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If, on the other hand, the forms of thought are said to be derived
from sense experience itself---and this is apparently the
Thomist contention---then the very first act of knowledge
would be impossible: significant thought cannot begin unless
the intellect has the basic forms of thought that make initial
predication possible. Unless the proclivities or tendencies of
intelligence are innate, the very first universals could never be
abstracted, and knowledge would be impossible---which is selfcontradictory
skepticism.
(3) Again, if there are no innate categories of thought, why,
as the Thomist maintains, should the active intellect concrete
initially the so-called first principles? The answer is that these
principles are the basis of all further knowledge: but why
should they not also be the basis of a conscious knowledge of
the principles themselves? The distinction between the basis of
knowledge in the one case from that in the other is purely arbitrary.
And the only satisfactory explanation is that the intellect
must operate with such first principles in the initial act of
knowledge: not, of course, in the sense that these prin- [[Page
126]] ciples are present from the beginning as ideas in consciousness,
but rather in the sense that they are modes of
thought wrought into the very structure of intellect itself. But
this is a repudiation of empiricist moorings.
After all, if the first principles are the initial achievements of
intellect, there must be some structure within the intellect which
causes the abstraction of intelligibles in this order. The
Thomists themselves admit this when they assert that the aptitude
for the formation of first principles is in the soul initially.
But what is this, if not the admission that the principles themselves
are innate structures of intellect which rise gradually to
consciousness through external or internal experience? The potentiality
of intellect to achieve these principles is inexplicable
on any other basis, especially when we realize that just these
principles are in fact basic to all knowledge.