3o6 Instinct, 



tivity, but he had a nature that would surely give rise to them, under 

 the proper conditions for its normal development. They are pro- 

 vided for in the nature of his being ; and that is all we mean to say of 

 the religious instincts. One may be so young, so deficient in origin- 

 al mental power, or so degraded, that these religious instincts have 

 not been called into activity — sufficiently certain, to make any im- 

 pr-ission on the observer. 



The writers who deny the existence of any thing like an innate idea 

 of God, seem almost uniformly to admit, by implication, what seems to 

 us to be proof of the existence in man of these religious instincts as 

 we have explained them. And we refer here again to the distinc- 

 tions drawn in the Tenth Lecture, between instinctive and intuitive 

 knowledge. 



Locke in the section from which we have quoted (§ 17) says, — 

 " though the knowledge of a God be the most natural discovery of 

 human Reason, yet the idea of Him is not innate." We do not be- 

 lieve that the idea of a God is innate, as Locke used the word " idea," 

 nor in any proper use of that word. But why is it, that " the knowl- 

 edge of a God (should) be the most natural discovery of the human 

 Reason" as Locke admits, unless it be on account of those special 

 impulses and tendencies in man's nature, which we call instincts, that 

 certainly urge him on, and in a measure direct him, so that he may 

 intellectually make the full discovery of that which shall satisfy the 

 yearnings of his being ? The knowledge of a God, of which Locke 

 speaks, considered abstractly, is not easy at all ; and the fact that 

 children receive it so fully as they do, at so early an age, is proof of 

 some special adaptability of the ideas relating to God, to the human 

 mind. 



Cousin, in his examination of Locke, has made some good points 

 on this subject, which we may quote, without assenting to all that is 

 implied in the extracts. " Every thing leads to God" says he. And 

 again, " Do not go to consult the savage, the child, the idiot, to 

 know whether they have the idea of God ; ask them, or rather with- 

 out asking them any thing, ascertain if they have the idea of the im- 

 perfect and the finite ; and if they have it, — and they cannot but have 

 it. if they have the least apperception, — be sure that they have an 

 obscure and confused idea of something infinite and perfect ; be su7-e 

 that what they discern of themselves and of the world, does not suffice 

 them, and that they, at once, humble and exalt themselves in an inti- 

 mate faith in the existence of something i?tfnite a7id perfect, that is to 



