230 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



leaving it standing as an insoluble dilemma. In France 

 the successors of Condillac early recognised that the 

 theory which reduced all inner life to an automatic 

 occurrence with the semblance only of a spiritual reality 

 was neither theoretically nor practically satisfactory. 

 Practically the opponents of the Eevolution saw in the 

 anarchy of the latter the proof that something was want- 

 ing which should govern and direct the aimlessness of 

 human actions when abandoned to complete freedom. 

 This something they found in the return to that authority 

 which in church and society had been destroyed by the 

 Kevolution. It was the philosophy of pure reaction, it 

 found its classical expression in the writings of Joseph 

 26. de Maistre (1754-1821). This position led to no further 



Reaction 



and develop- philosophical development, but only to an attempted re- 

 habilitation of the spiritual despotism of the Eoman 

 Catholic church with its dogma of infallibility. But 

 the followers of Condillac, notably Cabanis (1757-1808) 

 and De Tracy, actuated by a truly scientific spirit, pointed 

 out what was wanting in Condillac's system, which 

 emphasised unduly the passive and receptive side of the 

 < inner world, being mainly interested in an analysis of 

 the processes of understanding and reasoning. These had, 

 through the enormous development of the mathematical 

 and abstract sciences during that period, absorbed by far 

 the greater and the most original part of the intellect of 

 the age. Condillac had in the second edition of his 

 ' Treatise on Sensations ' l already pointed out one of the 

 defects in his earlier edition ; he incidentally makes the 

 remark that our knowledge of external things as outside 



1 Ravaisson, pp. 13, 14. 



