BERKELEY.
Leibnitz had not carried out the standpoint of idealism to its extreme.
He had indeed, on the one side, explained space and motion and bodily
things as phenomena which had their existence only in a confused
representation, but on the other side, he had not wholly denied the
existence of the bodily world, but had recognized as a reality lying at
its basis, the world of monads. The phenomenal or bodily world had its
fixed and substantial foundation in the monads. Thus Leibnitz, though an
idealist, did not wholly break with realism. The ultimate consequence of
a subjective idealism would have been to wholly deny the reality of the
objective, sensible world, and explain corporeal objects as simply
phenomena, as nothing but subjective notions without any objective
reality as a basis. This consequence the idealistic counterpart to the
ultimate realistic result of materialism—appears in _George Berkeley_,
who was born in Ireland, 1684, made bishop of the Anglican Church in
1734, and died in 1753. Hence, though he followed the empiricism of
Locke, and sustained no outward connection with Leibnitz, we must place
him in immediate succession to the latter as the perfecter of a
subjective idealism.
Our sensations, says Berkeley, are entirely subjective. We are wholly in
error if we believe that we have a sensation of external objects or
perceive them. That which we have and perceive is only our sensations.
It is _e. g._ clear, that by the sense of sight we can _see_ neither the
distance, the size, nor the form of objects, but that we only _conclude_
that these exist, because our experience has taught us that a certain
sensation of sight is always attended by certain sensations of touch.
That which we see is only colors, clearness, obscurity, &c., and it is
therefore false to say that we see and feel the same thing. So also we
never go out of ourselves for those sensations to which we ascribe most
decidedly an objective character. The peculiar objects of our
understanding are only our own affections; all ideas are hence only our
own sensations. But just as there can be no sensations outside of the
sensitive subject, so no idea can have existence outside of him who
possesses it. The so-called objects exist only in our notion, and have a
being only as they are perceived. It is the great error of most
philosophers that they ascribe to corporeal objects a being outside the
conceiving mind, and do not see that they are only mental. It is not
possible that material things should produce any thing so wholly
distinct from themselves as sensations and notions. There is no such
thing as a material external world; _mind alone exists_ as thinking
being, whose nature consists in thinking and willing. But whence then
arise all our sensations which come to us like the images of fancy,
without our agency, and which are thus no products of our will? They
arise from a spirit superior to ourselves—for only a spirit can produce
within us notions—even from God. God gives us ideas; but as it would be
contradictory to assert that a being could give what it does not
possess, so ideas exist _in God_, and we derive them from him. These
ideas in God may be called archetypes, and those in us ectypes.—In
consequence of this view, says Berkeley, we do not deny an independent
reality of things, we only deny that they can exist elsewhere than in an
understanding. Instead therefore of speaking of a nature in which, _e.
g._ the sun is the cause of warmth, &c., the accurate expression would
be this: God announces to us through the sense of sight that we should
soon perceive a sensation of warmth. Hence by nature we are only to
understand the succession or the connection of ideas, and by natural
laws the constant order in which they proceed, _i. e._ the laws of the
association of ideas. This thorough-going subjective idealism, this
complete denial of matter, Berkeley considered as the surest way to
oppose materialism and atheism.