Innate knowledge

“ So that if the Capacity of knowing be the natural Impression contended for, all the Truths a Man ever comes to know, will, by this Account, be, every one of them, innate; and this great Point will amount to no more, but only to a very improper way of speaking; which whilst it pretends to assert the contrary, says nothing different from those, who deny innate Principles. For no Body, I think, ever denied that the Mind was capable of knowing several Truths. The Capacity, they say, is innate, the Knowledge acquired. ”

“ Some inquirers will make the one set of elements the more essential, others will make the other set of elements the more essential. The one contribution or the other will be regarded as of preponderant or exclusive, or overwhelming importance; and thus we are again brought to the two alternatives spoken of, and are led either to adopt the doctrine which represents innate ideas as the essential groundwork of our knowledge, or we adopt the other doctrine, that our sensations, induced by external causes, are the basis and origin of our cognitions. ”

“ What is innate in intellect, therefore, is the tendency to establish relations, and this tendency implies the natural knowledge of certain very general relations, a kind of stuff that the activity of each particular intellect will cut up into more special relations. Where activity is directed toward manufacture, therefore, knowledge necessarily bears on relations. But this entirely formal knowledge of intelligence has an immense advantage over the material knowledge of instinct. ”

“ In consequence of this mistake, the neglect, viz., to discriminate between cognitions and mere elements of cognition, the psychology of innate ideas has come to us in a very crude state, in a very imperfect and untenable form, a form which was sure to provoke, and which did provoke, a reaction in favour of the other extreme, I mean the psychology of sensation. The advocates of innate ideas were held to have magnified to an undue extent the inborn principles of knowledge, to have multiplied without careful investigation the native properties of the mind ”

“ If it be meant that the use of reason assists us in the knowledge of these maxims, it would prove them not to be innate.” Reason is said to be the deriving from principles already known unknown truths. How then should the application of reason be required to discover supposed innate principles? This is a weak objection, for it assumes that by innate ideas we understand those which man possesses in consciousness as immediately present. ”

“ If the innate ideas be represented as mere elements of cognition, a perfectly correct and intelligible and impregnable psychology of innate ideas may, I conceive, be set on foot. But if the innate ideas be regarded as cognition, that is, as completed cognitions, nothing but an untrue doctrine, a doctrine of the most unintelligible and most bewildering character, can emerge. ”

“ Instead of abandoning ourselves to similar suppositions, it would seem that we ought to recognize in the mind an innate activity, subject to the laws imposed upon it by its Creator, the infinite intelligence. ”

“ For the supposing the understanding to be a distinct faculty of the mind no more proves our ideas to be innate, than the allowing perception to be a distinct original faculty of the mind, which everybody does, proves that there must be innate sensations. ”

“ The doctrine had been continually gaining ground, either per incuriam, or by design, that the senses were to some extent intellectual, were capable of cognition, or were competent to place intelligible data before the mind. But if sense can act as intellect, what is the use of intellect—why any intellect at all? If sense can intelligently apprehend anything, why can it not intelligently apprehend everything? Let man diligently cultivate his senses, and his advances in knowledge shall be immense. ”

“ As soon as we have argued around the circle, we find ourselves again at the starting-point, and so we are compelled to mark clear lines of division between instinctive knowledge, derived directly by perception, from conceptual knowledge, derived by processes of abstraction and reflection; in this way we award the palm of supremacy to the human mind. ”

“ The extreme doctrine of innate ideas allows nothing to foreign sources, but finds the origin of all cognition in the mind itself; the extreme doctrine of sensation allows nothing to the mind itself, but finds the origin of all cognition in foreign sources. ”

“ That which is not born, which the mind possesses, not acquired by its own labor, nor by impressions coming from the exterior, but by the immediate gift of the author of its nature; the innate is opposed to the acquired, and to inquire if there are innate ideas is to inquire if we have in our mind ideas, before receiving any impressions or doing any act. ”

“ What is the relation of the intelligence to the outer world? Does the outside world create knowledge in the mind by the impressions it makes upon it, [158] or does the mind bring something to the outside world which converts this raw material into knowledge? Is knowledge a reflection of the outer, or a creation of the inner? Does nature work it in us, or is there some spontaneous, creative, organizing, mental activity within us that takes the material presented by nature, turning it into a rational system of knowledge? ”

“ There are thus no innate ideas, and no extranate ideas; but every idea or cognition has an element which is innate, and an element which is not so—every cognition, in short, is both innate and extranate—is a synthesis constituted by an a priori part and an a posteriori part. ”

“ And this tendency, this actual inclination of intelligence in one way rather than another, so that it is not a matter of indifference to intelligence what it produces, is precisely what constitutes an innate idea. ”

“ For myself I would, however, take higher ground, for I believe there exists, and I feel within me, an instinct for truth, or knowledge or discovery, of something of the same nature as the instinct of virtue, and that our having such an instinct is reason enough for scientific researches without any practical results ever ensuing from them. ”

“ He possessed an instinct so keen that it amounted almost to intuition in his understanding of men, a business ability amounting almost to genius, and a philosophic turn of mind which permitted him to apply his knowledge with almost unerring judgment. ”

“ The intellectual superiority of the higher senses shows itself in two ways, the one strictly in the domain of Intellect, the other in the domain of Feeling. As regards Intellect, it is shown in the predominance of the ideas of the higher senses. Our intellectual or ideal trains, the materials of thought and knowledge, are made up most of all of ideas of sight, next of ideas of hearing, to a less degree of ideas of touch or skin contact, and, least of all, of ideas of stomach and lung sensations or other organic states. ”

“ I am not a profound believer in innate ideas, if they are such ridiculous ones as metaphysicians talk of—namely, that two and two make four, and such sort of nonsense—but I do believe in certain innate principles and feelings, that govern our thoughts and actions as powerfully and irresistibly as instinct impels the brute creation ”

“ The great principles which govern the phenomena of all bodies are gradually being discovered, and when found we deductively apply them to ourselves, and thus arrive at a knowledge of our true position in nature, our duties, our proper course of conduct, &c. Science also by disclosing to us the true relations of matter to mind in the human brain, will probably not only make known to us the true limits of our mental powers and of the knowable, but also help to solve the problems of the relations of the Universe and of Man to an intelligent Creator. ”

“ You laughed at me when, at the beginning of my general studies, I said to you that all branches of human knowledge seemed to me to be interrelated, and that one must needs know almost everything to be infallible on any given point; in a word, that no special work could dispense with synthesis, and that before learning the mechanism of a watch it would be well to learn the mechanism of creation. ”

“ Our instinctive knowledge, as we shall briefly call it, by virtue of the conviction that we have consciously and intentionally contributed nothing to its formation, confronts us with an authority and logical power which consciously acquired knowledge even from familiar sources and of easily tested fallibility can never possess. All so-called axioms are such instinctive knowledge. Not consciously gained knowledge alone, but powerful [Pg 191] intellectual instinct, joined with vast conceptive powers, constitute the great inquirer. ”

“ Only what is perfectly determinate in form is at the same time exoteric, comprehensible, and capable of being learned and possessed by everybody. Intelligibility is the form in which science is offered to everyone, and is the open road to it made plain for all. To reach rational knowledge by our intelligence is the just demand of the mind which comes to science. For intelligence, understanding (Verstand) , is thinking, pure activity of the self in general ”

“ The unassisted hand, and the understanding left to itself, possess but little power. Effects are produced by the means of instruments and helps, which the understanding requires no less than the hand. And as instruments either promote or regulate the motion of the hand, so those that are applied to the mind prompt or protect the understanding.
3. Knowledge and human power are synonymous, since the ignorance of the cause frustrates the effect. For nature is only subdued by submission, and that which in contemplative philosophy corresponds with the cause, in practical science becomes the rule. ”

“ They enable us metaphorically to express the divine phenomenon of truth, and its vivid apprehension and intrinsic adoption, till it becomes a fixed and imperishable knowledge, and to narrate intelligibly the intrinsic genesis of truth and true knowledge. For the following is, if we may so speak, the history of the growth of living science in the human mind, whenever the latter is capable of it, and is raised or raises itself to the height thereof. ”

“ Now it is evident that in all these cases the tendency which is shown by the human mind, in every stage of its development, to regard external phenomena ejectively, arises from man’s intuitive knowledge—or the knowledge which is given in the logic of recepts—of his own existence as twofold, bodily and mental. ”

“ If innate be equivalent to natural, then all the Perceptions and Ideas of the Mind must be allow'd to be innate or natural, in whatever Sense we take the latter Word, whether in Opposition to what is uncommon, artificial, or miraculous. ”

“ But why enumerate, when the entire intellectual history of our race demonstrates that every invention or thought which has extended man's mental vision and knowledge has been evolved from the discovery of some hitherto hidden law of the material world, or from the teachings of Nature, which always foreshadow the fundamental principles regnant in the seen and the unseen world? ”

“ THE two operations spoken of in the preceding chapters,—the Explication of the Conceptions of our own minds, and the Colligation of observed Facts by the aid of such Conceptions,—are, as we have just said, inseparably connected with each other. When united, and employed in collecting knowledge from the phenomena which the world presents to us, they constitute the mental process of Induction; which is usually and justly spoken of as the genuine source of all our real general knowledge respecting the external world. ”

“ This part, therefore, will consist of such things as we have invented, experienced, or added, by the same common use of the understanding that others employ. For as we have greater hopes from our constant conversation with nature, than from our force of genius, the discoveries we shall thus make may serve as inns on the road, for the mind to repose in, during its progress to greater certainties. But this, without being at all disposed to abide by anything that is not discovered, or proved, by the true form of induction. ”

“ Are you not making a transient confusion of intuitions with innate ideas? The most thorough experientialists admit intuition—i.e., direct impressions of sensibility underlying all proof, as necessary starting-points for thought. ”

“ When I say, therefore, that the human intellect is so constituted that it is obliged to regard mind as the source of power, I exclude all teaching but the teaching of experience. There can not be two courses of reasoning that are alike correct. If you uncover a portion of the earth's surface, and find there structures, implements, and various objects which you are convinced that the forces of nature did not produce, you must conclude that they were the productions of mind availing itself of the capabilities of matter to be molded and arranged by the force of an intelligent will. ”

“ Then, standing in the midst of the world of intelligence, himself a creator, a receiver, a distributor and an unfolder, he builds his own material world and says–“let there be light over his new universe.” He is universal intelligence, substance and force. He knows that he must manifest his own form, and that, in order to manifest it, he must command the Divine Intelligence around him. ”

“ From this definition of an idea, the following proposition must be evident, That there can be no such thing as an innate idea. If the original perception of an object be not innate, which is obvious, it is not less obvious, that the idea or secondary perception of that object cannot be innate. ”

“ Thus in the constant effort to acquire and elaborate ideas and preserve knowledge of things as necessary to its own preservation and higher development, the Self is working intellectually. Are we to say, then, that Intellect is the supreme function of mind, and that the Self is essentially Intellect—considering the other functions to be merely contributory? ”