How did Locke use the idea of infants to argue against innate knowledge?

In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke challenged the doctrine of innate ideas—the belief that certain principles or concepts are imprinted on the human mind at birth—by using the example of infants to demonstrate that such knowledge is not universal.12

Locke argued that for an idea to be truly "in the mind," an individual must be conscious of it. He pointed out that human infants lack any conception of logical axioms, mathematical truths, or the existence of God. To claim that these ideas are present in the minds of infants, despite a complete lack of evidence or awareness, is, in Locke's view, an unwarranted assumption maintained solely to protect the theory of innateness.2

By highlighting this absence of knowledge in children, Locke supported his empiricist position that the mind begins as a tabula rasa, or "white paper," and that all materials of reason and knowledge are derived from sense experience and reflection rather than being pre-installed by nature.32