126 INTRODUCTION 



j)ercegtion, the indistinct representation of things external 

 to the individual niind. Thus the self-evidence of uni- 

 versal and necessary truths is a result of experience, 

 though that experience is purely internal. And though 

 all our ideas are innate, there are many which can never 

 be reduced to the perfect clearness and distinctness of 

 self-evident truth, but which we have nevertheless quite 

 sufficient ground for recognizing as true. Further, though 

 our experience is entirely internal, it is none the less 

 objectively real, for it consists in a representation of the 

 whole universe, in accordance with the pre-established 

 harmony between substances. Human knowledge is thus 

 1 at once a priori and a posteriori, innate and experiential ] . 



Relativity of the Distinction between Perception and 

 Apperception. 



The acceptance of this theory involves a change in the 

 point of view held both by Descartes and by Locke. They 

 both argue on the assumption that perception and apper- 

 ception are quite distinct from one another. Descartes's 

 theory of innate ideas rests on his doctrine that absolute 

 certainty belongs to self-conscious thought alone, ex- 

 eluding all other forms of human experience as pheno- 

 mena of body, which is the contradictory opposite of 



1 ' If all our ideas [connaissances~] are innate in so far as they are 

 ideas distinct in themselves, they are all acquired in so far as they 

 are ideas distinct for us.' Boutroux, ed. of Nouveaux Essais, &c., 

 Introduction, p. 83. Cf. Lotze, Streitschrift, p. 13 : ' In earlier times 

 people made too free a use of the name of innate ideas ; but now it 

 seems to me that they have fallen into an opposite error when they 

 at once set aside this notion, with a superficial depreciation of its 

 somewhat inappropriate name. I have never been able to convince 

 myself that the logical and metaphysical principles regarding the 

 nature of things, which are necessary to our thought, the aesthetic 

 feelings and the consciousness of obligation rest upon anything 

 else than the immediate depth of our spiritual nature, so that they, 

 under the stimulus of experience, come into our consciousness as 

 original possessions of our nature, not as complete innate images, 

 always hovering in our consciousness, but as so grounded in us that 

 they indeed require the stimulus of experience, but are never given 

 to us by experience.' 



