Descartes now proceeds to further particulars, and expresses himself as follows: “We consider what comes under consciousness either as things or their qualities, or as eternal truths which have no existence outside our thought”—which do not belong to this or that time, to this or that place. He calls those last something inborn within us, something not made by us or merely felt,[179] but the eternal Notion of mind itself and the eternal determinations of its freedom, of itself as itself. From this point the conception that ideas are inborn (_innatæ ideæ_) hence proceeds; this is the question over which Locke and Leibnitz dispute. The expression “eternal truths” is current even in these modern times, and it signifies the universal determinations and relations which exist entirely on their own account. The word ‘inborn’ is however a clumsy and stupid expression, because the conception of physical birth thereby indicated, does not apply to mind. To Descartes inborn ideas are not universal, as they are to Plato and his successors, but that which has evidence, immediate certainty, an immediate multiplicity founded in thought itself—manifold conceptions in the form of a Being, resembling what Cicero calls natural feelings implanted in the heart. We would rather say that such is implied in the nature and essence of our mind and spirit. Mind is active and conducts itself in its activity in a determinate manner; but this activity has no other ground than its freedom. Yet if this is the case more is required than merely to say so; it must be deduced as a necessary product of our mind. We have such ideas, for instance, in the logical laws: “From nothing comes nothing,” “A thing cannot both be and not be,”[180] as also in moral principles. These are facts of consciousness which Descartes however soon passes from again; they are only present in thought as subjective, and he has thus not yet inquired respecting their content.