1. Principles not innate, unless their ideas be innate.
Had those who would persuade us that there are innate
principles not taken them together in gross, but considered separately the parts out of which those propositions are
made, they would not, perhaps, have been so forward to believe they were innate. Since, if the ideas which made
up those truths were not, it was impossible that the propositions made up of them should be innate, or our
knowledge of them be born with us. For, if the ideas be not innate, there was a time when the mind was without
those principles; and then they will not be innate, but be derived from some other original. For, where the ideas
themselves are not, there can be no knowledge, no assent, no mental or verbal propositions about them.
