CONDILLAC'S STATUE.
5. Condillac supposes a statue, which he animates successively with
each of the senses: then beginning with the sense of smell, he says;
"So long as our statue is limited to the sense of smell, its knowledge
cannot go beyond odors; it can neither have any idea of extension, of
space, or of any thing beyond itself, nor of other sensations, such
as color, sound, taste."[2] If, according to the conditions of the
supposition, all activity and every faculty be denied to this statue,
it certainly can have no other idea or sensation, and it may be added
that even its sensation of smell will be for it no idea.
[2] Chap. I.
"If we present it a rose," continues Condillac, "to us it will be a
statue which smells a rose; but for itself it will be only the smell
of a rose. It will then be the smell of the rose, the pink, the
jasmine, or the violet, according to the objects which operate upon
its organ; in a word, with respect to it, these odors are only its
own modifications and manners of being, and it cannot believe itself
any thing else, since these are the only sensations of which it is
susceptible."
6. It is very obvious that at the first step, the statue must take
a great leap. Close upon the apparent simplicity of the sensible
phenomenon, _reflection_, one of those acts which suppose the intellect
already well developed, is introduced. First the statue believes
itself something; it believes itself the odor; next consciousness
of itself in relation to the impression it has just received, is
attributed to it; then it is made to form a kind of judgment, whereby
it affirms the identity of itself with the sensation. This, however,
is impossible, unless we have something besides bare sensation; but we
neither have nor can have at this stage any thing beyond this purely
passive impression, an isolated phenomenon, upon which there can be
no reflection of any kind whatever; and the statue can have no other
reflection of itself than this sensation, which in the reflective
order has no title to be so called. Condillac's hypothesis rigorously
applied, presents only a phenomenon leading to nothing; and the moment
he leaves sensation to develop it, he admits an activity in the mind
distinct and very different from sensation, which destroys his whole
system.
The statue confined to the sensation of smell will never believe itself
smell; such a belief is a judgment, and supposes comparison, no trace
of which can be discovered in the sensible phenomenon, considered in
all its purity, as Condillac requires in his hypothesis. He begins his
analytical investigations by introducing conditions which he at the
same time supposes to be eliminated. He undertakes to explain every
thing by sensation alone, and his first step is to amalgamate sensation
with operations of a very different order.
7. Condillac calls the capacity of feeling, when applied to the
impression received, attention. So if there be but one sensation, there
can be but one attention. If various sensations succeeding each other
leave some trace in the memory of the statue, the attention will, when
a new sensation is presented, be divided between the present and the
past. The attention directed at one and the same time to two sensations
becomes comparison. Similarities and differences are perceived by
comparison, and this perception is a judgment. All this is done with
sensations alone; therefore attention, memory, comparison, and judgment
are nothing but sensations transformed. In appearance nothing clearer,
more simple, or more ingenuous; in reality nothing more confused or
false.
8. First of all, this definition of attention is not exact. The
capacity of feeling, by the very fact of being in exercise, is applied
to the impression. It does not feel when the sensitive faculty is not
in exercise, and this is not in exercise except when applied to the
impression. Consequently, attention would be nothing but the act of
feeling; all sensation would be attention, and all attention sensation;
a meaning which no one ever yet gave to these words.
9. Attention is the application of the mind to something; and this
application supposes the exercise of an activity concentrated upon its
object. Properly speaking, when the mind holds itself entirely passive,
it is not attentive; and with respect to sensations it is attentive
when by a reflex act we know that we feel. Without this cognition there
can be no attention, but only sensation more or less active, according
to the degree in which it affects our sensibility. If Condillac means
to call the more vivid sensation attention, the word is improperly
used; for it ordinarily happens that they who feel with the greatest
vividness are precisely those who are distinguished for their want of
attention. Sensation is the affection of a passive faculty; attention
is the exercise of an activity; and hence it is that brutes do not
participate of it except inasmuch as they possess a principle of
activity to direct their sensitive faculties to a determinate object.
10. Is the perception of the difference of the smell of the rose and
that of the pink a sensation? If we are answered that it is not, we
infer that the judgment is not the sensation transformed; for it is
not even a sensation. If we are told that it is one sensation, we
then observe that if it be either that of the rose or that of the
pink, it follows that with one alone of these sensations we shall have
comparative perception, which is absurd. If we are answered that it is
both together, we must either interpret this expression rigorously, and
then we shall have a sensation which will at once be that of the pink
and that of the rose, the one remaining distinct from the other so as
to satisfy the conditions of comparison; or we must interpret it so
as to mean that the two sensations are united; in which case we gain
nothing, for the difficulty will be to show how co-existence produces
comparison, and judgment, or the perception of the difference.
The sensation of the pink is only that of the pink, and that of the
rose only that of the rose. The instant you attempt to compare them,
you suppose in the mind an act by which it perceives the difference;
and if you attribute to it any thing more than pure sensation, you add
a faculty distinct from sensation, namely that of comparing sensations,
and appreciating their similarities and differences.
11. This comparison, this intellectual force, which calls the two
extremes into a common arena, without confounding them, discovers the
points in which they are alike or unlike each other, and, as it were,
comes in and decides between them, is distinct from the sensation; it
is the effect of an activity of a different order, and its development
must depend on sensations as exciting causes, as a condition _sine
qua non_; but this is all it has to do with sensations themselves; it
is essentially distinct from them, and cannot be confounded with them
without destroying the idea of comparison, and rendering it impossible.
No judgment is possible without the ideas of identity or similarity,
and these ideas are not sensations. Sensations are particular facts
which never leave their own sphere, nor can be applied from one thing
to another. The ideas of similarity and identity have something in
common applicable to many facts.
12. What next happens to a being limited to the faculty of experiencing
various sensations? It will receive without comparing them. It is
certain that when it feels in one manner it will not feel in another,
that one sensation is not another; but this sensitive being will take
no notice of the variety. Sensations will succeed sensations, but will
not be compared with each other. Even supposing them to be remembered,
the memory of them will be nothing more than a less intense repetition
of the same sensations. If it be admitted that this sensitive
being compares them, and perceives their relations of identity or
distinction, of similarity or difference, a series of reflex acts are
admitted which are not sensations.
13. Nor can the memory, properly so called, of sensations, be explained
by them alone; and here again Condillac is wrong. The statue may
recollect to-day the sensation of the smell of the rose which it
received yesterday, and this recollection may exist in two ways:
first, by the internal reproduction of the sensation without any
external cause, or relation to time past, and consequently without
any relation to the prior existence of a similar sensation; and then
this recollection is not for the statue a recollection properly so
called, but only a sensation more or less vivid: secondly, by an
internal reproduction with relation to the existence of the same or
another similar sensation at a preceding time, in which recollection
essentially consists; and here there is something more than sensation;
here are the ideas of succession, time, priority, and identity, or
similarity, all distinct and separable from sensation.
Two entirely distinct sensations may be referred to the same time in
the memory; and then the time will be identical, and the sensations
distinct. The sensation may exist without any recollection of the
time it before existed, or even without any recollection of having
ever existed; consequently, sensation involves no relation of time;
they are distinct and very different matters, and Condillac deceives
himself when he undertakes to explain the memory of sensations by mere
sensations.
14. These reflections utterly refute Condillac's system. Either he
admits something besides sensation or he does not; if he does, he
violates his own original supposition; if he does not, he cannot
explain any abstract idea, nor even the sensitive memory: he will
therefore be obliged to admit with Locke reflection upon sensations,
and for the same reason, other faculties of the soul.
15. It is easy to comprehend why certain philosophers have maintained
that all our ideas come from the senses, if we understand them to
mean that sensations awaken our internal activity, and, so to speak,
supply the intellect with materials: but it is not so easy to see
how it can be advanced as a certain, clear, and exceedingly simple
truth that there is in our mind nothing but these materials, these
sensations. We have only to fix our attention for a moment upon what
passes within us to discover many phenomena distinct from sensation,
and various faculties which have nothing to do with sensation. If
Condillac had been satisfied with maintaining that these faculties
needed sensation as a kind of excitement in order to be developed, he
would have advanced nothing contrary to sound philosophy: but for him
to pretend that all that is excited and all that is developed is only
the principle which excites, and to insist that this is confirmed by
actual observation, is openly to contradict observation itself, and
to render it absolutely impossible for him to make the least progress
in the explanation of intellectual activity, unless he abandons the
supposition upon which his whole system is founded. Nevertheless,
the author of the _Treatise on Sensations_ seems to be perfectly
satisfied with his system: the actual impression is the sensation;
the recollection of the sensation is the intellectual idea. If this
is not sound, it is at least deceptive: with the appearance of nice
observation he stops at the surface of things, and does not fatigue the
pupil. Every thing comes from sensation; but this is because Condillac
makes his statue talk as he pleases, without paying the least attention
to his hypothesis of sensation alone.
16. This system, by reason of its philosophical meagerness, is fatal to
all moral ideas. What becomes of morality if there are no ideas, except
sensations? What becomes of duty if every thing is reduced to sensible
necessity, to pleasure or pain? And what becomes of God, and of all
man's relations to God?