perceive ideas either by themselves or through the action of the all-powerful Spirit on which they depend.1

But besides these advantages, his philosophy also possesses disadvantages. We need not repeat the petty objection of his supposed adversaries, who make him say that we eat and drink ideas and are clothed with ideas. We may, how/ever, ask, What, on his theory, becomes of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, which the more realistic Leibniz regards as having objective existence? If it be true that unperceiving and unperceived things do not exist, what becomes of the soul in deep sleep? If the picture opposite to my bed exists only because I see it, what minds perceive it after I have gone to sleep, and thus hinder it from ceasing to exist? How shall we picture to ourselves a plurality of human individuals, if space exists in the mind only? How does Berkeley know that there are other minds than his own? How, moreover, does the creative Spirit produce sensible ideas in us? All these points and many others remain unexplained; for his deus ex machina explains nothing, and his theory of intervention is of no more avail than occasionalism and pre-established harmony. He is both a thorough-going theologian and a philosopher; his interests are both scientific and religious, and he attacks materialism 2 not only as a theoretical error but as the source of the most serious heresies.3

1 Principles, $155.

2 By materialism Berkeley understands not only the negation of spiritual substance, but the view that there exists, independently of the mind, a substance, or substratum, of sensible qualities, which it perceives. To assume the reality of matter is enough to stamp one as a materialist in the Berkeleyan sense.

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§§ 133 ff.-A system wholly similar to that of Berkeley was taught by his contemporary and colleague, the churchman Arthur Collier (1680-1732), a disciple of Malebranche and author of Clavis universalis, or a New Inquiry after Truth, Being a Demonstration of the Non-existence or Impossibility of an External World, London, 1713. [See G. Lyon, Un idéaliste Anglais au XVIII', siècle (Revue phil. vol. 10, 1880). — TR.]

$59. Condillac

The philosophy of Locke was introduced into France by Voltaire. Here it found an original follower in the abbot Étienne Bonnot de CONDILLAC,2 the founder of absolute sensationalism.

Locke distinguishes two sources of ideas: sensation and reflection, while Condillac, in his Traité des sensations recognizes but one, making reflection a product of sensibility. His proof is ingenious. He imagines a statue, which is organized and alive, like ourselves, but hindered by its marble exterior from having sensations. Its intellectual and moral life advances as the various parts of this covering are removed.

Let us first remove the marble covering its olfactory organs. Now the statue has only the sense of smell, and cannot, as yet, perceive anything but odors. It cannot acquire any idea of extension, form, sound, or color. A

1 1694-1778. Lettres sur les Anglais, 1728; Éléments de la philosophie de Newton, mis à la portée de tout le monde, Amsterdam, 1738; La métaphysique de Newton ou parallèle des sentiments de Newton et de Leibniz, Amsterdam, 1740; Candide ou sur l'optimisme, 1757; Le philosophe ignorant, 1767. Simultaneously with these writings of Voltaire, the Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes of Fontenelle (1657-1757), and the works of Maupertuis (1698-1759) made known to the French the labors of Copernicus and Newton, which were continued by Lagrange and Laplace (page 11). [On eighteenth century philosophy in France see Damiron, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la philosophie au XVIII. siècle, 3 vols., Paris, 1858-64; and Bartholmèss (p. 12). On Voltaire see the works of Bersot, Strauss, John Morley, Desnoiresterres, and Mayr. - TR.]

2 Born at Grenoble, 1715; tutor of the Prince of Parma; abbot of Mureaux; died 1780. Besides the Traité des sensations (1754), he produced the following works: Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines (1746); Traité des systèmes (1749); Traité des animaux, 1755; Logique (posthumous, 1781); Langue des animaux (posthumous). Complete works, Paris, 1798; 1803, 32 vols. in 12mo. F. Réthoré, Condillac ou l'empirisme et le rationalisme, Paris, 1864.

rose is placed before it. From the impression produced by it, a sensation of smell arises. Henceforth it is, from our point of view, a statue that smells a rose; in reality, however, it is nothing but the odor of this flower. The statue does not and cannot, as yet, possess the slightest notion of an object; it does not know itself as the subject of sensation; its consciousness, its "me." is nothing but the scent of the rose, or rather, what we call the scent of the rose.

Since this impression and the resulting sensation is the only thing with which our statue is occupied, that single sensation becomes attention.

We take away the rose. Our statue retains a trace, or an echo, as it were, of the odor perceived. This trace or echo is memory.

We place a violet, a jasmine, and some asafoetida before the statue. Its first sensation, the odor of the rose, was neither agreeable nor disagreeable, there being nothing to compare it with. But now other impressions and other sensations arise. These it compares with its memory images. It finds some agreeable, others disagreeable. Henceforth the statue desires the former, and rejects the latter. Towards these it entertains feelings of aversion, hatred, and fear, towards those, feelings of sympathy, affection, and hope. That is to say, from the sensations experienced by it, and their comparison, arise the passions, desires, and volitions. I will signifies I desire. The will is not a new faculty added to sensibility; it is a transformation of sensation; sensation becomes desire and impulse after having been attention, memory, comparison, pleasure, and pain.

From comparison, that is, from the multiplication of sensations, arise, on the other hand, judgment, reflection, reasoning, abstraction, in a word, the understanding. Ovr statue perceives disagreeable odors, and at the same time recalls other odors which gave it pleasure; these past sen

sations reappear in opposition to the present sensation, not as immediate sensations, but as copies or images of these sensations, that is, as ideas. It directs the attention to two different ideas and compares them. When there is double attention, there is comparison; for to be attentive to two ideas, and to compare them, is the same thing. Now, the statue cannot compare two ideas without perceiving some difference or resemblance between them: to perceive such relations is to judge. The acts of comparison and judgment. are therefore merely attention; it is thus that sensation becomes successively attention, comparison, and judgment.

Some odors, that is, some of the states experienced by the statue, yielded pleasure, others yielded pain. Hence it will retain in memory the ideas of pleasure and pain common to several states or sensations. Pleasure is a quality common to the rose-sensation, the violet-sensation, and the jasminesensation; pain is a quality common to the odor of asafoetida, decaying matter, etc. These common characteristics are distinguished, separated, abstracted, from the particular sensations with which they are associated, and thus arise the abstract notions of pleasure, pain, number, duration, etc. These are general ideas, being common to several states or modes of being of the statue. We do not need a special faculty to explain them. Abstraction itself, the highest function of the understanding, is a modification of sensation, which, consequently, embraces all the faculties of the soul. The inner perception, or the me, is merely the sum of the sensations we now have, and those which we have had.

Condillac endows his statue with a single sense, the sense of smell, and then evolves all mental faculties out of sensation. Any one of the five senses would have served his purpose equally well.

1 Condillac's object in choosing the least important of the five senses is plain. If the sense of smell suffices to make a complete soul, then, a fortiori, the combination of all five senses, or the total sensibility, will suffice.

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If now, we join to smell: taste, hearing, and sight, by taking away one marble covering after another, then tastes, sounds, and colors will be added to the odors perceived by the statue, and its intellectual life will become so much richer, more manifold, and complex.

There is, however, an essential idea which neither smell, nor taste, nor hearing, nor even sight, can yield, and that is the idea of an object, the idea of an external world. Colors, sounds, odors, and tastes are mere sensations or states, not, as yet, referred to external objects. Before external causes can be substituted for its sensations, the statue must be endowed with the most important of all senses: the sense of touch. Touch alone can reveal to us the objective world, by giving us the ideas of extension, form, solidity, and body. Even sight cannot suggest them. Persons born blind cannot, upon receiving their sight, distinguish between a ball and a block, a cube and a sphere, until they touch these objects. Only after having touched things do we refer the impressions received by our other senses, such as colors, sounds, tastes, and smells, to objects existing outside of us. Hence, touch is the highest sense, and the guide of the other senses; it is touch which teaches the eye to distribute colors in nature.

Conclusion and summary: All our ideas, without exception, are derived from the senses, and especially from touch.

Though Condillac is a sensationalist, and a sensationalist in the strict sense of the term, he is not, on that account, a materialist. He differs from Locke, who grants that mat

1 Allusion to Cheselden's celebrated operation.

2 Sensationalism is usually, but erroneously, confused with materialism. Sensationalism is a theory concerning the origin of our ideas, an explanation of the phenomenon of mind (eine Erkenntnisstheorie, as the Germans would say), while materialism is an ontology, a system of metaphysics. Sensationalism and materialism are undoubtedly closely related, for materialism is necessarily sensational. But the reverse is not true.