1. No moral principles so clear and so generally received as the forementioned speculative maxims.
If those
speculative Maxims, whereof we discoursed in the foregoing chapter, have not an actual universal assent from all
mankind, as we there proved, it is much more visible concerning practical Principles, that they come short of an
universal reception: and I think it will be hard to instance any one moral rule which can pretend to so general and
ready an assent as, "What is, is"; or to be so manifest a truth as this, that "It is impossible for the same thing to be
and not to be." Whereby it is evident that they are further removed from a title to be innate; and the doubt of their
being native impressions on the mind is stronger against those moral principles than the other. Not that it brings
their truth at all in question. They are equally true, though not equally evident. Those speculative maxims carry
their own evidence with them: but moral principles require reasoning and discourse, and some exercise of the
mind, to discover the certainty of their truth. They lie not open as natural characters engraven on the mind; which,
if any such were, they must needs be visible by themselves, and by their own light be certain and known to
everybody. But this is no derogation to their truth and certainty; no more than it is to the truth or certainty of the
three angles of a triangle being equal to two right ones: because it is not so evident as "the whole is bigger than a
part," nor so apt to be assented to at first hearing. It may suffice that these moral rules are capable of
demonstration: and therefore it is our own faults if we come not to a certain knowledge of them. But the ignorance
wherein many men are of them, and the slowness of assent wherewith others receive them, are manifest proofs
that they are not innate, and such as offer themselves to their view without searching.
