VIII.: Innate Ideas.

The predicate “innate” has been a source of great debate in connection with the philosophy of Descartes. But any one who intelligently apprehends its first principles, will readily see both what it means and what is the extent of its application in his philosophy. It will be found to amount to this, that there is no mental modification whatever in our consciousness, which, according to Descartes, is not innate. But it is innate not in the sense of being actually developed, or an actual modification of consciousness; innate only in the sense of being a potentiality capable of development into a form of consciousness, yet waiting certain conditions ere this takes place. In this sense, every idea of perception, and every state of sensation is innate. The supposed outward world and the organic impressions which precede perception and sensation lie wholly beyond consciousness. Yet, but for their action in the view of Descartes, neither perception nor sensation would occur. At the same time, their influence ceases at the threshold of consciousness; and when their action is completed, there originate in the mind out of its own nature the conscious idea of extension, and the conscious sensation of color or sound. These ideas and sensations are wholly innate, in the sense that they are evolutions of the consciousness alone; that they are not transmitted to the mind by the action of outward objects or by the organic impressions. They are the forms of a new and independent power, which arise simply on occasion of external stimuli, but which these stimuli serve in no way to create. Perceptions are innate,— due to the independency of the mind, on the theory of Descartes, hardly less than they are innate on the doctrine of the spontaneous monadic development of Leibnitz.

But there is another class of mental modifications with Descartes. These are not perceptions or sensations. They are “truths,” or “common notions,” or universal principles,—such as the law of substance and quality and of non-contradiction. These too are innate,—especially innate. They are innate potentialities, over and above mere perceptions or sensations. They too become actual in experience — but, unlike sensation, they are not immediately preceded by organic impressions. The moment the doctrine of Descartes is thus correctly apprehended, the whole polemic of Locke against “Innate Ideas” is seen to be irrelevant. If the doctrine is to be validly assailed, it must be on wholly other grounds than those stated by Locke.