Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/305

 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 283 sense precede those of reason. We are never wholly without ideas, only we are often not conscious of them. If thought ceased in deep sleep, we could have no ideas on awakening, since every representation proceeds from a preceding one, even though it be unconscious. In the thoughtful Neiv Essays concerning the Human Understanding Leibnitz develops his theory of knowledge in the form of a polemical commentary to Locke's chief work.* According to Descartes some ideas (the pure con- cepts) are innate, according to Locke none, according to { Leibnitz all. Or: according to Descartes some ideas (sensu- | ous perceptions) come from without, according to Locke all do so, according to Leibnitz none. Leibnitz agrees with Descartes against Locke in the position that the mind originally possesses ideas; he agrees with Locke against Descartes, that thought is later than sensation and the knowledge of universals later than that of particulars. The originality which Leibnitz attributes to intellectual ideas is different from that which Descartes had ascribed and Locke denied to them. They are original in that they do not come into the soul and are not impressed upon it from without ; they are not original in that they can develop only from previously given sense-ideas; again, they are original in that they can be developed from confused ideas only because they are contained in them implicite or as pre- dispositions. Thus Leibnitz is able to agree with both his predecessors up to a certain point : with the one, that the pure concepts have their origin within the mind ; with the other, that they are not the earliest knowledge, but are conditioned by sensations. This synthesis, how- ever, was possible only because Leibnitz looked on sensation differently from both the others. If sensation is to be the mother of thought, and the latter at the same time to preserve its character as original, i. e., as something not obtained from without, sensation must, first, include an un- conscious thinking in itself, and, secondly, must itself receive • A careful comparison of Locke's theory of knowledge with that of Leibnitz is given by G. Hartenstein, Abhandlungen der k. sacks. Gesellschaft d«r Wissenschaften, Leipsic, 1865, included in Hartenstein's Historisch-philos- ephischt Abhandlungen, %'}0.