gativing the charge of holding the doctrine of innate ideas; but in
the _Edinburgh Review_ several passages are given, amongst which is
the following:--"By the word idea I understand all that can be in our
thoughts; and I distinguish three sorts of ideas--adventitious, like
the common idea of the sun, framed by the mind, such as that which
astronomical reasoning gives of the sun; and innate, as the idea of God,
mind, body, a triangle, and generally all those which represent true,
immutable, and eternal essences." With regard to these rather opposite
statements, Lewes says, "If Des Cartes, when pressed by objections, gave
different explanations, we must only set it down to a want of a steady
conception of the vital importance of innate ideas to his system. The
fact remains that innate ideas form the necessary groundwork of the
Cartesian doctrine.... The radical error of all ontological speculation
lies in the assumption that we have ideas independent of experience;
because experience can only tell us of ourselves or of phenomena; of
noumena it can tell us nothing.... The fundamental question, then, of
modern philosophy is this--Have we any ideas independent of experience?"

Des Cartes's disciples are of two classes, the "mathematical cultivators
of physic," and the "deductive cultivators of philosophy." The first
class of disciples are far in advance of their chief, and can only be
considered as having received an impulse in a true direction. The
second class unhesitatingly accepted his principles, and continued his
thinking, although they developed his system in a different manner, and
arrived at stronger conclusions than Des Cartes's courage would have
supported. Some of the physical speculations of Des Cartes have been
much ridiculed by subsequent writers; but many reasons may be urged, not
only against that ridicule, but also against the more moderate censure
which several able critics have dealt out against the intellectual
character of Des Cartes. It should be remembered that the theories of
all his predecessors were mere conjectural speculations respecting the
places and paths of celestial bodies, etc. Innumerable hypotheses had
been formed and found useless; and we ought rather to look to what Des
Cartes did accomplish under the many difficulties of his position,
in respect to the then, state of scientific knowledge, than to judge
harshly of those speculations, which, though attended with no beneficial
result to h