 Leibniz’s New Essays offers a rationalist reply to the first concern. Where Locke puts forth the image of the mind as a blank slate on which experience writes, Leibniz offers us the image of a block of marble, the veins of which determine what sculpted figures it will accept (New Essays, Preface, p. 153). Leibniz’s metaphor contains an insight that Locke misses. The mind plays a role in determining the nature of its contents. This point does not, however, require the adoption of the Innate Concept thesis. Locke might still point out that we are not required to have the concepts themselves and the ability to use them, innately. In contemporary terms, what we are required to have is the right hardware that allows for the optimal running of the actual software. For Locke, there are no constrains here; for Leibniz, only a particular type of software is, indeed, able to be supported by the extant hardware. Put differently, the hardware itself determines what software can be optimally run, for a Leibnizian.