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moral nature. And here I must confess that I have insuper- 

 able difficulty in finding the origin of any experience in what 

 are called innate or '"'^ intuitive conceptions. Every idea 

 is born in the soul^, and in that sense is innate.^^ No idea is 

 born with the soul^ so none can be innate in that sense. 

 An idea_, or conception^ is not a capacity of thought^ but a 

 thought itself; so every idea is an inward teaching, and hence 

 an "intuition."'^ I can understand how men plead hard to be 

 granted certain starting-points of discussiou_, and so cling to 

 what they imagine necessary truths or intuitions ; but 

 their feeling of need for such starting-points springs simply 

 from their having as yet failed to go back to the true starting- 

 points. Bring two dissimilar sensations up in the soul_, and 

 more or less of a thought is the result. Continue to vary the 

 sensation Sj and the thoughts will vary. Grradually more and 

 more of the nature of intelligence will be the product in 

 such a process. The thoughts will_, by-and-by, have^, in some 

 instances, the character of intuitions ; such as that two 

 and two make four," or that " all the angles of a triangle are 

 equal to two right angles " ; but that distant goal will be 

 reached only after j^ears, it may be, of progress. It will be 

 long ere such ideas as those of space and time have any place 

 in the soul, though these are so firmly believed to be " neces- 

 sary.''^ 



That notion of innate ideas, for which Dugald Stewart 

 and others so energetically argue, is, as I think, groundless. 

 Speaking of what he calls many of our most famiHar notions 

 (altogether unsusceptible of analysis) ^' he says : " The point 

 at which these thoughts first arise in the mind is of little im- 

 portance, provided it can be shown to be a law of our consti- 

 tution that they do arise whenever the proper occasions are 

 presented."* Here I remark that it is a law of our constitu- 

 tion that any truth whatever, when placed before the mind 

 with sufficient evidence, is necessarily believed. Take any 

 fact that can possibly occur — let it be as far from one of the 

 notions to which Mr. Stewart refers as anything can be, only let 

 it be in idea before the mind with sufficient evidence, and 

 unbelief is impossible. Why, then, call one idea innate 

 or ^' intuitive " more than another ? 



If we seek an instance of an intuitive idea which seems the 

 same as that which Mr. Stewart would not scruple to call 

 " innate," he gives it thus : he says, " It is surely an intuitive 

 truth, that the sensations of which I am now conscious, and 

 all those of which I retain any remembrance, belong to one 



* Philosophical Essays, by Dugald Stewart, ed. 1816, pp. 102, 103. 

 VOL. VII. P 



