Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/512

502 is under the latter expression, the expression of "cognitions," that the doctrine has been usually expounded by philosophers. They have treated the innate ideas as cognitions, of course completed cognitions; and hence they have failed, I think, to construct a true or intelligible theory in regard to them.

8. 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; to have allowed, in short, far too much, in the formation of knowledge, to man's original and internal nature, and far too little to his outward experience. The system, as it stood, was felt to be crude and insufficient. Its doom was sealed for a time at least, and it is generally believed to have expired under the assault of the English philosopher Locke.

9. But we have now to ask, What kind of ethics might we naturally expect to germinate from this system of psychology? The answer is, that we might naturally expect the doctrine of innate ideas