Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/530

502PROP. IX.———— me) is no cognition at all, but is pure nonsense. This, however, was not the acceptation in which the doctrine of innate ideas was understood at the time when Locke wrote, and therefore he is less to be blamed for having impugned, than his opponents are for having advanced, so inept and irrelevant an hypothesis.

26. Locke's refutation of the doctrine, as it was at that time understood, was so complete, that little or nothing was heard of "innate ideas" for many years afterwards. This speculation lay dormant during the ascendancy of sensualism, or the scheme which derives all our knowledge from without, until towards the close of the eighteenth century, when it was again revived under the auspices of the German philosopher Kant. And on what footing does Kant place the resuscitated opinion? Precisely on the same footing as before. He understands, or rather misunderstands the doctrine, just as its former upholders had misunderstood it. He mistakes elements for kinds. In explaining the origin of our knowledge, he does not refer one part of each of our cognitions to the mind itself, and another part of each of our cognitions to some foreign source; but he refers some of our cognitions entirely to the one source, and some of them entirely to the other. It is true that Kant is ambiguous; and appears at times as if he had got hold of the right doctrine—namely,