same intellectual influences which suggested to Descartes
his views. Fragments of knowledge and partial solutions derived from older
philosophies exist before a great thinker like Descartes embodies them in
a system. Herbert may have been led by the indirect effect of such
influences to a theory of innate ideas, independently of Descartes; or he
may have arrived at it by reaction against the Pyrrhonism of some of the
French writers of the preceding age, such as Montaigne, with whose
writings he was familiar.

His works furnish his views on knowledge and on religion, both natural,
heathen, and Christian. They include a treatise on truth, which suggested
another on the cause of errors. The views on religion therein named,
further suggested one on the religion which could be expected in a layman,
and this again a critique on heathen creeds, written to show the
universality of the beliefs so described.(368)

In discussing truth(369) he surveys the powers of the human mind, and
places the ultimate test of it in the natural instincts or axiomatic
beliefs. These accordingly become the test of a religion. The true
religion must therefore be a universal one; that is, one of which the
evidence commends itself to the universal mind of man, and finds its
attestation in truth intuitively perceived. Of such truths he enumerates
five:(370)--the existence of one supreme God; the duty of worship; piety
and virtue as the means thereof; the efficacy of repentance; the existence
of rewards and punishments both here and hereafter. These he regards as
the fundamental pillars of universal religion; and distinguishes from
these realities the doctrines of what he calls particular religions, one
of which is Christianity, as being uncertain, because not self-evident;
and accordingly considers that no assent can be expected in a layman, save
to the above-named self-evident truths. His view however of revelation is
not very clear. Sometimes he seems to admit it, sometimes proscribes it as
uncertain. His object seems not to have been primarily destructive, but
merely the result of attempts to discover truth amid the jarring opinions
of the churches of his day.(371)

The ideas which his writings contributed to deist speculation are two;
viz., the examination of the universal principles of religion, and the
appeal to an internal illuminating influence superior to revelation, "the
inward light," as the test of religious truth. This was a phrase not
u