19.  Idea of Substance not innate.

I confess there is another idea which would be of general use for mankind to have, as it is of general talk as if they had it; and that is the idea of substance; which we neither have nor can have by sensation or reflection.  If nature took care to provide us any ideas, we might well expect they should be such as by our own faculties we cannot procure to ourselves; but we see, on the contrary, that since, by those ways whereby other ideas are brought into our minds, this is not, we have no such clear idea at all; and therefore signify nothing by the word substance but only an uncertain supposition of we know not what, i. e. of something whereof we have no idea, which we take to be the substratum, or support, of those ideas we do know.

20.  No Propositions can be innate, since no Ideas are innate.

Whatever then we talk of innate, either speculative or practical, principles, it may with as much probability be said, that a man hath 100 pounds sterling in his pocket, and yet denied that he hath there either penny, shilling, crown, or other coin out of which the sum is to be made up; as to think that certain propositions are innate when the ideas about which they are can by no means be supposed to be so.  The general reception and assent that is given doth not at all prove, that the ideas expressed in them are innate; for in many cases, however the ideas came there, the assent to words expressing the agreement or disagreement of such ideas, will necessarily follow.  Every one that hath a true idea of god and worship, will assent to this proposition, ’That God is to be worshipped,’ when expressed in a language he understands; and every rational man that hath not thought on it to-day, may be ready to assent to this proposition to-morrow; and yet millions of men may be well supposed to want one or both those ideas to-day.  For, if we will allow savages, and most country people, to have ideas of God and worship, (which conversation with them will not make one forward to believe,) yet I think few children can be supposed to have those ideas, which therefore they must begin to have some time or other; and then they will also begin to assent to that proposition, and make very little question of it ever after.  But such an assent upon hearing, no more proves the ideas to be innate, than it does that one born blind (with cataracts which will be couched to-morrow) had the innate ideas of the sun, or light, or saffron, or yellow; because, when his sight is cleared, he will certainly assent to this proposition, “That the sun is lucid, or that saffron is yellow.”  And therefore, if such an assent upon hearing cannot prove the ideas innate, it can much less the propositions made up of those ideas.  If they have any innate ideas, I would be glad to be told what, and how many, they are.

21.  No innate Ideas in the Memory.