ABSTRACT
The Sensationalism which became the most prevalent philosophical and psychological view in this country during the first half of the 19th century owed its origins to the much earlier Hartley, who wrote his Observations on Man in 1749. Hartley's theory was in effect physiological in character. He postulated vibrations which were set up in the nerves by stimulation of the sense-organs. Hartley defined sensations as ‘those internal feelings of the mind which arise from the impressions made by external objects upon the several parts of human bodies’. The most clear-cut and direct exposition of Sensationalism and Associationism is to be found in The Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind by James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill. Like Hartley, James Mill used the notion of a feeling as the basic notion of his system. Mill follows and even develops Berkeley's views in another respect also.
