12. The generally allowed breach of a rule, proof that it is not innate.
The breaking of a rule, say you, is no
argument that it is unknown. I grant it: but the generally allowed breach of it anywhere, I say, is a proof that it is
not innate. For example: let us take any of these rules, which, being the most obvious deductions of human
reason, and comformable to the natural inclination of the greatest part of men, fewest people have had the
impudence to deny or inconsideration to doubt of. If any can be thought to be naturally imprinted, none, I think,
can have a fairer pretence to be innate than this: "Parents, preserve and cherish your children." When, therefore,
you say that this is an innate rule, what do you mean? Either that it is an innate principle which upon all occasions
excites and directs the actions of all men; or else, that it is a truth which all men have imprinted on their minds,
and which therefore they know and assent to. But in neither of these senses is it innate. First, that it is not a
principle which influences all men's actions, is what I have proved by the examples before cited: nor need we seek
so far as Mingrelia or Peru to find instances of such as neglect, abuse, nay, and destroy their children; or look on it
only as the more than brutality of some savage and barbarous nations, when we remember that it was a familiar
and uncondemned practice amongst the Greeks and Romans to expose, without pity or remorse, their innocent
infants. Secondly, that it is an innate truth, known to all men, is also false. For, "Parents preserve your children,"
is so far from an innate truth, that it is no truth at all: it being a command, and not a proposition, and so not
capable of truth or falsehood. To make it capable of being assented to as true, it must be reduced to some such
proposition as this: "It is the duty of parents to preserve their children." But what duty is, cannot be understood
without a law; nor a law be known or supposed without a lawmaker, or without reward and punishment; so that it
is impossible that this, or any other, practical principle should be innate, i.e., be imprinted on the mind as a duty,
without supposing the ideas of God, of law, of obligation, of punishment, of a life after this, innate: for that
punishment follows not in this life the breach of this rule, and consequently that it has not the force of a law in
countries where the generally allowed practice runs counter to it, is in itself evident. But these ideas (which must
be all of them innate, if anything as a duty be so) are so far from being innate, that it is not every studious or
thinking man, much less every one that is born, in whom they are to be found clear and distinct; and that one of
them, which of all others seems most likely to be innate, is not so, (I mean the idea of God,) I think, in the next
chapter, will appear very evident to any considering man.