ESSAY 1`1. Of innate Ideas. SECT. I.The common Opinion well refuted by Mr. Locke. THE common opinion of innate notions and innate ideas, against which Mr. Locke so earnestly contends, I take to be this, viz. that there are some certain ideas of things, and some certain propositions both of speculation and practice, or of truth and duty, which are explicitly wrought into the very nature of man, and are born with all mankind; which ideas and propositions are supposed to be the first principles of our knowledge, and original rules of all our judgments and reasonings about natural or moral subjects ; that they stand in the soul as axioms or maxims, and are the propositional principles of our religion and virtue, of our duty both to Gad and man, though they lie hid, and we are not actually conscious of them till some special occa- sion calls them forth to sight. The propositions are reckoned such as these, 1. Of the natural kind, viz. 0° What has no being has no real properties; whatsoever acts, is, or exists ; one thing cannot be the cause of itself : It is impossible for a thing to be and not to be, in the saine sense and atthe same time ; the whole is greater than each part, &c." 2. Of the moral kind, viz. " Parents must be honoured ; falsehood must not be practised to our neigh- bour; injury mast not be done; contracts should be fulfilled, &c." 3. Of the religious kind, viz. " There is a God : God is to be worshipped : God will approve virtue ; he Will punish vice, &c" These havebeen supposed to be actual innate propositions ; and all the ideaso f which these are composed must certainly then be innate ideas, if they are actuallyeXistent in the mind as soon as it begins to be ; however, neither the propositions nor ideas may actually appear there to ourselves, till some occasion call them forth. Now those writers who hold innate ideas in this sense, seem to lie under a great mistake. Mr. Lockehas ingeniously and sufficiently refuted this sort of doctrine of innate ideas, and innate propositions, in his dis- course on that subject ; wherein he discovers that there is no ne- cessity from reason, or from religion, to admit them ; because God having given the mind of man a capacity of forming ideas of natural And moral things, and of comparing and joining or
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