17. Assenting as soon as proposed and understood, proves them not innate.
This evasion therefore of general
assent when men come to the use of reason, failing as it does, and leaving no difference between those suppose
innate and other truths that are afterwards acquired and learnt, men have endeavoured to secure an universal
assent to those they call maxims, by saying, they are generally assented to as soon as proposed, and the terms they
are proposed in understood: seeing all men, even children, as soon as they hear and understand the terms, assent to
these propositions, they think it is sufficient to prove them innate. For since men never fail after they have once
understood the words, to acknowledge them for undoubted truths, they would infer, that certainly these
propositions were first lodged in the understanding, which, without any teaching, the mind, at the very first
proposal immediately closes with and assents to, and after that never doubts again.