions known before these universal Maxims.

Nor let it be said, that those more particular self-evident
propositions, which are assented to at first hearing, as that "one and
two are equal to three," that "green is not red," &c., are received as
the consequences of those more universal propositions which are looked
on as innate principles; since any one, who will but take the pains
to observe what passes in the understanding, will certainly find that
these, and the like less general propositions, are certainly known,
and firmly assented to by those who are utterly ignorant of those more
general maxims; and so, being earlier in the mind than those (as they
are called) first principles, cannot owe to them the assent wherewith
they are received at first hearing.

20. One and one equal to Two, &c., not general nor useful answered.

If it be said, that these propositions, viz. "two and two are equal to
four," "red is not blue," &c., are not general maxims nor of any great
use, I answer, that makes nothing to the argument of universal assent
upon hearing and understanding. For, if that be the certain mark of
innate, whatever propositions can be found that receives general assent
as soon as heard understood, that must be admitted for an innate
proposition as well as this maxim, "That it is impossible for the same
thing to be and not to be," they being upon this ground equal. And as to
the difference of being more general, that makes this maxim more remote
from being innate; those ge