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