THE SENSATION 4LIST PHILOSOPHY. 401 



the mind independently of it. Applied to general and abstract ideas, 

 this is realism revived in full force, v«rhen we might have thought that 

 it had received its final blaw, and belonged only to history ; but the 

 language used carries us much further, and expresses something so 

 contrary to familiar facts and plain evidence that I hardly know how 

 to treat it. 



When a Berkleyan denies altogether the existence of anything ex- 

 ternal to the mind, I understand his reasoning, and perhaps think it 

 plausible, though I may fancy that I can see the fallacy of it, but if a 

 material universe and a bodily frame of man furnished with senses, be 

 admitted at all ; if sensations themselves have any reality : I cannot 

 comprehend the denial that the mind's copy of the sensation is derived 

 from the sensation. The doctrine maintained on my own side I shall 

 explain more fully as I proceed ; the assertion incapable of evidence 

 and made to give consistency to a theory, which I have brought under 

 your notice, scarcely admits of argumentative treatment. It seems to 

 me to be in itself a condemnation of the system which requires it. 



It appears from what has been stated that Sensationalism professes 

 to be a carrying out of Mr. Locke's leading ideas, by further examina- 

 tion of the nature and origin of that class of mental states of which 

 his explanations are obviously incomplete or unsatisfactory. Some 

 supporters of the doctrine, like James Mill, prefer not to meddle at 

 all with the physical part of the question. To others this appears of 

 no small importance in the way of evidence, and fairly within the 

 reach of investigation. The actual dependence of sensation — though 

 the sensations themselves belong to the mind, — on the nervous system, 

 and this part of the frame forming the link of connection between 

 mind and body, are truths physiologically established, generally ad- 

 mitted, and indeed only to be questioned by those who deny that we 

 know anything but mind, and run into all the extravagances of a 

 spiritual scepticism. Sensations then depend upon or uniformly 

 accompany some kind of action or excitement of the nerves, and 

 through them of the brain. But there are good and well known 

 proofs that a sensation is not instantaneous, but continues as a mental 

 state when the object no longer aifects the nerve, and gradually fades 

 away ; which fact implies, of course, the continuance in the brain of 

 the action whatever it be which caused the mental change called the 

 sensation. We also know that there arise in our minds states which 

 we recognise as copies or revivals of the sensations when no external 



