ld be for it in the very process of knowing to vitiate
true knowledge--to defeat its own purpose. The ideal was a maximum of
receptivity. Since the impressions made upon the mind by objects were
generally termed sensations, empiricism thus became a doctrine of
sensationalism--that is to say, a doctrine which identified knowledge
with the reception and association of sensory impressions. In
John Locke, the most influential of the empiricists, we find this
sensationalism mitigated by a recognition of certain mental faculties,
like discernment or discrimination, comparison, abstraction, and
generalization which work up the material of sense into definite and
organized forms and which even evolve new ideas on their own account,
such as the fundamental conceptions of morals and mathematics. (See
ante, p. 61.) But some of his successors, especially in France in the
latter part of the eighteenth century, carried his doctrine to the
limit; they regarded discernment and judgment as peculiar sensations
made in us by the conjoint presence of other sensations. Locke had held
that the mind is a blank piece of paper, or a wax tablet with nothing
engraved on it at birth (a tabula rasa) so far as any contents of ideas
were concerned, but had endowed it with activities to be exercised upon
the material received. His French successors razed away the powers and
derived them also from impressions received.

As we have earlier noted, this notion was fostered by the new interest
in education as method of social reform. (See ante, p. 93.) The emptier
the mind to begin with, the more it may be made anything we wish by
bringing the right influences to bear upon it. Thus Helvetius, perhaps
the most extreme and consistent sensationalist, proclaimed that
education could do anything--that it was omnipotent. Within the sphere
of school instruction, empiricism found its directly beneficial office
in protesting against mere book learning. If knowledge comes from the
impressions made upon us by natural objects, it is impossible to procure
knowledge without the use of objects which impress the mind. Words,
all kinds of linguistic symbols, in the lack of prior presentations of
objects with which they may be associated, convey nothing but sensations
of their own shape and color--certainly not a very instructive kind of
knowledge. Sensationalism was an extremely handy weapon with which
to combat doctrines and opinions resting wholly upon tradition and
auth