Condillac's Correspondence: A Correction

Notes and Discussions CONDILLAC'S CORRESPONDENCE: A CORRECTION In a recent article commenting on the development of Condillac's thought during the decade following publication of his first philosophical treatise in 1746, the Essai sur I'origine des connaissances humaines, I cited, incidentally, new evidence to show that, contrary to the general opinion of his contemporary critics, Condillac was quite innocent of the charge leveled against him that he had pilfered the notion of the hypothetical statue and the analytical methodology based on a d~composition des sens for his Trait~ des Sensations (1754) from Diderot's Lettres sur les sourds et muets (1751). 1 The evidence presented was in the form of a newly discovered Condillac letter dated 10 June 1750 and addressed to the Genevan mathematician Gabriel Cramer. The letter makes it perfectly clear that the basic methodology of the Trait~ des Sensations had in fact been worked out by Condillac with the help of his mysterious collaborator, Mlle Ferrand, well before the Diderot work in question appeared. In addition to making this point, and on the basis of a nineteenth-century catalogue description, which reproduced an intriguing snippet from another Condillac letter dated apparently on 20 September 1744, I speculated also (though happily with a certain measure of caution) on the possibility that the French philosopher had already been working on the notion of the ddcomposition des sens and the basic problems dealt with in his Trait~ des Sensations even well before he published the Essai in 1746 and hence even before he was brought into personal contact with Diderot by their mutual friend Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 2 The letter fragment in question does not appear in Le Roy's collected edition3 and the "philosophe" to whom Condillac supposedly addressed it in 1744 was not identified in the Charavay catalogue. Fortunately, a little further digging has now turned up the complete letter along with another of equal interest to historians of Condillac's thought. Both letters, as it turns out, were written in 1755, not 1744, and were addressed to the Berlin academician, Samuel Formey. Though unknown to I See my paper, "A new Condillac Letter and the Genesis of the Trait~des Sensations," Journal of the History of Philosophy 16 (January 1978):83-94. 2My note on the subject (ibid., p. 87, n. 14) reads as follows: "I find a reference in the Archives de l'Institut de France: Acad6mieFran~aise,Dossier Condillac, 1 G 17, to the Bul. des Autog. NoFICharavay, No. 286 Avril-Mai 1898, listing the following lettre autographesign~e~Condillac ~un philosophe, Paris 20 septembre 1744 (3 pp. in 4): 'Curieuse lettre off il s'attache h d~montrerqu'un seul sens, l'odorat, peut mener ~tdes op6rationsintellectuelles."Je crois que puisque tes cinq sens nous rendent capables d'op&ations intellectuelles, ils y contribuent chacun, et que, par cons6quent, ces operations auroient lieu, quand m6me nous serionsbom6s h l'odorat. Mais vouspensez que le concoursdes quatre sens, et surtoutde l'ouie y seroit n6cessaire;je vous avoue que je n'en vois pas la raison"'. I have so far been unable to verify the date in question; obviously the matter deserves further investigation." 3Oeuvresphilosophiquesde Condillac, 3 vols. (Paris: Presses Universitairesde France, 1947-51), Correspondance , 2:533-53. [75] 76 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Georges Le Roy, both had in fact been published by Formey in 1789 in Berlin as part of his now somewhat neglected but nevertheless extremely informative two-volume collection of letters and personal reminiscences, the Souvenirs d'un citoyen. 4 The two letters in question, together with another to Formey of 25 February 1756, already published by Le Roy, 5 probably represent the bulk of the correspondence addressed by the French philosopher to the Berlin academician. The first two, dated 2 August and 20 September 1755, are concerned with his recently published Trait~ des Sensations (1754). The third relates to the highly controverisal Trait~ des Animaux (1755). While the now-forgotten letters reveal little that is startlingly new, they provide an intersting commentary by the author on his own work and furnish as well additional proof of the extent to which Mile Ferrand made an obviously essential contribution to the...