An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. | Page 7

rule of virtue and vice, were pretty well preserved. So that even the
exhortations of inspired teachers," &c. By which words, and the rest of
that section, it is plain that I brought that passage of St. Paul, not to
prove that the general measure of what men called virtue and vice
throughout the world was the reputation and fashion of each particular
society within itself; but to show that, though it were so, yet, for
reasons I there give, men, in that way of denominating their actions, did
not for the most part much stray from the Law of Nature; which is that
standing and unalterable rule by which they ought to judge of the moral
rectitude and gravity of their actions, and accordingly denominate them

virtues or vices. Had Mr. Lowde considered this, he would have found
it little to his purpose to have quoted this passage in a sense I used it
not; and would I imagine have spared the application he subjoins to it,
as not very necessary. But I hope this Second Edition will give him
satisfaction on the point, and that this matter is now so expressed as to
show him there was no cause for scruple.
Though I am forced to differ from him in these apprehensions he has
expressed, in the latter end of his preface, concerning what I had said
about virtue and vice, yet we are better agreed than he thinks in what he
says in his third chapter (p. 78) concerning "natural inscription and
innate notions." I shall not deny him the privilege he claims (p. 52), to
state the question as he pleases, especially when he states it so as to
leave nothing in it contrary to what I have said. For, according to him,
"innate notions, being conditional things, depending upon the
concurrence of several other circumstances in order to the soul's
exerting them," all that he says for "innate, imprinted, impressed
notions" (for of innate IDEAS he says nothing at all), amounts at last
only to this--that there are certain propositions which, though the soul
from the beginning, or when a man is born, does not know, yet "by
assistance from the outward senses, and the help of some previous
cultivation," it may AFTERWARDS come certainly to know the truth
of; which is no more than what I have affirmed in my First Book. For I
suppose by the "soul's exerting them," he means its beginning to know
them; or else the soul's 'exerting of notions' will be to me a very
unintelligible expression; and I think at best is a very unfit one in this,
it misleading men's thoughts by an insinuation, as if these notions were
in the mind before the 'soul exerts them,' i. e. before they are
known;--whereas truly before they are known, there is nothing of them
in the mind but a capacity to know them, when the 'concurrence of
those circumstances,' which this ingenious author thinks necessary 'in
order to the soul's exerting them,' brings them into our knowledge.
P. 52 I find him express it thus: 'These natural notions are not so
imprinted upon the soul as that they naturally and necessarily exert
themselves (even in children and idiots) without any assistance from
the outward senses, or without the help of some previous cultivation.'

Here, he says, they 'exert themselves,' as p. 78, that the 'soul exerts
them.' When he has explained to himself or others what he means by
'the soul's exerting innate notions,' or their 'exerting themselves;' and
what that 'previous cultivation and circumstances' in order to their
being exerted are--he will I suppose find there is so little of controversy
between him and me on the point, bating that he calls that 'exerting of
notions' which I in a more vulgar style call 'knowing,' that I have reason
to think he brought in my name on this occasion only out of the
pleasure he has to speak civilly of me; which I must gratefully
acknowledge he has done everywhere he mentions me, not without
conferring on me, as some others have done, a title I have no right to.
There are so many instances of this, that I think it justice to my reader
and myself to conclude, that either my book is plainly enough written
to be rightly understood by those who peruse it with that attention and
indifferency, which every one who will give himself the pains to read
ought to employ in reading; or else that I have written mine so
obscurely that it is in vain to go about to mend it. Whichever of these
be the truth, it is myself only am affected thereby; and therefore I shall
be far from troubling my reader with what I think might be said in
answer