 But even when they speak of the mind as a tabula rasa, we should not attribute to medieval writers the kind of genetic empiricism later found in the work of John Locke. The blank tablet of which medievals speak, following Aristotle (DA 430a1), is what they called the “passive” or “potential” intellect, which was only one element in the process of cognition  (sect. 4.3).  When it comes to the larger picture, medieval philosophers will often combine the Aristotelian idea that all knowledge comes through the senses with Augustinian views, which speak of divine illumination  (sect. 4.2)  or innate knowledge. Even Aquinas held that we have a kind of innate capacity, ultimately given by God, to grasp the first principles of scientific knowledge (Pasnau 2002: 307–8). This is probably best thought of as a kind of a dispositional innatism: we are disposed to form certain ideas when presented with the right kind of experience. At times Aquinas seems to go further. He writes, for instance, that our knowledge arises “partly from within and partly from without” and that there is some truth in the idea that “we already know that which we learn” (Aquinas DV 10.6). But what he seems to mean here is that the principles we employ in forming our beliefs are implicit in the structure of the mind and its operations (Allers 1942: 58) (see  sect. 4.3).  Other writers approach the tabula rasa idea from the other direction, beginning with a clear commitment to innate knowledge. Roger Bacon (1215–1292), for instance, suggests that the human soul is created with the species (aspects or forms) of all things within it, which seems a strongly Augustinian conception of knowledge. But since the soul’s union with the body hinders our access to this knowledge, the human mind (as potential intellect) can be described as a “blank slate” (tabula nuda or rasa) (Bacon In Phys. pp. 7, 9; R. Wood 2007: 54). A similar view is found in the work of Robert Grosseteste (ca. 1165–1253), who also combines a modified Augustinian belief in divine illumination  (sect. 4.2)  with the Aristotelian idea that we gain knowledge of scientific principles from experience (van Dyke 2009: 688–89).