128 Herbert Spencer 



and developed the doctrines of his contemporaries and im- 

 mediate predecessors that the philosophy he sets before us 

 is the very culmination of their efforts — the bloom and 

 fructification resulting from long-continued anterior processes 

 of growth. Not only if his philosophy is true should we be 

 thankful to him, but also if it is false ; since we may be sure 

 that if he fails to convince, it is from no deficiency of his, 

 but from a fatal defect in his cause — a defect only made the 

 more patent by the ability of its advocate. 



The prolonged dispute, between those who assert and 

 those who deny that all our ideas are modified sensations 

 and no more, has undergone a strange transformation within 

 the last quarter of a century, and with this transformation 

 we witness as strange a reaction. The ambiguity of Locke 

 caused his system to be developed by Hume, through 

 Berkeley, into scepticism, and by Condillac into unmitigated 

 materialism. These results were the occasion of that Kantian 

 resurrection hailed throughout the Continent as a philo- 

 sophical system finally and triumphantly refuting the school 

 of empiricism. They were also the occasion of the parallel 

 movement in Great Britain of Reid and his followers — a 

 movement less developed and less conspicuous than was the 

 reaction under Kant on the European mainland. The event 

 has shown, however, that sensationalism was scotched, not 

 killed. In spite of Royer-CoUard, Maine-de-Biran, Jouffroy, 

 and Cousin, the grossest sensationahsm has reappeared in 

 France through Auguste Comte. In Britain, the successors 

 of Reid — Sir William Hamilton, Mansel, and M'Cosh — have 

 all been unsuccessful in exorcising the sensational spirit, and 

 though Mr John Stuart Mill (as almost a pure Lockian) may 

 be regarded as an instance of philosophical ' survival,' yet 

 Hume lives again in Huxley and in Lewes; and indeed 

 (however they may differ as to subordinate questions) Messrs. 

 Spencer, Bain, Mill, Huxley, and Lewes, unite in an essential 



