sensation, and as itself resolvable into sensation. This latter attribute, together with certain appetites and desires, these alone, in the psychology of the Sophists, were the original furnishings of human nature. Sensation was the foundation on which the whole superstructure of humanity and of society rested. The Sophists were thus the first inquirers who distinctly propounded a philosophy of pure sensationalism, that is to say, a doctrine which refers all the phenomena of thought, and all the operations of the mind, to sensation as their ultimate source and origin. This doctrine has had many advocates, both in ancient and in modern times. The English philosopher, Locke, lent it his countenance, although not without some reservations. The French philosophers of the eighteenth century put aside these reservations, and proclaimed a doctrine of sensationalism without any qualification; but the first who propounded the doctrine were the Sophists. Their psychology began and ended in sensationalism.
24. In a state of nature, then, and apart from society and all its relations, man, according to the Sophists, is a mere creature of sensation, including under that term certain appetites and desires, and the experience of pleasure and of pain. This is what man is in himself; he is, as he comes from the workshop of nature, a mere series or complement or congeries of sensations. That, say the Sophists, is what man; the individual or isolated
