21. These maxims not being known sometimes till proposed, proves them not innate.
But we have not yet done
with "assenting to propositions at first hearing and understanding their terms." It is fit we first take notice that
this, instead of being a mark that they are innate, is a proof of the contrary; since it supposes that several, who
understand and know other things, are ignorant of these principles till they are proposed to them; and that one may
be unacquainted with these truths till he hears them from others. For, if they were innate, what need they be
proposed in order to gaining assent, when, by being in the understanding, by a natural and original impression, (if
there were any such,) they could not but be known before? Or doth the proposing them print them clearer in the
mind than nature did? If so, then the consequence will be, that a man knows them better after he has been thus
taught them than he did before. Whence it will follow that these principles may be made more evident to us by
others' teaching than nature has made them by impression: which will ill agree with the opinion of innate
principles, and give but little authority to them; but, on the contrary, makes them unfit to be the foundations of all
our other knowledge; as they are pretended to be. This cannot be denied, that men grow first acquainted with
many of these self-evident truths upon their being proposed: but it is clear that whosoever does so, finds in
himself that he then begins to know a proposition, which he knew not before, and which from thenceforth he
never questions; not because it was innate, but because the consideration of the nature of the things contained in
those words would not suffer him to think otherwise, how, or whensoever he is brought to reflect on them. And if
whatever is assented to at first hearing and understanding the terms must pass for an innate principle, every
well-grounded observation, drawn from particulars into a general rule, must be innate. When yet it is certain that
not all, but only sagacious heads, light at first on these observations, and reduce them into general propositions:
not innate, but collected from a preceding acquaintance and reflection on particular instances. These, when
observing men have made them, unobserving men, when they are proposed to them, cannot refuse their assent to.
