fully seen in his "Examination of Reid, Beattie, and Oswald;" in fact, it is summed up in one extraordinary sentence, where he affirms, that "Something has been done in the field of knowledge by Descartes, very much by Mr. Locke, but most of all by Dr. Hartley, who has thrown more useful light upon the theory of mind, than Newton did upon the theory of the natural world!" After this acknowledgment of admiration towards the writings of Hartley, of course we could hardly expect to find anything else in the metaphysical works of Priestley, than a second edition of the Hartleian philosophy, revised, corrected, and expanded into a more mature form. Such, in fact, was precisely the case. The doctrine of philosophical necessity was more fully argued and more systematically enforced; utilitarian morals were maintained upon a broader basis, and illustrated by more copious examples; and materialism, from which Hartley himself had shrunk back, was now openly avowed.

Priestley rested the truth of materialism upon two deductions. The first was, that thought and sensation are essentially the same thing-that the whole variety of our ideas, however abstract and refined they may become, are, nevertheless, but modifications of the sensational faculty. This doctrine, we shall see, had been more fully maintained in France, by Condillac. The second deduction was, that all sensation, and, conse

quently, all thought, arises from the affections of our material organization, and, therefore, consists entirely in the motion of the material particles of which the nerves and brain are composed. It is but justice, however, here to add, that Priestley did not push his materialism so far as to evolve any conclusions contrary to the fundamental principles of man's natural religion, or to cut away the evidences of a future state. In the full conviction of these truths he both lived and died. To sum up, then, the precise influence of Priestley upon the progress of sensationalism in our own country in a few words, we may say, that he succeeded in cutting the last tie which had held Hartley to the poor remains of spiritualism, that he reduced the whole phenomena of mind to organic processes, and the mind itself to a material organization.

It might be expected, perhaps, that we should pause here in our history, to offer some remarks upon the abuses to which the principle of association has been subjected in the Hartleian school of philosophy, and to show how many of the simple phenomena of our intellectual and moral being have been there explained by other phenomena far more obscure and complex than themselves; but as this subject will come more fully under our consideration in a future chapter, we must waive the discussion of it for the present, and go on to

exhibit the final issue to which this sensational tendency led.

Priestley had denied the separate reality of mind or rather spirit in man, but had not rejected the existence of it altogether in the universe. To do this, required another reasoner still more bold in urging his arguments to their ultimate conclusions, and less under the restraints of early religious associations. Such a reasoner appeared in the person of Dr. Darwin, who determined to banish spirit altogether from the universe, to make the infinite and omnipresent mind itself synonymous with the all-pervading powers of an impersonal nature, and thus to trample the most cherished of man's religious hopes under the feet of a materialistic unbelief. This we may

regard as the culminating point of sensationalism. While idealism proceeds onwards in its conclusions, till it has banished matter, nay, everything else but the one eternal mind, in its various developments, out of existence, this opposed system of philosophy does not stop in the other direction, till it has reduced all mind, even the infinite mind itself, to nature and organization.

In conclusion, the influence which sensationalism exerted generally upon the age, may be seen in its bearing upon many of the subordinate branches of philosophy. To take the philosophy of language as an instance, we have in Horne

Tooke the grammarian of this school. It is needless to remind the reader of the ultra-nominalism which he professed; of the ingenious attempt he made in his " Еπеа ПIтероеνта," to derive every word from some material symbol, and of the inference he drew, that our reason itself is the gradual result of language, instead of language being the direct product of our

reason.

The moralist and politician again, of the same philosophy, appeared in the person of Jeremy Bentham, who stands forth as one of the most uncompromising advocates of the utilitarian system of ethics. Archdeacon Paley, another advocate of utilitarian morals, might also be mentioned as having philosophised under the guidance of Locke and of his most devoted follower, Abraham Tucker, and as having erected his ethical system upon principles derived from these sources. The very names of Bentham and Paley, however, remind us that we are already upon the confines of the eighteenth century, and that we must cease to pursue the results of sensationalism in our own country any further, until we come to look more particularly into the characteristics of the present age.

SECT. IV.-Effects of Locke in France and
Germany.

Whilst the philosophy of sensationalism was thus developing itself in England, a similar progress was made in France with still greater energy and far more extensive reputation. The " Essay on the Human Understanding" being soon after its appearance translated and extensively read throughout the whole circle of the literati of that country, produced quite as great an impression there as it did on this side the Channel. That there should arise, therefore, in France, as well as in England, defenders and expounders of Locke's philosophy, was a matter almost of absolute necessity. The first man who undertook this task was Condillac, a writer who is universally placed at the head of the whole modern school of the French sensationalism. Condillac, like Hartley in our own country, came forth as a professed disciple and warm admirer of Locke, but in process of time departed equally far, if not still farther, than Hartley himself, from the principles of his master. The course, indeed, which he took was a very different one from that of the Cambridge philosopher; but whilst he avoided some of the faults into which that philosopher fell, he certainly went with still hastier steps towards the region of complete empiricism.