70  MAINE    DE    BIRAN  S    PHILOSOPHY

the  beginning  of  memory.1  The  third  part  relates  to  the  judg-
ments in  regard  to  the  external  object.  The  fourth  part  shows
"  how  we  become  capable  of  prevision  and  industry,"  "what  our
first  judgments  are  concerning  the  goodness  and  beauty  of
things.  In  a  word  it  is  seen  how  man  having  been  at  first  only
a  sentient  animal  becomes  a  reflective 'animal."2

The  similarity  of  the  works  is  still  more  striking  when  we
consider  the  answers  that  are  given  to  special  questions.  To
take  an  important  instance,  the  origin  of  the  judgment  of  exter-
nality, for  Maine  de  Biran,  is  found  in  the  resistance  which  meets
the  active  exercise  of  the  sense  of  touch.  Were  it  not  for  this
sense  no  other  forms  of  sensation  could  ever  give  us  knowledge
of  the  external  world.  Condillac  had  already  given  the  same
solution  to  the  problem.  The  entire  third  part  of  the  Traite  des
sensations  describes  "  how  touch  teaches  the  other  senses  to
judge  of  external  objects."  Chapter  four  of  this  part  explains
why  we  attribute  to  vision  an  independence  of  function  which  it
does  not  in  reality  possess.  We  have  seen  that  Maine  de  Biran
made  the  judgment  of  externality  depend  upon  active,  not  upon
passive,  touch.  Condillac  after  maintaining  that  no  knowledge
of  external  objects  can  be  derived  from  olfactory,  auditory,  gus-
tatory, and  visual  sensations,  says:  "Just  as  certainly  there
would  be  the  same  ignorance  with  the  sense  of  touch  if  it  re-
mained motionless."  3  We  have  then  the  origin  of  the  judgment
of  externality  explained  by  the  same  fact,  the  activity  of  the  or-
gan of  touch.  The  difference  is  in  the  introspective  account  of
the  psychical  accompaniment  of  the  act.  With  Maine  de  Biran
it  is  an  act  of  a  self;  with  Condillac  it  is  the  movement  of  an
organism.
