of #Hercules is in a piece of marble when the marble is entirely neutral as to whether it assumes this shape or some other. However, if there were veins in the block which marked out the shape of Hercules rather than other shapes, then that block would be more determined to that shape and Hercules would be innate in it, in a way, even though labour would be required to expose the veins and to polish them into clarity?removing everything that prevents their being seen. This is how ideas and truths are innate in us - as inclinations, dispositions, tendencies, or natural potentialities, and not as actualities;2 although these potentialities are always accompanied by certain actualities, often insensible ones?which correspond to them.
   Our gifted author seems to claim that there is nothing implicit in us, in fact nothing of which we are not always actually aware. But he cannot hold strictly to this; otherwise his position would be too paradoxical?since, again, we are not always aware of our acquired dispositions [.habitude] or of the contents of our memory, and they do not even come to our aid whenever we need them, though often they come readily to mind when some idle circumstance reminds us of them, as when hearing the opening words of a song is enough to bring back the rest. So on other occasions he limits his thesis to the statement that there is nothing in us of which we have not at least previously been aware. But no one can establish by reason alone how far our past and now perhaps forgotten awarenesses may have extended?especially if we accept the Platonists doctrine of recollection which, though sheer myth, is entirely consistent with unadorned reason. And furthermore, why must we acquire everything through awareness of outer things and not be able to unearth anything from within ourselves ? Is our soul in itself so empty that unless it borrows images from outside it is nothing ? I am sure that our judicious author could not approve of such a view. Where could tablets be found which were completely uniform ? Will a perfectly homogeneous and even surface ever be seen? So why could we not also provide ourselves with objects of thought from our own depths, if we take the trouble to dig there ? Which leads me to believe that fundamentally his view on this question is not different from my own or rather from the common view, especially since he recognizes two sources of our knowledge, the senses and reflection.
  I doubt if it will be so easy to make him agree with us and with the ¥Cartesians when he maintains that the mind does not think all the time, and