any idea which does not consist wholly of them. But as the mind is wholly passive in the reception of all its simple ideas, so it exerts several acts of its own, whereby out of its simple ideas, as the materials and foundations of the rest, the other are framed. The acts of the mind wherein it exerts its power over its simple ideas, are chiefly these three.

"1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another, so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one; in which way it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence; this is called abstraction: and thus all its general ideas are made. This shows man's power to be much about the same in the material and intellectual world: for the materials in both being such as he has no power over, either to make or destroy, all that man can do is either to unite them together, or to set them by one another, or wholly to separate them."Vol. i. p. 151.

The first great point which Mr Locke labours to prove in his Essay, is that there are no innate

ideas, which he seems to have established very fully and clearly, if indeed so obvious a truth required any formal demonstration. His chief proofs are from the case of a man born blind, who has no idea of colours, and from the ignorance which children and idiots have of those first principles and universal maxims, which some philosophers and theologians, confounding the faculties of the mind with actual impressions, had supposed to be legibly engraven on the mind by the hand of its author. For the supposing the understanding to be a distinct faculty of the mind no more proves our ideas to be innate, than the allowing perception to be a distinct original faculty of the mind, which every body does, proves that there must be innate sensations. These two positions have, however, been sometimes considered as convertible by the partisans on both sides of the question; the one arguing from the existence of the soul and the power of thought to the positive perception of certain truths, and the others concluding that by denying any original inherent impressions, they had overturned the supposition of the different faculties and powers which must be in the mind, to account for the first production or subsequent modification of sensation or of thought. For instance, it has been made a

consequence of the doctrine that there were no innate ideas, that there could be no such thing as genius, or an original difference of capacity; as if the capacity were not perfectly distinct from the actual impressions by the very theory itself, and as if there might not be a difference in the capacity of acquiring ideas as all experience shows, though none in the knowledge acquired, because this capacity had never yet been exerted. As well might we argue that of two houses that are just built one is as commodious and capacious as the other, as well fitted for the reception of guests and the disposal of furniture, because at present neither of them is furnished or inhabited.

The following passages will show the manner in which our author treats this part of his subject:

The child certainly knows that the nurse that feeds it is neither the cat it plays with, nor the blackamoor it is afraid of: that the wormseed or mustard it refuses is not the apple or sugar it cries for; this it is certainly and undoubtedly assured of: but will any one say it is by virtue of this principle, That it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be, that it so firmly assents to these and other parts of its knowledge? Or that the child has any notion

or apprehension of that proposition at an age, wherein yet, it is plain, it knows a great many other truths? He that will say, children join these several abstract speculations with their sucking bottles and their rattles, may perhaps with justice be thought to have more passion and zeal for his opinion, but less sincerity and truth than one of that age. Though therefore there be several general propositions that meet with constant and ready assent as soon as proposed to men grown up, who have attained the use of more general and abstract ideas, and names standing for them, yet they not being to be found. in those of tender years, who nevertheless know other things, they cannot pretend to universal assent of intelligent persons, and so by no means can be supposed innate: it being impossible, that any truth which is innate (if there were any such) should be unknown, at least to any one who knows any thing else. Since if they are innate truths, they must be innate thoughts; there being nothing a truth in the mind which it has never thought on.

"That the general maxims we are discoursing of, are not known to children, idiots, and a great part of mankind, we have already sufficiently proved. But there is this farther argument against their being innate, that these characters,

if they were native and original impressions, should appear fairest and clearest in those persons in whom yet we find no footsteps of them. And it is in my opinion a strong presumption that they are not innate, since they are least known to those in whom if they were innate, they must need exert themselves with most force and vigour. For children, idiots, savages, and illiterate people being of all others the least corrupted by custom or borrowed opinion, learning or education having not cast their native thoughts into new moulds, nor by superinducing foreign and studied doctrines, confounded those fair characters nature had written there; one might reasonably imagine that in their minds these innate notions should lie open fairly to every one's view, as it is certain the thoughts of children do. One would think according to these men's principles that all these native beams of light (were there any such) should in those who have no reserves, no acts of concealment, shine out in their full lustre, and leave us in no more doubt of their being there than we are of their love of pleasure and abhorrence of pain. But alas, amongst children, idiots, savages, and the grossly illiterate, what general maxims are to be found? What universal principle of knowledge? Their notions are few and narrow,