Meditations - pg. xxix

The seeds of knowledge are in us: that is the deep reason why the Cartesian endeavour is not a chimera, the reason why we can, and must, attempt to discumber our reason of all the contents that it may have received from outside in the course of our life. These 'seeds of knowledge' or, as Descartes will call them later, thus rediscovering the deep intuition of Plato, 'innate ideas', 'eternal truths', 'true and immutable natures', purely intellectual essences that are utterly independent of the contents given to us by sense-perceptions, concepts that the rigorous catharsis of radical, methodical doubt reveals in our soul: these are the firm and sure foundations -- which Montaigne was not able to discover -- upon which we can base our judgment.