Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/279

Rh CONDI L LAG 251 reconciles this unity of method with the variety of form which it assumes as applied to different objects. By demanding at the outset the initial fact, of which all the others are to be shown to be transformations, he virtually quits the safe road of experience. He errs, too, in thinking that the method of mathematics is applicable to all the sciences. His oft-repeated advice to follow nature would have been advantageously accompanied by a clearer explana tion of what nature is. One thing which he certainly excludes from it is the mind viewed as the seat of intel lectual principles. Condillac s analysis combines what are generally regarded as the two distinct processes of analysis and synthesis. Synthesis he conceives to be that method which starts from abstract principles, and accordingly he treats it with supreme disdain. But while banishing the name he retains the thing, and insists that no analysis is complete without a process of recomposition. The logic of Condillac finds its most important applica tion in psychology. In the Essai sur VOrigine des C onnaissances he starts from sensation as the primitive fact, and seeks to show that all the ideas and operations of the mind are only transformations of it. He neglected, how ever, to make sure of his way back to the primitive fact of S3iisation, before using it as his starting point. Under the influence of Locke, he simply assumed it, and applied his ingenuity to derive from it all the ideas and operations of the mind. Throughout the Essai sur VOrigine he con founds sensation with perception in a way that vitiates his whole argument. At the outset he affirms that sensations are ideas, because representative of objects. It is difficult to understand in what sense he uses such language. For a long time it was supposed that he regarded the pure sensation as the primary element of consciousness ; but his more recent followers have adopted a different interpreta tion. They try to make out that his meaning was that in the simplest state of consciousness the whole mind is to be found, equipped with all its so-called faculties. Condillac found an opinion prevailing that the mind is partitioned off, as it were, into a variety of different faculties, each having its separate function, which it discharges independ ently of the others. It was against this opinion, they say, that he contended. He maintained that the mind is not a congeries of faculties, but is one and indivisible, and appears in all its forms of activity in the simplest state of consciousness. This opinion is difficult to reconcile with his avowed purpose, to which he adheres throughout all his psychological treatises, of tracing the genesis of the faculties ; for sensation would then not be a primitive fact, from which all the later furniture of the mind is derived by a process of transformation. There would, in fact, be no generation of the faculties, for all would be given in the rudimentary consciousness, and any reasoned account of their relations to each other would need to refer to something anterior to the individual consciousness. Probably the more correct view to take of Condillac s psychology is that when he tried to deal with sensation, pure and simple, he found it impossible to do so, and was compelled to invest the mere sensation with all the ideas of reason, that it might do duty in his system. No doubt either interpretation would save Condillac s consistency with his great principle of identity. The sameness of the elementary sensation with the higher faculties and ideas is secured, whether the faculty is degraded to the level of the sensation, or the sensation is raised to the level of the faculty. And there is much in Condillac to countenance either view. But it is probable that if he had been willing to concede that the mind is all in the primary sensation, in the sense in which his later followers understand him, he would have felt the necessity of exhibiting the relations of the different mental onerations. which in such case would be moments of the sensation, anterior to the sensation, instead of subsequent to it, in terms of the relations of different sensations to each other. The opening sentences of the Traite des Sensations show that Condillac was aware of the difficulties attending the study of our rudimentary consciousness on the presuppositions of sensationalism. If the mind at birth was a tabula rasa, there can be no traces left of our primary state. It is in vain therefore to interrogate our consciousness to learn what it was then. To show how all proceeds from sensation, we must consider our senses separately. As Condillac could not do this by examining his own consciousness, he devised the experiment of the statue. It is supposed to be possessed of a mind destitute at first of every sort of ideas, and only to have the use of its senses at the pleasure of the experimenter, who opens them at his choice to their appropriate impres sions. A beginning is made with the sense of smell, because it seems to contribute least to our knowledge. The other senses are successively experimented on, singly and in groups, and at last the statue is found to have become an animal able to preserve itself. Condillac claims to have stripped man for the first time of all his habits. Feeling is observed at its birth, and proof is given of how we acquire the use of our faculties. The principle of their development is found in the various degrees of pleasure and pain attaching to our sensations ; for none of them are indifferent absolutely. The contrast between pleasure and pain impels us to court some sensations and flee others. A sense of need is produced by the want of an object judged necessary for happiness. Needs beget desires ; old needs repeated and new ones formed are the ground of the development of our knowledge and our faculties. The outcome of Condillac s psychology is given in briefest form in chapters vii. and viii. of the Logique. Laromiguiere corrected Condillac by substituting attention for sensation as the principle of the active half of the mental phenomena. Cousin pointed out that attention is a voluntary act. He showed the essential difference between desire and will, as also between sensation and desire, and remarked that the organic impression must not be con founded with the sensation. If the sensation is the con dition of the exercise of the faculties, still it is not the principle of any. Condillac defines personality to be a collection of sensations plus the ability to say &quot;me.&quot; But this plus is of vast importance. How comes it that this particular collection of sensations can say &quot; me ? &quot; Because, answers Condillac, it is a collection of present and remembered sensations. But whether does the statue say &quot; me &quot; because it can remember its sensations, or remsm- ber its sensations because it can say &quot; me &quot;? Is not all that is involved in saying me already involved in memory, so that his answer merely repeats the fact which it professes to explain ? Condillac thought so in his first stage, as he then found the feeling of one s own existence to be an essential element of reminiscence. Then, indeed, reminiscence was distinguished by him from memory, but only in an artificial way. A collection of sensations is a less correct account of personality than the synthetic unity of Kant. What renders the collection possible 1 For Condillac its essential condition, a unifying principle, is wanting. That cannot be found in sensation. It is a condition of the ordering of sensations, and is the all- important unit out of which a true philosophy of spirit must grow. Sensations cannot give an answer to the question what constitutes experience. Even Mill had to confess that it must at least be sensations which have the strange property of turning back upon themselves. Con dillac has the very same phrase, &quot; As long as the statue changes not, it exists without any return upon itself.&quot;