For what is meant by _innate_?
If innate be equivalent to natural, then all the perceptions and ideas of the mind must be allowed to be innate or natural, in whatever sense we take the latter word, whether in opposition to what is uncommon, artificial, or miraculous.

If by innate be meant contemporary with our birth, the dispute seems to be frivolous; nor is it worth while to inquire at what time thinking begins, whether before, at, or after our birth.

Again, the word _idea_ seems to be commonly taken in a very loose sense by Locke and others, as standing for any of our perceptions, our sensations and passions, as well as thoughts.

Now in this sense I should desire to know what can be meant by asserting that self-love, or resentment of injuries, or the passion between the sexes is not innate?
"But admitting these terms, _impressions_ and _ideas_, in the sense above explained, and understanding by _innate_ what is original or copied from no precedent perception, then we may assert that all our impressions are innate, and our ideas not innate." It would seem that Hume did not think it worth while to acquire a comprehension of the real points at issue in the controversy which he thus carelessly dismisses.
Yet Descartes has defined what he means by innate ideas with so much precision, that misconception ought to have been impossible.

He says that, when he speaks of an idea being "innate," he means that it exists potentially in the mind, before it is actually called into existence by whatever is its appropriate exciting cause.
"I have never either thought or said," he writes, "that the mind has any need of innate ideas [_idees naturelles_] which are anything distinct from its faculty of thinking.