400 THE SENSATIONALIST PHILOSOPHY. 



in his view highly complex, which are usually referred to as examples 

 of ideas incapable of being analysed, which must therefore have a 

 necessary origin in the mind. For myself, I will only now say on this 

 subject, that if any one capable of reasoning on such matters, and at 

 all prepared by previous inquiries, can read Dr. Law's notes on the 

 ideas of space, time, immensity, and eternity, in his celebrated edition 

 of Archbishop King's origin of evil, and afterwards study James Mill's 

 clear and masterly analysis of what is implied in these terms and still 

 maintain that they represent simple ideas inherent in the mind and 

 independent of external things ; he and I differ so fundamentally and 

 approach these inquiries from such different points that I know not 

 where to seek any common ground, so as to see where our differences 

 begin, or how they are to be settled. 



Proceeding on what seemed to me the plainest possible principles, 

 and unwilling to break the continuity of my reasoning I stated the 

 relation of the ideas corresponding to sensations to the sensations 

 themselves, as implying their previous existence, as something certain 

 an4 generally admitted. I do not wish however to overlook the fact, 

 that manifest and indisputable as this appears to my mind, and gen- 

 erally as it seems to be received as among the most certain truths, it is 

 denied by those who have made a certain progress in the German 

 idealist school of philosophy. As an example I refer to a man of 

 great powers and great attainments, as well as of conspicuous position 

 in the world of science. Dr. Whewell, of Cambridge, in his 'Philosophy 

 of the inductive Sciences,' a work containing so much that is practically 

 valuable, as to be greatly admired even by those who think its philoso- 

 phical principles fundamentally erroneous. For the sake of concise- 

 ness, I quote from the author of the Historical and Critical Review 

 of the speculative philosophy of the nineteenth century, the following, 

 as the first of the points in which Dr. Whewell' s work shows the transi- 

 tion which according to this writer philosophy is undergoing, from 

 the Sensationalist to the Idealistic tendency : "In the broad distinction 

 laid down between sensations and ideas ; a distinction in which (unlike 

 that of Locke, Mill, and many others,) the latter are shown to have 

 no direct dependence upon the former, but an a priori existence of 

 their own, as original forms or categories of the understanding." 



It seems then according to these authorities that the idea arising in 

 my mind of any particular object of sense is not a consequence of a 

 previous sensation, is not derived from the sensation, but belongs to 



