of their being there, than we are of their love of pleasure, and abhorrence of pain. But, alas! among children, idiots, savages, and the grossly illiterate, what general maxims are to be found? What universal principles of knowledge? Their notions are few and narrow, borrowed only from those they have had most to do with, and which have made upon their senses the frequentest and strongest impressions. A child knows his nurse and his cradle, and, by degrees, the playthings of a little more advanced age; and a young savage has, perhaps, his head filled with love and hunting, according to the fashion of his tribe. But he that from a child untaught, or a wild inhabitant of the woods, will expect these abstract maxims and reputed principles of sciences, will, I fear, find himself mistaken. Such kind of general propositions are seldom mentioned in the huts of Indians, much less are they to be found in the thoughts of children, or any impressions of them on the minds of naturals. They are the language and business of the schools and academies of learned nations, accustomed to that sort of conversation, or learning, where disputes are frequent; these maxims being suited to artificial argumentation, and useful for conviction, but not much conducing to the discovery of truth, or the advancement of knowledge. But of their small use for the improvement of knowledge I shall have occasion to speak more at large, 1. 4. c. 7. § 28. Recapitulation.—I know not how absurd this may seem to the masters of demonstration; and probably it will hardly down with any body at first hearing. I must, therefore, beg a little truce with prejudice, and the forbearance of censure, until I have been heard out in the sequel of this discourse, being very willing to submit to better judgments. And since I impartially search after truth, I shall not be sorry to be convinced that I have been too fond of my own notions, which, I confess, we are all apt to be, when application and study have warmed our heads with them. Upon the whole matter, I cannot see any ground to think these two speculative maxims innate, since they are not universally assented to; and the assent they so generally find, is no other than what several propositions, not allowed to be innate, equally partake it with them: and since the assent that is given them is produced another way, and comes not from natural inscription, as I doubt not but to make appear in the following discourse. And if these first principles of knowledge and science are found not to be innate, no other speculative maxims can (I suppose) with better right pretend to be so. CHAPTER III. NO INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES. § 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 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 faither 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 every body. But this is no derogation to 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 fault, 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. § 2. Faith and justice not owned as principles by all men.—Whether there be any such moral principles, wherein all men agree, I appeal to any who have been but moderately conversant in the history of mankind, and looked abroad beyond the smoke of their own chimneys. Where is that practical truth that is universally received without doubt or question, as it must be, if innate? Justice, and keeping of contracts, is that which most men seem to agree in. This is a principle which is thought to extend itself to the dens of thieves, and the confederacies of the greatest villains; and they who have gone farthest towards the putting off of humanity itself, keep faith and rules of justice one with another. I grant that outlaws themselves do this one amongst another; but it is without receiving these as the innate laws of nature. They practise them as rules of convenience within their own communities: but it is impossible to conceive that he embraces justice as a practical principle who acts fairly with his fellow highwayman, and at the same time plunders or kills the next honest man he meets with. Justice and truth are the common ties of society; and, therefore, even outlaws and robbers, who break with all the world besides, must keep faith and rules of equity among themselves, or else they cannot hold together. But will any one say, that those that live by fraud or rapine, have innate principles of truth and justice which they allow and assent to? §3. Objection, Though men deny them in their practice, yet they admit them in their thoughts, answered.-Perhaps it will be urged, that the tacit assent of their minds agrees to what their practice contradicts. I answer, first, I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts. But since it is certain, that most men's practice, and some men's open professions, have either questioned or denied these principles, it is impossible to establish a universal consent (though we should look for it only amongst grown men), without which it is impossible to conclude them innate. Secondly, It is very strange and unreasonable to suppose innate practical principles, that terminate only C in contemplation. Practical principles derived from nature, are there for operation, and must produce conformity of action, not barely speculative assent to their truth, or else they are in vain distinguished from speculative maxims. Nature, I confess, has put into man a desire of happiness, and an aversion to misery: these, indeed, are innate practical principles, which (as practical principles ought) do continue constantly to operate and influence all our actions, without ceasing; these may be observed in all persons, and all ages, steady and universal; but these are inclinations of the appetite to good, not impressions of truth on the understanding. I deny not, that there are natural tendencies imprinted on the minds of men; and that from the very first instances of sense and perception, there are some things that are grateful, and others unwelcome to them; some things that they incline to, and others that they fly: but this makes nothing for innate characters on the mind, which are to be the principles of knowledge regulating our practice. Such natural impressions on the understanding are so far from being confirmed hereby, that this is an argument against them; since, if there were certain characters imprinted by nature on the understanding, as the principles of knowledge, we could not but perceive them constantly operate in us, and influence our knowledge, as we do those others on the will and appetite; which never cease to be the constant springs and motives of all our actions, to which we perpetually feel them strongly impelling us. § 4. Moral rules need a proof, ergo, not innate.-Another reason that makes me doubt of any innate practical principles, is, that I think there cannot any one moral rule be proposed, whereof a man may not justly demand a reason, which would be perfectly ridiculous and absurd if they were innate, or so much as self-evident; which every innate principle must needs be, and not need any proof to ascertain its truth, nor want any reason to gain it approbation. He would be thought void of common sense, who asked on the one side, or on the other side went to give reason, why " it is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be?" It carries its own light and evidence with it, and needs no other proof; he that understands the terms, assents to it for its own sake, or else nothing will ever be able to prevail with him to do it. But should that most unshaken rule of morality, and foundation of all social virtue," that one should do as he would be done unto," be proposed to one who never heard it before, but yet is of capacity to understand its meaning, might he not, without any absurdity, ask a reason why? And were not he that proposed it bound to make out the truth and reasonableness of it to him: Which plainly shews it not to be innate ; for if it were, it could neither want nor receive any proof; but must needs (at least as soon as heard and understood) be received and assented to, as an unquestionable truth, which a man can by no means doubt of. So that the truth of all these moral rules plainly depends upon some other antecedent to them, and from which they must be deduced; which could not be, if either they were innate, or so much as self-evident. § 5. Instance in keeping compacts.-That men should keep their compacts, is certainly a great and undeniable rule in morality; but yet, if a Christian, who has the view of happiness and misery in an other life, be asked why a man must keep his word? he will give this as a reason: Because God, who has the power of eternal life and death, requires it of us. But if a Hobbist be asked why, he will answer because the public requires it, and the Leviathan will punish you if you do not. And if one of the old philosophers had been asked, he would have answered because it was dishonest, below the dignity of a man, and opposite to virtue, the highest perfection of human nature, to do otherwise. § 6. Virtue generally approved, not because innate, but because profitable. Hence naturally flows the great variety of opinions concerning moral rules, which are to be found among men, according to the different sorts of happiness they have a prospect of, or propose to themselves which could not be if practical principles were innate, and imprinted in our minds immediately by the hand of God. I grant the existence of God is so many ways manifest, and the obedience we owe him so congruous to the light of reason, that a great part of mankind give testimony to the law of nature; but yet, I think, it must be allowed, that several moral rules may receive from mankind a very general approbation, without either knowing or admitting the true ground of morality; which can only be the will and law of a God, who sees men in the dark, has in his hand rewards and punishments, and power enough to call to account the proudest offender. For God, having, by an inseparable connexion, joined virtue and public happiness together; and made the practice thereof necessary to the preservation of society, and visibly beneficial to all with whom the virtuous man has to do, it is no wonder that every one should not only allow, but recommend and magnify those rules to others, from whose observance of them he is sure to reap advantage to himself. He may, out of interest, as well as conviction, cry up that for sacred, which, if once trampled on, and profaned, he himself cannot be safe nor secure. This, though it takes nothing from the moral and eternal obligation which these rules evidently have, yet it shews that the outward acknowledgment men pay to them in their words, proves not that they are innate principles; nay, it proves not so much as that men assent to them inwardly in their own minds, as the inviolable rules of their own practice, since we find that self-interest, and the conveniencies of this life, make many men own an outward profession and approbation of them, whose actions sufficiently prove, that they very little consider the Lawgiver that prescribed these rules, nor the hell that he has ordained for the punishment of those that transgress them. § 7. Men's actions convince us that the rule of virtue is not their internal principle.-For, if we will not in civility allow too much sincerity to the professions of most men, but think their actions to be the interpreters of their thoughts, we shall find that they have no such internal veneration for these rules, nor so full a persuasion of their certainty and obligation. The great principle of morality, " To do as one would be done to," is more commended than practised. But the breach of this rule cannot be a greater vice, than to teach others that it is no moral rule, nor obligatory, would be thought madness, and contrary to that interest men sacrifice to, when they break it themselves, Perhaps conscience will be urged as checking us for such breaches, and so the internal obligation and establishment of the rule be preserved.: § 8. Conscience no proof of any innate moral rule.-To which I answer, that I doubt not, but without being written on their hearts, many men may, by the same way that they come to the knowledge of other things, come to assent to several moral rules, and be convinced of their obligation. Others also may come to be of the same mind, from their education, company, and customs of their country; which persuasion, however got, will serve to set conscience on work, which is nothing else but our own opinion or judgment of the moral rectitude or pravity of our own actions. And if conscience be a proof of innate principles, contraries may be innate principles; since some men, with the same bent of conscience, prosecute what others avoid. § 9. Instances of enormities practised without remorse.—But I cannot see how any men should ever transgress those moral rules, with confidence and serenity, were they innate, and stamped upon their minds. View but an army at the sacking of a town, and see what observation or sense of moral principles, or what touch of conscience for all the outrages they do. Robberies, murders, rapes, are the sports of men set at liberty from punishment and censure. Have there not been whole nations, and those of the most civilized people, amongst whom the exposing their children, and leaving them in the fields, to perish by want or wild beasts, has been the practice, as little condemned or scrupled, as the begetting them? Do they not still, in some countries, put them into the same graves with their mothers, if they die in childbirth ; or despatch them, if a pretended astrologer declares them to have unhappy stars? And are there not places where, at a certain age, they kill, or expose their parents, without any remorse at all? In a part of Asia, the sick, when their case comes to be thought desperate, are carried out, and laid on the earth, before they are dead; and left there, exposed to wind and weather, to perish without assistance or pity.* It is familiar among the Mingrelians, a people professing Christianity, to bury their children alive without scruple. There are places where they geld their children. The Caribbees were wont to geld their children, on purpose to fat and eat them.§ And Garcilasso de la Vega tells us of a people in Peru, which were wont to fat and eat the children they got on their female captives, whom they kept as concubines for that purpose; and when they were past breeding, the mothers themselves were killed, too, and eaten. The virtues whereby the Tououpinambos believed they merited paradise, were revenge, and eating abundance of their enemies. They have not so much as the name for God,¶ and have no religion, no worship. The saints who are canonized amongst the Turks, lead lives which one cannot with modesty relate. A remarkable passage to this purpose, out of the voyage of Baumgarten, which is a book not every day to be met with, I shall set down at large, in the language it is published in. "Ibi (sc. prope Belbes in Egypto) vidimus sanctum unum Saracenicum inter arenarum Gruber apud Thevenot, part 4. p. 13. + Lambert apud Thevenot, p. 58. P. Mart. Dec. 1. |