expressions, that have scarce any signification, go for clear reasons to those who, being prepossessed, take not the pains to examine even what they themselves say. For to apply this answer with any tolerable sense to our present purpose, it must signify one of these two things: either that as soon as men come to the use of reason, these supposed native inscriptions come to be known and observed by them; or else, that the use and exercise of men’s reasons assists them in the discovery of these principles, and certainly makes them known to them.
If they mean that by the use of reason men may discover these principles, and that this is sufficient to prove them innate, their way of arguing will stand thus: that whatever truths reason can certainly discover to us, and make us firmly assent to, those are all naturally imprinted on the mind; since that universal assent, which is made the mark of them, amounts to no more but this – that by the use of reason, we are capable to come to a certain knowledge of, and assent to them. And by this means there will be no difference between the maxims of the mathematicians and theorems they deduce from them: all must be equally allowed innate, they being all discoveries made by the use of reason, and truths that a rational creature may certainly come to know, if he apply his thoughts rightly that way …
If by knowing and assenting to them when they come to the use of reason be meant that this is the time when they come to be taken notice of by the mind – and that as soon as children come to the use of reason, they come also to know and assent to these maxims – this also is false, and frivolous. First, it is false. Because it is evident these maxims are not in the mind so early as the use of reason; and therefore the coming to the use of reason is falsely assigned as the time of their discovery. How many instances of the use of reason may we observe in children, a long time before they have any knowledge of this maxim that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be? A great part of illiterate people, and savages, pass many years, even of their rational age, without ever thinking on this, and the like general propositions. I grant men come not to the knowledge of these general and more abstract truths, which are thought innate, till they come to the use of reason; and I add, nor then neither. Which is so, because till after they come to the use of reason, those general abstract ideas are not framed in the mind, about which those general maxims are, which are mistaken for innate principles; but [they] are indeed discoveries made … and brought into the mind by the same way, and discovered by the same steps, as several other propositions, which nobody was ever so extravagant as to suppose innate … I allow therefore a necessity that men should come to the use of reason, before they get the knowledge of those general truths: but deny that men’s coming to the use of reason is the time of their discovery.
In the mean time, it is observable that this saying, that men know and assent to these maxims when they come to the use of reason, amounts in reality of fact to no more but this: that they are never known nor taken notice of before the use of reason, but may possibly be assented to sometime after, during a man’s life; but when, is uncertain. And so may all other knowable truths, as well as these, which therefore have no advantage, nor distinction from others, by this note of being known when we come to the use of reason; nor are thereby proved to be innate, but quite the contrary.
But secondly, were it true that the precise time of their being known and assented to were when men come to the use of reason, neither would that prove them innate … All that can with any truth be meant by this proposition, that men assent to them when they come to the use of reason, is no more but this, that the making of general abstract ideas and the understanding of general names, being a concomitant of the rational faculty, and growing up with it, children commonly get not those general ideas nor learn the names that stand for them till (having for a good while exercised their reason about familiar and more particular ideas) they are, by their ordinary discourse and actions with others, acknowledged to be capable of rational conversation. If assenting to these maxims when men come to the use of reason can be true in any other sense, I desire it may be shown; or at least, how in this or any other sense it proves them innate.
The senses at first let in particular ideas and furnish the yet empty cabinet; and the mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the memory, and names got to them. Afterwards the mind, proceeding farther, abstracts them, and by degrees learns the use of general names. In this manner the mind comes to be furnished with ideas and language, the materials about which to exercise its discursive faculty; and the use of reason becomes daily more visible, as these materials, that give it employment, increase. But though the having of general ideas and the use of general words and reason usually grow together, yet I see not how this any way proves them innate. The knowledge of some truths, I confess, is very early in the mind; but in a way that shows them not to be innate. For, if we will observe, we shall find it still to be about ideas not innate, but acquired – it being about those first, which are imprinted by external things, with which infants have earliest to do, and which make the most frequent impressions on their senses. In ideas thus got, the mind discovers that some agree, and others differ, probably as soon as it has any use of memory; as soon as it is able to retain and receive distinct ideas. But whether it be then, or no, this is certain: it does so long before it has the use of words, or comes to that which we commonly call the use of reason. For a child knows as certainly, before it can speak, the difference between the ideas of sweet and bitter (i.e. that sweet is not bitter) as it knows afterwards (when it comes to speak) that wormwood and sugar-plums are not the same thing.
A child knows not that three and four are equal to seven, till he comes to be able to count to seven, and has got the name and idea of equality; and then upon the explaining those words, he presently assents to, or rather perceives the truth of, that proposition. But neither does he then readily assent because it is an innate truth, nor was his assent wanting, till then, because he wanted the use of reason; but the truth of it appears to him, as soon as he has settled in his mind the clear and distinct ideas that these names stand for; and then he knows the truth of that proposition upon the same grounds, and by the same means, that he knew before that a rod and cherry are not the same thing …
[At the start of Book II of the Essay, Locke gives his own view on the origin of ideas.]
Every man being conscious to himself that he thinks, and that which his mind is employed about while thinking, being the ideas that are there, it is past doubt that men have in their minds several ideas, such as are those expressed by the words, whiteness, hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drunkenness and others. It is in the first place to be inquired: How he comes by them? …
Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety? When has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience. In that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation employed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring.
First, our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to the various ways wherein those objects do affect them. And thus we come by those ideas we have of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet, and all those which we call sensible qualities, which when I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean, they, from external objects, convey into the mind what produces there those perceptions. This great source of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I call sensation.
Secondly, the other fountain from which experience furnishes the understanding with ideas is the perception of the operations of our own minds within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got. Which operations, when the soul comes to reflect on and
