The reader who wishes to have the idealistic argument sketched in the
foregoing chapter developed more fully should read Berkeley's
_Principles of Human Knowledge_. For the correction of Berkeley's
sensationalistic mistakes the best course is to read Kant's _Critique
of Pure Reason_ or the shorter _Prolegomena to any future Metaphysic_
or any of the numerous expositions or commentaries upon Kant. (One of
the best is the 'Reproduction' prefixed to Dr. Hutchison Stirling's
_Text-book to Kant_.) The non-metaphysical reader should, however, be
informed that Kant is very hard reading, and is scarcely intelligible
without some slight knowledge of the previous history of Philosophy,
especially of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, while some acquaintance with
elementary Logic is also desirable. He will find the argument for
non-sensationalistic Idealism re-stated in a post-Kantian but much
easier form in Ferrier's _Institutes of Metaphysic_. The argument for
a theistic Idealism is powerfully stated (though it is not easy
reading) in the late Prof. T. H. Green's _Prolegomena to Ethics_, Book
I. In view of recent realistic revivals I may add that the earlier
chapters of Mr. Bradley's _Appearance and Reality_ still seem to me to
contain an unanswerable defence of Idealism as against Materialism or
any form of Realism, though his Idealism is not of the theistic type
defended in the above lecture. The idealistic argument is stated in a
way which makes strongly for Theism by Professor Ward in _Naturalism
and Agnosticism_--a work which would perhaps be the best sequel to
these lectures for any reader {28} who does not want to undertake a
whole course of philosophical reading: readers entirely unacquainted
with Physical Science might do well to begin with Part II. A more
elementary and very clear defence of Theism from the idealistic point
of view is to be found in Dr. Illingworth's _Personality Human and
Divine_. Representatives of non-idealistic Theism will be mentioned at
the end of the next lecture.
[1] _Mind_, vol. iv. (U.S.), 1885.
[2] I do not mean of course that in the earliest stages of
consciousness this distinction is actually made; but, if there are
stages of consciousness in which the 'I' is not realized, the idea of
matter or even of an 'object' or 'not-self' existing apart from
consciousness must be supposed to be equally absent.
[3] I have dealt at length with this forgotten thinker in a
Presidential Address to the Aristotelian Society, printed in their
_Proceedings_ for 1907.
[4] _Principles of Human Knowledge_, pt. i., Sections 18, 20.
[5] _Principles of Human Knowledge_, pt. 1., Section 23.
[6] See Lecture IV., pp. 96-101, 123-6.
[7] I have attempted to meet this line of argument somewhat more
adequately, in the form in which it has recently been taken up by
Professor Hoeffding in his _Philosophy of Religion_, in a review in the
Review of Theology and Philosophy for November, 1907 (vol. iii.).
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