arises the idea of past and present impressions; i. e., of memory as well as of attention. The act of attending to the two impressions or " attentions at the same time is comparison, which, as implying the perception of resemblance and difference, is judgment. Upon judgment follow reasoning and reflection, which is attention passing successively over the various parts of an object. Attention, memory, comparison, judgment, reasoning, reflection, are but different stages of attention. From sensation arise also the "affections" of the mind,- desire, volition, etc., through the mediation of the feelings of pleasure and pain (which indeed are the sources of attention). Attention directed to a present disagreeable impression, in contrast with a past agreeable sensation, makes us feel the need of change in our condition. This feeling, together with the idea of the thing conceived as agreeable, constitutes desire, which may be defined as the "action of the understanding determined towards a particular object by the uneasiness caused by the privation of that object." From desire flow all other affections. Desire, strengthened by the idea of the attainability of its object, is transformed into will. The mass of remembered and present sensations constitutes the I. Self-consciousness, or the power to say I, depends on memory. The knowledge of the body and of external objects — i. e., of magnitude, motion, position, distance comes to us only through the operation of the sense of touch: by the other four senses we do not get "outside" of our minds at all. The seat of all sensation is the soul (not the body, Condillac denies being a materialist), and, in the last analysis, we know only our own thoughts.- Condillac employs, to explain the growth of experience, the fancy - which has become a familiar one – of a statue, organized similarly as a human being, caused by an experimenter gradually and systematically to acquire knowledge and power of action.

The Method of Knowledge. The fundamental principle of thought and the test of truth is the logical principle

of identity. Thought is purely analytical, the discovering of propositions by means of the mere explication of given propositions. The ideal norm of method in all sciences is mathematics. Science is merely well-formed `language (langue bien faite). In this sense, it presupposes a "given " knowledge of the external and internal worlds, " evidence of fact" and "evidence of feeling;" hence, while mathematics is our "method," nature is our

§ 85.

66

guide."

Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836).- De Tracy, who was of a "noble" family, was educated at the University of Strasburg, and adopted the profession of his father, who had died as a field-marshal. He sat in the Constitutional Assembly, and always remained loyal to the political principles of 1789. For political reasons he retired from the post of field-marshal, to which he had been appointed, and devoted himself to science, in company with Cabanis and Condorcet. During the Reign of Terror he was imprisoned, and came near ending his life on the guillotine. During his imprisonment, which lasted almost a year, he became introspective in mental habit, and, through the influence of the study of Locke and Condillac, formed the resolve to abandon the study of the natural sciences for that of mind. Under the Empire he was senator, during the Restoration made peer of France. He was elected to the French Academy, and was an important member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. He had the highest con

fidence as to the truth of his philosophical and political convictions, and was, it is told, deeply saddened at their becoming, or seeming to become, obsolete.

Works. The principal works of De Tracy are : "Éléments d'Idéologie" (1804-1824), and "Commentaire sur l'Esprit des Lois" (1819). The former includes the following special treatises: "Traité de Volonté," "Grammaire Générale," "Logique," "Idéologie."

Philosophy: The Problems of Philosophy. — Philosophy

has the three problems of (1) giving an account of the means of knowledge, (2) applying these means to our will, (3) applying them to the study of external objects. To these correspond three groups of sciences: (1) ideology, grammar, logic; (2) political economy, morals, politics; (3) physics, geometry, arithmetic.

Ideology. Ideology is the "first philosophy," upon which all other sciences depend for their foundation and method. All ideas and faculties originate in sensation; to think is to feel (penser, c'est sentir). The immediate objects of the faculty of thinking or feeling may be termed "sensations," "sentiments," "ideas," "perceptions." These are of four classes,-" sensations proper,' ," "memories," "relations between sensations," "desires." Four corresponding faculties are: sensibility, properly so called, memory, judgment, will. Sensibility is the property of our nature by virtue of which we receive impressions of various sorts and have consciousness. Our "external" sensations are caused by the action of objects upon the extremities of the nerves: "internal" sensations by the action of the nerves in the interior of the body resulting from the functioning of organs or lesions of different parts of the body, etc. Memory depends on certain permanent conditions of the brain. Judgment is directly involved in the connecting, in a feeling of agreement, of sensations. Desire and will are respectively passive and active conditions of the same form of thinking faculty. All acts of the thinking faculty, will included, are subject to the law of necessity. Our knowledge of external objects as such comes through the feeling of resistance acquired through voluntary movement. Ideology is a part of zoölogy (i. e., in later terminology, psychology is a part of biology). De Tracy's ideology is a combination of the physiological psychology of Cabanis with the "introspective " psychology of Condillac, the latter element predominating.

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Morals. Man, as having desires, has a capacity for suffering and enjoyment, has needs, rights, duties. His rights

are determined by his needs, his duties by his power of satisfying these. The fundamental principle of morals is that our 66 rights are always without limit, our duties are always only the general duty of satisfying our needs: every one has the right to do what he pleases and can; there is neither justice nor injustice."

Politics. The true government is one of pure representation under one or more leaders, a government sprung from and founded on the general will, having for its principle reason, its means liberty, its effects happiness — a government in which the rulers are servants, and punishment is simply for the prevention of wrong. Here we have in a nutshell the "philosophy" of the moving spirit of the French Revolution.

Result.De Tracy has been called the "logician or metaphysician" of the "sensualistic school."

§ 86.

Claude Adrien Helvétius1 (1715-1771).- Helvétius, who was the son of the court-physician at Paris, and educated at the Collège of Louis-le-Grand, had, it would seem, neither externally nor internally very favorable conditions given him for the attainment of philosophic wisdom. He had influential friends, was wealthy, vain of his person, without taste for really scientific pursuits, ambitious to shine in polite society, was, in short, a spoiled favorite of earthly fortune. He held a lucrative political office for a number of years, and feasted his friends frequently after he retired from it. The publication of Condillac's "Traité des Sensations" excited his intellectual vanity to attempt the production of a philosophical work, the result of his attempt being the (once) famous "De l'Esprit." He died of an attack of gout. He left behind a name for kindliness and for liberality in giving. In his youth he was fond of reading Locke.

1 Noack; Martineau, "Types of Ethical Theory," vol. ii.

Works. Besides the "De l'Esprit" (1758), which is his best work, he composed numerous other works, of which we may mention here "De l'Homme; de ses Facultés intellectuelles et de son Éducation" (1772),

which is a new version of the earlier work, and "Les Progrès de la Raison dans le Recherche du Vrai” (1775). There were published in various languages, fifty editions of the "De l'Esprit " in a short time.

Philosophy. The opinions of Helvétius were very largely borrowed from writers of the empirico-sensualistic school. In man, says Helvétius, all is the result of bodily organization, and is to be explained by corporeal sensibility. The law of man's nature is to seek pleasure and avoid pain. By this law - the law of interest he acquires ideas, or the impressions of relations, and the power of understanding; by this law also are his actions determined: man is a machine set in motion and kept running by corporeal sensibility. The passions of man, which have their origin purely in the impulse to seek pleasure and avoid pain, are of two sorts,- those depending immediately on the bodily sensations, and those depending on ideal, that is, artistic and social, sensations. Both sorts centre in selflove, by which even the most disinterested actions are explainable. "If a man does good to his fellows, if he sacrifices himself for his father, his son, or his country, it is because he finds in doing that action, in imposing a sacrifice upon himself, a pleasure greater than the sufferings which may follow it. An action which, besides procuring pleasure for ourselves, also benefits others, receives the name of virtue; but all virtue has for its final purpose the satisfying of self-interest." The problem of morals and legislation is to combine the interest of the whole with that of the individual. There is and can be no conflict between virtue and justice, on the one hand, and interest, on the other. Rather are the passions necessary to the highest virtue. The virtue of him who is incapable of passion is a passive virtue, - the virtue of indolence. We