18. If such an assent be a mark of innate, then "that one and two are equal to three, that sweetness is not
bitterness," and a thousand the like, must be innate.
In answer to this, I demand whether ready assent given to a
proposition, upon first hearing and understanding the terms, be a certain mark of an innate principle? If it be not,
such a general assent is in vain urged as a proof of them: if it be said that it is a mark of innate, they must then
allow all such propositions to be innate which are generally assented to as soon as heard, whereby they will find
themselves plentifully stored with innate principles. For upon the same ground, viz., of assent at first hearing and
understanding the terms, that men would have those maxims pass for innate, they must also admit several
propositions about numbers to be innate; and thus, that one and two are equal to three, that two and two are equal
to four, and a multitude of other the like propositions in numbers, that everybody assents to at first hearing and
understanding the terms, must have a place amongst these innate axioms. Nor is this the prerogative of numbers
alone, and propositions made about several of them; but even natural philosophy, and all the other sciences, afford
propositions which are sure to meet with assent as soon as they are understood. That "two bodies cannot be in the
same place" is a truth that nobody any more sticks at than at these maxims, that "it is impossible for the same
thing to be and not to be," that "white is not black," that "a square is not a circle," that "bitterness is not
sweetness." These and a million of such other propositions, as many at least as we have distinct ideas of, every
man in his wits, at first hearing, and knowing what the names stand for, must necessarily assent to. If these men
will be true to their own rule, and have assent at first hearing and understanding the terms to be a mark of innate,
they must allow not only as many innate propositions as men have distinct ideas, but as many as men can make
propositions wherein different ideas are denied one of another. Since every proposition wherein one different idea
is denied of another, will as certainly find assent at first hearing and understanding the terms as this general one,
"It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be," or that which is the foundation of it, and is the easier
understood of the two, "The same is not different"; by which account they will have legions of innate propositions
of this one sort, without mentioning any other. But, since no proposition can be innate unless the ideas about
which it is be innate, this will be to suppose all our ideas of colours, sounds, tastes, figure, etc., innate, than which
there cannot be anything more opposite to reason and experience. Universal and ready assent upon hearing and
understanding the terms is, I grant, a mark of self-evidence; but self-evidence, depending not on innate
impressions, but on something else, (as we shall show hereafter,) belongs to several propositions which nobody
was yet so extravagant as to pretend to be innate.