Background
Condillac's basic philosophy was, technically speaking, sensationalism, the theory that the senses are the only source and means of human knowledge, that thoughts and memories are explained by resolving them into the sensations in which they originated. He was a philosophical disciple of Locke and a contributor to the French Encyclopedia. In his TraitéTraite des sensations (1754) he illustrated his teachings with his famous analogy of a statue that acquires consciousness gradually as it receives one faculty after another. Other works by Condillac were Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines (1746), TraitéTraite des systèmessystemes (1754), TraitéTraite des animaux (1775), Le Commerce et le gouvernement considérésconsideres relativement l'un àa l'autre (1776), and La Logique (1781). Condillac died at Beaugency on Aug. 3, 1780.