CHAPTER 2

65. The first ideas to come under analysis are those of physical entia. Locke's modern philosophy concentrates upon these. Locke scarcely sees the difficulty arising from a desire to explain the origin of the idea of substance. Indeed, he went further, setting aside the idea of substance and even denying its existence. It did not fit his system and therefore was not.
He was unaware that, without it, we would have no way of forming for ourselves the idea of external bodies; nor did he grasp that every idea we have of a body inevitably includes the idea of substance, that is, of an existence proper to itself and not to anything else; in short, of a subject of sensible qualities.

However, Locke's remark about the impossibility of deriving the idea of substance from the senses was shrewd, although as an isolated remark, it took considerable time to come to fruition.
Because the idea of substance had occurred to him in abstract form, Locke was unable to see its connection with many other, more limited ideas. Consequently he spoke of it theoretically, as if it were an imaginary ens which philosophy could perhaps do without.

The philosophers who came after Locke were also unaware of the full impact of Locke's remark, and failed to give it due importance.
Instead they concerned themselves particularly with the way in which Locke deduced the ideas of bodies. In so doing, they discovered that some of his arguments were arbitrary and that he skirted around difficulties which should have caused him thought.
Locke was unaware of the need to pause and offer a more satisfactory explanation than that available to the ordinary person of the way we can form the ideas of things outside ourselves. He took as his starting point the following principle, which for him was a basic fact: 'Sensations give us immediately the ideas of bodies outside ourselves.' He did not think there was any need to spend time explaining such a primal fact.
D'Alembert noted that this could not be accepted as a primal fact; it presented difficulties requiring a solution. These were the problems d'Alembert saw:(57)

1. Sensations are only modifications of our spirit. They exist purely in ourselves. How, then, can we go out of ourselves and form the idea of something outside us if we have no other source for our ideas than sensations which are wholly present within us?

66. 2. Sensations are all separate and independent of each other. Our sensation of smell, for example, has nothing to do with our sensation of colour; that of colour has no correspondence with that of taste or sound, nor with that of touch. Our idea of body, however, is a complex of all these sensible, yet intrinsically distinct qualities which, in our idea, are combined and assigned to a single subject, that is, to the body of which we have the idea. How does our soul happen to combine these sensations and assign them to a single subject? If the senses alone provide us with the ideas of bodies, it is not clear how this can come about.

67. The difficulties which d'Alembert noted as rising from Locke's theory were the very difficulties that Locke had seen in attempting to explain the idea of substance. Locke however was considering the idea of substance in general, while d'Alembert, adopting a more partial approach, was considering the idea of substance in bodies.

In fact, thinking of a body outside us as a single subject to which the sensible qualities perceived by our senses are referred is merely the equivalent of thinking of a support, of a necessary centre for sensible qualities, in short, of bodily substance.
D'Alembert, however, did not realise that the two difficulties were only one.(58) In fact he showed that he concurred fully with Locke in denying the idea of substance(59) while, without realising it, raising the question: 'Whence do we derive the substantial idea we have of bodies?' Such is the indolence of the human spirit! Even the sharpest minds grope after the truth in a dim twilight.

68. D'Alembert indicates the two difficulties I have mentioned, but without solving them. Condillac followed him and attempted a solution.
To highlight a question in any way is always a step forward for philosophy, and d'Alembert deserves credit for what he did. However, he remained faithful to Locke's principle that all ideas come from the senses. At the time, such a principle, affirmed obstinately, was impossible to abandon.

Asking how we can pass from sensations, which are within our spirit, to form our ideas of bodies is the same as asking: 'How can we form a judgment before being supplied with ideas?' Actually, to have the concept of something outside ourselves, we have to form the following judgments: 1. some thing exists; 2. this thing which exists is outside me; 3. this thing which exists is the subject of the sensible qualities which I perceive. To form all these judgments, I must possess universal ideas. The formation of ideas, therefore, requires previous ideas: the first ideas that I form (such as those relating to bodies) are inexplicable unless I assume a first idea given to me by nature.

69. This is the question expressed to its fullest extent. Condillac however saw only the first part of it. He realised that judgments were necessary for the formation of ideas of bodies, but did not realise that these judgments presupposed prior universal ideas. This second step was short and easy after the first. Nevertheless, he failed to take it; such is the slow, protracted progress of the human spirit.

Condillac, therefore, with the benefit of hindsight was able to see things more extensively, and could reproach Locke with not having noticed how judgments are mixed with our sensations.
Condillac refers to Locke at the beginning of his Treatise on Sensations when he says:

And a little later:

70. This passage perhaps gives the impression that Condillac had thoroughly grasped the difference, which had eluded Locke, between external sensations and the judgments associated with them. It would seem to follow, therefore, that he had to posit two essentially distinct faculties, one enabling us to experience sensations, the other enabling us to make judgments upon them. His fondness for systems, however, leads him to do the opposite, that is, to reduce them all to a single faculty, to sensation alone. Thus, instead of adding to Locke's two principles, sensation and reflection, he attempts to reduce them to sensation alone. This systematic error is similar to that already indicated where a person tries to explain all kinds of sensations by means of a single sense. Anyone setting out to show that the faculty of sight, which enables us to perceive colours, is the same as that enabling us to perceive sounds and tastes, makes an assumption as difficult and absurd as that which forms the whole essence of Condillac's system:

71. In order to grasp more clearly Condillac's errors, let us follow him step by step. First, this is how he states the argument in the second part of the Treatise on Sensations:

A single faculty, a single sense, performs two different operations called by different names and recognised as distinct by Condillac himself: 1. it feels external things and 2. makes judgments about them.(61)
Condillac also attributes two distinct kinds of operation, feeling and judgment, to the other senses. He claims, however, that the senses do not receive the power of judging from themselves; rather, a power is communicated to them by the sense of touch (a very mysterious communication!) which is also sole judge. This is what he proposes to show in the third part:

72. Condillac, read carefully, appears as someone who intends to explain the progressive development of our faculties in a careful, analytical way, without any unwarranted step. He seems convinced that he can succeed where all his predecessors have failed. At the same time, it is obvious that his approach to rigorous, reliable argument is still at an infantile stage. As we ourselves try to retrace his steps with accuracy and skill (observation is more refined now, and we are less tolerant of unjustified argument), the crudity of his analysis of the operations of the spirit becomes more obvious. He interposes and assumes the most telling facts without explanation and without accurate observation - or at least without realising that they require justification and explanation.

To show this more clearly and to reveal how he was quite unaware of the difficulty involved in explaining the act of judgment without presupposing the existence within us of something innate, let us see how he crudely and artlessly reduces all other faculties to sensation alone.(63)

73. First of all, Condillac attempts to reduce attention to sensation in the following way:

However, it was easy to see that the action of external agents on our sense organs and the accompanying sensation is distinct from the activity of the intellective spirit which particularly handles this sensation.(64)

74. We can experience pure sensation without any act of will on the part of our spirit provided the spirit is ready to welcome the sensation passively. But attention to a sensation is an activity subject to our will; it is not mere passivity. Let us imagine that we receive four sensations simultaneously. Let us also imagine that we are in a state of passivity or inertia, and that all the sensations are of more or less the same intensity. Now if, instead of displaying the same equanimity and indifference to these four sensations, we concentrate as hard as we can on one, there is no doubt that, as a result of this concentration, we shall experience more keenly the sensation in question. Nevertheless, we cannot fail to perceive the others as well, although less forcefully. There is in our spirit, therefore, an operation of the will, a power enabling us to focus (where four similar sensations are involved) on any one we wish and thereby make its impact upon us more intense. This observation clearly shows that the power of our spirit, when activated by our will as it concentrates on sensations and chooses one rather than another, is something entirely different from the sensations themselves which exist even when such power does not come into play.

This can be experienced when we listen to a quartet. In allowing the music to pervade our hearing without our spirit's making use of any particular activity, we take in the playing and we experience all the sensations which the four instruments produce in us. However, it will soon be obvious that there is in our mind an operation of will quite different from this passive feeling. We deliberately compose the spirit either to take in more fully the entire range of harmony or to focus on a single instrument and enjoy its variation of tone or admire the player's virtuosity. Sensation, therefore, is a passive faculty for which the spirit has no need of any special, autonomous operation. Attention, on the other hand, is an active faculty whereby a person frequently and willingly brings into play the power of his spirit. In this sense, it is true that if engaged in sensation alone 'a human being is still no more than an animal that feels.' However, human beings never engage with sensation alone; besides the capacity for feeling, they have another power, whether they actually use it or not, of focusing their intellective activity upon one thing rather than another. From the very first moments of their existence, this marks them off from other animals and places them in an essentially higher class.(65)

75. Condillac is no more successful when he endeavours to show that memory also is a sensation.

It seems impossible for someone to be so wrong as to state that perceiving present and past sensations are acts of the same nature. Can a past sensation be perceived or felt?

76. A sensation, when past, no longer exists. Its existence in our memory cannot be said to exist in the same way as a real sensation. Its reality is over and done with, as the saying goes: 'We remember past sensations.' To exist in the form of a real sensation implies that our sensories are currently affected. Sensation really begins when our sensories are affected in the way necessary for feeling. The actual sensation remains as long as the sensories continue to be affected. As soon as the impression has ceased, the reality of the sensation has also ceased. On the other hand, the memory remains or, more exactly, begins precisely when the sensation has ceased. It is not therefore a sensation.

77. The expression: 'Past sensations are retained in the memory' seems to have led Condillac astray. He would not have erred if he had realised that, strictly speaking, the expression is inaccurate. The word sensation in the statement: 'Sensations are retained in the memory', has a different meaning when actual sensations are under discussion. It is not in fact real sensations which are retained in our memory, but their remembrance, which creates the memory. Anyone can see that remembering a pain is different from feeling a pain, and that calling to mind a pleasant feeling is different from feeling the actual sensation.

The mistake arising from the double meaning of the word 'sensation' applied to sense organs and to memory is in a way similar to the mistake of those who, when shown a portrait and told 'This is Manzoni', take the portrait as the real, living Manzoni! In fact the picture of Manzoni is intrinsically different from Manzoni himself, who is not a meagre canvas daubed with oils and colours, but a grown man of flesh and bone. Nor would it be correct to claim that the portrait was Alessandro Manzoni transformed. Manzoni, who would certainly deny having been transformed into a canvas and plastered with colours, would think we were mad. The sensation said to be in me when I recall it is not the actual sensation which, for example, caused me such an acute pain when my arm or leg was pierced. This can be felt only in the arm or leg, not in the memory where it is pure recollection, assisted perhaps by some residual or revived image but always something distinct and entirely disparate from the reality of sensation.(67) Hence sensation and memory of sensation cannot be confused even if they are both called 'sensation'. Whatever their interdependence or relationship, one can never be called a transformation of the other. Sense and memory are essentially different faculties which cannot be treated as one for the sake of some systematic, unnatural simplicity.(68)

78. Condillac, after imagining that he had shown the non-essential difference between the faculty of memory and the faculty of sensation, continues in the following forthright vein:

This is a rapid bird's eye view of a vast area; obstacles magically disappear as Condillac takes flight.

79. First, it requires little thought to understand that the act whereby we focus our attention either on the objects of memory or on the terms of sense is neither memory nor sense.
Attention is a power directed by our spirit or rather, it is the deliberative activity itself of our spirit (cf. 73-74). We focus our attention by an act of will, and can vary the intensity of such attention to suit ourselves.

We have already seen how sensation is distinguished from attention by its passivity, and from memory by its different term (cf. 75-77).
It is also easy to see that attention is distinct from memory, which is formed from remembrance of things past. This is its very nature. The act whereby we focus our attention can be applied to things past and things present. It is therefore different from the act of remembrance.

80. Consequently we have three essentially different faculties: 1. that whereby we feel present impressions; 2. that whereby we retain our memory of them when they are over; finally 3. that whereby we focus the intellective activity of our spirit at will on present or past sensations (this can be done with varying degrees of intensity).

81. Let us press on:

This method of argument is utterly wrong. It requires only a moment's thought to realise that focusing on two ideas does not constitute a comparison. I can restrict my attention perfectly well first on a single idea, then on another, without comparing them and seeing how they differ.

82. Even if focusing attention on two ideas inevitably involved comparing them and seeing how they differ, we would still have to distinguish three contemporary effects in our spirit: 1. attention focused upon one idea; 2. attention focused upon the other idea; 3. attention focused upon the difference between the two ideas. It would remain to be seen whether these three effects were of the same nature, and could be attributed to the same faculty. They could be contemporaneous, but dependent on different powers. Simultaneity is not sufficient to attribute them to the same power if they are not of the same nature.

83. Moreover, these three effects are not necessarily simultaneous. The fact is that I can first focus on one idea, then on another, without having focused my attention on the difference between them.
To realise more clearly that focusing one's attention on two ideas is not the same as comparing them and discovering how they differ, and that not even the attention focused on both ideas leads me inevitably to compare them and work out their difference, we have only to look at what occurs in the case of ideas involving numbers.

Let us assume I have the idea of the number thirty-five and that of the number forty-nine. Can I not concentrate on both without having to compare them and see how they differ? My knowledge of these two numbers is altogether different from my knowledge of the difference between them. The difference in this case is fourteen, that is, a third number which is neither thirty-five nor forty-nine. It is a third object of my thought, different from the first two, which I myself produce by means of a particular operation proper to my spirit and carry out on the two numbers given to me and kept before my spirit.

I can focus my attention on both numbers without performing that operation or act of the spirit by means of which I notice their difference, but I am also able to keep both numbers present at the same time and carry out numerous different operations on them without any need to carry out that which shows their difference.

84. The reason why Condillac was persuaded that attention could not be fixed on two things without discovering their difference seems to depend on his having observed solely that which usually and most frequently occurs when we think about things which are easily compared and whose difference is easily grasped.

85. However, it is quite remarkable that he did not observe how the act of the spirit whereby we compare two ideas for the sake of discovering their difference is of its nature quite distinct from merely fixing our attention on the two of them. Even if, every time we focused on two ideas, we were induced to compare them and discover their difference by an inherent law of our nature, we would still have to say that the act of comparison and the discovery of the difference is intrinsically distinct from merely focusing one's attention on both. Furthermore, it is an act of the spirit worthy of separate analysis. It should not be skipped over casually.

When I simply focus my attention on two ideas, I do not create a new object of my attention, but I engage my attention with two objects already existing in my spirit. On the other hand, when I compare two ideas and distinguish what is proper from what is common to them, I form for myself a new object of consideration, that is, their difference, which previously I had never thought of as separate and distinct from the objects (cf. 95).

86. Condillac should not have skipped so casually over the act of comparison and differentiation without analysing it. This is the duty of any philosopher who proposes to explain the inner working of the human spirit, and would perhaps have enabled him to see the difficulty of which I have spoken. It is, I think, insuperable, unless we first admit something innate in our spirits.

This passage, in which the philosopher discusses the comparison of ideas, would imply a prior explanation of the word idea.
Condillac, however, does not define 'idea' until much later. As a result, it was natural, when undertaking the explanation of the formation of judgments through the comparison of ideas, that he should encounter no difficulties. Without a definition of the nature of ideas, it is impossible to grasp what he is saying. But it is precisely when the argument is formally correct that readers are more indulgent to error, even though the meaning of the words used in the argument remains unspecified.

87. To avoid the same fate, let us first examine what Condillac means by the word idea, and then see whether his argument is free from difficulty.

He distinguishes sensations from ideas in the following way:

It would appear from this passage that Condillac does not attribute the word 'idea' to the sensation we experience here and now. On the other hand, he does assign 'idea' to the sensation which is retained solely in the memory. I have pointed out that sensation, when present in our memory, even though given the same name, is nevertheless something entirely different from actual sensation. Essentially, the nature of sensation consists in the passive modification which our spirit undergoes when our sensories (cf. 75-77) receive impressions from exterior things. It follows that the meaning of idea is essentially different from the meaning of sensation precisely because idea is applied to the remembrance of sensations, which is not a sensation but arises when a sensation no longer exists.

It is helpful to see how Condillac is led to such a distinction.
His following remarks show that he does not give the name 'idea' to sensation properly speaking but to our memories of it. Sensation does not represent anything outside itself. Memory on the other hand represents, or rather recalls, something different from itself, that is, sensation, of which it is the remembrance. According to our philosopher, what makes some apprehension by our spirit an idea is its capacity to represent something different from itself. This is why he attributes to the sense of touch the power to change sensations into ideas. He imagines that touch alone of all the senses is that which has the power to make our sensations representative. He says:

.

Note that, in this passage, the abbé de Condillac bestows the power to transform sensations into ideas (that is, to make sensations represent something external to themselves) upon the very sense to which he had attributed the power to judge external objects (cf. 70-71).
His entire theory of sensations is devoted, we may say, to demonstrating 'that touch alone judges of itself external objects, and teaches the other senses to judge them'. In the same way, touch is that faculty whose sensations are simultaneously ideas, and which transforms the sensations of the other senses into ideas.
According to Condillac, sensations are transformed into ideas by means of a judgment. In the passage I have quoted, he teaches that touch has the capacity to transform sensations into ideas only because it has the capacity of judging external objects. Touch, therefore, transforms sensations into ideas by means of judgment whereby it judges that such sensations are external to us.

88. I have already shown that it is as absurd to attribute to touch the ability to judge as it is to grant the eye the faculty of both seeing colours and hearing sounds. What is more, it requires only a moment's attention to recognise that the act of judgment is essentially internal, and proper to the spirit alone.(71) It does not require any external, actual impression on the organs. The action of touch, on the other hand, originates from an actual modification of the external, bodily organs. For the moment, however, I do not intend to take this distinction into account. Based solely upon Condillac's principles, my argument is as follows:

89. You say that the act of judgment consists in comparing two ideas and discovering how they differ.
In a different passage, you explain what you mean by the word idea. You teach that ideas are such that no one can have them without some judgment. You conclude that only the sense of touch is able to transform sensations into ideas because it alone has per se the ability to judge concerning sensations.
Now this is just where the difficulty lies. The problem consists in reconciling these two propositions: 1. a judgment is made by comparing ideas; 2. ideas are formed by means of a judgment. Which is the first, then, to be formed in our spirit, the judgment or the idea?
If every idea needs a judgment in order to be formed, it would seem that judgment is prior to the formation of ideas; but if judgment originates only by comparison between ideas, it would seem that ideas should be present before we can form judgments.(72)

90. This is precisely the difficulty which I outlined above and which requires a solution; it emerges here in all its generality.
It no longer involves a particular class of ideas, that is, common or universal ideas, but all ideas without distinction. It does not say: 'In order to make a judgment, some abstract element is necessary; but to produce an abstract, a judgment is necessary. Which of the two will be first, the abstract or the judgment?' It says: 'To make a judgment we need ideas which require comparison with each other. However, to produce ideas a judgment is needed. Which will be first in the human spirit, judgment or idea?'
This inquiry, when transposed into the form of a philosophical problem, may be expressed as follows: 'To assign origins to ideas and judgments so that neither takes the existence of the other for granted and, as a result, to avoid the absurd situation whereby an effect is taken to be the cause of its own cause.' This would be the case if all ideas were the result of judgments and all judgments the result of ideas.

91. Before attempting to see whether any other philosopher managed to extricate himself from this embarassing difficulty by solving the problem, it will help if I consider Condillac's theory more at length.
The concept of idea that Condillac offers us is that of a perception representative of something different from itself. It seems obvious that a judgment is required to realise that a perception has a relationship with something different from itself, and is thus able to represent it.(73)

A mere modification affecting the soul, such as a pain, a pleasure, is certainly felt without the need for any judgment. However, in order to understand how a modification may represent something else, the soul must make a judgment about the modification. This explains why Condillac attributes the formation of ideas to touch; as I said, he bestows on this sense the faculty of judging that its own or others' sensations are representative of external agents.
The difference between us, as I see it, for the moment, is simply that for me, but not for him, touch and judgment are two distinct powers. Touch consists in the impression of external agents felt by the soul; judgment is proper to the spirit, independently of any actual modification of the bodily organs. Judgment is not the prerogative of the sense of touch, which merely has the task of furnishing the spirit with the occasion and matter for making a judgment.

92. This difference between Condillac and myself has no bearing upon the objection which I am bringing against him. Whether judgment and touch are identical, as he claims, or are separate faculties, as I maintain, we both agree that a judgment is needed to form ideas.

Here the truth to which I referred in my exposé of the difficulty will become much more apparent: every idea, however particular it may be, contains within itself a universal or common element (cf. 43). Where ideas are involved, even when they are applied to particular things, we can always separate what is common from what is proper and thus find in particular things the common element. This would be impossible if it were not there. This truth flows, as we can see, from Condillac's views themselves.

As Condillac sees it, having an idea or a representative conception(74) is equivalent to having a model to which he can refer the objects which the model presents or expresses.(75)

A portrait is a representation of the person whom the artist has painted. However, as I said earlier, the painting in this image or portrait is merely a resemblance; it is not the nature or common substance of the person depicted. Consequently, persons other than the one the artist has painted may resemble the same portrait. The person depicted does not have such an exclusive relationship with the painted image that he can monopolise, so to speak, the resemblance and prevent others resembling the portrait in some way. Likewise, the moment a perception has become representative of something other than itself, it has become universal in the sense that, besides representing the thing from which it derived, it can, like the portrait of a specific individual, also represent and express everything resembling it. Being representative of something means bearing its likeness; this does not exclude but rather includes similar relationships with countless things that are or can be like it. A relationship of resemblance between two things does not pervade them equally; it does not endow them with the same nature; it does not wed them, so to speak, with a lasting bond. It leaves them free to resemble as many things as possible which they resemble. One similarity does not prevent or interfere with another but embodies and presupposes it. That is why, as soon as Condillac states that all ideas are perceptions representing things, he also has to state that there is in all of them a universal element which alone can make them representative. There must be a common feature because several things are not similar unless they have something in common. It is this common essence which, when viewed in isolation, can be considered as being typical of everything it refers to. A type therefore is always universal.

If, however, we want to particularise by referring it to an individual thing, that is, to the thing from which it has been extracted, we have a merely arbitrary, positive particularisation, not a natural, necessary one.
If Condillac had noticed this, he would not have spoken in one place about ideas and in another, much further on, of universal ideas. He would not have spoken about ideas without indicating the universality they all contain. He could then have spoken elsewhere about the different kinds of universality.
It is highly important to remove any doubt about the truth which I have demonstrated, that is, that every perception, from the moment it represents something, is universal. Let us see once more, therefore, how Condillac explains the universalisation of a particular idea.

93. As a result, we mean that an idea, when said to be general and universal, is a model for many objects, or rather for many real individuals. This is tantamount to saying that its function is to represent them. But every idea is a perception possessing the faculty of representation; every idea is a model. Every idea, therefore, has within it a universal element. Now, in my view, Condillac was prevented from grasping this truth because he confused the capacity of an idea for representing an infinite number of individual real entities with its use, that is, with the act whereby we explicitly recognise such an aptitude in the idea.

People who have an ancestor's portrait at home probably think only of the connection between the portrait and the ancestor on which it is based. This particular relationship gives the portrait a definite status as representative of the forefather of the family.

It remains to be seen, however, whether this fixed representation is derived from the nature of the picture and its exclusive relationship with the person depicted, or whether it depends on the accidental attitude of those who look at the picture not in its purely natural relationships but in a formal relationship, so to speak, whereby they know and remember that it was painted to bring out the desired features of this person alone, not of anyone else. It is clear that the issue involves a formal, not a natural relationship. Although fortuitous causes lead the family members to think constantly about the particular resemblance of the picture to the ancestor, this does not alter the nature of the image, nor prevent it from truly resembling and representing all those whom it resembles and represents, as well as the infinite number of people whom one can imagine endowed with the same features.

Similarly, as soon as a perception of ours is representative, it has a necessary, universal relationship with everything that it can represent. This is independent of the use we make of it and of the attention we bestow on different individuals whom it expresses and represents. It may be that we consider it as representative of a single individual, or two or three. This does not rule out its natural capacity to represent an infinite number of others even though we are not paying any attention to them. Moreover, because these individuals whom it represents can be multiplied indefinitely by our imagination, it is impossible for us to go through them all and apply it to all. Consequently, whenever we have a representative conception, we still have the task of applying it to individuals. This becomes almost an art which we learn step by step; we study, as it were, how to use our conception. But whether we do this well or ill, the nature of the concept always remains what it is. As such, it is capable of representing an infinite number of individuals even when we ignore this. True, we may tend to believe that this conception represents a single individual, just as the members of a family are accustomed to think that the ancestor's portrait represents one ancestor alone. The portrait, however, does not thereby cease to resemble those whose likeness it depicts. In the same way, our representative conception truly represents everything it stands for, and we conceive it as such. We think of it as endowed also with its representative character.

Condillac, as we know, requires his statue to see, after acquiring the concept of an orange, not one orange or several similar oranges successively, but two or more simultaneously. The aim is that the statue, by referring the multiple oranges to the idea it already possesses, may recognise this idea as the model or type of all other oranges.(77) But in doing this, he does not demonstrate, as he himself notices, how the idea is converted into a model or a universal. He only shows how we set about using it as a model for a number of oranges. The idea already constitutes a model per se, and our application of it presupposes that it is already such in itself. If we compare the various oranges which we see simultaneously to the idea of the orange we already have, we do not alter the nature of this idea. We merely apply it as a universal type. But if we can do this, the idea is per se universal, and has been so from the moment it was put in our mind. If not, it could not be used as such.

Take the portrait we have mentioned and imagine that someone outside the family looks at it. Its universal relationship with all the persons who do or can resemble it is not a new relationship created by the viewer, who simply discovers something already existing in it. Similarly, if we relate more oranges to the type of orange we have in our spirit, we do not change the nature of this type which was capable of representing all oranges, even if we ourselves have not focused exclusively on its aptitude and function, or thought that it represented only one orange.

Condillac thinks he has explained how our ideas become models for many individual ideas. In fact, he has merely pointed out the way whereby we later come to use them as models and recognise in them the in-built identity which makes them what they are. This identity consists in being representative of countless individuals, that is, of making us know the qualities which are or may be common to countless individuals. So, if we presuppose our acquisition of such conceptions, we also presuppose our acquisition of universal, common ideas which have slipped furtively and unseen into our spirit. These certainly escaped the attention of Condillac who found them in his statue, without realising how they had got there. Having found them, his investigations caused him no further difficulty. He assumed, without any justification, that the difficulty had been explained. In fact, he never saw it.

94. Having an idea and knowing how to use it are different things. Our spirit, which always proceeds step by step, comes to know the uses of ideas only as a result of sustained reflection and close analysis. It thereby discovers new relationships which ideas have with one another and with external things and, as a result of these relationships, finds new applications for such ideas. However, this does not mean our spirit does not fully possess the idea on which it carries out all these different operations. Without the idea, it could not carry out such operations nor discover the relationships and applications to which I am referring.

It is a condition of the human spirit that with one act it takes in the idea of things, and with another knows how it is to be used. But, as Condillac says, our spirit normally uses ideas as models for things. Thus it uses the idea of orange to judge about all oranges. When our spirit, therefore, perceives a number of oranges and is drawn to judge them all with the same idea which it uses as their general type and model, it does not acquire a new species of idea, that is, a universal idea, as Condillac seems to claim. We have to say that his idea was universal by nature, that is, apt to serve as a model or common type for all oranges. Only when the spirit sees a number of oranges together is it moved to use such a type to judge them.

95. The truth of this teaching is such that occasionally even Condillac seems to have glimpsed it, although reluctantly.
Take, for example, the passage where he speaks about judgment, which he conceives simply as an operation through which a person refers the object or present sensation which he is judging to the model or type of the sensation he has already stored in his memory.

As we have seen, he distinguishes two forms of attention: one proper to memory, the other to the senses. The former is active, the latter passive. He believes that these two kinds of attention (that enabling us to recall things previously seen which are retained in the memory, and that enabling us to perceive an individual object by means of our senses at any given moment) enable him to explain what a judgment is. We form a judgment when we compare the object which we presently perceive with the object which we have previously perceived, the image of which is retained in our memory. Now this is merely to refer what is real and actually felt to the type or model which we have already lodged in our memory. He says:

When one thing is compared with another in order to make a judgment, one of the two things is used as a model. The judgment simply endeavours to ascertain whether the thing about which a judgment is to be made is like the model or not. All judgments are of this kind. According to Condillac, the model is the idea present in the memory, while the thing to be judged is actually being perceived by sense.

96. However, if the idea in my memory, with which I compare things submitted to my senses for judgment, serves as a model in such judgments, it is consequently general in the sense that Condillac attributes to this word. As we have seen, the generality of an idea consists, according to him, in its acting as a model to a great number of objects. We ask Condillac, therefore, why he deals with judgments in his works even before discussing the universality of ideas. In fact, he deals with universal ideas in the fourth part of the Traité des sensations and judgments in the second.(80) If universal ideas are needed to form a judgment, as Condillac's theory would lead us to believe, it is impossible to explain the nature of judgments without first explaining the nature of ideas. Condillac, however, dealt with universal ideas after judgments because he realised that ideas of this type could not be formed according to his system except by means of judgments. He says:

It should be noted that, in Condillac's system, there is no comparison without a judgment. If, then, a comparison is required to transform a particular idea into a general idea, a judgment is certainly required. In fact, the opposite holds good: all judgments require an idea in their formation. This implies the prior formation of general ideas, or simply ideas (because all ideas have some universal element in themselves). The opposite also holds true: the formation of general ideas presupposes judgments, according to Condillac. His theory does not meet this difficulty which he bypasses without noticing it. He discusses ideas, judgments and general ideas in three different places as though they were unrelated, despite the impossibility of discussing one without intimate knowledge of the others. Finally, having spent much time explaining general ideas, he preens himself on the ease with which he has done this: 'It can be seen from this how easy it is to form general ideas.'(82)

97. So far, we have attempted to focus our discussion on Condillac and to bring to bear the type of arguments usually referred to as ad hominem. However, it would not be fair of me to overstate my last criticism of Condillac. I have myself already made a remark which mitigates Condillac's mistake, as we shall see.
In explaining the formation of universal ideas, Condillac mentions two sorts of ideas, particular and general. The former become general when our spirit, by making a comparison between general ideas and the individuals presented to it, uses them as models. In doing so, it forms a judgment about them.

As I showed, however, ideas do not become universal at this stage. They already have a universal element from the time they begin to be ideas. Condillac's own system bears this out. He defines an idea as a sensation representing other things, such as those retained by our memory. He uses the term 'general' for ideas which are used as models. But a representative idea is the same as a model. Condillac himself says that 'idea' necessarily contains this universal aspect. This shows that his mistake about the formation of general ideas consists above all in the incorrect use of the phrase 'formation of general ideas'. He ought to have said: 'The recognition and application by our soul of the universality inherent in all ideas.'

If Condillac's followers were to admit the inaccuracy of the expression, I would not be justified in putting forward my argument, which states: 'You require a judgment to form universal ideas; you require universal ideas to form a judgment. This is a vicious circle from which, given the nature of your system, you will never find a way out.' They would reply: 'We admit our mistake in saying that we form universal ideas only when we recognise them and apply them as models. They were already universal as soon as they were ideas. The judgments we form with them do not make them universal; they merely enable us to recognise them as such. They are consequently universal independently of such judgments, and there is no need for us to make these judgments before the ideas.'

98. However, if Condillac's followers are able, by rectifying their expression, to shrug off the force of my argument, which is strictly ad hominem and based on his inaccurate statement, the problem as I stated it earlier remains unsolved because it lies at the heart of Condillac's philosophy. It is impossible to form an idea unless a judgment is involved in the operation,(83) nor can judgments be made without pre-formed ideas. This leaves the problem in a state of complete ambiguity. Indeed it brands either Condillac's philosophy as false, or the formation of both judgments and ideas as inexplicable.

(57) Yet d'Alembert speaks of Locke's An Essay concerning Human Understanding as a complete treatise of metaphysics! At the time, it was the book to read. We cannot now accept the way in which people of the time overrated Locke. The human spirit has since moved on.

(58) One way to simplify philosophical questions is to clarify one's ideas and reduce the difficulties and questions to a minimum. The forms in which the difficulties occur are too numerous, and each new form is taken for a new question, although it may be the same. This is the result of the nature of language which furnishes thought with countless variations and forms. Those who wish to make a vain, ostentatious and useless display of their learning try to introduce problems, arguments and objections in their hundreds. Such pathetic ostentation can only impress morons. It is worse than the ostentation of the lunatic who broke everything that came his way into tiny pieces and claimed that this multiplied the number of objects he possessed.

(59) In my view, the idea of substance was repudiated as a result of a misunderstanding. In other words, it was thought that having the idea of substance required more than was actually the case. In fact, it was sufficient to know that modification requires a modified subject. This subject is the idea of substance. If you say to me: 'But I do not know what this subject is,' you may well be right. What is more, I grant that it is essentially an unknown for you, an 'x'. You do know, however, that it is the subject of certain modifications, that it is the cause of certain effects. But, what more do you wish to know? If you strip it of its modifications, its properties, its effects, it still remains an 'x' for you. You still have an idea of it, therefore, because you know how this unknown is related to what you know. This is our knowledge of substance in general, nor can we expect any more; this is sufficient for us to have the idea of substance.

(60) St. Augustine accurately defines the difference between feeling and judging in a number of passages in his works and sees a vast distance between these two operations of the spirit. He adds that the mind, strictly speaking, consists in the faculty of judgment: Servat aliquid quo libere de specie talium imaginum judicet, et hoc est magis mens, id est rationalis intelligentia, QUAE SERVATUR UT JUDICET [(The mind) contains something with which it may freely judge about the species of such images (of corporeal things). And this much more is the mind, that is, rational intelligence, which is contained so that it may judge] (De Trinit., bk. 9, c. 5).

(61) Both Aristotle and the Scholastics teach that the sense judges. But it would appear that the word judge was understood at that time metaphorically as conveying any similarity noted between the effects of the senses and those of judgment. I am led to this conclusion by passages in Aristotle where he explains the judgment he attributes to the intellect very differently from that attributed to sense. I find it difficult, however, to absolve Aristotle from the error I attribute to Condillac without accusing the former of inaccuracy and impropriety in his expressions.

(62) When I am told that one person communicates knowledge to another by instruction, I understand perfectly well what communicate means. However, I am baffled when told that one sense communicates the faculty of judgment, which it does not possess of itself, to another. Here communicate becomes unintelligible and inexplicable to me.

(63) Further remarks on the system of transformed sensation are to be found in the short work Breve Esposizione della filosofia di M. Gioia, included in the two volumes of Opuscoli filosofici and especially in the notes to pp. 358-365 in which I have endeavoured to set out briefly the absurdities of such a philosophy.

(64) Condillac himself distinguishes in the human spirit passivity and activity. But these two terms must be different if they produce opposing concepts. It is impossible to reduce to a single passive principle, such as mere sensation, all the most active powers of the soul. No one saw this error of Condillac more perspicaciously than Baron Galluppi in his Elementi di filosofia (Messina, 1820), vol. 2, pp.192 ss. In Condillac's native France, we find the following: 'Either Condillac was deluded for thirty years, or never expressed his thought clearly enough, or perhaps did not have the required insight to grasp it. Whatever the reason, I have always found it impossible to understand not how sensation is prior to attentiveness, but how sensation can be transformed into attention; not how an active state can occur immediately after a passive state, but how these two states can be identical in nature in such a way that activity is a transformation of passivity. I am so far from agreeing with this proposition that I scarcely know what is meant by the juxtaposition of the terms of which it is composed' (Laromiguière, Part 1, Lecture 5).

(65) What I have written in this article about attention as the faculty which directs intellective force does not exclude in any way the sensitive activity required for feeling. I accept that this sensitive activity is 1. almost always active in living persons who sense their own body and 2. modified by external sensation. At one moment, it expands quietly; at another it focuses on one of the sensations in accordance with certain instinctive laws.

(66) Can we imagine a more gratuitous statement than this? Condillac offers no evidence for it. Evidence, in the eyes of the philosophers of this school, is nothing but a forthright assertion of their own opinions. Strong assertions have an impact on the unwary reader, and serve as principles of knowledge, from which conclusions can be drawn that are easily reconcilable with their authors' preconceived systems.

(67) Strictly speaking, an idea cannot be called an image; the expression may be applied to the phantasms of bodies when we imagine them to be present just as our senses experienced them, but not to the idea. To understand what an idea is, we must accustom ourselves to consider it as it is in itself without introducing comparisons and metaphors drawn from material things. The idea has its own proper being which is intellectual and superior to bodily sensation.

(68) Condillac himself distinguishes the attention of memory (active) from attention of the senses (passive). This difference, which regards the two as contraries, is the most fundamental of all.

(69) Comparison does not imply twofold attention, but a twofold object: in other words, comparison arises only when a single act of attention is focused on two objects at one time.

(70) This statement is gratuitous; Condillac advances not the slightest evidence for it. But whatever the case - and this is not the place to discuss it - it should be pointed out that it is statements like this, accepted without any evidence, which often stealthily introduce errors into philosophical systems.

(71) The senses provide only the matter of judgment. The act of judgment takes place entirely within the spirit, and does not refer to any point of our body or of the space outside us.

(72) Fortunato da Brescia made a pathetic attempt to evade the difficulty when he thought of adding to Heineccio's definition of idea (a true image of an object which the spirit immediately contemplates) the words: without our affirming or denying anything about the thing itself. Nevertheless, the addition shows that he had at least glimpsed the difficulty. If, through the particular idea, I perceive that real things are outside me, can I realise this without having internally affirmed it to myself? But telling myself that real things are outside me means affirming something, judging that they exist outside me. I think it useful to mention here these obstacles, encountered by all authors who have attempted to explain the origin of ideas, and the various makeshift solutions which they have devised. Such explanations show universal agreement about the existence of the problem. Those who at first tried manfully to hide the difficulty, later disclosed it by the confusion, uncertainty and incoherence of their statements and the poverty of their painful efforts to hide it from themselves and their readers. Elsewhere (Section Five), I shall illustrate the ingenuity displayed by Wolff in extricating himself from this difficulty, and how poorly he succeeded.

(73) As we have seen (cf. 70), St. Augustine expressed extremely well the distinction between the faculties of feeling and judging. In a number of places he points out that if we were endowed with senses alone and lacked any faculty of judgment, we would be unable to use signs because we would lack any means of distinguishing the sign from the thing the sign stands for. This remark is most apposite here and, if philosophers paid due attention to it, could take them a long way towards understanding the way in which our spirit operates. Cf. St. Augustine, The Book of 83 Questions, q. 9 (amongst other works).

(74) I say 'conception'; Condillac would say 'sensation'. But, as we have seen, he stretches the word 'sensation' to mean 'remembrance of a sensation'. This is a dangerous interpretation, an error arising from the inaccuracy of everyday speech. Strictly speaking, a real sensation represents nothing, as I pointed out. What is representative is the remembrance, in the spirit, of the sensation. It is this mental remembrance that should be called 'conception'.

(75) I have already indicated the restricted sense in which one must take the words models, types, images as applied to ideas (cf. 77).

(76) Condillac is alluding here to a factual experience. 'Precisely when the understanding is less informed, people tend to generalise their ideas more readily.' This fact spells the ruin of Condillac's system. If the universality of ideas is an operation of our spirit, will those who are less educated, the most uncouth, be more suited to carry out such an operation? If in universalising ideas, we move from the particular to the universal, how can those who are least experienced scale this ladder faster? Is it easier to universalise much or little? Why is it that this is the sole instance in man's initial development when steps are skipped? The philosophy of Locke and Condillac allows no explanation of this fact which will prove perfectly simple after I have shown that the most universal idea of all (that of being) is bestowed by nature on every person coming into the world.

(77) Traité des sensations, part 4, c. 6.

(78) I have already shown the difference between feeling two things at the same time and comparing them (cf. 81-85). Each claims part of our attention and struggles to attain it all. On the other hand, the spirit, when judging, works in the other direction. It concentrates on both objects simultaneously without focusing exclusively on one. Otherwise, judgment would be impossible. This shows how absurd it is to attribute judgment to the senses. It is an act clean contrary to any action which the senses can contain or exert on our soul. Sensation tries to draw full attention to itself; the faculty of judgment tries to share attention fairly, as it were, among the different things it must compare in order to derive a judgment from them. On the other hand, the expression: sensations judge, is so inaccurate that it would appear impossible to be formulated by a philosopher. If sensation judges or if the senses judge or if judgment is a sensation, one sensation must feel another (because no judgment can occur without some comparison), or the sense of one sensation is the very one which simultaneously senses another sensation, or the relationship felt between two ideas which is the term of the judgment is itself a judgment. All this, however, is manifestly absurd.

(79) Traité des sensations, p. 1, c. 2, § 14 & 15.

(80) He does refer to general ideas also in the first Part when he describes how his statue, endowed with the sense of smell alone, begins to create abstract ideas. But he does this in c. 4 after discussing judgments in c. 2.

(81) Traité des sensations, p. 4, c. 6.

(82) Traité des sensations, p. 4, c. 6, § 6.

(83) Anyone requiring further proof should read carefully the whole paragraph by Condillac from which I quoted. He says: 'If I recall a pain I have had, the memory and the idea are one and the same thing. If I say that I form the idea of a pain about which someone tells me and which I have never experienced, I MAKE A JUDGMENT about a pain which I have suffered or am suffering. In the first case, the idea and the remembrance are identical. In the second, the idea is the feeling of an actual pain, MODIFIED BY THE JUDGMENTS which I make in order to represent to myself someone else's pain' (Extrait raisonné du Traité des sensations).