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all in them, especially of ideas anfwering the terms which make up thofe univerfal propofitions that are esteemed innate principles. One may perceive how by degrees afterwards ideas come into their minds, and that they get no more nor no other than what experience and the observation of things that come in their way furnish them with; which might be enough to fatisfy us that they are not original characters ftamped on the mind.

§ 3.

IT is impoffible for the fame thing to be, and not to be, is certainly (if there be any fuch) an innate principle. But can any one think, or will any one say, that impoffibility and identity are two innate ideas? Are they fuch as all mankind have, and bring into the world with them? And are they those that are the firft in children, and antecedent to all acquired ones? If they are innate, they must needs be fo. Hath a child an idea of impossibility and identity before it has of white or black, fweet or bitter? And is it from the knowledge of this principle that it concludes, that wormwood rubbed on the nipple hath not the fame taste that it used to receive from thence? Is it the actual knowledge of impoffibile eft idem effe, et non effe, that makes a child diftinguish between its mother and a ftranger, or that makes it fond of the one, and fly the other? Or does the mind regulate itself and its affent by ideas that it never yet had? or the understanding draw conclufions from principles which it never yet knew or understood? The names impoffibility and identity ftand for two ideas, fo far from being innate, or born with us, that I think it requires great care and attention to form them right in our understandings. They are fo far from being brought into the world with us, fo remote from the thoughts of infancy and childhood, that I believe, upon examination, it will be found that many grown men want them.

§ 4. Identity an Idea not Innate. IF identity (to inftance in that alone) be a native impreffion, and confequently fo clear and obvious to us,

that we must needs know it even from our cradles, I would gladly be refolved by one of feven, or feventy years old, whether a man, being a creature, confifting of foul and body, be the fame man when his body is changed? Whether Euphorbus and Pythagoras, having had the fame foul, were the fame man, though they lived several ages afunder? Nay, whether the cock too, which had the fame foul, were not the fame with both of them? Whereby, perhaps, it will appear, that our idea of fameness is not fo fettled and clear as to deferve to be thought innate in us; for if thofe innate ideas are not clear and diftinct, fo as to be univerfally known, and naturally agreed on, they cannot be fubjects of universal and undoubted truths, but will be the unavoidable occafion of perpetual uncertainty; for I fuppofe every one's idea of identity will not be the fame that Pythagoras and thousands others of his followers have; and which then shall be the true? Which innate? Or are there two different ideas of identity both innate?

$5.

NOR let any one think that the questions I have here propofed about the identity of man are bare empty fpeculations; which, if they were, would be enough to fhow, that there was in the understandings of men nɔ innate idea of identity. He that fhall, with a little attention, reflect on the refurrection, and confider that divine juftice fhall bring to judgment, at the last day, the very fame perfons, to be happy or miferable in the other, who did well or ill in this life, will find it perhaps not easy to refolve with himself what makes the fame man, or wherein identity confifts; and will not be forward to think he and every one, even children themselves, have naturally a clear idea of it.

§ 6. Whole and Part not Innate Ideas.

LET us examine that principle of mathematics, viz. That the whole is bigger than a part. This, I take it, is reckoned amongst innate principles. I am fure it has as good a title as any to be thought fo, which yet nobody

can think it to be, when he confiders the ideas it comprehends in it, whole and part, are perfectly relative: But the pofitive ideas, to which they properly and immediately belong, are extenfion and number, of which alone whole and part are relations; fo that if whole and part are innate ideas, extenfion and number must 'be fo too, it being impoffible to have an idea of a relation, without having any at all of the thing to which it belongs, and in which it is founded. Now, whether the minds of men have naturally imprinted on them the ideas of extenfion and number, I leave to be confidered by thofe who are the patrons of innate principles.

§ 7. Idea of Worship not Innate.

THAT God is to be worshipped, is, without doubt, as great a truth as any can enter into the mind of man, and deferves the firft place amongst all practical principles; but yet it can by no means be thought innate, unless the ideas of God and worship are innate. That the idea the term worship ftands for is not in the understanding of children, and a character ftamped on the mind in its first original, I think will be eafily granted by any one that confiders how few there be amongst grown men who have a clear and diftinct notion of it: And I fuppofe there cannot be any thing more ridiculous than to fay that children have this practical principle innate, that God is to be worshipped, and yet that they know not what that worship of God is which is their duty. But to pafs by this:

8. Idea of God not Innate.

Ir any idea can be imagined innate, the idea of God may, of all others, for many reafons, be thought fo, fince it is hard to conceive how there fhould be innate moral principles without an innate idea of a Deity. Without a notion of a lawmaker, it is impoffible to have a notion of a law, and an obligation to obferve it. Befides the atheists, taken notice of amongst the ancients, and left branded upon the records of hiftory, hath not navigation difcovered, in thefe later ages, whole nations, as

53 the Bay of Soldania (a), in Brafil (b), in Boranday (c), and the Caribbee Ilands, &c. amongft whom there was to be found no notion of a God, no religion? Nicholaus del Techo, in literis ex Paraquaria de Caaiguarum converfione, has these words (d): Reperi eam gentem nullum nomen habere quod Deum et hominis animam fignificet, nulla facra habet, nulla idola. Thefe are inftances of nations where uncultivated nature has been left to itfelf, without the help of letters, and difcipline, and the improvement of arts and fciences: But there are others to be found who have enjoyed these in a very great measure, who yet, for want of a due application of their thoughts this way, want the idea and knowledge of God. It will, I doubt not, be a surprise to others, as it was to me, to find the Siamites of this number. But for this, let them confult the King of France's late envoy thither (e), who gives no better account of the Chineses themselves (f). And if we will not believe La Loubere, the miffionaries of China, even. the Jefuits themfelves, the great encomiafts of the Chineses, do all to a man agree, and will convince us, that the fect of the literati or learned, keeping to the old religion of China, and the ruling party there, are. all of them atheifts. Vid. Navarette in the collection. of voyages, vol. the firft, and Hiftoria Cultus Sinenfium. And perhaps if we should with attention mind the lives and discourses of people not far off, we should have too much reafon to fear, that many in more civilized countries have no very strong and clear impreffions of a Deity upon their minds, and that the complaints of atheifm made from the pulpit are not without reafon; and though only fome profligate wretches. own it too barefacedly now, yet perhaps we fhould hear more than we do of it from others, did not the fear of the magiftrate's fword, or their neighbour's cen

(a) Rhoe apud Thevenot, p. 2. (b) Jo, de Lery, c. 16. (c) Martiniere 201-322. Terry, 17-545 et 23-545- Ovington, 489-606. (4) Relatio triplex de rebus Indicis Caaiguarum 43-70. () La Loubere du Royaume de Siam. T. 1. c. 9. fect. 15, &c. 23. feci. 22, &c. na. 6. (lb. T. 1. c. 20. fect. 4, &2. 23.

fure, tie up peoples tongues, which, were the apprehenfions of punishment or fhame taken away, would as openly proclaim their atheism as their lives do.

§ 9.

BUT had all mankind every where a notion of a God (whereof yet hiftory tells us the contrary), it would not from thence follow that the idea of him was innate; for though no nation were to be found without a name, and fome few dark notions of him, yet that would not prove them to be natural impreffions on the mind, no more than the names of fire, or the fun, heat, or number, do prove the ideas they ftand for to be innate, because the names of those things, and the ideas of them, are fo univerfally received and known amongst mankind: Nor, on the contrary, is the want of fuch a name, or the absence of such a notion out of mens minds, any argument against the being of a God, any more than it would be a proof that there was no loadstone in the world, because a great part of mankind had neither a notion of any fuch thing, nor a name for it; or be any fhow of argument to prove that there are no diftinct and various fpecies of angels or intelligent beings above us, because we have no ideas of fuch diftinct fpecies, or names for them; for men, being furnished with words by the common language of their own countries, can fcarce avoid having fome kind of ideas of those things whofe names thofe they converse with have occafion frequently to mention to them; and if it carry with it the notion of excellency, greatness, or fomething extraordinary; if apprehenfion and concernment accompany it; if the fear of abfolute and irrefiftible power fet it on the mind, the idea is likely to fink the deeper, and fpread the farther, efpecially if it be fuch an idea as is agreeable to the common light of reafon, and naturally deducible from every part of our knowledge, as that of a God is; for the vifible marks of extraordinary wifdom and power appear fo plainly in all the works of the creation, that a rational creature, who will but feriously reflect on them, cannot mifs the difcovery of a Deity; and the

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