THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 289 



know as the sensationalist and the intellectualist, 

 the empiricist and the rationalist. Admitting that 

 the dominance of the question of the possibility 

 and nature of knowledge is at bottom a funda 

 mental question of practice and of social direc 

 tion, is this distinction anything more than the 

 clash of scholastic opinions, a rivalry of ideas 

 meaningless for conduct? 



I think it is. Having made so many sweeping 

 assertions I must venture one more. Fanciful and 

 forced as it may seem, I would say that the sensa 

 tional and empirical schools represent in conscious 

 and reflective form the continuation of the princi 

 ple of the northern and barbarian side of medieval 

 life; while the intellectualist and the rationalist 

 stand for the conscious elaboration of the principle 

 involved in the Graeco-Roman tradition. 



Once more, as I cannot hope to prove, let me 

 expand and illustrate. The sensationalist has 

 staked himself upon the possibility of explaining 

 and justifying knowledge by conceiving it as the 

 grouping and combination of the qualities directly 

 given us in sensation. The special reasons ad 

 vanced in support of this position are sufficiently 

 technical and remote. But the motive which has 

 kept the sensationalist at work, which animated 

 Hobbes and Locke, Hume and John Stuart Mill, 

 Voltaire and Diderot, was a human not a scholastic 

 one. It was the belief that only in sensation do 



