also was it the country to which they were best adapted. Madame Dudeffand, who passed her long life in the midst of French society, and was one of the keenest observers of her time, has expressed this with great happiness. The work of Helvétius, she says, is popular, since he is the man who has told to all their own secret.93

True it was, that, to the contemporaries of Helvétius, his views, notwithstanding their immense popularity, bore the appearance of a secret; because the connexion between them and the general march of events was, as yet, but dimly perceived. To us, however, who, after this interval of time, can examine the question with the resources of a larger experience, it is obvious how such a system met the wants of an age of which it was the exponent and the mouthpiece. That Helvétius must have carried with him the sympathies of his countrymen, is clear, not only from the evidence we have of his success, but also from a more comprehensive view of the general complexion of those times. Even while he was still pursuing his labours, and only four years before he published them, a work appeared in France, which, though displaying greater ability, and possessing a higher influence than that of Helvétius, did, nevertheless, point in exactly the same direction. I allude to the great metaphysical treatise by Condillac, in many respects one of the most remarkable productions of the eighteenth century; and the authority of which, during two generations, was so irresistible, that, without some acquaintance with it, we cannot possibly understand the nature of those complicated movements by which the French Revolution was brought about.

66

it, complains that it was praised "avec une sorte de fureur" (Euvres de Turgot, vol. ix. p. 297); and Georgel (Mémoires, vol. ii. p. 256) says, “ce livre, écrit avec un style plein de chaleur et d'images, se trouvoit sur toutes les toilettes."

93

"D'ailleurs le siècle de Louis XV se reconnut dans l'ouvrage d'Helvétius, et on prête à Mme. Dudeffand ce mot fin et profond: C'est un homme qui a dit le secret de tout le monde."" Cousin, Hist. de la Philos. I. série, vol. iii. p. 201. Compare Corresp. de Dudeffand, vol. i. p. xxii.; and a similar sentiment in Mém. de Roland, vol. i. p. 104. The relation of Helvétius's work to the prevailing philosophy is noticed in Comte's Philos. Pos. vol. iii. pp. 791, 792, vol. v. pp. 744, 745.

In 1754,94 Condillac put forth his celebrated work on the mind; the very title of which was a proof of the bias with which it was written. Although this profound thinker aimed at nothing less than an exhaustive analysis of the human faculties, and although he is pronounced by a very able, but hostile critic, to be the only metaphysician France produced during the eighteenth century, 95 still he found it utterly impossible to escape from those tendencies towards the external which governed his own age. The consequence was, that he called his work a "Treatise on Sensations ;"96 and in it he peremptorily asserts, that every thing we know is the result of sensation; by which he means the effect produced on us by the action of the external world. Whatever may be thought of the accuracy of this opinion, there can be no doubt that it is enforced with a closeness and severity of reasoning which deserves the highest praise. To examine, however, the arguments by which his view is supported, would lead to a discussion foreign to my present object, which is, merely to point out the relation between his philosophy and the general temper of his contemporaries. Without, therefore, pretending to any thing like a critical examination of this celebrated book, I will simply bring together the essential positions on which it is based, in order to illustrate the harmony between it and the intellectual habits of the age in which it appeared.97

The materials from which the philosophy of Condillac was originally drawn, were contained in the great work published by Locke about sixty years before this time. But though much of what was most essential was borrowed from the English philosopher, there was one very

Biog. Univ. vol. ix. p. 399.

Condillac est le métaphysicien français du xviii siècle." Cousin, Hist. de la Philos. I. série, vol. iii. p. 83.

tr

Traité des Sensations," which, as M. Cousin says, is, sans comparaison, le chef-d'œuvre de Condillac." Hist. de la Philos. II. série, vol. ii.

p. 77.

97 On the immense influence of Condillac, compare Renouard, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. ii. p. 355; Cuvier, Eloges, vol. iii. p. 387; Broussais, Cours de Phrenologie, pp. 45, 68-71, 829; Pinel, Alién. Mentale, p. 94; Brown's Philos. of the Mind, p. 212.

important point in which the disciple differed from his master. And this difference is strikingly characteristic of the direction which the French intellect was now taking. Locke, with some looseness of expression, and possibly with some looseness of thought, had asserted the separate existence of a power of reflection, and had maintained that by means of that power the products of sensation became available.98 Condillac, moved by the prevailing temper of his own time, would not hear of such a distinction. He, like most of his contemporaries, was jealous of any claim which increased the authority of the internal, and weakened that of the external. He, therefore, altogether rejects the faculty of reflection as a source of our ideas; and this partly because it is but the channel through which ideas run from the senses, and partly because in its origin it is itself a sensation.99 Therefore, according to him, the only question is as to the way in which our contact with nature supplies us with ideas. For in this scheme, the faculties of man are solely caused by the operation of his senses. The judgments which we form are, says Condillac, often ascribed to the hand of the Deity; a convenient mode of reasoning, which has only arisen from the difficulty of analyzing them.100 By considering how our judgments actually arise, we can alone remove these obscurities. The fact is, that the attention we give to an object is nothing but the sensation which

" Whether or not Locke held that reflection is an independent as well as a separate faculty, is uncertain; because passages could be quoted from his writings to prove either the affirmative or the negative. Dr. Whewell justly remarks, that Locke uses the word so vaguely as to "allow his disciples to make of his doctrines what they please." History of Moral Philosophy, 1852, p. 71.

99 "Locke distingue deux sources de nos idées, les sens et la réflexion. Il seroit plus exact de n'en reconnoître qu'une, soit parceque la réflexion n'est dans son principe que la sensation même, soit parcequ'elle est moins la source des idées, que le canal par lequel elles découlent des sens." Condillac, Traité des Sensations, p. 13: see also, at pp. 19, 216, the way in which sensation becomes reflection; and the summing up, at p. 416, 66 que toutes nos connoissances viennent des sens, et particulièrement du toucher."

100 He says of Mallebranche (Traité des Sensations, p. 312), "ne pouvant comprendre comment nous formerions nous-mêmes ces jugemens, il les attribue à Dieu; manière de raisonner fort commode, et presque toujours la ressource des philosophes."

that object excites;101 and what we call abstract ideas are merely different ways of being attentive.102 Ideas being thus generated, the subsequent process is very simple. To attend to two ideas at the same time, is to compare them; so that comparison is not a result of attention, but is rather the attention itself.103 This at once gives us the faculty of judging, because directly we institute a comparison, we do of necessity form a judgment.104 Thus, too, memory is a transformed sensation; 105 while the imagination is nothing but memory, which, being carried to its highest possible vivacity, makes what is absent appear to be present.106 The impressions we receive from the external world being, therefore, not the cause of our faculties, but being the faculties themselves, the conclusion to which we are driven is inevitable. It follows, says Condillac, that in man nature is the beginning of all; that to nature we owe the whole of our knowledge; that we only instruct ourselves according to her lessons; and that the entire art of reasoning consists in continuing the work which she has appointed us to perform.107

It is so impossible to mistake the tendency of these views, that I need not attempt to estimate their result otherwise than by measuring the extent to which they were adopted. Indeed, the zeal with which they were now carried into every department of knowledge, can only

Traité

101 "Mais à peine j'arrête la vue sur un objet, que les sensations particulières que j'en reçois sont l'attention même que je lui donne." des Sensations, p. 16.

102Ne sont que différentes manières d'être attentif." p. 122.

103 "Dès qu'il y a double attention, il y a comparaison; car être attentif à deux idées ou les comparer, c'est la même chose." p. 17.

104 "Dès qu'il y a comparaison, il y a jugement." p. 65.

105 "La mémoire n'est donc que la sensation transformée." p. 17. Compare p. 61.

106 "L'imagination est la mémoire même, parvenue à toute la vivacité dont elle est susceptible." p. 78. "Or j'ai appelé imagination cette mémoire vive, qui fait paroître présent ce qui est absent." p. 245.

10"Il résulte de cette vérité, que la nature commence tout en nous: aussi ai-je démontré que, dans le principe ou dans le commencement, nos connoissances sont uniquement son ouvrage, que nous ne nous instruisons que d'après ses leçons, et que tout l'art de raisonner consiste à continuer comme elle nous a fait commencer." p. 178.

surprise those who, being led by their habits of mind to study history in its separate fragments, have not accustomed themselves to consider it as an united whole, and who, therefore, do not perceive that in every great epoch there is some one idea at work, which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issue. In France, during the latter half of the eighteenth century, this idea was, the inferiority of the internal to the external. It was this dangerous but plausible principle which drew the attention of men from the church to the state; which was seen in Helvétius the most celebrated of the French moralists, and in Condillac the most celebrated of the French metaphysicians. It was this same principle which, by increasing, if I may so say, the reputation of Nature, induced the ablest thinkers to devote themselves to a study of her laws, and to abandon those other pursuits which had been popular in the preceding age. In consequence of this movement, such wonderful additions were made to every branch of physical science, that more new truths concerning the external world were discovered in France during the latter half of the eighteenth century than during all the previous periods put together. The details of these discoveries, so far as they have been subservient to the general purposes of civilization, will be related in another place; at present I will indicate only the most prominent, in order that the reader may understand the course of the subsequent argument, and may see the connexion between them and the French Revolution.

Taking a general view of the external world, we may say, that the three most important forces by which the operations of nature are effected, are heat, light, and electricity; including under this last magnetic and galvanic phenomena. On all these subjects the French, for the first time, now exerted themselves with signal success. In regard to heat, not only were the materials for subsequent induction collected with indefatigable industry, but before that generation passed away, the induction was actually made; for while the laws of its radiation were