A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

INTRODUCTION.xisuch an original power in the mind, there must alsohave been implanted within us an idea of the object towhich it was to be directed. The possession of theinstinct supposes the possession of ideas of the actionsto be approved or disapproved by it : but we possess nosucli ideas, and therefore have no such instinct *.The same objection, however, would lie against theexistence of every power of the human mind, asoriginal. It is acknowledged upon all hands that wepossess a capacity of intuitively perceiving the relationof numbers, as soon as we understand the terms inwhich the proposition is stated. There is no nation inwhich it could not be true, and perceived to be so bythe inhabitants, that four are to twenty as twenty to ahundred. Yet though all mankind perceive this truthintuitively, no one contends as necessary to intuitionthat we should also possess an idea of all the possiblepropositions in numbers to which it is to be directed.In this respect the human eye and the natural conscienceare similar. The human eye is adapted to theperception of objects. It is so equally whether theseobjects may or may not have been presented to it : itwould perceive and distinguish them if they were. Sothe susceptibility of conscience to derive pleasure orpain from good or evil actions may exist independentlyof being exercised. It is however ready to operate,true to its office, whenever they may be presented byexperience or observation.It has also been objected against the doctrine thatconscience is a native and original faculty, that ourperceptions of right and wrong, upon this supposition,* Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, book i, ch.iv, 5 19.