In the mean time it is observable, that this saying, that men know and
assent to these maxims "when they come to the use of reason,"
amounts in reality of fact to no more but this,- that they are never
known nor taken notice of before the use of reason, but may possibly
be assented to some time after, during a man's life; but when is
uncertain. And so may all other knowable truths, as well as these;
which therefore have no advantage nor distinction from others by
this note of being known when we come to the use of reason; nor are
thereby proved to be innate, but quite the contrary.

  14. If coming to the use of reason were the time of their
discovery it would not prove them innate. But, secondly, were it
true that the precise time of their being known and assented to
were, when men come to the use of reason; neither would that prove
them innate. This way of arguing is as frivolous as the supposition
itself is false. For, by what kind of logic will it appear that any
notion is originally by nature imprinted in the mind in its first
constitution, because it comes first to be observed and assented to
when a faculty of the mind, which has quite a distinct province,
begins to exert itself? And therefore the coming to the use of speech,
if it were supposed the time that these maxims are first assented
to, (which it may be with as much truth as the time when men come to
the use of reason,) would be as good a proof that they were innate, as
to say they are innate because men assent to them when they come to
the use of reason. I agree then with these men of innate principles,
that there is no knowledge of these general and self-evident maxims in
the mind, till it comes to the exercise of reason: but I deny that the
coming to the use of reason is the precise time when they are first
taken notice of, and if that were the precise time, I deny that it
would prove them innate. All that can with any truth be meant by
this proposition, that men "assent to them when they come to the use
of reason," is no more but this,- that the making of general
abstract ideas, and the understanding of general names, being a
concomitant of the rational faculty, and growing up with it,
children commonly get not those general ideas, nor learn the names
that stand for them, till, having for a good while exercised their
reason about familiar and more particular ideas, they are, by their
ordinary discourse and actions with others, acknowledged to be capable
of rational conversation. If assenting to these maxims, when men
come to the use of reason, can be true in any other sense, I desire it
may be shown; or at least, how in this, or any other sense, it
proves them innate.

  15. The steps by which the mind attains several truths. 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. Afterwards, the mind
proceeding further, abstracts them, and by degrees learns the use of
general names. In this manner the mind comes to be furnished with
ideas and language, the materials about which to exercise its
discursive faculty. And the use of reason becomes daily more
visible, as these materials that give it employment increase. But
though the having of general ideas and the use of general words and
reason usually grow together, yet I see not how this any way proves
them innate. The knowledge of some truths, I confess, is very early in
the mind but in a way that shows them not to be innate. For, if we
will observe, we shall find it still to be about ideas, not innate,
but acquired; it being about those first which are imprinted by
external things, with which infants have earliest to do, which make
the most frequent impressions on their senses. In ideas thus got,
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 and
perceive distinct ideas. But whether it be then or no, this is
certain, it does so long before it has the use of words; or comes to
that which we commonly call "the use of reason." For a child knows
as certainly before it can speak the difference between the ideas of
sweet and bitter (i.e. that sweet is not bitter), as it knows
afterwards (when it comes to speak) that wormwood and sugarplums are
not the same thing.

  16. Assent to supposed innate truths depends on having clear and
distinct ideas of what their terms mean, and not on their
innateness. A child knows not that three and four are equal to
seven, till he comes to be able to count seven, and has got the name
and idea of equality; and then, upon explaining those words, he
presently assents to, or rather perceives the truth of that
proposition. But neither does he then readily assent because it is
an innate truth, nor was his assent wanting till then because he
wanted the use of reason; but the truth of it appears to him as soon
as he has settled in his mind the clear and distinct ideas that
these names stand for. And then he knows the truth of that proposition
upon the same grounds and by the same means, that he knew before
that a rod and a cherry are not the same thing; and upon the same
grounds also that he may come to know afterwards "That it is
impossible for the same thing to be and not to be," as shall be more
fully shown hereafter. So that the later it is before any one comes to
have those general ideas about which those maxims are; or to know
the signification of those general terms that stand for them; or to
put together in his mind the ideas they stand for; the later also will
it be before he comes to assent to those maxims;- whose terms, with
the ideas they stand for, being no more innate than those of a cat
or a weasel, he must stay till time and observation have acquainted
him with them; and then he will be in a capacity to know the truth
of these maxims, upon the first occasion that shall make him put
together those ideas in his mind, and observe whether they agree or
disagree, according as is expressed in those propositions. And
therefore it is that a man knows that eighteen and nineteen are
equal to thirty-seven, by the same self-evidence that he knows one and
two to be equal to three: yet a child knows this not so soon as the
other; not for want of the use of reason, but because the ideas the