3dly, Into the nature and grounds of Faith or Opinion; that is, of that Assent which we give to propositions of whose truth we have no certain knowledge and here we shall examine the reasons and degrees of Assent.

If we can find out how far the understanding can extend its view, how far it has faculties to attain certainty; and in what cases it can only judge and guess, we may learn to content ourselves with what is attainable by us in this state. We shall then use our Understandings right, when we entertain all objects in that way and proportion that they are suited to our faculties, and upon those grounds they are capable of being proposed to us; and not peremptorily or intemperately require demonstration and demand certainty, where Probability only is to be had, which is sufficient to govern all our Concern

ments.

Our business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our Conduct. If we can find out those measures, whereby a Rational Creature, put in that state in which Man is in this world, may and ought to govern his opinions and actions depending thereon, we need not be troubled that some other things escape our knowledge.

The term Idea is that which I think serves best to stand for whatsoever is the object of the Understand

ing, when a man thinks: I have used it to express whatever is meant by phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which the mind can be employed about in thinking.

I take for granted the existence of Ideas in all men's minds.

CHAP. II.

THERE ARE NO INNATE SPECULATIVE PRIN

CIPLES.

SOME think that the soul receives in its first being, and brings into the world with it, certain innate principles, primary notions, or impressed characters. This will appear to be false, if we can shew how men, barely by the use of their natural faculties, may attain all their knowledge, without any such original notions.

It would be impertinent to suppose the ideas of colours innate in a creature indued with a power to receive them by the eyes from external objects; or to attribute certain Truths to innate characters, when we have faculties to attain certain knowledge of them. Certain principles are supposed to be universally assented to; and therefore to be constant impressions, brought into the world with us as necessarily as our inherent Faculties. Yet this Consent, if true, does not prove them innate, if any other way of coming to such universal agreement can be shewn: but as there are none to which universal assent is given, this argument proves that there are no principles innate.

Children and Ideots have not the least apprehension or thought of the propositions,—“ Whatever is, is"—It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be"- -but, if these notions are imprinted, they must be perceived, and known to them; else Impression is nothing: for if any proposition can be said to be in the mind, which it never knew or was conscious of then all propositions which are true, and which the mind is capable of knowing, may be said to be imprinted: so that if the Capacity of Knowing be the natural Impression contended for, all the Truths a man ever comes to know are Innate. If Truths can be imprinted on the Understanding without being perceived, there is no difference, in respect of their original, between any truths the mind is capable of knowing; they must all be Innate or all Adventitious.

It is said that all men assent to them, when they come to the use of Reason:-though Reason is nothing else but the faculty of deducing unknown truths from principles already known. We may as well think the use of Reason necessary to make our eyes discover visible objects, as to make the Understanding see what is originally engraven in it, and cannot be there before it is perceived. The coming to the use of Reason cannot be the time of their discovery, because it is evident that these maxims are not in the mind so early as the use of Reason. Children use their Reason long before they have any knowledge of

the maxim-" It is impossible for the same thing to

be and not to be."

-Coming to the use of Reason is necessary before men get the knowledge of general Truths, but is not the time of their discovery: and if it were, does it follow that a notion is originally imprinted, because it is first observed and assented to, when a faculty of the mind, which has quite a distinct province, begins to exert itself? Coming to the use of Speech would be as good a proof that they were innate. The true meaning of this proposition is, that Children commonly get not those general abstract ideas, nor learn the names that stand for them, till having exercised their Reason about familiar and more particular ideas, they are acknow ledged capable of, Rational Conversation.

The senses at first let in particular Ideas, and furnish the yet empty Cabinet: and the mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the memory, and names got to them. After

wards the mind abstracts them, and learns the use of general names.

Our knowledge is first about those Ideas which are imprinted by external things, which make the earliest and most frequent impressions on the senses of infants. The mind discovers that some agree, and others differ, probably as soon as it has any use of Memory, as soon as it is able to retain distinct Ideas; certainly, it does so long before it has the use of