ESSAY IV: 379 disjoining them by judgment, has sufficiently furnished men with necessaries for knowledge ; and God having given its a power of reasoning, we are able from the most common and obvious things to infer both his own being and our duty censi_ ilered merely as creatures ; and there is no such necessity of his actual implanting in the mind all those ideas and long trains of propositions, whether natural or moral, which some men have supposed to be innate. Thus far 1 think we may safely agree, with Mr. Locke, who reasons exceeding well on this subject, and most of his arguments, I think, are just and convincing. And yet I believe still that many simple ideas are innate in some sense, though not actually formed in the mind at the birth; and perhaps also some general principles both of truth and duty may be called in some sense innate, though not in the ex- plicit form of propositions. Let us considerthings in the follow- ing manner. SECT. II. In what Sense many Ideas are innate. FIRST; The simple ideas of light and colours, sounds, tastes and smells, viz. red, blue, sweet, bitter, loud, shrill, cold, hot, &c. even all the sensible qualities (whichare called the secondary qualities of bodies) with all the infinitevariety of their mixtures, though they are not immediately, actually and explicitly impressed at once on the mined at its first union to the body; yet they may be called in some sense innate, for they seem to be given to the mind by a divine energy or law of union between soul and body, appointed in the first creation of man ; and this law operates or begins its efficacy in all particular in- stances, as soon as those sensible objects occur which give occa- sion to these sensible qualities and ideas to be first perceived by the mind. The reason why I think so is this : 'rhe millions of impres- sions that are made upon the senses by outward objects, do neces- sarily excite nothing but an equal variety of impressions or motions of certain. fibres in the brain, and form perhaps certain courses or traces of some fine fluid, called the animal spirits, there. But among this infinite variety of fibrous motions in the brain, or lines and strokes which are drawn there, or traces of the animal spirits ; none of them do necessarily and in their own nature raise in the soul the sensations of these secondary qualities as they are called, viz. colours, tastes, smells, feeling, sound, &c. such as green, blue, red, sweet, sour; stinking, cold, warm, shrill, loud, &c. Sensation is a very different thing frommotion : It is only God the author of our nature who really forms or creates these sensations and all these ideas of sensible qualities in a soul united to a body, and he has appointed these. ideas to arise when such particular impressions shall be
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