EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY 



instilled them into others. Further consideration 

 shows that all our ideas, save very few, can be 

 shown to involve some one or more members of 

 that scanty category. These ideas, of which that 

 of space may be taken as the most characteristic, 

 cannot be traced to experience, but seem to un- 

 derlie all experiences to be, in fact, as Kant de- 

 clared them, forms of the mind, necessary methods 

 or means or apparatus by which and in terms of 

 which we think. It would appear, then, that cer- 

 tain fundamental ideas, which are themselves in- 

 capable of analysis, and which all our acquired 

 ideas presuppose, must be innate, or inborn 

 part of the original structure with which the 

 young mind is furnished before it has undergone 

 any experience whatever. 



But it was proved by John Locke, of Oxford, 1 

 in his Essay concerning the Human Understanding, 

 that we are possessed of no innate ideas whatso- 

 ever, but that even the idea of space is derived by 

 experience. According to the father of scientific 

 psychology, the mind of the new-born infant is a 

 tabula rasa, a blank sheet of paper, without struct- 

 ure or prepossessions, merely capable of receiving, 

 with complete indifference, and without any con- 

 tribution or prejudices of its own, whatever ideas 

 experience may impress upon it. 



But it is evident that, though the doctrine of 

 innate ideas is untenable, yet it is impossible to 



1 It need hardly be said that the university of which he is 

 now the chief glory forbade his works to be printed or read. 



212 



