THE SENSATIONALIST PHILOSOPHY. 



397 



little prepared to appreciate what I shall oifer. It is a sense of the 

 injustice with which those who hold my views have been treated, that 

 induces me to say something in their defence, although I must candidly 

 confess that my philosophical reading is not quite up to the times, 

 and that my attention has of late years been much diverted to other 

 subjects. If, however, I should feel incompetent to discuss with you 

 the various modifications of German Idealism, and to manage with 

 ease its peculiar phraseology, I believe that I do understand what 

 was really meant by the leading writers of the school, for which I shall 

 accept Mr. Morell's name : Sensationalist, and that I know what in- 

 ferences from their doctrines they who had carefully studied it 

 admitted. When therefore I see these things totally misrepresented 

 by popular authorities I feel entitled to offer a few words of explana^ 

 tion. 



The philosophical system, now called Sensationalism, is regarded by 

 its supporters as being no more than the fair carrying out of Mr. 

 Locke's principles. Bishop Law prepared the way for it, whilst the 

 philosophic physician, David Hartley, fully developed it and set it 

 forth as a finished work, complete in all its parts, and even exhibited 

 in its application to the conduct of life. Dr. Priestley perceived that 

 Hartley's account of the physical cause of sensations and their corres- 

 ponding ideas was misunderstood by many, and disapproved by others 

 to a degree that made it an impediment to the fair consideration of 

 his great doctrine of Ihe association of ideas, and thence was induced 

 to publish what related to the latter in a separate form, with some 

 illustrative dissertations of his own, and in other works he defended 

 in connection with Hartley's theory a peculiar modification of materi- 

 alism. The speculations of Darwin went to such an extreme, and 

 were so generally thought both false and pernicious as to bring no 

 small odium on the whole system with which his extravagances seemed 

 to be connected. For a time Sensationalism languished, cherished in- 

 deed by some learned and thoughtful men, but neglected by the crowd, 

 and doing little to defend itself against adversaries or conciliate public 

 approbation. At length Dr. Brown arose, belonging indeed to the 

 Scotch idealist school, — of which Reid and Stewart were principal orna- 

 ments, — but adopting the great law of association, and in his various 

 ingenious analyses of mental states manifestly following the method 

 of the Sensationalists, whilst he rejected the name by which Hartley 

 had expressed his theory, and pursued with ridicule and scorn the 



VOL. IV. cc 



