27.  Principles must be examined.

By this progress, how many there are who arrive at principles which they believe innate may be easily observed, in the variety of opposite principles held and contended for by all sorts and degrees of men.  And he that shall deny this to be the method wherein most men proceed to the assurance they have of the truth and evidence of their principles, will perhaps find it a hard matter any other way to account for the contrary tenets, which are firmly believed, confidently asserted, and which great numbers are ready at any time to seal with their blood.  And, indeed, if it be the privilege of innate principles to be received upon their own authority, without examination, I know not what may not be believed, or how any one’s principles can be questioned.  If they may and ought to be examined and tried, I desire to know how first and innate principles can be tried; or at least it is reasonable to demand the marks and characters whereby the genuine innate principles may be distinguished from others:  that so, amidst the great variety of pretenders, I may be kept from mistakes in so material a point as this.  When this is done, I shall be ready to embrace such welcome and useful propositions; and till then I may with modesty doubt; since I fear universal consent, which is the only one produced, will scarcely prove a sufficient mark to direct my choice, and assure me of any innate principles.

From what has been said, I think it past doubt, that there are no practical principles wherein all men agree; and therefore none innate.

CHAPTER III.

Other considerations concerning innate principles, both speculative and practical.

1.  Principles not innate, unless their Ideas be innate

Had those who would persuade us that there are innate principles not taken them together in gross, but considered separately the parts out of which those propositions are made, they would not, perhaps, have been so forward to believe they were innate.  Since, if the ideas which made up those truths were not, it was impossible that the propositions made up of them should be innate, or our knowledge of them be born with us.  For, if the ideas be not innate, there was a time when the mind was without those principles; and then they will not be innate, but be derived from some other original.  For, where the ideas themselves are not, there can be no knowledge, no assent, no mental or verbal propositions about them.

2.  Ideas, especially those belonging to Principles, not born with children