STATEMENT OF LEIBNIZ'S PHILOSOPHY 125 



were entirely necessary ; Locke's might hold if knowledge 

 were merely contingent. But human" knowledge is both ; 

 it includes both self-evident truths and truths of fact. 

 A true theory of knowledge must do equal justice to both. 

 It must have affinity with the views both of Descartes 

 and of Locke, without altogether accepting either. *<- 



Leibniz's Solution of the Question of Innate Ideas and the 

 Tabula Rasa. 



fLocke endeavoured to establish his empiricism as 

 against the position of Descartes by denying that there 

 are in the human mind any innate ideas, f- If there be 

 no innate ideas, all our knowledge must reach us ab 

 extra, through the senses. And accordingly the only 

 true theory of knowledge must explain it a posteriori, 

 entirely from sense-experience. This was the contrary 

 opposite of the Cartesian view that all our genuine 

 knowledge comes from pure thought, in complete 

 independence of the senses (which are bodily, and there- 

 fore excluded from the sphere of thinking), and that the 

 only true theory of knowledge must explain it a priori, 

 as a logical deduction from self-evident innate ideas. To 

 Leibniz it seems that the conception of the human mind 

 as a Monad leads to a theory of knowledge which har- 

 monizes the other two, by combining in a new form the 

 truth they each contain, and at the same time setting 

 aside their errors. As a Monad the soul of man is not, 

 as in Locke's view, a purely passive tabula rasa, continually 

 receiving external impressions. It is always an active 

 force, and it is itself the spontaneous source of all its 

 ideas, i. e. of the entire sequence of its experience. All 

 its ideas are therefore innate. But none of its ideas is 

 from the beginning clear and distinct. When they first 

 appear they are confused and imperfect. The recognition 

 of their self-evidence is the result of a process, a develop- 

 ment from relative confusion to distinctness. But what 

 Locke calls sensation is, according to Leibniz, confused 



