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
done everywhere he mentions me, not without conferring on me, as some
others have done, a title I have no right to.

There are so many instances of this, that I think it justice to my
reader and myself to conclude, that either my book is plainly enough
written to be rightly understood by those who peruse it with that
attention and indifferency, which every one who will give himself the
pains to read ought to employ in reading; or else that I have written
mine so obscurely that it is in vain to go about to mend it. Whichever
of these be the truth, it is myself only am affected thereby; and
therefore I shall be far from troubling my reader with what I think
might be said in answer to those several objections I have met with, to
passages here and there of my book; since I persuade myself that he who
thinks them of moment enough to be concerned whether they are true or
false, will be able to see that what is said is either not well founded,
or else not contrary to my doctrine, when I and my opposer come both to
be well understood.

If any other authors, careful that none of their good thoughts should be
lost, have published their censures of my Essay, with this honour done
to it, that they will not suffer it to be an essay, I leave it to the
public to value the obligation they have to their critical pens, and
shall not waste my reader's time in so idle or ill-natured an employment
of mine, as to lessen the satisfaction any one has in himself, or gives
to others, in so hasty a confutation of what I have written.

The