light, either as written by
himself or as edited by Dumont. This was my private reading: while,
under my father's direction, my studies were carried into the higher
branches of analytic psychology. I now read Locke's _Essay_, and wrote
out an account of it, consisting of a complete abstract of every
chapter, with such remarks as occurred to me; which was read by, or
(I think) to, my father, and discussed throughout. I performed the same
process with _Helvetius de L'Esprit_, which I read of my own choice.
This preparation of abstracts, subject to my father's censorship, was
of great service to me, by compelling precision in conceiving and
expressing psychological doctrines, whether accepted as truths or only
regarded as the opinion of others. After Helvetius, my father made me
study what he deemed the really master-production in the philosophy
of mind, Hartley's _Observations on Man_. This book, though it did
not, like the _Traite de Legislation_, give a new colour to my
existence, made a very similar impression on me in regard to its
immediate subject. Hartley's explanation, incomplete as in many points
it is, of the more complex mental phenomena by the law of association,
commended itself to me at once as a real analysis, and made me feel by
contrast the insufficiency of the merely verbal generalizations of
Condillac, and even of the instructive gropings and feelings about for
psychological explanations, of Locke. It was at this very time that my
father commenced writing his _Analysis_ of the Mind, which carried
Hartley's mode of explaining the mental phenomena to so much greater
length and depth. He could only command the concentration of thought
necessary for this work, during the complete leisure of his holiday
for a month or six weeks annually: and he commenced it in the summer
of 1822, in the first holiday he passed at Dorking; in which
neighbourhood, from that time to the end of his life, with the
exception of two years, he lived, as far as his official duties
permitted, for six months of every year. He worked at the _Analysis_
during several successive vacations, up to the year 1829, when it was
published, and allowed me to read the manuscript, portion by portion,
as it advanced. The other principal English writers on mental
philosophy I read as I felt inclined, particularly Berkeley, Hume's
_Essays_, Reid, Dugald Stewart and Brown on Cause and Effect. Brown's
_Lectures_ I did not read until two or three years l