conceivable and intelligible, than that which affirms it to be. The case is different with the sciences, properly so called. Every proposition, which is not true, is there confused and unintelligible. That the cube root of 64 is equal to the half of 10, is a false proposition, and can never be distinctly conceived. But that Cæsar, or the angel Gabriel, or any being never existed, may be a false proposition, but still is perfectly conceivable, and implies no contradiction.

The existence, therefore, of any being can only be proved by arguments from its cause or its effect; and these arguments are founded entirely on experience. If we reason a priori, anything may appear able to produce anything. The falling of a pebble may, for aught we know, extinguish the sun; or the wish of a man control the planets in their orbits. It is only experience, which teaches us the nature and bounds of cause and effect, and enables us to infer the existence of one object from that of another. Such is the foundation of moral reasoning, which forms the greater part of human knowledge, and is the source of all human action and behaviour.

Moral reasonings are either concerning particular or general facts. All deliberations in life regard the former; as also all disquisitions in history, chronology, geography, and astronomy.

The sciences, which treat of general facts, are politics, natural philosophy, physic, chemistry, &c. where the qualities, causes and effects of a whole species of objects are enquired into.

Divinity or Theology, as it proves the existence of a Deity, and the immortality of souls, is composed partly of reasonings concerning particular, partly concerning general facts. It has a foundation in reason, so far as it is supported by experience. But its best and most solid foundation is faith and divine revelation.

Morals and criticism are not so properly objects of the understanding as of taste and sentiment. Beauty, whether moral or

1 That impious maxim of the ancient philosophy, Ex nihilo, nihil fit, by which the creation of matter was excluded, ceases to be a maxim, according to this philosophy. Not only the will of the supreme Being may create matter; but, for aught we know a priori, the will of any other being might create it, or any other cause, that the most whimsical imagination can assign.

natural, is felt, more properly than perceived. Or if we reason concerning it, and endeavour to fix its standard, we regard a new fact, to wit, the general tastes of mankind, or some such fact, which may be the object of reasoning and enquiry.

When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

ETIENNE BONNOT DE CONDILLAC

(1715-1780)

TREATISE ON SENSATIONS

Translated from the French* by

FREDERICK C. DE SUMICHRAST

CHAPTER I. THE FIRST NOTIONS OF A MAN POSSESSING THE SENSE OF SMELL ONLY

1. THE notions of our statue being limited to the sense of smell, can include odours only. It cannot have any conception of extent, of form, of anything external to itself, or to its sensations, any more than it can have of colour, sound or taste.

2. If we offer the statue a rose, it will be, in its relation to us, a statue which smells a rose; but in relation to itself, it will be merely the scent itself of the flower.

Therefore, according to the objects which act upon its organ, it will be scent of rose, of carnation, of jasmine, of violet. In a word, odours are, in this respect, merely modifications of the statue itself or modes of being; and it is not capable of believing itself aught else, since these are the only sensations it can feel.

3. Let those philosophers to whom it is so evident that everything is material, put themselves for a moment in the place of the statue, and let them reflect how they could suspect that there exists anything resembling what we call matter.

4. We may then already be convinced that it is sufficient to increase or to diminish the number of the senses to cause us to come to conclusions wholly different from those which are at present so natural to us, and our statue, limited to the sense of smell, may thus enable us to comprehend somewhat the class of beings whose notions are the most restricted.

*From Traité des Sensations, Paris and London, 1754.

CHAPTER II. OF THE OPERATIONS OF THE MIND IN A MAN LIMITED TO THE SENSE OF SMELL, AND OF THE FACT THAT THE DIFFERENT DEGREES OF PLEASURE AND OF PAIN CONSTITUTE THE PRINCIPLE OF THESE OPERATIONS.

1. With the first odour the capacity for feeling of our statue is wholly taken up by the impression made upon its organ. I call this attention.

2. From that moment it begins to enjoy or to suffer: for if the power of feeling is wholly devoted to a pleasant odour, enjoyment is the result; and if it be wholly devoted to an unpleasant odour, suffering results.

3. But our statue has yet no idea of the different changes it may experience. Therefore it is well; or it is not well, without the desire to be better. Suffering is no more capable of exciting in the statue a longing for an enjoyment of which it has no knowledge, than enjoyment is capable of making it fear an ill of which it is equally ignorant. Consequently, no matter how disagreeable the first sensation may be, even to the point of wounding the organ and of being a violent pain, it cannot cause desire.

While suffering with us is always accompanied by the desire not to suffer, it cannot be so with the statue. Pain creates that desire in us only because the condition of non-suffering is already known to us. The habit we have contracted of looking upon pain as a thing we have been without and of which we may be freed, is the cause that the moment we suffer we immediately desire not to suffer, and this condition is inseparable from a state of suffering.

But the statue which, at the first moment, is conscious of its feeling only through the very pain it experiences, does not know whether it can cease to be a statue and become something else, or cease to exist. It has, as yet, no conception of change, of succession or of duration. Therefore it exists without having the power to form a desire.

4. Once it has observed that it is capable of ceasing to be what it is, in order to become once more what it was before, we shall see its desires spring from a condition of pain, which it will compare with a condition of pleasure recalled to it by memory. Thus it is that pleasure and pain are the sole principle which, determining all the operations of its soul, will gradually raise it to all the knowledge of which it is capable; and in order to determine the progress of which it is susceptible, it will suffice to observe the pleasure it will have to desire, the pains it will have to fear, and the influence of either according to circum

stances.

5. Supposing the statue to have no remembrance of the changes it has undergone, then on every occasion of a change it would believe itself to be conscious of sensation for the first time: whole years would be swallowed up in each present moment. Therefore by ever confining its attention to a single mode of being, it would never reckon two together, and would never note their relations to each other: it would enjoy or suffer, without yet knowing desire or fear.

6. But the odour it smells does not, so soon as the odoriferous object ceases to act upon its organ, become wholly lost to the statue. The attention it bestowed upon it still retains the odour, and there remains a more or less strong impression of that odour in proportion as the attention itself has been more or less active. That is memory.

7. When, therefore, our statue is a new odour, there is still present to it the odour, that it was the moment before. Its power of feeling is divided between memory and the sense of smell, the former of these faculties being attentive to the past sensation, while the latter is attentive to the present sensation.

8. Thus there are in the statue two modes of feeling, differing only in this, that the one is concerned with a present sensation and the other with a sensation no longer existent, but the impression of which still remains. Unaware of the fact that there are objects which act upon it, unaware even of the fact that it possesses an organ, the statue ordinarily distinguishes between the remembrance of a sensation and a present sensation merely