17 
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 77 or “ intuitive 77 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 77 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 discussion, and so cling to 
what they imagine “ necessary truths 77 or “ intuitions ; 77 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 
sensations, and the thoughts will vary. Gradually 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 77 ; 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 years, 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 / 7 
That notion of “ innate 77 ideas, for which Dugald Stewart 
and others so energetically argue, is, as I think, groundless. 
Speaking of what he calls “ many of our most familiar notions 
(altogether unsusceptible of analysis) 77 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. 77 * 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 77 
or “ intuitive 77 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 , 77 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. 
C 
