Anthropology as an Aid to Moral Science
Appendix 11. (796).
We must note a progression of errors in sensist thinkers:
1st. They began by establishing that all the objects of our thoughts can be reduced to acquired sensations.
2nd. Following this principle, Condillac correctly concluded that Locke had not gone far enough in affirming the non-existence of all innate ideas; indeed, he should have said there were no innate faculties either.
3rd. But Condillac's observation only took the system a step further. If sensism was to be logical, it could not limit itself to the denial of ideas and innate faculties; it should have said that not even an innate human spirit existed. And clearly, if all feelings are reduced to acquired sensations, human beings had to acquire the human spirit. Helvetius drew the same conclusion: `The spirit,' he writes, `is only the complex of our ideas. According to Locke, our ideas come from the senses, and we can conclude from this principle and from mine that the human spirit is simply an acquisition' (Récapitulation de l'Homme, Sect. 2, c. 1). This was the opinion in France. Italy, although endowed with great clarity and nobility of intelligence and called by Providence to think for itself and be a master of truth, was for a long time satisfied to regurgitate the errors of other nations. We have heard Helvetius' opinion re-echoed in Gioia, who writes in his elements of Philosophy: `The whole of our existence is simply a continual movement of sensations' (Elem. di Filosofia ad uso de' Giovanetti, t. 1, p. 140, Milan edition, 1822). Foscoli also repeats the opinion, transforming the error into a basic theory of literature. Many other Italians have repeated the opinion, but less boldly.
4th. The spirit, that is, the human soul, is therefore an acquisition. But if it is only a complex of acquired sensations, what gives it unity? - We would have to say that there are as many souls as there are sensations or, as sensists call them, ideas. Such a necessary consequence did not escape Hume in his dialectic; he dissolved the human spirit into many unconnected ideas without a subject, as we can see in his writings on Human Nature. Such in fact is the final development of the sensist theory: the abolition of the human subject and the abandonment of acquired ideas, left to drift in an limitless sea! Hume's teaching, which turns the soul into ideas, is exactly the opposite of the Platonists' error, which turns ideas into souls (into a subject) (cf. Plato's Parmenides and Ficino's explanation of the dialogue).
Considering all these errors we note: 1. the usual partial view proper to sensism that cannot see further than the feeling or animal part of the human being; 2. the imperfection of such an observation limited even to animality - the observation concerns only multiple, acquired sensations without arriving at the unique fundamental feeling, of which the acquired sensations are only modifications. As we said from the beginning the animal feels the unity of its own feeling. In this feeling, it feels passivity and activity and that first energy which virtually includes all sensations and actions subsequent to the feeling. These sensations and experiences proceed from a single, active principle which produces and governs them with a single, harmonious authority.