KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



107 



more truth, that children are, in almost every- 

 thing, the diminutive of adults. Let us concede to 

 Locke that children do not yet manifest all the 

 qualities and all the faculties proper to the adult, 

 what consequence can be drawn thence against 

 their innateness ? Must we not regard as innate, 

 the instincts of animals, the greater part of whom 

 do not act immediately after their birth, nor even 

 at all seasons of the year ? They do not always 

 build their nest or their covert ; they are not 

 always laying up provisions ; they do not emigrate, 

 or sing, or couple at all times. Locke was com- 

 pelled to acknowledge, that he could not resist the 

 proofs and the objections drawn from the animal 

 kingdom ; but he pretends to answer them by 

 saying, " that he did not write a philosophy of 

 animals," and thus has fallen into an error amply 

 refuted, that man and animals have nothing in 

 common between them, and are governed in all 

 respects by opposite laws. But, not to go beyond 

 men, will Locke and his partisans deny that the 

 propensity of love, for example, is allied to the 

 organisation ? Yet we find no trace of it during 

 their earliest years. If Locke had had more just 

 ideas of the primitive faculties, he would have at- 

 tributed to each of them a proper organ ; he would 

 have known that the various nervous systems, and 

 particularly the different organs of the brain, exer- 

 cise their functions independently of each other , 

 that their development and their activity are not 

 complete in the same time ; but that they develop 

 themselves successively, some sooner, some later ; 

 that each organ, even when perfectly developed, 

 may be sometimes active, sometimes inactive. 

 Had Locke known all this, he would not have de- 

 luded himself with false observations ; and the 

 principles which he has established, to explain 

 the origin of the qualities and faculties of man, 

 would not have been in contradiction with the 

 nature of man and with that of animals. 



For the rest, many of these proofs have already 

 struck and convinced some, both of the ancient 

 and modern philosophers ; and they have, with 

 me, acknowledged that there are no primitive qua- 

 lities either acquired or factitious ; but that, in 

 man as well as in animals, all the dispositions 

 are innate, and that their manifestation is ren- 

 dered possible only by the organisation. 



Plato acknowledged that the talent of organisa- 

 tion is innate. According to him, it is not enough, 

 in order to be a philosopher, to join to the desire 

 of knowledge a vast conception, good memory, and 

 penetration ; it needs, also, a peculiar disposition, 

 which cannot be acquired any more than these 

 auxiliary faculties. He says, also, that the apti- 

 tude for mathematics is innate. He regards the 

 desires and the sentiments of pride, courage, and 

 sensual appetite not only as innate, but as founded 

 on organisation. 



Hippocrates, in speaking of the conditions ne- 

 cessary to make a good physician, says, that above 

 all he needs the natural dispositions. Quintillian 

 ridicules the ancient maxim, " that any body, by 

 means of constant application, may become an ora- 

 tor." "If precepts," says he, "could bestow the 

 art of eloquence, every one would be eloquent." 



Locke himself admits innate faculties. Condil- 

 lac, though not consistent throughout his works, 

 thus expresses himself on innate faculties : " Men 

 are ignorant of what they can do, so long as ex- 



perience has not led them to take notice of what 

 they actually do from nature only. Hence, they 

 have never done by design, anything but what 

 they had already done, even without intending it. 

 I think that this observation will always hold good; 

 and I also think, that if it had not escaped notice, 

 men would have reasoned better than they have 

 clone. Men never thought of making analyses, 

 till they found they had made them ; they never 

 thought of speaking the language of action to 

 make themselves understood, till they found 

 that they were understood. In like manner 

 they would never have thought of speaking with 

 articulate sounds, unless they had observed that 

 they had spoken with such sounds ; and languages 

 have commenced without any design of making 

 them. It is thus that men have been poets and 

 orators without dreaming of being such. In a 

 word, all that they have become, they have first 

 been by nature alone ; and they have not studied 

 to be such, till they had noticed what nature her- 

 self had led them to do. She has commenced 

 every thing, and always well : this is a remark 

 which we cannot repeat too often. 



" If laws," says he, elsewhere, " are not conven- 

 tional, they are then arbitrary ! There may have 

 been arbitrary ones ; there are even too many ; but 

 those which determine whether our actions are 

 good or evil, are not such and cannot be such. 

 They are, indeed, our work, because they are con- 

 ventions which we have made. But we have not 

 made them alone ; nature made them with us, 

 she dictated them to us, and it was not in our 

 power to make others. The wants and faculties 

 of man being given, the laws themselves are given ; 

 and though we make them, the Deity who has 

 created us with such wants and such faculties is, 

 in truth, our sole legislator. In following these 

 laws thus conformed to our nature, it is him whom 

 we obey, and this is what constitutes the morality 

 of actions." 



St. Paul spoke in the same sense, in addressing 

 the Romans. "If," says he, "the Gentiles, who 

 have not the law, do by nature the things contained 

 in the law, they show the work of the law written 

 in their hearts." Hume regards covetousness, the 

 sense of justice and injustice, the moral sense, &c, 

 as innate. George Leroy speaks of compassion 

 and religion as innate sentiments. Herder regards 

 the sociability of man as innate, and thinks with 

 me, that the law, " do not to another what you 

 would not have another do to you," is founded on 

 the sympathy natural to man. He even regards, 

 as innate, the disposition of man to religion, and 

 his propensity to honor superhuman beings and 

 those of a superior order. 



I shall, elsewhere, completely prove these same 

 truths. I shall, likewise, while treating of the dif- 

 ferent organs and the various primitive faculties, 

 demonstrate that the talents for music, painting, 

 architecture, the mechanics, imitation, geometry, 

 mathematics, &c, which seem to be only talents 

 acquired and produced by social life, are innate in 

 man, and are indicated to him by his organisation, 

 as the laws of the hexagonal cell are to the bee ; to 

 the nightingale, his melody ; and to the beaver, 

 his building. I shall, also, make evident, that if 

 the qualities of man were not determinate, society 

 would only be confusion. I shall show that 

 the determination of justice and injustice 



