A Crucible in Which to Put the Soul”: Keeping Body and Soul Together in the Moderate Enlightenment, 1740-1830

“A CRUCIBLE IN WHICH TO PUT THE SOUL”: KEEPING BODY AND SOUL TOGETHER IN THE MODERATE ENLIGHTENMENT, 1740-1830

DISSERTATION Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the doctor of philosophy degree in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

KARA ELIZABETH BARR, M.A.

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

2014

DISSERTATION COMMITTEE: Dale K. Van Kley, director Matthew D. Goldish, advisor Geoffrey Parker

ABSTRACT

This dissertation examines the relationship between Christianity and the

Enlightenment in eighteenth-century Europe. Specifically, it explores how the

Enlightenment produced the modern Western perception of the nature of the mind and its relationship to the body. While most traditional Enlightenment historiography argues that the movement was defined by radical, atheistic thinkers, like Diderot and Spinoza, who denied the existence of the traditional Christian immaterial and immortal soul, this project demonstrates that these extreme thinkers were actually a minority, confined largely to the intellectual fringes. By contrast, not only were many Enlightenment thinkers sincere Christians, but they were actually the most effective communicators of new ideas by showing how the Enlightenment supported, rather than attacked, traditional

Christian beliefs. This moderate Enlightenment is responsible for developing Western ideas about how the mind and body are related, especially within the emerging fields of psychology and psychiatry in the mid-nineteenth century.

This dissertation gains its focus through an examination of the work of two historiographically neglected enlightened thinkers—David Hartley in Britain, and the

Abbé de Condillac in France. Both of them argued for the traditional Christian belief in an immortal soul, but used enlightened ideas to do so. The first two chapters look at how

Hartley and Condillac developed this argument by making use of not only their published works, but also their private papers and correspondence. This evidence demonstrates that despite and even because of strong religious convictions, both thinkers remained open to

ii new ideas about the relationship between the mind and the body. The later chapters examine how Hartley and Condillac’s ideas about the human mind were received both geographically (in their respective home countries and throughout Europe and America) and chronologically (from their own lifetimes until the mid nineteenth century). They conclude that both thinkers’ compelling synthesis of religious, philosophical, and scientific concerns in large part accounted for their continuing popularity in the early nineteenth century and beyond.

iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

WITH gratitude to my dissertation director, Dale Van Kley, as well as Matthew Goldish and Geoffrey Parker, for generously placing the staggering accumulation of their wisdom at my disposal throughout the research and writing process. A mere statement of thanks seems inadequate in the face of your continued attention and support.

MY warmest thanks for the unfailing encouragement of my wonderful colleagues in the History Department at the Ohio State University, most especially Jessica Wallace, Daniel Watkins, and JT Tucker. A special note of gratitude to Jim Bach for always having the right answer.

FINALLY, I offer my deepest love to my family, most especially my incomparable parents, without whom this dissertation quite simply never could have been written. To my always faithful and mostly patient dog, Paddington: Yes, buddy, we can go play ball now.

VITA

2009...... B.A., History & Psychology, Walsh University

2011...... M.A., History, The Ohio State University

2009-present...... Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University

FIELD OF STUDY

MAJOR FIELD: History Early Modern Europe

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract...... ii

Vita...... iii

List of Tables ...... vi

Introduction...... 1

CHAPTER 1: THE SELF AND SOUL IN DAVID HARTLEY’S BRITAIN, 1700-1760...... 33

CHAPTER 2: DEFINING THE SOUL IN THE ABBÉ DE CONDILLAC’S FRANCE, 1700-1775...... 77

CHAPTER 3: “THE ADOPTED SYSTEM OF FUTURE PHILOSOPHERS”: AN AFTERLIFE FOR THE OBSERVATIONS, 1755-1815...... 132

CHAPTER 4: THE RADICAL REVOLUTION AND THE MODERATE RESURRECTION: CONDILLACIAN LEGACIES IN FRANCE, 1780-1804...... 203

Conclusion...... 262

Bibliography...... 274

LIST OF TABLES

Table 0.1: Frequency of Word “Secular”...... 28

Table 0.2: Frequency of Word “Secularization”...... 28

Table 2.3: Frequency of Review of Foreign Language Works in the Histoire des ouvrages des sçavans...... 128

vii !

{Introduction} “FRAGMENTS OF A SHATTERED UNIVERSE”

! At the turn of the twentieth century, a physician in Massachusetts sat rocking in his desk chair, deep in thought. In his career, he had witnessed any number of deathbed scenes: the tearful goodbyes, the fading of hope for recovery into resignation to the end, oftentimes a priest flitting in and out—hearing confessions, sprinkling holy water, making solemn signs, and administering last rites. Yes, he had seen all of this; and it troubled him. He liked to think of himself as a thoroughly modern man, a scientist and a skeptic through and through; he was unmoved by the spiritualist craze that had recently swept the nation, and was equally ambiguous about Catholic teaching on the afterlife so prevalent in the small town of Haverhill where he made his living. But still he wondered as he rocked back and forth: was there a way to definitively prove whether the soul existed or not? It seemed obvious to him that science, and not theology would provide the answer. And so, over the next six years, our Massachusetts physician assembled a team of like-minded doctors and formulated an experiment. His hypothesis was simple: if the soul existed, then surely it must possess mass—it had to weigh something and would therefore be detectable as it left the body at the moment of death. His methodology was equally simple: he and his team arranged to be present at several deathbeds, which they specially equipped with scales to finely gauge any shifts in weight, however slight, as the

1 ! !

patient slipped from life into death. The results of this six-year endeavor shocked and fascinated the nation: The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, among other major newspapers,

2 ! ! reported that “a woman’s soul weighed half an ounce and that men’s souls weighed from three-quarters of an ounce to almost a full ounce”.1

Twentieth-century Massachusetts seems worlds away from eighteenth-century

Europe, and in some ways it is. But our doctor’s assumption that the soul must be material and thus measurable by scientific means represents the culmination of a radical departure in the history of Western thought about the soul, of which the Enlightenment is a crucial element. As John Wright and Paul Potter’s edited collection on the mind-body problem in Western thought suggests, different interests—from the religious to the medical and political—often dictated the manner in which the soul was separated (or not) from the physical body.2 While, very broadly speaking, medieval Europe entrusted discussions of the soul to theologians who generally argued for its immateriality, by the dawn of the twentieth century the soul was not only considered to be fair game for scientific inquiry, it was also acceptable to assume its materiality. This dissertation tells the story of how that shift occurred. It attempts to explain how the soul went from being the province of the priest to the problem of the physician. My reasons for telling this tale are several, but essentially I hope to demonstrate a few things about both Enlightenment and modernity and how they negotiated and related to Christianity which are perhaps counterintuitive to modern definitions of both terms. What better place is there to demonstrate shifts in perception and worldview than in a study of the very essence of the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 “Weigher of Men’s Souls Tells of His Experiments”, The Plain Dealer 90, 31 March 1907, 5. Some headlines were quite colorful, including the San Jose Mercury News’ apt “These Bright Doctors Say Soul is Material” 2 John P. Wright and Paul Potter, Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind- Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003): 4-11

3 ! ! human person? But before delving into the story of how the soul became material, a review of the broad categories of scholarship with which I engage is in order.

The Historiographical Foundations of the Modern Enlightenment(s)

The Enlightenment is generally considered, in both popular and scholarly interpretations, as the birthplace of modern ideas about religion, politics, and human rights. The traditional narrative of the Enlightenment is that it employed reason to attack and defeat the corruption, superstition and decadence of religion and created the secular

(i.e. irreligious or at least a-religious) world. But upon closer examination, a disconnect emerges between this assumption and the realities of the twenty-first century world.

While the dominant narrative indicates that Western modernity is secular—a product of

Enlightenment—and that religious ideas such as still exist are really just leftovers from another age, the realities of the modern world tell us that religious thought is far from pre-modern.

Perhaps no clearer illustration of this exists than that, mere hours before I wrote these words, Pope Francis I was declared Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” for 2013, beating out everyone from Miley Cyrus, who twerked her way to an early lead in the magazine’s popular poll, to the star of the NSA leak scandal, Edward Snowden. The article justifying this choice speaks eloquently to both the common perception that

Christianity (particularly Catholicism) is a “mysterious” relic from another age as well as the growing realization that religion is still, in fact, highly relevant in the second decade of the twenty-first century. “Through... conscious and skillful evocations of moments in the ministry of Jesus,” the article suggests, “this new Pope may have found a way out of the 20th century culture wars, which have left the church moribund in much of Western

4 ! !

Europe and on the defensive from Dublin to Los Angeles”.3 The authors’ tone of surprise is obvious. And while “moribund” might seem like a strong word, it perfectly captures the popular perception that the Enlightenment defeated Christian superstition and left it to die slowly throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its alleged “resurrection” in the early days of Francis’ papacy therefore seems oddly out of place—extraordinary in every sense of the word—in this narrative.

Traditional histories of the Enlightenment, most dating from the first half of the twentieth century, highlighted the importance of the most radical thinkers the movement produced: Diderot’s masterful Encyclopèdie, Voltaire’s battle cry of “ecrasez l'infame”, and Spinoza’s taboo monism. The most able expressions of this original unitary

Enlightenment narrative came in Peter Gay and Ernst Cassirer’s seminal volumes.

Writing to challenge accounts of Enlightenment philosophers as unrealistic or idealistic,

Gay authored a two-volume work, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, detailing the progress of the Enlightenment from its origins in Renaissance humanism to its culmination in eighteenth-century France.4 Gay’s overall thesis, which defined the

Enlightenment worldview in opposition to its religious counterpart, redefined the historiographical perception of the movement as inarguably pagan and unapologetically anti-Christian. In Gay’s estimation, Enlightenment is defined primarily by the desire to break the intellectual limits imposed by the Christian worldview and which had been stifling Western philosophical advances for over a millennia. Similarly, Ernst Cassirer’s

The Philosophy of the Enlightenment crafts a compelling and influential argument for a

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 “Pope Francis, the People’s Pope” http://poy.time.com/2013/12/11/person-of-the-year-pope- francis-the-peoples-pope/ 4 Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, 2 Vols. [New York: W.W. Norton, 1995].

5 ! ! unitary Enlightenment. He clearly presents his focus in his preface as “the unity of [the

Enlightenment’s] conceptual origin and its underlying principle rather than of the totality of its historical manifestations and results”.5 Cassirer argues for the existence of a method which was completely new and unique to the eighteenth century and was characterized by using the “universal method of reason” to rethink the “universal process of philosophizing”.6 By employing this highly philosophical methodology, Cassirer crafted an argument for the unity of Enlightenment in principle, if not in practice.

Some twenty-first century historians have remained loyal to this approach and have attempted to update and vindicate these classic interpretations. Best known for this attempt is Jonathan Israel whose ambitious multivolume project I referenced earlier, argues that the European Enlightenment was actually split between a mainstream,

“conservative” Enlightenment and a far more radical fringe Enlightenment. He argues that it is the radical branch to which modernity is most indebted. The differentiation, for

Israel, between radical and conservative ideas comes primarily in the extent to which they seek either to reject or defend traditional philosophical and theological ideas and worldviews. While moderate Enlightenment thinkers sought some political, social, and ecclesiastical reform, Israel’s radical thinkers saw themselves as engaged in a struggle against established, religiously-oriented institutions and largely rejected moderate thought as unviable. They “broadly denied all miracles and revelations and rejected physico-theology, Lockean empiricism, and providential Deism, along with monarchy,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 5 Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, trans. by Koelln and Pettegrove, [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951]: v. 6 Cassirer, 93, vii

6 ! !

(in most cases) aristocracy, and social, racial and sexual hierarchy as well”.7

Unapologetically teleological, Israel’s Enlightenment is defined by its apparent links to the modern world—he links modern concepts about “equality, toleration, democracy, and individual freedom” to their radical early-modern ancestors.8 Moderates, he claims, such as Locke and even Voltaire, were afraid to pursue the new philosophy to its radical conclusions.9 In Israel’s account, these men are portrayed variously as hesitant, wishy- washy, confused, and ultimately engaged in a losing battle to reconcile traditional ideas with the “new” philosophy. In the end, Israel concludes, their philosophy was hopelessly doomed by its own contradictions and ultimately usurped by Diderot and the rest of the radically inclined French philosophes.

For the most part, however, recent scholarship has dispelled this myth of “The

Enlightenment,” leading us to doubt not only the accuracy of such a position, but even the possibility of defining a singular Enlightenment at all. It leaves us instead with a collection of enlightenments, each vying for the newly-vacated position of primacy.

Contemporaries called the eighteenth-century a “century of lights” and historians have now, by and large, confined themselves to the study of this plurality of “light,” rather than attempting to find one definition to encapsulate the collective glow.10 Scholars like

Robert Darnton argue that “summit view of eighteenth-century intellectual history”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 7 Jonathan Israel, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man, 1670-1752, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006): 43. 8!Ibid,!xi.!! 9 In Israel’s account, Voltaire comes across as thoroughly moderate (meaning he embraced Locke, Newton and Deism) and openly hostile to the Radical Enlightenment, using his influence to damage the prospects of many of the most prominent philosophes. (Israel, Enlightenment Contested, 12, 89-90. 726-7, 766-8, 772, 780) 10 For an excellent discussion of trends in Enlightenment historiography, both past and present, see the introduction to John Robertson’s book The Case for Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples, 1680-1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005): 1-51.

7 ! ! presents only one aspect of the wider Enlightenment movement, and proposes instead that historians “penetrate into [the Enlightenment’s] underworld”.11 Darnton and others like him have undertaken the work of dismantling the once-accepted narrative of the

Enlightenment, leaving us with a bewildering variety of social, political, geographical, religious and even individual enlightenments. J.G.A. Pocock perhaps provides the best summation of this approach: “In studying the intellectual history of the late seventeenth century and the eighteenth, we encounter a variety of statements made, and assumptions proposed, to which the term “Enlightenment” may usefully be applied, but the meanings of the term shift as we apply it. The things are connected, but not continuous; they cannot be reduced to a single narrative”.12

If this new approach leaves room for religion, then it does so only by isolating it from other, more antireligious strands of enlightened thinking. David Sorkin’s Religious

Enlightenment is perhaps most successful in this attempt to reintegrate religion into some part of enlightened thought. Sorkin opts to examine case studies of individual thinkers, from the Anglican Bishop William Warburton to Jewish Moses Mendelssohn. Sorkin, however, undermines his own illustration of the importance of the “religious

Enlightenment” by contending that his thinkers “in historical retrospect were, by and large, decidedly second rank”. Their significance, he contends, comes solely from the fact that they were “prominent and influential in their day”. 13 While perhaps not the most original thinkers, Sorkin’s depiction of the religious enlighteners as “compromisers”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 11 Robert Darnton, "The High Enlightenment and the Low-Life of Literature in Pre-Revolutionary France," Past & Present 51 (1971): 81 12 J.G.A Pocock, "Historiography and enlightenment: a view of their history." Modern Intellectual History 1, no. 5 (2008): 83. Italics mine. 13 David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011): 5.

8 ! ! seems unnecessarily negative—those who negotiated between religion and

Enlightenment would be far more accurately depicted as synthesizers. Moreover,

Sorkin’s willingness to relegate them to the sidelines in view of their current obscurity seems curiously self-defeating and at odds with his own realization of the influence they had on their contemporaries.

Essentially, the interpretations of Enlightenment made by Sorkin and others look forward to the future, and tend to neglect in a fundamental way the historical moment in which Enlightenment ideas were developed and disseminated. In many ways, any study of Enlightenment has to be somewhat teleological: when we conceive of Enlightenment as the project that ushered in, for better or worse, modern values, our interpretations will inevitably attempt to locate embryonic modern values in Enlightened thought. Thus, our understanding of modernity will impact our understanding of the Enlightenment.

However unavoidable this may be, it is problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, searching for the modern conceptions of the makeup of the human person among

Enlightened texts inevitably neglects or glosses over the priorities of the authors themselves, only a small minority of whom really intended to or did abandon the traditional Christian opinions on the relationship between body and soul for the brave new world of secularism. Whether or not they actually ushered in this new world in spite of themselves is separate question, but it too is one which must be answered historically.

Furthermore, we must ask not only how secular ideas like the dependence of the mind on the body were developed, and by whom, but also in what form they were disseminated.

Simply put, it is impossible to draw a straight line from Spinoza, Diderot or any other radical seventeenth-century thinker to modernity. A more nuanced approach to the

9 ! ! circulation of ideas and the channels through which they reached the mainstream is required. Secondly, the very concept of modernity—even should we wish to use it as a measure of Enlightenment—is itself contested. While twentieth-century scholars may have wanted to believe in the triumph of the secular, we of the twenty-first recognize the continued importance of religious ideas and mindsets in determining world affairs, and that we have no more left behind the notion of a spiritual essence to the human person than we have religion. Therefore, the narrative in which Enlightenment represents the triumph of the secular and the demise of the religious no longer makes sense in the face of a more nuanced conception of modernity.

Overall, scholarship on the Enlightenment has fallen short in two, very distinctive ways. Firstly, it provides a narrative of both Enlightenment and modernity which is overly simplistic, insufficiently nuanced, and frankly outdated. Secondly, when it does attempt to add in nuance, it does so at the cost of narrative altogether. Therefore, while many scholars can agree that the traditional narrative is insufficient, they have failed to produce a compelling replacement. My project suggests a path to the restoration of narrative coherence to Enlightenment, via the close examination of how the soul became a material object. For this reason, I phrased the purpose of this project very carefully: I want to explain how the soul became material. I do not want to explain how it disappeared from makeup of the modern person (it did not), and certainly not how modern science or Enlightenment atheists destroyed it (because they most emphatically did not). While most modern accounts of the mind-body “problem” and its enlightened solutions place thinkers into two major camps—those who sought to protect the soul from enlightened philosophical interference, and those who sought to destroy the soul as

10 ! ! a puerile religious superstition—my research has yielded surprisingly different results.

Though these two extreme camps did hold an important place in enlightened discourse about the soul, I argue that it was not the soldiers in the war over the soul that ultimately determined its outcome; it was the diplomats. If we use Jonathan Israel’s categories of

“Radical”, “Moderate”, and “Counter” Enlightenment, then it was the moderates who truly determined the terms on which the modern soul was to be considered. Moderate enlighteners did not view uncertainty over the soul as a cause for war, but as an opportunity to strengthen the religious foundations of the soul using radical new ideas, and to encourage human progress in the process. Such an argument challenges the regrettable perception that the Enlightenment was all about secularization and the end of religion, while retaining the narrative coherence of scholarship on the movement.

Theories of Secularization

If, as I argue, Enlightenment cannot be divorced from modernity, then neither can modernity be altogether divorced from the twentieth-century narrative of secularization.

For many reasons, it is difficult to approach the subject of secularization which, as Sanja

Perovic eloquently phrased it, “is arguably the last master narrative that remains an article of faith in Western society”.14 Taking the very usage of the words “secular” and

“secularization” in written works as an entry point, simple word analysis makes abundantly clear that this has increased dramatically since the nineteenth century, reaching a peak in the mid to late twentieth century (See Figures 0.1 and 0.2).15 Even the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 14 Sanja Perovic, “Introduction”, in Sacred and Secular Agency in Early Modern France: Fragments of Religion, ed. Sanja Perovic, (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012): 1 15 Jean-Baptiste Michel*, Yuan Kui Shen, Aviva Presser Aiden, Adrian Veres, Matthew K. Gray, William Brockman, The Google Books Team, Joseph P. Pickett, Dale Hoiberg, Dan Clancy, Peter Norvig,

11 ! ! most ardent critics of the modern West have seldom challenged, in a coherent and compelling manner, either the idea of secularization itself or its origins in the eighteenth- century Enlightenment. In the modern context, “secular” typically is used to denote something that has no religious or spiritual basis—hence a secular society is one which based on something other than religious values, either generally or in Christianity particularly.

The notion that Western society has, first of all, achieved a secular basis and, second of all, that such a foundation is preferable to a religious one has been prevalent and assumed in scholarship, historical and otherwise, for much of the last century.

Jonathan Israel, for example, recently depicted the Enlightenment as “the quest for human amelioration occurring between 1680 and 1800, driven principally by

‘philosophy’... seeking universal recipes for all mankind and, ultimately, in its radical manifestation, laying the foundations for modern basic human rights and freedoms and representative democracy”.16 As for religion, he contends, it necessarily manipulated and limited human capabilities until the Enlightenment broken its stranglehold: “In short, the century of the Et was one in which human life had ceased to be ‘the plaything of politics and religion’! With the public sphere, freedom of the press, and the Revolution, humanity had become, or so it seemed, briefly, the sphere of ‘reason’”.17 Recently, however, some scholars have attempted to better define not only secularization itself but also the role in which religion played in helping to form it, as well as its continued role in the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Jon Orwant, Steven Pinker, Martin A. Nowak, and Erez Lieberman Aiden*, “Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books”, Science (Published online ahead of print: 12/16/2010) 16 Jonathan Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750- 1790. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011): 7. 17 Ibid., 634

12 ! !

“secularized” West. By challenging such a narrative at its Enlightenment roots, my dissertation contributes to this trend primarily by illustrating, to quote Perovic again, the

“growing realization that religion may indeed be more resilient and compatible with

‘modern’ forms of social life than was previously assumed”.18

Among classic efforts to seek out challenge the origins of the secular from which my project takes its cue, perhaps none is more insightful than Mircea Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Written in 1957, almost at the height of the secularization theory’s popularity, Eliade’s work does not challenge that the West existed in a primarily secular age. Its insight, however, is to suggest that perhaps that secular age had religious origins. Indeed, Eliade insists that this must be the case since, as he puts it,

“the manifestation of the sacred ontologically founds the world”.19 Religion, in other words, provided humanity with the orientation and meaning to make sense out of their lived experiences. It is impossible, Eliade continues, to ever completely step outside of this sacred orientation without risking the loss of all meaning and purpose: “there is no longer any world, there are only fragments of a shattered universe”.20 Ultimately, Eliade concludes, the profane (read: secular) individual can never escape the reality of his or her sacred (read: religious) origins: “Do what he will, he is an inheritor. He cannot utterly abolish his past, since he is himself the product of his past. He forms himself by a series of denials and refusals, but continues to be haunted by the realities that he has refused and denied”.21 Like our Massachusetts doctor attempting to empirically observe the soul,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 18 Perovic, Sacred and Secular Agency, 1 19 Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1958): 21 20 Ibid., 23 21 Ibid., 204

13 ! !

Eliade’s secular man works to abandon his religious roots but ends up acknowledging their power in his opposition to them.

Equally important is Marcel Gauchet’s The Disenchantment of the World.22

Gauchet’s effort to produce what Charles Taylor calls “a global theory of religion, of its history and transformations” and secularization, controversially finds the “end of religion” in Christianity itself. Gauchet’s goal is to understand secularization as the process of

“exit from religion” from the perspective of, as Taylor calls it, “those who have lived through its demise”.23 For him, the whole of Western history is characterized by the gradual movement away from the religious toward the secular. Christianity, Gauchet argues, made this process possible by envisioning a God who, though omnipotent, was increasingly removed from his creation. The less direct intervention from God, the more free humans became, eventually becoming free enough to choose not to believe in God altogether. Paradoxically, Gauchet argues that the more powerful the Christian God became, the more distant it became from the sphere of human actions. Like Eliade, however, Gauchet remains convinced in the narrative of the decline and fall of religion in the West.

More recently, Charles Taylor’s formidable A Secular Age takes on the task of tracing the secularization of society, which he defines as the process “which takes us from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one human possibility among others”.24

Taylor’s important contribution to discussions of secularization has been to argue, along

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 22 Gauchet, The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion 23 Taylor, Foreword to Ibid., ix. 24 Taylor, 3.

14 ! ! with Gauchet, against the decline of religion due to its presumed falsity; if religion did decline in the West, as Taylor still maintains it does, it is for reasons found within the structure of Christianity itself. Specifically, he identifies “a growing concern for reform, a drive to make over the whole society to higher standards. I don’t pretend to have an explanation of this ‘rage for order’, but it seems to me a fact about the late-mediaeval and early modern period, and moreover one which has carried over into the modern period in the partly secularized ideal of ‘civilization’.25 For Taylor, therefore, the secular society is defined not by how many people believe or disbelieve in religious truths, but rather by

“the conditions of experience of and search for the spiritual”. Secularity itself is not a mode of thinking, but “the whole context of understanding in which our moral, spiritual or religious experience and search takes place” and which makes it possible to choose not to believe in a higher power.26 Unlike Eliade and Gauchet, Taylor rejects any attempt to approach modern intellectual parameters as having been “been emptied of God, or of any reference to ultimate reality”—he argues that this is very clearly not the case.27 Much like

Eliade and Gauchet, however, Taylor recognizes that secularization can only divorce itself from religion by completely denying its own origins.

Efforts to define and critique narratives of secularization also include the work of

Reformation historian Brad Gregory, whose controversial work The Unintended

Reformation takes on the secular/religious binary already in its subtitle: “How a Religious

Revolution Secularized Society”.28 Most relevant for the subject of this dissertation,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 25 Ibid., 63. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid., 2. 28 Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society. (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press, 2012)

15 ! ! however, are Gregory’s pair of articles published in 2006 and 2008 in History and Theory concerning what he refers to as “secular bias” in present-day scholarship of historical religions. Gregory charges that the very understandable desire to move away from

“confessional” histories (i.e. scholarship written from a denominational viewpoint, and generally with an apologetic flavor) has created a new confessional history—one which approaches religion from the modern social sciences and other humanistic theories of religion. The problem with this approach, Gregory argues, is that it “has produced not unbiased accounts, but reductionist explanations of religious belief and practice with embedded secular biases that preclude the understanding of religious believer- practitioners”.29 Rather than accepting religions and those who practice them on their own terms, this “secular bias” insists on seeing ulterior motives and viewing claims of sincerity with skepticism. Essentially, Gregory concludes, “the most important prerequisite for analyzing religion consists in seeing that one’s own beliefs, regardless of their content, are simply and literally irrelevant to understanding the people whom one studies”.30

Gregory finds the source of this reductionist and biased approach in the work of the well-known, and still highly influential, twentieth-century theorists Emile Durkheim and Michel Foucault, along with anthropologist Clifford Geertz. While it is unnecessary here to venture into the problems with each individual thinker’s approach to the study of religion, Gregory’s critique of the continuing popularity of Foucault cuts to the heart of the problem with the now-standard secularization narrative. The appeal of the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 29 Brad S. Gregory, “The Other Confessional History: On Secular Bias in the Study of Religion”, History and Theory 45, No. 4 (December 2006): 132 30 Ibid., 147

16 ! !

Foucauldian approach, he writes, is “reinforced by a besieged but still dominant and most approved liberationist narrative of secular modernity, in which early modern individuals and groups gradually freedom themselves from the assumptions of hierarchy and the demands of tradition”.31 As long as we view religion as outmoded, primitive, and limiting, historians can never hope to understand either the lived experience of religious peoples or how this experience, particularly during the Enlightenment, evolved to produce the modern West.32

Gregory is not the only scholar interested in restoring religious belief as a genuine category of human thought. Among others, Charly Coleman has attempted to apply a parallel approach to studies of the Enlightenment. In his 2005 article, “Resacralizing the

World: The Fate of Secularization in Enlightenment Historiography”, Coleman indicates a shift in secularization studies, one which nevertheless continues to relegate religion to the role of a sad leftover of past ignorance. “Secularization, which previously referred to a process of inevitable decline, now more often describes a nonlinear movement originating within religion itself that effectively rendered divine referents unnecessary for ordering the human world,” he writes.33 But Coleman suggests that, along with these developments, it is important to also consider the new ways in which religion negotiated with them. Essentially, Coleman proposes to “identify an opposing trajectory by which !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 31 Ibid., 145 32 Responding to Gregory, Egil Førland argues for the importance of applying modern categories to historical events, noting that “awareness of the historicity of the concepts by means of which we comprehend the world need not entail our discarding the possibility that new concepts divide the world for us in more useful ways than did the older concepts” ( “Historiography without God: A Reply to Gregory”, History and Theory 47, no. 4 [December 2008]: 522). This is almost shockingly beside the point: the role of the historian should not be judge the “usefulness” of the categories which past peoples used to understand themselves and the world, but rather to understand how these categories developed and why they appealed to those who employed them. 33 Charly Coleman, “Resacralizing the World: The Fate of Secularization in Enlightenment Historiography”, The Journal of Modern History 82, No. 2, (June 2010): 373

17 ! ! persons and things in the eighteenth century became resacralized, immanent to each other in new ways that turned the disenchanting powers of the human subject upon and against itself”.34 Religion, Coleman’s work suggests, was not a dinosaur helpless in the face of the oncoming secularization meteor—it adapted, changed, and actively worked with and against so-called “secular” impulses to produce modernity. My dissertation, by examining the specific case of the human soul, serves as an illustration of how, precisely, this negotiation occurred.

The Soul in Historical Scholarship, Materialism in Christian Theology

There have been relatively few works devoted to the study of the soul in Western thought, and most of those which do exist tend to be broad in their chronological scope.

These studies provide a useful frame for my more intensive look at the middle eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Of particular significance is John Wright and Paul

Potter’s edited collection, Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the

Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment. Though covering an enormous scope, Wright and Potter identify a number of themes within their collection which shape the overall narrative of the work. Broadly speaking, these themes signify various methods of differentiation between soul and body along with the rationale for making this distinction. Firstly, Wright and Potter identify dualism—or the contention that the soul/body must be considered as separate, though potentially interdependent, entities—as one of the major themes in Western thought about the soul. Though dualistic thought is traditionally linked to arguments for an immaterial soul (made of a completely different substance from the material body), the editors are careful to mention that such a link is

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 34 Ibid.

18 ! ! not necessary to a dualistic approach. My dissertation illustrates that, despite largely operating within a dualistic framework, many enlightened studies of the soul not only insisted on the close interconnection between soul and body, but also allowed for the possibility of a material soul. However, as Wright and Potter point out, such arguments do not necessarily or even strongly lead to irreligion and atheism. Related to this current of dualism, is the concern—which became foregrounded during the Enlightenment and ever more prominent in the nineteenth century—with determining the specific functions of the soul-mind, especially as distinct from the functions of the body. Even thinkers who, much like those I propose here to study, were uncertain or agnostic on the question of the construction of the soul still studied its functions, something much more easily observable.

In the realm of specific studies of the soul-mind in the eighteenth century, very little exists. Raymond Martin and John Barresi’s The Naturalization of the Soul: Self and Personal Identity in the Eighteenth Century is concerned with, as the title suggests, how the soul became “naturalized” during the eighteenth century, and how “what was once philosophy of the soul became philosophy of the mind”.35 They accomplish this primarily through extended descriptions of the thought of British thinkers from Locke to

William Hazlitt, and argument is clearly only a secondary concern of the work. What argument there is, however, centers on the idea that the soul increasingly became part of the “natural” world, a trend touched off by John Locke’s seminal Essay Concerning

Human Understanding. What this really results in is essentially a claim about eighteenth-

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 35 Raymond Martin and John Barresi, The Naturalization of the Soul: Self and Personal Identity in the Eighteenth Century, (New York: Routledge, 1999): 70

19 ! ! century thought of the variety I seek to challenge in broader studies of the Enlightenment: the more “natural” the soul became, Martin and Barresi claim, the less “supernatural”

(read: religious) it became. But, as I will demonstrate, it is thoroughly unclear why this should be the case. If, as Coleman rightly claims, the Enlightenment had less to do with the decline of religion and more to do with its reinvention and adaptation, then the same is true of thought about the soul. Attempting to locate the soul in the realm of the natural world did not, by extension, deprive it of its supernatural qualities like immortality or make the thinkers making this transition less Christian.

This false binary is similarly present in the only other recent work on the soul in the Enlightenment, Ann Thomson’s Bodies of Thought: Science, Religion, and the Soul in the Early Enlightenment. Though Thomson’s work is primarily focused on the century previous to the major shifts in thinking about the soul wrought by the “high”

Enlightenment, she nevertheless provides valuable background on the foundations for such shifts in the seventeenth century. Like Martin and Barresi, Thomson focuses exclusively on the British handling of the soul. Unlike them, however, she allows for the importance of religious concerns in shaping new ideas about the soul. She rightly argues that what she calls “the doctrine of the soul” should be “situated in a wider context, paying more attention to not only medical but also theological concern and the unintended consequences of doctrinal disputes”.36 Her claim that debates about the soul should be considered “in terms of the period” by “trying to take religious concerns seriously rather than dismissing unorthodox expressions of belief as mere masks for

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 36 Ann Thomson, Bodies of Thought: Science, Religion, and the Soul in the Early Enlightenment, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008): vii.

20 ! ! irreligion” promises a far more accurate approach to the subject than has yet been managed. However, just like The Naturlization of the Soul, Thomson’s Bodies of

Thought makes the unfortunate assumption that reevaluations of the soul were all part of zero sum game—the more “scientific” the study of the soul became, the less religious it was. Even if religion was the cause of the transformation of the soul, irreligion was the result: “A secular conception of humans is seen to emerge not only from a radical onslaught on religion, but also from difficulties raised by sincere if unorthodox believers”.37 Thomson runs very quickly into the same problems of “secularization theory” that Gregory and others discuss, perhaps because she openly admits that her own atheistic standpoint has often made it difficult for her to really appreciate or sympathize with early-modern Christian accounts of the soul.38

What these accounts of the soul in the eighteenth-century fail to take into account, however, is the very real and important role played by the body in Christian theology of the human person. The materiality of the soul, while hardly a mainstream part of

Western Christianity, has nevertheless been present since its early days. For example,

Norman Burns’ Christian Mortalism from Tyndale to Milton draws attention to the heterodox British cadre who throughout the seventeenth century posited the hibernation or even annihilation of the individual soul after death. Burns’ treatment stops short of the eighteenth century, but he argues that mortalists were not forerunners of or participants in enlightened and often atheistic materialism of the sort proposed by La Mettrie and others, despite the apparent similarities. Indeed, Burns’ mortalists scorned the modern philosophy which could have supported their position, turning instead to scriptural !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid., viii.

21 ! ! analysis and Reformation-era theology. Such scriptural analysis of early Church figures like Paul revealed what these mortalists perceived to be ambiguity on the nature of the soul.

Moreover, even modern theology is by no means opposed to the notion of a material soul. When philosopher-theologians Slajov Žižek and John Milbank recently debated the theological implications of Hegelian dialectics (in 2005’s The Monstrosity of

Christ: Paradox or Dialectic), they did so working from largely materialist principles.

Žižek, who utilizes Christian theology to support his atheistic reading of modern existence, argues that Christian materialism actually sacralizes matter and mundane reality by arguing that “independent external reality is a matter of faith, that the existence of ‘holy matter’ is the fundamental dogma of the ‘theology’ of dialectical materialism”.39

Moreover, he contends that “it is only materialism that can accurately explain the very phenomena of mind, consciousness, etc.; and, conversely, it is idealism that is ‘vulgar,’ that always-already ‘reifies’ these phenomena”.40 His opponent, Catholic social theologian John Milbank similarly calls for a “joyful, positive” materialism which respects the body as a sexual and sacred object, and which sees that “in one sense atheism is correct, ‘there is only this world,’ but on the other hand, if that is correct, then one needs to take in a much more serious and nonrhetorical sense the idea that this world... is then God”.41 Ultimately, it is Milbank who provides the philosophical-theological summary of Christian materialism, as true of the eighteenth-century variety as it is of the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 39 Slavoj Žižek, “A Modest Plea for the Hegelian Reading of Christianity”, in!Slavoj Žižek and John Milbank. The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? ed. Creston Davis, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2009): 98 40 Ibid., 93. 41 John Milbank, “The Double Glory, or Paradox versus Dialectics”, in Žižek and Milbank, The Monstrosity of Christ, 189.

22 ! ! twenty-first: “If matter is ‘held up’ by form, which is itself held up by the divine esse

[essence], then one has the sacramental glorification of matter instead of the reduction of all to ‘mere matter’ which turns out to always means some sort of vitalist doctrine of rarefied ideal force.... Materialist materialism is simply not as materialist as theological materialism”.42

Introducing the Main Players: Hartley and Condillac

It is within this body of literature that I locate my own attempt to tell the story of the soul in the early modern West. I hope to contribute to reconsiderations of

Enlightenment, to challenges of the secularization narrative, and more focused evaluations of the history of thought about the human person, body and soul. Voltaire, defining the word “soul” in his Philosophical Dictionary, queried with his customary eloquence and wit: “When we want to learn something roughly about a piece of metal, we put it in a crucible in the fire. But have we a crucible in which to put the soul?”

Though Voltaire himself was confident that no such tool existed, most of his fellow philosophers were not discouraged by the apparent impossibility of the task. They sought to create a crucible of words and ideas, of thought experiments and Biblical analysis, in which to test the soul. Many such thinkers took as their starting point the late seventeenth-century publication of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human

Understanding, unquestionably one of the most important texts of the moderate

Enlightenment. Tracing the impact of Locke’s theory of the association of ideas, as well as the controversy surrounding his proposal of “thinking matter”, provides the essential means by which this dissertation will make its argument. I approach this subject by

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 42 Ibid., 206.

23 ! ! examining two such thinkers—the British physician David Hartley and the French abbé

Etienne Bonnot de Condillac—along with the crucibles they created, and the ways in which these philosophical instruments were employed both with and without the approval of their original creators.

David Hartley

There is an astonishing lack of literature on the role of David Hartley in the

British Enlightenment, although Peter Gay cites him as “the most inventive and… influential psychologist of the eighteenth century”.43 Richard Allen has written the only monograph on Hartley, David Hartley on Human Nature, but focuses on Hartley as a proto-psychologist. Hartley’s religion and the historical context in which his thought developed are completely neglected in this account—Allen is clearly far more concerned with establishing the relevance of Hartley to modern psychology than placing Hartley in an enlightened context. Roy Porter devotes a chapter of Flesh in the Age of Reason to

Hartley, noting that he “has been neglected or misunderstood, largely because his writings defy modern academic categories” specifically as regards his unique blend of religious belief and proto-behaviorist psychology.44 Porter examines Hartley as both an important interpreter of Lockean empiricism as well as a significant philosopher in his own right, shaping thinkers far into the nineteenth century. Most importantly, Porter takes Hartley’s Christianity as seriously as Hartley himself did. Additionally, there are a handful of articles linking him to modern psychology or exploring his legacy in the nineteenth century. Only two articles from these years even tangentially relate to Hartley

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 43 Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: The Science of Freedom, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1996): 181-187. 44 Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003): 348.

24 ! ! as an Enlightenment thinker. First, a 1976 article by Barbara Bowen Oberg in the Journal of the History of Ideas explores the development of Hartley’s theory of the association of ideas but spends little time placing this theory in the eighteenth-century enlightened context.45 Secondly, in a 1981 article in the Journal of the History of Philosophy, Stephen

Ferg attributes two anonymous eighteenth-century manuscripts to the work of a young

Hartley.46 Porter’s analysis of the literature concerning Hartley summarizes the lacuna succinctly: “Hartley the monist has been ironically split in two: he must be put back together again”.47

Etienne Bonnot de Condillac

Literature on the French philosophe the Abbé de Condillac is, as for Hartley, limited. This may in part be due to the extremely private nature of the Abbé, who left little clue in correspondence, annotations, or notes concerning the development of his ideas or how, if at all, his published works differed from his private beliefs. Again as with Hartley, Condillac is generally acknowledged in broader works on the

Enlightenment as an important conduit and developer of Lockean empiricism in France, but he has garnered few in-depth studies. Isabel Knight’s The Geometric Spirit: The Abbé de Condillac and the French Enlightenment provides one of the better analyses of

Condillac’s thought, although it should be noted that Knight approaches her subject from a philosophical, rather than strictly historical, methodology, which results in a far more speculative argument than an historian would generally produce. The Geometric Spirit

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 45 Barbara Bowen Oberg, "David Hartley and the Association of Ideas," Journal of the History of Ideas 37, no. 8 (1976): 441-454. 46 Stephen Ferg, "Two Early Works by David Hartley," Journal of the History of Philosophy 19, no. 2 (1981): 173-189. 47 Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason, 348.

25 ! ! argues that Condillac was more of a “popular” philosopher to his contemporaries than an innovative one, and that his works did more to confirm beliefs rather than to create converts. Because of this, Knight sees him as a representative figure of many of the interests and controversies of eighteenth-century French intellectual culture. Aside from

Knight’s monograph, much of the literature surrounding Condillac is both dated and limited. French scholar Georges Le Roy published, in the years from 1947 to 1951, a number of commentaries on Condillac’s correspondence and published works. An article appeared in the Journal of the History of Philosophy in 1978 analyzing a recently discovered letter in terms of its relations to the Traité de Sensations, Condillac’s sensationalist manifesto.

Chapter Outlines

This dissertation is organized into two, chronological halves. In the first half, I focus primarily on the immediate development of Hartley and Condillac’s ideas about the soul, along with their interpretation of Locke. Using this means, I explore the intellectual contexts of Britain and France respectively, and indicate the impact of these contexts on theories about the nature of the soul. In the second half, I deal with the question of reception and interpretation of Hartley and Condillac’s ideas, both in their home countries and abroad. While in the first section, I concern myself with what the two thinkers thought they were saying, in the second, I focus instead on what people who read their works understood them, regardless of authorial intentions. While each chapter is divided geographically between Britain and France, they also frequently take a comparative turn, evaluating the thought of Hartley and Condillac in relation not only to each other, but also to the wider spectrum of enlightened thought about the soul.

26 ! !

Chapter one begins with an examination of Lockean philosophy in British thought, which sets the stage for an in-depth exploration of Hartley’s sole fully-developed work of philosophy, the formidable Observations on Man: His Frame, His Duty, and His

Expectations, first published in 1749. I argue that, despite and even because of his strong religious convictions, Hartley remained open to the possibility of a material soul. Indeed, he developed an entirely physiological explanation for how the human mind gains and develops knowledge, leaving little room for an immaterial soul. I explore the implications of this explanation for Hartley’s theory of human nature more broadly, especially focusing on the vexed questions of free will (which Hartley denied) and the relationship between humans and animals (which Hartley argued was very close). I briefly discuss reception, though with the awareness that Hartley’s real impact was delayed until over twenty-five years following the publication of the Observations.

Chapter two hops the channel to France, where it follows a similar path to chapter one. I begin with an evaluation of the translation of Locke into a French intellectual context. I especially consider this translation in light of the dominant theory of the human person—René Descartes’ rigidly dualistic division between the spiritual soul and the physical body. Condillac was one of the first French thinkers to attempt to interpret

Locke within and against this Cartesian framework, and this struggle forms the primary theme of the chapter. There is little evidence regarding the development of Condillac’s thought in either his correspondence or unpublished papers, and consequently my arguments concerning this stem largely from a comparative reading of his major philosophical works along with the pieces he produced in defense of his orthodoxy.

Condillac’s publishing career was far more colorful than Hartley’s, and the accusations

27 ! ! rendered against him by Parisian journals, conservative enemies, and jealous competitors provide much of the context for the development of his thought. Charges of heterodoxy and materialism followed Condillac throughout his life, and I discuss them both in terms of their accuracy as well as how representative they may be of the general terms of

Enlightenment in France.

Chapter three represents the first of the chapters on later reception of Hartley and

Condillac. Remaining geographically in France, I begin with an exploration of the two

French translations of Hartley’s thought, the first in 1756 and the second in 1801. A comparative reading of these two translations, most particularly the justification for their translation provided by the translators themselves, reveals significant changes in the manner in which French intellectuals thought about the soul over the course of the late eighteenth century. While in the first case, the Catholic translator was openly appalled at

Hartley’s denial of free will and troubled by his suggestions of human-animal similarities, the 1802 translation reads as an attack on the materialism of the later followers of

Condillac. From France, I return to Britain to depict the resurrection and alteration of

Hartley’s Observations at the hands of chemist and theologian Joseph Priestley.

Priestley’s succinct and simplified interpretation of Hartley provided the lens through which most subsequent thinkers viewed the Observations. The controversy this interpretation sparked—most importantly in its denial of an immaterial soul—is also explored as a means of contextualizing Priestley’s unusual religious convictions. From

Britain, I move to the Italian peninsula to explore an 1801 Venetian translation of

Priestley’s Hartley. Torn from its religious moorings, the Italian Hartley served far more as a scientific exploration of the human mind than the religious treatise Hartley himself

28 ! ! had originally envisioned. Next, I follow Hartley’s Observations to the German states, where his religious thought was not only present but primary in Herman Andreas

Pistorius’ translation. Pistorius wielded Hartley as a weapon in his fight against Kantian idealism and used his theory to demonstrate the preeminence of the physical world over the Kant’s world of abstract ideals. I return once again to Britain to explore the use of

Hartley—both in his Priestleian form and the original—by the Romantic poets Samuel

Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The Romantics were drawn to Hartley’s emphasis on the physical world, which they interpreted in a mystical manner.

Finally, I jump the Atlantic itself to explore the writings of Hartley’s tireless American supporter, Benjamin Rush. Rush not only continually pushed Hartley’s theories on friends like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, but also utilized the Observations in his physiology lectures at the new University of Pennsylvania. I conclude that the breadth of the Observations, along with its compelling synthesis of religious, philosophical, and scientific concerns in large part accounted for its continuing popularity in the early nineteenth century and beyond.

In a final chapter, I explore Condillac’s legacy. While I remain primarily in

France, the Revolution provides an explosive transition point for French thought generally and Condillac specifically. I not only approach Condillac’s thought in the work of the Abbé Sieyès, but also significantly in the work of the Ideology party which dominated the French intellectual scene in the 1790s and early 1800s. Taking Destutt de

Tracy and Pierre George Cabanis as the primary representatives of the movement, I explore the ways in which they altered Condillac’s thought—making it more materialist and less religious—even while claiming Condillac himself as their “master”. The

29 ! !

Idéologues had many enemies, and these thinkers often attacked Condillac as a means of discrediting the theories of his “followers”. This renaissance in controversy over the soul, now considered in the post-revolutionary but still religious terms, provides a flash point which illuminates not only Condillac’s fate in the late century, but also the ways in which the Revolution had both succeeded and failed to alter French thought about the soul. In a final section, I venture abroad to Scotland and consider the elevation of Condillac (at the expense of the demotion of Hartley) in Scottish Common Sense philosophy as championed by Dugald Stewart. Stewart’s analysis of these two thinkers provides a neat summation of their respective fates in the early nineteenth-century thought.

I conclude with a reflection on the significance of Hartley and Condillac’s attempts to remake the soul for an enlightened world, especially within the broader

Enlightenment context. I briefly explore the means in which these theories were employed in the later nineteenth century, particularly in the development of the new science of psychology. Overall, I conclude that the strain of thought represented by

Hartley and Condillac did far more to alter and shape modern conceptions of the mind, soul, and body, than the radical theories developed by marginal (if highly visible) figures like Spinoza, Diderot, and d’Holbach. Such a realization demands that we reconsider not only the Enlightenment itself, but also the secular reality typically believed to have resulted from it by way of the nineteenth century.

30 ! !

Figure 0.1

Figure 0.2

31 ! !

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

MacDougall, Duncan. “Weigher of Men’s Souls Tells of His Experiments”. The Plain Dealer 90. 31 March 1907.

Time Magazine. “Pope Francis, the People’s Pope”. Online article. http://poy.time.com/2013/12/11/person-of-the-year-pope-francis-the-peoples- pope/

Secondary Sources

Cassirer, Ernst. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, trans. by Koelln and Pettegrove. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951.

Coleman, Charly. “Resacralizing the World: The Fate of Secularization in Enlightenment Historiography”, The Journal of Modern History 82, No. 2. (June 2010).

Darnton, Robert. "The High Enlightenment and the Low-Life of Literature in Pre- Revolutionary France," Past & Present 51 (1971)

Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1958.

Ferg, Stephen. "Two Early Works by David Hartley," Journal of the History of Philosophy 19, no. 2 (1981): 173-189.

Førland, Egil. “Historiography without God: A Reply to Gregory”, History and Theory 47, no. 4 (December 2008).

Gauchet, Marcel. The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion. Princeton University Press. 1999.

Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. 2 Vols. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995.

Gregory, Brad S. “The Other Confessional History: On Secular Bias in the Study of Religion”, History and Theory 45, No. 4 (December 2006)

_____. The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press, 2012.

Israel, Jonathan, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750-1790. New York: Oxford University Press. 2011.

32 ! !

_____. Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man, 1670-1752. New York: Oxford University Press. 2006.

Martin, Raymond and John Barresi. The Naturalization of the Soul: Self and Personal Identity in the Eighteenth Century, (New York: Routledge, 1999)

Michel, Jean-Baptiste and Yuan Kui Shen, Aviva Presser Aiden, et al. “Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books”, Science (Published online ahead of print: 12/16/2010)

Oberg, Barbara Bowen "David Hartley and the Association of Ideas," Journal of the History of Ideas 37, no. 8 (1976): 441-454.

Perovic, Sanja “Introduction”, in Sacred and Secular Agency in Early Modern France: Fragments of Religion, ed. Sanja Perovic, (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012)

Pocock, J.G.A. "Historiography and enlightenment: a view of their history." Modern Intellectual History 1, no. 5 (2008)

Porter, Roy. Flesh in the Age of Reason, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003)

Robertson, John. The Case for Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples, 1680-1760. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Sorkin, David. The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011)

Thomson, Ann. Bodies of Thought: Science, Religion, and the Soul in the Early Enlightenment. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008.

Wright, John P. and Paul Potter. Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Žižek, Slavoj and John Milbank. The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? ed. Creston Davis. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2009.

33 ! !

{Chapter 1} THE SELF AND SOUL IN DAVID HARTLEY’S BRITAIN, 1700-1760

In 1710, an Irish clergyman published his speculations on what he called the

“mechanical operation of the spirit.” Of particular interest to him was the brain, which he argued was the point of intersection of the soul and the body. While none too sure of his own conclusions on the subject, and indeed even taking the precaution of removing his own deductions from the text altogether, he deemed it safe to report the contemplations of smarter men. He had heard learned men speculate that “the Brain is only a Crowd of little Animals, but with Teeth and Claws extremely sharp, and therefore, cling together in the Contexture we behold... like bees in perpendicular swarm upon a tree”. The result of this, at least according to what the clergyman had heard of educated speculation, was that

“all Invention is formed by the Morsure [bite] of two or more of these Animals, upon certain capillary nerves, whereof three branches spread into the tongue, and two into the right hand. [...] That if the Morsure be Hexagonal, it produces poetry; the Circular gives

Eloquence; If the Bite hath been Conical, the Person, whose Nerve is so affected, shall be disposed to write upon the Politicks.”1 Of course, this was only conjecture, the Rev.

Jonathan Swift hastened to remind his readers.

As Swift’s satiric handling of the soul attests, there is no question that in Britain the rhythm was different. While religious controversy raged throughout continental

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003): 158.

33! ! !

Europe, dominating the discourse and forcing thinkers like Condillac to reckon with powerful censorship mechanisms, British writers treated controversial subjects like the mind-body problem with relative ease. While this is not the place to enter the scholarly debate on just how different Britain was, their censorship laws were unquestionably more tolerant compared to most of the rest of Europe. The breakdown of censorship surrounding the Civil War and Commonwealth interlude, followed by the lapse of the

Licensing Act in 1695, ended pre-publication censorship in Britain for good. On the religious side, the Act of Toleration in 1689 opened the door for a wide variety of religious views to be practiced and, thanks to the end of pre-publication censorship, promulgated with near impunity. By contrast, French censors carefully screened manuscripts for ideas, religious and political, which could prove potentially harmful to its sacral monarchy, and frequently demanded edits before granting the official privilège to print, if such permission came at all. French writers who wished to convey subversive ideas were either forced underground, illicitly publishing only at great personal and financial risk, or into elaborate maneuvers, in the manner of the Encylopèdie, to avoid censoring. While British satirists like Swift were able to openly point and laugh, their contemporaries in France and elsewhere on the Continent could only snicker behind a strategically placed hand.

This is not to say that British intellectuals did not take seriously the perennially pressing questions of human identity, such as “What am I?” and “What will happen to me after I die?” After all, for most people, the eternal stakes were as high as they had ever been. Rather, eighteenth-century British thinkers appeared particularly interested in these subjects, discussing their thoughts openly—boisterously even—and producing poetry,

33! ! ! satires, and novels, alongside the more traditional theological and philosophical treatises.

While Swift mocked the attempt to find personal identity in a clarified understanding of the soul-body connection, his more seriously-minded contemporaries filled page after printed page in precisely this endeavor. Some, like Samuel Johnson and Anthony Ashley

Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury and erstwhile pupil of the late John Locke, viewed the relationship between soul and body as adversarial; the body was a treacherous beast to be subdued and overcome by the proper education and tempering of the lofty and incorruptible soul. Others, like Henry More and David Hartley himself, were convinced of the inextricable bonds between the two; bonds which could only be understood through the rigorous application of the scientific method and Lockean associationism.

“Without Locke I Could Have Known Nothing”

So spoke Jeremy Bentham, in clear tribute to the power of the one thinker who most clearly dictated the terms of this new conversation about the self. While to most modern minds, John Locke is most closely associated with his incredibly influential political writings, in the eighteenth century, it was his epistemology—or his theory of how the human mind acquires knowledge—that had the greatest initial impact. While

Locke’s Two Treatises of Government were published anonymously in 1689 and languished for over half a century before finally attracting attention, his Essay

Concerning Human Understanding, published the same year, made quite a splash.

Already in a second, and significantly revised, edition by 1694, the Essay raced through multiple editions over the next ten years at the hands of an author never satisfied by its unwieldy, disorganized, and often contradictory character. By 1696, Locke’s theories were being railed against by theologian and bishop of Worcester, Edward Stillingfleet,

34! ! ! who was to prove only the first of many challengers to the Essay.2 Stillingfleet, perhaps the most capable and learned of Locke’s early attackers, and the only one to whom Locke deigned to respond, captured conservative Christian concerns about the potential impact of the Essay: “I cannot believe that you intended to give any advantage to the enemies of the Christian faith,” he wrote. “But consider in our age wherein the mysteries of faith are so much exposed by the promotion of scepticism and infidelity, it is a thing of dangerous consequence to start such new methods of certainty as are apt to leave men's minds more doubtful than before”.3 Despite these conservative doubts, Locke’s Essay Concerning

Human Understanding nonetheless conquered the eighteenth century and succeeded in becoming the established, if still controversial, basis in Britain for further inquiry into the workings of the human mind. In 1819, looking back over the eighteenth century, Samuel

Coleridge wrote that “it is said that Stillingfleet died of a broken heart in consequence of his defeat by Locke”.4

A difficult to define, and often difficult to understand, collection of thoughts,

Locke’s Essay provoked just as much discussion about the author’s “real” intentions and the meaning behind his often obscure language as it did about the ideas themselves. It was clear that Locke supported a program of observation and assessment by reason over more traditional emphases on reflection and revelation, but just what precisely this meant

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2 For more on the reception of the Essay, as well as reactions to it throughout the eighteenth century, see Christopher Fox, “Locke and the Scriblerians: The Discussion of Identity in Early Eighteenth Century England” in Eighteenth-Century Studies 16, no. 1 (Autumn 1982): 1-25. 3 Quoted in Barry Till, ‘Stillingfleet, Edward (1635–1699)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/view/article/26526, accessed 20 May 2013] 4 Quoted in Fox, 74. This is incredibly unlikely, given that Stillingfleet was an old man by the time he took up his pen against Locke. Also, despite literary imaginings, there has never yet been one confirmed case of death from a broken heart.

35! ! ! was a matter of much debate. In this, however, arguably lay both the beauty of the Essay and the secret to its longevity. Especially after its author’s death in 1704, the Essay proved amenable to such a wide array of interpretations that it could appeal to thinkers as disparate as the radical deist John Toland and our own thoroughly moderate David

Hartley. “Locke,” it seemed, could be made to say just about anything.

At its root, however, the Essay argued against centuries of speculation that the mind possessed intrinsic knowledge. The common assumption, Locke wrote, was that

“there are in the understanding certain innate principles... stamped upon the mind of man, which the soul receives in its very first being; and brings into the world with it”.5 He had found reason to doubt this, however, and painstakingly dismantled the arguments usually used to support such a position, most especially the idea of universal assent to certain common principles. Just because a proposition is universally acclaimed as true, Locke argued, this “proves nothing” about innate ideas, for “if it were true in matter of fact, that there were certain truths, wherein all mankind agreed, it would not prove them innate, if there can be any other way shown, how men may come to that universal agreement, in the things they do consent in; which I presume may be done”.6 Instead, Locke contended that it was far more likely that the mind was an empty apartment which could be furnished in two ways—either from the experiences of the physical senses, which would create knowledge of the physical world, or by reflection on abstract concepts, which could produce theoretical knowledge.

All ideas come from sensation or reflection. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, a white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 5 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Alexander C. Fraser (New York: Dover Publications Inc. 1959): 7 6 Ibid., 8

36! ! !

to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless fantasy of man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety? [...] To this I answer, in one word, from experience: in that all our knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself.7

The mechanism by which this occurred, according to Locke, was the association or linking of sensations or reflections to the perceptions they formed in the mind. “Our senses,” Locke explained, “...convey into the mind, several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways, wherein those objects do affect them: and thus we come by those ideas”.8 Similarly, ideas could come from reflection on the “operations of our own minds”. It was by reflection, Locke contended, that we are conscious of “all the different actings [sic] of our minds” such as “thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, [and] willing”.9 In both cases, Locke concluded, it was observation of original objects—both physical and mental—which gave birth to ideas.

Important contemporary thinkers such as the Irish scientist William Molyneux and the Bishop George Berkeley, among others, joined Locke in rejecting the possibility that the mind had “innate” ideas, or those originating within the mind itself rather than from the senses or through reflection. And, as the support of Molyneux demonstrated,

Locke’s impact was not confined to the realm of philosophy alone; his theories informed new scientific inquiries into how the brain formed and retained ideas. The implications

Lockean association for the science and culture of eighteenth-century Britain will be discussed in more depth in the following chapter, but of particular interest to the scientifically minded in Britain and elsewhere were individual cases of extreme deprivation from the environments and stimuli considered by Locke necessary to form !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 7 Ibid., 33 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., 34

37! ! ! ideas: Did the so-called ‘savage’ child, known as Peter of Hanover, who emerged from the forests of northern Germany in 1725 have an idea of God; could he be “civilized” by means of Lockean educational program? Could a woman born blind, Molyneux wondered, who regained her sight through surgery immediately differentiate between round and square objects? Associationism provided an interesting lens through which to examine such questions: children who grew up isolated from human interactions and culture would naturally “furnish” their minds through more “primitive” associations, much like animals. The blind could not form visual ideas of geometric shapes because they lacked the sensory stimuli to create such associations. The interest evidenced in such questions in Britain paralleled similar trends elsewhere in Europe—Condillac and

Diderot, among others, would write on the unique problems and opportunities presented by such unusual cases of “deprivation”.

As widely applicable as it was, the Essay proved a dangerous disruption to established systems of thought, especially about the mind and body. Roy Porter notes in his discussion of Locke’s enormous impact on the shape of the British Enlightenment in

The Creation of the Modern World that, “[i]n dismissing Platonic and Cartesian a priorism, in asserting that knowledge was the art of the probable and in holding that they way forward lay in empirical inquiry, [Locke] replaced rationalism with reasonableness in a manner which became programmatic for the Enlightenment in Britain”.10 It is easy to understand how, coming on the heels of the dominant Cartesian assumptions about the innate knowledge of the mind—and, indeed, its utter separation from the body—Locke’s thought proved unpalatable to some. Accusations of materialism, Socinianism, and !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 10 Roy Porter, The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment, (New York: Norton, 2000): 65-66

38! ! ! atheism—among others—followed both Locke and certain of his supporters.11

Stillingfleet argued that it was impossible from Locke’s theory to “prove a Spiritual

Substance in us”.12 After all, what was a soul that had no content or character but what it gained from observation and experience? But even those who disagreed with Locke were still forced to account for his theories and to work within the paradigm he had established.13

As the eighteenth century progressed, Locke’s ideas penetrated even deeper into

British consciousness: textbooks containing simplified versions of his theories were widely printed and used in educating students on the workings of the human mind.

Indeed, one textbook author went so far as to say that the Essay, “has diffused fairer

Light through the World in numerous Affairs of Science and of Human Life”.14 By the time David Hartley made his way to Jesus College at Cambridge as a scholarship student,

Lockean theories had become a standard part of the curriculum. 15 Popular culture also embraced Locke. According to Porter, it was The Spectator which really popularized

Locke; editor Joseph Addison made Lockean epistemology both accessible and appealing to his wide readership. Such was the success of Locke that writers and advertisers began to namedrop, with the clear understanding that readers knew the Essay, knew Locke and believed him to be an authority figure in the realms of education and epistemology.

Perhaps the best gauge of the Essay’s success is in its editions; according to Porter, by !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 11 A sort of all-encompassing insult, the term nonetheless carried connotations that the individual in question denied the hypostatic union of Christ’s human and divine natures, and instead claimed he was merely an extraordinary human being, with no divine component. 12 Quoted in Fox, 42 13 Porter, Creation, 134. 14 Porter, Creation, 68. 15 Ironically, the most notable exception to this rule was Oxford. Locke’s staunchly Tory alma mater had condemned him and his thought during his lifetime, and was in no hurry after his death to admit it may have been in error. (Ibid., 69-70)

39! ! !

1760, it had been through nine English editions, been translated to Latin, and made appearances on the Continent.16 William Warburton summed up the general feeling concerning Locke: “When Locke first published his Essay, he had hardly a single approver. Now Locke is universal”.17

Newton and the Mechanical Universe

If John Locke told eighteenth-century Britons how they knew things, it was Isaac

Newton and his successors who told them what they knew and why it was significant.

Aside from his inestimable contributions to physics, optics, and other scientific pursuits,

Newton and his followers were responsible for successfully establishing a relationship between moderate Christianity and cutting-edge science, and in doing so crafting the worldview that governed English intellectual life for the greater part of the eighteenth century. Newton argued for the prominent role of mathematics in comprehending the world, which he understood to be essentially mechanical. He and his followers knew, however, that this position could easily be used to reach atheistic and materialistic ends: what need was there for a God in a universe that seemed to operate independently of any divine intervention? Consequently, they balanced this mechanical system with a strong belief in a providential Deity who had created the world and designed its laws. Newton wrote of his system that it was not crafted “with a design of bidding defiance to the

Creator but to enforce and demonstrate the power & superintendency of a supreme being”.18 The centerpiece to this worldview, therefore, was the belief that the pursuit of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 16 Ibid., 60-70 17 William Warburton, Letters from a late eminent prelate to one of his friends, (London: T. Caldwell and W. Davies, 1809): 282 18 Quoted in Frank E. Manuel, A Portrait of Isaac Newton, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968): 125.

40! ! ! science, rather than leading to doubt and eventually atheism, would instead lead to their eradication and the triumph of a rational Christianity.19 The better they understood the mathematical and mechanical laws of nature, Newton and his disciples were convinced, the better they could understand both the nature of the Deity who created these laws as well as the providential plan of which they were a part.

Through the study of creation, moreover, Newtonians hoped to uncover knowledge previously ignored which would bolster their own faith and prove to atheists and Catholics alike the superiority of the Protestant understanding.20 The Newtonian crusade against atheism and the religious “superstition” associated with Catholicism was epitomized in the Boyle Lectures, a series of talks endowed by scientist and theologian

Robert Boyle following his death for the purpose of encouraging educated discussion of religion in a scientific context. Boyle, much like Newton, had conceived of the world as functioning in an essentially mechanical way, and his lecture series seemed custom-made for promulgating the Newtonian gospel. Featuring prominent Newtonians such as

Richard Bentley and Samuel Clarke, these lectures encouraged a certain variety of moderate Christianity which envisioned scientific progress as the means to greater knowledge of Christian truth. Furthermore, they also successfully crafted a new social philosophy which espoused hierarchy on the basis that it paralleled Newton’s highly structured vision of the universe. Together with Lockean epistemology, the Newtonian !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 19 Indeed, Hartley was fascinated by more than just Newton’s scientific endeavors—he also looked to him as a guide in religious matters. In 1736, he wrote his friend Lister to enquire if John had “read Sir Isaac Newton’s Commentary upon Daniel…and the Apocalypse… [for] it affords great Light to many passages both of the old and new Testament”. [Hartley to Lister, London, 13 March 1736, SH:7/HL/2] 20 For more on the uses which Newton and his disciples envisioned for the new science and the ways in which they may have wielded it as a force to inhibit heterodoxy, particularly in the more radical form of skepticism and atheism, see Margaret Jacobs’ discussion of the moderate Enlightenment in The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons, and Republicans (Boston: George Allen & Unwin, 1981): 87-108.

41! ! ! system crafted a comprehensive worldview which, Margaret Jacob wrote, “asked that educated men and women acknowledge a providentially guided polity where diversity of

Christian creeds was to be tolerated, where learning about nature and society was encouraged” but all of this was to be put to the end of supporting the established social and political regime.21 Newton himself approved of the lectures, writing to Bentley in

1692 that, “[w]hen I wrote my treatise [the Principia] about our Systeme I had an eye upon such Principles as might work with considering men for the beleife of a Deity & nothing can rejoyce me more than to find it usefull for that purpose”.22

Much like Locke, Newton dominated the eighteenth century. The potency of the

Newtonian argument for the social and political status-quo had undeniable appeal for moderate thinkers of all stripes. Just as with Locke, however, not everyone was convinced that Newton’s system would not eventually lead to atheism and materialism.

In a famous public exchange of letters in 1715-1716, the German philosopher Leibniz challenged Newton’s protégée Samuel Clarke to account for what, precisely the Deity did in maintaining the mechanical world he had created. If, as Newton had argued in the

Principia, the world functioned like a clock that needed rewound and repaired every so often, Leibniz sneered that its creator must have been very clumsy indeed: “he must consequently be so much the more unskillful a workman as he is more often obliged to

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 21 Jacob, 21. 22 Sir Isaac Newton to Doctor Bentley, 10 December 1692, in Four letters from Sir Isaac Newton to Doctor Bentley. Containing some arguments in proof of a deity. (London, MDCCLVI. [1756]. Eighteenth Century Collections Online): 1.

42! ! ! mend his work and set it right.”.23 Instead, Leibniz proposed, did it not seem more likely that the creator’s role was a minimal one?

According to my opinion, [he wrote], the same force and vigor always remains in the world and only passes from one part of matter to another in agreement with the laws of nature and the beautiful pre-established order. And I hold that when God works miracles, he does it not to supply the needs of nature, but those of grace. Whoever thinks otherwise, must necessarily have a very mean notion of the wisdom and power of God.24

Such an understanding of the role of God, and the mutability of the mechanical laws of the universe, ran counter to Newton/Clarke’s entire worldview. The debate between the two systems is a significant one, not only because it engaged several of the brightest minds of the early eighteenth century, but also because it effectively defines and represents the terms of the debate about providence and mechanism for much of the rest of the century.

Significantly for the present discussion, Leibniz began his discussion of

Newtonianism not with the principles of Newton himself, but rather with Locke and the question of the soul. “Natural religion itself seems to decay in England very much,” he observed, for “many people will have human souls to be material; others make God himself a corporeal being”.25 Moreover, he continued, “Mr. Locke and his followers are uncertain at least whether the soul is not material and naturally perishable”.26 Clarke’s response to this accusation of Locke’s materialist inclinations is equally telling: “That Mr.

Locke doubted whether the soul was immaterial or not may be justly suspected from parts of his writings,” Clarke admitted, “but in this he has been followed only by some !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 23 G.W. Leibniz, in “Exchange of Papers Between Leibniz and Clarke”, ed. Jonathan Bennett (2010): 1. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid.

43! ! ! materialists... who approve little or nothing in Mr. Locke’s writings but his errors”.27

Clarke found it impossible to deny that materialist inclinations could be found in the

Essay by those who looked for them. For the two thinkers, and with them much of the rest of the eighteenth-century thought, the problem of the material soul was necessarily bound up in the question of the mechanical universe and the nature of God himself. And for both Leibniz and Clarke, adversaries on the nature of the universe, it seemed clear that only those who deliberately chose to highlight Locke’s errors could possibly reach materialist conclusions. Therefore, the intellectual milieu of eighteenth-century was a rather murky one: the very same thinkers hailed as the greatest minds of the age were simultaneously suspected of crafting systems that challenged the nature of the world, the human person, and the relationship between the two.

David Hartley and the Lockean-Newtonian Synthesis

It was within this milieu that David Hartley first crafted and published his innovative theory of the mind-body relationship. The son of a poor clergyman, David

Hartley was born in 1705 with the expectation that he, too, would become a man of the cloth and, for the first part of his life, all seemed to go according to plan: he first attended

Bradford Grammar School and then Jesus College, Cambridge, where he acquired the background in Newtonian and Lockean philosophy which would become so important to his later writings. He left Cambridge after four years, married, and ran headlong into the same obstruction to ordination which inhibited so many of his peers: the Thirty-Nine

Articles of the faith to which all Anglican clergymen were required to ascribe. In his short ‘Sketch’ of the life of his father, David Hartley, Esq. wrote that Hartley was not a !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 27 Samuel Clarke in “Exchange of Papers Between Leibniz and Clarke”, ed. Jonathan Bennett (2010): 1-2

44! ! !

Dissenter, but felt that certain of the articles were “of speculative and abstruse opinion”.28

According to the younger Hartley, what troubled his father seemed not to be any one of the articles specifically—although he did object strongly to the idea of eternal damnation implicit throughout the text—but rather the idea that after four years of excellent education, he would be expected to swallow doctrine whole. Hartley, concluded to his son, needed a career where he could question and explore without first swearing allegiance to dogma.29

Though he possessed neither the degree nor the license to practice, Hartley nonetheless turned from care of souls to care of bodies, building a successful medical practice first in London and later in Bath. He first rose to public prominence in 1738, when he endorsed a controversial treatment for kidney stones (a complaint from which he himself suffered). The debate over the efficacy of a certain Joanna Stephen’s proprietary medicine raged for years, and Hartley stuck to his guns despite being roundly abused as a

“Puff-scribbler in Favour of an old Woman’s Quack-medicine” by critics of the supposed cure30 Nonetheless, Hartley emerged from the fray apparently vindicated in his support of the controversial treatment, and as a largely respected public figure in the world of medicine. It was this reputation that he parlayed into the publication of his philosophical speculations. In fact, it was in 1746 in an appendix to the second edition of his Latin

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 28 David Hartley, Esq., “A Sketch of the Life and Character of Dr. Hartley,” in Notes and Additions to Dr. Hartley’s Observations on Man, (London: J. Johnson, 1801): 13. 29 Ibid. 30 Quoted in Richard C. Allen, David Hartley on Human Nature, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999): 56.

45! ! ! treatise in support of Stephen’s cure that Hartley first floated his theories to a public audience, though admittedly a somewhat elite one.31

Although it took many years before Hartley published his theories, he had in fact been thinking about the composition of the human mind and its relation to the body for many years previous. Indeed, according to an account given by his daughter Mary, he often recollected that he had been interested in such questions ever since he was a child, and “that when he was so little as to be swinging backwards and forwards upon a gate…he was meditating upon the nature of his own mind; wishing to find out how man was made; to what purpose, and for what future end”.32 While it is impossible to determine just when Hartley began to muse on such questions, we can date his writings on the subject to about ten years before he first made them public, in letters to his longtime friend, the Reverend John Lister.

In 1736, Hartley began expounding his ideas about the mind to Lister. It was

Locke, Hartley wrote, who had provided the necessary inspiration for Hartley’s own theory. Given respect which Locke commanded in Britain by the mid century, it is unsurprising Hartley should have turned to him for the foundation of his own theory. His exposure to Locke, Hartley explained in the introduction to the Observations had initially come from John Gay, the British thinker first responsible for applying Locke’s theory of association to morality. Gay argued, as Hartley would in the Observations, that morality

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 31 M. Kallich, introduction to David Hartley, Various Conjectures on the Perception, Motion, and Generation of Ideas [1746], trans. by R.E.A. Palmer, (Los Angeles: Augustan Reprint Society, 1959): iv. 32 Mary Hartley to the Rev. William Gilpin, 18 July 1795, in Original letters from Richard Baxter, Matthew Prior, Lord Bolingbroke, Alexander Pope, Dr. Cheyne, Dr. Hartley, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Mrs Montague, Rev. William Cilpin, George Lord Lyttleton, Rev. John Newton, Rev. Dr. Claudins Buchanan, &c., &c, ed. by Rebecca Warner, (London: R. Cruttwell, 1817): 92-93.

46! ! ! could be boiled down to the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain.33 “[O]ur

Approbation of Morality, and all Affections whatsoever,” Gay wrote in his Preliminary

Dissertation Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or Morality (1731), “are finally resolvable into Reason pointing our private Happiness, and are conversant only about things apprehended to be means tending to this end”.34 Gay argued, again as

Hartley would, against the idea of any kind of innate moral sense on the basis that it violated Locke’s principle that the mind possessed no innate ideas, including those of morality. Allowing for this, Gay concluded, that any morality must ultimately be based on “the true Principle of all our Actions, our own Happiness” and be enforced by social methods, such as approval of actions with consequences that benefitted mankind generally, and punishment of those that did not.35

Gay’s particular interpretation of Lockean associationism was evident in

Hartley’s own formulation years before the publication of the Observations. Writing to

Lister on the subject of “the Foundation of Morality” in early 1736, Hartley explained that the “Moral Good” was best understood as aligning with “private Happiness, with

Public Happiness or with the Will of [God]”.36 These three criteria were really closely connected, Hartley speculated, since it seemed likely that “those Actions [are] morally good which promote the Happiness of the Agent in the best possible Manner; and... the fairest Probability of obtaining private Happiness always arrives from our Endeavours to

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 33 Jonathan Harris, ‘Gay, John (1699–1745)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/view/article/10474] 34 John Gay, “Preliminary Dissertation Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or Morality”, in William King, An Essay on the Origin of Evil, trans. Edmund Law (London, 1731): xxxii. 35 Ibid. 36 Hartley to Lister, Leicester Fields, 13 March 1736, SH:7/HL/2.

47! ! ! promote public [happiness]” and finally that “God is infinitely benevolent and therefore must will that we should be so too”.37 Perhaps even more so than Locke or Gay, Hartley was from the very beginning anxious to show that the denial of any kind of innate moral sense did not, despite initial appearances, undercut the overall pursuit of virtue.

It wasn’t only the idea of innate morality that Hartley objected to, however.

Hartley wrote to Lister at the end of 1736 that he had come to understand that “natural affections” (his term for Locke’s innate ideas) did not actually exist, but were instead

“only prejudice and custom”.38 He hoped to show, he told his friend, that “that all our

Intellectual Pleasures and Pains are formed either immediately or mediately from sensible ones by Association, i.e. that they are meerly Compositions of a variety of Sensations and all our Reflection ultimately [are] resolvible into Sensation.”39 Already, it is clear from this letter, Hartley planned to employ what “Mr. Locke [… has] delivered concerning the

Influence of Association over our Opinions and Affection” to take the step that Locke would not and destroy the last province of so-called innate ideas.40 The human mind, in

Hartley’s vision, possessed no knowledge that did not have its origin in physical sensation: ideas of God, virtue, and morality were all learned by physical means, no matter how complex and abstract they appeared. Just as with the moral sense, though,

Hartley was eager to demonstrate that the this destruction would not result in the denial of complex and abstract ideas of God and religion. Whatever he may have intended

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 37 Ibid. 38 Rev. John Lister to David Hartley, Bury, 15 November 1736, SH:7/HL/3. Lister was also already cautioning Hartley against stating his ideas too strongly, or coming across too boldly, writing to his friend that “methinks the prejudice is so very strong, that it will be difficult, extremely difficult to persuade the world of [this].” 39 Hartley to Lister, 2 December 1736, SH:7/HL/4. 40 David Hartley, Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations, 1749, (Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars' Facsimile Reprints, 1966): Part I, 7. (italics in original not included)

48! ! ! however, by doing away with Locke’s distinction between simple ideas received via the senses and those conceived through reflection, Hartley intensified the materialist implications underlying Lockean theory.

What was lacking in Hartley’s earliest musings, however, was the physiological explanation for this sensate origin of ideas—a crucial component given Hartley’s profession and interests. By the time he published Conjecturæ quædam de Sensu, Motu, and Idearum Generatione (Various Conjectures on the Perception, Motion, and

Generation of Ideas) in 1746, however, Hartley had turned to that other intellectual giant of the eighteenth century—Newton. Just as with Locke, Hartley was not merely a passive receptacle for Newtonian science. Instead, he utilized the Newtonian theory of vibrations, through which purported to explain the as yet mysterious process of nervous transmission. In both the Opticks and the Principia Mathemetica, Newton proposed the existence of “a most subtle spirit which pervades and lies hidden in all gross bodies” which is “neither like the liquor, vapor or gas of spirit of wine; but of an aethereal nature, subtle enough to pervade the animal juices, as freely as the electric, or perhaps magnetic, effluvia do glass”. 41 This ether-like spirit, Newton contended, vibrated when exposed to outside stimulation such as heat or light. These vibrations were then “propagated along the solid filaments of the nerve, from the outward organs of sense to the brain, and from the brain into the muscles”.42

Hartley was primarily concerned with the first half of this process, in which sensations were transmitted to the brain. He utilized this process to explain how

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 41 Quoted in Wes Wallace, "The vibrating nerve impulse in Newton, Willis, and Gassendi: First steps in a mechanical theory of communication." Brain and Cognition 51 (2003): 69, 73. 42 Ibid., 69.

49! ! ! sensations transformed into both simple and complex ideas once they reached the brain.

As Hartley was concerned with the brain as a physiological entity, rather than the mind as a spiritual one, and he contended that “the brain is... the immediate Instrument, by which

Ideas are presented to the Mind: Or, in other Words, whatever Changes are made in this

Substance, corresponding Changes are made in our Ideas”.43 These ideas originated as sensations, transmitted from the nerve endings to the brain through Newtonian vibrations, and “being often repeated, leave certain Vestiges […] of themselves, which may be called, Simple Ideas”.44 Furthermore, complex ideas formed through the process of association in which a given set of sensations experienced either together or in close succession with one another and became linked together so that triggering one recalled to mind the ideas of the others.45 It is worth noting that Hartley, while convinced of the value of the theory of associations, readily acknowledged the potential weaknesses of the

Newtonian theory of vibration. Despite this, he was certain that his theory as a whole did not depend on its accuracy. Rather, he claimed, it was as likely a physiological explanation as any available and could easily be replaced by a more convincing one as the science of the brain and the nervous system developed.46

Thus, in many ways, Hartley’s theory epitomized the intellectual state of Britain during the early and mid part of the century. Adopting the principles of those giants of the Enlightenment via media, Hartley sought to follow in the footstep of Locke and

Newton along the philosophical tightrope between Christian belief and philosophical innovation. His success at this, however, is questionable once one begins to examine the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 43 Hartley, Part I, 8. 44 Ibid., 56. 45 Ibid., 65, 73-79. 46 Ibid., 34.

50! ! ! implications of his theory more carefully. Partially due to larger intellectual anxieties about the position of the soul in new theories of the anatomical and mental makeup of the human person, Hartley along with Locke and to a lesser extent Newton as well all found themselves under attack for the supposedly radical implications of their systems.

Moreover, where Locke and Newton were extremely subtle, even to the point of ambiguity, in their writings, so as to maintain the delicate balance between scientific innovation and religious orthodoxy, Hartley was far more forthright in his expression.

Perhaps this was partially due to his confidence that, properly understood, his theory could not possibly be a threat to proper Christian and traditional beliefs. Such optimism was clearly on display in his exchanges with John Lister, who in many ways typified the eighteenth-century British moderate—both intrigued by Hartley’s ideas and skeptical of their repercussions. Several of these implications, whether Hartley chose to acknowledge them or not, persuaded many people that his theory was dangerous to the belief in an immaterial and immortal soul, free will, and the important distinction between humans and their fellow living creatures. As will become apparent, many believed that the elimination of these elements of human nature endangered the larger cause of moderate

Christianity and opened the door to deism, atheism, and radicalism.

Implications of Hartley’s System: Materialism and Thinking Matter

The first charge leveled against Hartley’s theory was that it clearly challenged the existence of an immaterial, or spiritual soul—a challenge which sat uncomfortably with

Hartley’s own devout Christianity. If all ideas originated in the senses; if the mind had no innate ideas of its own; if thought could be understood as a purely physical process,

51! ! ! then what room was left for the spiritual soul? Indeed, what purpose would such a thing serve even if it did exist? And without a spiritual soul, there appeared to be nothing left to separate human beings from their fellow living creatures or indeed grant them immortality after the death of the body. Traditional, orthodox understandings of the mind-body relationship hinged on the argument that human beings were comprised of both matter and spirit, and were therefore simultaneously material and immaterial. In this balance, the immaterial soul was the portion of the person which possessed self- awareness and the capability of thought, and it always trumped the material body in its role as the director of human action. Materialism, and the atheism it was thought to encourage, posed enormous problems to early-modern thinkers by upsetting this balance and calling.

Many thinkers believed that the concept of the mind/soul was under attack, in danger of being rendered unnecessary and archaic in the face of new theories of matter which seemed to account for thought and motion without any resort to a spiritual component. As John Yolton explains, British thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries perceived two primary threats to the concept of the immaterial soul/mind: the mechanistic depiction of matter as both passive in itself as well as the dominant force in human actions, which rendered human beings utterly reactionary beings who possessed no free will; and the troubling idea that perhaps matter is inherently active, and therefore has no need of a spiritual component to direct it, which rendered human beings entirely material and disposed of the immaterial soul.47 Both mechanistic and materialistic tendencies were prominent features of Hartley’s theory, and much more will be said later !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 47 John W. Yolton, Thinking Matter: Materialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983): 3-4.

52! ! ! regarding the former. While the eighteenth-century concern with materialism was by no means new, it certainly took on new urgency as Locke and his followers provided, unintentionally in many cases, creative new ways to elide the distinction between mind and matter.

While debates about the dangerous implications of materialism had followed close on the heels of the circulation of Spinoza’s almost pantheistic monism and Hobbes’ attempts to reduce ideas and perception to matter and motion, the flashpoint of the eighteenth-century debate was an almost casual comment made by Locke in the Essay

Concerning Human Understanding. Though Locke was by no means the most radical of philosophers to suggest the possibility of a material soul, he was undoubtedly the most widely known. In his discussion the extent of man’s ability to know and understand the connections between ideas, Locke was adamant that there were limits to how much humans could hope to know about specific manner in which thoughts and ideas were manifested in the brain:

We have the ideas of matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know whether any mere material being thinks or no: it being impossible for us, by the contemplation of our own ideas, without revelation, to discover whether Omnipotency has not given to some system of matter, fitly disposed, a power to perceive and think, or else joined and fixed to matter, so disposed, a thinking immaterial substance: it being, in respect of our notions, not much more remote from our comprehension to conceive that God can, if he please, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, than that he should superadd to it another substance with a faculty of thinking. (4.3.6)48

He reinforced the claim elsewhere by concluding that “[w]e shall, perhaps, never be capable of knowing, whether a Being, purely material, thinks or not”.49 Since the idea that matter itself could think without being imbued with some sort of spirit first had !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 48 Quoted in Ibid., 14. 49 Locke, Essay, Bk. IV, Ch. III, Sec. 6, p. 195

53! ! ! undoubtedly radical implications, this hypothetical statement led many to accuse Locke of being a materialist, despite his claim that his speculations were not intended to “in any way lessen the belief of the soul’s immateriality”.50 Locke was plagued during his lifetime by charges of materialism that continued to haunt his legacy long after his death: recall Samuel Clarke’s comment to Leibniz that “Mr. Locke doubted whether the soul was immaterial or not”. The so-called “thinking matter” controversy sparked by Locke was one which had long life in eighteenth-century intellectual debates over the make-up of the human mind in England, as well as in France.51 Indeed, both Hartley and Condillac found themselves forced to confront it, to a greater or lesser extent, in their attempts interpret and innovate on the Lockean system.

Hartley was well acquainted with the perceived dangers of materialism as well as with the thinking matter controversy. His son reported in the ‘Sketch’ that although his father was largely content to surrender his system to “the candour and mature judgment of time and posterity. There was but one point in which he appeared anxious to present any misapprehension of his principles: that point respected the immateriality of the soul”.52 Specifically, as the younger Hartley noted, it was the potential misreading of the

Observations’ extensive use of the Newtonian doctrine of vibrations as the primary means of creating and associating ideas that vexed the philosopher. “He was therefore anxious to declare,” Hartley, Esq. wrote of his father, “and to have it understood, that he

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 50 Quoted in Ibid., 15 51 For a discussion of the origins and development of the “thinking matter” controversy in England, see Yolton’s Thinking Matter: Materialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain. While Yolton provides an excellent account of both the development of this debate as well as its continuation in nineteenth-century thought, he strangely neglects many of Locke’s earliest disciples, including Hartley. 52 Hartley, Esq., Sketch, xv.

54! ! ! was not a materialist.”53 The fact that some forty-four years after Hartley’s death, his son was still defending the orthodoxy of his father’s theory speaks to the persistence of the charge.

Already in the Conjectures, Hartley demonstrated awareness of the potentially radical interpretations of his theory, noting in the concluding pages that it was possible that “from this theory many arguments may be drawn against the immateriality of the human soul and against even its immortality” because it had been “necessary to postulate that sensations arise in the soul from motions excited in the medullary substance”.54

Somewhat peculiarly, however, Hartley chose to defend his orthodoxy both in the

Conjectures and more elaborately in the Observations by asserting his neutrality on the fraught issue of communication between spirit and matter. Hartley claimed ignorance on the tricky question of the nature of the soul, writing that his theory of associations was not intended to explain “what the soul is; but only assuming and supposing its existence and its connection with the bodily organs in the most simple case”.55 What resulted was not so much an assertion of the immateriality of the soul as a claim that this quality was not an essential one.

In both texts, Hartley argued that his theory “[precluded] all Possibility of proving the Materiality of the Soul”.56 He did acknowledge that the association of ideas placed significant emphasis on the material world and its influences on the soul, but he continued that it would be a mistake to conflate this with an argument for the materiality of the soul: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 53 Ibid. 54 Hartley, Various Conjectures, 57 55 Ibid., 56 56 Hartley, Observations, Part I, 511

55! ! !

It is all one to the Purpose of the foregoing Theory, whether the Motions in the medullary Substance be the physical Cause of the Sensations, according to the System of the Schools; or the occasional Cause, according to Malbranche [sic]; or only an Adjunct, according to Leibniz.57

This was hardly the decisive rejection of materialism which Hartley’s contemporaries would have expected from an orthodox and moderate thinker; and it is easy to understand how Hartley’s successors would interpret such waffling as concealing materialist inclinations. Locke, after all, had been tried and convicted of materialism in certain circles based on much less. Hartley did little to argue in his own defense when he addressed the looming shadow of the thinking matter controversy, and again sidestepped coming down decisively on either side of the issue:

It does indeed follow from this Theory, that Matter, if it could be endued with the most simple Kinds of Sensation, might also arrive at all that Intelligence of which the human Mind is possessed: Whence this Theory must be allowed to overturn all the Arguments which are usually brought for the Immateriality of the Soul […] But I can no-ways presume to determine whether Matter can be endued with sensation or no. […] It is sufficient for me, that there is a certain Connexion, of one Kind or other, between the Sensations of the Soul, and the Motions excited in the medullary Substance of the Brain.58

Much like Locke, Hartley insisted that empirical observation made it impossible to know for sure whether the soul was material or immaterial.

Despite this staunchly empirical position and despite Hartley’s awareness of the controversy inherent in it, he concluded in the Conjectures that “I therefore by no means defend the materiality of the soul” and in the Observations elaborated that “I would not therefore be any-way interpreted so as to oppose the Immateriality of the Soul. On the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 57 Ibid., 511. All these theories deal with the cause behind the motions of matter. According to the seventeenth-century French theologian and philosopher Nicolas Malebranche, God alone functioned directly as the sole causal agent in all finite beings, which by themselves were devoid of causal efficacy. On the other hand, Malebranche’s German contemporary Gottfried Leibniz, God functioned as the “clockmaker” with whom all motions originated, but were not directly caused by. 58 Ibid., 511-512.

56! ! ! contrary, I see clearly, and acknowledge readily, that Matter and Motion, however subtly divided, yield nothing more than Matter and Motion still”.59 This may seem like a reasonably clear disavowal of any use of his theory to support the materiality of the soul, but Hartley, candidly though strangely, chose not to leave it there. Instead, he went on to say in the Conjectures that “[w]hether indeed the immateriality of the soul is established therefrom [Hartley’s theory] and thus satisfies the problem, let others decide” and even more explicitly in the Observations that “neither would I affirm, that this Consideration affords a Proof of the Soul’s Immateriality”.60 Such ambivalence is somewhat lessened by his argument that “the immateriality of the soul is absolutely divorced from its immortality”, and that “[h]e who first breathed breath of life into men, formed from the dust of the earth, so that he became a living soul, is competent to resurrect even the dead”.61 It is certain, though, that Hartley’s willingness to divorce the problem of the substance of the soul from its mortality was by no means universal, or even particularly popular, among his contemporaries or successors.

Implications of Hartley’s System: Animal and Human Nature

The doubt cast by Hartley’s theory on the presence and necessity of the immaterial soul raised another specter of eighteenth-century materialism: the problematic relationship between humans and animals. Following the Aristotelian division of the soul into three, each associated with a “level” of being—vegetative, sensible, and rational— the medieval tradition in the form of the Great Chain of Being had largely placed humans as mediators between the sacred and profane, a result of their unique combination of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 59 Hartley, Various Conjectures, 56; Observations, Part I, 512. 60 Hartley, Various Conjectures, 57; Observations, Part I, 512. 61 Hartley, Various Conjectures, 57; emphasis in original

57! ! ! material body with rational, immaterial soul.62 Aristotle’s pagan theory was easily adapted to fit Christian concerns: forever bound to lower beasts by means of the legacy of

Original Sin—carnal urges—humans were nonetheless elevated above their fellow creatures by a “divine spark” through which they were able to reason, possessed free will, and were granted immortality. Whereas the vegetative and sensitive souls were closely associated with physical organs—the stomach, and the heart/brain, respectively—the rational soul had the distinction of being completely immaterial. Of course, the negotiation between these two natures was an ongoing process, and one that medieval and early-modern theologians and thinkers never fully settled. Aristotle was by no means the only ancient thinker who had something to say about animal and human nature; Plato and Plutarch, among others, were frequently cited in medieval and early-modern discussions to argue for the brain as the seat of the soul and animal instinct as equivalent, and often superior, to human reason.

The introduction of Cartesian dualism into the debate further muddied the waters.

To be sure, Descartes’ intention was precisely the opposite; but the very rigidity with which he cast the terms of human and animal natures threw a monkey wrench into the previously familiar terms of the debate. In the Discourse on Method, Descartes presented his opinion clearly, apparently based on observation, rather than the a priori assumptions so characteristic of that work:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 62 In this model, Aristotle used “soul” to mean principle of life, and conceived of the souls in a hierarchy. Thus all living things—vegetable, animal, and human—possess the vegetative soul, which is the principle of nutrition, growth, and reproduction, as well as involuntary movement. Both humans and animals possessed the sensitive soul, which allowed for perception and voluntary motion. The last—the rational soul—was reserved for humans alone, and bestowed reason, will, and intellect. [Erica Fudge, Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality and Humanity in Early Modern England (Cornell University Press: Ithaca, 2006): 8].

58! ! !

[I]f any machines had the organs and outward shape of a monkey or of some other animal that lacks reason, we should have no means of knowing that they did not possess entirely the same nature as these animals; whereas if any such machines bore a resemblance to our bodies and imitated our actions as closely as possible for all practical purposes, we should still have two very certain means of recognizing that they were not real men. The first is that they could never use words, or put together other signs, as we do in order to declare our thoughts to others. [...] Secondly, even though such machines might do some things as well as we do them, or perhaps even better, they would inevitably fail in others, which would reveal that they were not acting through understanding but only from the disposition of their organs.63

Descartes’ account sharply divided the material from the immaterial, and reason from unreason, thus denying animals the power of thought, consciousness and even, in extreme interpretations, the ability to experience physical pleasure or pain. In doing so, he unequivocally reduced them to highly complex machines. The anxiety provoked by the whole question of animal reason was thoroughly understandable, and therefore, the appeal of Descartes’ apparently neat solution is evident as well. If animals could be observed acting rationally, then, under the old model, what prevented them from having immortal souls? Even more disturbingly, in cases where human beings acted irrationally—either through illness, age, or some other impairment—did this mean they were no longer human? How much simpler it seemed to merely declare firmly that, regardless of appearances, humans possessed reason and animals did not.

Dangerously, though, the Cartesian solution rested on the rather shoddy foundation of one man’s observations; after all, many retorted, they had seen many a horse, cat, or dog act in a more rational manner than their human masters. Furthermore, as the famous skeptic Montaigne provocatively wondered, “How does [man] know... the secret internal stirrings of animals? By what comparison between them and us does he

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 63 Quoted in Fudge, Brutal Reasoning, 147-148.

59! ! ! infer the stupidity that he attributes to them”?64 For many early-modern thinkers, Hartley among them, Descartes’ smug assurance of human superiority rested on some rather shaky assertions, not least of which was the immateriality of thought and the existence of a rational soul. By the eighteenth century, Lockean associationism was the wrecking ball assaulting this questionable foundation by persuading more and more thinkers that thought might just have physical origins after all. Adding to the mix, medical discoveries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—largely achieved through animal experimentation—had made it clear to everyone that, in a physical sense, most animals and humans were highly similar. Hearts, veins, lungs, brains, nerves—all were held in common between scientists performing dissections and vivisections and the animals on which they worked. Descartes, and Aristotle before him, claimed that humans alone possessed the immaterial faculty of a rational soul. When that same soul became increasingly tied to physical phenomena or even written out of existence altogether, animals and humans were drawn closely together in ways that most moderate thinkers— good Christians, all—could not be comfortable with.

When Hartley delved into this issue, it was with that familiar combination of sensitivity to controversy and unwillingness to commit firmly to a moderate position. He clearly stated, for example, that animals possess inferior intellectual capabilities to humans, but maintained that his theory of both associations and the inner-workings of the nervous system applied equally to animal and human brains. “[T]he laws of vibrations and association may be as universal in respect of the nervous system of animals of all kinds, as the law of circulation is with respect to the system of the heart and blood

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 64 Quoted in Ibid., 115.

60! ! ! vessels,” he concluded, driving home his argument that thought was merely a physiological process, and somewhat surprisingly categorizing humans as animals.65

Furthermore, the degree of difference in intellectual capabilities between humans and animals paralleled the same sorts of differences between “the several kinds of animals”.66

While there were several definable differences that Hartley listed between human and animal intellects, including variations in brain size and the ability to communicate using language, he ultimately understood them to be differences of degree rather than nature.

Shockingly, Hartley drove the point home by contending that “sagacious quadrupeds may therefore be said to resemble dumb persons arrived at an adult age, who are possessed of much knowledge, which yet they cannot express, except by gestures”.67

Out the window went Descartes’ comfortable assertion that animals “could never use words, or put together other signs, as we do in order to declare our thoughts to others”.68

Even the faculty of reason Hartley was willing to ascribe in some degree to animals, most especially apes and monkeys, who “approach nearest to man, in the general faculty of reasoning, and drawing conclusions”.69 Finally, any careful observer of animal behavior would do well to remember, Hartley cautioned, that “brutes have more reason than they can shew, from their want of words, from our inattention, and from our ignorance of those symbols, which they do use in giving intimations to one another, and to us”.70 In arguing for limited power of human observation, Hartley echoed Montaigne’s skeptical

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 65 Hartley, Observations, Part I, 404. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid., 410. 68 Quoted in Fudge, Brutal Reasoning, 147 69 Hartley, Observations, Part 1, 410. 70 Ibid., 414-415.

61! ! ! question: “How does [man] know the secret internal stirrings of animals?”.71 For Hartley, then, in essential nature as well as in the use of both language and reason, animals closely resembled their more advanced kin.

In light of such alarming conclusions about the parallel natures of man and beast,

Hartley addressed Descartes’ speculation that animals were little more than machines incapable of awareness or feeling. “[T]hough I suppose with Descartes, that all their motions are conducted with mere mechanism,” Hartley wrote, “yet I do not suppose them to be destitute of perception, but that they have this in a manner analogous to that which takes place in us”.72 Hartley’s rejection of the Cartesian conclusion that because animals were largely mechanical beings—i.e. their actions and instincts were entirely determined by external stimuli—they were also completely devoid of feeling and consciousness was a necessary one, given the close bond his own theory of association created between animals and people. “I always suppose,” Hartley concluded, “that... feelings, and affections of the mind, attend upon them, just as in us. And the brute creatures prove their near relation to us, not only by the general resemblance of the body, but by that of the mind also.... and as there is, perhaps, no passion belonging to human nature, which may not be found in some brute creature in a considerable degree”.73 Hartley had, in the course of a few short paragraphs, completely obliterated the Cartesian distinction between human and animal minds and run roughshod over Aristotelian assertions of immaterial thoughts governed by a rational soul.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 71 Quoted in Fudge, Brutal Reasoning. 72 Hartley, Observations, Part I, 413. 73 Ibid., 413-414; emphasis mine.

62! ! !

In the end, though, Hartley did argue for the superiority of human over animal minds. Animals brains, he wrote, were smaller and their nerves made of a cruder substance and therefore were less capable of attaining the same breadth of knowledge that humans generally achieved. Furthermore, they lacked sophisticated means of symbolic communication; although on this point, Hartley was apparently of two minds: he seemed to willing to admit the possibility that animals did, in fact, possess symbolic means of communication of which man was merely ignorant. Moreover, he argued, certain domesticated animals such as dogs and horses were clearly capable of learning at least the basics of human language. Finally, Hartley noted, animals appeared incapable of the same kind of abstract reflection which characterized human thought, and were therefore limited in their potential social development: “The brutes seem scarce ever to arrive at any proper self-interest of the abstract and refined kind, at consciousness, so as to compare and connect themselves with themselves in different situations, or at any idea and adoration of God”.74 But, in the end, these seem rather paltry objections in the face of the problems unleashed by Hartley’s application of Lockean associationism to animals.

In his comparison of human and animal minds, the similarities far outweigh the differences, and Hartley once again reinforced the impression that his theory of the human mind in no way required the existence of an immaterial soul.

But the shocking conclusion to Hartley’s assessment of animal nature came not in

Part I of the Observations, but rather in Part II in the section on the ultimate salvation of all mankind. After laying out his theory, Hartley turned again to animal life. “How far the brute creation is concerned in the redemption by Christ, may be doubted,” he began,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 74 Ibid.

63! ! !

“and it does not seem to be much or immediately related to our business to inquire”.75 So far, so good. But Hartley was never one to leave well enough alone, and so he continued:

However, their fall with Adam, the covenant made with them after the deluge, their serving as sacrifices for the sins of men, and as types and emblems in the prophecies, their being commanded to praise God...seem to intimate that there is mercy in store for them also, more than we may expect, to be revealed in due time. ...The Jews considered the Gentiles as dogs in comparison of themselves. And the brute creatures appear by the foregoing history of association to differ from us in degree, rather than in kind.76

It is difficult to imagine a more scandalous assessment of human and animal nature. Not only did Hartley confirm what he had implied in his earlier discussion of animal nature, but even to further elide the differences between human and animal souls. Although he had earlier claimed that animals lacked any idea of God or the need to adore him, here he used the Bible itself to argue that they did in fact praise their creator. Even more surprisingly, he gave them a very real claim to the fundamentally human expectation of salvation and redemption: if animals were also “saved” by Jesus’ sacrifice, then how was the human soul superior or distinct? Hartley answered the question boldly and simply:

“Brute creatures...differ from us in degree, rather than in kind”.

Implications of Hartley’s System: Mechanism and the Will

Perhaps even more surprising than his advocacy of the similarity of the animal and human mind, but perfectly in step with the conclusions he reached through this

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 75 Hartley, Observations, Part II, 450

76 Ibid.; Hartley is almost certainly referring to Matthew 15: 25-27, and Jesus’ interaction with a Canaanite (gentile) woman: “Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs. And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table”.

64! ! ! comparison, Hartley openly embraced in both cases the principle of mechanism, or the idea that the mind, because it works like a machine through association and reaction to physical stimuli, does not possess free will. This, remember, was the same principle that

Descartes had employed to argue against animal consciousness and feeling. It was also, alongside materialism, the second bogeyman of eighteenth-century orthodoxy, apparently doing away with an active immaterial agent (the soul) while eschewing the claim of some materialists that motion was inherent to matter itself. No longer did the mind move the body; but neither did the body move itself. Instead, external stimuli produced reactions in a body which did not possess free will or the ability to act voluntarily.

Once again, Locke was implicated in the mechanist cause. Though the question of free will was, of course, a very old one, Locke’s Essay was paramount in delineating the contours of the debate for eighteenth-century British thinkers. For Locke, the question,

“is the will free?”, was fundamentally incorrect. “[I]t is as insignificant to ask whether man’s will be free,” he wrote in the Essay, “as to ask whether his sleep be swift or his virtue square: liberty being as little applicable to the will, as swiftness of motion is to sleep, or squareness to virtue”.77 His rationale for this assessment stemmed from the manner in which he defined both freedom and the will. The latter, he wrote, was the power of the mind to “…order the consideration of any idea, or forbear the considering of it; or to prefer the motion of any part of the body to its rest”.78 The use of this power was the act of volition or willing. Locke also defined liberty as a power, namely the power an individual “to think or not to think, move or not to move, according to the preference and

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 77 Locke, Essay. 319. 78 Ibid., 313.

65! ! ! direction of his own mind”.79 “When anyone well considers it,” he concluded, “I think he will plainly perceive that liberty, which is but a power, belongs only to agents, and cannot be an attribute or modification of the will, which is also but a power”.80 For

Locke, the power of liberty and the power of the will were separate, independent and parallel powers; freedom applied only in the former case. Essentially, Locke’s recasting of the free will debate endeavored to remove the question of a mechanical will from consideration entirely. In this, he was largely unsuccessful.

Hartley closely followed Locke in his discussion of the will, and was well aware that his theory lent itself to a mechanical interpretation of that faculty. If all ideas originated in physical sensations, and the brain and nervous system were the thoroughly material seat of thought and action, then it was a short leap to mechanism. Indeed,

Hartley wrote in a discussion of the passions, that “[t]he will appears to be nothing but a desire or aversion sufficiently strong to produce an action. The will is therefore that desire or aversion, which is strongest for the then present time. [...] Since therefore all love and hatred, all desire and aversion, are factitious and generated by association, i.e. mechanically, it follows that the will is mechanical also”.81 In the conclusion to the first part of the Observations, Hartley openly avowed and reinforced the mechanistic understanding of the human will which was implicit throughout the Observations.

“Besides the consequences of the doctrine of associations [already discussed],” he wrote,

“there is another, which is thought by many to have a pernicious tendency in respect of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 79 Ibid., 315. 80 Ibid. 320. 81 Hartley, Observations, Part I, 371; emphasis mine.

66! ! ! morality and religion. […] The consequence I mean is the mechanism or necessity of human actions, in opposition to what is generally termed free will”.82

Hartley defined the precise sense in which he meant this controversial term, lest his meaning be mistaken. It is clear from this definition, however, that he had no interest in mitigating the most controversial aspects of this position: “By the mechanism of human actions I mean, that each action results from the previous circumstances of body and mind, in the same manner and with the same certainty, as other effects do from their mechanical causes”.83 Elsewhere, Hartley took care to differentiate between the ideas of what he called “philosophical free will,” which he rejected, and “popular free will”, which acknowledged might be compatible with his system. This important distinction had been made by Locke and others, and essentially separated the lived experience of free choice and the philosophical question of whether that liberty of choice was reality or only an illusion. Those who argued for philosophical free will based their claim on the assumption that “God has given to each man a sphere of action, in which he does not interpose; but leaves man to act entirely from himself, independently of his Creator”.84

But Hartley disagreed.

This philosophical argument, Hartley contended, was actually contradictory to the proper Protestant understanding of God’s relationship to mankind since it rejected the concept that since all that is good comes from God, no man can or should take credit for his own good works. By contrast, Hartley defined “popular” or “practical” free will as

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 82 Hartley, Observations, Part II, 267-8. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid., 53-4.

67! ! ! merely the ability to regulate one’s own “affections and actions”.85 Hartley gave an example to clarify this somewhat vague definition as well as demonstrate its connection to good Christian belief: “For instance, since religion commands us to love God and our neighbor, it presupposes that we have the power of generating these affections in ourselves, by introducing the proper generating causes, and making the proper associations, i.e. by meditation, religious conversation, and reading practical books of religion and prayer”.86 Essentially, for Hartley, the duty of the good Christian was to make every effort to form their ideas and character correctly through exposure to the correct external stimuli, such as reading prayer books. Hartley was therefore able to tackle one of the most the troubling aspects of his system by arguing that morality itself is the mechanical result of the divine plan: “It appears from history, that God so formed the world, and perhaps (with reverence be it spoken) was obliged by his moral perfections so to form it, as that virtue must have amiable and pleasing ideas affixed to it; vice, odious ones. The moral sense is generated necessarily and mechanically”.87 In this system, true pleasure was produced by virtuous actions, while misery and misfortune awaited the sinner. Presaging Pavlov’s famous dogs, Hartley’s humans mechanically learned to associate morality with pleasure and vice with wretchedness.

This was not a conclusion Hartley reached lightly. Already in 1739, a good ten years before the publication of the Observations, he was calling himself a “necessitarian”

(another term for mechanist) and arguing that although such a position was “thought to be injurious to the Cause of Virtue,” it appeared to him “in a different Light when rightly

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 87 Hartley, Observations, Part I, 504. Italics mine.

68! ! ! understood”.88 He sent Lister a collection of papers that would later become the

Observations, which apparently contained similar remarks. Once he had read these papers, Lister responded with some confusion, writing that he did not know what Hartley meant by the term “necessity” and asking for clarification. He attempted to convince

Hartley (and perhaps himself) that believing that good actions would be rewarded and bad ones condemned did not, in fact, make one a mechanist. In fact, Lister continued, clearly warming to his theme, what could be more likely than that such a system existed as a “proper guard for virtue and a fit attendant on the Liberty of an imperfect

Creature”?89 Lister’s draft of this letter viscerally demonstrates how uncomfortable he was with even the suggestion of “necessity” or “mechanism”; it is riddled with strike-outs that make apparent that Lister was trying to express in his discomfort clearly, while still giving his friend the benefit of the doubt: “I cannot approve of the Necessitarian scheme”, he wrote, and then, “if you be a strict Necessitarian, and hold that ...I cannot join with those who hold that whatever is, is of necessity…I must dissent from you,” before finally settling on, “such an hypothesis leads to very strange Consequences”.90

Lister continued on in a series of letters to weigh the outcomes of free will versus mechanism, apparently not giving his friend a chance to respond. Good moderate

Christian that he was, Hartley’s friend touched upon nearly every major moderate objection to the mechanistic system. Mechanism, Lister wrote, “damps our Endeavours after a good Life and encourages Licentiousness and Living at Random”. By denying free will, Lister argued, Hartley was effectively absolving humans of all responsibility for

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 88 Hartley to Lister, 1 April 1739, SH:7/HL/14. 89 Lister to Hartley, 1739, SH:7/HL/15. 90 Ibid.

69! ! ! their actions, something that appeared to Lister and others as tantamount to encouraging sin and vice. At the very least, Lister urged, his friend should understand that regardless of the philosophical truth of mechanism, it would be harmful both to individuals and society for such a theory to be promulgated widely. In support, Lister cited Joseph

Butler’s conclusions about mechanism in the recently published The Analogy of Religion

(1736).91 In the Analogy, Butler argued that the necessity of human actions, while perhaps philosophically accurate, should, in Lister’s words, “not be applyed to Practice, in Conduct and Behavior. We must suppose ourselves to be Free Agents”. In this breakdown between lived experience and philosophical speculation, Lister saw the fatal flaw of mechanism: “As this Opinion of Necessity is to be rejected, as false, in Practice, I greatly suspect the Truth of it in Speculation. Surely the notion of Virtue and Vice as deserving Reward and Punishment and the whole Story of Man’s being an Accountable

Creature is founded on Freedom”.92

Hartley addressed his friend’s concerns regarding the mechanical will in a lengthy letter. Essentially, Hartley explained as he would a decade later in the Observations, the whole issue of the will revolved around semantics. “I do not deny Free-will in any such sense, as that Men cannot feel Pleasure and Pain, desire and fear, resolve and perform in

Consequence of those Resolutions” he wrote soothingly to Lister. If he meant to assuage his friend’s concerns, he would have done better to leave it there; but he did not. “All I mean to say is,” Hartley went on,

that all out most internal and intellectual Perceptions result as much from the structure of our Bodies and Impressions of external objects or the remains of such !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 91 Hartley himself had cited this same text in an earlier letter, and perhaps Lister hoped that appealing to it would persuade his misguided friend. 92 Lister to Hartley, Bury, 16 April 1739, SH:7/HL/15. Emphasis mine.

70! ! !

Impressions as the Perceptions of Colours do upon the Structure of the Eye…and that [this occurs] in the way of Association hinted at in the Papers you read. In like manner, every Resolution to act and every consequent action are as much the Result of internal and external sensations, as…the action of Vomiting is of the sickness in the Stomach… 93

He continued in this vein for some time, responding to Lister’s specific concern about human passivity in the case of a mechanistic will:

You seem to think that if there be an established Order of Causes and Effects that removes all motives. But surely it does not. I am mechanical, and for this very reason it is that the Flame which I see approaching, raises in me Apprehensions and a Train of internal Sensations, the consequence of which is (according to previous Associations) that my muscles contract and carry me away, or if you please to vary the Phrase, I contract my muscles and run off. 94

As this exchange makes abundantly clear, by 1739 Hartley had not only formulated the core of his mechanistic understanding of the will, but was also aware and attempting to head off its potentially radical interpretation. But with the addition of Hartley’s understanding of morality developed through Lockean associations, it becomes clear that, in Hartley’s mind, the mechanical will supported, rather than menaced Lister and others believed, the cause of moderate Christianity and the existence of a benevolent God.

Conclusions

It is important to note that, whatever the charges leveled against Hartley following the publication of the Observations, Hartley was able to publish the work with apparent ease, a benefit of living in the relatively tolerant intellectual climate of Britain.

Furthermore, and in stark comparison to both Locke and Newton, Hartley was never once forced to write in his own defense, except to privately address the concerns of his close friend. Although this may have been at least partially due to the decidedly non-

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 93 Hartley to Lister, 13 May 1739, SH:7/HL/18. 94 Ibid. italics mine.

71! ! ! combative nature of its author, it appears that there was not much controversy surrounding the initial reception of the Observations. As the younger Hartley recorded in his ‘Sketch’, his father “did not expect that [the Observations] would meet with any general or immediate reception in the philosophical world”.95 Far from being concerned about the controversy it would create, Hartley appeared (rightly) convinced that his philosophical masterwork would be mostly ignored, at least initially. The younger

Hartley continued that his father “kept a general and vigilant attention upon the work to receive and consider any subsequent thoughts which might have occurred...from the suggestions of others, by which he might have modified or arranged any incongruous or discordant parts. But no such alterations or modifications seem to have occurred to him: and at his death he left his original work untouched”.96 Hartley was ready to address controversy, but it simply never came—at least not within his lifetime. His passing in

1757 was reported by several major periodicals, where he was remembered simply as a

“Doctor of Physic and a Member of the Royal Society”.97 It would not be long, though, before Hartley’s reputation as a philosopher of significance and potentially a materialist as well would be solidified in moderate circles in Britain and beyond.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 95 Hartley, Esq., Sketch, xiv 96 Ibid. 97 London Evening Post; The Public Advertiser; Lloyd’s Evening Post and British Chronicle; from the Burney Newspaper Collection at British Library.

72! ! !

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Gay, John. “Preliminary Dissertation Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or Morality”, in William King, An Essay on the Origin of Evil, trans. Edmund Law. London, 1731.

Hartley, David. Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations, 1749. Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars' Facsimile Reprints, 1966.

_____. Various Conjectures on the Perception, Motion, and Generation of Ideas [1746], trans. by R.E.A. Palmer. Los Angeles: Augustan Reprint Society, 1959.

_____ . In Original letters from Richard Baxter, Matthew Prior, Lord Bolingbroke, Alexander Pope, Dr. Cheyne, Dr. Hartley, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Mrs Montague, Rev. William Cilpin, George Lord Lyttleton, Rev. John Newton, Rev. Dr. Claudins Buchanan, &c., &c, ed. by Rebecca Warner, London: R. Cruttwell, 1817.

_____. Prayers and Religious Meditations. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Hilliard and Brown, 1829. _____. to the Rev. John Lister, unpublished correspondence, West Yorkshire Archives, Calderdale: SH:7/HL/1-56.

Hartley, Esq., David. “A Sketch of the Life and Character of Dr. Hartley,” in Notes and Additions to Dr. Hartley’s Observations on Man. London: J. Johnson, 1801.

Hartley, Mary. To the Rev. William Gilpin, 18 July 1795, in Original letters from Richard Baxter, Matthew Prior, Lord Bolingbroke, Alexander Pope, Dr. Cheyne, Dr. Hartley, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Mrs Montague, Rev. William Cilpin, George Lord Lyttleton, Rev. John Newton, Rev. Dr. Claudins Buchanan, &c., &c, ed. by Rebecca Warner. London: R. Cruttwell, 1817.

Lister, John to David Hartley, unpublished correspondence, West Yorkshire Archives, Calderdale: SH:7/HL/1-56.

Leibniz, G.W. In “Exchange of Papers Between Leibniz and Clarke”, ed. Jonathan Bennett, 2010.

Locke, John., An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Alexander C. Fraser. New York: Dover Publications Inc. 1959.

73! ! !

Newton, Isaac. Opticks, or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections & Colours of Light. 4th ed. London: Dover Publications, 1952.

_____. Four letters from Sir Isaac Newton to Doctor Bentley. Containing some arguments in proof of a deity. London, MDCCLVI. [1756]. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

_____. To Doctor Bentley, 10 December 1692, in Four letters from Sir Isaac Newton to Doctor Bentley. Containing some arguments in proof of a deity. London, 1756.

Warburton, William. Letters from a late eminent prelate to one of his friends, London: T. Caldwell and W. Davies, 1809.

Secondary Sources

Allen, Richard C. David Hartley on Human Nature. Albany: State University of New York Press. 1999.

Burns, Norman T. Christian Mortalism from Tyndale to Milton. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972.

Clarke, Samuel. In “Exchange of Papers Between Leibniz and Clarke”, ed. Jonathan Bennett. 2010.

Ferg, Stephen. "Two Early Works by David Hartley." Journal of the History of Philosophy 19, no. 2 (1981): 173-189.

Force, James E., and Richard H. Popkin. eds. Newton and Religion : Context, Nature, and Influence. Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1999.

Fox, Christopher. “Locke and the Scriblerians: The Discussion of Identity in Early Eighteenth Century England” in Eighteenth-Century Studies 16, no. 1. Autumn 1982.

Fudge, Erica. Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality and Humanity in Early Modern England. Cornell University Press: Ithaca, 2006.

Funkenstein, Amos. Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986

Harris, Jonathan. ‘Gay, John (1699–1745)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2010.

74! ! !

Jacob, Margaret. The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689-1720, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976.

_____. The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons, and Republicans. Boston: George Allen & Unwin, 1981.

Kallich, M. Introduction to David Hartley, Various Conjectures on the Perception, Motion, and Generation of Ideas [1746], trans. by R.E.A. Palmer. Los Angeles: Augustan Reprint Society, 1959.

Kroll, Richard, R. Ashcraft, and P. Zagorin, eds. Philosophy, Science, and Religion in England, 1640-1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Lamont, William. Godly Rule: Politics and Religion, 1603-1660. London: Macmillan, 1969.

Manuel, Frank E. A Portrait of Isaac Newton, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968): 125.

Marsh, Robert. "The Second Part of Hartley's System." Journal of the History of Ideas 20, no. 2 (1959): 264-273.

Marshall, John . "John Locke's Religious, Educational and Moral Thought." The Historical Journal 33, no. 4 (1990): 993-1001. Porter, Roy. The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment. New York: Norton. 2000.

_____. Flesh in the Age of Reason. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2003.

Schofield, Robert E. Mechanism and Materialism: British Natural Philosophy in An Age of Reason. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970

Stephen, Leslie. History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century. 3rd ed. Vol. 1 & 2. New York: Harbinger Books, 1962.

Till, Barry, ‘Stillingfleet, Edward (1635–1699)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Verhave, Thom. “David Hartley: The Mind’s Road to God: An Introduction to the New Edition of Hartley’s Theory of the Human Mind”. Introduction to Hartley’s Theory of the Human Mind. New York: AMS Press, 1973.

Wallace, Wes. "The vibrating nerve impulse in Newton, Willis, and Gassendi: First steps in a mechanical theory of communication." Brain and Cognition 51 (2003).

75! ! !

Webb, R.K. “Perspectives on David Hartley.” Enlightenment and Dissent, no. 17. 1998.

Willey, Basil. The Eighteenth Century Background: Studies on the Idea of Nature in the Thought of the Period. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969.

Yolton, John W. Thinking Matter: Materialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983.

76! ! !

{Chapter 2} DEFINING THE SOUL IN THE ABBÉ DE CONDILLAC’S FRANCE, 1700-1775

On the 23rd of January, 1759, the attorney general of the Parlement of Paris delivered a formal indictment. The initial target of his ire was Claude-Adrien Helvétius’ radical materialist tract, De l’Esprit (On the Mind). This book and others like it, the attorney general thundered to his audience, were undermining the foundations of right thinking by reopening questions that religion had already definitively answered: “What greater weakness is there than to desire to be without certitude of the principles of one’s being, of one’s life, of one’s senses, of one’s knowledge, and of the nature and destination of one’s soul?”1 Specifically, he continued, De l’Esprit had dangerously charged that “the faculty of thought in men is a passive power that [Helvétius] called physical sensation [sensibilte physique], and that it makes us common with animals. The cause of the inferiority of their soul is only a physical difference; they have paws, and man has hands; this is the ridiculous principle of their inferiority”.2 Finally, the attorney general noted with disgust, Helvétius had argued that it was impossible to demonstrate either the spirituality or the immortality of the soul, and that both these concepts rested entirely on the authority of the Church which proclaimed them and could not be proved

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1Arrests de la Cour de Parlement, portant condamnation de plusieurs livres & autres ouvrages imprimés: Extrait des Registres de Parlement du 23 janvier 1759, 3-4 2 Ibid., 5

77 ! ! through rational thought alone.3 Equally alarmed by the destructive potential of these ideas, the Parlement acted to protect the French state, society, and religion, and ordered

De l’Esprit, along with numerous other works, lacerated and burned by the Paris hangman.

If the ideas that so angered the attorney general of the Parlement sound familiar, it is for good reason. Helvétius used many of the same sources to write De l’Esprit as

David Hartley had to write his Observations on Man, albeit within a strikingly different intellectual climate. In the midst of the scandal surrounding De l’Esprit, when Helvétius feared he might lose his position or even his life, he publically abjured his objectionable system even while defending it in a letter.4 He had begun, he wrote, with Locke: “His

[Locke’s] system could not appear suspicious to me; I could not challenge it, nor suppose it dangerous, seeing it taught, by good teachers, in very orthodox schools. Filled with the principles of this philosophy, I thought that I could draw all the conclusions [inductions] that presented themselves to me”.5 But Helvétius’ apology rang a bit false for, as we have already seen, Locke’s system could in fact be interpreted in very dangerous ways, something of which Helvétius would have been well aware.

Significantly, though, it was not Helvétius who first introduced a Locke’s system to the French reading public. Nor, it seems, did he get many of his most radical ideas

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 Ibid. 4 Only the year previously, the Royal Council—panicked over the attempted assassination of Louis XV and eager to condemn any literature that may have contributed to it—issued a proclamation that “All those convicted of having composed, having had composed, and having had printed writings that attack religion, disrupt minds, undermine our authority, and disturb the order and tranquility of our territories, will be punished with death.” Quoted in Raymond Birn, Royal Censorship of Books in Eighteenth-Century France, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011): 27. 5 Claude-Adrien Helvétius to Pierre Joseph Plesse, 28 Sepetmber, 1758, in Correspondance générale d'Helvétius: 1757–1760 / Lettres 250–464, ed. David Smith, et al. (Toronto, ON, & Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 1981–2004); vol. 2, p. 308–310 (Appendix 4).

77 ! ! directly from Locke’s writings; rather, the source of most of the trouble was the mild mannered and retiring Abbé de Condillac, erstwhile friend of both Diderot and Rousseau, but who had little interested in the flamboyant polemics in which the two often engaged.

Despite his dislike of participating in public disputes, Condillac nonetheless found himself the target of accusations of materialism and atheism similar to those that led to the burning of De L’Esprit. In fact, the original draft of the condemnation of De l’Esprit had also called for the burning and laceration of Condillac’s Traité des Sensations, among other titles.6 In France, it seemed, it was dangerous to be an empiricist.

French Censorship and the British Invasion

Thus, while Jonathan Swift sat pointing and laughing from his comfortable perch in Ireland at the foolishness of philosophers who attempted to understand the human mind, across the Channel the story was much different. Not only were French writers faced with an elaborate censorship structure that had no real counterpart in Britain, but the costs for publishing clandestinely were far higher: exile, imprisonment in the Bastille, and even the threat of death awaited those who ran afoul of censorship laws.7 Daniel

Roche helpfully places the French censorship structure into two categories: preventative censorship attempted to head off the publication of manuscripts believed to contain dangerous or erroneous content, while reactive censorship attempted to prevent the further circulation of books deemed unfit after their publication.8 Condillac narrowly avoided damaging confrontations with reactive censorship during the Helvétius affair, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 6 Joseph-Omer Joly de Fleury, “Denunciation des Livres”, 1756. Joly de Fleury, Avis en Memoires sur les Affaires Publiques, 3807-3819: 352. Bibliotèque Nationale de France [BnF] 7 For example, of the 339 prisoners held in the Bastille from the years 1750-1759, 40% of them had violated censorship laws, and 52 of them were authors or pamphleteers. [Daniel Roche in Revolution in Print: The Press in France 1775-1800, Berkley: University of California Press, MORE: 24] 8 Daniel Roche, "Censorship and the Publishing Industry," in Revolution in Print: The Press in France, 1775-1800, ed. Robert Darnton and Daniel Roche (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989), 3-5.

78 ! ! and early in his career struggled with the preventative variety. Although the French censorship mechanism evolved throughout the early-modern period, in the eighteenth century preventative censorship was the primary responsibility of the monarchy and was handled by the Direction de la librairie, or the Department of the Book Trade. Raymond

Birn notes that, on average, there were about 150 censors working as subject specialists reviewing manuscripts in the years from 1750 to 1789. Manuscripts approved by the censors for publication were awarded a privilége or permission de sceau, a sealed permission, and then registered. The awarding of a privilége not only put the monarchy’s stamp of approval on the contents of the book, but also guaranteed some measure of legal protection if it were pirated. Books could be published without a privilége, provided that either they originated from outside France and were exported in or, in the case of domestic publication, their publishers applied for permissions tacites. This method, however, did not protect authors or publishers from piracy or seizure if a work was deemed unfit after its publication. This reactive censorship was handled by a veritable menagerie of interested parties; parlement officials, assemblies of the clergy, booksellers’ and printers’ guilds, and the police all vied to suppress dangerous and distasteful writings.

But a good deal more than stricter censorship practices differentiated the French from the British intellectual climate. Far from snickering at the efforts of British philosophers to provide a sound epistemological basis for understanding the human mind, the French were enthralled by all things British and in some ways more receptive to

British attempts to establish a non-theological means for understanding human nature than the British themselves. Ross Hutchison notes that French interest in English thought can be dated to the late seventeenth century, when French writers began to make the trek

79 ! ! to Britain. Hutchison’s survey of foreign texts reviewed by the Histoire des ouvrages des sçavans provides the data for an excellent image of the sustained fascination with British texts through the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (fig. 3.1): in any given year, English language works were reviewed far more frequently than were German,

Dutch, or Italian.9 Moreover, many French writers believed that radical British thought was responsible for the development of similarly radical ideas in France. While some

French Catholic thinkers liked to console themselves that radical concepts like deism and materialism were solely the product of Protestant “errors” and therefore could never gain purchase in France, the reality was far different. The French eagerly read (in translation) everything from British gardening manuals to medical texts on inoculation against small- pox; British philosophy would not prove the exception.10 But even when it was impossible to deny the spread of deism, atheism, and materialism in France, French writers comforted themselves that these were imported concepts which proper French

Catholicism could never have produced on its own. As reassuring as this thought might have been, it was also thoroughly mistaken.

“Rash, Inconsiderate Madmen”: French Empiricists and French Cartesians

There were indeed homegrown French materialists and atheists, though, as the case of the irrepressible Baron D’Holbach illustrates. He was certain that the soul was material, and everyone who attended his legendary salon knew it. They also knew that he was an atheist, insofar as he saw no need for the “First Cause” in his philosophical system. Some, like the Scottish philosopher David Hume, attempted to reason him out of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 9 Ross Hutchinson, Locke in France: 1688-1734 (British Library, 1986): 18. 10 Cyril Blaise O’Keefe, Contemporary Reactions to the Enlightenment, 1728-1762 (General Books LLC, 2009): 101

80 ! ! these positions. In a famous encounter related by Diderot, Hume told D’Holbach that there were no atheists in Britain (how differently they were perceived across the

Channel!) and after a brief glance around the room at the eighteen other guests, the Baron archly replied, “I am lucky enough to be able to show you fifteen atheists at one glance.

The other three have not made up their mind”.11

Beyond his rejection of a supernatural “First Cause”, D’Holbach was certain that the idea of an immaterial and immortal soul was a recent invention of theologians and, most significantly, of the misguided efforts of Descartes. He said as much publicly, albeit anonymously, in the clandestinely published Système de la Nature (1770), arguing that the very incomprehensibility of the idea of an immaterial, non-extended substance capable of thought had led thinkers to conclude that it must be divine. “Those who dared believe that which was believed before; namely that the soul was material, were held as rash inconsiderate madmen,” he boomed in the first part of the Système.12 “The more man reflects,” he concluded, “the more he will be convinced that the soul, very far from being distinguished from the body, is only the body itself, considered relatively to some of its functions”.13

When D’Holbach blamed the “sublime errors” of Descartes for the idea that “that which thinks ought to be distinguished from matter”, he was only stating what most of his readers probably already believed, although he employed it in a far more radical direction.14 Significantly, for D’Holbach and his contemporaries, not only was the idea

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 11 Quoted in Alan Kors, D’Holbach’s Coterie: An Enlightenment in Paris (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976): 41. 12 D’Holbach, The System of Nature, Part 1, (Echo Library, 2007): 66; emphasis in original. 13 Ibid., 67 14 Ibid., 66

81 ! ! of an immaterial soul was most closely associated with Cartesianism, its denial was closely linked to atheism. In both cases, this marked an important departure from the

English attitude. Initially, British thinkers, like the Cambridge Platonists in the late seventeenth century, were drawn to Cartesian dualism because of the alternative it offered to the inexorably Catholic approach of scholastic empiricism, which glorified nature and the body far too much for their more spiritual Protestant sensibilities, but also because it provided a more optimistic account of human freedom than did the hardline

Calvinism of strict Anglicanism. These same men, however, ultimately rejected

Descartes for venturing too far in the other direction: by rendering nature nothing but matter in motion (because human beings were the only ones who possessed a spiritual component), Cartesian dualism distanced God from his creation and could be used to promote a mechanistic materialism of a sort.15 But British religious diversity allowed thinkers to be more flexible when defining the nature of the soul while still remaining within the Christian tradition. Heterodox currents such as mortalism—the belief that the soul is not naturally immortal, and therefore “sleeps” with the body until the Second

Coming and resurrection—and millenarianism, which emphasized the physical return of

Christ to establish an earthly kingdom, were never mainstream, but they were a significant part of religious and philosophical discourse nonetheless. Thinkers in this tradition provided evidence that it was possible to be a materialist and maintain a strong claim to Christianity, and numerous pamphlets and books employed primarily scriptural evidence to support such a blend. Alternatives to Cartesianism abounded, therefore, in

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 15 Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of Body and Soul, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005): 83-84.

82 ! ! the diverse British intellectual soil, allowing thinkers to dabble in materialism with considerably less danger than their French equivalents.

While in Britain, Cartesianism had long since fallen by the wayside as the primary philosophical approach to metaphysical questions and even in its heyday had only been one of a variety of options, in France it continued to be very relevant and, in some ways, dominate the philosophical discourse long into the eighteenth century. While the

Cambridge Platonists—formerly the biggest promoters of Cartesian dualism—eventually abandoned it for the more genial approach of empiricism, in France important movements like Jansenism continued to use it as a theological and philosophical base for their entire discourse. In fact, Cartesianism became so entrenched in the philosophical subsoil that thinkers, whether they realized it or not, were largely working within

Cartesian definitions of “mind” and “body”. It did not matter if they rejected Descartes’ dualistic premises, they were still bound by its consequences. Simply put, a rejection of

Cartesianism made one a materialist, and embracing materialism made one an atheist.

Therefore, David Hartley could reasonably entertain the idea of a material soul without necessarily relinquishing his Christian credentials, but the same could not be said for his

French counterparts, the Abbé de Condillac included.

The reasons for this polarization of French enlightened thought has, as might be expected, numerous origins. Alan Kors compellingly argues in Atheism in France that the seventeenth century witnessed the birth of French philosophical atheism due not to spread of Spinozist monism or other similarly radical systems, but debates amongst orthodox thinkers themselves, namely the entrenched Scholastic empiricist tradition and those who embraced the new Cartesian rationalism. Kors shows how the policy of

83 ! ! mutually assured destruction adopted by both camps in their battle for intellectual supremacy resulted in the invention of a philosophically viable atheism, even as it paved the way for the rigid duality of the Cartesian vision of human nature. Though

Cartesianism may have emerged the victor from this “theological fratricide”, it was at the cost of a complete rejection of scholastic empiricism and the hardening of its rationalistic methodology.16 All of this, it would seem, prepared the ground for a new encounter between Lockean empiricism and this battle-worn variety of Cartesianism. As Dale Van

Kley notes in his review of Kors,

Kors' argument seems all set up to show how Christian Cartesianism's short-term victory over scholastic empiricism was won at too high an intellectual price in France because, in insisting so rigidly upon the total autonomy of mind or soul (aîme) and thought in relation to "extension", it forced later converts to sensate Lockean empiricism to regard the admission of any sensate origins of ideas as entailing the elimination of âme--and eventually with it, God--altogether from their epistemology.17 When Locke’s Essay finally made its way into French consciousness, therefore, it required translation in more than language. As it turned out, the manner in which

Lockean empiricism was introduced to France meant that the dualism which Locke himself had worked so hard to established seemed to many thinkers to be irrelevant and even harmful to his broader theory.

“The ABCs of Impiety”: Locke in France In a sense, Locke’s Essay had made its debut in French in the article “Extract of an English book which has not yet appeared, entitled Philosophical Essay Concerning the

Understanding” (Extrait d’un livre Anglois qui n’a pas encore paru, intitule Essai

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 16 Alan Kors, Anticipations of the Enlightenment in England, France, and Germany, (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987): 21 17 Dale Van Kley, review of Atheism in France, Eighteenth-Century Studies 26, no. 1: 138-142.

84 ! ! philosophique concernant l’entendement) published by Locke’s friend Jean Le Clerc in his influential Dutch periodical Bibliothèque Universelle a full two years prior to the

English publication of the work in its entirety—it was from this article that Locke’s earliest continental readers, including Bayle and Leibniz, first became acquainted with the Essay. From this article and other publications reviewing the English edition of 1690,

French intellectuals and the reading public got their first taste of Locke. Ten years later, the French translation appeared. It took another twenty-three years for a new French edition to be printed. Whether, as in Roy Porter’s estimation, this meant that copies of the 1700 edition were still “lying around unsold” two decades later is difficult to determine.18 Locke certainly was not altogether unknown or unused by thinkers, but examples of his influence in the early part of the century are few and far between.

This all changed in 1733, with the publication of Voltaire’s Lettres anglais, which, in true Voltairean style, exacerbated the most controversial aspects of Locke, especially thinking matter. While claiming that the question was altogether a philosophical one and that only the superstitious and paranoid would take it as an attack on religion, Voltaire was entirely aware of the thinking matter hypothesis’ implications for the Christian idea of a spiritual soul. Elsewhere in his letter on Locke he openly engages the controversy, writing that the soul is a “Clock which is given us to regulate, but the Artist has not told us what Materials the Spring of his Clock is compos’d” 19 and, more blatantly still: “I am a body, and, I think, that's all I know of the matter. Shall I ascribe to an unknown cause,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 18 Porter, 67. 19 John W. Yolton, Locke and French Materialism, [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991]: 40-41; http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1778voltaire-locke.html

85 ! ! what I can so easily impute to the only second cause I am acquainted with?”.20 Widely read, this publication quickened interest in Locke’s thought and exposed it to the wider reading public. It also ensured that, for many, their first exposure to Locke was as a purported materialist and likely deist. The Jesuit Journal de Trévoux harshly condemned

Voltaire’s Lettres, and in particular his writings about Locke. The Journal charged

Locke with “arguing in favor of materialism” and further contended that “he reasoned therefore against faith, against reason, against truth and is by consequence a Sophist, foolish, mad, [and an] enemy of all good Philosophy”.21 The Journal des Savants was similarly skeptical: “Locke is in a manner of speaking the first step and the ABCs of impiety” as well as “dangerous for Religion”.22

As the reception of Locke makes apparent, beginning in the late seventeenth century onward the French were incredibly concerned about the spread of materialism in all its forms. The desire to integrate man fully into the realm of the natural defined a large part of many philosophes’ endeavors, and the results ranged from the relatively moderate all the way to radicals such as La Mettrie and his infamous L’Homme Machine.

When Cartesian dualism demanded the separation of the spiritual, thinking part of human nature from the physical body held in common with animals, it further complicated this endeavor. For while most thinkers were concerned with maintaining man’s distinctive place in the universe as a rational and moral being, it became far more difficult to accomplish this within the rigid structure of dualism. The effort to understand how

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 20 Voltaire, “On John Locke”, from Lettres Philosophiques, in French and English philosophers : Descartes, Rousseau, Voltaire, Hobbes : with introductions and notes, The Harvard classics v. 34, (New York : P.F. Collier, c1910) 21 Quoted in the original French in O’Keefe, 39 22 Quoted in the original French in Ibid., 98

86 ! ! humans acquired knowledge was far trickier while working under the assumption that soul and body were absolutely separate: how, exactly, did the two influence one another?

How could the soul direct the actions of the body, or the body relay information to the soul when they were utterly distinct?

When D’Holbach wrote that Descartes had unnecessarily complicated the issue of the soul, and that it was far more logical to assume that “since man, who is matter, who has no idea but of matter, enjoys the faculty of thought, matter can think; that is it is susceptible to that particular modification called thought”, he had not departed from the structure of dualism so far as he may have liked to believe.23 Still working within

Descartes’ categories, D’Holbach regarded the likelihood of sensate origins of thought as equivalent to the rejection of a spiritual soul. Therefore, as appealing as the recently imported Lockean empiricism was, it furthered a vision of human nature that made almost no appeal to the spiritual and which seemed to lend itself to the radical interpretation that D’Holbach gave it—after all, had not Locke himself suggested the possibility of thinking matter? Once the spiritual essence of humanity had been rejected, it was but a short step to deism and even atheism. So while most thinkers were not prepared to so far depart from the Western humanist tradition as to relegate man to the realm of beasts or machines and the universe to a causeless accident, they flirted with these ideas merely by entertaining alternatives to Cartesianism.24 Diderot perhaps summed the dilemma up best in a letter to his mistress, saying that,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 23 D’Holbach, System, part I, 67 24 For an excellent, if somewhat speculative, discussion of this tension, see Isabel F. Knight, The Geometric Spirit: The Abbé de Condillac and the French Enlightenment, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968): 112-116.

87 ! !

Atheism is close to being a kind of superstition, as puerile as the other… Nothing is indifference in an order of things which is tied together; it seems that everything is equally important… If I believe I love you of my own free will, I am mistaken, it is nothing of the sort. Oh, what a fine system for ingrates! I am maddened at being entangled in a devilish philosophy that my mind can’t help approving and my heart refuting.25

While this quandary was undoubtedly present in some form in all works of high

Enlightenment epistemology, including Hartley’s Observations, it was far more overt in the French context. David Hartley managed to walk to the philosophical line without tipping into the abyss of radicalism, primarily because in England, thinkers had to navigate not so much a tightrope as a bridge. There was far more room to maneuver, as the consequences for heterodoxy were not nearly as dire. In France, however, the climate was far more divisive. Thinkers at both the orthodox and radical ends of the spectrum were more than eager to twist the words of the moderately minded author to their own ends. Voltaire’s radicalization of Lockean principles represents one such attempt; examples of such appropriations abound.26

Indeed, the acceptability of such ideas was often as dependent on the context and manner in which they were presented as on the content of the ideas themselves. A prime example of the importance of context may be seen in the example of the Prades affair, analyzed by Jeffrey Burson in his The Rise and Fall of Theological Enlightenment: Jean-

Martin de Prades and Ideological Polarization in Eighteenth-Century France.27 The

Abbé de Prades, utilizing a Jesuit-pioneered interpretation of Lockean sensationalism, proclaimed in his Sorbonne thesis that “Man, this being whose ideas, still shapeless and !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 25 Quoted in Ibid., 115. 26 See Yolton, Locke and French Materialism, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991) 27 Jeffrey D. Burson, The Rise and Fall of Theological Enlightenment: Jean-Martin de Prades and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century France, foreword by Dale Van Kley (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010)

88 ! ! scarcely sketched out, are born from sensation… From thence, all our understanding takes its source, because these sensations are the first seed from which all of our reflections are seen to be hatched and from which depart just as branches are born from the trunk of a fertile tree”.28 He took care, however, to explicitly reject Locke’s thinking matter hypothesis and thus ensure his orthodoxy. Prades nevertheless stumbled into a complex web of controversy and rivalry amongst Jesuit, Jansenist and philosophe competitors. In the ensuing storm, Prades’ sensationalism was radicalized by Diderot and company, and condemned from more orthodox quarters as an attempt to undermine religion. His career was ruined, and he fled from Paris first to the far more tolerant environment of the Dutch Republic and later to Frederick the Great’s court in Prussia.

The case of the Abbé de Prades highlights just how fine the line between radicalism and orthodoxy had become. Consequently, faced with the perils of censorship in all its forms in addition to a increasingly polarized intellectual climate, French thinkers like Condillac and Prades were forced to spend far more time clarifying and defending their ideas in the face of far higher stakes than British moderates like Hartley ever did.

“Man is Only What He has Acquired”: Condillac’s Innovations on Locke

It is within this context that Condillac attempted to present Locke in much the same manner as David Hartley. Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, son of a moderately wealthy aristocrat and younger brother of the Abbé de Mably, entered the seminary at

Saint-Suplice in Paris at seventeen-years old. After attending the Sorbonne and defending his thesis there, he was ordained a priest in 1741. Condillac soon embarked on

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 28 Ibid.,187-188

89 ! ! a period of “self-study” and read not only the great philosophers of the seventeenth century, but also much of the now in-vogue British philosophy—including Locke’s Essay.

So taken was he with the ideas set forth in the Essay, that the entire purpose of

Condillac’s first major work, Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines (1746) was to explore and improve on them. Mysterious and almost taciturn in his correspondence,

Condillac never shared the source of his attraction to the same Lockean principles about which Hartley wrote Lister. Whatever its origin, however, this fascination, manifested in numerous writings, would become, far more than his cassock, the source of his identity and status in eighteenth-century French society.

After his ordination, Condillac took up residence in Paris, where he would live for the next decade. His family had an old connection with Rousseau, who recalled in the

Confessions that he had briefly been tutor to both Condillac and his elder brother, the

Abbé de Mably.29 Reestablishing their connection in adulthood, Condillac and Rousseau soon met in Paris very early in both their careers. Rousseau wrote that when he had first encountered Condillac in Paris, he “had acquired no more literary fame than myself” but that he had “every appearance of his becoming what he now [1769] is”.30 Predictably,

Rousseau took all the credit for “discovering” Condillac: “I was perhaps the first who discovered the extent of his abilities, and esteemed them as they deserved”.31 The two remained close throughout the writing of Condillac’s Essai, and upon its completion

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 29 Rousseau, Les Confessions Book VII. Rousseau further contended that as a child Condillac “appeared stupid and fretful, was headstrong as a mule, and seemed incapable of instruction. [...] He was of an obstinacy beyond belief, and was never happier than when he had succeeded in putting me in a rage” (Book I) As with all recollections of Rousseau, these must be taken with a grain of salt, but considered in light of the significant evidence of Condillac’s reserved nature in adulthood, they contribute to a better understanding of his personality. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid.

90 ! !

Rousseau undertook to help find a publisher for the piece. Rousseau made vague references to Condillac’s “the difficulty... [finding] a bookseller who would take it”, but he was not clear as to why this was. It is possible that booksellers were concerned with the orthodoxy of the contents of the Essai, as Jonathan Israel and some other scholars suggest, but it seems equally likely that a dense work of metaphysics did not seem like a potential bestseller.32 He introduced his friend to Diderot, who was sufficiently impressed by the Essai to persuade a bookseller with whom he was acquainted to publish it anonymously. Condillac ran into further difficulties, though, with the royal censors.

Mably wrote to a friend in May of 1744 that his brother’s book was being held up endlessly by the censors, “Condillac is still in the hands of his censor, who is very slow moving”, and told a cousin the following year that, “his [Condillac’s] work has not yet appeared. It has encountered difficulties with censorship, an author is to be much pitied among all the formalities that he must endure”.33 Beyond these intriguing comments, there is once again no indication of what would cause the Direction de la librarie to hesitate in bestowing a privilege on the Essai. In a final twist, however, Condillac’s first work apparently never received a privilege at all—when it finally made its appearance in

1746, it was marked as an import from a publishing house in the notoriously more lenient city of Amsterdam, a sure sign that Condillac had determined to roll the dice on a permission tacite. One begins to see that, with all the smoke surrounding Condillac’s first publication, there was almost certainly some heterodox fire.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 32 Rousseau says only that “the booksellers of Paris are shy of every author at his beginning, and metaphysics, not much then in vogue, were no very inviting subject”. Les Confessions, Book VII. For alternate interpretations, see Israel Enlightenment Contested, 775. 33 Both quoted in the original French in Michel Gilot and Jean Sgard, “Biographie de Condillac” in Corpus Condillac, ed. Jean Sgard, (Geneva: Slatkin Editions, 1981): 115.

91 ! !

Though Rousseau does not explain what potential he and Diderot saw in the system of the young thinker, it seems likely that they were intrigued by the materialist implications of Condillac’s brand of Lockean sensationalism. Regardless, Condillac quietly but firmly maintained a moderate Catholicism, completely in keeping with his priestly garb, throughout his entire life. Though rumors of his materialism, atheism, and general impiety constantly haunted him, there is no real evidence to substantiate the claim that he understood himself to be any of those things: Condillac professed to be a sincere

Christian, and without anything other than rumors to contradict this claim, we must believe him. Indeed, even the Jesuit Journal de Trevoux took up his cause, noting in their review of his Traité des Sensations that while “according to some Critics, [Condillac’s system seemed] to give off an odor of materialism” they regarded this as an “odious suspicion, and one should not risk it without the greatest proof”. “We think, for us,” they concluded, “that the spirituality of the soul is one of the essential parts of the Traité, and that, without this dogma, the whole system would have no consistency. Furthermore, the

Author explained so eloquently divinity, creation, and revelation, that in all these regards, his orthodoxy seems beyond question [hors de toute atteinte].34 Whatever the Journal and Condillac himself may have believed, however, the reality was that Condillac had directly engaged with and professed admiration for Locke, a thinker many regarded for reasons already discussed to be incontrovertibly materialist.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 34 Journal de Trévoux: Mémoires pour l'Histoire des Sciences & des Beaux-Arts, “ARTICLE XXXI. TRAITÉ DES SENSATIONS, à Mme La Comtesse de Vassé, par M. l'Abbé De Condillac, de l'Académie Royale de Berlin; 2 Tomes in-12. Le premier de 345, le second de 335 pages. A Londres, & se vend à Paris chez Debure l'aîné.M.DCC.LIV” 660.

92 ! !

It was nearly a decade after the publication of Voltaire’s Lettres anglais that

Condillac first discovered Locke. In writing the Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines, he sought to both improve upon Locke’s theory, as well as begin to distinguish himself as an independent thinker in his own right. Though he admired Locke greatly,

Condillac was dissatisfied with what he believed to be the British thinker’s somewhat haphazard and disorganized approach. “It does not seem,” he wrote in the introduction to the Essai, “that [Locke] ever made the treatise…his principle occupation. He undertook it by chance, and continued it in the same spirit. …To this we may charge the longueurs, the repetitions, and the lack of order that prevails in it”.35 Of primary concern to

Condillac was Locke’s neglect of what he terms “the origin of our knowledge”.36 “He assumes, for example,” Condillac noted, “that as soon as the soul receives ideas by sense, it can at will repeat, compose, and unite them together with infinite variety and make all sorts of complex notions of them”.37 Condillac’s primary goal in writing the Essai was thus to remedy this “superficiality” in Locke’s account:

As the soul does not from the first instant control the exercise of all its operations, it was necessary, in order to give a better explanation of the origin of our knowledge, to show how it acquires that exercise, and what progress it makes in it. It does not appear that Locke addressed that question, or that anyone has ever blamed him for the omission or has tried to remedy this part of his work.38

Condillac’s ambition was not to alter Locke’s essential theory, but rather to simply extend it by better accounting for the experience of sensation, and to determine how this

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 35 Condillac, Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge. Trans. and ed. by Hans Aarself. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001): 7. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid.

93 ! ! experience translated itself into knowledge. In fact, the English translation of the Essai was subtitled, “A supplement to Mr. Locke’s essay on the human understanding”.

Condillac accepted, albeit with hesitation, Locke’s distinction between ideas gained through both sensation and reflection. He argued that the ability to develop new ideas through reflection, which he defined as the product of the combined forces of imagination and memory, was something which must be learned and that the human mind in its earliest manifestation (i.e. that of an infant or child) was therefore unable to fashion ideas in this way. He also accepted the principle of the association of ideas. However, already in the Essai, Condillac was preparing to innovate on Locke’s theory in ways that would further leave him open to charges of materialism. Significantly, while Locke remained distrusting of human languages and believed them to be a means of conveying

(and often obscuring) already formed ideas, Condillac regarded language as a system of signs that was essential for the mind to process and categorize knowledge. “The principle benefit of the way in which I have envisioned the operations of the soul,” he wrote in the first edition of the Essai, “is that we see clearly how good sense, intellect, reason, and their contraries are all equally the product of a single principle, namely the connection of ideas with one another; and that we see how on a higher level, this connection is produced by the use of signs; and that consequently the progress of the human mind depends entirely on the skill we bring to the use of language”.39 In later writings, the role that Condillac perceived language to play in the acquisition and development of ideas would shift. Increasingly, he would emphasize the role played by sensation and downplay the necessity of signs. But already in the Traité, by further !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 39 Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, trans. and ed. by Hans Aarself. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001): 69/fn.

94 ! ! integrating ideas and thought into the physical development of language, Condillac had weakened the ability of any “spiritual” component to develop and retain ideas without physical assistance.

Like Hartley, Condillac attempted to head off any accusations of materialism by addressing a number of the most controversial aspects of his theory head on. Firstly, he rejected Locke’s “thinking matter” proposal, writing that “[w]e must not imagine that for the resolution of this question it would be necessary to know the essence and the nature of matter. ...It is enough to observe that the subject of thought must be ‘one’. But a mass of matter is not one; it is a multitude”.40 Interestingly, Condillac’s response to thinking matter relied on the Cartesian concept of the soul as indivisible and unextended, something of which Locke himself was not entirely convinced and which was in no way a working assumption of his epistemology. Condillac’s protestation, therefore, seems a bit out of place in his otherwise generally Lockean empiricist treatment of the human mind. Beyond addressing thinking matter, Condillac took up the controversy surrounding his (and Locke’s) foundational contention that the soul/mind could not acquire knowledge without the senses. In a convenient theological maneuver, he declared that this state of affairs was only applicable in a postlapsarian context (i.e. after the Fall of man). “Before the Fall,” Condillac explained, “an altogether different system prevailed from the one in which the soul exists today. Exempt from ignorance and concupiscence, it ruled the senses... [and therefore] had ideas prior to the use of the senses. But things have greatly changed owing to its disobedience. God has deprived it

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 40 Ibid., 13

95 ! ! of all its power”.41 And like a good empiricist, Condillac contended that only the postlapsarian soul could be “the object of philosophy, because it is the only one we can know by experience”. 42 Therefore, Condillac implored his readers to remember that

“when I say ‘that we do not have any ideas that do not come from the senses,’ it must be remembered that I speak only of the state we are now in after the Fall. This proposition would be altogether false if applied to the soul in the state of innocence [before the Fall] or after its separation from the body [after death]”.43 Evidently, these caveats proved sufficient to eventually stave off the disapproval of the censors, though not the attacks of other thinkers.

It was not until several years later, with the publication of the Traité des sensations that Condillac fully emerged as a distinctive and independent innovator on

Lockean principles. Dissatisfied with many of the ambiguities and even contradictions in

Locke’s system, many of which he had adopted in order to maintain a dualistic concept of human nature, Condillac struck out on his own in the direction of a rigorous sensationalism. Indeed, he may have begun rethinking some of Locke’s more unempirical arguments as soon as 1749. In a letter to the Genevan mathematician

Gabriel Cramer, Condillac argued that all operations of the soul, including imagination and memory, could be attributed to physical causes:

“The faculties which transmit ideas to the soul are corporeal; why would the others not be? It would be better if the soul would operate independently of the body; however, since it is exhibited in [remarquer par] the body, it is necessary to search for the cause in the body. But would a soul without a body be without

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 41 Ibid., 13 42 Ibid., 14 43 Ibid.

96 ! !

imagination and memory? I reply that this question relates to a different order than those that I consider here.44

He reiterated to Cramer his conviction that the proper province of philosophers was empirical observation, and any questions beyond that would be better left to theologians:

“As a theologian, faith comes to my rescue, when experience ceases to enlighten me, and it tells me that... the soul separated from the body would exercise all the operations of which it is capable, that it will have ideas, knowledge, etc.”.45 Furthermore, Condillac now completely rejected the possibility of ideas produced in any other way than via the senses—the same adjustment, incidentally, which Hartley had seen fit to make in his

Observations. Writing again to Cramer, Condillac expressed himself quite plainly:

It does not seem to me that we can render intelligible the ideas of extension and impenetrability, if by that word you mean an idea which belongs only to the understanding and in which the senses and the imagination have no part. I touch objects, and I have sensitive ideas [idées sensibles] of extension and understandings. I cease to touch them, and I retain the memory of these ideas; or to speak another way, the imagination presents to me these ideas modeled on those which the senses have transmitted to me. [...] We consider the same property, only sometimes by the senses, and sometimes by imagination modeled on ideas of the senses, we do not know the essence of an object better than when we imagine that we touch it.”.46

Finally, Condillac expressed dissatisfaction with the manner in which he had tied language to the mental development in the Essai. Writing to the physicist Pierre Louis

Maupertuis in 1752 to critique Maupertuis’ Philosophical Reflections on the Origin of

Languages, Condillac articulated his frustration: “I could wish that you had shown how the progress of the mind depends on language. I attempted this in my Essay on the

Origin of Human Understanding, but I was mistaken and put too much weight on !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 44 Condillac to Gabriel Cramer [n.d.; but tentatively dated to 1750] in Condillac: Lettres Inédites a Gabriel Cramer, ed. Georges Le Roy (Presses Universitaires de France, 1953): 82 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid., 74

97 ! ! signs”.47 As we shall see, these alterations among others would serve only to exacerbate rather than resolve the “thinking matter” issue and other controversial elements of Locke, which, thanks to Voltaire and others, had become a major source of discussion in France.

Condillac published the Traité des Sensations in 1754. In many ways, it was both a sequel and a correction to the Essai. While his focus in the Essai had been primarily on the role played by language in the development of the human mind, his letter to

Maupertuis would seem to indicate that he had reconsidered just how crucial its role really was. In the Traité, therefore, his concern was entirely with mental development prior to the acquisition of language. Condillac set about doing this proposing a famous

“thought experiment”: he suggested the hypothetical existence of a human statue, which would be endowed with various physical senses in succession. Condillac urged his readers that it was “very important to put [themselves] exactly in the place of the statue”.

The dedicated reader, he continued, “should begin to live only when it [the statue] does, have only a single sense when it has only one, acquire only those ideas it acquires”.48

The Traité was, in essence, a hypothetical experiment designed to demonstrate how the human mind processes sensation and transforms it into knowledge about the material world. Condillac departed from the Lockean idea that the mind possesses certain abilities—such as reflection, imagination etc.—innately. “Locke distinguishes two sources of our ideas, the senses and reflection,” he wrote,

But it would be more precise to recognize only a single one, either because reflection is underlying only sensation itself, or because it is less the source of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 47 Condillac to Pierre Louis Maupertuis, Paris, 5 May 1752 in Oeuvres Philosophique de Condillac, vol. 3, ed. Georges Le Roy, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1947-1951): 536 48 Condillac, “Treatise on Sensations”, in Philosophical Writings of Etienne Bonnot, Abbé de Condillac, trans. by Franklin Philip and H. Lane. (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1982): 155

98 ! !

ideas than the channel by which they are derived from the sense. [...] Thus this philosopher [Locke] is content to recognize that the mind perceives, thinks, doubts, believes, reasons, knows, wills, reflects... but he did not feel the necessity of discovering their basis and elaboration, he did not suspect that they could be only acquired habits.49

Thus, for Condillac, reflection and the abilities associated with it were far from innate, as

Locke believed and Condillac himself had argued in the Essai, but instead were actually skills which must be learned and honed as the mind learns how to process the input it receives from the senses. The crucial stimulus for the mind to develop these skills,

Condillac argued, was desire:

The principle determining the development of its [the mind’s] faculties is simple; sensations themselves contain it; for since each is necessarily pleasant or unpleasant the statue is interested in enjoying some and ridding itself of others. [...] This interest is sufficient to give rise to the activities of understanding and volition.50

Elsewhere, he reiterated the point: “[I]n passing from need to need, from desire to desire, the imagination takes shape, the passions arise, the mind acquires more activity in a trice, and develops from one bit of knowledge to the next”.51 The more complex the input, the more effort the mind must employ to make sense of it, and in struggling to process it would become more complex and agile.

Condillac further embraced a completely sensationist position, arguing that not only were mental skills like judgment acquired through the experience of sensations but that they themselves were essentially born out of physical experiences: “Judgment, reflection, desires, passions, and so forth are only sensation, differently transformed”.52 If this were the case, Condillac realized that this might leave him open to charges of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 49 Ibid., 159 50 Ibid., 171 51 Ibid., 161 52 Ibid., 171, emphasis mine.

99 ! ! demoting the human mind to the level of its animal counterparts, and he attempted to head this off in a footnote: “But, it will be said, [that] animals have sensations and yet their minds are not capable of the same faculties as man’s”.53 Condillac accounted for this by arguing that the organs of sensation, primarily of touch, were inferior in animals, and thus the information they received was of an inherently lower quality, hence their poorer mental development. This was not an explanation calculated to bring comfort to readers looking for reassurance that human and animal minds were essentially different.

Condillac must have realized this as well, for he continued,

From which the philosopher should conclude, in accord with the teachings of the faith, that the mind of animals is of an essentially different order than that of man. For would it be a part of God’s wisdom that a mind capable of attaining all kinds of knowledge, of discovering its duties, of being worthy and unworthy, should be subjected to a body that would only occasion in it the faculties necessary for animal survival?54

Essentially, Condillac argued, there was no way to empirically prove that animal minds were different from human ones—his readers would just have to take it on faith. This rather insubstantial defense of human superiority would later lead to some of the harshest critiques of the Traité and prompt Condillac to write an entirely new treatise on the subject.

The conclusion to the Traité drove home the thoroughly sensationist position that

Condillac had adopted, and along with it established firmly his rejection of Cartesian rationalism. “Man,” he wrote, “is only what he has acquired”.55 How much more clearly could he have rejected the Cartesian conviction that the human mind possessed innate ideas, or that a spiritual soul governed the actions of the body? Rather, for Condillac the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 53 Ibid., fn5 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid., 338

100 ! ! influence was in the entirely opposite direction: the mind was only what the body made it. Though he was not interested in the physiological realities of this in the same way that

Hartley (the physician) was, he nonetheless would have been in complete sympathy with

Hartley’s contention that “the brain is... the immediate Instrument, by which Ideas are presented to the Mind”.56 Unlike Hartley, however, Condillac (the abbé!) incongruously chose not to make plain just how this theory could support a proper Christian understanding of human nature. While Hartley had argued that as mechanistic and even materialistic as his system might seem, it was nonetheless all part of God’s plan for the greater perfection of his creation, Condillac left these connections implicit. For him, it seems, faith was the last resort rather than the guiding principle for understanding the human mind; only where empirical observation left off could faith begin to make its case.

It would soon become clear that relegating faith to the sidelines in a theory already straining the boundaries of orthodoxy was potentially very problematic.

“An Odor of Materialism”: Animal Bodies and Human Souls

Given the divisive climate in which he was writing, the difficulties he had getting published and approved by the censors, and the company he kept at the Parisian salons,

Condillac must have been aware of the potential heterodoxy inherent in the uncompromisingly sensationalist theory presented in the Traité. As Isabel Knight notes in her analysis of the Traité, the “thought experiment” of the statue man was “solipsistic from the point of view of the statue [and] mechanistic from the point of view of the observer” and begged for a clearer delineation of how humans related to the world

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 56 Hartley, Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations, 1749, (Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars' Facsimile Reprints, 1966) 8.

101 ! ! beyond themselves, including other men, nature and God.57 He did not, however, take the preemptive steps to defend himself from criticism that David Hartley employed in the

Observations. While in the Essai, he had clearly disowned the materialist implications of

Lockean epistemology, there was no such defense to be found in the Traité, despite it being the more obviously philosophically problematic of the two. Condillac’s rationale for this is unclear. Perhaps he believed that his wording had been subtle and specific enough that he would avoid controversy; or that he had so clearly expressed himself that no right-minded reader would believe he was espousing radical ideas. Perhaps his personality—reticent and retiring—prevented him from courting trouble before it came to him.

For the most part the Traité was generally well received, at least if its reviews in the Journal de Trévoux and the Journal des Sçavans are any indication. The Journal des

Sçavans supported the Traité and took care to defend the orthodoxy of its author. After introducing Condillac’s basic argument that sensations were the foundation of all ideas and before starting the review proper, they noted that “[m]any readers may perhaps be alarmed by these principles; but we must advise them that M. l’Abbé de Condillac respects Religion, that his arguments only ever consider the natural order, and that his

Book is purely philosophical. We will outline his ideas, and we protest in advance against the consequences that impiety would use for the defense of materialism”.58 The

Jesuit Journal de Trévoux also defended both the work and its author from the “odious suspicion” of materialism and proclaimed his orthodoxy. This did not mean, however, that the editors did not have some concerns about the Traité. After their vote of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 57 Knight., 109 58 Le Journal des sçavans, January 1755: 144.

102 ! ! confidence, the editors presented a number of criticisms which, they said, “impeded them from completely adhering to some articles of [Condillac’s] doctrine”.59 Though most of their criticisms were technical and relatively minor, there is one that worth exploring in depth. While he might not have been a materialist, the Journal had some concerns with the manner in which Condillac portrayed the soul. Speaking of the statue-man, the editors noted that “prior to perceiving sensation, the soul of the Statue seems, according

[to] this hypothesis, to have no sense of its life and its existence: one could say that the sensation, by penetrating this soul, is the beginning and all the foundation of its being alive. [...] Prior to this sensation, the soul was in a state of inertia, death, and almost nothingness”.60 This implication concerned the Journal, because it had the potential to eradicate the distinction between material and immaterial substances: “How to reconcile

[accorder] this supposition with the nature of our souls? Is not the sense of life and being essential to their substance? Is not it what most distinguishes between the spiritual substance and the material substance?”61 This clearly illogical claim, they concluded, made Condillac’s overall argument weaker.

Approbation of the Traité was by no means universal, however. Condillac was attacked in a number of published letters as materialistic and mechanist before taking up his pen to defend himself. Adding insult to injury, he was also publically accused of having plagiarized portions of the Traité des Sensations. There appears to be little scholarship and even less clarity on the matter of precisely from where Condillac was supposed to have stolen the concept of the statue-man, but both the well-connected !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 59 Mémoires pour l'Histoire des Sciences & des beaux Arts. (Briasson & Chaubert, Paris, Mars 1755) 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid.

103 ! ! naturalist the Comte de Buffon along with none other than Denis Diderot were frequently cited as the originators of the device Condillac employed to such great effect in the

Traité.62

Diderot had, in fact, made extensive use of the Essai in his 1749 work Lettre sur les Aveugles a l’usage de ceux qui voient (Letter on the Blind for the use of those who see). Citing Condillac’s particular brand of Lockean empiricism, Diderot argued that “If ever a philosopher, deaf and blind from birth constructed a man after the fashion of

Descartes, I can assure you, Madame, that he would place the soul at the end of the fingers, for thence the greater part of the sensations and all his knowledge are derived”.63

Condillac entered into Diderot’s discussion as a defender of the principle that, as Diderot phrased it, “whether we go up to the heavens, or we descend to the abyss, we never go beyond ourselves, and it is only our thoughts that we perceive”.64 Indeed, when we consider Diderot’s obvious debt to Condillac alongside the fact that the Lettre was lacerated and burned alongside De l’Esprit by the Parlement of Paris in 1759 for its radical content, it no longer seems strange that Joseph-Omer Joly de Fleury considered throwing Condillac’s works on the fire as well.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 62 There is absolutely no reason to suppose that these accusations were true. Though this is not the place to enter into the rather unedifying details of the controversy, it seems far more likely that Diderot (as Condillac would later claim) had access to a manuscript version of the Traité des Sensations through a mutual friend, and that he was the one who appropriated the idea of the statue-man and referenced it very briefly in his Lettre sur les sourds et les mouets, which unfortunately for Condillac was published some five years before the Traité. Furthermore, there appears to have been a great deal of animosity between Condillac and Buffon, who as far as I can tell was the source of the accusations that Condillac had plagiarized both himself as well as Diderot. A high (or low) point of the controversy came at the salon of Helvétius where, Condillac later related to Samuel Formey, Buffon confronted Condillac with his charges. Diderot, somewhat disappointingly, never came to his former friend’s defense and remained entirely silent throughout the controversy. 63 Denis Diderot, Lettre sur les Aveugles ,(Geneva: E. Droz, 1951): 18 64 Ibid., 36

104 ! !

It was defense of his orthodoxy and his scholarly integrity, therefore, that prompted Condillac to write the Traité des Animaux in 1756, but the publication of this piece only led to more serious charges of materialism and mechanism. Most notable among these new critics was the Abbé de Lignac, a former Oratorian, a committed

Cartesian, and a longtime opponent of Buffon, who attacked both Condillac and Buffon in his Suite des lettres à un Amériquain regarding the question of animal souls.65 As a

Cartesian, the question of animal souls was of particular concern to Lignac, and he accused Condillac of falling into the trap of attempting answer all questions philosophically: “when one tries to determine what is the nature of Animal souls, one will be obligated, in treating the phenomena that one observes in them, to recognize in Beasts, a soul of the same nature as our own, and to sacrifice the part of the prejudice which most strongly interests our amour propre... the superiority of our nature over theirs. This is precisely the pitfall which trips the celebrated Abbé de Condillac”.66

It is true that, in the Traité des Animaux, Condillac faced the troubling question of the distinction between humans and animals, specifically the knotty problem of the human versus animal soul. Is one material and the other spiritual? Do animals even have souls? Condillac seemed frustrated that he even had to address the issue. The question of animal souls did not even occur to him while writing the Traité des Sensations, he protested in the introduction to the Traité des Animaux, but he had since considered it after reading Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle and in light of the accusations made by certain critics of the Traité des Sensations that he had utilized Buffon’s ideas, without properly !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 65 Jacques Roger, The Life Sciences in Eighteenth-Century French Thought (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1963): 488 66 Joseph Andrien LeLarge de Lignac, Lettres à un amériquain: sur l'histoire naturelle, générale & particuliere, (Paris, 1756): 5.

105 ! ! citing them. Besides, Condillac indignantly remarked, no one that had read both authors could possibly think that this accusation had any merit. The purpose of the Traité des

Animaux, therefore, was just that—to present first Buffon’s views (as interpreted by

Condillac, naturally), and then to present his own views on the subject of animal souls.

Condillac protested, however, that he would not go so far as to claim that he understood

“the nature of animals”. “I admit in this regard,” he wrote, “all my ignorance, and I content myself to observe the faculties of man from that which I observe [sens], and to judge those of beasts by analogy”.67

No matter how he came to the question, Condillac’s response is incredibly significant—should he stray too far in one direction, he would be contradicting his own epistemology; should he stray too far in the other, he would be in materialist waters.

Certainly, his proposed method of extrapolating the nature of animal souls from what he observed about human ones was dangerous all on its own—by its very nature, it heightened the connection between the two. Just as in Britain, the distinction between human and animal also preoccupied French thinkers. And as just the materialistic undertones of Lockean empiricism were heightened in the French context, the consequences of rejecting the Cartesian assertion that animals were machines were far more radical than they were in Britain. If rejecting Cartesian dualism made one a materialist in France, then rejecting his hard distinction between man and beast was an equally radical step. Despite this, Condillac’s response was clearly calculated to maintain his orthodoxy while not giving any philosophical ground. Apparently, it seemed far easier for Condillac to maintain that both humans and animals had some form

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 67 Condillac, Traité des Animaux, (Amsterdam, 1756): 17.

106 ! ! of spiritual soul (mortal in animals, immortal in humans), rather than attempt to prove that humans had one and animals did not. 68 This, however, was not a failsafe method, for it could be interpreted to mean that human beings were really little more than complex animals—a conclusion that, while perhaps not materialist, was equally problematic.

Therefore, in order to achieve his goal of establishing himself as a moderate thinker and a good Christian, Condillac had to first establish the presence of a spiritual soul within all living creatures, and then specify the ways in which the human soul was different and superior to the animal.

In the Traité des Animaux, Condillac first addressed the Cartesian claim that animals were little more than complex machines, incapable of feeling or knowledge. He attributed this to flaws in Descartes’ entire metaphysical theory as well as the rationalist approach, which he treated at length. The problem with rationalism, Condillac concluded, was also the source of its appeal: “What is most favorable to the principles they [the

Cartesians] adopt is the impossibility that one sometimes has of demonstrating completely their falsity. There are laws to which it seems that God could have given preference; and if he could, [then] he did, soon concludes the philosopher who measures divine wisdom against his own”.69 Therefore, Condillac continued, “with such vague reasoning one proves anything one wants, and consequently proves nothing. I desire that

God could have reduced beasts to pure mechanism: but has he done this?”70 Far better, he concluded, to adopt an empirical method of observation and judgment and to limit the scope of one’s theories to what could be obtained by this method. Moreover, Condillac

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 68 Knight, 123. 69 Condillac, Traité des Animaux, 23. 70 Ibid., 24.

107 ! ! argued, opponents of the concept of thinking matter had no choice but to accept that animals possessed some spiritual component, just like humans. “If to feel is to experience [avoir] pleasure or pain, how to reconcile these two propositions? Matter is incapable of feeling, and beasts, although purely material, have feelings”.71 Descartes had correctly understood the terms of the problem: if animals were capable of feeling and thought, then either these qualities must be immaterial, meaning that animals possessed an immaterial soul, or they must be entirely physical, meaning that the same qualities must be material in humans as well. Of course, Descartes had chosen the third option: to deny that animals were capable of feeling or thought. But, as Condillac had already argued, simple observation rendered this assertion extremely problematic. Animals clearly behave in similar ways to human beings and possess the same physical senses which guide their actions, therefore did it really make sense to “say that God would create automatons, that would do, by a mechanical movement, that which I do myself with reflection”?72 There was therefore only one conclusion to reach: whatever a soul was made out of, both humans and animals possessed one, meaning that animals were just as sentient as human beings.

But sentience, Condillac cautioned, did not necessarily mean language. The ability to communicate symbolically through words was a significant way in which

Condillac argued animals and humans differed: “It would be easy, I think,” he wrote, “to understand why beasts, even those who can articulate [sounds], are incapable of learning to speak a language”.73 Certainly, they could not communicate amongst different species,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 71 Ibid., 83. 72 Ibid., 25. 73 Ibid., 97

108 ! ! for each possessed a different organization of their senses—some animals could see far better than others, some could smell things that others could not, and so on—so that there was no common collection of sensations on which they could base a language.74 Animals of the same species, however, were a different story. Much like Hartley, Condillac argued that animals of the same species “experience the same needs, [and] satisfy them in similar ways” would “have in common the same core of ideas”.75 Therefore, Condillac concluded, “they could have a language; and everything indicates that in fact they do have one”.76 Observation of animals of the same species clearly showed that “they question, they help one another [donnent des secours]: they speak of their needs [...].

Inarticulate cries and physical actions, are the signs of their thoughts”.77 Furthermore,

Condillac paralleled Hartley’s argument that domesticated animals were capable of grasping the basics of human language. Ultimately, though, Condillac used the far inferior communication skills of animals to argue for the inferiority of their physical organization, and therefore their minds. Though language contributed to further human development, animals could not progress in the same way because they could not effectively communicate their ideas amongst one another in the same way that humans could. The difference, though, once again seemed to be one of degree rather than nature.

Establishing the immortality of the human soul while simultaneously arguing for a mortal animal soul was essential to establishing the legitimacy and orthodoxy of

Condillac’s defense. It, unfortunately for him, was a difficult if not impossible distinction to actually prove using the purely empirical means he had employed to such !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid., 99 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid. 99-100

109 ! ! great effect elsewhere. Instead, he reverted to an argument based on revelation and theology to prove the immortality of the human soul, explaining that only God can endow a soul with immortality. Condillac argued that God bestowed humanity with immortal souls to ensure that the injustice in this world is compensated for in the next: “It is not in this world that good and evil are proportional with merit and demerit. There is therefore another life, where the just are recompensed, the wicked will be punished; and our soul is immortal”.78 Animals, on the other hand, suffer no injustice because they are incapable of acting morally or immorally, and therefore do not need the gift of immortality: “There are no obligations to beings who are absolutely powerless to know the law. Nothing is ordered of the beasts, nothing is forbidden them [...]. They are incapable of merit and demerit, they do not have the right to divine justice. Their soul is therefore mortal”.79

How differently he assessed the divine “debt” to animals than did Hartley—where the

British thinker saw very clearly that animals were part of the divine system of justice, based on both reason and revelation, Condillac denied it on the basis that animals were incapable of sin. Again, though, this difference may easily be attributed to a lingering

Cartesianism: Hartley may not have believed animals were capable of sinning, but he did think they had been sinned against by humanity. Condillac, though, while he did acknowledge animals to be capable of feeling and pain, saw no such responsibility for animal well-being. Sentient or no, animals were outside the divine system of justice.

Condillac did not stop there, however, but cautioned that the mortality of the animal soul did not necessarily mean that it was also material and “we conclude without

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 78 Ibid., 143-144 79 Ibid., 144

110 ! ! doubt that the dissolution of the body does not cause its annihilation”.80 This was because, Condillac continued, “these two substances [body and soul] can exist the one without the other; their mutual dependence takes place, because God wants it and so far as he wants it. But immortality is not natural to both, and if God does not grant it to the soul of beasts, this is only because he does not owe them”.81 Finally, Condillac concluded, “although the soul of beasts is as simple as that of man, and in this regard there is no difference between the one and the other; the faculties that we share and the end for which God destined us, demonstrates that if we could penetrate into the nature of the two substances [human and animal souls] we would see that they are totally different.

Our soul is therefore not of the same nature as that of beasts”.82

Condillac realized that he was still faced with the task of arguing for the fundamental difference of animals and humans: “But if beasts think, if they are aware of some of their feelings, and finally if they have some little understanding of our language; how therefore are they different from man...”?83 Once again he resorted to protestations of the impossibility of empirically understanding the true essence of animal and human existence, and instead employed an analogy to prove his point:

[A]s we are in powerlessness to know the nature of beings, we cannot judge them by the extent of their operations. [...] This is the way that man differs from the Angel, and the Angel from God himself; so from the Angel to God the distance is infinite; while that from man to Angel is very considerable, and is undoubtedly also very great from man to beast. However, to mark these differences we have only vague ideas and figurative expressions... [but] I do not undertake to explain these things.84

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 80 Ibid., 144-145 81 Ibid., 145 82 Ibid., 146 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid., 104

111 ! !

The most Condillac could promise his readers what that, just as angels did not have the potential to become God, so animals did not have the potential to become human. He acknowledged that the similarity between man and beast in terms of behavior might frighten some, but this was only because they believed that acknowledging similarities would lead to confusing one with the other and admitting they were both, ultimately, the same. These were the people to whom the Cartesian animal-machine hypothesis appealed, Condillac argued; in a futile attempt to reject the obvious connection between man and beast, they “refuse [animals] feeling and intelligence”.85 Such individuals were

“guided by their prejudices” and “fear[ed] to see nature as it is”.86 Ultimately, though,

Condillac concluded that “these are children who in the darkness, are afraid of the phantoms that their imagination presents to them”.87

Although Condillac assured his readers that all of his arguments in The Traité des

Animaux were completely in keeping with morality and natural religion, and that “true philosophy [could] not be contrary to faith”, this work nevertheless proved to be an even greater source of accusations of materialism than the Traité des Sensations had been.

The Journal de Trévoux, who had defended Condillac from accusations of materialism in their review of his Traité des Sensations, also reviewed the Traité des Animaux only a few months later. Once again, the Journal supported Condillac’s orthodoxy in this new work and encouraged their readers to investigate all his other writings. Their criticisms were relatively mild, though one in particular is significant to our discussion. Why, they asked, had Condillac not “ensured [that] beast and man are different in their essence, that

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 85 Ibid., 105 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid.

112 ! ! the beast has not, in its nature, [the ability] to become man, as the Angel has not in its

[nature] to become God”?88 The editors speculated that, “the Author would perhaps answer that such is the system; that one concedes the least one can in this type [of system]; and that there is no requirement to extend reflections on animals beyond the needs of their bodies”.89 Indeed, this probably is what Condillac would have said, bound as he was by the empirical methodology he could not allow himself to speculate on the potential of animals to become more like humans, since this was clearly not something he could determine by observation alone. Evidently, however, not everyone was as comfortable with the notion of leaving this question unanswered although the Journal merely wished for the resolution of this (and other) questions in a new edition:

“[Condillac’s] reasons have merit, but it seems that a development [of them] might add a degree of strength: this is what we desire in a new Edition, which will not be long [in coming] if one judges by the weight of this Work”.90

Indeed, Condillac would reference this review to support his cause when attacked by the Abbé de Lignac. Condillac responded to Lignac’s attacks in a published letter subsequently included alongside the Traité des Animaux. Lignac claimed that he did not believe Condillac to be a materialist, and allowed that he had convincingly argued that animal sensations were not “an operation of a machine” and that, if they had sensations, animals must also have souls. But here Lignac thought Condillac’s theory broke down:

“he does not prove, that if this soul is sensible, it is [also] intelligent; he derives his evidence from the uselessness of sensation in an Existence which has no degree of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 88 Mémoires pour l'Histoire des Sciences & des beaux Arts. (Briasson & Chaubert, Paris, Décembre 1755) 89 Ibid. 90 Lignac, Suite des Lettres, 5.

113 ! ! intelligence, in order to avoid what is harmful, or pursue what is useful”.91 Lignac argued that he himself had already answered the animal soul question far more satisfactorily by proving, in true Cartesian style, that just because animals appeared to have intelligence, did not mean this was in fact the case. Furthermore, Lignac continued, Condillac utterly failed to demonstrate how these purported animals souls differed from human ones.

Finally, Lignac charged Condillac with not distinguishing carefully enough in his Traité des Sensations between physical sensations and their impressions upon the soul. He argued that Condillac was the “dupe of his [own] good intentions” and played right into the hands of materialist thinkers by ascribing physical qualities to what should be an immaterial object—the soul.

Condillac responded indignantly. He noted that the Traité des Sensations’s arguments “must be read with attention; and you, Monsieur, you must [read them] scrupulously, because your design is to make it seem [faire voir] that the principles that you combat, carry with them dangerous consequences”.92 Condillac further charged his critic of twisting his words, misquoting him entirely, and of generally making poor arguments. He rather haughtily professed himself unsurprised at Lignac’s tactics, given that Lignac’s goal seemed to be to “prove that all Philosophers are Materialists”.93

Against the charge of conflating human and animal souls, Condillac addressed Lignac directly, “I recognize a soul in beasts. This sentiment offends you, and to combat it, you say that I cannot prove that this soul essentially differs from that of man. Before I

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 91 Ibid., 6 92 Condillac, “Lettre de M. l’Abbé de Condillac à l’Auteur des Lettres à un Américain”, in the Traité des Animaux, 188. 93 Ibid., 190

114 ! ! respond to you, I will cite a passage from the Memoires de Trévoux [a.k.a. the Journal de

Trévoux]”.94 Condillac then proceeded to cite the review of the Traité des Animaux:

The Author, it is of me that they speak, says that overall the nature of beings does not matter... [but] this does not prevent ensuring that beast and man differ in their essence... We can therefore ask how these things reconcile; and here is what we think in this regard. The author intends, no doubt, that of their natures and essences he lacks perfect knowledge... [but instead uses] what is called judging a posteriori, tracing the effects back to the cause.95

Condillac praised their author of the review for his open-mindedness and his willingness to understand the empirical methodology, something he implied Lignac was unable or unwilling to do. Condillac pointedly asked Lignac, “Do you require of me, Monsieur, that I show the difference in the soul of beasts, by considering its principle? You demand the impossible from me. Do you require that I prove [it], by tracing the effects to the cause, by searching for the principle in the consequences? I have done it”.96

Finally, Condillac addressed Lignac’s accusation that, by claiming that it was impossible to know for certain if animals and humans differed essentially, Condillac had suggested that animal or human, the physical body was merely “accidental” (meaning

“nonessential”) to the nature of the soul it contained. The only difference, by this calculation, was that the soul would develop differently in humans and animals based only on the complexity of the sensations it was exposed to: the human body was capable of more complicated sensations, therefore the human soul would be more highly developed than its animal counterpart. But, in essence, Lignac charged Condillac with arguing, the souls of animals and those of humans were the same. To counter this charge,

Condillac returned to his argument from the Traité des Sensations that it was only logical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 94 Ibid., 194. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid.

115 ! ! that God would not confine “a mind capable of attaining all kinds of knowledge, of discovering its duties, of being worthy and unworthy” in a body “that would only occasion in it the faculties necessary for animal survival”.97 Essentially, Condillac argued that, when reaching beyond the limits of empirical knowledge, one could only recourse to faith in the rationality of God’s plan. “Therefore,” Condillac concluded, “since the bodies differ essentially, I am right to conclude that the souls [also] differ in their nature”.98

The Requirements of Liberty: Mechanism and the Will

In the Traité des Animaux, Condillac also took up the all-important question of the free will and mechanism. It was a problem that, as we have already seen with Hartley, any supporter of the notion that all ideas came from the senses had to address; for if, as both thinkers argued, the minds of humans (and animals) learned by reacting to pleasure and pain, then what room did that leave for freedom of choice? He had argued in the

Traité des Sensations that the soul was completely dependent on the body for its knowledge and development; it was of no account that he included the proviso that this was only the case in the postlapsarian world of Original Sin—Christian orthodoxy demanded that he prove that the will was free nonetheless. Appended to the Traité des

Sensations, therefore, Condillac included small Dissertation sur la Liberté which purported to prove the freedom of the will from seemingly mechanistic principles.

In the Dissertation, Condillac took a position on the issue of mechanism which, while certainly far more carefully worded, echoed Hartley’s position. “…It would be an absurdity,” he told his readers, “to imagine that it [the will] can be reduced to a simple

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 97 Condillac, Traité des Sensations, 171, fn5. 98 Condillac, “Lettre”, in the Traité des Animaux, 196.

116 ! ! power, in relation to two contradictory actions; it may, for example, at the same instant, desire and not desire, to walk and not to walk. The choice between these actions is the effect of its freedom; but it is necessary to desire or not desire” .99 More specifically,

Condillac continued, it is our ability to weigh our options and make rational choices about what to desire that makes us truly free: “If one does not deliberate, one does not choose: one simply follows the impression of objects. In this case, liberty no longer has a place... Deliberation, as we have seen, requires experience and knowledge. Liberty requires them as well.”.100 The greater our knowledge, the better our choices will be,

Condillac argued. Even God, he concluded somewhat surprisingly, was bound by this same system of liberty: “God himself will so use his own [liberty], that because he knows all, he always does that which is the most worthy of him”.101 While Hartley looked at the necessity of choice and concluded that the will must therefore be mechanical, Condillac examined the same dilemma and argued instead that “freedom consists therefore of choices which, supposing that we always depend at any point on the action of objects, are the result of deliberations that we made or had the power to make”.102 Condillac came to the apparently far more orthodox conclusion that it is our ability to choose between the options available to us that makes us free.

But Condillac had an additional challenge to face in the Traité des Animaux: now that he had spent an entire treatise arguing that animals possessed souls just like humans, he had to prove that the latter possessed free will while the former did not. In order to

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 99 Condillac, “Dissertation sur la Liberté”, in Oeuvres Complètes de Condillac, Book 2, (Parma: 1792): 364 . Italics mine. 100 Ibid., 356. 101 Ibid., 374 102 Ibid., 376.

117 ! ! make his argument, Condillac established first a definition of the human soul and its composite characteristics. Thought, he argued, was really a broad term which described all “modifications” of the soul and comprehended a broad variety of mental actions.

Condillac further broke down the broad category of “thought” into two main groups: understanding and will. The understanding he described as that which received ideas and then judged them. Therefore, any act of mental reflection, comparison, imagination or recall fell into the category of “understanding”. The will, by contrast, was “a movement of the soul,” and as such, entailed mental activities such as feeling emotions like love, hate, desire or fear. When establishing these definitions, Condillac was careful to remind his readers that they were abstract terms only—helpful for comprehending how the soul works, but not hard and fast divisions. He criticized those who failed to grasp this nuance: “Not suspecting that they are only abstract concepts, they take them for very real things, which exist somehow separately in the soul, and which each have a character essentially different”.103 Misunderstanding the makeup of the soul, Condillac warned, could only be “a source of vain disputes and bad reasoning”.104 He concluded by reemphasizing his sensationalist theory, reminding his readers that while it was useful to distinguish between “understanding” and “soul” for descriptive purposes, ultimately,

“these two faculties have a common home in the senses”.105

Because the purpose of the Traité des Animaux was to delineate the differences between man and beast, the attentive reader may well wonder to whom or what the foregoing definitions apply. Condillac made the somewhat surprising assertion that both

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 103 Condillac, Traité des Animaux, 175. 104 Ibid. 105 Ibid., 176.

118 ! ! humans and animals were in possession of a soul capable of understanding and will. The crucial distinction he explained in this way:

One consequence of this explanation and of the principles that we have established in this work, is that in beasts the understanding and the will comprise only those operations of their soul made a habit, and that in man these faculties extend to all the operations over which reflection presides.106

The difference, once again, appeared to be one of degree, not possession. In the human soul, further development allowed people to make greater use of the faculties of understanding and will through reflection, while animals remain chained to habit and instinct. Reflection, in Condillac’s estimation, was what enables human beings to act voluntarily—it was what made them free. His explanation of how reflection led to freedom is worth quoting at length:

From reflection are born voluntary and free actions. Beasts act like us without hesitation [répugnance], and this is already a condition for liberty; but it takes another; for I will does not only signify that a thing is agreeable to me, it signifies also that it is the object of my choice: yet one only chooses among things which are available. One does not have anything available when one only obeys its habits; one only follows the instinct given by the circumstances. The right to choose, liberty, therefore belongs to reflection: but circumstances control beasts; man on the contrary judges them, he submits to them, he refuses them, he conducts himself; he chooses, he is free.107

While this understanding of human freedom clearly harkened back to the definition of free will established in the Dissertation, Condillac expanded on this basic concept in the

Traité des Animaux. Free will, he continued, was comprised of three things: firstly, some knowledge of what we should or should not do; secondly, a “resolution of the will” which came from our own internal motives not from any kind of external power; and thirdly, the power to do what we want. Deliberation, he went on to explain, was a function of our

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 106 Ibid., 178-179. 107 Ibid., 180. Italics mine.

119 ! ! own limited and ignorant minds: “If our minds were sufficiently extensive and sufficiently keen to embrace the simplest view of things, according to the reports which

[our senses] give to us, we would not waste time deliberating. To know and to determine, would only entail a single moment”.108 Deliberation, therefore, resulted from uncertainty and lack of knowledge and was not necessary to freedom. Furthermore, it was different still from reflection, which could occur instantaneously.

Sensationalism Abroad: Condillac in Geneva

Condillac’s reputation was such that he influenced thinkers beyond the select

Parisian circle in which he moved. Charles Bonnet, a Genevan devotee of Condillac, was a Protestant thinker primarily interested natural science and metaphysics. His reading of

Condillac, combined with his own interpretation of Lockean empiricism, aligned him very closely with the conclusions reached by elder abbé. A lawyer by trade, it does not appear that Bonnet ever actually practiced his profession. Furthermore, it seems that he lived his entire life in Geneva and was never much prone to travel, but became a fellow of the Royal Society, and a foreign member of the Swedish and Danish academies of science, thus gaining an international reputation from the comfort of his Swiss château.

Bonnet considered himself primarily as a natural philosopher, and much of his earliest work resulted from extensive experiments on both plants and lower invertebrate animals, particularly worms. It was, however, these very experiments which led to Bonnet’s growing interest in metaphysics; though initially a committed Cartesian dualist, Bonnet’s observations of animal behavior led him to reject Descartes’ animal-machine hypothesis.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 108 Ibid.

120 ! !

Bonnet’s experimentation on the regenerative abilities of decapitated worms, particularly his observation that they grew a second tail in place of a new head, led him deeper into the conundrum of the animal soul. He wrote to his friend and mentor, renowned entomologist René Réamur in 1742 in confusion at this strange phenomenon:

“where does the soul reside, the self, in this portion which instead of a head has grown a rear end? It would be very strange if such a noble principle were to be found lodged in a part which is so insignificant”.109 Unable to accept Descartes’ idea of mechanical animals

(Bonnet wrote that the two-tailed worm “seemed quite abashed” at its lack of a head), and yet troubled by the question of the seat of the soul, Bonnet turned to the human soul and

Condillac. Bonnet’s earliest work on the human mind was the Essai de psychologie, published anonymously from London in 1754. Bonnet argued in this early work for the immateriality of the soul, working from a very Cartesian notion of the “Moi”—that simple, unassailable awareness of self. Though he was by no means a Lockean, Bonnet also utilized empiricist arguments to make his case, especially the common trope that nothing in the observation of matter gave one cause to think that it was capable of thought or judgment.

In 1760, Bonnet published a far more developed exploration of the soul. The

Essai Analytique sur les Facultés de l’Ame covered much of the same territory as

Condillac’s Traité des Sensations. Bonnet owned early on in the Essai that this was, in large part, by design. He admitted that he had first become aware of the Traité whilst working on his own project and was “agreeably surprised at the conformity of this Plan with my own”. Though he modestly declared that “Mr. de Condillac has anticipated me !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 109 Quoted in Virginia P. Dawson, “The Problem of the Soul in the ‘Little Machines’ of Reaumur and Charles Bonnet”, Eighteenth-Century Studies 18, no. 4 (Autumn 1985): 514

121 ! ! and... and he [is] much more capable than I to bring light to this darkness [i.e. the confusion surrounding the origin of ideas]” and continued that he greatly respected the

“good metaphysics” of the French thinker, Bonnet professed dissatisfaction with

Condillac’s methodology. “I was not slow to perceive that we differ greatly in Ideas and

Analysis,” Bonnet wrote. “In general, it seems to me that the Author does not analyze enough: he passes sometimes by faults [fauts?]. ...He often passes by very important questions without touching [on them]: he does not seem even to suspect their importance, or the influence they make have on all the progress of his Statue”.110 He wrote that

Condillac’s “diverse inexactitudes that I could call errors” inspired him to “take up the thread of my Work that I had completely abandoned. I thought that I would be better to trace back further [haut] than this Author, and in following a more analytical route than his”.111 Bonnet’s almost proprietary concern for the device of the statue-man, which he himself went on to employ in order to explore the very same questions about sensations and ideas as the Traité, is odd when one considers how unlikely it is that he developed a similar such device independent of Condillac. Apparently, the similarity of the two thinkers’ approach was enough to generate accusations of plagiarism—this time against

Bonnet. Though Bonnet maintained that he had not been aware of Condillac’s methods or his use of the statue-man until well after he had begun work on his own Essai, he did admit that his approach had been to “take... the substance of the good things that his

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 110 Charles Bonnet, Essai Analytique sue les Facultés de l’Ame, (Copenhagen: Chez Philibert, 1760): 10 111 Ibid., 11

122 ! !

Book contains, and avoid the mistakes which it appears to me have escaped him”.112 This had apparently required Bonnet to adopt a great deal of Condillac’s substance.

Despite Bonnet’s earlier indication that he would include in the context of the

Essai an analysis of Condillac’s Traité, he only directed considered Condillac’s thought in a select few places. His first point of analysis was the question of free will, which

Condillac had discussed just a few years before in his Dissertation sur la liberté, appended to the Traité des Sensations. Bonnet agreed with Condillac that free will was an essential part of the human experience, but he disagreed with Condillac’s definition and analysis of the will itself. Bonnet began with his understanding of Condillac’s definition of liberty, which he defined as “the Power to do that which one does not do, or to not do that which one does” or the ability to resist one’s desires. Bonnet disagreed with such a definition sharply, writing that “it is not the obscurity of this Definition on which I would insist; it is on its injustice. ... Liberty does not consist in non action; but in action”.113

Bonnet instead found freedom of the will in the power to act upon the inclinations of the will; it was in acting voluntarily. He further disagreed with Condillac’s emphasis on the ability to deliberate and choose as the act which made the will free. Bonnet presented

Condillac’s position thusly: “Mr. de Condillac affirms therefore... that a Being which yields to the impression of an Object without deliberation, and without the power of deliberation, is not free: that if this Being has a need, and it only knows that one particular Object to satisfy it, the act by which it satisfies this is not an act of Liberty”.114

This, Bonnet continued, was an absurd assumption, because freedom was solely the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 112 Ibid., 12 113 Ibid., 122-123 114 Ibid., 125

123 ! ! power to act voluntarily in accordance with desire. Moreover, “deliberation proves simply that the Being who deliberates, does not have enough penetration, or intelligence, to see at first glance, the true best [choice]”.115

It is easy enough to account for Bonnet’s rejection of Condillac. The latter worked from John Locke’s altered definition of the freedom of the will, and the former did not. Remember that Locke had, in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, spurned the question “is the will free?”, writing that “[I]t is as insignificant to ask whether man’s will be free,” he wrote in the Essay, “as to ask whether his sleep be swift or his virtue square: liberty being as little applicable to the will, as swiftness of motion is to sleep, or squareness to virtue”.116 Locke, furthermore, had defined freedom as the power of an individual to “to think or not to think, move or not to move, according to the preference and direction of his own mind”. 117 While Condillac embraced this altered definition to find freedom in the power to deliberate, Bonnet adhered to the more traditional argument that free will was something externally determined by circumstances.

Hartley, in the meantime, found no such freedom internally or externally because the association of ideas always predetermined the choices that individuals would make, whether or not they were free to act on them.

Bonnet and Condillac predictably differed in other places as well. Bonnet, for instance, was less sanguine about the nature of animals souls than his French counterpart because, as he wrote, “this Supposition has not been demonstrated; it rests solely on the

Principle, that similar Organs answer similar Purposes, and that similar effects proceed !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 115 Ibid., 125-126 116 John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (New York: Dover Publications Inc, 1959), 319. 117 Ibid., 315.

124 ! ! from similar Causes”.118 He further acknowledged that “one cannot explain mechanically the Operations of Brutes”. But for all this, Bonnet thought it was “at least probable” that animals did in fact possess souls. However, Bonnet further cautioned, this hypothetical animal soul was undoubtedly immaterial, just like our own, and thus capable of

“Sentiment, Will, and Action”. Bonnet was willing to entertain the notion that animals possessed an immaterial soul because, he explained, “I do not see that it is more consistent with the Healthy Philosophy to admit the alleged immateriality of our

[soul]”.119 He continued: “Those who, from an unenlightened seal for Religion, have combated the immateriality of the Soul of Beast, have not dreamt that they have in this way damaged the materiality of our own. ...They have supported the destruction of the

Soul of Beasts, as if the Dogma of the Immortality of our Soul was tied to the destruction of those of Beasts”.120

Bonnet was a fervent believer in the immateriality and immorality of the human soul, but didn’t see these two things as necessarily linked. Bonnet’s conclusion complimented those of Hartley and Condillac: where the latter two had also separated immorality and immateriality in order (especially in Hartley’s case) that the soul could very well be material and still immortal, Bonnet argued that the soul was unquestionably immaterial and, separately, also immortal: “the Immortality of our Soul does not reside uniquely in its Simplicity. God could accord Immortality to a Portion of Matter, even [a] very complex, very organized [one]”.121 However, Bonnet independently concluded that

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 118 Ibid., 464. 119 Ibid., 465 120 Ibid., 466 121 Ibid.

125 ! !

God had not done so, but rather chosen to make the soul an immaterial as well as immortal object.

The reason why Bonnet argued thusly is largely due to his interest in the question of animal souls and the ability of certain animals to “regenerate” as well as his different intellectual pedigree. Bonnet’s interest in Locke was for the most part limited to his empirical methodology, rather than the association of ideas, and he remained far more loyal to Cartesian dualism than did Condillac. Consequently, he was far more concerned than Condillac ever was with the question of the precise nature of the soul of an animal who could be cut into pieces and yet not die. Convinced as he was that animals were not automatons, Bonnet was troubled by the nature of their souls and the implications of this for the human soul. Essentially, Bonnet was a scientist and Condillac a philosopher. The minutia of experimentations on invertebrate animals were of little interest to Condillac, who came only to the question of the animal souls secondarily and via his primary concern with the human mind. Bonnet, conversely, was a naturalist at heart, and his focus lay in animal behavior; it was only when he considered the implications of this behavior for more metaphysical and theological questions that he entered into the murky waters of philosophy. Ironically, considering his Cartesian roots, Bonnet was far more of an empiricist than Condillac who, devoted as he was to Locke, was equally devoted to subjects beyond the realm of observation.

“Enlightened Zeal”

In the conclusion to his response to Lignac’s Suite des lettres à un Amériquain,

Condillac reproached Lignac for attacking philosophy, especially Lockean empiricism, in

126 ! ! the name of religion. While throughout the letter, Condillac had been by turns indignant, scornful, and outraged, by its conclusion he sounded merely disappointed:

You hurt the interests of religion [vous entrez mal dans les interets de la religion], when your zeal makes you search for odious consequences, even in the works of those who defend it [religion]: for what is the difference between you and me? The system of Locke, that is to say, at least a credible position [opinion]. Now I ask which of us is taking the wiser course? Is it you, who leaving aside [laissant subsister] the principles of this Philosopher who has not always been consistent, undertake to show that they lead to materialism? Or is it me who, as you acknowledge, is passionate about Locke, because I believe [I] render an important service to religion, in conserving the philosophy of this Englishman, in explaining the manner that the Materialists can abuse it? I commend your zeal, but enlightened zeal should not see danger where there is none.122

Simply put, Condillac reminded Lignac that they were fighting the same battle for the same reasons. But where Condillac believed that Lignac rejected out of hand any idea that appeared dangerous to an orthodox Christian understanding of the human person, he saw himself as the mediator, unwilling to throw the baby of Lockean empiricism out with the bathwater of the thinking matter controversy and his materialist reputation. The real problem with Lockean empiricism in France, however, was that it precluded ever obtaining complete certainty on the existence and nature of things by definition unobservable—like the soul. Once the Cartesian rationalist certainty of cogito ergo sum was rejected in the name of empiricism, French thinkers were left with few options for maintaining a viable dualistic approach to human nature. Every time Condillac was forced to revert to “faith” in order to maintain his orthodoxy—whether it to argue for the existence of an immaterial substance, the inferiority of animal souls, or the prelapsarian independence of the soul from the body—he contradicted his own methodology. While there is no reason to doubt that Condillac believed in all of these things, the problem was

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 122 Condillac, “Lettre”, in Traité des Animaux, 198

127 ! ! that he could not prove them via the methodology he espoused and thus, hoist with his own petard of Lockean empiricism, left himself open to charges of radicalism.

Clearly, Condillac, like Hartley was aware of and troubled by the potentially radical implications of his theory. Accusations of materialism and mechanism were widespread enough to be dangerous—even making it to the pages of the Journal de

Trévoux—and Condillac clearly took them seriously. Furthermore, working within the far more tense and polarized climate of France, he had far more materially at stake than did Hartley. While Hartley’s friends may have privately expressed their criticism of his thought, he was apparently never publicly challenged for his clearly radical beliefs during his own lifetime. Condillac, conversely, had something to fear from both sides.

Approval from Diderot and company meant the further radicalization of his theories, and accusations of plagiarizing Diderot did more than merely damage Condillac’s reputation as a scholar—they closely linked him with one of most radical figures of the French

Enlightenment. Disapproval from the more mainstream intellectuals meant loss of his social position and censure by his order. Disapproval from the official censors or condemnation by any of the parties who took it upon themselves to condemn radical works could end his publishing career. Condillac seems to have navigated this minefield rather successfully, however. Despite criticism from some quarters, he was never regarded as particularly radical. Indeed, he became one of the most prominent mainstream philosophers of eighteenth-century France, even if it does seem that both he and his supporters spent and inordinate amount of time contending that his theory did not lead to materialism. Despite their efforts, as the case of Helvétius’ condemned De

128 ! ! l’esprit made plain, Condillac’s sensationalist theory further pushed potentially materialist ideas into the mainstream.

Table 2.1: Review of Foreign Language Works in the Histoire des ouvrages des sçavans !

30! ! 25!

20! English! 15! German! 10! Dutch! Italian! 5! Number of Books Reviewed Number

0! 1687-1690! 1691-1695! 1696-1700! 1701-1705! 1706-1709! Review Years!

129 ! !

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Bonnet, Charles. Essai Analytique sue les Facultés de l’Ame. Copenhagen: Chez Philibert. 1760.

Condillac, Etienne Bonnot. “Dissertation sur la Liberté”. In Oeuvres Complètes de Condillac. Volume 2. Parma. 1792.

_____. Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, trans. and ed. by Hans Aarself. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2001.

_____. Traité des Animaux. Amsterdam: 1756.

_____. “Treatise on the Sensations”, in Philosophical Writings of Etienne Bonnot, Abbé de Condillac. Translated by Franklin Philip and H. Lane. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 1982.

_____. To Gabriel Cramer [n.d.; but tentatively dated to 1750] in Condillac: Lettres Inédites a Gabriel Cramer. Edited by Georges Le Roy. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1953.

_____. To Pierre Louis Maupertuis, Paris, 5 May 1752 in Oeuvres Philosophique de Condillac. Vol. 3. Edited by Georges Le Roy. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1947-1951.

D’Holbach, Paul-Henri Thiry. The System of Nature, Part 1. Echo Library, 2007.

Diderot, Denis. Lettre sur les Aveugles. Geneva: E. Droz, 1951.

Hartley, David. Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations. (1749) Gainesville: Scholars' Facsimile Reprints, 1966.

Helvétius, Claude-Adrien to Pierre Joseph Plesse, 28 September, 1758, in Correspondance générale d'Helvétius: 1757–1760 / Lettres 250–464, ed. David Smith, et al. (Toronto, ON, & Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 1981– 2004); vol. 2, p. 308–310 (Appendix 4).

Joly de Fleury, Joseph-Omer. “Denunciation des Livres”. 1756. Joly de Fleury, Avis en Memoires sur les Affaires Publiques, 3807-3819: 352. Bibliotèque Nationale de France.

130 ! !

Joly de Fleury, Joseph-Omer. Arrêts de la Cour de Parlement, portant condamnation de plusieurs livres & autres ouvrages imprimés: Extrait des Registres de Parlement du 23 janvier 1759. Paris: 1759.

Journal de Trévoux: Mémoires pour l'Histoire des Sciences & des Beaux-Arts, “ARTICLE XXXI. TRAITÉ DES SENSATIONS, à Mme La Comtesse de Vassé, par M. l'Abbé De Condillac, de l'Académie Royale de Berlin.” Chez Debure. 1754.

Le Journal des Sçavans, Paris: Libraire de l’Université. January 1755.

Lignac, Joseph Andrien LeLarge, Lettres à un amériquain: sur l'histoire naturelle, générale & particulière. Paris. 1756.

Locke, John. Essay Concerning Human Understanding. New York: Dover Publications. 1959.

Mémoires pour l'Histoire des Sciences & des beaux Arts. Briasson & Chaubert: Paris. March; December 1755.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Les Confessions de J.J. Rousseau, Book VII. Paris: 1813.

Voltaire, “On John Locke”, from “Lettres Philosophiques” in French and English philosophers: Descartes, Rousseau, Voltaire, Hobbes. The Harvard classics v. 34, New York : P.F. Collier. 1910.

Secondary Sources

Baker, Keith M. Reviewing Isabel F. Knight, The Geometric Spirit: The Abbé de Condillac and the French Enlightenment and Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of Enlightenment in France, in Journal of Modern History, 42, no. 3 (1970): 398-405

Becker, Carl L. The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932.

Bongie, Laurence L. “Condillac’s Correspondence: A Correction” Journal of the History of Philosophy 18, no. 1 (1980): 75-77. ______. “A New Condillac Letter and the Genesis of the Traité des Sensations” in the Journal of the History of Philosophy 16, no. 1 (1978): 83-94

Birn, Raymond, Royal Censorship of Books in Eighteenth-Century France. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2011.

131 ! !

Burson, Jeffrey D. The Rise and Fall of Theological Enlightenment: Jean-Martin de Prades and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century France, foreword by Dale Van Kley. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 2010.

Dawson, Virginia P. “The Problem of the Soul in the ‘Little Machines’ of Reaumur and Charles Bonnet”, Eighteenth-Century Studies 18, no. 4 (Autumn 1985).

Darnton, Robert. "The High Enlightenment and the Low-Life of Literature in Pre- Revolutionary France." Past & Present 51 (1971): 81-115.

Gilot, Michel and Jean Sgard, “Biographie de Condillac” in Corpus Condillac, ed. Jean Sgard. Geneva: Slatkin Editions. 1981.

Hutchinson, Ross. Locke in France: 1688-1734. British Library. 1986.

Israel, Jonathan. Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man, 1670-1752. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

_____. Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750- 1790. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

_____. Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Knight, Isabel F. The Geometric Spirit: The Abbé de Condillac and the French Enlightenment. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1968.

Kors, Alan, ed. Anticipations of the Enlightenment in England, France, and Germany. Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press. 1987.

Kors, Alan. D’Holbach’s Coterie: An Enlightenment in Paris. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1976.

O’Keefe, Cyril Blaise. Contemporary Reactions to the Enlightenment, 1728-1762. General Books LLC. 2009.

Porter, Roy. Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of Body and Soul. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2005.

Roche, Daniel. "Censorship and the Publishing Industry." In Revolution in Print: The Press in France, 1775-1800. Edited by Robert Darnton and Daniel Roche. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 1989.

Roger, Jacques. The Life Sciences in Eighteenth-Century French Thought. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1963.

132 ! !

Van Kley, Dale. Review of Atheism in France by Alan Kors. In Eighteenth-Century Studies 26, no. 1 (Autumn 1989): 138-142.

Yolton, John W. Locke and French Materialism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.

133 ! !

{Chapter 3} “THE ADOPTED SYSTEM OF FUTURE PHILOSOPHERS”: AN AFTERLIFE FOR THE OBSERVATIONS, 1755-1815

In 1801, David Hartley’s son (also named David) published a small biography of his father, intended to appear in conjunction with a new edition of the Observations on

Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations. Along with basic biographical details,

David included his own thoughts on his father’s philosophy and how, he was certain,

Hartley would want to be remembered by future thinkers. Hartley, his son recalled, “did not expect that it [the Observations] would meet with any general or immediate reception in the philosophical world, or even that it would be much read or understood; neither did it happen otherwise than he expected”.1 But, the younger Hartley continued, “he did entertain an expectation that, at some distant period, it would become the adopted system of future philosophers. That period seems now to be approaching”.2 Indeed it did. The

1801 edition of the Observations was the eighth republication of Hartley’s massive work, whether in its entirety or more commonly in an abridgement, since 1755. By 1801,

Hartley’s theories had made their way to France and Germany, and an Italian translation would be published that same year; a new French translation followed in 1802.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 David Hartley, Esq. “A Sketch of the Life and Character of Dr. Hartley,” in Notes and Additions to Dr. Hartley’s Observations on Man, (London: J. Johnson, 1801): xiii 2 Ibid.

! 134 !

But, as with all published work, Hartley in some measure lost control over his ideas once they made their way into the hands of readers. Indeed, he seemed to feel no inclination to exercise control: his son recalled that, “after the completion and publication of it [the Observations], his mind was left in perfect repose. He kept a general and vigilant attention upon the work, to receive and to consider any subsequent thoughts which might have occurred from his own reflections, or from the suggestions of others. ...But no such alterations or modifications seem to have occurred to him”.3 His death in 1757 left his mind in a still more perfect state of repose, and put a permanent end to any authorial control over he may have wanted to exercise over the interpretation of his theory of the human mind. Thereafter, every new edition carried with it the editor’s, translator’s, or some other mediating party’s interpretation of Hartley’s thought and what it all “meant”—these individuals ruthlessly abridged parts they found distasteful, added new introductions or conclusions to reshape the purpose of the work, and attacked others who had dared to do the same. Had he been alive to see it, this rather brutal and piratical approach to his ideas may perhaps have disturbed the untroubled waters of Hartley’s mind, even though he must have been pleased to see his work so widely recognized.

Hartley’s son recalled in 1801 that his father did have one specific concern regarding the legacy of the Observations: “He was apprehensive lest the doctrine of corporeal vibrations, being instrumental to sensation should be deemed unfavourable to the opinion of the immateriality of the soul. He was therefore anxious to declare, and to have it understood, that he was not a materialist”.4 Unsurprisingly, the younger Hartley had some difficulty supporting this claim from the elder Hartley’s writings alone. “He !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 Ibid., xiv 4 Ibid., xv

! 132 ! has not presumed to declare any sentiment respecting the nature of the soul,” David hedged, “but the negative one, that it cannot be material according to any idea or definition that we can form of matter”.5 What Hartley had actually said, though, was this:

“I would not therefore be any way interpreted so as to oppose the immateriality of the soul. On the contrary, I see clearly, and acknowledge, that matter and motion, however subtly divided, or reasoned upon, yield nothing more than matter and motion still. But then neither would I affirm that this consideration affords a proof of the soul’s immateriality. ...But it is most worthy of notice, that the immateriality of the soul has little or no connection with its immortality”.6 While still staunchly Christian in its orientation, Hartley’s open admission of uncertainty was very far from the anxiety-ridden denial of a material soul that his son so desperately wanted it to be.

Why was Hartley the elder relatively unconcerned about engagement with potentially materialist ideas, but Hartley the younger so anxious to deny the materialist legacy of his father’s thought? The answer, in large part, lies in the fate of Hartley’s ideas and their circulation among circles as widely disparate as the British Romantics, the founders of the American Republic, and the Italian clergy. Between 1755 and 1802, something significant changed in the European perception of the mind-soul-body conundrum which made the younger David Hartley balk at the “materialist” label increasingly being applied to the Observations.7 The most obvious events during that span of time were the American and French Revolutions, both of which were to a certain

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 5 Ibid. 6 David Hartley, Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations, 1749, (Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars' Facsimile Reprints, 1966), Part I, 512. 7 Quite apart from filial concern for his father’s legacy, David Hartley had become by this point a politician and a Member of Parliament.

! 133 ! extent perceived to have been if not caused by radical philosophy then certainly shaped and guided by it. Conservative British thinkers of all varieties, therefore, worked to distance themselves from anything with potentially revolutionary consequences.

Furthermore, during the early part of the century philosophical ideas were still very much in flux, leaving their degree of radicalism open to interpretation (so that

Hartley could reasonably claim to be a sincere Christian who embraced the possibility of a material soul), by latter part of the eighteenth century this was no longer the case. In

France, the radical “atheist” materialists like Diderot and d’Holbach had coopted

Lockean sensationalism, despite Condillac’s best efforts, and by the time the Revolution abolished all religion in France, it seemed clear to moderate and conservative onlookers that to fraternize with materialism was to encourage atheism, something that appeared to inevitably result in social and political chaos. Even the comparatively more moderate use of Locke in some of the more ideological justifications for the American Revolution must have tainted him for conservative British audiences. Of course, as we will see, later

British appropriations of Hartley contributed equally to the radicalization of his legacy.

Tracing this legacy both chronologically and geographically provides the focus for this chapter.

Before beginning this process, a word or two is in order regarding the methodology I will employ to construct the narrative of this chapter. Carl Becker wrote that “it has long been a favorite pastime of those who interest themselves in the history of culture to note the transfer of ideas (as if it were no more than a matter of borrowed

! 134 ! coins) from one writer to another”.8 Of course, Becker himself set the standard for a different type of intellectual history, one which allows that often “books ‘influence’ readers in ways not intended by the writers”.9 Following in Becker’s footsteps, along with some of the other great works of contextualized intellectual history, this chapter takes as its starting premise that Hartley’s ideas were not “coins” changing hands, but multifaceted entities which looked and felt different when transplanted to different environments. I focus on the reincarnations of Hartley’s Observations in different geographies, climates, and languages. The purpose of this chapter is to explore just how, in their afterlife, David Hartley’s ideas both transformed his legacy and made a significant contribution to the major debates about the human mind which preoccupied post-Enlightenment Europe.

Explication Physique

A mere five years after David Hartley published his momentous Observations, and in the middle of Condillac’s battle to reclaim his orthodoxy after the publication of the Traité des Sensations, the first French translation of Hartley appeared. The

Explication Physique des Sens, des Idées, et des Mouvements, tant volontaires qu’involontaires appeared in 1755, complete with its very own privilege and a dedication to none other than Condillac’s bête noire, Buffon. Appended to it was a small essay from a member of the Royal Academy of the Sciences which claimed to have determined the physiological location of the soul. Significantly, the French title made the purpose of

Hartley’s theory explicit : “The Physical Explanation of the Senses, Ideas, and voluntary

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8 Carl Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932): 72. 9 Ibid.

! 135 ! and involuntary Movements.” Rather than merely “observing” man, as he had in Britain, in France Hartley was, from the first moment, out to prove the physical origin of ideas.

Its translator, the Abbé Henri Jurain, was a professor of mathematics who appears to have published little else aside from a treatise in 1766 which strangely seemed to disown the Lockean roots of the Hartley translation, and instead argued for the value of

Cartesian rationalism as the best means of gaining knowledge about the human mind.

Perhaps influenced by the Counter-Enlightenment trends identified by Robert Palmer and

Darrin McMahon, Jurain approved only cautiously of the theory of Lockean associationism which stood at the center of Hartley’s work. Rather, he used the common tropes of the Counter-Enlightenment movement to argue for the preservation of Christian

(specifically, Catholic) orthodoxy and cautioned against overreliance on reason, in the manner of the philosophes. Jurain can thus be located on the same enlightened spectrum as Hartley and Condillac, but he was clearly far more conservatively inclined than either of the other two. Where Hartley believed in the unlimited power of reason to illuminate the divine plan for humanity, Jurain cautioned that the liberal application of reason could lead to doubt and atheism. It is with this difference in motives in mind that Jurain’s translation of Hartley must be considered.

Jurain declined to translate the entire second part of the treatise or Hartley’s defense of the mechanistic understanding of the human will. His reasoning for this, as he explained in his preface, was that the entirety of the second part was “infected with the heresy” of soul sleep and universal salvation.10 Of course, as a good Catholic, Jurain would have completely rejected both positions as heretical—this is hardly surprising. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 10 Henri Jurain, in David Hartley, Explication Physique des Sens, des Idées, et des Mouvemens, tant volontaires qu’involontaires, (Reims: Chez Delaistre-Godet, 1756): xx-xxi.

! 136 !

But, Jurain continued, he had also thought it appropriate to substitute Hartley’s conclusion “on the alleged necessity of human actions”, which Jurain said he thought he could “suppress and substitute another more useful”.11 The subject of this “more useful” conclusion penned by Jurain himself was the immateriality of the soul. Jurain claimed to demonstrate three points; the first was that animals did in fact have souls “entirely distinguished from matter”; the second that “those of men, not only have nothing in common with the nature of the body, but which are even of an order infinitely superior to those of beasts”; and the third and final argument Jurain proposed was that “the human will is exempted not only from all constraint, but all necessity, in its deliberate acts”.12

Essentially, Jurain claimed that he would resolve once and for all every single troubling aspect of the Lockean understanding of the human soul. Furthermore, the translator contended, he would accomplish all this utilizing Hartley’s own arguments. Hartley, he implied, could have easily chosen to argue for an immaterial soul, separated in nature from animal souls, and completely free to make its own choices, but for whatever reason the British author had chosen otherwise. Jurain concluded that “these precautions taken,

I think that it is easy to see that one cannot draw any dangerous conclusions from the doctrines of vibration and of association in favor of Materialism”.13

While Hartley had protested repeatedly in the Observations that it was impossible to truly understand the nature of the soul based on empirical observation, Jurain felt differently. He strongly declared in the opening lines of his appended conclusion that

“Man while on earth is not capable of any sensations without the participation of the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 11 Ibid., xii. 12 Ibid., xxi. 13 Ibid., xii-xiii.

! 137 ! body; the sensations are the only origin of all the ideas of the man. Such is the fundamental principle of the theory of M. Hartley, [a] simple principle, but at the same time very illuminating for piercing the thick veil which renders our soul impenetrable to ourselves, [and] prevents us from discovering the secret spring which animate our senses”.14 Far from the sensate origins of ideas throwing the immaterial soul into doubt,

Jurain asserted, Hartley’s theory actually provided a key capable of unlocking one of the most troubling of philosophical conundrums. “[L]et us face it sincerely,” Jurain urged his readers, “if with this help our soul can cross the barriers which until now have prevented it from [understanding] itself, then it could discover the law of this intimate union which exists between it and its body: this union is no longer an impenetrable mystery which the Pyrrhonists [skeptics] often abuse in order to deny that it [the soul] is distinguished from its body and that it can survive it”.15 Jurain proposed that this ambitious goal could be accomplished, using Hartley’s Lockean approach, with just two simple proofs: “1. That all sensitive principles are distinguished from matter; 2. That the soul of man is of an order infinitely superior to the soul of animals, and of a totally different order [espèce]”.16

Even allowing, Jurain contended, for Hartley (and Locke’s) contention that “we have no innate idea of bodies, that we can only come to knowledge with the aid of our senses, that the senses can only reach to their exterior surface” this was still no reason to give up hope of knowing if the soul was material.17 After all, we have abundant sensory experience with matter, and there was nothing in that experience to indicate that matter !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 14 Ibid., 407 15 Ibid., 408 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., 408-409

! 138 ! was capable of thought. Essentially, Jurain took Hartley’s empiricist reluctance to venture beyond what could be readily observed and stood it on its head. Empiricists did not need to observe the soul to know it could only be immaterial, rather they just needed to observe matter itself:

We approach therefore the supreme court [of observation], and see if it will decide in favor of the Materialists, that the power of sensing is a property common to all bodies, and at the same time constant, uniform, and invariable; for if it pronounces on the contrary, that this power not only is not found in the great number of bodies which compose this vast Universe, but that one generally and invariably finds in [them] all properties which excludes it [the power of sensing]; one would be forced to admit that it is not in their essence, that it does not enter into their nature.18

Conversely, Jurain continued, one could not really imagine that the mind possessed the same qualities as matter: “extension, motion, form [figurabilité], inertia, [and] impenetrability”.19 This thought experiment produced a soul that was “a shapeless mass, as incapable of all feelings as a block of marble”.20 This was a long way from Hartley’s resigned admission that “I can no-ways presume to determine whether Matter can be endued with sensation or no”. 21 It also completely side-stepped the issue of the physical origin of thoughts.

Jurain’s precautionary conclusion, it must be said, reads a lot like Condillac’s

Traité des Sensations and Traité des Animaux, both of which were published right around the time of Jurain’s translation of Hartley. Certainly, Jurain’s comparison of a material mind to a “block of marble” makes an interesting contrast to Condillac’s thought experiment of the statue-man which did precisely that. Furthermore, while Hartley’s

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 18 Ibid., 409-410 19 Ibid., 410 20 Ibid. 21 Hartley, Observations, Part I, 511-512.

! 139 !

Observations never firmly addressed the issue of animal souls, and instead only engaged in comparisons of behavior and the apparent similarities between human and animal brains, Jurain felt the need to make a more explicit case for animal inferiority. This is indeed an understandable provision, given the heated nature of the animal soul controversy in the Cartesian climate of mid-eighteenth-century France, but Jurain failed to make a compelling case for precisely the same reasons that Condillac had failed as well. “In comparing man with animal,” Jurain contended,

[O]ne finds in the one and the other a body, organic material, of sense, of the flesh, of blood, of movement, and an infinity of similar things. But all these similarities are exterior and are not sufficient for us to pronounce that the nature of man is the same as that of the animal. In order to judge the nature of one and the other, it would be necessary to know the interior qualities of the animal, as well as we are acquainted with our own; and as it is not possible that we ever have knowledge of that which passes on the interior of the animal, so we can never know of what order, of what species its sensations could be, relative to those of the man, we can only compare the results of the natural operations of one and the other.22

This clearly parallels Condillac’s contention that the difference between animals and humans was likely one of degree rather than substance and that it would be impossible to determine this for sure since “we are in powerlessness to know the nature of beings, we cannot judge them by the extent of their operations”.23 The crucial difference, though, was that whereas Condillac looked at this dearth of empirical evidence and concluded that, for all we know, animals and human beings might be incredibly similar, Jurain put the burden of proof on the materialist thinkers he combatted. “Nothing is more marked,” he asserted, “than the opposition one finds between the body and the soul. But do we find a very strong one between the soul of animals and those of man, in order to ensure that they are of a totally different species? This is something that we have no room to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 22 Jurain, in Explication Physique, 421. 23 Condillac, Traité des Animaux. (Amsterdam, 1756): 104

! 140 ! doubt, if we consider the power which resides in us to form abstract ideas of sensation, but we observe nothing similar in the most perfect of animals”.24 The conclusion, for

Jurain, was obvious: “The Soul of man is of an order infinitely superior to those of

Animals”.25

While it is interesting to contemplate these markedly similarities of expression alongside the equally strikingly contrasted conclusions, it is difficult to determine if

Jurain had read Condillac. The Traité des Animaux made its appearance earlier in 1755 than did the Explication Physique, but it is likely that it would still have been too late to have made any significant impact on Jurain’s contributions and alterations to Hartley’s ideas. Conversely, while it is also interesting to contemplate Condillac’s reaction to this translation of the Observations, if indeed he read it, he left behind no evidence of it. In a lot of ways, however, such a simple explanation for the similarities between Jurain’s

Hartley and Condillac would obscure the more intellectually satisfying explanations which a close comparison brings to light. For one thing, Jurain was evidently far less interested in the nature of the soul was Condillac. A decade later, he would write in La

Logique only that, “It is astonishing that we do not understand better the nature of the sensitive and intellectual principle by which we are animated, like those of exterior objects. We experience pleasure, and pain. Therefore we have faith in something capable of these sentiments. But we want to go further and discover what this thing is; we find it enveloped in the heaviest darkness”.26 Jurain seemed contented to assume the immateriality of the soul, where Condillac could not be.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 24 Jurain, in Explication Physique, 419 25 Ibid. 26 Jurain, La Logique ou la Art de Penser, (Paris: Ventes et Compagnie, 1766): 16

! 141 !

Furthermore, Jurain’s task as translator extended beyond mere issues of language.

Indeed, his translation of the Observations bears all the hallmarks of a rendering of

Hartley’s system into Cartesian-influenced philosophical language of mid-eighteenth century France. The similarities between Jurain’s attempt to argue for the inferiority of animal souls, his bold attempt to prove the existence of an immaterial soul from observations alone, and Condillac’s more nuanced efforts to do the same thing can, in part, be explained by the common Cartesian language which they spoke. Where Hartley was reluctant to take any steps beyond what he could observe from the behavior of humans and animals, both Jurain and Condillac were able to employ Cartesian deductive reasoning to turn these observations into more speculative arguments. While it was impossible to observe the soul, they both argued, its nature could possibly be deduced from the observation of matter: the characteristics which matter lacked, but were present in living things, must be accounted for by an immaterial soul. That Jurain was far more convinced of the strength of these deduced conclusions than was Condillac perhaps indicates a lesser commitment to Locke, and almost certainly indicates both a less subtle philosophical understanding and the heavier hand with which he manipulated these delicate questions. If nothing else, he labored under the need to please the censors, something Condillac had avoided by publishing his work abroad.

Ultimately, the purpose of Jurain’s conclusion was to employ Hartley’s principles to argue against their original author’s depiction of a mechanical mind. In this, he was very much on the same page as Condillac. Jurain argued that liberty was the ability to resist instinctual or “mechanical” responses to situations that governed animals’ behavior.

Taking the example of an wounded man who does not cry out in pain, Jurain argued that

! 142 ! this was possible because he possessed “a soul which resists the action of his machine

[mechanical nature]. The opposite happens with beasts, proving therefore that they do not have the power to resist the natural impressions that they feel”.27 Condillac would have wholeheartedly agreed with this account of human behavior—after all, for him free will came down to the ability to reflect on the best course of action, something animals were incapable of doing: “The right to choose, liberty, therefore belongs to reflection: but circumstances control beasts; man on the contrary judges them, he submits to them, he refuses them, he conducts himself; he chooses, he is free.28

But for Hartley, such an argument utterly missed the point of Lockean associationism: “[t]he will appears to be nothing but a desire or aversion sufficiently strong to produce an action. The will is therefore that desire or aversion, which is strongest for the then present time. [...] Since therefore all love and hatred, all desire and aversion, are factitious and generated by association, i.e. mechanically, it follows that the will is mechanical also”.29 Jurain instead took these same premises and applied them to animals alone. “Their soul obeys without the least resistance,” he contended, “those sensations which objects excite in them; this is because they have no abstract ideas, they are incapable of that reflection which gives to our soul the force of resisting those movements which arise involuntarily in us; simply, this is because they have no liberty to support one object more than another, and they are always determined to follow the most strong impression”.30 It is clear from this statement that Jurain did not understand

Hartley’s system quite as well as he claimed, for Jurain seemed to indicate that abstract !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 27 Jurain, in Explication Physique, 427 28 Condillac, Traité des Animaux, 180. Italics mine. 29 Hartley, Observations, Part I, 371. 30 Jurain, in Explication Physique, 427-428

! 143 ! ideas and even more complex ideas belonged in a separate category from immediate impressions.

In fact, he denied that abstract ideas could produce the same “strong impression” on the mind as immediate circumstances. In La Logique, Jurain adhered to the original

Lockean distinction between ideas gained through the senses and ideas gained by reflection, and sounded quite the Cartesian when he argued that “coming to observe in ourselves that we think, and that we are able to think, and that we can, when we want, move certain parts of our bodies” we arrive at the idea of “power” or “will” by reflection alone.31 For Hartley, though, human nature always acted in accordance with the desire or aversion which made the strongest impact on the mind, whether this be crying out in pain or remaining silent from a stronger sense of fear or courage. And of course, all those ideas came from the senses alone, reflection being only able to build on the information it got from the senses. Condillac would most likely have shied away from such a strong distinction as well: after all, he too recognized that all ideas, up to and including the very notions of God and morality, were the products of sense impressions. But the delicate distinction between the ability to reflect and choose among these impressions and the denial of their influence on human decisions was one that was utterly lost upon Jurain, who merely stated in his own work that “I pretend to determine nothing here... on the famous question of the origin of ideas, contenting myself to determine only that which is absolutely certain; namely, that our ideas of sensation are simple, and that reflection suggests to us many [ideas] which are no less [simple]”.32 This hardly seems a fitting

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 31 Jurain, La Logique, 86 32 Ibid., 87

! 144 ! statement from a man who thought highly enough of Hartley’s Observations to translate them into French within six years of their publication.

This first effort at translating Hartley for a French audience made enough of an impact that, within the first months of its publication, it had been reviewed by the same two leading journals who had previously reviewed Condillac. Moreover, the venerable

Malsherbes, directeur de la librarie, perhaps after learning of the translation during its time with the censors, acquired his own personal copy. The Jesuit Journal de Trévoux was quite impressed by Hartley’s theory when they reviewed it in March of 1756. They acknowledged both the difficulty and the fascination of the question of the origin of ideas, but cautioned that “the true key to the Enigma has not yet been found. For to resolve the question, it would be necessary to know what is the union of the body and the soul”.33

Unconvinced as they were that Hartley had managed to resolve the question once and for all, however, the reviewers were still favorably impressed by Jurain’s rendition of his theory. “The author exposes in detail,” they wrote, “the power and the influence of association on the understanding, on the will, on the memory and on the imagination. He follows the Philosophical march of the human mind. Under the direction of this systematic spirit, the theory of association becomes the most fertile and the most extensive”.34 Ultimately, though, the Journal agreed with Jurain’s edits and additions, noting at the very end of their review that, “[the] estimable Translator adds to the Book of

M. Hartley a conclusion where he proves, with great force, the spirituality and the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 33 Le Journal des Sçavans, (Paris: Libraire de l’Université, June 1756): 316. 34 Mémoires pour l'Histoire des Sciences & des beaux Arts. (Briasson & Chaubert, Paris, Mars 1756): 718

! 145 ! freedom of the soul: two Articles which are the foundation of Religion and Morality”.35

Just as they had defended Condillac’s orthodoxy by arguing that the association of ideas did not lead to materialism or mechanism the prior year, the reviewers were willing to endorse Hartley’s theory only once it had been stripped of these same inferences.

The Journal des Sçavans was far less impressed with both Hartley and Jurain when they reviewed the Explication Physique in June of 1756. Though they acknowledged that Hartley was “celebrated” in England, they seemed rather underwhelmed with his theory. They called the physical origin of ideas a “dark maze” and told their readers that it would be “very difficult” to follow Hartley down this twisty path. 36 Furthermore, while they agreed with Jurain’s decision to remove Hartley’s conclusion on “the alleged necessity of human actions” they sniped at his rationale for doing so, telling the readers that “the Translator so far from adopting similar sentiments, felt obliged to remove it and substitute another which he calls simply more useful as if that which he rejected was only useless”.37 Jurain, they felt, had been overly ambitious in his attempt to “prove that the soul of beasts, or to speak more generally, all sensitive principles are entirely distinguished from matter; that our soul not only has nothing that takes the nature of bodies, but that it is even of an order infinitely superior to that of beasts, and finally that the human will is exempt from all constraints on its deliberate acts”.38 This, the reviewers scoffed, was merely “the development of the principle of the association of ideas, which is applied to the most difficult and abstract matters”,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 35 Ibid. 36 Le Journal des Sçavans (1756), 316. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid., 364

! 146 ! significantly with no comment on how convincing this application was.39 To complete their roundabout damnation of Jurain’s efforts at legitimizing Hartley’s theory, they praised “the wisdom of the Translator and the righteousness of his intentions”.40 For the

Journal des Sçavans, it would take far more than good intentions to divorce the association of ideas from its materialist and mechanist connotations.

A comparison of this less than flattering review with Condillac’s review in the

Journal des Sçavans the previous year reveals at least one of the sources of the journal’s problems with Jurain’s translation. They had defended Condillac against all charges of materialism not because such a conclusion could not be deduced from his premises, but because “M. l’Abbé de Condillac respects Religion, [and] his arguments only ever consider the natural order, and... his Book is purely philosophical”.41 Jurain’s mistake, then, had been to attempt to apply philosophical arguments to theological issues— something we have seen that Condillac studiously avoided. Jurain, though, was merely following in Hartley’s footsteps and Hartley, as we have also seen, was nothing if not enthusiastic in his employment of philosophical principles in the cause of Christianity.

Condillac was astute enough to realize that, within the Cartesian dualist framework of mid-century French thinking about the soul, there was no way to directly confront the question of either the nature of the soul or its relation to the body without teetering into materialist territory. Hartley, writing for a British audience, labored under no such concerns. For this and other reasons, Hartley’s Observations failed to translate completely into the French context, despite the best efforts of the Abbé Jurain and the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Le Journal des sçavans, (Paris: Libraire de l’Université, January 1755): 144.

! 147 ! official privilege de roi, leaving him open to at best charges of over-ambition and at worst accusations of materialism.

“My Mind is No More in My Body than it is in the Moon”: Priestley’s Hartley in England

When the younger David Hartley wrote with concern of his father’s materialist legacy in 1801, however, he can hardly have been worried about France. After all, by this point England had long since ended its always tense love affair with French culture, especially in the wake of a revolution many perceived to be the result of radical French philosophy. Just as conservative French thinkers had comforted themselves mid-century that radical philosophy and atheism were foreign to France, imported from the radical

British, so the British charged the French with spawning a incredibly dangerous atheistic revolution at the end of the century. Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in

France, for instance, argued that the revolutionaries had been thoroughly impractical in their aims: “The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity; and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man’s nature, or to the quality of his affairs”.42 He further charged the

Enlightenment with encouraging this naïve and simplistic vision. Far better, he argued, was the British system for its founders, “[not] being illuminated with the light of which the gentlemen of France tell us they have got so abundant a share, they acted under a strong impression of the ignorance and fallibility of mankind”.43 This conservative reaction against the perceived excesses of the French Revolution helps explain in some part the change in British attitudes toward materialist philosophy. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 42 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2010): 57 43 Ibid., 228

! 148 !

When we last left David Hartley, he had died before the Observations had made much of an impact on the intellectual world. Despite Jurain’s 1756 translation, in

England little attention was paid to Hartley as a philosopher (though he was well known and respected as a physician) until about twenty years after his death. It was at this moment that the young scientist Joseph Priestley published a new, and thoroughly abridged, edition of the Observations. An enormously important figure in both Britain and America, Priestley was corresponding terms with the likes of Benjamin Franklin.

Sometimes credited with the discovery of oxygen, closely linked to the founding of the

Unitarian church, and cited by John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham as a proto-utilitarian,

Priestley was a controversial and complex figure. A dissenting clergyman and natural philosopher, in many ways Priestley’s interests closely resembled Hartley’s own; but there the similarities cease. While Hartley lived a retired existence, first in Calderdale and then in Bath, Priestley was of a much more active and political temperament. In fact, so controversial were his openly materialistic publications, along with his enthusiastic support for the French Revolution, that an angry mob in his town of Birmingham burned his home and church in 1791, sparking what are sometimes called “the Priestley Riots”.

The radical thinker was first forced to flee to London and later to leave the country altogether, eventually ending his days in Pennsylvania.

Priestley’s fascination with Hartley actually dated from much earlier than his

1775 abridgement, and indeed the younger David Hartley claimed in his memoirs that the two had struck up a correspondence in the last years of the elder’s life. There are, unfortunately, no letters to substantiate this claim—if they existed, they have long since been lost. Whatever the case, Priestley recalled that he first encountered the

! 149 !

Observations as a student in 1752 during a lecture, and that thereafter he read the work carefully for himself, later writing in his memoirs that “it immediately engaged my closest attention, and produced the greatest, and in my opinion, the most favourable effect on my general turn of thinking through life”.44 Priestley’s enthusiasm for Hartley’s theory lasted throughout his entire career and influenced not only his religious but also his political views. In his memoirs, written just a few years before his death, he mused,

“I do not know whether the consideration of Dr. Hartley’s theory, contributes more to enlighten the mind, or improve the heart; it effects both in so super-eminent a degree”.45

As is clear from Priestley’s comment above, he was attracted to the entirety of

Hartley’s system, especially the religious conclusions which made up the second part of the Observations. Far from Jurain and Sicard’s concern that Hartley’s form of

Christianity was heterodox at best and downright heretical at worst, Priestley enthusiastically adopted Hartley’s belief in soul sleep, his necessitarian understanding of the human will, and his rejection of eternal punishment. Indeed, in the last sermon he gave to his dissenting congregation in 1794 before fleeing to the United States, Priestley adopted even Hartley’s somewhat mystical predictions of the apocalypse, telling his congregation that the French and American Revolutions were indicative of the end times.

“If we can learn any thing concerning what is before us, from the language of prophecy,” he argued, “great calamities, such as the world has never yet experienced will precede that happy state of things [ i.e. Christ’s return]. And it appears to me highly probable... that the present disturbances in Europe are the beginning of those very calamitous

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 44 Joseph Priestley, Memoirs of the Rev. Dr. Joseph Priestley, to the Year 1795, (London: Janes Belcher and Son, 1810): 12 45 Ibid.

! 150 ! times”.46 In the published version of the sermon, he clarified in an appendix that he had

“originally got the leading ideas that are enlarged upon in the preceding discourse from

Dr. Hartley’s Observations on Man” and quoted at length from Hartley’s millenarian predictions. “I am indebted,” Priestly concluded, “[to the Observations] for the whole moral confirmation of my mind”.47

Joseph Priestley thus became the self-appointed publicist of the late Hartley.

Hartley’s son may well have wished that Priestley had been a bit less devoted in his cause, however, for the younger man often invoked the name of the great Dr. Hartley in support of some of his most radical opinions. In his Memoirs, Priestley recalled that he had first been inspired to publish his 1775 abridgement after elsewhere citing Hartley in support of his belief in “philosophical necessity”. Even more problematic, Priestley, by his own admission, had taken this republication as an opportunity to express “some doubt of the immateriality of the sentient principle in man”.48 He recalled that “the outcry that was made when I casually expressed on that subject can hardly be imagined. In all the newspapers, and most of the periodical publications, I was represented as an unbeliever in revelation, and no better than an Atheist”.49 Far from being intimidated or persuaded to rethink this radical statement, Priestley instead reached “the firmest persuasion that man in wholly material, and that our only prospect of immortality is from the Christian doctrine of a resurrection”.50 The radical thinker then, against the advice of his friends, published these conclusions in the Disquisitions Relating to Spirit and Matter (1777)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 46 Joseph Priestley, The present State of Europe compared with Antient Prophecies; A Sermon preached at the Gravel Pit Meeting in Hackney, February 28, 1794 (London: J. Johnson, 1794): 2 47 Priestley, Appendix to Ibid., 35# 48 Ibid. 49 Priestley, Memoirs, 58. 50 Ibid.

! 151 !

“without regard to any consequences”.51 Priestley was a man with a cause, and he assuredly did not consider it problematic that his hero, Hartley, would become irrevocably associated with his own bold formulation of Christian materialism.

The initial salvo which launched Priestley’s materialist crusade took much the same form as Locke’s casual reference to thinking matter, and indeed Priestley called on this very section of Locke for support. “It will stagger some persons,” Priestley noted in an introductory essay on Newtonian vibrations preceding Hartley’s Theory of the Human

Mind, “that so much business of thinking should be made to depend upon mere matter, as the doctrine of vibrations supposes. For, in fact, it leaves nothing to the province of any other principle, except the power of perception; so that if it were possible that matter could be endued with his property, immateriality, as far as it has been supposed to belong to man, would be excluded altogether”.52 But the good Christian was not to worry,

Priestley soothed his readers: “I do not know that this supposition need give any concern, except to those who maintain that a future life depends upon the immateriality of the soul.

It will not at all alarm those who found all their hopes of a future existence on the christian [sic] doctrine of a resurrection of the dead”.53 Furthermore, Priestley contended, there were many respectable philosophers who had been materialists, and here he cited

Locke’s thinking matter hypothesis.

Priestley did own that “Dr. Hartley however, notwithstanding his hypothesis would be much helped by it, seems to think otherwise”.54 Regrettably, Hartley had

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 51 Ibid., 59 52 Joseph Priestley, Hartley's Theory of the Human Mind, on the Principle of the Association of Ideas: With Essays Relating to the Subject of it, (London: J. Johnson, 1775): xix 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid.

! 152 ! insisted on the existence of an “intermediate elementary body between the mind and the gross body” but Priestley owned that “I see no reason why his scheme should be burdened with such an incumbrance [sic] as this”.55 In fact, Priestley was more than willing to assert that he understood Hartley’s theory better than the its original author.

Though Hartley had been too faint-hearted to fully own the materialist consequences of his theory, Priestley implied, he was not:

I am rather inclined to think that, though the subject is beyond our comprehension at present, man does not consist of two principles, so essentially different from one another as matter and spirit, which are always described as having not one common property by means of which they can affect or act upon each other; the one occupying space, and the other not only not occupying the least imaginable portion of space, but incapable of bearing relation to it.56

This being the case, Priestley sarcastically concluded, “my mind is no more in my body, than it is in the moon”.57

The younger thinker had indeed struck at the heart of the inconsistency in

Hartley’s theory, something that Hartley himself had identified when he noted in his early publication, the Conjectures that “from this theory many arguments may be drawn against the immateriality of the human soul and against even its immortality” because it had been “necessary to postulate that sensations arise in the soul from motions excited in the medullary substance”.58 But Hartley had attempted to kick the can down the road, as it were, by assuring readers that his theory was not intended to explain “what the soul is; but only assuming and supposing its existence and its connection with the bodily organs in the most simple case,” and later in the Observations that, “I can no-ways presume to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid., xx 57 Ibid. 58 David Hartley, Various Conjectures on the Perception, Motion, and Generation of Ideas [1746], trans. by R.E.A. Palmer. (Los Angeles: Augustan Reprint Society, 1959): 57

! 153 ! determine whether Matter can be endued with sensation or no. …It is sufficient for me, that there is a certain Connexion, of one Kind or other, between the Sensations of the

Soul, and the Motions excited in the medullary Substance of the Brain”.59 But by drawing attention to this tension in Hartley’s theory, in opening pages of his introduction no less, Priestley ensured that his readers would have materialism on their minds when the reached the Observations themselves.

Furthermore, Priestley’s edits had made Hartley’s necessitarian view of the will even more prominent than it had appeared in the original text. Hartley, remember, had debated extensively with John Lister concerning the propriety of publishing a theory which viewed the human will as little more than a machine, and had only done so with hesitance allowing that “some persons may perhaps think I ought not have delivered my opinions so freely and openly, concerning the necessity of human actions”.60 Priestley had no such qualms, and indeed seemed to feel that the mechanistic parts of Hartley’s theory deserved to be highlighted. With this view in mind, he salvaged several portions of the mostly discarded Part II of the Observations which related to mechanism, and even went so far as to add his own conclusion to the end of the treatise, “On the Practical

Application of the Doctrine of Necessity”.61 Tucked in among Hartley’s own conclusion and not differentiated from the original text, it would be very easy for a reader to mistake this addition as Hartley’s own work—and it seems reasonable to suppose that many of them did. While Priestley did not make any significant additions to Hartley’s theory here, he did bring to the forefront some of the consequences of it and try to clarify how, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 59 Ibid., 56; and Hartley, Observations, Part I, 511-512. 60 Hartley, Observations, Part I, Preface, iv. 61 Ronald B. Hatch, “Joseph Priestley: An Addition to Hartley’s Observations”, Journal of History of the Ideas 36 (1975): 548-550

! 154 ! precisely, the lack of free will fit into the Christian worldview. For instance, Priestley claimed that mechanism attributed all human actions ultimately to God—something entirely in keeping with a strict Calvinist understanding of God’s omnipotence as well as

Christian humility more generally. Hartley had hinted at this, both in his letters to a shocked Lister and slightly more obliquely in the Observations themselves, but Priestley stressed it in his appended conclusion.

The response to Priestley’s interpretation of Hartley came immediately. In 1776,

Joseph Berington attacked both Priestley and Hartley in Letters on Materialism and

Hartley’s Theory of the Human Mind. Berington was an interesting figure; both a Roman

Catholic priest and a reformed Lockean, he had lost his position teaching in the English

College at Douai in 1771 for his open advocacy of sensationalist philosophy against scholastic (and Cartesian) rationalism. Properly chastised, Berington abjured the views which had lost him his job and from then on devoted considerable time and energy to attacking these same views. His assault on Priestley and Hartley in 1777 was his first, but by no means his last, foray into polemical writing.62

The tone of Berington’s attack was set from the title page itself, where the author quoted Priestley’s own observation that “He who does not foolishly affect to be above the failings of humanity, will not be mortified, when it is proved that he is but a man”.63

Priestley (and by extension Hartley), Berington implied, had attempted to reason beyond

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 62 Eamon Duffy has written several articles on Berington’s role in the English Catholic reform movement of the mid-eighteenth century. For more on Berington, see Duffy, ‘Joseph Berington and the English Catholic Cisalpine movement, 1772–1803’, PhD diss., U. Cam., 1973; Duffy, ‘Ecclesiastical democracy detected [pts 1 and 2]’, Recusant History, 10 (1969–70), 193–209; 309–31; Duffy, ‘Ecclesiastical democracy detected [pt 3]’, Recusant History, 13 (1975–6), 123–48; Duffy, ‘Doctor Douglass and Mister Berington: an eighteenth-century retraction’, Downside Review, 88 (1970), 246–69. 63 Joseph Berington, Letters on materialism and Hartley's theory of the human mind, addressed to Dr. Priestley, F.R.S. (Birmingham: G. Robinson and M. Swinney, 1776): title page.

! 155 ! the reach of human knowledge in assessing the nature of the human soul. But the author of Letters on Materialism was not the sort to leave his arguments to mere subtext.

“Reverend Sir,” he addressed Priestley in the first letter, “it is you, who have lately revived the almost antiquated notions of Materialism, and it is under your auspices, that

Dr. Hartley’s Theory of the Human Mind hath appeared. ...To your warm recommendation that Theory owes its great increase in credit with the public: You are therefore answerable for the truth of its principles; you are answerable also for any bad effects it may produce on the minds of its admirers”.64 Berington had thrown down the gauntlet and, fairly or no, laid the materialistic consequences of Hartley’s theory squarely at Priestley’s door.65

That Priestley had clearly suggested materialism in its worst form, Berington had no doubt: “It may be said with regard to the doctrine of Materialism, that you have barely expressed your thoughts in a dubious manner; that you only suspected that it might possibly be, that man was nothing more than organized manner, and consequently that his future existence was to reason alone purely problematic”.66 But Berington charged that these materialist musings had been exaggerated by Priestley’s celebrity. Already well known by the time he published his abridgement of Hartley’s theory, Priestley’s works were read with great interest by a large segment of the reading public. Berington declared that this recognition gave Priestley a duty to censor his more radical thoughts:

“Celebrity itself, Sir, becomes even hurtful to the possessor, when his bare doubts, or

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 64 Berington, Letters, 1-2 65 Berington did apologize for his rather polemical tone, saying only that “metaphysical subjects, naturally too dry, demand some little animation of style, consistent with decency and good breeding” (3). How fair this justification might be, I am certain the reader by this point is qualified to determine. 66 Ibid., 4

! 156 ! casual expressions, are by weak minds erected into axioms and first-rate truths”.67

Priestley must have known, Berington alleged, the effect that his materialist sentiments would have on the minds of his readers: “You was [sic] not, I dare say, at all surprised, when you beheld the effects, that assertion produced on the minds of the public. It was a kind of electric shock [a clear reference to Priestley’s experiments], which instantly pervaded a wide and extensive mass, even those of heterogeneous dispositions”.68 Still worse, Berington alleged, was Priestley’s likely response to this reaction: “perhaps I may add with too much truth, that you smiled at the conceit of yourself being the prime conductor of so great a concussion”.69

Thus read Berington’s indictment of Priestley. But what of Hartley, the inspiration behind Priestley’s dangerous musings? Berington set about dismantling it with the zeal of one newly undeceived, informing Priestley that he was certain that he would convert him, too: “I shall soon expect to hear, when you have duly considered the dark side of Hartley’s theory (a side, from which you hitherto seem to have turned your eyes) of some signal action from you; such as religiously committing to the flames the darling system”.70 Despite his mocking tone and his inability to resist poking fun at

Priestley’s zealous promotion of Hartley, Berington was nevertheless deadly serious about what he believed was the “dark side” of the Observations. In particular, he seemed most concerned about the mechanistic consequences of Hartley’s system, which he called both “evil” and “absurd”.71 Echoing Hartley’s skeptical friend Lister, Berington

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 67 Ibid., 68 Ibid., 5 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid., 140 71 Ibid., 11

! 157 ! observed that it must be a very strange person who would eagerly deprive humanity of its free will, given the immorality that would inevitably result. “This however,” he told

Priestley, “you and Dr. Hartley are striving to effect; and, what may to many appear still more extraordinary, you take glory to yourselves for the attempt, and loudly proclaim yourselves the very best friends to virtue and religion”.72

While Berington admitted the attractions of Hartley’s system, he also admitted that mechanism was the inevitable result of this system. But rather than concluding, with

Hartley and Priestley, that mechanism could be reconciled to Christian belief, Berington instead threw the associationist baby out with the mechanistic bathwater. “I knew falsehood could never originate from truth,” he declared, “and I knew that man was free”.73 Berington described his onetime adherence and ultimate abjuration of Hartley thusly:

I could never prevail upon myself to anathemize principles, so justly analogous, in many respects, to the phæenomena [sic] of the human mind. ...If then I should be able to preserve Dr. Hartley’s principles, as far as may be requisite, and withal maintain the grand prerogative of man, liberty, I shall be more than amply rewarded for the many hours of close application I have given to the subject. But rather than resign my freedom, I am ready to immolate at her shrine the most dear and fascinating schemes of a Hartley... or even a Dr. Priestley. 74

The priest concluded his confession on a sarcastic note. “You will laugh, I know, at my wild enthusiasm,” he flippantly told Priestley, “but why should you, if it be the necessary result of the associated system of my brain?”.75

Berington made the most of his position as a sort of recovering addict of Hartley’s system. He conceded the appeal of Hartley’s interpretation of Locke, but attempted to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 72 Ibid., 163 73 Ibid., 12 74 Ibid., 14-15 75 Ibid., 15

! 158 ! impress that its dangers outweighed any potential knowledge which could be gained by it.

“I allow you that, speculations on such subjects, as Dr. Hartley hath treated, tend greatly to enlarge the mind, by filling it with ideas, so noble, and so far elevated above the level of common life and manners,” he would begin. “Yet”—there was always a ‘yet’—“in such pursuits great moderation is requisite, lest the mind too freely rove, and idly indulge itself in the airy wilds of fancy”.76 Regarding materialism specifically, Berington once again acknowledged that it was, indeed, the logical outcome of Hartley’s system: “If you really then think that, every process, termed mental, in man, is in fact nothing more than so many distinct nervous vibrations, then I readily grant that matter may think”.77 Such a conclusion, Berington readily admitted, was only logical: “for undoubtedly, every stretched cord, when touched, will vibrate”.78 But here, once again, the dangers of such a view immediately presented themselves to the priest: “I will farther grant, that a fiddle, in that sense may likewise be stiled [sic] a thinking substance. But if this be the case, it is idle to make such a fuss about it, and so seriously to require the Deity should interfere with the construction of such a machine. ...In all this, certainly, there is nothing very wonderful, nor any necessity of suspecting matter to be gifted with extraordinary properties”.79 As logically appealing as Hartley’s system was, Berington demonstrated, it was impossible to be both a good Christian and a materialist, something he himself had learned the hard way. “Dr. Hartley, I am confident,” he concluded, “hath carried it [the principle of association] much too far. This hath been no uncommon manæuvre with all fabricators of systems and airy theorists. Impatient that any effect should rise above their !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 76 Ibid., 14 77 Ibid., 27 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid., 27-28

! 159 ! comprehension, such philosophers are determined to force every element of nature, how stubborn soever, to conform to their favourite scheme”.80

Berington, though, was no mere polemicist. He did not merely make light of

Hartley’s system with clever remarks but also displayed a deep understanding of all the philosophical issues associated with it. Quite apart from taking issue with Hartley as a

Christian, he also took great offense to Hartley as a philosopher. By pointing to weaknesses in Hartley and Priestley’s understanding of the mind, Berington engaged with the very same enlightened source material—Newton and Locke, among others—that had originally inspired Hartley. Furthermore, he took it upon himself to provide his readers with his own summary of Hartley’s Observations, contending that neither their original author nor their reviver had explained them in an accessible manner. He even went so far as to accuse Hartley of intentionally making the Observations long and abstruse with

“a design... of puzzling his readers”.81 In particular, Berington drew attention to

Hartley’s conception of the soul (whether material or immaterial): “Hence it follows that, as every idea is the immediate effect of vibratory motions, the soul, in all her supposed operations, must be ever passive and inert. She may be compared to a mirror, on whose face are described a thousand different objects, just as they pass before it”.82

In Berington’s estimation, Hartley had deceived himself into believing that his system allowed for an active soul which possessed various properties, when Berington saw clearly what the other could not: that the only real power left to the soul in such a

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 80 Ibid.,, 161 81 Ibid., 230 82 Ibid., 108

! 160 ! structure was perception, which was utterly passive. Priestley, he concluded, had actually been more consistent to openly declare mechanistic materialism:

You are disposed to differ from your master in thinking that, the sum total of mental affections may be resolved into mere mechanical vibrations. This notion I have proved to be absurd and impracticable; otherwise indeed, it might have associated very well with your Doctor’s system. For where all is cause and effect according to the heavy laws of matter, it seems superfluous to require the presence of an immaterial substance, could matter alone perform the whole work.

Hartley, in Berington’s judgment, had been not a little disingenuous in his decision to maintain the fiction of a soul in his system:

Sensible of this difficulty, he [Hartley] chose to form his man of soul and body; but that the spiritual part might have no pretext to glory in its superiority, he invidiously despoiled it of all its high endowments, and bad [sic] it servilely submit to the mandates of the body. ...Little solicitous for the company of such a stupid partner, you, Sir, positively decline all connexion with Soul and humbly submit to rank with solitary matter.

Berington’s backhanded compliment of Priestley drove home what he believed to be the irrationality of Hartley’s system: left with such a soul, who wouldn’t choose materialism?

By coming to the conclusion that it was not, in fact, possible to be a Christian and a materialist, Berington was only doing what would have been expected of an orthodox

Christian (Catholic or otherwise) in late-century Britain. By going to the mat with materialism, however, and displaying an insider’s knowledge of it to boot, Berington’s

Letters on Materialism demonstrate just how far the radical notion of materialism had penetrated into mainstream and even conservative consciousness. When combatting the material soul, Berington did not resort to revelation, but instead relied on reason alone.

Berington not only assumed that his readers would be attracted to an extended rebuttal of materialism, but also chastised Priestley for raising its profile in popular consciousness

! 161 ! by resurrecting Hartley’s Observations. He realized that it was no longer possible to simply raise the bugbear of atheism to frighten readers away from so-called Christian materialism; instead he was forced to mount an extended and in-depth attack in order to convince his readers that Hartley’s theory was dangerous.

It is not only Berington’s attack which illustrates the growing public fascination with Hartley’s Christian materialism, however. The reaction which both he and Priestley referenced immediately following the publication of Hartley’s Theory of the Human

Mind was very real, and in itself an indication of the attraction of materialism. In January of 1776, the London Review of English and Foreign Literature published a review of

Priestley’s abridgement. Berington charged that this article had given a “warm sanction” to Priestley’s materialist interpretation of Hartley.83 But while the authors endorsed the

“merit” of Hartley’s work, and commended Priestley for rendering it more intelligible for a general audience, they had very little to say about materialism specifically. Perhaps

Berington referred to a later edition of the Review, however, in which the reviewers devoted more time to Priestley’s introductory essays specifically. Certainly, The Monthly

Review had nothing very kind to say about Priestley’s materialist interpretation of Hartley in a review that veritably dripped with sarcasm:

Though Dr. Hartley’s Observations on Man are, in his opinion, to be ranked among the greatest efforts of human genius, and without exception, the most valuable production of the mind of man; yet, in this point, Dr. Priestley has seen farther than even that wonderful man. For, according to Dr. Hartley, there is, in the human composition, not only a gross body, and a mind distinct from it, but an intermediate elementary body between the two. But Dr. Priestley, perceiving that the elementary body and the mind are only an incumbrance to the system, has thrown them both out.84 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 83 Ibid., 6-7 84 The Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal 53 (London: R. Griffiths, July 1775-January 1776): 383

! 162 !

The reviewers were similarly skeptical of Priestley’s mortalism, which they would have been hard pressed to say he did not get from Hartley, since Hartley was blatant about this point.

Nor did the controversy raised by Priestley’s resurrection of Hartley die away quickly. Three years later, in 1778, an anonymous author published a new refutation of

Priestley’s interpretation of Hartley which took a somewhat different tone from

Berington’s strident attack. The author of An Essay on the Immateriality and Immortality of the Soul and its Instinctive Sense of Good and Evil quickly professed his lack of interest in metaphysical inquiries of all varieties, since he found them “neither instructive, nor entertaining”. He had only taken interest in Hartley, he claimed, because he had seen an advertisement which claimed that Priestley had used Hartley’s theory to “deny the immortality of the soul”. 85 Whether the author misremembered the advert, or it had misrepresented the original text is unclear: but not even Berington had alleged that

Hartley’s Theory had denied the soul’s immortality. And even when he discovered that both Priestley and Hartley did in fact clearly espouse the immortality of the soul, the author of the Essay was by no means willing to give up this rhetorical point.

The author of the Essay sought to make the by now traditional case for the dangers of materialism: he focused on how it would incite immoral behavior among people by apparently lessening the threat of post-mortem punishment for sins. He claimed that immateriality and immortality were inseparable, and in order to prove this he resorted to something that neither Priestley nor Berington (though ordained clergy both)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 85Anonymous, An Essay on the Immateriality and Immortality of the Soul and its Instinctive Sense of Good and Evil (London: J. Dodsley, 1778): 3-4

! 163 ! had thought fit to reference: Scripture. “There is a rule which should be invariably adhered to, in the understanding of the scripture,” the author instructed his readers, “we should never presume to stray from the express, obvious, literal meaning...or absolutely contradictory to, and inconsistent with, that reason which he has given us to be our guide”.86 And since, he continued, the scriptures “always make an evident distinction between our souls... and our bodies—and this must have been intended, to inculcate the idea of our not being ‘of an uniform composition’—but consisting of two principles”, materialism was clearly incompatible with revelation and therefore false.87 After engaging in an extensive exegetical treatment of references to the soul in the Old and

New Testaments, the author considered his point proven: “We have seen how absurd, ridiculous, and impossible it is for man to expect any future retribution, consistent with justice, and our belief in scripture, provided it be granted that we are now uniformly and entirely material”.88 And “what can we say,” the author concluded, “but that what he

[Priestley] terms, philosophy, prevented his attending properly to what so nearly concerns religion—virtue and the happiness of mankind!”.89 Clearly, whoever he was, the author of the Essay had shown himself to be of a far more conservative stripe than Priestley or

Berington. But he did not, at this point at least, address the fact that Hartley himself had in fact made extensive use of scripture to support his heterodox portrayal of the soul.

The Essay also served to ridicule the supposedly unavoidable consequences of

Priestley’s materialist claims: “Now—if this [materialism] be the case, a man must lose part of his thinking principle, on losing his leg—but if he should happen to lose both his !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 86 Ibid., 39 87 Ibid., 41-42 88 Ibid., 63 89 Ibid., 62

! 164 ! legs—and, perhaps, an arm besides—or both—he ought to lose half, if not more than half of thinking principle. ...In this case people should be cautious how they paired their nails or cut their hair—lest they lost, with their hair and nails, part of their reason!” 90

Clearly, the author concluded, “the idea is too ridiculous to be credited out of bedlam!”.91

Heavy-handed italics and overwrought declarations aside, the Essay’s author raised an important point of concern about a material soul: if matter were prone to decay, then might not the soul be also? And a decayed material soul might no longer retain identity or consciousness in the same way that an immaterial one might. The consequences of such an admission, while they may not have troubled Priestley’s sanguine reliance on the power of God to raise material souls as easily as immaterial ones, would prove a very real sticking point.

Once again, though, the author separated his criticisms of Priestley from those of

Hartley. Though hardly endorsing Hartley’s theory, he nonetheless noted that “the many excellent sentiments which are found in Dr. Hartley’s books, in some degree counterballance [sic] the evil tendency of his doctrine of necessity”.92 The author even allowed that, had Priestley let poor Hartley alone, he too might have silently passed over

“those parts which deserve censure”. But Priestley had wickedly determined to highlight the worst parts of the Observations, and now the author of the Essay had no choice but to address them as well: “I therefore think it my duty to do my utmost in order to confute those arguments, which I deem dangerous—and expose those absurdities and inconsistencies, which, when exposed, must lead reasonable men to reject his [Hartley’s]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 90 Ibid., 68 91 Ibid., 71 92 Ibid., 192

! 165 ! doctrine of necessity, and consequently, Dr. Priestley’s of [by] association”.93 Ultimately, though, the anonymous author laid all blame at Priestley’s door: “Dr. Priestley, therefore, by having republished Dr. Hartley’s arguments in favour of necessity... has made those arguments his own,—and he may be justly censured in proportion as Dr. Hartley’s arguments are found liable to lead men into dangerous errors”.94

Essentially, the Essay’s criticism of Hartley’s theory of the mechanical will was based on a claim of its inconsistency—while Hartley claimed that he was a necessitarian, based on his own principles he could not be. Hartley “allows that we possess that

‘voluntary power over our affections and actions, by which we deliberate, suspend, and chuse,’—and I should be very glad to know, how such a power, is, or can be, consistent with that “necessity of human actions” in which he professes to have faith?”.95 Hartley, in this interpretation, had only mistakenly believed himself to be a necessitarian and had he thought it through would have realized this. But what the author of the Essay could not know was that Hartley had considered this appellation at length in his many private conversations with John Lister on that very subject. Whatever later interpreters may have thought of the logic of Hartley’s conclusions, he himself had not come to them lightly.

Fortunately for Joseph Priestley, he was not one to shy away from a good fight, and he defended his interpretation of Hartley with vigor for many years after the initial publication of Hartley’s Theory of the Human Mind. In his Disquisitions relating to

Matter and Spirit (1777) he owned that, prior to his reading of Hartley and even for sometime afterward, he had resisted materialism and mechanism. “Like the generality of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 93 Ibid., 193. 94 Ibid., 202 95 Ibid., 198

! 166 ! christians [sic] of the present age,” Priestley declared in the preface, “I had always taken it for granted, that man had a soul distinct from his body. ...And I believed this soul to be a substance so intirely distinct from matter, as to have no property in common with it”.96

He professed himself disappointed in the general outcry that had followed his tentative suggestion of materialism in Hartley’s Theory, especially as it was “echoed from quarters where more candour and better discernment might have been expected”.97 The

Disquisitions functioned as Priestley’s formal declaration as a Christian materialist thinker. In it, Priestley ventured back to Locke himself to revise his original theory of associationism in a materialist direction: “It is still more unaccountable in Mr. Locke, to suppose, as he did... that for any thing we know to the contrary, the faculty of thinking may be a property of the body, and yet to think it more probably that this faculty inhered in a different substance, viz. an immaterial soul”.98 Though he always cited Hartley as one of the greatest influences on his philosophical and religious thought, Priestley was no longer merely an interpreter of Hartley but a metaphysician in his own right.

It must be said, however, that Hartley himself likely would have balked at his most ardent defender’s portrayal of him, even while rejecting his attackers’ portrait of a variously confused and possibly malicious philosopher who had, willingly or no, led men into dangerous misapprehensions of the human soul. Hartley was unwilling to declare himself the materialist Priestley wished him to be, but he was equally unable to deny the necessitarian consequences which he understood to clearly result from Lockean associationism. But it did not much matter what Hartley would have thought. Priestley’s

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 96 Priestley, Disquisitions, xi 97 Ibid., xiv 98 Ibid., 31

! 167 ! interpretation of Hartley would become, for better or worse, the vehicle by which the elder philosopher would finally gain the recognition that he had presaged and desired during his lifetime—many later interpretations of Hartley would take Priestley’s reading, rather than the original text, as their starting point.

“A Confession that not even my Charitable Jesuit Confessor has Heard”: Lockean Empiricism, Newtonian Natural Theology, and Materialism in Italy

Perhaps the most unusual place that Hartley’s thought penetrated was Venice.

Though recent scholarly work by John Robertson in particular has drawn attention to the flowering of Enlightenment in Naples and, to a lesser extent, Rome, it would appear that

Venice has more or less been abandoned to its slow decline until its resurrection in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, it is here that Hartley’s Osservazioni Sopra l’Uomo, sua struttura, suoi doveri, e sue speranze made their unexpected appearance in 1801, translated by one Pietro Antoniutti. Antoniutti had apparently made it his business to translate English language philosophy, having already translated portions of Benjamin

Franklin’s political writings in 1783, and later doing the same for Scottish thinker David

Hume’s History of England in 1816. To understand his motivations for doing so, and particularly for translating Hartley, it is necessary to begin with a brief investigation of the Enlightenment in Italy, particularly its relationship to Lockean empiricism.

Overall, the Italian Enlightenment happened in the long shadow cast by both

Galileo and his conviction of heresy. The Galilean vision of a mechanical universe continued to exert great power over Italian thinkers, even as the Church’s condemnation of heliocentrism made it difficult to acknowledge this influence directly. More immediately, it was also heavily influenced by British thought, especially Newtonianism.

! 168 !

Spurred at least in part by a desire to see the Galilean system rehabilitated, Neapolitan thinker and prelate Celestino Galiani presided over the translation of many of Newton’s primary works into Italian. The ensuing debate about the possibility of rendering

Newton’s system orthodox to Italian Catholic minds is well-chronicled by Vincenzo

Ferrone in his Scienza, natura, religione: Mondo newtoniano e cultura italiana nel primo settecento. Ferrone argues that far from accomplishing its intended goal, Newtonianism instead proved a troubling addition to the Italian Catholic Enlightenment, especially when considered in combination with Locke, whose Essay also made its way to Italy in the early eighteenth century. Church opposition to Newtonian-Lockean synthesis stemmed primarily from its espousal of natural theology, or the idea that some basic elements of religion could be derived from reason alone, without the influence of revelation.99

If, therefore, it is indeed possible to speak of a “Venetian Enlightenment”, according to Ferrone it must be distinguished from its Neapolitan and Roman counterparts. While intellectual circles in Naples and Rome—led by the Newtonian

Bishop Galiani—were primarily concerned with the potentially heretical implications of

Newton and Locke, in the Veneto the story was much different. Venice and its hinterland had always envisioned itself as a more liberal counterpart to Rome, and as much as possible held itself aloof from papal influence. Ferrone argues that Venetian Catholicism rejected many of the Counter-Reformation attitudes adopted by the Council of Trent, and

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 99 This, of course, should sound familiar—Condillac and especially Hartley employed elements of natural theology in their analyses of how human beings gain knowledge of God through lived experience. For more on this debate, see Vincenzo Ferrone, Scienza, natura, religione: Mondo newtoniano e cultura italiana nel primo settecento (Naples: Jovene, 1982), or the English translation of the same work, The Intellectual Roots of the Italian Enlightenment: Newtonian Science, Religion, and Politics in the Early Eighteenth Century (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1995)

! 169 ! instead encouraged free debate of controversial subjects.100 This is not to suggest that there was a free press in Venice—there was not. The republic carefully watched over internal political dialogue to prevent the dissemination of radical ideas.101 Despite this,

Venice remained one of the most important publishing centers in Europe, and Venetian academies experienced significant freedom of thought as they were mostly sponsored by powerful Venetian noble families. Similarly, Paduan academic tradition had built strong international ties and was characterized by free intellectual debate.102

While Roman and Neapolitan intellectual circles were busily adopting Newtonian and Lockean empiricism, in the Veneto Cartesianism gained sway, primarily through the influential Giornale de’ Letterati, which first appeared in Venice in 1710. According to

Ferrone, “The two axes of the journal’s epistemological framework were Galileo’s experimental philosophy, seen as the authentic interpretation of Italian philosophical traditions, and Descartes’ method, understood as the rigorous application of methodical doubt”.103 The Giornale further embraced mechanism as a means to avoid consideration of ultimate causes. Already, the strikingly different manner in which the Venetians approached Cartesian rationalism as opposed to their Parisian counterparts is apparent. In

France, Cartesianism found favor with conservative thinkers because it preserved the soul as a spiritual object. In Venice, Cartesian dualism was used to sharply divide religion from philosophical and scientific investigations by thinkers seeking greater intellectual freedom. Where in France, Lockean and Newtonian empiricism seemed to threaten

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 100 Ferrone, Intellectual Roots, 88 101 For more on Venetian censorship, see Marino Berengo, La Societá Veneta alla fine del Settecento, (Firenze: Sansoni, 1956): 134-161 102 Ferrone, Intellectual Roots, 89 103 Ibid., 92

! 170 ! materialism and atheism, in Italy it was employed to bolster the Catholic establishment through the physico-theology of the Boyle Lectures. Certainly due in part to the precedent of Church censorship and intervention in scientific matters set by the Galileo

Affair, this dramatically different perception of the impact of British empirical thought on

Christianity would play a major role in the Italian understanding of Hartley nearly a century later.

On these bases, from its very inception the Venetian Giornale devoted considerable space to attacking Newton’s Principia, which, though copies had been circulating since the late seventeenth century, was not well publicized until Galiani undertook his own analysis in 1708. According to Ferrone, Newtonianism was viewed skeptically by the thinkers of the Veneto long after the rest of Europe had lauded his work—while the validity of his results could not be disputed, his methodology remained in dispute. 104 Specifically, Venetian scientists questioned the entire physico-theology which Newton, Locke and their successors had built, best emphasized in the Boyle

Lectures. Ferrone demonstrates that Venetian intellectuals like Antonio Conti were far more interested in a methodology completely divorced from religious concerns and consideration of final causes (i.e. the role of God).105 Modenese biblical scholar and founder of the Giornale de’ Litteratti, Ludvico Antonio Muratori, summarized this attitude best. Muratori noted in his Latin treatise urging a moderate approach to religious questions in philosophy that “true religion must not depend on man’s intellect” and later that “the most famous and sharp philosopher Descartes established above all: God and

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 104 Ibid. 105 Ibid., 98

! 171 !

His works cannot be measured by a human yardstick”.106 Far better to avoid applying reason to religious questions altogether, Muratori concluded.

So much for the mainstream response to Newtonian and Lockean empiricism in the Veneto, but what about radical responses? Clearly, the Venetian desire to rend religion and science facilitated those who wished to simply do away with the former.

Radically inclined thinkers like physician and naturalist Antonio Vallisneri and mathematician Jacopo Riccati rejected the role of Providence in their accounts of the universe, and went even further in their investigations of the nature of the soul. Ferrone shows that Vallisneri, while putting on a more or less orthodox show for the Inquisition, actually espoused a material and mortal understanding of the soul, drawn not from Locke but rather from ancient sources. His logic for doing so is strikingly similar to that of

Hartley and Condillac, and is therefore worth quoting at length. Writing to Antonio

Conti in 1727 that “I have a confession that not even my charitable Jesuit confessor has heard,” Vallisneri admitted that he found the soul’s immateriality to be logically inconsistent with the rest of creation:

God did not want to leave gaps in all things created, but He passed... from one species to another imperceptibly... with an ever admirable unity of forms. If it happened thus, farewell to Descartes’ machines...! All organic bodies that have sense, that are born, that grow, that develop, and that give birth to like creatures, have a soul, as we do. ...Therefore if we consider this chain and the progression of souls... it seems that a legitimate consequence is that all souls are of the same nature. ...[Otherwise] there would be a great somersault from the material soul of brutes to the immaterial one of man, which would be the same as the leap from a watch to a living thing.107

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 106 Both quoted in Ferrone, Intellectual Roots, 103; 313, en. 18. 107 Quoted in Ibid., 110-111

! 172 !

In rejecting the Cartesian hypothesis of the animal-machine, Vallisneri arrived at the same, dangerous conclusion as Hartley and Condillac would several decades later: the difference between human and animal souls could only be one of degree, not nature.

Riccati would reach similar conclusions, though he did so through an adoption of

Newtonian and Lockean empiricism and a reinterpretation of their significance in the

Italian context. In his almost pantheistic approach to the universe, justified by the

Newtonian concept of infinite space which seemed to suggest its unity with an infinite

God, Riccati arrived at his own parallel conception of Locke’s thinking matter: though he affirmed the existence of a spiritual soul, Riccati envisioned it as the inherent aspect of matter which gave it life. Materialism of the Lockean sort also made its way more directly into the Italian intellectual climate, in the form of the Leibniz-Clarke debate.

Leibniz, remember, had charged that “many people in England will have human souls to be material; others make God himself a corporeal being” and that, “Mr. Locke and his followers are uncertain at least whether the soul is not material and naturally perishable”.108 A French translation of the debate appeared from Amsterdam in 1720, and made such a splash in Italy that the Inquisition added it the Index of Prohibited

Books. Ultimately, however, Ferrone concludes that materialism could never become a widely adopted system in Italy, neither in the Veneto nor in Naples and Rome, because it remained “lazily immobile and trapped in the framework of a Catholic hegemony closed

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 108!Leibniz, G.W., “First Paper” in “Exchange of Papers Between Leibniz and Clarke”, ed. Jonathan Bennett, 2010.

! 173 ! to discussion”.109 Whether this harsh evaluation of early-eighteenth century Italian thought is deserved, it is not within the scope of this current project to say.

The Ethereal Body: Hartley in Italy

Antoniutti, translator of the Osservazioni, made one thing clear from the start:

Joseph Priestley did not understand David Hartley. “Although the observations of Dr.

Hartley could be placed among the major works of human genius,” Antoniutti indignantly remarked in his preface, “nevertheless Dr. Priestly did not attempt to illustrate, but rather to surpass this admirable man”.110 Hartley was very clear, the translator continued, that “in the composition of the human being there is not only a gross body, and a intellect distinct from it, [but] that an intermediate body [exists] between the two”.111 But his greatest admirer had failed to understand the very essence of his system:

“Priestley did not understand the doctrine that he wished to elucidate; for where Hartley only established a necessary and unique connection, Priestley wants to have an absolute identity; nor will anyone judge the merits of the Work of Hartley in the rude mutilation presented to the Public by Dr. Priestley”.112 Much of this assessment of Priestley appears to be taken, word for word in some cases, from the Monthly Review article cited above.

But where the authors of the Review scorned Newtonian vibrations as the most ridiculous part of Hartley’s (and therefore Priestley’s) theory, Antoniutti differed sharply.113

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 109 Ferrone, Intellectual Roots, 120. 110 Pietro Antoniutti, “Preface,” in David Hartley, Osservazioni Sopra l’Uomo, sua struttura, suoi doveri, e sue speranze (Venice: Santini, 1801): X 111 Ibid. 112 Ibid. 113 The Monthly Review sniped that “If there can be any odds, Priestley’s notion of the materiality of the soul makes the absurdity [of Hartley’s vibrations] still greater, or at least more glaring” [53: 383]

! 174 !

Antoniutti argued that Priestley had rendered Hartley’s system incoherent by not emphasizing Newtonian vibrations, which he envisioned as the bulwark between Lockean associationism and the material soul. He quoted Hartley’s brief discussion of how his theory of the relationship between the soul and body related to those of Descartes,

Leibniz and others:

The Reader...will perhaps derive some pleasure from comparing my hypothesis to that of Descartes, and Leibniz concerning animal motion, and the connection between the soul and the body. My Plan is very close to theirs, nor does it seem improbable to me that Descartes would have had success in the execution of his, as proposed in the principle of his treaty on man, had he been provided with a sufficient number of facts on Anatomy, Physiology, Pathology, and Philosophy in general. Both the pre-established harmony of Leibniz, as the system of occasional causes of Malebranche are free from that great difficulty of support, conforms to the scholastic system, that the soul (an immaterial substance) exercises on the body (a material substance), and receives a real physical influence from it; and the Reader may observe, that the hypothesis proposed, elucidates greatly this difficulty.114

Essentially, Antoniutti claimed that Hartley’s intention had been to utilize Newtonian vibrations not to introduce a physical explanation for thought, but to solve the old

Cartesian dilemma of how an immaterial soul communicated with a material body.

When Priestley had eliminated these portions of Hartley, and instead inserted his own account of vibrations in the introduction, he had misinterpreted Hartley’s system so dangerously that materialism was the inevitable result.

In order to make his case for an orthodox Hartley against Priestley’s radical one,

Antoniutti relied heavily on Newtonian ether, which, remember, was that “most subtle spirit which pervades and lies hidden in all gross bodies” which is “neither like the liquor, vapor or gas of spirit of wine; but of an aethereal nature, subtle enough to pervade the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 114 Hartley, Observations, Part I, 114

! 175 ! animal juices, as freely as the electric, or perhaps magnetic, effluvia do glass”. 115 This,

Antoniutti argued, was the substance Hartley had envisioned when he proposed the existence of “an intermediate body” between soul and physical form. Priestley, however, omitted all reference to this ethereal substance, and instead argued in his introductory essay that “there will be no great difficulty in conceiving that, in a substance not fluid, like the air, but solid, though soft, like the brain, a vibration affecting any part of it will leave that part disposed to vibrate in that particular manner rather than in any other”.116

Associations could only be formed, in Priestley’s estimation, if they made an impression on a substance capable of retaining this imprint—i.e. on a material substance. The doctrine of vibrations, according to Priestley, was inevitably a materialist one in which

“the business of thinking [is] made to depend upon mere matter”.117

Antoniutti, however, was working with the better part of a century’s interpretation of Newtonian physics and physico-theology and would not abandon ether and the

“intermediate body” so easily. After reviewing Newton’s definition of ether, Antoniutti cited a letter by Newton to Robert Boyle in 1679 to argue that Newton had envisioned it as containing attractive/repulsive properties capable of producing motion. Such a substance, he continued, was necessary to explain a wide variety of motions, including those of the nervous system and the human mind: “The doctrine of Association becomes applicable to resolve the phenomenon of memory, intellect, will, passion, and power of particular motion, for those who want to reduce these phenomena to the intellect”.118

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 115 Quoted in Wes Wallace, "The vibrating nerve impulse in Newton, Willis, and Gassendi: First steps in a mechanical theory of communication." Brain and Cognition 51 (2003): 69, 73. 116 Priestley, Hartley’s Theory, xv 117 Ibid., xix 118 Antoniutti, Osservazioni, 7

! 176 !

Without ether, dualism would falter for the same reasons it had a century earlier: no one could account for how a material substance could influence or be influenced by an immaterial one. Ultimately, Antoniutti concluded, it would be thinkers like Hartley, working within a Newtonian framework, who would eventually “unlock the mysteries in the constitution of the natural body”.119

Clearly far more work needs to be done on English thought in late eighteenth- century Italy in order to be able to properly place this translation of Hartley in context.

Several things stand out in comparison to Hartley’s reception elsewhere, however.

Firstly, though Antoniutti took exception to Priestley’s materialist reading of Hartley, he did so not on religious grounds, but on methodological ones. While Priestley’s critics in

Britain accused him of nothing less than the willful and enthusiastic destruction of the

Christian worldview, Antoniutti never even mentioned the religious implications of materialism. Reading his preface to Hartley, one would never even know that there were religious issues at stake. Secondly, and in a similar vein, Antoniutti apparently approved of Priestley’s elimination of the religious portions of Hartley’s theory in his abridgement.

Though Priestley accounted for this elimination purely on the grounds of clarity—he certainly adopted many of Hartley’s religious ideas himself—Antoniutti passed over them without comment. In fact, it is clearly Priestley’s Hartley’s Theory of the Human

Mind which Antoniutti translated, rather than working from the original Observations themselves. For all that he claimed to be restoring Hartley to his original meaning which he understood better than Priestley, the Italian translator was nevertheless viewing

Hartley through Priestley’s lens. And, it would seem, that apart from their disagreement

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 119 Ibid., 8

! 177 ! over ether, there was actually a great deal of agreement between Hartley’s British and

Italian interpreters.

Hartley in Germany

If Hartley’s appearance in Venice was unexpected, his translation into German in

1772, appears rather mysterious at first glance. Its translator, Herman Andreas Pistorius, was a German Protestant theologian who, though an active intellectual force throughout his life, rarely took credit for his published works and therefore remained rather obscure both during his life and after his death. The pastor of Pöserwtiz on the Island of Rügen in

Northern Germany, Pistorius is perhaps remembered for his incisive review of Immanuel

Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, which Kant responded to in later editions of the work.

Perhaps the most erudite representative of mid-century devotees of Lockean empiricism, who called themselves the Popularphilosophen [popular philosopher], Pistorius’ espousal of empiricism against idealism was insightful enough to earn Kant’s approbation.120 The

Popularphilosophen were, in many ways, kindred spirits to Hartley in their optimistic assessment of human nature and trust that, through Lockean associations, humanity would eventually reach a state of perfection. They consciously modeled themselves on the French and British Enlightenments, but interpreted Locke through the lens of the home-grown thought of Christian Wolff. They were primarily responsible for introducing British and French thought in Germany, and translated Locke, Condillac, and

Diderot. Pistorius’ attraction to Hartley and his subsequent translation seems far less mysterious when considered in this light.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 120 For more on Pistorius’ critiques of Kant, see The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte, 188-192; and Kant’s Early Critics: The Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy

! 178 !

Just like in Antoniutti’s case, it is unclear how Pistorius acquired a copy of the

Observations; but unlike Antoniutti, he not only possessed the entirety of the text but he also focused exclusively on the second, religious section. Printed some three years previous to Priestley’s abridgement, Pistorius examined Hartley in the original and provided extensive commentary to accompany his translation. By 1801 Pistorius’ commentary on the Observations had made its way back into England as Notes and

Additions to Dr. Hartley’s Observation on Man, accompanied by an excerpt from

Pistorius’ German preface. Pistorius explained his decision to translate only Part II in this preface, noting that “of the two volumes of Dr. Hartley’s work in English... the second only was properly fit for my purpose. ...I therefore contented myself with giving a short though sufficient abstract of the first volume, which contains the association of ideas; but the second I have thought it necessary to divide into two, and amplify it with my own observations”.121

Pistorius confronted the twin specters of mechanism and materialism which haunted the pages of the Observations in the very first pages of his commentary. In his section, “On Necessity”, the German theologian cautioned his readers. “When the reader reflects,” he began, “that this treatise on religion is the second park of a work in which

Hartley considers the nature of man, and treats the mind and body altogether as machines, he will probably take it up with mistrust and prejudice, and condemn it as irrational, without an examination”.122 Free will, though frequently misunderstood, Pistorius continued, was generally considered to be the basis of Christian faith and good morality.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 121 Herman Andreas Pistorius, Notes and Additions to Dr. Hartley’s Observations on Man, (London: J. Johnson, 1801): 457 122 Ibid., 458

! 179 !

Therefore, “the supposition that, both must fall to the ground, if the human soul be subjected to corporeal or spiritual mechanism, has been supported both by the friends and by the opponents of religion”.123 In light of this, Pistorius judged that “Hartley’s endeavour, not merely to shew the accordance of mechanism with religion, but even to build all religion on the doctrine of necessity, is a new and unheard of attempt, in which respects it deserves the attention of the learned”.124

Pistorius gave his unreserved support to Hartley’s novel use of the doctrine of necessity, and undertook to defend it in his commentary. He argued that “necessity is not incompatible with happiness and virtue, is clear, as has been already observed by others, from this principle, that, if it were, God could neither be virtuous nor happy, since he is both from necessity”.125 If, then, as both Hartley and Pistorius claimed the “end of morality and religious is, unquestionably, the happiness of mankind,” then necessity was not incompatible with religion or morality. Pistorius continued:

Of happiness we know nothing, but that it consists in a chain of agreeable sensations, or that it is a state which man rather wills, than wills not. By mechanism we understand a power of effecting or suffering such changes as are dependent on each other. ...If the human mind be subject to such a mechanism, all its actions and sufferings, its perceptions and ideas...must be consequences of a necessary connection; and so founded on each other...they will follow one another in such a manner as to exclude every thing arbitrary.126

The German thinker neatly bundled Hartley’s mechanism into a providential package: if the purpose of religion is to bring about happiness for humanity, and mechanism is the force which makes certain that actions do have proportional consequences, then how could Christianity and mechanism possibly be opposed? To the objection that “if religion !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 123 Ibid. 124 Ibid., 458-459 125 Ibid., 459 126 Ibid., 459-460

! 180 ! may make a man happy on the principles of necessity, still on these principles it cannot render him virtuous, or an object of divine bliss and reward” Pistorius only responded that, as divine rewards or punishments consisted of happiness or misery respectively, this argument had no force: “What should hinder the Supreme Being from permitting a necessary good conduct to be followed by a necessary adequate happiness?”.127

Pistorius’ discussion of the materialist implications of the Observations did not, somewhat surprisingly, come in a discussion about the human soul. Rather, he addressed

Hartley’s discussion of the immateriality of God, and found them “liable to some not unfounded objections”.128 In particular, Pistorius took exception to Hartley’s argument for the immateriality of God based on the passive nature of matter (which would mean

“the grounds and cause of its motion are not in itself, but in an essence which is not matter”).129 Surprisingly, the German theologian wanted to argue that matter was not in fact always passive, for passivity entailed the ability to resist motion (through Newtonian gravitational force) which was, in Pistorius’ calculation, itself a kind of motion and active power: “Thus we must conclude, that, if it [matter] exerted not determinate moving power, and indeed possessed no such power, it would exert no resistance; or, in other words, if matter had no active power, it would have no power of being passive”.130 If matter could be active, therefore, then God might well be material. Pistorius found the passivity of matter a very poor peg on which to hang a defense of God’s immateriality.

But the German thinker took more kindly to Hartley’s handling of the question of the nature of immaterial substances: “We have, indeed, no original ideas, says he, but !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 127 Ibid. 128 Ibid., 508 129 Ibid. 130 Ibid., 509

! 181 ! what are impressed by matter: whence we are led to conclude that nothing but matter exists. But as we cannot explain the most ordinary and simple phænomena from our idea of matter, we must either admit an immaterial substance or suppose, that matter has some powers and properties different from, and superior to those which appear”.131 It was the responsibility of modern philosophy, Pistorius continued, to provide proofs of an immaterial substance. “Our inability to explain the phænomena of nature, and in particular the faculties of the mind,” he speculated,

from the known and admitted properties of matter, in all probability led philosophers, who found gross matter insufficient to this explanation, to imagine a more and still more subtile matter, till funding, that, however subtile it were supposed, it would still be matter, and thus incapable of making us comprehend the effects they would willingly have explained.132

But the philosophical acknowledgement of a substance that was not matter, Pistorius argued, was not enough verify the existence of an immaterial substance. And, he judged, that “as long as we admit, that matter is a reality, we cannot admit its opposite to be a reality also; hence all realities that we ascribe to an immaterial substance, when for instance we term it a simple thing, are nothing but words of the same meaning as immateriality whereby in effect nothing new is advanced”.133 Essentially, the German theologian claimed that by its very name, immateriality was nothing more than a negative concept which could never gain purchase in the “real” world. Therefore, theologians were left with a conundrum when considering God: “we must either grant immateriality to the immutable being [an unchanging nature was considered both essential to God’s nature

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 131 Ibid., 511 132 Ibid. 133 Ibid., 512

! 182 ! and the very antithesis of corruptible matter] or, if we suppose him to be material, we must give up the fundamental notions we have of God”.134

Furthermore, Pistorius contended that Hartley agreed with him: “Our author seems, in part at least, to grant this, when he says, that to admit an immaterial substance, or to suppose that matter possesses certain powers and properties of a nature different from and superior to those we perceive in it, is the same thing”.135 According to Pistorius,

Hartley realized that matter itself was only a philosophical concept, which mean that to suggest that “matter” was immutable, and therefore essentially different than philosophy judged it to be, was very much the same thing as suggesting a substance other than matter.

In order to extract both Hartley and himself from this convoluted reasoning, Pistorius proposed that Hartley’s true meaning had been that all the “powers” ascribed to immaterial substances (indivisibility, immutability, etc.) should, for the sake of clarity, just be considered as occasional additions to matter. He seemed utterly unaware that such a course would, in wide swaths of Europe, be equivalent to espousing materialism.

Perhaps this was because while much of the rest of the late Enlightenment was preoccupied with the question of materialism, in Germany—faced with Kant’s transformative idealism—the story was rather different. Rather than losing all spirituality to the encroachment of matter, Kant’s theory threatened to vanish the external reality of physical objects into mere ideas of objects. Hartley’s theory was an appealing corrective to this threat, since the senses provided a certain access point for the mind to investigate physical objects and guaranteed the reality of perceptions.

Romancing Hartley !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 134 Ibid. 135 Ibid., 514

! 183 !

Our grand tour of Europe in the company of the Observations ends in on

Christmas Eve, 1794 in Britain. Mere months after Priestley had preached his last sermon the end times to his congregation in Birmingham before fleeing to America,

Samuel Taylor Coleridge sat thinking about religion and metaphysics. His ruminations he put into poetic form; “Religious Musings” was long poem—420 lines of blank verse— which encompassed Coleridge’s thoughts on Christianity, along with a consideration of the great men of science and philosophy who had helped the cause of Christianity and enabled the progress of mankind through their work. The whole poem has a decidedly mystical feel; Coleridge took on the role of prophet to announce the second coming of

Christ, hastened by his faithful sentinels who would be among the first resurrected on

Christ’s return:

The Saviour comes! While as the Thousand Years Lead up their mystic dance, the Desert shouts! Old Ocean claps his hands! The mighty Dead Rise to new life, whoe'er from earliest time With conscious zeal had urged Love's wondrous plan Coadjutors of God. To Milton's trump The high groves of the renovated Earth Unbosom their glad echoes : inly hushed, Adoring Newton his serener eye Raises to heaven : and he [Hartley] of mortal kind Wisest, he first who marked the ideal tribes Up the fine fibres through the sentient brain Roll subtly-surging. Pressing on his steps Lo! Priestley there, Patriot, Saint, and Sage, Whom that my fleshly eye hath never seen! A childish pang of impotent regret! Hath thrill’d my heart.136

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 136 Samuel Coleridge, “Religious Musings: A Desultory Poem, written on the Christmas Eve of 1794”, http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/noa/pdf/27636_Roma_U06_Coleridge.pdf. Coleridge provides a note clarifying the reference to Hartley.

! 184 !

Right there, side by side with none other than Newton and Priestley, was David

Hartley—“he of mortal kind/Wisest, he who first marked the ideal tribes/Up the fine fibres through the sentient brain”. And this tribute to Hartley was by no means the only one the Romantic poet would make to the author of the Observations; when his first son was born two years later, Coleridge named him David Hartley Coleridge. Moreover, in his devotion to Hartley, Coleridge was accompanied by fellow poets William

Wordsworth and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

At first blush, Hartley’s appeal to this Romantic coterie seems odd. What place could the Enlightenment philosopher who argued for a mechanical understanding of the human mind have in a movement that was in many ways a reaction against

Enlightenment reason and science? The answer arguably lies in Hartley’s determination to maintain the existence of a higher plane of being, even alongside his materialistic philosophy. No doubt, such an approach appealed to a generation little impressed by

Enlightenment atheism and irreligion: when Wordsworth envisioned a soul that had

“cometh from afar...trailing clouds of glory”, he encapsulated the early Romantic belief that Enlightenment concern with the temporal world was good and well, but it was not all.

Hartley easily spoke to this belief despite the undeniable materialistic flavor of his epistemology, because for him, the role of enlightened reason was to help better grasp the otherworldly nature of the soul.

Though most of the late-century Romantic writers appear to have engaged with

Hartley to some extent, Coleridge wrote most extensively on this connection. In large part, Coleridge’s study of Hartley took place early in his career. Though some scholars of his work seem inclined to dismiss this interest as a mere youthful foible prior to the

! 185 ! development of the adult Coleridge’s independent thought, many of the most interesting aspects of Coleridge’s intellectual biography would seem to demand that Hartley be given his due. Apart from the lofty place accorded to the thinker in Religious Musings,

Coleridge used Hartley to buttress some of his most mystical Christian notions, most notably mankind’s destined reunion with its creator. Earlier in the poem, Coleridge declared that,

And first by Fear uncharmed the drowséd Soul Till of its nobler nature it 'gan feel Dim recollections; and thence soared to Hope. Strong to believe whate'er of mystic good The Eternal dooms for His immortal sons. From Hope and firmer Faith to perfect Love Attracted and absorbed : and centered there God only to behold, and know, and feel, Till by exclusive consciousness of God All self-annihilated it shall make God its Identity : God all in all! We and our Father one!137

Coleridge’s original note to these lines declared his position “demonstrated by Hartley” as well as expanded upon and “freed from the charge of Mysticism, by Pistorius in his

Notes and Additions”.138 Coleridge referred to Hartley’s indication that not only was all of humanity a necessary participant in the divine plan for ultimate happiness, by virtue of the association of ideas and the mechanism of the will, but his consequent conviction that the perfection of humanity was imminent. Hartley’s appeal to Coleridge was clear: he provided the rational and physical justification for Coleridge’s own mystical flights.

Coleridge’s attachment to Hartley in his later career, while perhaps not as strong as it had been and no longer clearly manifested in his poetry, was significant and !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 137 Quoted in Hoxie N. Fairchild, “Hartley, Pistorius, and Coleridge”, PMLA 62, No. 4 (December 1947): 1010 138 Quoted in Ibid.

! 186 ! enduring. It seems unlikely (though certainly possible) that Coleridge would have named a son after a thinker whom he had only briefly respected. There are more substantial proofs of the persistence of Coleridge’s respect, however. The theory of vibrations seems to have been one of the earliest aspects of Hartley’s thought to come under fire from the

Romantic poet, and writing to William Godwin in 1801, he described it only as “all the nonsense of vibrating etc.”.139 But later that same year, he repeatedly praised Hartley in his correspondence. He wrote to Josiah Wedgwood that “we should give Newton a more worthy associate, and instead of Locke and Newton, we should say Bacon and Newton, or still better, perhaps, Newton and Hartley” and later referred to him as one of the “three great Metaphysicians which this country has produced”, alongside Berkeley and

Butler.140 And although only a month later, he announced that he had “overthrown the doctrine of Association, as taught by Hartley, and with it all the irreligious metaphysics of modern Infidels—especially the doctrine of Necessity”, this rejection did not mean that he also rejected Hartley’s overarching theory of the science of the mind. Instead, two years later he considered writing his own abridgement of Part I of the Observations, which excised the materialistic aspects of Hartley’s theory.141 Coleridge’s relationship with Hartley, though troubled, remained important, apparently because Coleridge identified with Hartley’s struggle to incorporate mystical notions of the ultimate destiny of mankind into something approaching a scientific theory of the mind.

Coleridge was not the only Romantic admirer of Hartley. His good friend

William Wordsworth also respected Hartley, though he was by no means as verbose or !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 139 Quoted in Richard Haven, “Coleridge, Hartley, and the Mystics”, Journal of the History of Ideas 20, No. 4 (October-December 1959): 479 140 Ibid. 141 Ibid.

! 187 ! demonstrative about it as Coleridge. Wordsworth’s fascination with the human mind is itself well documented in his poems, like when he refers to the “the Mind of Man” as

“my haunt, and the main region of my song” in The Recluse His attraction (if indeed it can be called that) to Hartley is not. In fact, Wordsworth only ever made one reference to

Hartley in his writings—in 1808, he referred to Hartley as belonging among the “men of real power, who go before their age”.142 Literary critics have, over the past couple of centuries, attempted to determine the extent of Hartley’s influence through an analysis of

Wordsworth’s poetry. Their inability to reach any kind of consensus is striking. Some argue that “Hartley’s system makes up the bone structure of Wordsworth’s compositions; without it they sag to the ground. ...To teach Wordsworth and not teach Hartley is ruination to our idea of the poet”.143 Others positively declare that there is no evidence that Wordsworth ever even read the Observations, much less that they provided the “bone structure” for his body of work.144 With such little evidence to go on, and serious misgivings about the place of literary criticism in a work of history, I suggest the possibility of Hartley’s influence on Wordsworth but can only affirm that the Romantic poet was aware of Hartley’s theory, and apparently esteemed it.

Much more explicit is the case of the third Romantic poet who claims a link to

Hartley’s Observations: Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley obtained a copy of Part I of the

Observations in 1812, and read it with great interest, as the damaged but nevertheless extant copy itself demonstrates. Of primary interest to the poet was Hartley’s theory of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 142 Quoted in John Hayden, “Wordsworth, Hartley, and the Revisionists” Studies in Philology 81, No. 1 (Winter 1984): 94. 143 Robert Brainard Pearsall, “Wordsworth reworks his Hartley”, The Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association 24, No. 2 (June 1970): 76 144 See Hayden, “Wordsworth, Hartley, and the Revisionists” for more.

! 188 ! vibrations, in particular his use of Newtonian ether. Hartley’s description of a “subtle medium” capable of motion and therefore transmitting actions all were heavily underlined in Shelley’s copy. Nor is the particularly surprising; Shelley had apparently long since been interested in ether as a scientific construct, primarily its status as matter or spirit, and while still a student questioned: “Is the electric fluid [ether] material? Is light—is the vital principle in vegetables—in brutes—is the human soul?”.145 But where

Hartley seemed to answer this question with a tentative yes, Shelley disagreed. Hartley envisioned ether as composed of tiny particles, which could perhaps be obstructed on their path through the firmer substance of the brain, and further charged that it lacked

“active power”. Shelley marked through this passage in his copy with a firm “No”, in clear rejection of this assessment. Even more blatant is Shelley’s reaction to Hartley’s rejection of thinking matter. Where Hartley claims that “I do not...in the least presume to assert, or intimate, that matter can be endued with the power of sensations”, Shelly responded with confusion, writing “What is this?”. Indeed Shelley’s own conception of thinking matter hinged on the concept of an ethereal substance which infused itself into matter, giving it life and power. In his Queen Mab, Shelley even noted that “Soul is the only element; the block / That for uncounted ages has remained /The moveless pillar of a mountain’s weight / Is active, living spirit. Every grain / Is sentient both in unity and part”.146 Shelley’s engagement with Hartley is indicative of a very different approach to the same mystical problem of human destiny that had led Coleridge to the Observations: where Coleridge sought out Hartley to provide a rational foundation for his experience of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 145 Quoted in Ann Wroe, “Shelley’s Good Vibrations: His Marginal Notes to Hartley’s Observations on Man”, Wordsworth Circle 41, No. 1 (Winter 2010): 36-41 146 4th canto

! 189 ! the world, Shelley rejected Hartley for this very same reason. Hartley’s latent materialism and mechanical vision of the mind could not agree with Shelley’s almost vitalist vision of matter imbued by ether with life and activity.

“Dr. Hartley, whose works will perish only with time itself”: Hartley in America

While Hartley’s Observations trekked their way across Europe, they made their way across the Atlantic as well. This was almost certainly due to the efforts of the indefatigable Joseph Priestley, who developed close friendships with several important

American thinkers, most significantly Benjamin Rush. Though Priestley had earlier attempted to convince no less than Benjamin Franklin of the virtues of David Harley, he would ultimately find a more receptive audience in Rush.147 An original signatory of the

Declaration of Independence, Surgeon General of the Continental army, and later professor of chemistry and medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Rush was an incredibly important figure in the early Republic. Religiously, Rush was a product of the

Great Awakening. From a dizzyingly diverse religious background—his ancestors were

Quaker, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Episcopalian—he struggled to find his own religious identity. Under the tutelage of Awakeners like Samuel Finley and Samuel Davies, however, Rush developed deep Calvinist beliefs. His one innovation on Calvinist theology was a firm belief in the universal salvation of all mankind, something that makes his affinity for David Hartley more understandable.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 147 Priestley wrote, “It is much to be lamented, that a man of Dr. Franklin’s general good character, and great influence, should have been an unbeliever in Christianity... Accordingly, I recommended him Hartley’s evidences of Christianity in his observations on man... But the American war breaking out soon after, I do not believe that he ever found himself sufficiently at leisure for the discussion”. (Memoirs, 64- 65)

! 190 !

Rush equaled Joseph Priestley in his enthusiasm for Hartley’s Observations. He recalled in his autobiography that he had first closely studied Hartley in 1791, upon his appointment to the University of Pennsylvania, when he was required to give lectures on physiology, a subject he confessed to disliking. Though Rush recalled reading any number of treatises upon the subject—Boerhaave and Haller among them—he declared that “from none of them did I derive so many useful hints as from Dr. Hartley’s treatise upon the frame of man”.148 In a lecture to his students at the University of Pennsylvania in 1794, “On the Application of Metaphysicks to Medicine,” Rush recalled again his debt to Hartley’s theory of the human mind. He noted that “from this book I derived my system of physiology” and proceeding to explain to his students “the great object of Dr.

Hartley’s work” to illuminate the physical origins of ideas.149 Rush did not stop there, however, but argued that what Isaac Newton had been to physics, so Hartley had been to the mind, for the association of ideas was the metaphysical counterpart to gravity. Not only did Hartley’s theory incontrovertibly prove that the human mind was designed to become increasingly virtuous as it developed, Rush argued, but it also proved the existence of the benevolent God who had designed this system.150

In 1799, Rush published his own system of the physiology of the human mind based largely on Hartley’s Observations, entitled Three Lectures upon Animal Life, which were based on the first lectures he had given on physiology in 1791. The workings of the mind, Rush told his students, were often considered by physicians to be best left to

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 148 Benjamin Rush, A Memorial Containing Travels Through Life Or Sundry Incidents in the Life of Dr. Benjamin Rush, (London: Biddle, 1905): 68 149 Donald J. D’Elia “Benjamin Rush, David Hartley, and the Revolutionary Uses of Psychology”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 114, No. 2 (April 1970): 110. 150 Ibid.

! 191 ! theologians and philosophers. But Rush was determined to use Hartley’s Observations to explore “animal life as applied to the human body, motion—sensation—and thought”.151

The human capability of thought he defined much as Hartley had done forty years previously: “The exercises of the faculties of the mind... all act by reflection only, after having been previously excited into action by impressions made upon the body”.152

Elsewhere, Rush confirmed that he, like Hartley, rejected “the doctrine of innate ideas” and instead ascribed “all our knowledge of sensible objects to impressions acting upon an innate capacity to receive ideas”.153 Significantly, Rush limited the sensate origin of ideas to ideas of “material objects” and made no reference to abstract ideas.

Regarding the immateriality of the soul, Rush approached the question from a perspective both materialist and vitalist, and his answer sounded much like Locke’s thinking matter hypothesis: “Should it be asked, what is that particular organization of matter, which enables it to emit life, when acted upon by stimuli, I answer, I do not know. ...It belongs exclusively to the true God to endow matter with those singular properties, which enable it under certain circumstances, to exhibit the appearances of life”.154 Rush maintained that human life was more than the sum of its material parts, but he was unwilling to speculate further on what it might be. He continued that life was something separate from matter, but endowed to it by God, and that this alone was sufficient to discredit atheistic materialism:

Admit a principle of life in the human body, and we open the door for the restoration of the old Epicurean [materialist] or atheistical philosophy, which supposed the world to be governed by a principle called nature, and which was !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 151 Benjamin Rush, Three Lectures Upon Animal Life, (Philadelphia: Budd and Bartram, 1799): 5 152 Ibid., 19 153 Ibid., 79 154 Ibid., 77

! 192 !

believed to be inherent in every kind of matter. The doctrine I have taught, cuts the sinews of this error... By rendering the continuance of animal life, no less than its commencement, the effect of the constant operation of divine power and goodness.155

Rush also “[decided] in favor of the necessity of motives” and argued that “I cannot help but bearing testimony against the gloomy misapprehension of this doctrine by some modern writers. When properly understood, it is calculated to produce the most comfortable views of the divine government, and the most beneficial effects upon morals, and human happiness”.156 The clear connection to Hartley’s assessment of the will is too obvious to need much comment. Rush concluded with a brief reflection of life after death, which he told his students had been assured by revelation. Even though the details he admitted to be beyond human comprehension, he lectured that “it is sufficient to believe, the event [resurrection] will take place, and that after it, the soul and body of man will be exalted in one respect, to an equality with their Creator. They will be immortal”.157

It was not only Hartley’s physiological explanation of human thought that attracted Rush, however. Writing to John Adams in late October of 1807, Rush enthusiastically detailed his upcoming course of lectures, the subject of which was the diseases of domestic animals which he justified to Adams by noting “our relation to domestic animals arising from our being formed at the same time and from the same dust,

[and] possessing bodies capable like theirs of pain and subject to death”.158 More than this, he continued, he was inspired by Hartley’s assessment of animal nature. He quoted !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 155 Ibid., 81 156 Ibid., 80 157 Ibid., 83 158 Rush to John Adams, Philadelphia, 31 October 1807, in Letters of Benjamin Rush, ed. L.H. Butterfield, (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1951): 953

! 193 ! his lecture directly to Adams on this point, and its description of Hartley’s theory is worth reading at length. “I proceed in the last place,” he began, “to mention a reason for making the health of domestic animals the subject of our studies and care which I should hesitate in delivering were it not sanctioned by the name of a man whose discoveries in physiological, metaphysical, and theological science mar an era in the achievements of the human mind—I mean the great and good, I had almost said the inspired, Dr.

Hartley”.159 Whatever it was that followed, Rush’s discomfort with announcing it to a roomful of medical students as well as his implicit trust in Hartley are both apparent. The reason was as follows:

Their [animals’] probable relation to us in a resurrection after death and an existence in a future state. I shall read a short passage from the Doctor’s Works [the Observations] upon this point. After expressing a doubt concern the redemption of the brute creation, he adds, ‘However, their fall with Adam, the covenant made with them after the deluge, their serving as sacrifices for the sins of men, and as types and emblems in the prophecies, their being commanded to praise God, seem to intimate that there is mercy in store for them also, more than we may expect, to be revealed in due time. The Jews considered the Gentiles as dogs in comparison of themselves. And the brute creatures appear by the foregoing history of association to differ from us in degree, rather than in kind’.160

At last someone had read Hartley carefully enough to discover that he believed animals may well have a share in Christian salvation. But rather than disavowing such a strange and radical position, Rush expanded upon it and even radicalized it further. He continued to quote his lecture to Adams:

In favor of these remarks of Dr. Hartley, it may be said that as moral evil and death accompanied each other in the human race, they are probably connected in the brute creation, that they possess nearly all our vices and virtues, that the perfection of the divine government requires that their vices should be punished and their virtues rewarded, that reparation should be made to them for their accumulated sufferings in this world, and that the divine bounty discovered in the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 159 Ibid., 953 160 Ibid., 953-954

! 194 !

gift of their pleasures, would be rendered abortive unless they are placed in a situation to make retuned for them in praise and gratitude in a future state of existence.161

In Rush’s estimation, not only were animals likely to be resurrected but also judged for their behavior here on earth. Morality and immorality were no longer the preserve of human nature, nor was immortality. One would give quite a lot to know what the famously acerbic and impatient Adams had to say to this extraordinary declaration, but his response (if indeed he did respond) seems to have been lost.

While we may wonder in vain how Adams took Rush’s avowal of animal immortality, the reaction to his delivery of the lecture is abundantly substantiated in

Rush’s correspondence with another good friend, the Philadelphia judge Richard Peters.

Peters wrote to Rush in November of 1807 to communicate some gossip he had heard concerning Rush’s lecture. While Peters’ letter itself is lost, the content is clearly communicated in Rush’s response. “Dear Sir,” he began, “I am so much accustomed to have my opinions and conduct misrepresented that I have ceased to complain of my medical brethren on that account. ...I know from when the falsehood was derived. The men who propagated it did not believe it”.162 The “falsehood” Rush referenced was the charge that he believed animals possessed immortal souls. This Rush steadfastly denied in his response to Peters: “I believe brutes have souls, but I never said nor never believed that they were immortal”.163 This is a somewhat surprising declaration, given that only a month earlier he had told John Adams proofs for animals’ “probable relation to us in a resurrection after death and an existence in a future state”. But Rush now disavowed that !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 161 Ibid. 162 Benjamin Rush to Richard Peters, 28 November 1807, in Letters of Benjamin Rush, ed. L.H. Butterfield, (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1951): 957 163 Ibid.

! 195 ! he personally had ever believed such a thing, and attempted to shift the blame to Hartley, writing that “wiser and better men than I shall ever be have maintained the latter opinion, among whom I mentioned Dr. Hartley”.164 His students, he concluded, “all understood me perfectly”—only his enemies, Rush implied, could possibly have taken his suggestion literally. But the text of Rush’s lecture, quoted at length to Adams, clearly suggests otherwise.

While Rush’s enthusiasm for Hartley is clearly evident, it remains unclear if

Hartley’s foremost American disciple managed to effectively convert any of his compatriots. Perhaps, this was because Rush wasted his proselytization efforts on the most skeptical of his friends. In 1811, only a few years after lecturing on animal souls,

Rush wrote to his old friend Thomas Jefferson. Apparently resuming a previous conversation, Rush asked the former president if he had “found leisure to look into Dr.

Hartley’s Observations upon the Frame, Duties, and Expectations of Mankind since your retirement to Monticello”. Rush continued to wax poetic on the virtues of the text, telling Jefferson that “I envy the age in which that book will be relished and believed, for it has unfortunately appeared a century or two before the world is prepared for it. ...Its illustrious author has established an indissoluble union between physiology, metaphysics, and Christianity. He has so disposed them that they mutually afford not only support but beauty and splendor to each other”.165 To this passionate endorsement, Jefferson (the deist) had little to say. “You ask if I have read Hartley? I have not,” he told Rush, and then neatly changed the subject: “My present course of life admits less reading than I

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 164 Ibid. 165 Benjamin Rush to Thomas Jefferson, 2 January 1811, Philadelphia, Letters of Benjamin Rush, ed. L.H. Butterfield, (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1951): 1074-1075

! 196 ! wish. From breakfast, or noon at latest, to dinner, I am mostly on horseback attending to my farm or other concerns”.166

If it seems abundantly clear to the modern reader that Jefferson and Adams were not the men to be convinced of the virtues of Hartley’s Christian science, it apparently was less evident to Rush. The intellectual diversity of the new American republic meant that there was plenty of room for Rush’s somewhat eccentric interpretation of Hartley. It does seem, however, that just as in Italy, Germany, and France, Hartley’s American disciple was committed but often a bit lonely. It took an unusual mind to really appreciate Hartley’s thought in its entirety, and too often he was rendered to later audiences in a piecemeal fashion that reflected more about the character of his disciples than the man himself. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that Hartley seemed to turn up just about everywhere that boasted of an Enlightenment. The appeal of his philosophy was broad—it attracted chemists, physicians, priests, theologians, and poets.

Conclusions

After following Hartley’s trail through the intellectual centers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Western world—London, Philadelphia, Paris,

Venice— and even the German isle of Rügen, it is time to bring this tour to a close. In terms of the reach of his ideas, it should be more than evident by now that Hartley’s influence in the fifty years following his death cannot be easily dismissed. Apart from the extensive geography they covered, they also attracted a veritable cornucopia of thinkers; everyone it seems from French priests to American surgeons and British poets.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 166 Jefferson to Rush, 16 January 1811, Monticello, in “The Letters of Thomas Jefferson, 1743- 1826”, online database, .

! 197 !

The breadth of Hartley’s vision accounts for this at least in part: there was room for almost everyone beneath the thousand-page tent of the Observations. To be sure,

Hartley’s thought was mutilated, condemned to death, dissected, reassembled, and resurrected until even the man himself may not have recognized it; but this is scarcely relevant to the larger point. The Observations lived beyond the Age of Enlightenment because they both embodied and transcended its narrow scientific interests. Hartley’s purpose—to find a scientific foundation for the Christian worldview—spoke to the needs of a post-Enlightenment generation to restore something more to the deconstructive tendencies of early eighteenth century. Even those who rejected Christianity itself appeared to find comfort in this largely spiritual endeavor. Locke and others, Hartley among them, had broken down the human mind into a chemistry lab of sorts where certain combinations of impressions inevitably produced certain reactions. Hartley was almost alone, however, in the attempt to find higher meaning in this simplified vision of the mind. While the reader of the Observations is immediately struck with the seeming incongruity of materialism, mechanism, and bold assurances of divine providence, this odd blend managed to survive the vicissitudes of various interpretations for it seemed to ensure what Benjamin Rush called “an indissoluble union between physiology, metaphysics, and Christianity”.

! 198 !

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary

Anonymous, An Essay on the Immateriality and Immortality of the Soul and its Instinctive Sense of Good and Evil (London: J. Dodsley, 1778): 3-4

Antoniutti, Pietro. “Preface,” in David Hartley, Osservazioni Sopra l’Uomo, sua struttura, suoi doveri, e sue speranze (Venice: Santini, 1801)

Berington, Joseph. Letters on materialism and Hartley's theory of the human mind, addressed to Dr. Priestley, F.R.S. Birmingham: G. Robinson and M. Swinney, 1776.

Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). New York: Barnes & Noble, 2010.

Coleridge, Samuel. “Religious Musings: A Desultory Poem, written on the Christmas Eve of 1794”.

Condillac, Etienne Bonnot. Traité des Animaux. Amsterdam, 1756.

Hartley, David. Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations, 1749, Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars' Facsimile Reprints, 1966.

_____. Various Conjectures on the Perception, Motion, and Generation of Ideas [1746], trans. by R.E.A. Palmer. Los Angeles: Augustan Reprint Society, 1959.

_____. “A Sketch of the Life and Character of Dr. Hartley,” in Notes and Additions to Dr. Hartley’s Observations on Man, (London: J. Johnson, 1801)

Jefferson, Thomas to Benjamin Rush, 16 January 1811, Monticello, in “The Letters of Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826”, online database, .

Jurain, Henri. in David Hartley, Explication Physique des Sens, des Idées, et des Mouvemens, tant volontaires qu’involontaires. Reims: Chez Delaistre-Godet, 1756.

_____. La Logique ou la Art de Penser. Paris: Ventes et Compagnie, 1766.

Le Journal des Sçavans, Paris: Libraire de l’Université, January 1755.

_____. , Paris: Libraire de l’Université, June 1756.

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Leibniz, G.W., “First Paper” in “Exchange of Papers Between Leibniz and Clarke”, ed. Jonathan Bennett, 2010.

Mémoires pour l'Histoire des Sciences & des beaux Arts. Briasson & Chaubert, Paris, Mars 1756.

The Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal 53. London: R. Griffiths, July 1775-January 1776.

Pistorius, Herman Andreas. Notes and Additions to Dr. Hartley’s Observations on Man, London: J. Johnson, 1801.

Priestley, Joseph. Hartley's Theory of the Human Mind, on the Principle of the Association of Ideas: With Essays Relating to the Subject of it. London: J. Johnson, 1775.

_____. Memoirs of the Rev. Dr. Joseph Priestley, to the Year 1795. London: Janes Belcher and Son, 1810.

_____. The present State of Europe compared with Antient Prophecies; A Sermon preached at the Gravel Pit Meeting in Hackney, February 28, 1794. London: J. Johnson, 1794.

Rush, Benjamin to John Adams, Philadelphia, 31 October 1807, in Letters of Benjamin Rush, ed. L.H. Butterfield. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1951.

_____. to Richard Peters, 28 November 1807, in Letters of Benjamin Rush, ed. L.H. Butterfield. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1951.

_____. to Thomas Jefferson, 2 January 1811, Philadelphia, Letters of Benjamin Rush, ed. L.H. Butterfield. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1951.

_____. A Memorial Containing Travels Through Life Or Sundry Incidents in the Life of Dr. Benjamin Rush. London: Biddle, 1905.

_____. Three Lectures Upon Animal Life. Philadelphia: Budd and Bartram, 1799.

Secondary

Becker, Carl. The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932.

Berengo, Marino. La Societá Veneta alla fine del Settecento. Firenze: Sansoni, 1956.

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D’Elia, Donald J. “Benjamin Rush, David Hartley, and the Revolutionary Uses of Psychology”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 114, No. 2. April 1970.

Duffy, Eamon. ‘Doctor Douglass and Mister Berington: an eighteenth-century retraction’, Downside Review, 88. 1970.

_____. ‘Ecclesiastical democracy detected [pt 3]’, Recusant History, 13 (1975–6), 123– 48.

_____. ‘Ecclesiastical democracy detected [pts 1 and 2]’, Recusant History, 10 (1969– 70), 193–209; 309–31;

_____. ‘Joseph Berington and the English Catholic Cisalpine movement, 1772–1803’, PhD diss., U. Cam., 1973.

Fairchild, Hoxie N. “Hartley, Pistorius, and Coleridge”, PMLA 62, No. 4 (December 1947)

Ferrone, Vincenzo. The Intellectual Roots of the Italian Enlightenment: Newtonian Science, Religion, and Politics in the Early Eighteenth Century. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1995.

Hatch, Ronald B. “Joseph Priestley: An Addition to Hartley’s Observations”, Journal of History of the Ideas 36 (1975): 548-550

Haven, Richard. “Coleridge, Hartley, and the Mystics”, Journal of the History of Ideas 20, No. 4 (October-December 1959)

Hayden, John. “Wordsworth, Hartley, and the Revisionists” Studies in Philology 81, No. 1 (Winter 1984)

Sassan, Brigitte, trans. Kant’s Early Critics: The Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Pearsall, Robert Brainard. “Wordsworth reworks his Hartley”, The Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association 24, No. 2 (June 1970)

Beiser, Frederick C. The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Wallace, Wes. "The vibrating nerve impulse in Newton, Willis, and Gassendi: First steps in a mechanical theory of communication." Brain and Cognition 51 (2003)

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Wroe, Ann. “Shelley’s Good Vibrations: His Marginal Notes to Hartley’s Observations on Man”, Wordsworth Circle 41, No. 1 (Winter 2010): 36-41

! 202 !

{Chapter 4} THE RADICAL REVOLUTION AND THE MODERATE RESURRECTION: CONDILLACIAN LEGACIES IN FRANCE, 1780-1804

It was late morning on Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday, of the first week of

August 1780, and the abbé de Condillac was just sitting down to breakfast. His host was the Marquis de Condorcet, a politician, relative newcomer to the philosophical scene, and

Condillac’s sworn enemy. Condorcet, the protégé of Turgot (the former Controller-

General of Finance), disagreed vehemently with Condillac’s recent work on philosophical language and Condillac resented him for it. What brought these two together to drink hot chocolate is unknown, but as the abbé reluctantly sipped at his cup, he must have attributed the sour taste in his mouth and his increasingly queasy stomach to the distasteful encounter. Less than seventy-two hours later, Condillac was dead. His nieces, who nursed him through a “putrid bilious fever” during these final hours, recalled that their uncle had told them, “in his agitation, that he knew [the cause of] his illness

[mal]”: Condorcet “had made him take a cup of bad chocolate, and that after this time he had not ceased to suffer”. The biographer who related this extraordinary tale made only one comment in favor of its veracity: “It is true that he had always detested Condorcet”.1

It should by now be apparent to the reader that, while Hartley’s renown was largely post-mortem, Condillac’s works immediately attracted significant attention within

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Baguenault de Puchesse, Condillac, Sa Vie, Sa Philosophie, Son Influence (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1910): 23-24.

203 ! !

France. They continued to exert influence even after their originator was no more. And as aggressively as he had defended his orthodox reputation in his life, a sour cup of chocolate left Condillac’s memory and philosophy at the mercy of the not always kindly disposed living. Called “philosopher to the philosophes”2 for good reason, however, it is not always easy to trace Condillac’s legacy. Interpretation and implementation of his thought began well before his death, and while many authors openly engaged Condillac by name, others did not. It is true, for instance, that most scholars claim the significant influence of the Traité des Sensations on Helvétius’ scandalous De l’Esprit. Clearly,

Attorney General Joly de Fleury suspected as much as well when he initially planned to condemn the Traité alongside its alleged progeny.

But if De l’Esprit claims any relation to Traité des Sensations, then it is as its bastard offspring. Helvétius himself never once mentioned Condillac or the Traité in either De l’Esprit itself or indeed in any of his published works or private correspondence.

Condillac, less surprisingly, never owned such a connection either. And it must be said that Helvétius could just as easily have, as he in fact claimed, gotten all his ideas directly from Locke.3 Therefore, as this chapter begins its work of tracing the legacy of Condillac, a word of warning is in order: rather than engage in speculations of who Condillac might have influenced, I will limit myself to tracing his numerous legitimate philosophical progeny—those who openly engaged with his writings. This is not to say it is

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2 Isabel F. Knight, The Geometric Spirit: The Abbé de Condillac and the French Enlightenment, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968): 1. 3 In fact, a 1797 attack on Helvétius actually utilized Condillac as an example of the proper use of Lockean associationism. “We have see that Condillac was distinguished by extending and deepening the principles of Locke. Helvétius has only abused them, and in exaggerating the truths that Locke has discovered, he drew the most false conclusions.” [Jean-François La Harpe, Refutation du Livre De l’Esprit, (Paris: Migneret, 1797): 12]

203 ! ! insignificant that many contemporaries thought that Helvétius owed his radicalism to

Condillac—this is hugely significant, and their writings on the subject will be examined.

It is only to say along with Becker that ideas are not “coins changing hands”—not every

French empiricist, or even devotee of Locke, owed their intellectual character to

Condillac, though certainly a great many of them did.

Moreover, while Hartley’s philosophy sailed along the relatively smooth waters of eighteenth-century English politics and society, Condillac’s philosophical legacy is complicated by the cataclysm of the French Revolution. In the tumult of these years,

Condillac’s moderate philosophical and religious approach vanished from sight, apparently drowned in the waves of Rousseauian and D’Holbachian radicalism which increasingly determined the course of the Revolution until about 1795. Though historians have been debating for some time the role played by the Enlightenment in bringing about the Revolution, it inarguably became the language employed by revolutionaries of all stripes throughout the early phase of the Revolution and into the

Terror. Whether, as Jonathan Israel argues, the Terror was actually a betrayal of the

Radical Enlightenment, or a fulfillment of it as many contemporaries believed, is largely irrelevant. This historical moment is undeniably significant in evaluating the course of the French Enlightenment. The era of the early Revolution and the Terror seemed to signify a victory for the radical materialist strain of thinking about religion and the body, all the more so because most histories of the Enlightenment take 1789 or shortly thereafter as a convenient ending point. The Revolutionaries themselves sought to begin history anew, leaving moderates and compromisers like Condillac and his early followers in the blood and dust of the Terror.

204 ! !

Intellectual historians have, for the most part, been content to allow this wall between the old France and the new to stand, meaning that while scholars of the

Directory and the Empire recognize the return of a more moderate approach to philosophy in thinkers like Sieyès, they rarely consider what this might mean for the legacy of the Enlightenment in France. And while no historian of the French

Enlightenment would deny that—as is clearly evidenced by the parallel cases of Hartley and Condillac—it took a more radical path than its British counterpart, it seems that ultimately this radical approach proved untenable. Quite simply, the politicians and thinkers left picking up the pieces after 1792 sought, in part, to repair the bloodied reputation of the Enlightenment. In this endeavor, they were drawn not to Helvétius’ radical reading of Locke nor yet D’Holbach’s atheism, but rather to the moderate thought of the Abbé de Condillac. As I will demonstrate, this return to moderation calls into question the assessment of the French Enlightenment as unrepentantly radical and further problematizes narratives of nineteenth-century philosophy as

With the above in mind, the course of the chapter becomes clear. Picking up at the moment of Condillac’s death, it begins with the controversy surrounding a controversial obituary, which provides insight into the terms in which the revolutionary generation would consider Condillac. Perhaps most significant in this new generation of thinkers was the Abbé Sieyès, author of the Revolution’s most famous pamphlet, “Qu'est- ce que le tiers-état?” and one of the most significant theorists of the French Revolution’s early years. Sieyès early writings show him to be a committed, if critical, follower of

Condillac and an important translator of Condillac’s ancien régime works for the early

Revolutionary era. Without wading into the quagmire that is the scholarship on the

205 ! ! relationship between Enlightenment and Revolution, it will become easily evident that

Condillac’s metaphysical ponderings lost much of their potency in the demanding reality of 1789-1792. In the aftermath of the Terror, however, Condillac’s writings not only resurfaced but climbed to great heights as they provided the foundation for the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences at the newly founded Institute of France, of which Sieyès would become just one of a number of significant Condiliacean members. So associated did Condillac become with the idéologues (as these nouveau-sensationists called themselves), that his philosophy came under attack with renewed frequency in the early nineteenth century from those wishing to undermine this new movement. Facing their stiffest competitors in the new French devotees of Kant, the idéologues utilized

Condillacian theories to combat Kant’s apparent resurrection of so-called “innate ideas”.

Where, then, did this leave the immaterial soul? Certainly, as a concept, the immaterial soul became less of a concern for many French thinkers after the revolution.

While the earlier analyses of Condillac, such as Charles Bonnet’s in Geneva, seemed much concerned with the location and nature of the soul, later thinkers, like the idéologues, seemed far less concerned with it or its potential religious implications. It will be clear, however, that this had less to do with an open adoption of materialism than the increasing focus among French thinkers on the outcomes rather than the causes of human behavior. While Condillac, too, had been primarily concerned in understanding the mechanism of the mind rather than of what, precisely, it was composed, the Cartesian slant of ancien régime France demanded that he address the nature of the soul or risk the

“materialist” label. With the ever-growing irrelevance of Cartesian dualism, Condillac’s

Revolutionary era followers were able to ignore the vexed question of the soul altogether.

206 ! !

Indeed, even when the reappearance of Kant on the French intellectual scene in 1802 recalled the problem of innate ideas to the fore, the debate did not really take the same form that it had fifty years previous. Nonetheless, ignoring the soul was not the same as rejecting it. Moreover, as the previous chapter’s tale of Hartley’s afterlife showed, the human soul remained very much a current concern outside of France.

“In order to diminish the glory of M. de Condillac”: Condillac’s Legacy at the Close of the Ancien Régime

There is another version of Condillac’s death. According to the earliest notice of his death published in Orleans where he lived (when not in Paris) and died, the philosopher had succumbed to a fever “prevalent in the area” where his home was located.

The second, far more interesting account of Condillac’s death by chocolate at the unwitting hand of Condorcet existed as an oral tradition until one of his earliest biographers wrote it down many decades later. Like so many such “alternative” histories, this tale reveals far more about Condillac’s life than it does about his death. The animosity between the younger Marquis de Condorcet and the elder Condillac is very visible in Condorcet’s private writings about the abbé, whom he considered to be “quiet and cold”.4 It becomes far more revealing when considered alongside the anonymous eulogy of Condillac published in the Journal de Paris in 1780. Rather than limiting himself solely to a celebration of the philosopher’s achievements, the anonymous eulogist took it upon himself to enter into a critique of Condillac’s thought and methods. This made for such a strange tribute that the Journal de Paris received at least one vehement complaint against it. After researching the correspondence of Condorcet from this same

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 4 Keith Michael Baker, Un Éloge Officieux de Condorcet : Sa Notice Historique et Critique sur Condillac, Revue de synthèse, 3e série, nos 47-48 (1967): 227-251.

207 ! ! period, Keith Baker has persuasively attributed this unusual commemoration to the

Marquis himself.

Condorcet’s dislike of Condillac had little enough to do with his interpretation of

Locke, or his ideas about the human soul. Rather, they were founded almost entirely on a later work by Condillac, La Logique, ou l’art de penser, which considered the developments of philosophical languages and the systems it supported. As a mathematician, Condorcet objected rather strongly to Condillac’s attempt to reduce complex mathematics to merely another kind of philosophical “logic”. He later wrote to a friend, “I confess that I scarcely skimmed through his Logique. The pride he shows there is so revolting. He announces there in a tone so elevated those things that everyone has known a long time, he speaks there of all the other men with such contempt that I have not had and I probably never shall have the courage to read this work well below the others which he has written”.5 Condorcet did not, however, prevent his dislike of this work from seeping into his analysis of all Condillac’s other publications, something which became very clear in his so-called “tribute”. Overall, Condorcet sought to present

Condillac as an unoriginal and largely incompetent thinker in order to relegate him to the minor leagues of French philosophy.

While Condorcet observed somewhat the usual format in his eulogy—mentioning

Condillac’s birthplace, family, and so on—he spent the most space discussing the late philosopher’s body of work. He described Condillac’s Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines as “an exposition of the ideas of Locke, and especially of his methods with new developments and some new ideas”, his Traité des Sensations as an !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 5 Condorcet to Mademoiselle Suard, October 1780 (Letter 1), Lettre autographe (Lettres et papiers de CONDORCET, Bibliothèque Nationale, Fonds. Fr., nouv. acqu. 23639, ff. 14-15) in Ibid.

208 ! ! examination of “the ideas that the mind owes to each sense in particular, and the manner in which our ideas are born of our sensations”, and finally reached the Traité des

Animaux, “the first reasonable work that has been printed on the soul of beasts”.6 Overall,

Condorcet continued, “one especially notices in these works the development of the way in which our understanding is formed by the succession of our sensations, the analysis of language, the observation of their influence on the progress of the mind, [and] finally the principle of the association of ideas by which M. l’Abbé de C. explains a part of the phenomena that the human mind offers to the small number of men who reflect on themselves”.7

So far, so good—or was it? Condorcet seemed altogether determined to damn

Condillac by faint praise, and therefore his next move was to place Condillac in the context of recent philosophical developments in the study of the human mind. “It is true,” he began,

that Bacon has recommended, a long time ago, the analysis of all our ideas as the only means to reach knowledge of the truth, that Loke [sic] has executed that which Bacon has prescribed for a great number of abstract ideas; that the absolute necessity of the invention of signs for the human mind to be able to make some progress, has been observed by all the Philosophers; that Loke has developed very well the relations of ideas with works, of languages with the operations of the mind.8

Listing all Condillac’s claims to philosophical significance, Condorcet dismantled them one by one, attributing to other men. To Condillac he left one thing only—the rejection of innate ideas: “M. l’Abbé de C. explains by the association of ideas that which had been

[previously] explained by marks on the brain, by the tablets that are supposed to be !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 6 Condorcet, “Notice Historique et Critique sur la Vie et les Écrits de Condillac” Journal de Paris, no 269 (25 septembre 1780), pp. 1089-91, in Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid.

209 ! ! engraved, a very wanton hypothesis that M. l’Abbé de C. has had the wisdom to proscribe”.9 Instead, Condorcet concluded, “he was content with the sole fact of the association of ideas that the Metaphysicians of the last century had grasped very well, and of which they have developed the consequences with much wisdom”.10 Condorcet’s

Condillac was a mere follower, riding on the coattails of the great seventeenth-century metaphysicians, with little new to offer his readers beyond recapitulation. Moreover,

Condorcet presented his readers with a version of the late abbé that would have been entirely comfortable with such a lukewarm assessment of his talents. “We do not make these observations in order to diminish the glory of M. de C”, Condorcet concluded. “He knew better than anyone that no man founds an entire Science”.11

Condorcet continued, insulting Condillac’s acceptance speech upon being received by the French Academy of the Sciences (“His discourse had little success; it did not have much of reason, [or] philosophy”), praising him for his ability to “retract [his position] when one had convinced him of an error”, and concluding with a unflattering description of Condillac’s personality as “grave, silent, and sad” and elsewhere as “quiet and cold”. 12 Reactions to such a presentation of one of the best known philosophers of the age were, as might be imagined, strong. Condorcet faced challengers to his eulogy both publically and privately, who not only disagreed with his portrayal of Condillac but also with the venue in which he had chosen to share it. Eulogies, most people seemed to feel, were not the place for too much honesty. A good friend of Condorcet, Dominique

Joseph Garat, who was to play a significant role in the Revolution to come, wrote the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid.

210 ! !

Journal de Paris to rail against the anonymous eulogy (which he had no idea his friend had written). Garat complained both as a seasoned writer of eulogies and also as an admirer of Condillac. “I applaud the wise and philosophical mind which dictated it, and the precision and the clarity manifested in this analysis of the works of the most profound

Metaphysician of this century, also the merits of the style, which seemed to me simple and noble all at once,” Garat began. But he was struck by one problem: “have you not judged, Sirs, that the praise is here dispended with too much sobriety?”.13

This was indeed the problem. Condorcet’s close friend, the salonniére Amélie

Suard, apparently suggested the same thing in a letter, to which he responded indignantly,

“I am one of the men who most esteem L’abbé de Condillac, but because I do not think that all that he said was new, or sublime, you think that I have an aversion to him”.14 But all of Condorcet’s protestations could not change the reality to which Garat and Suard had called attention. Garat explained it as jealousy and cowardice, “Would he fear, in praising the rival and perhaps the superior of Locke, as which he is worthy, would he fear to irritate hidden enemies that were made by M. l’Abbé de Condillac by his rare talents and especially by the straightforwardness of his hatred for all that seemed to him to resemble games, intrigue, and cabale?”.15 Suard implied that Condorcet was merely being petty, prompting Condorcet to respond that “The errors of which I have spoken to you about...are not trivial. ”.16 Ultimately, Condorcet defended his position only privately to Suard, writing somewhat peevishly that: “I have read the newspaper of Paris [Journal

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 13 Ibid. 14 Condorcet to Mademoiselle Suard, October 1780 (Letter 2), Lettre autographe (Papiers de CONDORCET, Bibliothèque de l'Institut de France, ms. 854, ff. 428-9) in Ibid. 15 Dominique Joseph Garat to the Editors of the Journal of Paris, Journal de Paris, no 279 (5 octobre 1780), pp. 1130-31, in Ibid. 16 Condorcet to Mademoiselle Suard, October 1780 (Letter 2), in Ibid.

211 ! ! de Paris] where M. Garat tells me my business [me dit mon affaire]. I will not respond to him... because I think I have said much good of the abbé de Condillac, and that it is also too hard to name the superior of Locke, for Loke [sic] finally made a revolution in the philosophy of the whole of Europe, and certainly abbé de Condillac has not made one”.17

No, perhaps Condillac had not launched a European-wide revolution, but neither was he the petty thinker that Condorcet stubbornly persisted in thinking him. Nevertheless,

Condorcet’s opinion became available for public consumption via the Journal de Paris obituary and with the coming of the French Revolution, the perception of Condillac as a unoriginal thinker, afraid to reach the bold new heights of Diderot or even Rousseau, only grew.

Politicizing Condillac: The Abbé Sieyès and the Rights of Man

While in England and Geneva, the nature of the human soul remained very much at the forefront of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century thought, in France more pressing concerns took precedence. Nine years after Condorcet relegated Condillac to little more than a philosophical footnote, the Marquis became swept up in the

Revolutionary movement which owed, in some part, its philosophical foundations to the work of Condillac and others on the human mind. At the center of the storm, from the turbulent debate over the meeting of the Estates General to the overthrowing of

Robespierre’s Reign of Terror four years later, was the Abbé Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès.

Famous as a politician and the author of the iconic Revolutionary pamphlet, Qu’est-ce- que le tiers-ètat?, Sieyès nevertheless had a deep grounding in metaphysics. While

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 17 Ibid.

212 ! ! studying at the Sorbonne, Sieyès notoriously neglected his theological education in favor of the Enlightenment thought. Reading Condillac, Diderot, Helvétius, and Bonnet,

Sieyès formed his understanding of the human person from which his political thought ultimately sprang.

Evidence for the Sieyès’ reading of Condillac and stems primarily from his manuscript notes, gathered together into a Cahier métaphysique, with a first portion dating from the 1770s when Sieyès was a seminarian at Saint-Suplice, and a second then much later entry, post-Revolution—all in all some eighty pages of densely written notes reflecting on the various thinkers’ methodology and philosophy. In both sections, Sieyès’ engagement with Condillac in particular is extensive, though later entries are much concerned with the Idéology movement (whom he called the “l’école de Condillac” or

“the Condillac school”) which sprang from Condillac’s thought. While it seems most prudent to examine Sieyès’ response to the Idéologues later, his writings in the 1770s provide plenty of insight into early thoughts about the body, sensationalism, and metaphysics. The primary targets of Sieyès’ early examination were Condillac’s Traité des Sensations and Bonnet’s Essai analytique which, as we have just seen, owed its foundation to Condillac’s earlier thought.

While for the most part, Western considerations of the soul happened in a primarily religious context, in the final decades of the eighteenth century this began to change. New interest in the individual not only as a religious but also a political entity shifted concerns about the soul as well—the current life took precedence over the afterlife. Political philosophers like Sieyès may not have been interested in the immortality of the soul, but they were definitely interested in the character of that soul

213 ! ! and its development and operations within society. For this reason, the sensationalist and materialist thinkers of the mid century were invaluable to later political thinkers.

Contrary to what their enemies often claimed, those on the sensationist spectrum—from

Condillac to d’Holbach—often utilized their new emphasis on the physical environment to enhance the place of the individual in society.

Whilst their opponents busily demonstrated how they were making man nothing more than a highly-developed animal, sensationalists and materialists were attempting to use this “reduction” to suggest the importance physical environment for the development of moral and responsible individuals and, more radically, their fundamental equality.

D’Holbach, for instance, cited the work of physicians and anatomists who studied the human body for, “their discoveries teach moralists of the real causes that may affect the actions of men; to legislators [they teach] the motives which they should put to use to excite them to work for the general wellness of society”.18 Legislators were obligated, according to this rationale, to create social harmony through greater equality. Even

Condillac himself got into the act, writing in his 1776 treatise Le commerce et le gouvernment considérés relativement l’un à l’autre that common interests, enhanced by greater quality, were essential for social harmony: “All classes, each occupied by their needs, contribute to the environment to increase the mass of wealth, or the abundance of things which have a value. ...Thus all citizens are, each in accordance with his work, co- owners of the riches of society, and this is just, since each, in accordance with his work,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 18 Quoted in Reinhard Bach, Rousseau et la Discours de la Revolution, au Piège des Mots: les Physiocrates, Sieyès, les Idéologues, (Uzès, France: Inclinaison, c2011): 130.

214 ! ! contributes to its products”.19 Sensationalism and materialism were readily applicable to social and political problems; they only required the right mind to implement them.

The sensationalist legacy found that ready and able mind in Sieyès. It became a lifelong goal of the abbé to step beyond the empirical understanding of the human mind to craft the science of society, which would enable politicians to influence their constituents to become virtuous and dedicated citizens. His first steps toward that goal are already apparent in his interpretation of both Condillac and Bonnet. Writing over fifty pages of dense notes on both thinkers while still in his late twenties, Sieyès revealed the contours of his own political thought that would be later developed in his revolutionary works. Though Sieyès was far from satisfied with the sensationalism manifested in these two treatises, or with the device of the statue that each employed, the overall tenor of his notes seem to one of great intellectual engagement and indicate the value he saw in the flawed approach of Bonnet and especially Condillac.

After pages and pages of detailed engagement with the device of statue as employed by both thinkers, Sieyès offered his overall assessment of the “statuaires métaphysiciens”. “When Messieurs Condillac and Bonnet proposed to animate by degrees a human statue, their design was undoubtedly to discover the order in which we receive knowledge. It is very evident that they were obliged to choose an arbitrary development,” Sieyès concluded.20 Already it is apparent that more than the goal of understanding how knowledge reaches the brain, of which Sieyès approved, he took issue with the “thought experiment” which both of the mid-century thinkers had employed to

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 19 Quoted in Ibid., 138. 20 Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, “Le Grand Cahier Métaphysique” in Des Manuscrits de Sieyès, 1773- 1799, ed. Christine Fauré, (Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 1999): 139

215 ! ! achieve this goal. Though he applauded the desire to “strongly refute those who believe that man does not acquire his ideas one by one, but is in an instance assailed by al the senses”, Sieyès concluded ultimately there could not possibly be one universal order in which this occurred: “Whatever indeed the order in which the mind is formed, this order varies for each individual.”. 21 It seems worth mentioning, however, that the young

Sieyès may have misunderstood the intentions of Condillac, if not Bonnet as well—

Condillac’s exercise with the statue was not to determine the order in which the human mind gains knowledge from the physical world, but rather to establish that it happens and to explore the sorts of knowledge received from each of the five senses. “The interesting

[thing],” he wrote, “is to distinguish our true knowledge, [and] to know precisely what it is, so that we know to what we hold and [so] that we can safely reject an infinity of nonsense which possesses and torments our soul”.22 In order to reach this point, Sieyès concluded, “it is sufficient for me that I place myself at the door of my soul at the moment when I want such and such a sensation to enter; moreover, the instant that I choose is unimportant”.23 He recommended a rather Cartesian approach: “I conclude that instead of observing the statue, M. Bonnet instead observes himself”. 24 The point, therefore, remains the same—Sieyès accepted wholeheartedly the physical origins of human knowledge, despite quibbling over approach and methodology.

Further supporting this conclusion is Sieyès’ evident reluctance or perhaps mere disinterest in the question of the nature of human consciousness or the mind, manifested in a serious neglect of this important mid-century topic in his notes. While he noted in his !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid., 140

216 ! ! critique of the statuaires métaphysiciens that the statue’s experience of sensations could by no means considered universal, because “Men of all forms exposed to the same sensation receive impressions very different in proportion to their knowledge, the passions which divide their soul”, Sieyès seemed unwilling to enter at any point into what accounted for this.25 Furthermore, he only approached the issue of the soul indirectly, and discussed it in conjunction with his reading of Bonnet’s argument that the soul was a

“simple” and immaterial substance, which gave rise to the sense of moi. Sieyès argued that it was pointless to waste time thinking about the means through which the individual experienced sensation (i.e. the mind) since “the means [to discover this] are not in his power”.26 Sieyès wrote further that,

When I state this unique fact, the limit of knowledge, I would be tempted to ask myself: but what is the cause of this fact[?], and right away, it assails me with religious ideas. The only response to this is to stop [asking] these questions. Why a cause? If I could not reach secondary sensations or the perception of them, I could only feel and I would not demand [to know] what is the cause of my sensations. This question only begins when one has a glimpse of a constant association between such and such combination, but this association is not a cause.27

In a fascinating blend of the Cartesian “I think therefore I am” with the empiricists reluctance to comment on causes, Sieyès neatly removed the question of the soul as the ultimate cause of human consciousness—immaterial or otherwise—from his consideration.

To reinforce his point, Sieyès concluded his meditation on Condillac’s Traité thusly: “Our knowledge only consists in judgments awakened by the action of the senses on the one hand, and the reaction of the brain on the other. The brain is the central point. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 25 Ibid., 139-140 26 Ibid., 105 27 Ibid., 106

217 ! !

But in minding that a superior faculty still exists which observes and judges and has consciousness of the operations in the brain”.28 Sieyès explanation of what this “superior faculty” might be is revealing; where Condillac, Hartley, and all the thinkers of their generation would have confidently defined this as the soul, Sieyès turned instead to yet another physical cause. “I should not be amazed,” he wrote, “that it should trace back to the cerebellum, the last of our faculties. Arriving there, I feel that in listening closely to myself that if I wanted to examine and subsequently render myself aware of what happens, I am ready to fall into a sort of intellectual dizziness. This is apparently the last center [of consciousness]”.29 From here on out, these reflections seem to declare, the budding social scientist would concentrate solely on human behavior and learning, not on their origin point in the soul/mind, which may or may not reside in part of the brain.

Significantly, however, Sieyès more or less subscribed to Condillac’s attribution of all ideas to the senses. Though he quibbled with his methodology, and disliked his willingness to speculate on causes, Sieyès found in the sensationalist philosopher a firm foundation for the development of his own political thought.

Sieyès, unlike any of the other thinkers considered thus far, had the rather monumental distraction of the Revolution to keep him from writing and publishing much in the way of systematic thought. His own perfectionism seems to also have been a contributing factor: with the Revolution eating up so much of his time, he felt unable to publish what he believed were poorly edited works. Looking back on one such work begun before the Revolution and left unfinished, Sieyès muttered to himself “I had so

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 28 Ibid., 141 29 Ibid.

218 ! ! much material. Why did that detestable revolution divert me from my work!”.30 While he may have lacked the time for deep reflection (something his later exile during the

Bourbon restoration would resolve), Sieyès was provided with an opportunity most philosophers never get: the chance to help dismantle and rebuild a nation based on his own political and social philosophy. Sieyès political imagination envisioned, like so many other revolutionaries, a government which always manifested and defended the will of the people it represented. He embraced the Rousseauian ideas of the social contract and the general will. Unlike many revolutionaries, however, Sieyès’s grounding in the sensationalism of Condillac, Helvétius, and others allowed him to envision differently the potential disconnect between the general will of society and the will of the individual.

His “social science” (a term he coined) was in large part the effort to bring these two into harmony through a better understanding of how the individual acts in society. This, along with his innate political savvy, allowed him to famously remark when asked what he had done during the Terror, “J’ai vécu. [I survived]”.

Sieyès’ main contribution as a pre-revolutionary thinker was to clearly articulate the incoherence of the French system of privilege through a comparison of the contributions of the Third Estate (i.e. all non-noble, non-ordained members of society) to the French economy with the contributions of the other two estates. In doing so, he took on the notion of inherited superiority and the notion of family lineages. In his most famous work, the 1789 pamphlet Qu’est-ce-que le tiers-état?, Sieyès argued that “all lines of descent are mixed, ...the blood of the Franks [i.e. the lineage claimed by France’s oldest noble families] (hardly worth more in its pristine separateness) is indistinguishable !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 30 Michael Sonenscher, “Introduction”, in Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, Political Writings, (Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co., 2003): ix.

219 ! ! from the blood of the Gauls, and...the ancestors of the Third Estate are the fathers of the whole Nation”.31 Such a declaration, echoes of which could be found in much of the literature of the last days of the ancien régime, rang especially true in the light of the contributions of thinkers like Condillac. In the Revolutionary context, “man is only what he has acquired” became more than a denial of innate ideas, it also became a denial of innate privileges. Though the sensationalism of Condillac and Bonnet remained implicit

Sieyès’ writings and his actions as revolutionary leader, it nevertheless is clear that it impacted the young thinker early on in his career. Moreover, it seems his attachment to

Condillac never quite vanished altogether; as the heat of the Revolution cooled momentarily following the Terror and Sieyès found himself able to devote his time to the newly founded French Institute, he returned once more to Condillac in order to confront

“l’école de Condillac”—the Idéologues.

“Kings who injure society lose the right of commanding it”: From Enlightenment to Revolution, from Revolution to Terror

The question of the relationship between the enlightened philosophers of ancien régime France and the revolutionaries who toppled that same old order in 1789 is a notoriously vexed one. This is not least because nearly every major “light” of the ancien régime—from Voltaire to Diderot—had not lived to see the dawn of the Revolution. As

Jonathan Israel rightly points out, the French philosophes often seemed to desire nothing more than the overthrow of the corrupt and despotic order in which they believed they lived. D’Holbach, for instance, had written in the scandalous Système de la Nature that

“a society of which the chiefs and laws do not procure any good to its members,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 31 Sieyès, Political Writings, 99.

220 ! ! evidently loses its right over them: Those chiefs who injure Society lose the right of

Commanding them”.32 This would seem a clear enough call for revolution and, indeed, as

Keith Baker notes, “it is clear that the language of the Enlightenment, in its various forms, provided a fundamental repertory of meanings and understandings upon which revolutionary actors drew as they sought to redefine the principles of French social and political existence in 1789”.33 The Enlightenment provided a ready-made alternative vocabulary for those seeking to erase the ancien régime’s language of privilege and tradition which, as Baker also notes, had proven “no longer compelling or adequate to resolve fundamental contradictions evident within the political and social order”.34

Despite these claims, for those philosophes who did live to see 1789 and beyond the reality of revolution proved to be too much for many of them—wealthy aristocrats, and thus innately invested in both privilege and tradition—to handle. Indeed, as Alan

Kors demonstrates, many of the most faithful members of the Baron d’Holbach’s notoriously atheistic and radical salon began to disassociate themselves from the

Revolution early in the process. Raynal for instance, who had formerly collaborated with

Diderot in the clandestine publication of the radical Histoire philosophique des deux

Indes, wrote a letter supporting the monarchy to the Estates General in 1789 and another, still more virulent, to the National Assembly 1791. The Revolution, he chastised the revolutionaries, was out of control; anarchy reigned throughout the country, and

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 32 Paul Henri Thiry d’Holbach, The system of nature: or, The laws of the moral and physical world, trans. William Hodgson, (London: Hodgson, 1795): 248 33 Keith Michael Baker in From Deficit to Deluge: The Origins of the French Revolution, ed. Thomas E. Kaiser and Dale K. Van Kley, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010): 178 34 Ibid., 179

221 ! ! individual liberty was sacrificed to political interests.35 The revolutionaries reacted predictably—heaping scorn and derision on the once-revered name of Raynal, and revealing the chasm between philosophical cries for liberty and their far bloodier revolutionary cousins. To put it in Baker-esque terms, the Revolution became the battleground for competing definitions of Enlightenment; and the revolutionaries often found themselves in direct contention with the Enlightenment thinkers whose works they sought to interpret and deploy in their ambitious attempt to remake France.

Thus, if the philosophes themselves were largely unenthusiastic about the direction of the Revolution, the Revolution itself began to revise the history of the

Enlightenment. Rousseau, by consequence, was pushed ever more to the forefront by the

Jacobins in the events leading to the Terror. Whether, as Jonathan Israel argues, the revolutionary version of Rousseau contrasted starkly with the man himself is largely irrelevant in this particular context. His claim that most revolutionaries secretly rejected

Rousseau and publicly supported him only out of fear of losing popular support is still more so.36 The Rousseauian individual was originally, and remained in the

Revolutionary era, one governed by his emotions and passions. The Rousseauian concept of the “general will” was originally, and remained, the indivisible and undiluted expression of the French people. Between these two ultimately dangerous concepts, there was little room for Sieyès’ vision of a “social science” which could study and potentially alter the manner in which individuals acted in society. As the optimism of 1789-1790 gave way to the paranoid days of the Terror, it became nearly impossible to imagine that

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 35 Jonathan Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750- 1790, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011): 934-936 36 Ibid., 640-647

222 ! ! the individual could act independently and in his or her own best interests in society—to do so was to risk a betrayal of the Revolution and the general will. In such an environment, it is little wonder that Condillac’s vision of the human mind appeared little more than an irrelevant relic of the ancien régime.

Though Jonathan Israel insists that the radical Enlightenment of Helvétius, d’Holbach, and Diderot was equally betrayed by the Terror, it seems that their particular brand of irreligion was irreparably damaged by the Terror’s excesses as well. Though both the atheism which led to the slaughter of more than 200 priests in the September

Massacres of 1792 as well as Robespierre’s particular brand of deism which gave rise to the Cult of the Supreme Being shortly afterward was clearly unrelated to the

“philosophical atheism” of Helvétius and company, both extremes nevertheless to expose the flaws in the radical Enlightenment’s vision. The new popular atheism was adopted apparently with no more deep reflection than any of the most “superstitious” beliefs of the ancien régime. Moreover, as Jacques-Andrés Naigeon (himself an atheist an associate of Diderot and d’Holbach) pointed out at the height of the Terror, the deism of

Robespierre’s cult was the “most intolerant” of “all religious opinions” for “the deist, once attacked, ... in this last asylum of the religious man, has nowhere to rest his head. ...He thus must hate, persecute, [and] even exterminate, if he can, ...the enemy of the god of which he was the inventor”.37 Therefore, by the time the more moderate revolutionaries, led by Sieyès and his new ally Napoleon Bonaparte, had reestablished control of the Revolution with the final massacre of 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794), the most radical expressions of the Enlightenment appeared thoroughly discredited. It would !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 37 Quoted in Alan Kors, D’Holbach’s Coterie: An Enlightenment in Paris, (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1976): 287.

223 ! ! be left to the philosophers of the Directory—the Idéologues—era to attempt to restore in some fashion the tarnished legacy of France’s once-lauded Age of Reason.

“Condillac is King of the New Academy” Idéology and Sensationalism After the Terror

In the era surrounding the Revolution, the idéologues arose to claim the title of intellectual heirs to French sensationalism, and owed much of their terminology to Locke,

Helvétius, and especially Condillac. In the most general terms, their goal was very similar to that of Sieyès: to use the association of ideas to inculcate citizens of the French

Republic and Empire with the values and virtues deemed essential. Ideology found its historical moment in the renewed dedication to moderation following the end of the

Terror and the Thermidorian Reaction. The Rousseauian positions of the early

Revolution now discredited by the chaos and excesses of the Terror, those looking to restore legitimacy to the mid-century Enlightenment turned instead to Condillac. Not only did sensationalism manage to become the tacitly official philosophical position of the Directory, Ideology also supported the Directory’s moderate republican approach in turn. In specific terms, this close relationship to the government allowed the leading

Idéologues to suggest reforms according to a restructured plan to remake society and

French citizens based on Condillacian principles. Several key thinkers would take the lead in remaking and interpreting Condillac’s Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines and the Traité des Sensations for the revolutionary era, most importantly

Destutt de Tracy and Pierre Jean George Cabanis.

Born the same year that Condillac published the Traité des Sensations, Destutt de

Tracy was a French nobleman and officer in the French army. George Cabanis was born

224 ! ! three years later, and pursued a career in medicine. Both men were frequent attendees of one the longest running and most pre-eminent salons in Paris, hosted by Helvétius and his wife. After Helvétius’ death in 1771, his widow took up primary residence in their home in Auteuil but continued to host a salon there until her death in 1800. The importance of the Helvétius salon for the formation of the ideologique movement must unfortunately only be speculated upon—though nearly all the major Idéologues attended the salon regularly, there are next to no documents concerning their subjects of conversation there.

This was perhaps a sensible precaution during the Reign of Terror, when six of the salon’s members were imprisoned. We do know, however, that both Helvétius and his wife were acquainted with Condillac, who had himself been an attendee of the salon in earlier years. Helvétius’ own enthusiasm for Lockean sensationalism was made abundantly clear by the De l’Esprit affair years before. Both Tracy and Cabanis would make many important philosophical connections in Auteuil, among them d’Holbach,

Thomas Jefferson, Condillac, Diderot and d’Alembert. Moreover, so close did Cabanis become to Madame Helvétius that she later adopted him as her son and heir.

In the wake of the Terror, the circle at Auteuil began publically calling for the reinvention of philosophy in the mode of Condillac as the antidote to Robespierre’s

Rousseauian religious fervor. An idéologique newspaper sprang up in 1794 in order to promote sensationalist methods as the only way “we can be sure of penetrating the

Sanctuary of Science”.38 The Idéologues reached institutional heights in late 1795, when the Directory authorized the creation of the National Institute of Arts and Sciences. In the Academy of the Sciences, a Class of Moral and Political Sciences was established, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 38 Quoted in Emmett Kennedy, Destutt de Tracy and the Origins of "Ideology" : A Philosophe in the Age of Revolution, (Philadelphia : American Philosophical Society, 1978): 40

225 ! ! thus confirming the important role envisioned for Enlightenment philosophy at the new

Institute.39 Among the most important of the subdivisions of this Class was the Section of the Analysis of Sensations and Ideas. So incredibly Condillacian was this Class (as should be plenty evident from its title), that its earliest historian, writing in 1885, noted that “if Voltaire and Condillac had lived, it is Condillac who would have been king of the new academy”.40 On April 4, 1796, the president of the Institute gave its inaugural address to the Directors and an audience of 1,500. He argued that the Revolution had enabled philosophy to penetrate to new depths, and had revealed clearly the strengths and weaknesses of human nature. “Moral traits are magnified, man’s faculties appear more conspicuously,” he pronounced, “It is then that philosophy, faced more than ever by man’s moral nature, can pursue its analysis, recreate its theory, and learn from this spectacle of upheavals and destruction”.41

Others, including Tracy and Cabanis, echoed the president’s call for the practical application of sensationist philosophy. Two weeks after the inaugural address, Tracy arrived at the Louvre from Auteuil in order to address the Class of Moral and Political

Sciences: “I am deeply persuaded that the speculative sciences are mainly recommended by their applications,” he told his audience, “for, in the last analysis, what is the end of all research, if it is not utility?”42 This statement alone distinguished the Idéologues from their midcentury counterparts. Condillac, Hartley, Bonnet, and others had engaged primarily in the study of the human mind for its own sake, only later applying it to

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 39 Ibid., 42 40 Jules Simon, Une académie sous le Directoire, (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1885): 55 41 Quoted in Kennedy, Destutt de Tracy, 44. 42 Quoted in original French in B.J. Garnham, The Intellectual Background of the French Revolution: Original Texts of Les Idéologues, 1789-1825 with an Interpretive Commentary, (Queenston, ON: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2007): 64

226 ! ! education and other more practical ends. For Tracy, Cabanis, and the other Idéologues, however, practicality was, from the outset, the primary goal. Tracy continued that such practicality could only benefit the Institute: “Nothing is more capable of honoring, in the eyes of the nation, the second class of the Institute, and to render palpable to the more ignorant the advantages which they could reap by watching the savants”.43 The best means of achieving this, Tracy argued, was through the study of the human mind and human society: “it is especially worthy to establish a theory of moral and political science, which has languished until the present in a fatal uncertainty”.44 Furthermore, “it is... principally in strengthening the moral sciences on a stable and certain foundation that you will answer the expectations that enlightened Europe conceives of the first learned body which deals with these matters with some freedom”.45 The eyes of Europe were on

Revolutionary France, Tracy argued, and it was only through returning to Condillacian sensationalism and using it to create a new science of man that the Institute could hope to rise to meet the challenge of the new age. Specifically, Tracy found the applicability of

Ideology in communication and education:

Undoubtedly, no one will deny that the knowledge of the generation of our ideas is the foundation of the art of communicating these ideas, grammar; that of combining these same ideas and in coming up with new truths, logic; that of teaching and spreading established truths, instruction; that of forming the habits of men, education; of the most important art of assessing and regulating our desires, morality; and finally the greatest of all arts, the success of which must coordinate all the others, that of regulating society in such a fashion that man finds there the most relief and the least discomfort possible from his fellows.46

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid., 65

227 ! !

Tracy was confident that all this could be accomplished through a better grasp of the association of ideas, which he believed were “subject to the same degree of certainty as those of the mathematical sciences”.47

The end goal of the idéologique movement was admirably summed up in a speech given during the presentation on the works of Condillac before the Council of Elders in

1799. Dominique Joseph Garat, member of the Auteuil circle (and passionate defender of Condillac against Condorcet’s notorious eulogy), declared to his audience that “the

Revolution began when the wisdom of the philosophes became the wisdom of the legislators; the Revolution will not be complete until the wisdom of the legislators becomes that of the people”.48 Essentially, Garat argued for the implementation of a universal system of public education. Though the Directory is frequently given credit for the implementation of just such a policy, the reality is a bit more complicated. The

Directory actually removed state support for French primary schools, focusing instead on establishing the secondary écoles centrales which educated children from the age of twelve until sixteen. Though a few Idéologues, particularly Tracy, supported this approach (Tracy doubted the capability of the “masses” to be fully educated), the majority of the movement, including Cabanis, supported state-sponsored education of all people as a means of social engineering and social control. It was here, Cabanis and most

Idéologues were convinced, that Condillacian methods could be applied to greatest effect; by using the association of ideas and sensationalism to raise good citizens from an early age, France might yet produce the harmonious and perfect society envisioned by the

Revolution. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 47 Ibid. 48 Quoted in Kennedy, Destutt de Tracy, 71.

228 ! !

That Tracy, Cabanis, and their followers viewed Condillac as their master in this ambitious project is abundantly evident. In the foundational text of the movement,

Tracy’s Elemens d’Ideologie (1804), Tracy clearly states his intention to resurrect the thought of Condillac (and through him, Locke) and organize it to better instruct young thinkers on the workings of the human mind. He wrote disdainfully of the metaphysicians who had tackled this subject before Locke: “It is not that before him no one had made many assumptions on this subject, the nature of the soul was even dogmatized with great boldness; but this was always in view, not of discovering the source of our knowledge, its certitude and its limits, but of determining the principal and the end of all things, of divining the origin and the destination of the world”.49 Such an improper focus, Tracy argued, was in strong contrast to Locke himself, who had “tried to observe and describe human intelligence, as one observes and describes a property of a mineral, or of a vegetable, or a remarkable circumstance in the life of an animal: he also made this study part of the Physical [world]”.50 Tracy made his dislike of metaphysical systems clear: “we include them in a number of the arts of imagination destined to satisfy us, and none to instruct us”.51 Moreover, it was Condillac that Tracy credited with doing the most to advance Locke’s principles and Tracy claimed him as the father of Ideology.52

Later, he wrote that, “Before Condillac, we had barely, on the operations of the human mind, sparse observations [which were] more or less faulty: first he has reunited them

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 49 Destutt de Tracy, EdI, xvi. 50 Destutt de Tracy, Élémens d'idéologie: Idéologie proprement dite, 3rd edition, (Paris: Courcier, 1817): xv. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid., xvi.

229 ! ! and has created a body of doctrine; thus it is only after him that idéologie is truly a science.

The purpose of Tracy’s Elemens d’Ideologie, he claimed, was not to advance any new principles or ideas, but merely better organize the thought of his master Condillac.

The one serious flaw Tracy saw in Condillac’s works was that they were “like detached pieces” and nowhere had Condillac provided “a body of complete doctrine which could serve as [the] text of the lessons of a course” on his thought. He wrote elsewhere that

Condillac “would have advanced them [observations on the human mind[ much more, if, instead of disseminating his principles in many works, he had reassembled them in a single treatise which contained his system in its entirety”.53 Tracy did not blame

Condillac for this gap, but instead attributed it to his “premature death” which had

“prevented this important service to human reason”.54 Moreover, the lack of this masterwork did not seriously diminish Condillac’s legacy, in Tracy’s estimation, as the

“guide most generally followed by all the great minds of our day” or take away “the honor of having powerfully contributed” to the works of these great thinkers. 55

Nevertheless, Tracy declared that he intended to fill this hole, in order to better instruct interested readers about the elements of Idéologique thought present in Condillac’s major works: “I propose to supplement it [Condillac’s thought]. I have attempted to make an exact and detailed descriptions of our intellectual faculties, of their principle phenomena, and their most remarkable circumstances, essentially of the true elements of Ideology”.56

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 53 Ibid., 214-215, fn 54 Ibid., 215, fn 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid., xvii

230 ! !

Tracy did, however, make an important alteration to Condillac’s theory of the nature of ideas themselves. Recall that Condillac himself had altered Locke’s argument that ideas came from sensation and reflection, and reduced the origin of ideas to sensation alone. Tracy sought to do something similar to the power to judge, deliberate, and choose among ideas, all of which Condillac had defined as powers of the soul. Tracy rejected this, arguing that “the manner in which Condillac has broken down our intelligence is faulty [vicieuse]; and... the more one reflects, the more one will be convinced that the thought of man never consists but in feeling sensations, memories, judgments and desires”.57 Condillac, Tracy contended, had actually hit upon this truth, but had unfortunately obscured it with unnecessary complications. “The grand idéologiste whose ideas I dare to combat here [Condillac], has the eminent merit of having first recognized what it is to think,” Tracy began.

He said in twenty places, and specifically in those which I would cite: The faculties of the soul are born successively from sensation. There is only sensation that transforms itself to become each of them. All the operations of the soul are only the same sensation which is differently transformed, etc. ... Assuredly this is to say, not only like Locke, that all our ideas come from the senses, but again that they are only sensations of a different species. However this is not completely right, and often the subsequent explanations obscure again those rays of light.58

Thus, Condillac had revealed a great truth but, in Tracy’s estimation, had unwittingly obscured it with unnecessary addendums and complications. Tracy sought to correct

Condillac by clearing away the philosophical weeds surrounding the nature of the human mind. “I would therefore better like [if] he said: Sensing is a phenomenon of our organization, whatever has been the cause; and thinking is nothing but sensing”.59 Tracy

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 57 Ibid., 223-224 58 Ibid., 224 59 Ibid., 225

231 ! ! argued that the mind was nothing more than another sense organ, and that thought was nothing more than another kind of sense. He continued to clarify his point: “That which we call faculty of thinking, the mind, is nothing other than the faculty of sensing, sensitivity taken in the most extended sense. All our ideas, all our perceptions are things that we sense, that is to say sensations, to which we give different names, following their different effects and their different characters”.60 It hardly needs to be said that such an understanding left little room for an immaterial soul, and tied the mind ever closer to the sensory input on which its ideas were based. All this, Tracy traced back to the master of

Ideology, the abbé de Condillac.

Moreover, Tracy was certain that had Condillac been presented with this

“clarification” his thought, he would have been persuaded to adopt it himself. “I am persuaded that if he had written his proper principle under the form which I have given him, that excellent mind which made him remove both false and vague ideas, would have necessarily led him to no longer recognize in thought all the interfering operations which he had before admitted”.61 But Tracy, in his rush to claim Condillac as an idéologue, failed to account for the different priorities which had led Condillac to conceive of the mind in the manner that he did. As a priest living in ancien régime France, Condillac had not only been concerned with reducing the operations of the human mind to the simplest possible formula, but also with maintaining the mind as a separate, and special, faculty of the body. In short, Condillac was concerned about the soul. Tracy was apparently not, making it nearly impossible for him to comprehend the elder thinker’s preoccupation with the idea that thought must be more than mere sensation. It seems unlikely, therefore, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid., 226

232 ! ! that Condillac would have accepted Tracy’s suggested “elucidation” of his original idea: in 1754 it would have sounded just like materialism.

Along with Tracy, Cabanis also not only remained loyal to the empirical tradition established by Locke and Condillac, but also perceived ideology as the true heir to the

Enlightenment, defined as the reunion of the science of the mind and the science of the body. While Tracy attempted, in the Elémens d’Idéologie, to provide a systematization of

Condillac’s thought, Cabanis sought to provide a better physiological grounding for

Condillac’s theory. Much like Tracy, Cabanis had little patience for attempts to understand the human mind and establish a “moral science” before Locke. In his

Rapports du Physique et du Moral de l’Homme (1802), Cabanis wrote that

Since it was judged appropriate to draw a line of separation between the study of the physical man and that of the moral man, the principles relevant to this latter study are found necessarily obscured by vague metaphysical hypotheses. There indeed remained, in effect, after the introduction of these hypotheses to the study of the moral sciences, no solid base, no fixed point which one could link the results of observation and experience. ... This was, before Locke appeared, the state of the moral sciences; this is the reproach which one could make with some foundation, before a surer philosophy had found the first source of all the marvels which present the intellectual and moral world, in the same laws, or in the same properties which determine the vital movements.62

Cabanis would go on to Condillac as the founder of the Idéologique movement, just as

Tracy had.

Cabanis argued that while Locke was the one who first revealed the “fundamental axiom: That all the ideas come by the senses, or are the product of sensations”, it had been Condillac who “developed, understood, perfected it: he demonstrates the truth by all new analysis, very profound and very capable of directing his application”.63 Cabanis

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 62 J.G. Cabanis, Rapports Du Physique Et Du Moral De L'Homme, (Paris, 1824): ix-x 63 Ibid., xi

233 ! ! went on to discuss how the many disciples of Condillac, including Tracy, “in cultivating different branches of human knowledge, have further improved it, some have even corrected it, in many points, his portrayal of the process of the understanding”.64 For

Cabanis, the primary contribution of theses thinkers had been, as Tracy hoped, to systematize Condillac’s thought and then work to apply it to different types of knowledge.

Since Condillac’s important contribution, Cabanis concluded, the analysis of the human mind had “progressed by practical routes, perfectly sure”.65

Where, then, did Cabanis see his own contribution to Condillac’s work? He wrote that, although Condillac had opened up many new realms of analysis for his disciples, “certain questions, that one could regard as primary in the study of the understanding, are always presented in obscure pieces”.66 Cabanis proposed that the remedy to this obscurity was to examine the operations of the mind using the same experimental methodology that physicians and scientists used to study the human body.

He argued that, as it was impossible to determine accurately the relationship between the

“different physical and moral states”, it would be a better approach to merge “the operations of the intelligence and the will..., in their origin, with the other vital movements [of the body]”.67 By classifying desire, thought, and other mental acts with physical actions, Cabanis continued, would place the study of the human mind on a much firmer foundation:

The principle of the moral sciences...will return to the domain of the physical; they would be no more than a branch of the natural history of man: the art to confirming observations, of attempting experiments, and in drawing all the certain !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid., xii 67 Ibid., xv

234 ! !

results that they can supply, would not differ in any way from those generally employed with the greatest integrity and the most justified confidence, in the practical sciences of which the truth is less contested: the fundamental principles of the one and the other would be equally solid; they would be formed equally by serious study and by the arrangement of facts; they would grow and improve themselves by the same methods of reasoning.68

In essence, Cabanis brought to their natural conclusion the implications of Condillac’s thought: if all ideas came from the senses, and therefore the act of thinking was, in some sense, a physical one (or at least could not be completely separated from its physical origins), than why continue to isolate the human mind as a distinct area of study, with a separate methodology? Cabanis further separated himself and this proposed science from what he perceived to be the taint of metaphysics. He accused prior thinkers of crafting

“vague hypotheses hazarded for the explanation of certain phenomena which appear, to the first glance, strangers to the physical order”.69 Such metaphysical musings “could not fail to give these sciences a character of uncertainty; and one should not be surprised that their very existence, as a body of doctrine, has been called into doubt by other judicious minds”.70 Cabanis presented himself and his essay as the primary means of restoring the science of the mind “to [its] true place” alongside the physical sciences.

This did not, however, mean that Cabanis was willing to take on the title of

“materialist”. In fact, he attempted to separate completely his work from any kind of consideration of the ultimate nature of the human mind. Proving himself to be a better empiricist than Condillac (who, remember, could not avoid drawing some “logical” conclusions regarding the immortality of the soul, among other things), Cabanis simply declared that his work was only to demonstrate how the science of the mind could benefit !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid.

235 ! ! from borrowing some of the methodology of the physical sciences. Nevertheless,

Cabanis continued, “some persons have seemed to fear, they assure me, that this work has the intention, or the effect, of reversing certain doctrines, and in establishing others relative to the nature of first causes, but this cannot be, and even with reflection and good faith, it is not possible to seriously think this”.71 What this very roundabout explanation meant, essentially, was that Cabanis feared the accusation that by categorizing the science of the mind among the other physical sciences he would be taken for a materialist or even an atheist, because he effectively challenged “the nature of first causes”. Cabanis claimed that “the reader will find, in the course of the work, that we regard these causes as placed outside the sphere of our researches, and as shielded forever, from the means of investigations that man has received with life”.72 Essentially, Cabanis argued that considering the nature of the human mind was above his pay grade and better left to other, more ambitious thinkers.

In conclusion, Cabanis wished to make a “formal declaration” of his own ignorance of these subjects: “[If] there were something yet to say on these questions, which are never raised with impunity, nothing would be simpler than to prove that they can be neither an object of examination, nor even a subject of doubt, and that the most invincible ignorance is the only result of that which guides us to regard [their pursuit as] the wise use of reason”.73 He continued:

We will leave to more confident minds, or if you like, more clear [ones], the care of researching, by routes we recognize as impracticable for us, what is the nature of the principle which animates the living body: for we regard the manifestation of the phenomena which distinguishes it from other active forces of nature, or the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 71 Ibid., xxvi-ii 72 Ibid., xvii 73 Ibid.

236 ! !

circumstances under which these phenomena occur, as confounded, in some way, with the first causes, or as immediately subject to the laws which preside over their action.74

Far from Condillac’s assurances of the existence of the human soul, far from Bonnet’s confident assertions that such a soul must be immaterial, Cabanis declared himself agnostic on the question. “You will not find here what has been called for a long time metaphysics,” Cabanis declared, “this [work] will be simply researches of physiology”.75

Most significantly, though, he declared it utterly irrelevant to the study of the human mind. The beginnings of a shift in the terms of thinking about human nature are evident in Cabanis’ declaration. Rather than thinking about the soul in terms of its materiality or immateriality, nineteenth-century physicians like Cabanis moved in the direction of a

“vitalist” conception of matter, which rejected dualism and saw matter/spirit on the same continuum and crucially interrelated.76 Moreover, playing the central role in this new mode of thinking were the Idéologues or, as Sieyès called them, the école de Condillac.

“Strangers to Passion”: Reactions to Ideology and Hartley’s Return to France

The very visible resurrection of Condillac at the hands of the Idéologues did not occur uncontested, however. Sieyès, who had survived the harrowing days of the Terror to help facilitate the overthrow of Robespierre and the establishment of the Directory, was very familiar with the Idéologues and their methods. Sometimes, he is even classified as one of them. But though Sieyès was, as we have seen, very much influenced by the sensationist philosophy of Condillac, he read his works with a far more critical eye !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid. 76 For more on this shift, see, John P. Wright & Paul Potter, ed., Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment (New York : Oxford University Press, 2000)

237 ! ! than many of his contemporaries. His notes and analysis on both Condillac and Tracy, dating from the early nineteenth century, reveal the mature Sieyès’ overarching resistance to the reduction of human behavior to a science as well as a desire to reestablish instinct, passion, and even some innate knowledge in the catalogue of human motivations.

Writing his private response to the works of Destutt de Tracy, Sieyès criticized what he saw as the overly political nature of the Idéologique movement. “The school of

Condillac resembles the gentlemen of the world who are directed by politics and ‘those

[people]’ do not believe in acts without motives”, he wrote.77 Because their own behavior was always so calculated, Sieyès implied, the Idéologues were incapable of imagining that human behavior was ever otherwise motivated. “Though most human actions only have for a principle a sort of mechanical impulsion, an instinct independent of judgment, they want to see in them a calculation of the head. Similarly the new metaphysicians [i.e. the Idéologues] only see judgments more or less quick in our affections and in the action of instinct”.78 In some ways, Sieyès’ notes revealed the tension he saw between the cold, calculated actions of the head, and the more impulsive, heated actions of the passions. He continued, saying that “our affections are not a calculation of the head. They are strangers to judgment. The passionate man, because

[he is] passionate does not reason, does not see, does not judge. At the moment when he feels, he would be beyond the state of rendering an account of his passion”.79 It is difficult to argue this point with an aging Revolutionary, a man who had certainly witnessed plenty of violent acts by impassioned men.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 77 Sieyès, in Des Manuscrits, 60 (MS 146) 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid.

238 ! !

Sieyès also made the case for the reintroduction of interior, if not innate, knowledge to calculations of the human understanding. While Condillac and his followers had placed the origin of knowledge entirely in the external world, Sieyès had his doubts. He could not accept, he wrote, Condillac and Bonnet’s attempts to bring a statue slowly to life solely by means of external sensation. This was because, he wrote, it was impossible for a statue, starting from the now proverbial “blank slate,” to make any sort of judgment about its sensory experiences at all. “We have therefore,” Sieyès concluded, “knowledge other than our first sensations. Our intellectual operations are not merely confined ‘to the most exterior’, to the sensations arrived by the senses with this first matter”. 80 Sieyès directly challenged Condillac’s claim, that had by that point become that rallying cry of the Idéologues, that all our knowledge was only “sensation, differently transformed”. Rather, Sieyès claimed, “each operation has its particular product, its proper result. ...Sensations do not metamorphose, they do not transform to become knowledge”.81 Sieyès clearly desired to distinguish more clearly between sensory input and the ideas that resulted from it, and he concluded that only a more precise philosophical language could hope to sort out the differences between sensory input and ideas themselves.

Sieyès was not alone in his critique of the Ideology, either. In 1802, another abbé who had survived the Terror turned to none other than David Hartley a new translation of the Observations to provide and in-depth critique of this new form of sensationalism.

Strikingly, the cover page of this new translation, De l’Homme, de ses Facultés

Physiques et Intellectuelles, de ses Devoirs, et de ses Espérances, no longer bore the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 80 Ibid., 165 81 Ibid., 165

239 ! ! once-coveted distinction of the privilege of the king, and instead proudly proclaimed a publication date of dixième année, marking the tenth year since 1792 when the revolutionaries had boldly begun time anew in order to cleanse France of its Christian and monarchical past.

Hartley’s second translator was Roch-Ambroise Cucurron Sicard, abbé and director of the Institution for Deaf-Mutes, a charity school devoted to educating those born deaf or with speech impediments. Sicard had led a rather charmed life, surviving the perils of the Terror despite a brief period of imprisonment, and managing to remain the director of the Institution until his death in 1822. His innovative methods for educating the hearing and speech impaired were heavily based on Lockean associationism, and the impact of both Hartley and Condillac on his thought is clear.

Indeed, on an 1815 trip to London with several of his most improved pupils, Sicard openly owned his indebtedness to British philosophy. His students, in their addresses to

British audiences made Sicard’s connection to sensationalism and associationism even more clear when one attested that “without [Sicard] our souls would be deprived of the faculty of thinking. ... He has restored us to moral life, to a life of reason. ... It is he who drew us out of the darkness by teaching us that our souls are endowed with reason”.82

The other student affirmed this assessment, noting that “thanks to the Divine goodness, and the genius of this most excellent father, we are become men”.83 How could these two products of Sicard’s educational program have more clearly indicated the methods by which they had been taught, than to claim that, without Sicard, they should never have

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 82 J.H. Sievrac, Recueil des définitions et réponses les plus remarquables de Massieu et Clerc, sourds-muets, (London: Cox and Baylis, 1815): 111-113 83 Ibid., 113

240 ! ! been able to think or reason? Deprived of one of their most crucial senses, they had nevertheless been able to form proper associations and learn language, thanks to the assistance of Sicard’s associationist methodology.

Sicard was highly critical of the early Jurain translation of the Observations. “It seems there was, about 50 years ago,” he began his preface skeptically, “a translation of the work which we publish today”.84 Although, in his opinion, “the treaty on the faculties of Man by M. Hartley was produced, in the intellectual world [le monde savant], a sensation as grand as that which Locke’s Essay on the human understanding had caused, in the time of its first edition,” he acknowledged that Hartley had not gained nearly as a great a reputation as Locke in the years following.85 He believed that Hartley was a worthy complement to Locke, noting that “these two works are, in effect, worthy of inclusion, the one beside the other, and must lend [each other] mutual luster” and placed the failure of the Observations to achieve this status squarely on the (long deceased) shoulders of Henri Jurain: “Perhaps the fault is that of the first translation, which, in some parts, is not as faithful as it should be to the text [être], and which, in general, does not present that clarity so necessary to excite the interest of the reader, in matters naturally abstract.”86 Sicard hoped that his new edition would remedy this problem by illuminating the strengths of Hartley’s system, and most significantly its implications for education and morality:

The doctrine of association, which he embellished, so to speak, by learned discussions, and clarified by well chosen examples that are illuminating, has greatly contributed, in England, to the great art of education. At least the writers !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 84 R.A. Sicard, in David Hartley, De l'homme, de ses facultés physiques et intellectuelles: de ses devoirs et de ses espérances, (Paris: Ducauroy, 1802): v 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid., v-vi.

241 ! !

which are occupied with it, in that country, seem to feel all the rewards of the profound studies of this philosopher and apply them very fortunately to the system of education. When the work of M. Hartley can only serve to facilitate the process in such an important part of science, it would be a great service that he would render to humanity, and under this term only, it merits, indisputably, to be strongly recommended. This is decisive evidence of the intimate connection which exists between metaphysics and morals.87

As an educator himself, Sicard believed that Hartley’s system would provide a valuable new approach to for the education of his hearing and speech impaired students.

But Sicard was no less willing to acknowledge the radical consequences of

Hartley’s thought than Jurain had been forty-seven years earlier. He provided extensive notes to the text itself, each intended to clarify some point of the Observations which might seem to lead to an untoward consequence. To Hartley’s contention that “the brain is... the seat of the rational soul, i.e. of the soul, as far as it is influenced by reasons and moral motives”, Sicard responded that, “the language of the author appears here most extraordinary. It seems to conform to that of some modern idéologues which, only seeing in man, as an animal of a more delicate and perfect organization, regard the soul as an effect, and not a cause; an effect of this same organization, as a faculty and not as a principle.88

For Sicard, idéologues were little more than materialists. “They place the understanding entirely in the corporeal being,” he criticized, “the one in the nervous system; the other in the muscular framework. Abusing the opinions of the philosophers, the most religious, such as Descartes, Leibniz, etc., some seriously say that it occupies

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 87 Ibid., vii-viii 88 David Hartley, Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations, 1749, (Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars' Facsimile Reprints, 1966): Part I, 81; Sicard, in De l’homme, notes appended to 131

242 ! ! the pineal gland; others, the cerebellum”.89 Sicard himself, writing a catechism for the students of the Institution just prior to the terror, had instructed children that “God made the body of man, from earth, and he made the soul of man, from nothing”.90 The soul itself, created from nothing, Sicard defined thusly, “the soul of man is a simple being, which is the life of man, [a] being which knows and desires, which thinks and loves”.91

Despite this, Sicard further instructed his students that sensations were what “transferred the image of [an] object to the soul” and essentially created an idea, though he was clear that it was not the soul itself that experienced sensations—he did not elaborate on the process by which this occurred.

Finally, Sicard concluded that no matter where they located the soul idéologues all classified “man as an animal being, without will to recognize a being which could exist in all its perfection, and even more perfect, independent of the matter its mind animates and on which it acts. ... alarmed by the consequences of the doctrines of the spirituality of man, they put all their efforts to reassemble, completely, the animals which follow their brute instinct”.92 But surely, Sicard asserted, Hartley would never have agreed with their attempts to render man an animal. When Hartley, his translator contended, “seems to assign a particular location to the soul, he could not intend that, it could occupy a place, and there be confined, like all things that are extended, by these limits”.93 Sicard was certain that Hartley understood the soul as he did: a spiritual body that resided in the body, without being limited to any one location. All Hartley meant, he !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 89 Sicard, De l’homme, notes appended to 131 90 R.A. Sicard, Catéchisme ou Instruction Chrétienne, a l’Usage des Sourds-Muets (Paris: Institution Nationale de Sourds-Muets, 1792): 5 91 Ibid., 7 92 Sicard, De l’homme, notes appended to 131 93 Ibid.

243 ! ! concluded, was that “it is in the brain more than anywhere else in the organization of the machine that it [the soul] seems to provide the greatest impression”.94

Sicard was also very concerned about the implications of Hartley’s theory for the human-animal relationship, as his comments about man being an animal being indicate.

He reacted strongly against Hartley’s contention that apes and humans must have much in common, especially in their ability to “imitate” other animals and their “peculiar chattering” which “may perhaps be some attempt toward speech”.95 Although Hartley noted that apes’ failure to achieve intelligible speech was no doubt due to “the narrowness of their memories, apprehensions, and associations”—clearly indicating that he did not think simian minds were of the same caliber as human—Sicard again felt the need to clarify. “The author seems to accord here,” he wrote in an appended note in which he defined the terms of the problem, “the same faculty to apes which so much distinguishes man from animal and the comparison of God, that a poetic philosopher was not afraid to define man, thus: ‘Animal by senses and God by thought’. For it should be said of the ape, if it only differs from man by the intensity of its intelligence; because [if] the ape thinks, it is intelligent”.96 But, he went on, this was not in fact the case. Rather,

Hartley raised the example of the ape only to illustrate the vast difference between man and beast because, “In vain the body of the ape, as the author says, resembles our own more than any other animal. In vain the ape imitates us, for the most part our material

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 94 Ibid. 95 Hartley, Observations, Part I, 262 96 Sicard, De l’homme, notes appended to 33

244 ! ! and mechanical actions; it cannot elevate above this imitative faculty” to create abstract ideas or true language.97

Sicard then abstracted Hartley’s comparison into a more generalized discussion of animal souls, something Hartley had only tangentially touched on in his discussion of animals brains and behavior. Far be it from him, Sicard contended, to take the Cartesian route: “It is not that I refuse them a soul. We cannot deny that animals have sensations and memories; they have therefore, in themselves, ideas and images of objects which mark their organs”.98 But, he continued, it was clear that they were incapable of utilizing these impressions and ideas: “[Can] they combine these ideas and compare them? Judge their convenience and inconvenience? Undoubtedly no. If it was so, they would be susceptible to perfectibility; one cannot say this of any animal, no more of those who approach the most the intelligence of man, by its instinct, that which is their distant advantage; no more the orangutan than the oyster”.99 His instructions to the students of the Institute similarly clarify his position on animal souls. Sicard wanted his students to learn that animals did not “think, compare, or judge” because these were “simple actions, which cannot belong to beings who are only compounds”.100 Furthermore, he taught that though animals had souls, this soul “their life and is not reasonable like that of man”.101

All of this sat a bit oddly, though, with the intentions of the original author of the

Observations. Hartley was by no means so clear in his distinctions between the human and animal mind. Hartley, rather, had argued that apes came closest to humans “in the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid. 99 Ibid. 100 Sicard, Catéchisme, 10 101 Ibid.

245 ! ! general faculty of reasoning, and drawing conclusions” and further that even “sagacious quadrupeds may...be said to resemble dumb persons arrived at an adult age, who are possessed of much knowledge, which yet they cannot express, except by gestures”. 102

And in direct contrast to Sicard’s claim that animals were incapable of judgment, Hartley had claimed that “feelings, and affections of the mind, attend upon them, just as in us.

And the brute creatures prove their near relation to us, not only by the general resemblance of the body, but by that of the mind also.... and as there is, perhaps, no passion belonging to human nature, which may not be found in some brute creature in a considerable degree”.103 This is unsurprising, however, when one considers the stark differences in terms between the discussion of animal minds in Britain and the more privileged place it occupied in French philosophical discourses on the soul.

Not everyone produced such a thoughtful analysis of Ideology, however. Though a number of early nineteenth-century publications attacked Ideology, a few specifically direct their ire at Condillac himself. In the 1801 treatise Anti-Condillac ou Harangue aux

Idéologues Modernes, the anonymous author stated his purpose clearly: “Locke and

Condillac... did not want to lower our soul to the level of matter, but they did not...distinguish it either, as they placed its faculties, in the organs of sense; this is a repulsive falsehood, and this is what I propose to combat here most particularly”.104

Polemical and a not a bit overdramatic, the author of the Harangue nevertheless redirected contemporary attention to the “repulsive falsehood” of materialism, especially as manifested in Condillac’s theory of the human mind. To combat Condillac, the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 102 Hartley, Observations, Part 1, 410; 404 103 Ibid., 413-414 104 Anonymous, Anti-Condillac ou Harangue aux Idéologues Modernes, (Paris: 1801): iv

246 ! !

Harangue turned instead to the old doctrine of “innate ideas,” sounding rather Cartesian in the process. It set forth four main arguments against the sensate origin of ideas:

1) That our faculties of sense, perception, and judgment are founded on our sensations, our ideas and our innate sentiments, developed or undeveloped. 2) That these spiritual elements are the substantial modes which constitute our soul. 3)That these modes are necessarily representative of all the essences of existing and possible beings in the order of creatures. 4) By examining our soul thus conceived, in the silence of prejudice and passions, we can clearly read all the truths that interests us.105

Essentially, the author of the Harangue argued that the spiritual soul innately contained innate dispositions and concepts (sentiments and modes) that it employed in forming ideas. He called for a return to the “abandoned system of innate ideas” and berated modern thinkers for straying from the “path of truth” it revealed.106

Condillac, the anonymous author charged, was just as dangerous a thinker as

Spinoza or Lucretius (both popular materialist boogeymen): “Not one of you admits the terrible system of Lucretius and Spinoza, because these two confound our nature with that of the most vile animals; but, o sages of today! would you even adopt that of Locke and Condillac, if you would have better examined it yourself?”, he exclaimed. Condillac, however, was perhaps the most dangerous of all due to his revived popularity. “The system of Condillac is today very accredited, I confess, but however brilliant, and however supported, by old apostles and new protectors, it is no less dangerous,” the

Harangue predicted direly. The danger, he continued was that “it follows from this system, that our ideas are nothing but sensible objects, and that our incorporeal God is a pure illusion of the soul”.107 Much like the contemporary attacks Condillac faced, the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 105 Ibid., v-vi 106 Ibid., vi 107 Ibid ., 6

247 ! !

Harangue charged him with materialism, disrespect of human nature, and most importantly with atheism and irreligion.

The Harangue was perhaps more enthusiastic than philosophical in its evaluation of the dangers of Condillac’s theory. The author complained that Condillac frequently contradicted himself, though such complaints were frequently based on a misreading, perhaps deliberate, of Condillac’s arguments. “Could you bear (no, I cannot believe it) that Condillac,” he intoned, “this innovator that you regard as the father of the philosophy of the last century, destroys, so often, in a chapter, that which has been established in another?” For Condillac had as much admitted, the Harangue contended, that the “that our sensations, our ideas and our sentiments are innate, and that they form even the nature of our soul” when he stated that “We can become aware of nothing in us, unless we regard it as to us, as belonging to our being, in this or that fashion, feeling, seeing, etc.”.108 A more accurate reading of this passage clearly suggests that Condillac was referring to the importance of the five senses in receiving the sensory input offered by physical objects, but accuracy was obviously not the primary concern of the Harangue.

The anonymous author also directed his indignant tirade against the Idéologues themselves. “O our profound Idéologistes! you who are made for discovering and propagating lights”, he melodramatically pronounced, “why do you say that our ideas directly or primarily, as you call it, come from the organs of the senses?”109 Returning to an almost Platonic idea of forms, the author argued that ideas provided the form (tableau) of our knowledge, and could therefore not be corporeal. To argue otherwise was not only mistaken, he reiterated, but could only lead to materialism. “You give us analysis, as the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 108 Ibid. 109 Ibid., 20

248 ! ! sole means that we have to discern sensible things,” he accused the Idéologues, “but why do you not specify one for discerning the insensible things?” Such suspicious behavior could only suggest one thing: “Would it perhaps be because you do not believe in the existence of the latter? Ah! if this is so, you take the leap, and according to you, we are no more than bodies without souls, which does not even need to have a creator to exist”.110 Once again, the Harangue reiterated, sensationist philosophy posed a dangerous and hidden threat not only the material soul, but to God himself.

In closing, the anonymous author offered a word of warning to all would-be philosophers. “Avoid therefore, o philosophers! you who are made to illuminate the earth, avoid the errors of our modern thinkers,” he cautioned. “Do not lie, like them, to your conscience, by assuring, with Lucretius, that all is matter; with Locke, that God could make matter think; with Condillac, that a statue could, in some circumstances, be open, without a soul, to certain sensations, and in others, to some ideas, to some sentiments,” for all this was contrary to, “the created reason which distinguishes us from beasts, and of those attributes constituting our minds which can only regard the body”.111

He reiterated that to follow Condillac was to head irrevocably in the direction of atheism, and called for a return to Christian virtues and the belief in an immortal soul. “Honor the philosophy of the century which we are now entering, by principles more certain, more comforting and more true than those adopted by many reckless idéologues, in which false or insignificant definitions can only mislead us”.112 The Harangue ends on an uplifting note; the anonymous author reminded his readers of the promise of the resurrection of the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 110 Ibid., 21 111 Ibid., 58 112 Ibid., 64

249 ! ! dead, embodied in the image of the “God-man” Jesus Christ. Such a promise, he informed them, could not be lightly discarded, especially in favor of the problematic theory of sensationalism. Two years later, this same author would publish a more systematic attack on Condillac’s La Logique, along with Voltaire’s treatise on metaphysics. In the preface, he laid all the violence and chaos of the Revolution squarely at Condillac’s feet. “It is for the revival of religion that one must seek the causes which have caused its decadence,” he began. “The principal among these causes is, undoubtedly, the bold and contradictory doctrine, false and reckless, of many of our modern idéologues”.113 And who was responsible for this “false and reckless” doctrine?

Naturally, it was Condillac, aided in no small part by Voltaire:

It is incredibly how the reading of Condillac, who one so little suspects, and of the much celebrated Voltaire... have reversed consciences after 60 years; how they have made deists, atheists, materialists. These readings have produced disorganization of governments, hatred, divisions, theft, robbers and assassins so frequently in our revolution, and have almost made these crimes look legitimate, or proper to benefit the public good.114

The author was outraged by the public support Condillac’s harmful theory had acquired:

“It would be too disgusting to give here the portrait of the sad truth; those who dare to support this view, can be seen in the cabinets of men of state, and in the archives of the police and the courts”.115 It is difficult to imagine how much more dangerous one could have found the theories of Condillac, who after all had been by all accounts a mild- mannered and retiring priest.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 113Anonymous, Nouvelle Théorie des Êtres, Suivie des erreurs de Condillac..., (Commercy: Denis, 1803): iii 114 Ibid., iii 115 Ibid., iii

250 ! !

If the Idéologues had resurrected the ghost of Condillac’s sensationalism in their new philosophy of the mind, then the Harangue raised the specter of Condillac’s anti- materialist, Cartesian enemies. By arguing for the importance of innate ideas, denying the supreme role of sensation, and reintroducing the question of human superiority and the existence of God to the problem of the human mind, the Harangue’s anonymous author represented a tradition of counter-enlightened thought that had no more died with the Revolution than had Lockean associationism. Searching for an alternative to replace the largely outmoded Cartesian dualism, the enemies of Condillacian sensationalism turned to the German idealism of Immanuel Kant.

German Idealism and French Materialism: Kant and Condillac in the Early Nineteenth Century

Kant’s idealism was perceived, as we already saw in the case of Pistorius’ translation of Hartley, to be almost as threatening to human nature as materialism had been in the past two centuries. If materialists threatened to reduce all to mere physical substance, Kant and his followers attempted the opposite: to vanish all physical reality into mere perceptions, leaving the human observer adrift in a world of mental images and without any means of penetrating this veil to the real world beyond. Kantian idealism distinguished between the direct experience of the world (which Kant argued was impossible for human beings to attain) and indirect experience via the senses. Crucially, however, he argued that it was impossible for human beings to determine true reality when all experience of it was filtered through not only the physical sense organs but also innate mental concepts and “pure reason” which made sense out of sensory input.

Although Kant had been working contemporaneously to Condillac, and although the first

251 ! !

French translation was published in 1781, it took several decades and a Revolution for his thought to really gain traction in France. Particularly, as the century closed, enemies of

Ideology turned to Kant as a persuasive argument against Condillacian sensationalism and empiricism. There were few true Cartesians left in France by 1800, but empiricism nevertheless faced a formidable new enemy in the form of Kant’s idealism.

The Idéologues likely first became aware of the seriousness of the Kantian threat at the end of the eighteenth century, when the journal La Magasin encyclopédique published an extended treatment, complete with translated excerpts, of Kant’s philosophy.

The idéologique journal La Decáde philosophique was far more reserved in its treatment of Kant. Though it could not completely ignore Kantian idealism, the journal rarely referenced it except in the context of a critique or satire. Such criticism only increased after 1800, when Kant’s theory reached new heights of popularity among its French audience. It was right around this same time that a member of the Institute first attempted to introduce his own interpretation of Kant in several reports publicly delivered in the spring of 1802. Poor Sebastian Mercier was ruthlessly ridiculed by the Decáde philosophique for his attempt to reintroduce innate ideas and a unitary concept of the self to metaphysical discussions. “It is myself which embraces time, eternity, God,” he told his audience, closely following Kant, “in me is still the unalterable type of the just and of the good, and this is a priori. There are laws, immediate attributes of the primitive moi; they have an all-powerful reality, which does not belong to any speculative or sensible object: there is an emancipation from all senses whatever”.116 Mercier called this liberation from the tyranny of Condillacian sensationalism, “a beautiful discovery of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 116 Quoted in Kennedy, Destutt de Tracy, 117

252 ! !

Kant”.117 The Decáde philosophique’s response to this impassioned argument was brutal: the report of his speech snickered at Mercier’s ambition to “dethrone... not only Locke, but Condillac and their Metaphysics, in order to rehabilitate the ancient and enlightened system of innate ideas”.118 The reviewer gave an extended excerpt of Mercier’s speech, calling it a “beautiful discourse” in a tone that suggested that it had been anything but.

Despite the reputation and wide readership of the Décade philosophique, snide comments about Kant and his French disciples would not be enough to inhibit the growth of the Kantian alternative to Condillacian metaphysics. Mercier (according to the

Décade philosophique) had ridiculed both Condillac, calling the statue-man “Condillac’s doll! Absurdity, nonsense, foolishness this doll!”, as well as Locke, noting that “it was a mistake when Locke entitled his book, Philosophical essay on the human understanding, for it does not take a step in the direction of the human understanding”.119 It had been

Kant, those who rejected Ideology claimed, who had returned metaphysics to the proper path after the long empiricist detour. In the wake of this, more systematic refutations of

Kantian idealism began to appear. Destutt de Tracy in particular engaged with Kantian metaphysics after a less than flattering review of his Projet d’elements d’idéologie referred readers instead to a recently published summary of Kant. The volume on Kant which Tracy’s reviewer had pitted against the Elements d’idéologie was Charles Villiers’

La Philosophie de Kant. Villiers presented Kant as an alternative to the “empiricism of

Condillac, journalistic speculations on its moral and political applications, or superficial

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 117 Ibid. 118 La Décade Philosophique, Littéraire, et Politique 22, (Paris, May 1802): 238. 119 Ibid., 239

253 ! ! and witty treatises”.120 A different review of the same text called Tracy’s take on

Condillacian sensationalism “[a] science, offered to a new generation, [which] substitutes the movement of the brute for human reason, and sees in man only muscles and nerves”.121

Tracy could no longer ignore Kant. Since he could not read German, Tracy turned instead to a summary account of Locke’s philosophy published by a Dutch thinker in French. Johannes Kinker, like Mercier, Villiers, and others, presented Kant primarily as an alternative to the dominant Condillacian empiricism. “Empiricism or sensationalism, as it has been established in France,” he wrote, “after having been collected in the philosophy of Locke by Condillac, Destutt-Tracy, and others, who have made it a universal doctrine of sensations, would better merit than any other theory the title of vestibule de la philosophie, if, instead of limiting itself to external experience, it had included internal experience and sensations”.122 Kinker acknowledged the important role of sensations in the formation of knowledge, for “without these facts all reasoning would be only a vain display of words artistically arranged”, but he cautioned that it was internal sensations and perceptions that gave “logical order” to sensory input.

Tracy responded to Kinker, Villiers, Mercier, and Kant himself in a report to the

Institute in 1802. The British journal The Monthly Magazine provided an account of

Tracy’s report. “The French have for a long time testified much indifference for the philosophy of Kant,” the journal began. Tracy had made it “his particular business to

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 120 Charles Villiers, Philosophie de Kant, ou Principes Fondamentaux de la Philosophie Transcendantale, (Metz: Collignon, 1801): 145 121 Quoted in Kennedy, Destutt de Tracy, 116-117 122 J. Kinker, Essai d’une Exposition Succincte de la Critique de la Raison-Pure, trans. J. LeFevre, (Amsterdam: Chaguion and den Hengst, 1801): 323

254 ! ! prove, that there cannot exist in our minds anything like what they call pure reason, pure understanding, pure sensibility... and that we cannot have any pure knowledge, in the sense that is given to those words”.123 Tracy argued that Kant, unlike himself and fellow ideologists, could not be considered a true scientist; he was far too obscure. “If anyone can conceive what pure reason could be,” he said sardonically, “I congratulate him... [for]

I conclude that the picture he gives us of reason is the inverse of reason itself”.124 As an empiricist, Tracy strongly rejected Kant’s attempt to find the root of human knowledge in a principle rather than a demonstrable physical fact. The Monthly Magazine reported that

Tracy wished to demonstrate the “mistake of supposing that we are to judge of particular ideas by general laws”.125 Writing to a friend several months later, Tracy argued that

Kant’s ideas were little more than warmed-over Cartesianism and “always founded on the eternal abuse of abstract principles”.126 Reporting to the Institute on the state of philosophy in France, Tracy commented that the idéologique method had formed the

“distinctive character of French philosophy” and fostered “the progress which the knowledge of our intellectual operations has made amongst us”.127 Finally, Tracy referred all once again to Condillac. All the ideologists had done, he said, was to

“[proceed] in the track of Condillac, and, faithful to his principles, have taken him for a guide, without receiving him for a master”.128 Tracy’s advice to Kantians, he wrote later

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 123 The Monthly Magazine 14, No. 1 (London: Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper, August 1802): 333 124 Quoted in Kennedy, Destutt de Tracy, 119 125 The Monthly Magazine 14, No. 1, 333 126 Quoted in Kennedy, Destutt de Tracy,118 127 The Monthly Magazine 14, No. 1, 333 128 Ibid.

255 ! ! to his friend, was always the same: “I send [them] unceremoniously back to Condillac’s

Traité des systèmes which makes quick work of them”.129

! Tracy’s handling of the Kantian challenge reveals the leader of a movement full of confidence in both his own capabilities and the unlimited power of Ideology to improve science and society in France. Though initially this confidence seemed warranted, and Ideology rose to ever greater heights in France, the impending arrival of the Napoleonic regime would signal a shift in the philosophical winds. A close alliance with the church, combined with a decided suspicion of anything that looked too much like republicanism, meant that Napoleon and the Consulate would disband the

Idéologique movement by abolishing the department of the “analysis of sensations and ideas” where the Idéologues had made their home since 1795. But though they were scattered, the Idéologues continued to lobby for the importance of Condillacian sensationalism against any and all challengers to their positivistic empiricism. Ultimately,

Condillac’s theory would maintain its importance in the work of late-century proto- psychologists like Victor Cousin. That, however, is tale for another time.

Conclusions

In the years following Condillac’s death, his legacy underwent two radical transformations. Though during his life he had been generally well respected, if somewhat embattled, for his contributions to Lockean associationism, his death coincided with a change in the philosophical winds. While Condorcet sought to discredit

Condillac’s contributions to the French Enlightenment by characterizing him as unoriginal and mediocre, the collapse of the old regime necessarily brought an end to the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 129 Quoted in Kennedy, Destutt de Tracy, 118

256 ! ! abstract metaphysical musings about the soul and mind in which Condillac had played so integral a role. As Alan Kors notes, Condillacian sensationalism had envisioned and demanded the moral transformation of the individual as the primary means of reforming and improving society. The Revolution, by contrast, sought reform through more and more radical political measures intended to reform society as a whole—the French people en masse.130 There was little space for individual morality in a climate where individual nonconformity could mean death.

However, after some years and a dramatic Revolution had passed, the time again seemed right to consider the moral transformation of the individual. As a new era of revolutionaries sought to understand and move past the horror of the Reign of Terror, they turned once again to Condillac’s moderate empiricist approach to the human mind.

This was no mere return to the philosophical world of the ancien régime, however—that world had vanished forever in the chaos of Revolution, and with it many of the philosophical characteristics which had defined Condillac’s life and writings. This becomes clear in the fact that Condillac’s new breed of followers more or less willingly adopted (though not in so many words) the materialist stance he had tried so hard to avoid. Though Cartesianism dualism may have remained implicit in French thought about the soul, the Revolutionary forces of de-Christianization had significantly reduced the consequences for running afoul of Descartes’ radical distinction. The Idéologues offered certainty and the promise of progress to a country drained and confused in the aftermath of the Terror. It would take the combined forces of Kant and Napoleon to even

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 130 Kors, D’Holbach’s Coterie, 309-310

257 ! ! temporarily derail the idéologique train, which proudly ran on Condillacian tracks in the direction of the French psychological advances of the late nineteenth century.

258 ! !

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Anonymous. Anti-Condillac ou Harangue aux Idéologues Modernes. Paris: 1801.

_____. Nouvelle Théorie des Êtres, Suivie des erreurs de Condillac... Commercy: Denis, 1803

Cabanis, J.G. Rapports Du Physique Et Du Moral De L'Homme. Paris, 1824.

Condorcet, Nicolas de. “Notice Historique et Critique sur la Vie et les Écrits de Condillac” Journal de Paris, no 269 (25 septembre 1780), pp. 1089-91.

_____. To Mademoiselle Suard, October 1780 (Letter 1), Lettre autographe (Lettres et papiers de CONDORCET, Bibliothèque Nationale, Fonds. Fr., nouv. acqu. 23639, ff. 14-15.

_____. To Mademoiselle Suard, October 1780 (Letter 2), Lettre autographe (Papiers de CONDORCET, Bibliothèque de l'Institut de France, ms. 854, ff. 428-9) in Ibid.

D’Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry. The system of nature: or, The laws of the moral and physical world, trans. William Hodgson. London: Hodgson, 1795.

De Tracy, Destutt Élémens d'idéologie: Idéologie proprement dite, 3rd edition. Paris: Courcier, 1817.

Garat, Dominique Joseph. to the Editors of the Journal of Paris, Journal de Paris, no 279. 5 octobre 1780. pp. 1130-31.

Hartley, David. Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations, 1749. Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars' Facsimile Reprints, 1966.

Kinker, J. Essai d’une Exposition Succincte de la Critique de la Raison-Pure, trans. J. LeFevre. Amsterdam: Chaguion and den Hengst, 1801.

La Décade Philosophique, Littéraire, et Politique 22. Paris. May 1802.

La Harpe, Jean-François. Refutation du Livre De l’Esprit. Paris: Migneret, 1797

Puchesse, Baguenault de. Condillac, Sa Vie, Sa Philosophie, Son Influence. Paris: Plon- Nourrit, 1910.

Sicard, R.A. Catéchisme ou Instruction Chrétienne, a l’Usage des Sourds-Muets. Paris: Institution Nationale de Sourds-Muets, 1792.

259 ! !

Sicard, R.A. in David Hartley, De l'homme, de ses facultés physiques et intellectuelles: de ses devoirs et de ses espérances. Paris: Ducauroy, 1802.

Sievrac, J.H. Recueil des définitions et réponses les plus remarquables de Massieu et Clerc, sourds-muets. London: Cox and Baylis, 1815.

Sieyès, Emmanuel Joseph. “Le Grand Cahier Métaphysique” in Des Manuscrits de Sieyès, 1773-1799, ed. Christine Fauré. Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 1999.

The Monthly Magazine 14, No. 1. London: Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper, August 1802.

Secondary Sources

Bach, Reinhard. Rousseau et la Discours de la Revolution, au Piège des Mots: les Physiocrates, Sieyès, les Idéologues. Uzès, France: Inclinaison, 2011.

Baker, Keith Michael in From Deficit to Deluge: The Origins of the French Revolution, ed. Kaiser, Thomas E. and Dale K. Van Kley, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010

Baker, Keith Michael. Un Éloge Officieux de Condorcet : Sa Notice Historique et Critique sur Condillac, Revue de synthèse, 3e série, nos 47-48. 1967.

Garnham, B.J. The Intellectual Background of the French Revolution: Original Texts of Les Idéologues, 1789-1825 with an Interpretive Commentary, (Queenston, ON: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2007.

Israel, Jonathan. Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750-1790. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Kennedy, Emmett. Destutt de Tracy and the Origins of "Ideology" : A Philosophe in the Age of Revolution. Philadelphia : American Philosophical Society, 1978.

Knight, Isabel F. The Geometric Spirit: The Abbé de Condillac and the French Enlightenment. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968.

Kors, Alan. D’Holbach’s Coterie: An Enlightenment in Paris. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1976.

Simon, Jules. Une académie sous le Directoire. Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1885.

Sonenscher, Michael. “Introduction”, in Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, Political Writings. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co., 2003.

260 ! !

Villiers, Charles. Philosophie de Kant, ou Principes Fondamentaux de la Philosophie Transcendantale. Metz: Collignon, 1801.

Wright, John P. & Paul Potter, ed., Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment. New York : Oxford University Press, 2000.

261 ! !

{Conclusion}

Condillac, Hartley, and the Scottish Enlightenment

Overall, it seems that, in large part, that the theories of Condillac and Hartley crisscrossed Europe without ever really encountering one another. Though Bonnet read

Condillac, he appeared either uninterested or unaware of Hartley. Though Sicard translated Hartley into French in order to challenge Ideology, there is no real evidence that Tracy, Cabanis, or the journal Le Decáde philosophique ever confronted Hartley’s arguments or Sicard’s criticisms. Similarly, the English translation of Condillac never seemed to make much impact on English thought generally, though individual thinkers like James Mill and Herbert Spencer did adopt elements of Condillac’s thought in their writings on political economy. There is, however, one intellectual atmosphere in which

Hartley and Condillac’s legacies did intermingle; in the late Scottish Enlightenment, leading thinkers like Dugald Stewart developed their “common sense” philosophy surrounding the sensationalist philosophy of Locke, Hartley, and Condillac. While it ventures beyond the scope of this dissertation to investigate common sense philosophy in depth, Stewart’s treatment provides the one instance of a contemporary comparison of the two thinkers.

Dugald Stewart, a Scottish thinker active in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, conceived of philosophy in much the same basic manner as the

262 ! !

Idéologues. For him epistemology was the broad umbrella under which all more specific scientific and philosophical disciplines should fall. Although Stewart generally adhered to the empirical methodology proposed by Locke and others, he was far more comfortable than Locke with the use of “general principles” to determine the meaning of empirical observations. “Without theory, or in other words, without general principles,” he wrote in 1829, “inferred from a sagacious comparison of a variety of phenomena, experience is a blind and useless guide”.1 This, for Stewart, was what he called

“common sense” which he described as “nearly equivalent to what we in Scotland call motherwit, that degree of sagacity derived partly from natural constitution, but chiefly from personal experience, by which one is able to conduct one’s self with propriety in the affairs of common life”.2 For Stewart, this was a far more firm foundation on which to build knowledge than from mere experience alone.

In a series of reflections on the progress of Lockean empiricism throughout the eighteenth century, Stewart offered his own view of the impact of both Hartley and

Condillac on European philosophy. Writing in 1810 about the state of French philosophy in the late eighteenth century, Steward noted that, “the account given by Locke of the origin of our ideas... has for many years past, been adopted implicitly, and almost universally, as a fundamental and unquestionable truth, by the philosophers of France”.3

In particular, he continued, it had been “assumed as the common basis of their respective conclusion concerning the history of the human understanding, by Condillac, Turgot,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Dugald Stewart, quoted in Michael P. Brown, ‘Stewart, Dugald (1753–1828)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. 2 Quoted in Ibid, 3 Dugald Stewart, The Works of Dugald Stewart: Philosophical Essays, Volume V of VII, (Cambridge: Hilliard and Brown, 1829): 113

262 ! !

Helvétius, Diderot, D’Alembert, Condorcet, Destutt-Tracy... and many other writers of the highest reputation”.4 The problem according to Stewart, however, was that “although all these ingenious men have laid hold eagerly of this common principle of reasoning, and have vied with each other in extolling Locke for the sagacity which he has displayed in unfolding it, hardly two of them can be named who have understood it in the same sense; and perhaps not one who has understood it precisely in the sense annexed to it by the author”.5 Even worse, Stewart continued, “the praise of Locke has been loudest from those who seem to have taken the least pains to ascertain the import of his conclusions”.6

For this great error, Stewart held but one philosopher responsible: Condillac.

The mistakes so prevalent among the French philosophers on this fundamental question, may be accounted for, in a great measure, by the implicit confidence which they have reposed in Condillac (whom a late author [Destutt de Tracy] has distinguished by the title of the Father of Ideology), as a faithful expounder of Locke’s doctrines; and by the weight which Locke’s authority has thus lent to the glosses and inferences of his ingenious disciple.7

Condillac’s version of Locke, Stewart argued, had become the foundation of French philosophy, but incorrectly, since Condillac himself had not properly understood Locke himself. Condillac’s argument that “all the operations of the understanding are only transformed sensations” did not in fact accurately represent Locke, but instead “tend to involve Locke’s principle in much additional obscurity”.8

Stewart proceeded to chart, as he claimed “to how very great a degree this vague language of Condillac has influence the speculations of his successors” by showing

“through what channel the French philosophers have, in general, acquired their !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., 114 8 Ibid.

263 ! ! information, with respect to Locke’s doctrine concerning the origin of our ideas”.9

Stewart cited Helvétius, Diderot, Condorcet, and others as having all fallen victim to

Condillac’s great error in assuming that ideas were only “sensations differently transformed”. Stewart compared what he described as the nearly universal adoption sensationalism to the Cartesian system of innate ideas, calling it a “transition from extreme to the other” which seemed “wonderful indeed”.10 He accounted for the

“extravagance of the length to which his doctrines have since been pushed by some

French writers” by attributing it to the “lateness of the period when Locke’s philosophy became prevalent in France”.11 Such an extreme, Stewart noted proudly, would never be possible in the advanced philosophy propounded by “the writers of this island

[Britain]”.12 However, he did admit that, “every candid Englishman who studies the history of this branch of science, will own, with gratitude, the obligations we owe to the lights struck out by Condillac and his successors”.13 French philosophers like Diderot and others, Stewart contended, had interpreted Locke in a manner that led “obviously to an extravagance...—the scheme of materialism”.14

But though Stewart wished, in general, to give credit to his fellow countrymen for their more moderate and accurate interpretation of Locke, he regretted that he could not do so in every case. “I need scarcely add that,” he noted below his claim of British philosophical superiority, “in this observation, I speak of the general current of philosophical opinion, and not of the conclusions adopted by the speculative few who

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., 118 11 Ibid., 118 12 Ibid., 119 13 Ibid., 119 fn. 14 Ibid., 123

264 ! ! think for themselves”.15 Among those “speculative few” Steward particularly singled out

Hartley and Priestley for special consideration in the subsequent essay. “When I hinted, in the preceding essay, that the doctrines prevalent in this country, with general respect to the origins of knowledge, were, in general, more precise and just than those adopted by the disciples of Condillac, I was aware that some remarkable exceptions might be alleged to the universality of my observations,” he began. While Stewart could at least claim that

“I do not recollect an individual of much literary eminence [in Britain], who has carried

Locke’s principle to such an extravagant length as Diderot and Helvétius”, this was as far as he could go. Indeed, Stewart considered his fellow Britons to be rather worse in their misreading of Locke:

From that class of our authors, who have, of late years, been attempting to found a new school, by jumbling together scholastic metaphysics and hypothetical physiology, various instances might be produced of theorists, whose avowed opinions on this elementary question, not only rival, but far surpass that of the French Materialists, in point of absurdity. Among the authors just alluded to, the most noted are Hartley, Priestley, and [Erasmus] Darwin.16

Though there were some minor disagreements among these thinkers, Stewart believed they were all cut from the same faulty cloth. Hartley, Stewart contended, had made the same error as Condillac when he contended that “we have no direct knowledge of the operations of our own minds; not indeed any knowledge whatsoever, which is not ultimately resolvable into sensible images”.17 Stewart, moreover, found it extraordinary that he could not “recollect that any one has hitherto taken any notice of the wonderful coincidence, in this instance, between Hartley’s Theory and that of Condillac” and the further relation of Hartley and Condillac’s speculations to those of Charles Bonnet. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 15 Ibid., 119 fn. 16 Ibid., 129 17 Ibid., 130

265 ! !

Apparently one of the few contemporary writers who had studied both Hartley and

Condillac in depth, Stewart came away convinced of the uncanny similarities between the two. His recognition of these parallels add weight to the contention that it was the vastly different intellectual environments of France and Britain which had determined the reception and import of the two thinkers respective theories.

None of this meant, however, that Stewart saw any value in Hartley’s theory.

Hartley’s “grand arcanum”—the association of ideas—Stewart found thoroughly unconvincing due the “the unexampled latitude with which the words association and idea are, both of them, employed, through the whole of his theory”.18 All of this, however, was mere part and parcel of Hartley’s overall desire to explain how external senses become “refined and spiritualized”, something Stewart considered worthy of the attention of the medieval scholastics, but certainly not a modern thinker. “Such reveries,” he scoffed, “are certainly not entitled to a serious examination in the present age”.19

At the last, however, Stewart did defend Hartley’s orthodoxy, at least respecting the immateriality of the soul. Quoting Hartley’s declaration that he did not wish to be

“interpreted so as to oppose the immateriality of the soul”, Stewart wrote that he believed it should be mentioned “in justice to Hartley, as most of his later followers have pretended, that, by rejecting his supposition of a principle distinct from the body, they have simplified and perfected his theory”.20 It was, of course, Priestley that Stewart had in mind. If Stewart found Hartley’s philosophical endeavors to be absurd, he found those of Priestley to be both dangerous and incoherent. After reviewing Priestley’s materialist

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., 130 20 Ibid., 131

266 ! ! principles, Stewart mused that “it has become customary, of late, for materialists, to object to those who profess to study the mind in the way of reflection, that they suffer themselves to be misled, by assuming rashly the existence of a principle in man, essentially distinct from any thing which is perceived by the senses”.21 Stewart disagreed.

“The truth is, that while we adhere to the method of reflection, we never can be misled by any hypothesis. The moment we abandon it, what absurdities we are apt to fall into!”22

Chief among these, for Stewart, was the mechanism of the will, which reflection and

“common sense” told the serious thinker was absurd and dangerously incorrect.

Much of Stewart’s own writings on epistemology and the origin of ideas repeatedly reference and challenge both Condillac and Hartley. The manner in which he perceived the two thinkers, however, differed drastically. In the concluding section to his

1829 addition to his earlier Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Stewart announced to his readers: “For the space allotted to my criticisms on Condillac, no apology is necessary to those, who have the slightest acquaintance with the present state of philosophy on the Continent, or who have remarked the growing popularity, in this

Island, of some of his weakest and most exceptionable theories”.23 Hartley, however,

Stewart treated with the greatest of disdain. Elsewhere, in his 18XX The Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man, Stewart snidely referred to “Dr. Hartley’s once celebrated work entitled ‘Observations on Man,’ in which he has pushed the theory of association to so extravagant a length, and which, not many years ago, found so many

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 21 Ibid., 133-134 22 Ibid., 134 23 Dugald Stewart, The Works of Dugald Stewart: Elements of the philosophy of the human mind, Vol. II of VII, (Cambridge: Hilliard and Brown, 1829): 348

267 ! ! enthusiastic admirers in England”.24 Hartley’s interpretation of Locke, Stewart wrote elsewhere in this essay, was little more than a “coarse caricature” which could only result in “some degree of discredit on one of the most important doctrines of modern philosophy”.25 Rather like a favorite punching bag, Hartley’s name was dredged up by

Stewart in connection with just about any objectionable theory that he wished to discredit and always in the context of its current irrelevance. But despite his earlier contention that

Hartley’s “reveries” were not “entitled to a serious examination”, Stewart certainly seemed to spend a lot of time thinking about them.

Conclusions

One a king, the other a jester, Stewart could tolerate neither Condillac nor Hartley.

The strength of his reaction, some fifty odd years after their deaths, hints at continued significance and controversy surrounding these thinkers well into the nineteenth century, long after the morning star of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding had faded from Europe. Though he recognized the striking similarities in the works of the two men, Stewart attributed the difference in their success largely to the differing intellectual climates of France and Britain. Though undoubtedly biased toward his own countrymen, Stewart nevertheless produced a remarkably accurate depiction of the differing terms of debate in these two contexts. For Hartley, the variety of British philosophical and religious approaches to the mind-body problem made it impossible for him to achieve the same level of dominance as Condillac at the turn of the century.

Despite this, however, Hartley remained a powerful voice not only for Lockean

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 24 Ibid. 49 25 Ibid., 585 fn.

268 ! ! associationism but also for the possibility of divine providence even in the most materialistic of philosophies.

By now, it should be evident that the cases of Hartley and Condillac were not isolated incidents in an otherwise polarized Enlightenment society. While scholars seek to return some narrative coherence to the intellectual movements of the eighteenth century without sacrificing nuance, it will be impossible for them to do so without considering the central role of moderate thinkers. Hartley and Condillac were written about, talked about, and interpreted by the thinkers and movements who were in large part responsible for the European mindset in the early nineteenth century and beyond. I argue that this is not only because they were clearly significant to their contemporaries, but also because they serve an indispensible function to modern scholars: Like packets of tracer dye injected into the complex currents of mid and late-century Enlightenment,

Hartley and Condillac’s paths through England, France, and beyond highlight the reflections, deflections, and diffractions of light specific to each climate they traveled through. If by the time their thought emerged in the nineteenth century, it was in so altered a form that neither Hartley nor Condillac would have approved, then this too tells us something about the nature of the Enlightenment.

One of the most obvious differences may be found in the intellectual climates of

Britain and France. The careers of Hartley and Condillac, despite their relatively similar interpretations of Locke, speak volumes to this reality. This, in itself, is hardly a new or even interesting observation. But this project’s analysis goes far deeper and suggests that the reasons for this difference have as much to do with high philosophy—namely the domineering legacy of Cartesianism in France—as they do with the far more popular

269 ! !

“cultural” contrasts, such as differing attitudes towards censorship and religious dissent, that historians frequently cite. While it is often far easier to make connections between cultural realities and the mindset of ordinary people, examinations of “high” intellectual history provide a crucial depth and counterbalance to such explorations. For instance, while ordinary people may have had little interest in what Descartes said about the nature of the soul, they were undoubtedly influenced by the writings produced under the restrictions of Cartesian dualism, from pre-Revolutionary pamphlets like Sieyès Qu’est- ce le tiers-état? to Rousseau’s Émile. Thus while the matter of Cartesian dualism may seem of little import to the “lived reality” of most eighteenth-century British and French people, closer analysis reveals that this cannot possibly be the case. Thus, although this project begins “in the clouds”, as it were, of high intellectual history, by the end it has made contact with movements which had immediate consequences for many “ordinary” people: from the clinical approach of early French psychiatrists to the emotionally heightened poetry of the British Romantics.

Secondly, this dissertation contributes to ongoing scholarly discussion about the nature of “radicalism” in the Enlightenment. While scholars, almost to a person, argue that the French Enlightenment was, for many reasons, the most radical manifestation of this movement, I suggest the possibility of an alternative interpretation. Rather than argue that the French Enlightenment was more “radical” or “atheistic” than its British cousin, I would instead make the case for a far less dramatic reality: philosophers were saying similarly “radical” things about the nature of the soul in both Britain and France, but without the Cartesian baggage weighing them down, the British were for the most part unconcerned about such statements. In France, philosophy was dangerous,

270 ! ! subversive, and often illegal; in Britain, the very same philosophy was easily ignored, and even satirized. This set of circumstances made it possible not only for Hartley to live and die relatively unmolested by attacks on his reputation, but also for his philosophy to have a rather free-ranging afterlife, as Chapter 4 illustrates. Indeed, this is in spite of the fact that Hartley was often more radical than Condillac by the materialistic standards used to judge enlightened thinkers. To the best of our knowledge, no one ever considered publicly burning the Observations; the same could not be said of the Traité des

Sensations.

The soul itself underwent a profound transformation throughout the period under observation, and this too tells us something about the character of the movement which sought to alter it. Once the sacred purview of priests and theologians, the soul had been largely desacralized by the nineteenth century. This is not to suggest that its study became necessarily divested of theological consequences, only that such a divestment was now possible. And, most significantly, the soul—that indefinable addition to animal life which made it human—was very much alive and well in the opening decades of the nineteenth century. A secular approach to human nature became an option but, as

Charles Taylor and Brad Gregory would suggest, it was only one of several viable approaches, and by no means the most popular. If the “radical Enlightenment” did not produce the secular, atheistic society that historians like Jonathan Israel argue it desired to, then we must look elsewhere to discern the complex nature of the relationship between Enlightenment and modernity. Moreover, the parties behind this secularized soul were not the most obvious suspects—Helvétius, Diderot, and D’Holbach remained marginalized at the dawn of the nineteenth century. Instead, the scientific version of the

271 ! ! soul produced by the French Idéologues in the aftermath of the Revolution had very obvious Condillacian foundations. It would not be until later that the radical “coterie”, as

Alan Kors aptly christened them, would be raised from obscurity.

Ultimately, it seems that any approach to the Enlightenment which would make a case for the extremes without considering the middle is just missing the point. Whether the middle is pulled toward the edges, or the edges push in towards the middle, no spectrum can exist or even be conceived without its center section. Though intellectual polarization did undoubtedly occur, usually in the form of an almost grotesque anomaly like the French Revolution, this is more of an illustration of the overwhelming importance of the middle rather than an argument against it. Thus this dissertation is populated by characters both measured and cautious, working not to destroy religious traditions about the soul but to preserve them. By shoring up the foundations of the

Christian soul using the best materials available to them, they necessarily changed the way in which it was thought about and studied by future generations. But in their ultimate pursuit, they were largely successful. Western societies in large part continued to think, write, and act as though they possessed a soul which differentiated them from other life, even when this assumption was largely devoid of any overtly religious implications.

272 ! !

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