opinion, a strong presumption that they are not innate, since they are
least known to those in whom, if they were innate, they must needs exert
themselves with most force and vigour. For children, idiots, savages,
and illiterate people, being of all others the least corrupted by
custom, or borrowed opinions; learning and education having not cast
their native thoughts into new moulds; nor by superinducing foreign and
studied doctrines, confounded those fair characters nature had written
there; one might reasonably imagine that in THEIR minds these innate
notions should lie open fairly to every one's view, as it is certain
the thoughts of children do. It might very well be expected that these
principles should be perfectly known to naturals; which being stamped
immediately on the soul, (as these men suppose,) can have no dependence
on the constitution or organs of the body, the only confessed difference
between them and others. One would think, according to these men's
principles, that all these native beams of light (were there any such)
should, in those who have no reserves, no arts of concealment, shine
out in their full lustre, and leave us in no more doubt of their being
there, than we are of their love of pleasure and abhorrence of pain. But
alas, amongst children, idiots, savages, and the grossly illiterate,
what general maxims are to be found? what universal principles of
knowledge? Their notions are few and narrow, borrowed only from those
objects they have had most to do with, and which have made upon their
senses the frequentest and strongest impressions. A child knows his
nurse and his cradle, and by degrees the playthings of a little more
advanced age; and a young savage has, perhaps, his head filled with love
and hunting, according to the fashion of his tribe. But he that from a
child untaught, or a wild inhabitant of the woods, will expect these
abstract maxims and reputed principles of science, will, I fear find
himself mistaken. Such kind of general propositions are seldom mentioned
in the huts of Indians: much less are they to be found in the thoughts
of children, or any impressions of them on the minds of naturals. They
are the language and business of the schools and academies of learned
nations accustomed to that sort of conversation or learning, where
disputes are frequent; these maxims being suited to artificial
argumentation and useful for conviction, but not much conducing to the
discovery of trut