CONDILLAC, ETIENNE BONNOT DE, was born at Grenoble in 1715, and was distinguished at an early age for his taste for meta physical inquiries. The works of Locke chiefly attracted his attention, and were the cause of his publishing, in 1746, his Easel our l'origine des connoissances humaines,' a work intended to promulgate principles founded on those of the English philosopher. The tendency which Locke's works had naturally produced of tracing all knowledge back to sensations, induced him to publish, in 1749, his second work, the Traits des Systemes,' which was designed to oppose the theories of Leibnitz, Spinosa, and others, as based upon abstract principles, rather than what he conceived the more solid foundation of experience. His third work, Traits des Sensations,' is his master-piece. The author supposes a statue, which he has the power of endowing with one sense at a time. He first gives it smell alone, and then traces what may be the pleasures, pains, abstract ideas, desires, &e., of a being so limited with regard to its faculties; the other senses are then added, and the statue gradually becomes a complete human being. His works seem to have made but little impression on the general public in his time, but he was much sought after by those of high attain ments. Diderot, J. J. Rousseau, and Dudes were among the number of his most intimate friends, and his celebrity spread so far, that be was appointed preceptor to the Prince of Parma. In this capacity he published his Cours d'etudee,' divided into L'Art d'ecrire, Part de raisonner, rest de penser, and Histoire generale des hommes et des empires,' a series of works calculated to promote his own philosophical views. Having completed the education of his pupil, he retired to philosophical meditations. In the year 1768 he was admitted a member of the academy in the room of Abbe l'Olivet, though, strange to relate, he never afterwards attended the meetings of this learned body. His labours only terminated with his life, as he published his Logique ' but a few months previous to his death, which happened August 3, 1780. His Longue des Calculs,' a posthumous work, did
not appear till the year 1798.
As a philosopher, Condillac rather deserves the term ingenious than profound. He has the art of developing his own views in the most entertaining manner possible; in working out his theories he almost becomes prolix. Not satisfied with giving his statue smell alone, examining its situation in that state, and then adding the other senses, he conisiders it endowed with each of the other senses alone, and thus extends his Traits des Sensations,' which is at beat-but a pleasing example, to a thick volume.
Professor Stewart has justly censured the French for taking for granted that Condillac was a correct interpreter of Locke, and at the same time is somewhat severe on their Locke mania. It is clear enough that Condillac was not a faithful interpreter of Locke. He had, perhaps wilfully, overlooked a very short chapter in the Essay on the Human Understanding Of simple Ideas of Reflection. Locke traced all our knowledge to sensation and reflection ; Condillac stopped at sensation alone, and thus produced a system which cannot he surpassed in sensualism. When his statue has smell alone, he tells us, that if a rose be presented to it, it is certainly, with respect to us, a statue smelling a rose ; but is, with respect to itself, nothing but the smell of the flower; the very perceiving subject is to itself nothing but an odour. And this was supposed to be a faithful expo sition of the doctrines of Locke—of Locke, who allows the mind ideas of reflection, "when it turns its view inward upon itself, and observes its own about those ideas it has ;" and therefore can never have conceived that a perceiving being cannot divide itself in thought from the thing perceived. Some have thought that Condillac imbibed this notion of a sensation being to the mind only a modification of itself from Berkeley ; but though Berkeley denied an inanimate sub stratum to our sensations, he certainly never went so far as to make the mind take itself for a self-perceiving sensation.