156 LOCKE. ^ " There are no innate principles in the mind"* The doc- trine of the innate character of certain principles is based on their universal acceptance. The asserted agreement of mankind in regard to the laws of thought, the principles of morality, the existence of God, etc., is neither cogent as an argument nor correct in fact. In the first place, even if there were any principles which everyone assented to, this would not prove that they had been created in the soul ; the fact of general consent would admit of a different expla- nation. Granted that no atheists existed, yet it would not necessarily follow that the universal conviction of the exist- ence of God is innate, for it might have been gradually reached in each case through the use of the reason — might have been inferred, for instance, from the percep- tion of the purposive character of the world. Second, the % fact to which this theory of innate ideas appeals is not true. No moral rule can be cited which is respected by all nations. The idea of identity is entirely unknown to idiots and to children. If the laws of identity and con- tradiction were innate they must appear in consciousness prior to all other truths; but long before a child is con- scious of the proposition " It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be," it knows that sweet is not bitter, and that black is not white. The ideas first known are not general axioms and abstract concepts, but particular impressions of the senses. Would nature write so illegible a hand that the mind must wait a long time before becom- ing able to read what had been inscribed upon it ? It is often said, however, that innate ideas and principles may be obscured and, finally, completely extinguished by habit, education, and other extrinsic circumstances. Then, if they
- According to Fox Bourne this first book was written after the others.
Geil {Ueber die Abhdngigkeit Lockes von Descartes, Strassburg, 1887, chap, iii.) has endeavored to prove that, since the arguments controverted are want- ing in Descartes, the attack was not aimed at Descartes and his school, but at native defenders of innate ideas, as Lord Herbert of Cherbury and the English Platonists (Cudworth, More, Parker, Gale). That along with these the Carte- sian doctrine was a second and chief object of attack is shown by Benno Erd- mann in his discussion of the treatises by G. Geil and R. Sommer {Lockes Ver- hdltnit zu Descartes, Berlin, 1887) in the Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophit, ii. pp. 99-121.
