NATIVISM, that theory which bases some tangible part or phase of our knowledge on the inborn nature of mind and not on sense-experi ence alone. It is opposed to empiricism (q.v.), which finds in sense-experience the origin of all knowledge. While the distinction between truths of reason and truths of sense dates from Heraclitus, or even earlier, Plato was the first to make nativism a leading tenet of his philoso phy. Over against the knowledge of sense, he maintained the existence of a knowledge of ideas due to a recollection, stimulated indeed by sensory experience, but reaching back beyond birth. Aristotle's views as to the origin of knowledge, though not greatly emphasized, seem to be essentially of the same nature as those of Plato. The Stoics were the first to use the word innatus or truths, applying it primarily to the moral law. The realists of the Middle Ages, holding as they did that univer sals have a separate existence, were practically driven to nativism. unlike the nominalists, who maintained that nothing is in the intellect which was not previously in sense. In modern times nativism and rationalism have gone hand in hand, and Descartes, Spinoza and especially Leibniz believed in the existence of innate ideas, such as those of God and of the self. Locke opposed this opinion, and pointed out that the new-born child does not possess a ready-made stock of ideas. Kant maintained a theory of knowledge essentially nativistic, but departed from his predecessors in not making knowledge consist in the possession of representative ideas and in holding that the phase of knowledge independent of sense — the knowledge of pure form — is not so much congenital as extra temporal. The modern discussion of evolution ism has given a new turn to nativism, in that some writers, such as Spencer, have upheld the view that the knowledge of the individual is in a large measure inherited racial experience.
However, according to Weismann's theory of evolution, acquired characterictics cannot be inherited, so that racial experience can have no direct effect on the individual. The innate substratum of the mind, on this theory, is the result of the accumulation of fortuitous varia tions which have been able to survive through special fitness. Neither this view nor Spencer ianism are in the original sense forms of na tivism, since the sort of innate knowledge which the classical nativism maintains is the same in nature for all minds.
It is not essential for nativism to maintain that the new-born babe actually has certain con ceptions perfectly formed, or that he will form them without any sensory stimulus. An item of knowledge may be innate even if it requires experience to evoke it. For this reason Locke's refutation of Leibniz will not hold water. On the other hand, to be an antithesis to empiri cism, the nativist must maintain, not merely that the general nature of man is a condition of all sensory experience, for the empiricist would agree with him in this, but that some phase of knowledge, such as that of necessary truths, is peculiarly dependent on the nature of think ing minds themselves. Consult Aristotle, 'De Anima' ; Locke, 'Essay on the Human Under standing' ; Kant, (Kritik der reinen Vernunft'; Leibniz, 'New Essays' ; Locke, 'Essays on the Human Understanding' ; Mill, J. S., 'A System of Logic> (London 1843) ; Moore, G. E., article on 'Nativism and Empiricism' in 'Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology' (new ed., New York 1911) ; Plato, 'Men& ; (Theaetetus) ; Zeller, 'Stoics, Epi cureans and Sceptics' (tr. London 1892).