"Perception, he [Locke] says, is "the first step and degree towards knowledge, and the inlet of all materials of it." This may seem, to a modern, almost a truism, since it has become part of educated common sense, at least in English speaking countries. But in his day the mind was supposed to know all sorts of things a priori, and the complete dependence of knowledge upon perception, which he proclaimed, was a new and revolutionary doctrine. Plato, in the Theaetetus, had set to work to refute the identification of knowledge with perception, and from his time onwards almost all philosophers, down to and including Descartes and Leibniz, had taught that much of our most valuable knowledge is not derived from experience. Locke's thorough-going empiricism was therefore a bold innovation."
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A History of Western Philosophy
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