Note 289.1 — UTILITARIANISM.

It will be now quite evident from these specimens, that Hartley’s philosophy is just the sensuous side of Locke worked curiously into detail, with a practical rejection of the intellectual side. Indeed, he says expressly (i. 360) that “all our most complex ideas arise from sensation, and Reflection is not a distinct source, as Mr. Locke makes it.” This throwing of reflection overboard is the necessary postulate of all the absurdity that afterwards grew out from the Lockian philosophy; and James Mill accordingly[289.1] disowns the “ideas of reflection” with the same fatal one-sideness, and, it may be added, with the same transparent superficiality of logic; for when a man talks of “generalizing states of consciousness,” what is this but another term for reflection? Generalizing is a species, and one of the most universally practised species, of reflection.