'For mock-turtle make me sup sensations.'
The grave criticisms and arguments of many of Berkeley's opponents rest
on the same basis. On the other hand, Hegel looks down loftily upon the
whole affair, and pronounces the philosophy and its criticism a mere
play upon words. Berkeley says _without_ is _within_. Be it so. He has
done nothing to settle the problem of philosophy, which remains as
before. It may help to bring out more clearly what we believe to be a
juster estimate of the nature and value of the speculations of Bishop
Berkeley, if we shortly summarize these two different modes of
criticizing his system as they appear in their latest form.
Thus it is said, on the one hand, when we look at any object we feel
compelled to assert that we see it to be of a certain colour; but this
assertion, we afterwards find, must be compatible with two facts--that
the same object has different colours as seen by the same person from
different points of view, and also as seen by different persons at the
same time. Yet we stand by our conviction, that we do see the same
thing, because it is our conviction that we do see it. If we were not to
stand by it under these circumstances, we could never stand by such
natural convictions at any time. The whole evidence for the system is
that visible objects look of different sizes and colours at different
distances, and in different lights; while the arguments against the
theory are the primary convictions of men.[221]
On the other hand, a recent German critic says that the reason why
Berkeley's theory has been so little approved of, not only by the great
public of those who are capable of reflection, but also by those who are
philosophers by profession, is that it is not at all in advance of
common opinion; for Berkeley was not the first to declare that the apple
which is seen and felt, is only seen and felt, or is phenomenal. This
assertion is as old as philosophy. Most philosophers, however, in
opposition to Berkeley, have thought, and still think, that the
fundamental cause of the phenomena which brings it about is not merely
phenomenal, but something quite different. This hypothesis is not
without its difficulties. We cannot explain how a motion in the nerves
becomes a sensation which we are conscious of. But Berkeley's theory
does not better the position. He cannot show how it happens that the
divine objective 'ideas' become one human subjective perception or
intuition; he does not tell us how God enables us to share or represent
His thoughts, since He neither speaks to us nor writes to us. Berkeley
cannot, from his point of view, show with any certainty where the truth
lies in the different opinions of men upon the orderly coherence of the
phenomenal world, the relation of phenomenal things to each other, upon
the ground and purpose of human existence, &c. In short, he is as little
able to found a scientific knowledge and a theory of knowledge upon his
hypothesis as the common opinion of man can on its presupposition. His
whole system is only a change of position without result. It explains
nothing, helps us in nothing--it is no philosophy.[222]
We have chosen these two representations, not because they are the best,
but simply because they are the latest.
All such criticisms proceed upon the supposition that the whole of the
philosophy of Berkeley is summed up in the 'Principles of Human
Knowledge,' and do not even take the trouble to investigate the history
of the opinions advanced in that unfinished and imperfect treatise. They
do not know the philosophical importance of the Theory of Vision, the
correspondence between Johnson and Berkeley, nor the Platonism or
Neo-Platonism of 'Siris.' The publication of a complete edition of
Berkeley's writings ought itself to render such criticism impossible,
and the elucidations supplied by Professor Fraser should make them less
excusable. A philosophical critic can scarcely now proceed on the
presupposition that the 'Principles of Human Knowledge' and the
Dialogues are the full and finished results of Berkeley's speculations,
and take it upon him to neglect all else in his critique.[223] He must
now recognise that it is not so easy to sum up Berkeley's principles;
that we are in the same position for judging him as we would be with
regard to Leibnitz if the 'Monadologie' and the 'Nouveaux Essais' had
never been written; that we have a series of treatises, each more
unfinished than the other, from which the latent developing thoughts
have to be gathered as much by reference to history and life as by
actual reference to their pages. He must recognise that there is a
discernible unity in his life and speculations--a unity which may be
traced throughout all Berkeley's writings, and which reconciles the
Theory of Vision with 'Siris,' the Preface to the 'Principles,' &c.,
with the cancelling of the pages on Nominalism in the last edition of
the 'Alciphron.'
Berkeley's whole philosophy is a combination of two currents of
speculation--that of Locke on the one hand, and that of the English
mystics on the other. In his earlier writings the influence of Locke is
predominant, but gradually loses power until at last it almost succumbs
to the influence of the Platonists; but, from first to last, we have the
attempt to combine what is real and deep and true in the old spiritual
philosophy with the clearness, consistency, and relation to physical
science which Nominalism and the Baconian method can bring.
Berkeley seeks, in metaphysics, direct spiritual intuition; in physics,
to abolish what would prevent this intuition. The mystics from whom
Berkeley had learned so much had built their system of philosophy upon
such an intuition, and made it their one thing needful. But their
spiritual intuition was an intuition which was said to be enjoyed in
meditations and trances, not in life and work. The world of things seen
and handled did not bring them into direct communion with spirit; it was
rather a veil to cloud the vision, a clog to hinder the endeavour of the
human spirit ever trying to get beyond it. The senses and
sense-knowledge were despised, and only behind the veil which it hung
athwart the soul was there that universe of things unseen and eternal
which More and Norris delighted to expatiate upon; or, if the senses did
in any dim and uncertain way reveal the invisible spiritual realities
longed for, it was because the soul, rising above them, put a divine
meaning into them, and revelled in the 'lusciousness of this inward
sense.' Such a hazy, unreal way of conceiving the spirit-life which he
believed to be the true reality, was distasteful to Berkeley. He wished
to keep to the spiritual intuition, which was the one good thing in
these mystical doctrines, but he wished to bring it out of dreamland,
and make it serviceable for every-day work and endeavour. Both More and
Norris dreamt of an Atlantis, and celebrated its praises in prose and
verse; Berkeley set sail for America to create the Utopia he had
visioned. More and Norris could only realise the spiritual intuition on
which they based their philosophy in an ecstatic contemplation, when
the soul is borne on the wings of meditation far beyond this world of
sensible things; Berkeley employs his spiritual intuition to account for
puzzles in vision, errors in mathematics, and the virtues of tar-water.
He wishes to mould and fashion, to give clearness and distinctness of
outline to the spiritual beliefs and intuitions of the mystics by
applying to them the _method_ of Locke and Bacon. He wishes to conserve
and give value to the fundamental truths which lie unshaped in the
scholastic Realism, by applying to them the clearness and methods of
Nominalism. This is, we believe, the key to Berkeley's life and
philosophy.
Let us try to show its application.
The English mystics were the reaction against a phase of the new
philosophy which had been so developed by Hobbes as to create a strong
counter opinion. This phase was the doctrine of an inert matter which is
so prominent in the writings of Descartes and Geulinx--matter, whose
distinguishing characteristic was extension, which was entirely void of
all power to act or to influence, and which was set up in opposition to
spirit, whose distinguishing characteristic or property was
consciousness. This theory of matter was so void of all real meaning
that the existence and properties of material substance became gradually
of less importance in a system of philosophy, and at length, as in
Malebranche and Norris, ceased to have any influence on their
speculations. It was outside their system, and of little or no account
in its explanation. Yet the very semblance of its presence prevented a
thorough-going attempt to explain the real meaning of reality, power,
and causality, and recourse is had to meditation and ecstasy instead of
to philosophical explanation and analysis. Locke's philosophy, on the
other hand, with its calm, experimental analysis of the facts of
knowledge, and its concentration of effort upon the senses and the
knowledge they supplied, had brought the mind of man back to facts, and
pointed to another path than that of vision or ecstasy, by which one
might ascend to the understanding of what is meant by the world of
things known and knowable. But if Locke is always judicious, he is never
deep. He solved the theory of substance more by ignoring than by
explaining it; and his Atomism, if one may call it so--his assertion
that all knowledge is of particulars, and particulars only--not only
turned him aside from any complete statement of causality, but forced
him into theories of abstract ideas or conceptions that seem
inconsistent with his own principles. When Locke had to account for the
fact that this, that, and the other, sensation of colour were felt to be
the same, he explains away this seeming contradiction to his favourite
doctrine that all knowledge is of particulars, by saying that there is
an abstract idea of whiteness framed from the particular ideas or
sensations. But the necessities of language, thought, and science
require that this abstract idea of whiteness must be as often, if not
oftener, before the mind than any one of the particular ideas out of
which it has been constructed, and thus the abstract idea is much more
important than the particular sensation. When Locke is called on to give
an account of our knowledge and its origin, his Atomism is always
brought forward; when he wishes to speak of truth, certainty, &c., he
cannot help paying more attention to abstract ideas. He thus figures two
worlds just as the mystics had done, the sensible and intelligible, and
while elevating the worth of the former, is inclined to make certainty,
demonstration, &c., belong to the latter.
Locke's theory of abstract ideas was an hypothesis to account for and
explain a really objective knowledge--that is, a knowledge which is true
for others as well as for the individual. Objectivity, in this simple
sense of the word, was a great difficulty in Locke's system. He had
reduced all our ideas to ideas of sense and of reflection. He had
insisted on the purely subjective origin of whatever is known. And at
the same time he had insisted that what was known in this way were
particular things and particulars only. He seems both in his account of
the origin of knowledge, and in his description of the things known, to
exclude the possibility of a knowledge common to several individuals at
once. Each man seems rather to be shut within the sphere of his own
ideas of sense and reflection about certain particular objects. But a
subjective theory of knowledge and things known cannot be maintained. It
would render all social intercourse impossible. There could be neither
language, propositions, nor even common nouns. And the theory of
abstract ideas is the way out of the difficulty. Now Berkeley, with his
strong spiritual intuition, regarded Locke's system of abstract ideas
very much as Aristotle, with his strong faith in progressive motion
towards a final end ([Greek: telos]), looked at Plato's ideal theory. It
was only reproduction, a shadowy reflection, a cold crystallization of
the world of sense ideas, and really did nothing to explain the life,
motion, and order of the sense-world, nor furnished us with a basis for
our real common or objective knowledge. We do not think that Berkeley
altogether appreciated Locke, nor fully recognised the use which he, as
well as Hobbes, had made of the doctrine of association of ideas, to
explain community of knowledge and objective certainty. For in Hobbes
and Locke we see the beginnings of that modern psychological theory
which, under the names of association of ideas and relativity of
knowledge, explain the existence, permanence, and objectivity of things
and classes of things by a manifold flow of phenomena. Ideas or
sensations, by rubbing themselves against consciousness, in various ways
coalesce into things, and things into those possibilities of
reproduction, intercourse, and communion which are represented by common
nouns. But Berkeley had been taught by the mystics to associate motion,
cause, and sensation with spirit or mind, and he could not see that
Locke's doctrine of association, so void of conscious life or personal
activity, might at least prove so nearly allied to his own doctrine of
causality that it might be called its external wrapping. And even if
Berkeley had seen this, we may excuse him from acknowledging what he
owed to Locke in this matter, and forcing into prominence, in opposition
to Locke's teaching, his intuition of direct spiritual agency, when we
find how the association theory has not freed us from the abstractions
which Berkeley dreaded, but still gives us such shadowy conceptions as
the 'unconditioned' of Hamilton, or the 'unknown cause' of Mill.
Berkeley admired Locke, and studied him carefully. His great aim was to
keep Locke's results, to retain Locke's philosophy, but to give it new
life. His philosophy was to be Lockianism stript of its notionalism, and
inspired in all its parts by that direct spiritual intuition which was
never absent from his mind. It was to be Locke's philosophy, with these
differences: the starting-point of the system was to be the human
self--the conscious _ego_--the type of all subsistence: and an
association theory producing a second world of abstract ideas was to be
supplanted by the continuous active causality of personal spirits; or,
more shortly, it was to be Locke's philosophy, with living personal
causality put instead of abstract ideas.[224]
If we take this as the fundamental thought in Berkeley's speculation we
find three stages of development in his philosophy. In his 'Common-place
Book,' and in the 'Principles,' he fancies, in his youthful fervour,
that he has only to strip Locke's philosophy of its notionalism and the
true system of metaphysics will appear. Hence his speculation in this
first period is mainly negative. It is a war against abstractions, and
his positive theories are more hinted at than explained. The second
period is revealed in his philosophical letters to Dr. Samuel Johnson.
He begins to find that there is more to be done in philosophy than to
extirpate abstract ideas, and inquires into the archetypes of things.
The third period is given us in 'Siris.' His philosophy has got deeper
and perhaps less dogmatic. He was won to the grand thought of an organic
universe of things, in which their whole is made for all the parts, and
every part for the whole, and for the other parts; so that the virtues
of tar-water are intimately connected by a multiform concatenation
with the constant presence and continual agency of the God in whom we
live and move and have our being. The first period in Berkeley's
speculation is, as we have said, mainly negative. It is a polemic
against abstract ideas in their various forms. The attack is earnest,
eager, but also impatient and inadequate. We have only hints at
construction. It seems as if he thought he had only to deny false modes
of explanation in order to state the right one, and his discussion
throughout bears the stamp of eagerness and impetuosity. It represents
the man who could say of those who doubted the success of his American
enterprise, 'that small-minded persons had a talent for objections.'
This period is represented in the 'New Theory of Vision,' 'The
Principles of Human Knowledge,' and 'The Dialogues between Hylas and
Philonous.' Its negative character may be due to accident. These three
works are confessedly an imperfect sketch of Berkeley's principles. The
'Theory of Vision' is a mere tentative introduction; the 'Principles,'
as we have them, are only the first part of a work which, if we are to
trust 'The Common-place Book,' was meant to include three parts, and was
published as Part I. The 'Dialogues' are only the 'reproduction of the
first part of the 'Principles of Human Knowledge.' They are all of them
imperfect expositions of Berkeley's speculative opinion. Taking them as
they are, however, let us endeavour to discover the fundamental thoughts
in each.
It has been for some time acknowledged that the essay towards A New
Theory of Vision is not to be summed up in the dictum that distance is
invisible. The invisibility of distance is the psychological basis of
the theory.[225] The work is rather the first blow in the attack upon
Locke's 'Doctrine of Abstract Ideas':--
'The treatise is, in short, a professed account count of
the facts, the whole facts, and nothing but the facts, of
which we are visually conscious, as distinguished from
pretended facts and metaphysical abstractions, which
confused thought, an irregular exercise of imagination, or
an abuse of words had substituted for them.'
The question which Berkeley really asks is--How do we universalize our
ideas of sight? The proper objects of sight are light and colours. How,
then, do we see distance, figure, size, situation, magnitude and
solidity? How can the sensation of green colour peculiar to my mind
stand for, not the mere sense-blur of vague green colour, but an oval
leaf fluttering in the wind some twenty feet above me, attached to the
twig of a beech tree! and, moreover, how can this sensation which
belongs to me so far belong to others that the same knowledge conveyed
to me is also given to them? How can the vague subjective sensation be
universalized so that it stands for several things not felt, and more
especially for sensations of touch? What is the link between these
various qualities? What is the bridge by which the mind passes over from
the one to the other? This link is _not_, says Berkeley, an _abstract
idea_ of extension, in which the visible and tangible sensations unite,
for there is no such idea. The sensations of sight and of touch are on
their side quite heterogeneous:--
'The extension, figures, and motions perceived by sight are
specifically distinct from the ideas of touch, called by
the same names; nor is there any such thing as one idea, or
kind of idea, common to both senses.'
Light and colour are the immediate objects of sight, and they constitute
a species entirely distinct from the ideas of touch. No one would think
of adding a visible foot to a tangible foot; and the experience of
persons born blind and recovering their sight points to a certain
confusedness in apprehending the connection between the two sets of
ideas which would not occur if they belonged to one and the same
abstract idea of extension. If we would explain the fact that ideas may
so be universalized that they stand for ideas of touch, we must rather
bring them under the living power of mind which, grasping the two
together, makes the one the sign of the other. When we have the
sensation of the colour greenness, we see a green leaf of a small oval
shape, not because the colour is necessarily connected with the size and
shape, nor because all three inhere as qualities in an abstract idea of
extension, but because:--
'Light and colours, with their several shades and degrees,
all which being infinitely diversified and combined, deform
a language wonderfully adapted to suggest and exhibit to us
the distances, figures, situations, dimensions, and various
qualities of tangible objects--not by similitude, nor yet
by inference of necessary connection, but by the arbitrary
imposition of Providence, just as words suggest the things
signified by them.'
There is no abstract idea which corresponds now to the sensations of
sight, now to the sensations of touch; the connecting link is supplied
by the unifying action of the human mind, which seizes upon the one idea
and makes it the sign of the others, and this one idea is fitted to be
the sign of the others not by any similarity or peculiar fitness on its
side, but because of its position in the flow of phenomena given to it
and preserved for it by the living spiritual causality which creates and
arranges everything. The ideas of sense are universalized, scientific
and objective knowledge is possible, we can go from ideas of sight to
those of touch, and back again from those of touch to those of sight,
because of a double spiritual influence--the active living influence of
mind outside, permeating, creating, and associating all things, and the
partly passive, partly active ingathering influence of the individual
human mind within, interpreting, arranging, according to the
associations imposed upon them and lying undeveloped in them, the vague
_blurs_ of sensation. Berkeley's thought is almost the same as
Schleiermacher's, that all scientific knowledge is the joint product of
an internal and an external factor--organic function and the external
world,--which factors are universally related to each other; only,
according to Berkeley's spiritual intuition, everywhere present; the
living centre of organic function is the partly passive, partly active
influence of the human self, while the living centre of the external
factor is the supreme mind without us continuously creating and
arranging.
The Principles of Human Knowledge follow up the attack on abstract ideas
made in the New Theory of Vision. The introduction, with its attack on
Conceptualism,[226] prepares the way for a more sweeping assault on
abstractions. Now Berkeley almost invariably attacks a general question
by making an assault on one special form which it takes. His method is
borrowed from Locke, who shows that all our ideas may be reduced to
ideas of sensation and reflection by selecting one or two most unlikely
to conform to such a reduction, and proving by analysis that they do.
Berkeley begins to attack the Lockian doctrine of abstract ideas by
showing that there is no abstract extension common to sight and touch;
he proves the providence of God by explaining the beauty and value of
the language of vision; and he exhibits the organism of the universe by
tracing the connection between the virtues of tar-water and the hidden
mysteries of things. He always seeks a concrete instance of the abstract
fact, and assails a particular case of the general principle he wishes
to attack. This method is carried out in the 'Principles.' He does not
assail the doctrine of abstract ideas in general, nor endeavour to strip
Lockianism of all its notionalism. He fastens on one particular abstract
idea, which because of its importance and prevailing influence may be
considered as the champion of the rest, and puts to flight the armies of
the Philistines by slaying their Goliath.
The sum and head of all abstract ideas is the idea of matter, as this
was used in the new philosophy of the seventeenth century. For what is
an abstract idea? It is a connecting link between sensations--something
to which they may be referred, in which they are supposed to inhere, and
which is thought to account for their permanence of objective reality.
For example, 'white' is a single quality or a single sensation felt by
me now and here when I look at a sheet of paper. But 'whiteness' is the
abstract idea to which all these single sensations may be referred, and
in which they may inhere and so have a permanence and objective reality,
so that this sheet of paper, because it has 'whiteness,' is always and
by every one seen to be 'white.' The abstract ideas of extension, of
situation, and of number, are examples which are supposed to be of more
importance, and to include a vastly larger number of individuals. Now
the one idea to which every sense-particular, without exception, may be
referred is the idea of matter or material substance. It gives them
permanence, reality, and objectivity. It is the germ, the centre, the
vital spot of the whole system of abstractions. Destroy it, and the
system perishes. Show that it is an illusion, a mere word,--that it can
give no reality, no permanence,--that it cannot afford a basis for
scientific knowledge nor community of belief, and the whole doctrine
which seeks to build science and reality on such a foundation
disappears, and on the ground thus cleared a more substantial, real, and
living structure of belief and opinion may be erected. This seems to be
the guiding thought in the 'Principles of Human Knowledge' and in the
'Dialogues.' It is mainly negative,--a denial of matter, and therefore
of all abstractions. But amidst the negative or destructive reasonings
there are traces, as there must be, of positive construction. The _one_
positive principle which is always present is that spiritual intuition
which we have already spoken of,--the all-pervading belief inherited
from the mystics, and particularly from Malebranche and Norris, that
mind or spirit is the one reality and the one fount of active agency.
But this intuition, always present, is never adequately expressed nor
applied. Berkeley either meant to reserve its discussion for another
'Part,' or his natural impatience made him overlook the necessity of
explaining the steps in his analysis of all _reality_ into personal
spirit, and all _causality_ into the conscious activity of such personal
spirits. He is always confused, hesitating, and sometimes conflicting in
his statements about the way in which 'mind' becomes the only real
existence, and the 'activity of mind' the only real agency; and it is in
the skill with which he has pierced together the scattered hints into
one really complete and so far adequate explanation of the universe of
things that Professor Fraser's unwearied patient study and just
appreciation of his author is seen to most advantage.
Our experience as given us in the senses is made up 'of sensations,
ideas, or phenomena,--facts of which there is a perception or
consciousness.' These sensations, and nothing else, make the material of
the sensible universe which we see and know and live in,--they are the
material out of which the shifting scenes in this wonderful panorama of
sense-life are formed,--they are the exciting causes of all the various
forms of our mental life, of our joy and sorrow, laughter and tears,
hopes and despairings. When we are conscious of the outward world, it is
of a world of sensations which is _immediately_ present to our minds and
in our minds; for the essence of an idea or sensation is that it is
perceived,--its _esse_ is _percipi_. But this is not the whole of
Berkeley's theory of matter, as many critics would have us believe.
There is along with this 'immediate perception of extended sensible
reality' a 'mediate perception or a presumptive inference of the
existence of sensible things and their relations.' The knowledge we have
of the external world of the senses cannot be reduced to the sensations
of which we are actually conscious for the time being. There are,
besides the sensations immediately present, clustering groups of others
which we do not immediately perceive. Tangible things are signified by
visual sensations, and sounds recall colours and shapes. Every isolated
sensation is significant of more than itself, and _mere_ sensation is
impossible. And this significance of sensations, the reality of their
_relations_ to each other, recognised and insisted upon by Berkeley,
makes his scheme different from any system of merely subjective
idealism, and supplies a basis for objective or scientific knowledge.
'For,' as Professor Fraser says, 'faith in an established or external
association between our sense-phenomena is the basis of the constructive
activity of intellect in all inductive interpretation of sensible
things.' It is this 'external,' or imposed association, which
_universalizes_ and gives objective existence to sensations and the
sense-world, and so far Berkeley's explanation does not differ very much
from that of Mr. Mill or Professor Bain.
But then, what is Berkeley's 'association'? It is, as Professor Fraser
well puts it, 'his religious faith in the constancy of the Divine
constitution of the Cosmos.' The associative relations of things which
give permanence and objective reality and intelligibility to the world
of sense-phenomena are not to be explained by any hap-hazard
one-coming-after-another, as modern psychologists do. They are due to
the active agency of the Supreme Mind which links sensations together in
ways of His own, so that there exists, not a chaos of varying, changing
phenomena, but an orderly intelligible system of sense things,
co-existing and successive, significant of each other, and all together
making the interpretable language of Him whose designs they embody, and
by whose constant activity they are all maintained. 'And thus,' as
Professor Fraser has beautifully expressed it:--
'The only conceivable and practical, and for us the only
possible, substantiality in the material world
is--permanence of co-existence or aggregation among
sensations; and the only conceivable and practical, and for
us the only possible, causality among phenomena
is--permanence or invariableness among their successions.
These two are almost (but not quite) one. The actual or
conscious co-existence of all the sensations which
constitute a particular tree, or a particular mountain,
cannot be simultaneously realized. A few co-existing visible
signs, for instance, lead us to expect that the many other
sensations of which the tree is the virtual co-constituent
would gradually be perceived by us, if the conditions for
our having actual sensations of all the other qualities were
fulfilled. The substantiality and causality of matter thus
resolve into a Universal Sense-symbolism, the interpretation
of which is the office of physical science. The material
world is a system of interpretable signs, dependent for its
actual existence in sense upon the sentient mind of the
interpreter; but significant of guaranteed pains and
pleasures, and the guaranteed means of avoiding and
attaining pains and pleasures: significant too of other
minds, and their thoughts, feelings, and volitions; and
significant above all of Supreme Mind, through whose
Activity the signs are sustained, and whose Archetypal Ideas
are the source of those universal or invariable relations of
theirs which make them both practically and scientifically
significant or objective. The permanence and efficiency
attributed to Matter is in God--in the constitutive
Universals of Supreme Mind: sensations or sense-given
phenomena themselves, and sensible things, so far as they
consist of sensations, can be neither permanent nor
efficient; they are in constant flux. This indeed is from
the beginning the tone of Berkeley himself--much deepened in
"Siris."'
In Berkeley's earlier philosophy, and even in his later, this grand
conception of an orderly universe permeated and ever upheld by mind, is
by no means fully or consistently worked out, as Professor Fraser
himself acknowledges. The starting-point itself is somewhat confused.
Berkeley starts with sensations. But the universe is not a universe of
sensations, but of sensible things, and although the formula _esse est
percipi_ will at once explain the meaning of a sensation, it will not,
without some argument and explanation, account for the meaning of a
sensible thing. Berkeley did not sufficiently recognise the difference,
and he leaped to a conclusion which, however right, should have been
reasoned out. A whole is not the aggregate number of its parts, it is
the sum of the parts _plus_ their being placed together. There is a
difference between a house and a heap of stones. Now Berkeley did not
seem to see this, at least in his earlier philosophy. Tangible distance
was to him a series of _minima tangibilia_, a series of tactual points;
visible distance a series of _visible points_, and that only. Whereas,
distance is really the sensible points _plus_ their arrangement. The
sensible thing is really the complex of sensations _plus_ their
unification. We are not disposed to believe with Professor Ueberweg[227]
that this oversight amounted to a begging of the whole question, we hold
with Professor Fraser that there is only a little confusion in
apprehending the problem aright, and a rashness in leaping to a
conclusion which should rather have been elaborated and proved. Berkeley
thought, as Professor Fraser says, that 'the consciousness of my own
permanence, amid the changes in my senses, is the only archetype, in my
experience, of proper substance or permanence; and apart from this
experience, permanence or substance is an unintelligible word.' His
thought was not substantially distinct from Dr. Ueberweg's own,--who
says[228] 'that individual intuitions gradually arise out of the
original _blur_ of perception, when man first begins to recognise
himself an individual essence in opposition to the external world,' and
who elsewhere[229] makes the notion of self the type of the essence of
things. That unique thing called 'self' or 'I' is the only real
permanent unity known, and is therefore the type of all permanence and
unity elsewhere. The _esse_ or the essence which gives shape and
endurance to fleeting formless sensations is mind--my mind or the
Supreme Mind. It is the _percipi_, _being perceived_, or coming under
the formative influence of mind, which gives to a series of sensations
that unity which we can call 'distance,' that shape and unity to the
cluster of sensations which we call 'leaf' that orderly series
arrangement and permanence which we call the system of things. The
action of mind upon sensations, forming and arranging them, is not
discussed by Berkeley. He contents himself with his vague spiritual
intuition, and leaves his readers to work out his meaning. It does seem
clear to us, however, both from his references to the archetypes of
ideas in the 'Principles of Human Knowledge,' and more especially from
his interesting discussions on the native archetypes of ideas in his
letters to Johnson, that he did not altogether overlook the distinction
between mere complexes of sensations and sensible things; but that he
was sensible of this distinction, and wished to explain that the complex
of sensations was transformed into an orderly stable sensible thing by
the unifying formative mind putting as it were its stamp upon it.[230]
It was undoubtedly a hindrance to the completeness of Berkeley's
thoughts that he had no clear and distinct scheme of ethical relations
before his mind when he was investigating the relations between mind
and phenomena. It is true that, as Professor Fraser says, 'the moral
presumption of our individual free and proper agency is obscurely
involved in Berkeley's philosophy of sense from the first.' But the
ethical relations of the individual human spirit were nowhere clearly
seen, and were not made its leading and peculiar characteristic. It was
reserved for Kant to place the moral relations of these individuals and
their significance in the world of things in due prominence, and it has
been easier for men such as Schleiermacher and Herman Lotze, who have
come after Kant, and who have maintained a doctrine of the spiritual
relations which exist in and give order, cohesion, and permanence to the
universe, not unlike Berkeley's, to develop the doctrine of these
relations so far as the human spirit goes, and give more thoroughness
and completeness to the scheme. We may conceive Berkeley carefully
working out the double relation of human to divine spirit, and finding
in the sensible universe the veil which hangs between, not merely the
orderly and pregnant language of the Creator Spirit to be interpreted
and made intelligible by the creature spirit, but also the shadowy
reflection of the working of the Creator towards the creature, and of
the striving of the creature towards the Creator. Each thing, class,
order, genus, and race, with all its relations to all the other parts of
the vast order of things, filling the place in the organism in which the
Creator placed it, acting, influencing, and ruling, according to its
function and place in the arrangement of the whole; just as the
individual, or class, or nation fulfils, or ought to fulfil, the ethical
duties which its hands find to do, so that the universe, in all its
spheres of animate and inanimate life, of organic and inorganic bodies,
becomes in its mutual action and reaction, as Schleiermacher says, a
'fainter ethic.'
Berkeley approaches this in his greatest metaphysical work, the 'Siris.'
It is here that the thought of organism or development in things and in
the universe, which comes in occasionally in his earlier writings, is
more fully expressed and even elaborated. The very name suggests it, the
book is a _chain_ of philosophical reflections and inquiries. Faithful
to the method of his younger days, Berkeley takes a concrete instance of
the concatenation of nature. He discourses on the virtues of tar-water,
and thoughts on these lead up to the highest mysteries of the universe.
But when we divest the thoughts of this particular form, we have such a
system of the universe as Bacon working with Plotinus might have
conceived. The centre source and light of all is the One Supreme
Spirit--the personal omnipresent God in whom we and all things live and
more and have our being. The universe is his reflection, it represents
his thoughts, it is the revelation of his mind and will, it is his
language. But the old puzzling word 'arbitrary' has disappeared, and
this language of nature is seen to depend upon great laws and to be
capable of interpretation because so dependent. The esse of sensation
and of the sense-world generally, is still _percipi_, but the ambiguity
lying in the word is carefully distinguished. On the one hand all things
are dependent on the creative and upholding influence of the Supreme
Spirit. He it is that, making all things after their _kinds_, sends
forth and sustains the archetypes of things. On the other hand, the
fleeting sense-world is framed and shaped by the individual mind into
the universe of things, in accordance with the divine ideas or
archetypes which lie hidden in it. There is a double meaning in the
phrase, _esse_ is _percipi_. It means both that these ideas are
dependent for the possibility of existence on the divine thoughts, or
archetypes whose sensible shadows they are, and also that all sensible
things are dependent for their particular formation and position on the
formative powers of the human mind, which works in each man by general
laws of human intelligence, in accordance with and for the discovery of
the divine ideas lying immanent in things. And thus human knowledge is a
reproduction, or discovery and representation of the thoughts which the
divine creative thinking has built into things;[231] human science is a
presaging or reading of the letters and words of nature which manifest
its order and harmony, in the faith and expectancy that this same order
and harmony now prevailing, because it depends on the divine ideas of
the Creator, is fixed and enduring;[232] and the 'proper name of this
world is Spirit--free immortal Spirit--Spirit in communication with
Spirit--Spirit in dependence on and in reconciliation, through Christ,
with the one absolute Spirit--God.'[233]