144 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book II. 



It mav be obje<Sled, that the human mind has all thofe great ta- 

 lents> I have mentioned, only in poiver or capacity, when it makes its 

 firrt appearance in this world : 1 hat the brutes may have the fame 

 latent powers, though hitherto we have not difcovered them ; becaufe 

 they never have exerted them, for want, perhaps, of opportunities, and 

 that inlh'u6tion to which we know that man owes fo much ; and we 

 have more reafon to think fo, that fome of them, by education and in- 

 ftrudion, iire carried on very far ; and how much farther they might 

 be carried, were due pains bellowed upon them, it is impoffible to 

 fay. 



That the great powers of the human mind are, at firfl:, latent, 

 and immeried in matter, fo that the infant is no more than a man 

 in capacity-, is a fad that, I think, cannot be denied. Ariliotle fays, 

 that, at his birth, his mind is like a tablet, v^'ith nothing v;ritten upon 

 it, or, as we would fay, a white fheet of paper. And even the Plato- 

 nic philofophers, who maintain, that his ideas are not acquired here, 

 but brought with him, acknowledge, that they are fo overwhelmed at 

 firfi with matter, that they lie, like fparks under afhes, which do not 

 appear till they are ftirred and roufed ; and that, they fay, is done by 

 the objeds of fenfe. And, therefore, the dodrine that I have main- 

 tained 



onlv, and left matter in the world, there might have been fome reality in our knoiv- 

 ledge, fuch as it was, and our fenfations, at leaft, might have had fome foundation in 

 nature ; but, when he takes away both ideas and matter, what does he leave in the 

 place of them, but mere delufion, and an empty dream ? As to a later philofopher, 

 who maintains the fame doftrine concerning ideas, I have not the fame charity for him, 

 but rank him with Mr Hobbes, with this difference only, that he has put his atheifm 

 into ^ more fceptical form, and is a man of lefs genius, as well as lefs fcience, 



I obferve, too, that the French material philofophers, fuch as the author of the trea- 

 tife Stir V Efprit, and he that writes Le Syjleme de Id Nature, the mofl profefled book 

 of atheifm that has been publiflied in our time, maintain likewife, that there is nothing 

 in our minds but perceptions of fenfe, or ideas of fenfation, as Mr Locke calls them : 

 And the reafon is plain, that, if they (hould admit that the mind could operate by it- 

 felf, without the affiftaiice of the body, it might be fuppofcd that the mind could ex- 

 exifl likewife without the body, and that there was really a difliudion betwixt mind 

 and body. 



