ABSTRACT
When a reaction against the Sensationalist view began it had many sources. The main reaction against Sensationalism began round about 1890, but there was a straw in the wind earlier in Brentano's Psychology from an Empiricist Standpoint. In the main, Brentano was reacting against the German romantic tradition, but his views had influence upon philosophers of a different persuasion. The first publication which constituted a direct reaction to Sensationalism was James Ward's Encyclopaedia Britannica article on ‘Psychology’, which he wrote in 1885. This article was sufficient to exact a number of concessions from Bain. Ward uses the term ‘sensation’ in roughly the same way in which the Sensationalists had used it, although he often substitutes for it the term ‘presentation’. The effect of Bradley's view is to distinguish between thought and mere presentation; it is also to stress again that pure presentation is an artificial abstraction.
