25.  Whence the Opinion of Innate Principles.

When men have found some general propositions that could not be doubted of as soon as understood, it was, I know, a short and easy way to conclude them innate.  This being once received, it eased the lazy from the pains of search, and stopped the inquiry of the doubtful concerning all that was once styled innate.  And it was of no small advantage to those who affected to be masters and teachers, to make this the principle of principles,—­that principles must not be questioned. For, having once established this tenet,—­that there are innate principles, it put their followers upon a necessity of receiving some doctrines as such; which was to take them off from the use of their own reason and judgment, and put them on believing and taking them upon trust without further examination:  in which posture of blind credulity, they might be more easily governed by, and made useful to some sort of men, who had the skill and office to principle and guide them.  Nor is it a small power it gives one man over another, to have the authority to be the dictator of principles, and teacher of unquestionable truths; and to make a man swallow that for an innate principle which may serve to his purpose who teacheth them.  Whereas had they examined the ways whereby men came to the knowledge of many universal truths, they would have found them to result in the minds of men from the being of things themselves, when duly considered; and that they were discovered by the application of those faculties that were fitted by nature to receive and judge of them, when duly employed about them.

26.  Conclusion.

To show how the understanding proceeds herein is the design of the following Discourse; which I shall proceed to when I have first premised, that hitherto,—­to clear my way to those foundations which I conceive are the only true ones, whereon to establish those notions we can have of our own knowledge,—­it hath been necessary for me to give an account of the reasons I had to doubt of innate principles.  And since the arguments which are against them do, some of them, rise from common received opinions, I have been forced to take several things for granted; which is hardly avoidable to any one, whose task is to show the falsehood or improbability of any tenet;—­it happening in controversial discourses as it does in assaulting of towns; where, if the ground be but firm whereon the batteries are erected, there is no further inquiry of whom it is borrowed, nor whom it belongs to, so it affords but a fit rise for the present purpose.  But in the future part of this Discourse, designing to raise an edifice uniform and consistent with itself, as far as my own experience and observation will assist me, I hope to erect it on such a basis that I shall not need to shore it up with props and buttresses, leaning on borrowed or begged foundations:  or