EXCHANGE 
 
IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS 
 IN ENGLAND 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN PICKETT TURNER, A. M. 
 
 Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements 
 
 for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 
 
 in the Faculty of Philosophy, 
 
 Columbia University 
 
 1910 
 
IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS 
 IN ENGLAND 
 
 BY 
 JOHN PICKETT TURNER, A. M. 
 
 Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements 
 
 for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 
 
 in the Faculty of Philosophy, 
 
 Columbia University 
 
 1910 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Whether any excuse should be offered for going 
 into a period that has so often been the object of 
 inquiry on the part of more experienced students, 
 is left for the reader of the following studies to 
 decide, but a word as to the genesis of the paper 
 cannot be out of place. It began in an inquiry 
 into the signification of the term imagination in 
 earlier English writers. This was found to be a 
 trustworthy index of the several philosophers' po- 
 sitions in psychology. Interesting light was 
 thrown upon the beginnings of idealism. With 
 the English germs of idealism so completely laid 
 bare, it has been thought worth while to retrace 
 the study with especial reference to that move- 
 ment. In tracing this gradual development of 
 and continued emphasis upon the synthetic func- 
 tion of mind, it has been thought relevant to the 
 study to keep watch upon the formal explanation 
 of union as well as the explanation that must 
 underlie the description given by each author. 
 Hence the importance of and attention given to 
 the principle of association in these studies. That 
 these studies have been made from the stand-point 
 of physiological psychology, is too apparent to 
 call for the statement. 
 
The labor of carrying out any thorough study 
 of Hobbes has been greatly lightened since the 
 appearance of Professor Woodbridge's compila- 
 tion of selections from his writings. 1 I take this 
 opportunity to acknowledge the great usefulness 
 of this volume, from which for the most part my 
 quotations are taken, and my indebtedness to its 
 author. In the case of Berkeley and Locke the 
 editions of Professor A. C. Fraser were used, 
 while in the case of Hume that of Professor L. A. 
 Selbe-Bigge. 
 
 The Philosophy of Hobbes. 1903. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Preface 5_6 
 
 Introduction 11-15 
 
 I Hobbes : Dogmatic Materialism 19-49 
 
 II Locke : Open-minded Dualism 53-81 
 
 III Berkeley: Dogmatic Spiritualism 85-103 
 
 IV Hume : Critical Positivism 107-129 
 
 Conclusion 133-4 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The reception accorded Sterling's The Secret of 
 Hegel, the epoch-making character of which all 
 freely admit, has usually been explained as a re- 
 action against the doctrines of Spencer, Huxley 
 and other espousers of the evolutionary hypothe- 
 sis. But it is a far more significant fact that the 
 whole transcendental movement was in its origin 
 a reaction against the advance of science. The 
 germanization of British thought is a topic of 
 local importance, but the beginnings of idealism 
 arouses a more general interest. The present 
 paper undertakes to trace the first crude steps of 
 this movement which, beginning with Hobbes end- 
 ed in the philosophy of Kant. While an endless 
 amount of work has been put upon the transition 
 from the English school to Kant, it has been done 
 in a broad way and has rarely devoted itself to 
 psychology, as is the case with this paper. The 
 gradual development of the idealistic mind in 
 England has been neglected. While the present 
 paper necessarily brings into relief this aspect of 
 the English school, it must be at once understood 
 that the writer does not lose sight of the direct 
 line of the school a phase of the subject that has 
 not been neglected just as Kant's continental 
 antecedents have not been forgotten. But it is 
 maintained that the developments in England con- 
 
12 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 stitute the best explanation of how Kantianism 
 came to be. 
 
 While Bacon had done much to arouse thinking 
 men, the philosophy of Hobbes constitutes the 
 first systematic break of modern thought with 
 the past; what is wanting in Bacon is found in 
 Hobbes, a clear statement of his case. The 
 Baconian division between science and religion 
 was reasserted by Hobbes and so extended as to 
 enable him to treat as relevant to his investiga- 
 tion only the world of sensuous experience. His 
 statement, if dogmatic, was at least clear and his 
 position unwavering. The work of Locke, on the 
 other hand, tho' it has long been regarded as 
 epoch-making by reason of its radical character, 
 marks a distinct return to the past in some re- 
 spects. His general attitude towards mind, de- 
 spite his much written of sensationalism was, 
 when all is considered, of a reactionary colour. 
 While Hobbes declared for an absolutely homo- 
 geneous universe, Locke in an unmistakable man- 
 ner opposed mind to matter and introduced an 
 intervening world of ideas. Altho the distinc- 
 tion between mind and matter was not so rigid as 
 that of Cartesian dualism, this leaning towards 
 Plato does not harmonize well with his Hobbistic 
 sensational psychology which Locke has had the 
 credit of re-asserting. Where Hobbes had in a 
 clear and unmistakable manner decried a faculty 
 psychology. Locke in just as unmistakable a 
 manner restores a new set of faculties, called by 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 him powers, or natural faculties, by the use of 
 which a directing and active mind gets into touch 
 with and systematizes sensuous experience. The 
 Lockean attitude may be easily explained. While 
 accepting certain new theories, his openness of 
 mind forbade his neglecting certain old ones re- 
 garded as yet to be overthrown. Such a com- 
 promising position on the part of Locke was but 
 a goad to Berkeley, who completed the reaction 
 implicit in Locke's teachings. His return to the 
 past was at least novel. In his psychological 
 idealism he crossed by way of a consideration of 
 primary and secondary qualities into a one-world 
 theory all his own, which tho' directly opposed to, 
 had many points in common with, that of Hobbes. 
 As in the case of Hobbes his position was a dog- 
 matic one, but remarkable for its consistency. 
 Starting with Hobbes-Lockean sensationalism, de- 
 veloping Locke's signification of idea, he re-in- 
 terprets the doctrine in such a way as to destroy 
 its meaning; what in his two predecessors had 
 vouchsafed an external world independent of mind, 
 became for him nothing more than the operation 
 of mind. His alliance with sensationalism prov- 
 ed to be but a mask for the restoration of mind. 
 The scholastic faculty of will, which Hobbes had 
 successfully discarded, is restored and more, it 
 becomes for Berkeley the essence of orig- 
 inal and active mind, marking off individu- 
 als from each other. Hume, who extend- 
 ed the same doctrine into the realm of mind, 
 
14 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 carried Berkeley to his implicit conclusion. 
 He reasoned that if sensuous experience 
 does not signify an external world independent 
 of mind, then there is no proof that subjective ex- 
 perience signifies mind, the inner world. All we 
 have of a certainty are two streams of experience ; 
 what the uniting principle of our experience is, is 
 an insoluble mystery. As the materialism of 
 Hobbes had been replaced by a dualism of the 
 Cartesian type by Locke, so the spiritualism of 
 Berkeley is replaced by the Humean dualism of 
 experience. So, too, as the dogmatic position 
 taken by Hobbes had been followed by the more 
 openminded Locke, the dogmatic position taken by 
 Berkeley had been followed by the still more open- 
 minded Hume. In assuming this non-committal 
 position, declaring only for the existence of 
 two streams of experience, Hume took the 
 step that rendered Kantianism a possibility. 
 While trying to destroy prejudice in favor of an 
 ordered external world, such as we fancy that we 
 have about us, Hume emphasized very significant- 
 ly the part that the mind plays in giving continuity 
 to our experience of nature. The balance was 
 thus tilted in favor of mind for Kant, although 
 there can be little doubt of Hume's leaning to a 
 mechanistic interpretation of nature. If Hume's 
 attack upon the causal principle aroused Kant 
 from his dogmatic slumber, the Humean emphasis 
 upon mental creations suggested the way out to 
 him, while the significant, if loose, Humean use 
 
INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 of the term imagination gave the cue to him that 
 enabled him to bring into closer union perception 
 and conception. In a larger sense, therefore, it 
 made possible the significant claim of the critical 
 philosophy to bring harmony into the opposing 
 schools of empiricism and rationalism. For Kant 
 really did little more than give a systematic de- 
 fense of Hume's position. 
 
I. 
 
 HOBBES: DOGMATIC MATERIALISM. 
 
HOBBES: DOGMATIC MATERIALISM. 
 
 That Hobbes was for many years the most 
 hated man in all England, is a fact far from in- 
 significant, even for psychology. For although 
 his labor in this field was incidental to his work 
 in political science, it constitutes a break with 
 the past the effects of which are felt to-day. To 
 him as much as to any other one man is due the 
 loss of prestige suffered by the ancient doctrine 
 of innate ideas. Greek intellectualism met for 
 the first time, in his psychology, the instrument 
 that may yet play havoc with it and physiological 
 psychology became a possibility. For while what 
 he did in psychology has its shortcomings from 
 the standpoint of neurology, examined in the 
 light of the advancement of the science of physi- 
 ology in his day, his contributions are nothing 
 less than remarkable. 
 
 It is well, however, to call attention at the out- 
 set to the relation that Hobbes sustained to the 
 intuitionalists; for unless this be borne constant- 
 ly in mind, his treatment of mind may seem one- 
 sided. Hobbes, as is the case with all sensation- 
 alists, in combating innate ideas went to the 
 other extreme. This will help us to understand 
 why it is that Hobbes lays so much emphasis 
 
20 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 upon the conservative aspect of mind, which in 
 the light of his unbounded confidence in the 
 power of mind, may seem undue. 
 
 Before entering upon his long career as writer 
 and thinker, Hobbes had already come to the con- 
 clusion that consciousness is dependent upon 
 change. As he afterwards wrote: 
 
 "To be always sensible of one and the same thing, and 
 not to be sensible at all of anything is almost all one." 
 
 If now consciousness exists, which Hobbes 
 does not question, it is explicable in terms of 
 change. Here Hobbes turns to Galileo whose 
 theory of motion certainly suited his needs. 
 Change is motion essentially; that is a fact be- 
 yond question. 'That all mutation consists in 
 motion', is for Hobbes a general truth, not ac- 
 cepted only by those whose ' natural discourse 
 has been corrupted with former opinions re- 
 ceived from their masters and who have not bent 
 their minds to the inquiring out of truth '.( 1 ) 
 
 To pass thus from Galileo to Hobbes is but a 
 step; change in the mind is in its essence what 
 change in nature is, motion. Sensation "is noth- 
 ing but motion in some internal part of the sen- 
 tient ". The world within the mind no less than 
 the world without the mind is a world of motion ; 
 the " internal parts", or the "fluids", of the body 
 are in constant motion as well as the external 
 
 *) Elements of Philosophy. Chapter VI, Par. 5. 
 
HOBBES: DOGMATIC MATERIALISM. 21 
 
 world. Here we come to the key to Hobbes' 
 system. From the above quotation it can easily 
 be seen that for Hobbes the one indisputable fact 
 is that all change is a manifestation of motion. 
 Prom his own significant observation that con- 
 sciousness depends upon change, reinforced by 
 the teachings of Galileo, Hobbes leaps to the 
 center of his whole metaphysical system, that 
 motion is the one reality, the cause of all things 
 that are, with no cause but itself. From this uni- 
 versal he then proceeds in rigorous fashion to 
 make his deductions. But despite his great con- 
 fidence in the deductive method, Hobbes still 
 makes valuable contributions to the subject of 
 psychology, as we shall soon see. 
 
 The student of Hobbes' psychology, then, must 
 approach it through the concept of motion; the 
 technique that Galileo applied to physics is to be 
 intensified and applied to mind and its relation to 
 the external world. When a body is presented to 
 the senses of a sentient creature such as man, it 
 by its own motion sets in motion the internal parts 
 of the creature counter to which is the motion 
 from within (which for our author explains that 
 appearance of outness that all our phantasms 
 have) and there arises concomitantly with this 
 motion and reaction the phantasm called sense, 
 the persistence of which is called an image 
 or fancy. The persistence of the im- 
 age is accounted for by the fundamental 
 
22 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 laws of motion. Now, it is just these im- 
 ages, gained from sense, maintained accord- 
 ing to the laws of motion, that constitute what 
 is known as mind; for images are the irreducible* 
 element of the thinking process. Thus Hobbes re- 
 places a mind filled with innate ideas with a mind 
 of moving images not inborn, but gained from ex- 
 perience. And instead of a mind that goes out 
 and by means of forms comprehends objects, such 
 as Ralph Cudworth and other Platonists defended, 
 we have as mind a moving sea of images that con- 
 stitute the register of past experience. 
 
 And here we come to the significant aspect of 
 mind for Hobbes, the mind as the conservator of 
 experience. Nothing brings this out better than 
 his discussion of the imagination, which is the 
 most fundamental term used by Hobbes in his 
 treatment of mental phenomenona. To cite his 
 words : 
 
 "For after the object is removed, or the eye shut, we 
 still retain an image of the thing seen, though more 
 obscure than when we see it. And this is it, the Latins 
 call the imagination, from the image made in seeing; and 
 apply the same, though improperly, to all other senses. 
 But the Greeks call it fancy; which signifies appearance, 
 and is as proper to one sense, as to another. IMAGINATION 
 therefore is nothing but decaying sense: and is found in 
 men, and many other living creatures, as well sleeping, 
 as waking. The decay of sense in men waking, is not 
 the decay of motion made in the sense; but the obscuring 
 of it, in such manner as the light of the sun obscureth the 
 light of the stars * * * And any object being removed 
 from our eyes, though the impression it made in us 
 remain, yet other objects more present succeeding, and 
 working on us, the imagination of the past is obscured, 
 and made weak, as the voice of man is in the noise of 
 the day. From whence it followeth, that the longer the 
 
HOBBES: DOGMATIC MATERIALISM. 23 
 
 time is, after the sight or sense of any object, the weaker 
 is the imagination. For the continual change of man'3 
 body destroys in time the parts which in the sense were 
 moved; so that distance of time, and of place, hath one 
 and the same effect in us/'C 1 ) 
 
 And again later we find him saying: "All fan- 
 cies are motions within us, relics of those made in 
 the sense ". Let no one think the word " decay " 
 significant, it is clear from the above that it does 
 not mean that motion ceases ; but is merely coun- 
 teracted by other motions, and the concomitant 
 images, merely obscured for the time by new 
 images, reassert themselves in sleep and in the 
 processes of thought. 
 
 A test of their strength may easily be made by 
 anyone in sleep, when images take on the vivacity 
 of phantasms of sense, as may be seen from the 
 following citation: 
 
 "IMAGINATION therefore is nothing else but sense decay- 
 ing, or weakened, by the absence of the object. But what 
 may be the cause of this decay or weakening? Is the 
 motion the weaker, because the object is taken away? If 
 it were, then phantasms would always and necessarily be 
 less clear in the imagination, than they are in sense; 
 which is not true. For in dreams, which are the imagin- 
 ations of those which sleep, they are no less clear than in 
 sense itself. But the reason why in men waking the 
 phantasms of things past are more obscure than those of 
 things present, is this, that their organs being at the 
 same time moved by other present objects, those phan- 
 tasms are the less predominant. Whereas in sleep, the 
 passages being shut up, external action does not at all 
 disturb or hinder internal motion." ( 2 ) 
 
 (*) Leviathan, Chapter II, Par. 2. 
 
 (*) Elements of Philosophy, (M 1, 396). 
 
24 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 What has been experienced is thus successfully 
 retained as images, and the primary function of 
 mind is just this conservation of experience. To 
 this subject we shall return later but for the 
 present we shall turn to another problem. 
 
 Hobbes agrees with Des Cartes in his distinction 
 between the essential and non-essential qualities 
 that constitute an external object, or body, or 
 rather the objective and subjective aspects of 
 bodies. This distinction, years afterwards, be- 
 came current in philosophical writings in the 
 terminology of Locke as the primary and 
 secondary qualities of bodies. The essential quali- 
 ties for Hobbes are, of course, motion and exten- 
 sion, which, as we have seen, fits in well with his 
 theory of sensation. That our images, then, in 
 no wise agree with their objects, goes without 
 saying for Hobbes; the vast majority of qualities 
 that we attribute to bodies are not in them at all. 
 This may be gone at experimentally. Observa- 
 tion teaches us that images may arise in the mind 
 even when there is no external object present to 
 the senses; in such cases a phantasm is beyond 
 all 'doubt subjective. Again there are instances 
 in which two phantasms arise when only one ex- 
 ternal object is present to the senses; in such a 
 case it would appear that either the one or the 
 other of these images is subjective, if one is un- 
 real, then why have we not reason for believing 
 the other also in the same case. Such is the in- 
 
HOBBES: DOGMATIC MATERIALISM. 25 
 
 ductive proof used by our author to establish the 
 subjectivity of phantasms, which finally is con- 
 cluded with these words : 
 
 "And from hence also it followeth, that whatsoever ac- 
 cidents or qualities our senses make us think there bo In 
 the world, they be not there, but are seeming and appar- 
 itions only; the things that really are in the world with- 
 out us, are thoso motions by which these seemings are 
 caused. And this is the great deception of sense, which 
 also is to be by sense corrected, for as sense telleth me, 
 when I see directly, that the colour seemeth to be in the 
 object; so also sense telleth me, when I see by reflection. 
 that colour is not in the object." ( J ) 
 
 Much might be made of the phenomenology of 
 Hobbes, despite the inductive proof here offered 
 for what he elsewhere treats as a deduction from 
 his universal that motion causes all and therefore 
 phantasms. But the value of such an attack is 
 open to question. In how far does his position 
 differ from that of modern science according to 
 which the real world of objects apart from mind 
 is, theoretically at least, a dark colourless sea of 
 moving atoms? What attitude we are to assume 
 towards Hobbes here, depends in large measure 
 upon the avenue of approach. From the stand- 
 point of open-minded experimentalism the situa- 
 tion is just what we find it, and further investiga- 
 tion is certainly not precluded. But if one ap- 
 proaches the subject with the philosophers, a 
 priori, from a two-world theory, the case is quite 
 different. We then have the problem of Cartesian 
 dualism, an old friend, but in an entirely new 
 
 ( x ) Human Nature, Chap. II, last Par. 
 
26 IDEAUSTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 dress; for it must be remembered that images 
 constitute the very fabric of mind for Hobbes. 
 Stated in his terms, the problem loses some of 
 its usual mystery and significance. This has im- 
 portant bearings upon the formality of the prob- 
 lem. The question for us now is a definite one, 
 just how are images caused by motion? Granting 
 that sensation is motion and that it is dependent 
 upon motion, how do we know that sensation 
 causes images? From the philosopher's stand- 
 point, Hobbes does not appear to fully appreciate 
 the difficulty before him; the knot that so many 
 philosophers would untie, he, in the eyes of many, 
 merely cuts. He takes the liberty of passing freely 
 from phantasms to motion and from motion to 
 phantasms. Is this so easy as our author would 
 have us believe ? When he says that the motion of 
 the external object sets in motion the internal 
 parts of the body, there is no objection to that, 
 speaking generally ; that appears to be good phys- 
 ics. But what, pray, has this to do with the origin 
 of apparitions, or seemings, which are merely con- 
 comitant with motion? Does Hobbes, then, not 
 miss an excellent opportunity to assume the 
 Humean position on causation? As a philosopher, 
 three positions besides Cartesian dualism were 
 open to him, all of which have been unduly 
 stressed since his time. The idealist has obviated 
 the difficulty by making it his starting point, since 
 the subject and his phantasms constitute the entire 
 universe. The parellelist undertakes to define no 
 
HOBBES: DOGMATIC MATERIALISM. 27 
 
 relationship between the two worlds; apparitions 
 and motions just are and happen also to be con- 
 comitant. The third position is that of thorough- 
 going materialism, which is where we find Hobbes ; 
 for motion is the cause of all things, and is, there- 
 fore, the cause of apparition. Approaching the 
 subject in an empirical temper, observing our 
 phantasms he says : 
 
 (They) "are not always the same; new ones appear to 
 us, and old ones vanish, according as we apply our organs 
 of sense now to the one object, now to another. Where- 
 fore they are generated and perish. And from here it is 
 manifest, that they are some change or mutation in the 
 sentient." ( l ) 
 
 That is to say, for Hobbes there is no such 
 problem as that of mind and matter. Whether 
 this be called naive realism or rank materialism, 
 in this respect Hobbes goes back to Democritus, 
 or if you choose, anticipates the position taken 
 by many thinkers since the advent of the evolu- 
 tionary hypothesis. For as the generations have 
 passed the Cartesian problem has gradually lost 
 its significance. Our author, however, was not 
 unmindful of the intellectualist ; if he chooses to 
 ask how it is that notice can be taken of these 
 changes in a sentient creature, whether it be by 
 means of some internal sense, we have Hobbes' 
 reply : 
 
 "I answer, by sense itself, namely, by the memory which 
 for some time remains in us of things sensible, though 
 they themselves pass away. For he that perceives that he 
 perceives remembers, sentire se sentisse, meminisse est."(*) 
 
 (*) Elements of Philosophy. Chap. XXV, Par. 2. 
 ( 3 ) Elements of Philosophy, Chap. XXV, Par. 1. 
 
28 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 It now becomes clear that our author, by his 
 naive position, if one chooses to call it such, has 
 really anticipated the modern position on the sub- 
 ject. Mind is conservative, it is the power of one 
 experience to call up another; images are the 
 means by which it is done. Thought, as Hobbes 
 sees it, is reflective, that is, so far as thought is 
 relevant to the discussion. Or if Hobbes had 
 stated it in present-day language, he might well 
 have said : Mind represents inhibited action ; it is, 
 then, an organ of behavior and is as much a part 
 of the organism as the hand, the leg or any other 
 organ of the organism. Whence, then, this op- 
 position of mind and matter? In such a psychol- 
 ogy there is no place for this problem, purely 
 formal in its nature, and in his neglect of it 
 Hobbes gives another example of how nearly 
 he approximates the present-day physiological 
 psychology. It must not be supposed either that 
 in the above citation there is any disposition to 
 belittle intelligent inquiry into the nature of per- 
 ception. Hobbes says : ' 1 Of all phenomena, or ap- 
 pearances which are near us, the most admirable 
 is apparition itself. " The absence of the evolu- 
 tionary hypothesis helped to make the problem 
 possible and significant in those days; for this 
 reason its neglect by Hobbes is really all the more 
 commendable. 
 
 We shall have occasion to refer to other re- 
 spects in which Hobbes is in alliance with present- 
 
HOBBES: DOGMATIC MATERIALISM. 29 
 
 day psychology. But perhaps none is more sig- 
 nificant than his definition of sensation, which may 
 not be out of place at this point : 
 
 "Sense is a phantasm, made by the reaction and en- 
 deavor outwards in the organ of sense, caused by the 
 endeavor inwards from the. object, remaining for some 
 time more or less." (*) 
 
 If we rob this definition of some of its cruder 
 physiological presuppositions as to the function 
 of the heart, quite irrelevant here and due to the 
 state of physiology in his day, we shall see how 
 very similar it is to the present-day theories as 
 to sense stimuli and consequent reaction involved 
 in perception. All this is quite interesting in the 
 light of the fact that Locke has had the credit for 
 doing so much to overthrow the doctrine of in- 
 nate ideas and other ancient doctrines. Much 
 that has been attributed to Locke should be 
 credited to the influence of Hobbes ; certainly his 
 revolutionary doctrine that there are no innate 
 ideas was set forth by Hobbes in its baldest de- 
 tails, as we have just seen a few pages back. That 
 Hobbes ' position was fully appreciated by his con- 
 temporaries, can be easily gathered by the read- 
 ing of a few pages of the writings of Ralph Cud- 
 worth. But there is more in Hobbes than this 
 bald denial of intuitionalism. In the few lines 
 that he devoted to the analysis of the behavior of 
 mental phenomena he did some good constructive 
 
 *) Elements of Philosophy, Chap. XXV, Par. 5. 
 
30 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 work. We must not allow the fact that he was 
 fighting the intuitionalist and was therefore lay- 
 ing great stress upon the fact that our ideas are 
 gained from experience rather than inborn to 
 blind us to the importance of his work in a posi- 
 tive direction. But to properly set this forth, we 
 must turn back again to the fundamental nature 
 of mind. 
 
 Attention has already been directed to the 
 stress Hobbes laid upon the conservative aspect 
 of mind, but the manner in which mind retains ex- 
 perience may be set forth in greater detail. To 
 the simple law of motion, not often reflected upon, 
 according to our author, the persistence as well 
 as the origin of all the images, or fancies, that flit 
 across the mind, is due and to that alone. This is 
 in a nut-shell the how of retention, and it is just 
 these "relics" of sensuous experience that con- 
 stitute the very fabric of mind. Nor has mind any 
 original power whereby it can introduce other 
 images than those that it has thus acquired. Long 
 before the sober Locke had declared that the mind 
 can frame unto itself no new simple ideas, Hobbes 
 had set forth in a manner not so foreign in spirit 
 to modern physiological-psychology, the origin of 
 all our ideas, images, fancies, or whatever one 
 wishes to call them. His ignorance of the nature 
 of neural connections does not invalidate the value 
 of his description. All the images in our mind 
 are due to sensation, motions in the internal parts 
 
HOBBESl DOGMATIC MATEBIALISM. 31 
 
 of the sentient creature, and they persist in ac- 
 cordance with, or in obedience to, the fundamental 
 laws of motion, the motion of the internal parts 
 continuing after the removal of the stimulus, just 
 as the " waves of the storm-tossed sea cannot give 
 over their motion' 7 although the storm has sub- 
 sided. Since this motion of the internal parts can 
 never completely cease, the image that is con- 
 comitant with it, or that is caused by it, as Hobbes 
 puts it, can never really disappear from the mind. 
 It may become obscured by the thousands of other 
 impressions that are constantly pouring in upon 
 the mind through the gateway of sensation, and 
 therefore become less and less vivid as time 
 elapses, but completely disappear they cannot. 
 Ideas pass out of consciousness for the simple 
 reason that other ideas come in to crowd them 
 out, taking their places, different motions coun- 
 teracting each other in the internal parts. But 
 this does not mean that these ideas, although they 
 have been forced to retire, have, therefore, been 
 obliterated from the mind. For it is just these 
 images, ideas, or fancies, relics of experience, that 
 constitute the mind; since this is so, to obliterate 
 them would be to destroy mind. Thought is the 
 powor to control images; hence for Hobbes the 
 thinking process presupposes sensation. 
 
 An excellent opportunity for the study of the 
 imagination (mental imagery, as we would say 
 now-a-days) is offered in dreams. Here we have 
 
32 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 relics of past experiences active in their greatest 
 vividness. For the organs of sense are numbed 
 in sleep and all access to the world without is 
 shut off; and the mind, for this reason, is not 
 open to the onset of new impressions that in 
 waking moments so quickly force into retirement 
 other images. So vivid are these images and 
 fancies of sleep that there is nothing to be com- 
 pared with them but the phantasms of sense. It 
 is, therefore, for our author anything but sur- 
 prising that some people sometimes confuse the 
 images and phantasms of actual perception in 
 waking life with those of dream life. Thus Bru- 
 tus, dreaming in his tent on the field of battle, 
 sees the form of great Caesar standing before him 
 with words of warning on his lips with such vivid- 
 ness that on waking he would have it that the 
 spirit of dead Caesar had appeared to him, being 
 astonished that his servant neither heard nor saw 
 him. Indeed the waking life and dream life are 
 not so different as we would have it generally; 
 the two experiences possess such similarities that 
 it is really difficult to set forth an accurate dis- 
 tinction. If such can be made, it lies in the fact 
 that our waking life experiences are more inclu- 
 sive than our dream life experiences. He con- 
 tinues : 
 
 "and because waking I often observe the absurdity of 
 dreams, but never dream of the absurdities of my waking 
 thoughts; I am well satisfied, that being awake, I know I 
 dream not, though when I dream, I think myself awake." ( x ) 
 
 C 1 ) Leviathan. Chap. II. 
 
HOBBES: DOGMATIC MATERIALISM. 33 
 
 It is interesting to note, too, in this connection 
 that our author anticipated the work of Spencer 
 when he gives it as his opinion that from 
 
 "ignorance of how to distinguish dreams, and other strong 
 fancies, from visions and sense, did arise the greatest part 
 of the religion of the gentiles in times past, that wor- 
 shipped satyrs, fawns, nymphs, and the like; and now-a- 
 days the opinions that rude people have of fairies, ghosts, 
 and goblins, and of the power of witches. "C 1 ) 
 
 All of which would never have been the case, such 
 is our author's firm conviction, had savage peoples 
 been acquainted with the workings of the human 
 mind. So, too, the ignorance of the play of mental 
 imagery accounts for the superstition of rude peo- 
 ple. And in this connection Hobbes finds occasion 
 for offence. How much better, he would know, 
 is the scholastic doctrine of volition? In teaching 
 that images and ideas arise in the mind at the 
 beck and call of the will of the individual, are not 
 schoolmen fostering just such superstition? Those 
 who so teach are both deceived and deceiving; 
 mental images are not the effect of our will, but 
 our will is rather the effect of our mental images. 
 But we cannot here take up volition, the treat- 
 ment of which will be given in greater detail later. 
 From what has been said up to this point, it 
 now becomes quite clear that the imagination is 
 a very fundamental term, for Hobbes. It is, in 
 fact, another word for mind, a term that carries 
 well that emphasis that Hobbes has seen fit to 
 
 J ) Leviathan. Chap. II. 
 
34 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 place upon the conservative aspect of mind. For 
 mind is not for him an original power, but on the 
 contrary, the conservation of sensuous experience. 
 Now, the term imagination is used to cover all 
 these mental images and processes of thought. 
 For, in his own words, 
 
 "besides sense, and thoughts, and trains of thoughts, the 
 mind of man has no other motion; though by the help 
 of speech and method the same faculties may be improved 
 to such a height, as to distinguish men from all other 
 living creatures." (*) 
 
 Man's difference from all other animals consists 
 merely in his better use of the imagination. He 
 has, to be definite, no other faculties or powers, 
 or divinely implanted gifts. Such as are so called 
 and commonly supposed to be are but other names 
 for the imagination, when regarded now from this 
 and now from that aspect. Nothing in the whole 
 of Hobbes' writings is clearer than this attitude 
 of his towards mental imagery. Memory thus 
 is another name for imagination, that emphasizes 
 the fact that the experience under consideration 
 belongs to past time, or in the words of present- 
 day psychology, the images of memory are local- 
 ized in time and place, while those of the imagina- 
 tion are "set free." Thus it is clear: 
 
 "This decaying sense, when we would express the thing 
 itself, I mean fancy itself, we call imagination, as I said 
 before: but when we would express decay, signify that the 
 sense is fading, old and past, it is called memory. So that 
 
 (*) Leviathan, Chap. III. 
 
HOBBES: DOGMATIC MATERIALISM. 35 
 
 imagination and memory are but one thing, which for 
 diverse considerations hath diverse names." C 1 ) 
 
 Likewise the understanding is another name 
 for imagination, or an operation of the imagina- 
 tion; for to understand a thing is to call up an 
 image of the thing named, or the images that cor- 
 respond to the sign given, the association of an 
 image of sound with one of sight, say. If when 
 the word cow is spoken in the presence of a child, 
 the visual image of a cow arises in the mind of 
 the child, then it may be said that the child under- 
 stands, the two images of cow being associated 
 in the mind of the child, it understands the sign 
 given. But the child being unable to call up the 
 image of a horse when the word hippos is spoken, 
 is said not to understand, the sign given not 
 calling up the visual image that should corres- 
 pond. These two images not being associated in 
 the child's sensuous experience, it has no under- 
 standing on that point. 
 
 Beasts, then, no less than men, have understand- 
 ings; for they have images to correspond to the 
 signs given them, as is most frequently illustrated 
 when they do our bidding. When, then, the im- 
 agination is active in response to given signs, 
 visual and auditory and other images being prop- 
 erly associated, we may call this understanding. 
 
 So likewise, it is with all other mental processes ; 
 they are but mere names for one and the same 
 
 Leviathan, Chap. II. 
 
36 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 thing, the imagination, but this can best be set 
 fourth in our author's own words: 
 
 "To consider a thing is to imagine it; to understand 
 a thing is to imagine it; to hope and fear, is to imagine 
 the things hoped for and feared. The difference is, that 
 when we imagine the consequence of anything, we are 
 said to consider that thing; and when we imagine from a 
 sign, and especially from those signs we call names, we 
 are said to understand his meaning that maketh the sign, 
 and when we reason, we imagine the consequences of 
 affirmations and negations joined together; when we 
 hope or fear, we imagine things good or hurtful to our- 
 selves; in-so-much as all these are but imaginations di- 
 versely named from different circumstances; as any man 
 may perceive as easily as he can look into his thoughts." (*) 
 
 If we are to take seriously what our author has 
 set forth up to this point, certain conclusions are 
 inevitable. All our faculties are of one funda- 
 mental nature, different names for ways in which 
 images behave. In so far as setting one faculty 
 over against another, after the manner of Kant, 
 this is out of the question; for there is no suffi- 
 cient reason for it, there being no difference in 
 them. They are all the same fundamental thing, 
 which when it acts so, we call by such and such 
 name ; and when it acts differently, we call by an- 
 other name. Regarded in this light of mere 
 names for the behavior of images, there could be 
 little harm in a faculty psychology; but if tone 
 comes to think too seriously of these separate 
 faculties of mind, it would according to Hobbes' 
 view, be very misleading to speak of the different 
 faculties of mind. Far better always to bear in 
 
 I 1 ) Questions Concerning Human Liberty (M. V. 358-359). 
 
Xv- 11 
 
 I 
 
 1 UN/Vftai T 
 
 HOBBES: DOGMATIC MATERIALISM. 37 
 
 mind the fact that these are fundamentally one 
 and the same thing, are of one and the same na- 
 ture. To do this in a thorough-going way will, he 
 feels, be to relieve us of the foolishness of the 
 schoolmen, who believe that this or that faculty 
 has power over the images in the mind. And it 
 may also be had in mind that it might have saved 
 us from Kant's compartmental aspect of mind. 
 
 The consequences implicit in the position of 
 Hobbes are far reaching. The human mind, so 
 viewed, is an integral part of the universe; the 
 motions that disturb it, which cause our ideas, are 
 the same motions that constitute the universe as 
 a whole. Our individual minds are part and 
 parcel of the universe and possess just as little 
 liberty as this figure allows. Would it help to 
 replace the term motion here with the term mind? 
 This is what Berkeley, with some changes of con- - 
 ception, (to say nothing of Edwards and other 
 good theologians) really did. Berkeley, how- 
 ever, keeps the power of forming ideas in the 
 mind in the individual, while sensations are caused 
 by universal mind ; but it is the content of the term 
 will that enables him to make the separation be- 
 tween the two realms. If will is to be regarded 
 as a fundamental term in the study of mind, 
 Berkeley's psychological interpretation of the uni- 
 verse is much to the point. 
 
 But the conception of Hobbes is quite thorough- 
 going. The term motion, which he had used to 
 explain both mind and matter, does not allow of 
 
38 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 this separation as does the term will, so far as 
 terms go. Let us, then, follow up a little further 
 the implied consequences of his position. We as 
 individuals cannot think, imagine, or reason be- 
 cause we desire to or will to, but quite to the con- 
 trary, we perform these acts of mind simply be- 
 cause we are a part of the universe,, which is in 
 motion, of which the essence is motion, which is 
 likewise the essence of mind. Our imagination 
 is active, our thoughts play, just in the same way 
 and for the same reason that the sun moves, the 
 stars move, and the waves of the sea lash in their 
 fury. Our minds are not substances distinct from 
 extension, endowed with original power, as with 
 DesCartes and Locke. We are, on the contrary, 
 of one essence with the universe of extension, sub- 
 ject to the laws of motion, its essence. Particular 
 attention is drawn to these logical consequences 
 implicit in the position of Hobbes for reasons that 
 will appear later. 
 
 Images that arise in the mind are of two dis- 
 tinct kinds; simple, "as when one imagineth a 
 a man, or a horse, which he hath seen before, and 
 compounded, as when from the sight of a man 
 seen at one time, and of a horse seen at another, 
 we conceive in our mind a centaur." It will be 
 noticed that what Hobbes here calls compounded 
 imagination is what is generally referred to as 
 the imagination, or more exactly, as the creative 
 imagination. Popularly, this compounding of 
 
HOBBES: DOGMATIC MATERIALISM. 39 
 
 images, or better, these creations of the imagina- 
 tion, are thought of as the work of the will; this 
 conception is, as set forth above, absolutely 
 foreign to the conception of mind entertained by 
 Hobbes. That images are not under the control 
 of the will may easily be discovered by a little 
 observation of the working of our own minds, 
 according to our author. This doctrine of the 
 power of the will along with those kindred doc- 
 trines that our good thoughts are due to God 
 while our evil thoughts are due to the devil, to 
 say nothing of the elaborate system where it 
 is taught that 
 
 "the senses receive the species of things and deliver them 
 to the common sense, which in turn delivers them to the 
 fancy, which again delivers them to the memory, whence 
 they are handed over to the judgment" etc. (*) 
 
 are all in one bundle classed as the foolishness of 
 the deceived and deceiving schoolmen, who with 
 their many words still make nothing understood. 
 None of these doctrines have any foundation; 
 least of all is it true that the will controls the 
 play of mental images. Quite the contrary : 
 
 "Sense, memory, understanding, reason, and opinion are 
 not in our power to change; but always, and necessarily 
 such as the things we see, hear, and consider, suggest them 
 to us; and therefore are not effects of our will, but our 
 will of them."( 2 ) 
 
 (*) Leviathan, Chap. II. 
 
 (') Leviathan, (M. Ill, 360). 
 
4:0 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 How nearly Hobbes' conception of will ap- 
 proaches that offered to-day may be seen from 
 the following citation : 
 
 "In deliberation, the last appetite, or aversion, immedi- 
 ately adhering to the action, or to the omission thereof, 
 is that we call the WILL; the act, not the faculty, of willing. 
 And beasts that have deliberation, must necessarily also 
 have will. The definition of the will, given commonly 
 by the Schools, that it is a rational appetite, is not good. 
 For if it were, then could there be no voluntary act against 
 reason. For a voluntary act, is that, which proceedeth 
 from the will, and no other. But if instead of a rational 
 appetite, we shall say an appetite resulting from a pre- 
 cedent deliberation, then the deliberation is the same that 
 I have given here. Will, therefore, is the last appetite in 
 deliberating"^) 
 
 "As in the water, that hath not only liberty, but a neces- 
 sity of descending by the channel; so likewise in the 
 actions which men voluntarily do; which, because they 
 proceed from their will, proceed from liberty; and yet 
 because every act of man's will, and every desire, and 
 inclination proceedeth from some cause, and that from 
 another cause, in a continual change, whose first link 
 is in the hand of God, the first of all causes, proceed 
 from necessity, so that to him that could see the connec- 
 tion of those causes, the necessity of all men's voluntary 
 actions, would appear manifest." (') 
 
 The foregoing citation, I think, sets forth cor- 
 rectly Hobbes* conception of will. While there* 
 are other passages of a more or less popular 
 nature that might be construed otherwise, these, 
 his definite statements, should be taken as the 
 test of his doctrine. The meaning of it is this: 
 Hobbes does not regard the concept will as 
 fundamental and ultimate hence it is not fruit- 
 ful to use such a term in the analysis of mind. 
 
 () Leviathan, Chap. VI. 
 (') Leviathan, (M. Ill, 196). 
 
HOBBES: DOGMATIC MATERIALISM. 41 
 
 The term is popular and anthropomorphic. Here 
 he is opposed to Berkeley, for whom the term 
 will is fundamental and original. Hobbes does, 
 however, take carefully into consideration the 
 same phenomena that Berkeley treats under the 
 term will. The treatment of Hobbes is of a thor- 
 oughly scientific nature. Man's use of arbitrary 
 signs by which he controls his impulses and gets 
 the better of nature and environment is more than 
 once alluded to in the works of Hobbes. We 
 shall have occasion to refer to this subject, how- 
 ever, under another head where it will be taken 
 up in greater detail. 
 
 But the above doctrines, especially those with 
 reference to the will, do not mean that these com- 
 pounded images do not, to all intents and pur- 
 poses, constitute real creations. This is just what 
 images are, and causal explanation does not make 
 them any the less so. Mind, indeed, is quite* given 
 to this habit of compounding images, and it is this 
 with the use of signs that has helped to make the 
 difference between man and his brothers in na- 
 ture. It is from this source that all man's lofty 
 constructions flow. And it is his perpetuation of 
 this habit that enabled him to cope all the more 
 successfully with natural obstacles. Out of this 
 power, or habit, comes philosophy, which if cul- 
 tivated, will according to the teachings of Hobbes, 
 do so much for mankind. 
 
 But unfortunately there is another side to this 
 habit of compounding images ; for what gives, un- 
 
42 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 der the significant name of the creative imagina- 
 tion (as it is now called), such lofty conceptions 
 and what is of so much service to man in art, in 
 inventions and all his many endeavors, also gives 
 us results that are as pernicious as these are ser- 
 viceable : like all powers in the universe, it works 
 for good and bad alike. Many people with lively 
 and uncontrolled mental activity have com- 
 pounded, for instance, the images of their own 
 person with that of other persons, distinguished 
 persons, it may be, of times past. Especially is 
 this true of those young persons who are given 
 to the reading of romances. To this also may be 
 added the many cases that arise from time to time 
 of persons claiming to be this or that great man, 
 announcing themselves as prophets risen from 
 the dead, or claiming themselves to be saviours of 
 men, seers, and workers of miracles. All of which, 
 according to Hobbes, is due to this compounding 
 habit of mind, or the creative imagination. And 
 it may be said that no theory of mind fits in so 
 well in the explanation of insanity as that of 
 Hobbes; this certainly is not without its signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 But if it be so that our minds, as has been set 
 forth above, are made up of a restless sea of images 
 in constant motion and that, as has just been set 
 forth, these images are subject to new combina- 
 tions not found in sense, how is it that our 
 thoughts are what they are? For this there is 
 
HOBBES: DOGMATIC MATERIALISM. 43 
 
 ample explanation. In this connection I cannot 
 do better than cite the immortal passage : 
 
 "When a man thinketh on anything whatsoever, his next 
 thought after is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. 
 Not every thought to every thought succeeds indifferently. 
 But as we have no imagination, whereof we have not for- 
 merly had sense, in whole, or in part; so we have no 
 transition from one thought to another (save as in sense) 
 * * A man may oftentimes perceive the way of it, 
 and the dependence of one thought upon another. For 
 in a discourse of our present civil war, what could seem 
 more impertinent, than to ask, as one did, what was the 
 value of a Roman penny? Yet the coherence to me was 
 manifest enough. For the thought of war, introduced the 
 thought of delivering up the king to his enemies; the 
 thought of that, brought in the thought of the delivering 
 up of Christ; and that again the thought of thirty pence, 
 which was the price of that treason; and thence easily 
 that malicious question, and all this in a moment of time; 
 for thought is quick." ( J ) 
 
 Thus the word war calls up not only war images, 
 but also other images that have been experienced 
 with this, which in turn leads to still others which, 
 if expressed to the unobservant listener, might 
 appear altogether remote from the subject under 
 discussion. Thus the richness of our sensuous 
 experience renders possible an untold number of 
 trains of thought. Apparently, then, there can 
 be no certainty as to what train of thought will 
 follow upon the mention of any one thing, since 
 the image of this one thing may have been fol- 
 lowed in our sensuous experience by many and 
 different images. Why, then, should one train of 
 thought not flow from a given sign as well as an- 
 
 C 1 ) Leviathan, Chap. III. 
 
44 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 other? Here comes in what is known as the law 
 of association of ideas, according to contiguity in 
 time and space, for which our author goes back 
 to Aristotle. If at any time when our thoughts 
 are said to be wandering and our mind is said to 
 be passive, images and fancies arising as it were 
 at random, we investigate' the trains of thoughts 
 that are then flowing in our mind, it will be found 
 that they are really succeeding each other in ac- 
 cordance with these laws of association and that 
 of motion. At such a time, our minds are accur- 
 ately repeating sense impressions ; but such times 
 are rather rare, since the mind is usually under 
 the influence of some emotion. When such is the 
 case, our thoughts are said to be unregulated. 
 
 Our thoughts are, however, for the most part 
 regulated. This is in accordance with the law of 
 interest that Hobbes so definitely stated without 
 the name here given it. Such is the case when 
 our mental discourse is governed by some pas- 
 sionate thought, from which our minds are rarely 
 free. Thus, for example, when one has constantly 
 in mind some desire'd end, and thinks constantly 
 either on the means that lead to that desired end 
 or on the consequences that flow from the end 
 once attained. There are, then, two ways where- 
 by one may regulate his thoughts : that of think- 
 ing of the means that lead to the end desired and 
 secondly, that of thinking of the results that flow 
 from the end attained. The first power man has 
 
HOBBES: DOGMATIC MATERIALISM. 45 
 
 in common with the beasts of the field, but the 
 second power is characteristic of man alone. 
 
 This analysis of the thinking process is simple 
 and free from any unnecessary subtleties. It 
 shows again that reflective thought is the only 
 thought that Hobbes regarded as relative to the 
 business he has in hand. This is in keeping with 
 his neglect of the Cartesian problem of mind and 
 matter. This shows, too, in a most substantial 
 way his alliance with present-day tendencies in 
 philosophy. As parallel with the above simple 
 statement the words of a modern thinker, 1 who 
 espousing the evolutionary hypothesis, has made 
 it felt in the study of mind, may be read with 
 profit. 
 
 This explanation of thought in terms of purpose, 
 so closely in harmony with present-day doctrines 
 may at first seem to be out of harmony with his 
 own statement that thought is the computation of 
 verbal signs. But it must be remembered that 
 this statement constitutes only an external ex- 
 planation of thought and one that grows out of 
 his emphasis upon verbal signs as marks for 
 remembrance in our own thinking. And here 
 Hobbes was hitting at a most important truth 
 which certainly marks him as a keen observer. I 
 have yet to see a just appreciation of Hobbes on 
 this point: indeed, not a few have wondered just 
 why Hobbes saw fit to lay such stress upon ar- 
 
 Studies in Logical Theory, pages 4, 10-, 14, etc. 
 
46 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 bitrary signs. The importance of this observation 
 is made manifest in the statement of present-day 
 psychologists. We think in terms of verbal signs ; 
 for signs are words, and words are made by the 
 movements of the muscles, which gives the mind 
 images known as kinsesthetic, which doubtless 
 form the vast majority of our images and in terms 
 of which we do most surely think. Arbitrary 
 signs, then, play their parts in two ways : as 
 kinaesthetic images they enable us to control our 
 thoughts as well as to systematize our experience 
 in words. 
 
 We have seen that Hobbes laid great stress 
 upon the principle of association and that his 
 analysis of thought does not differ so much from 
 that offered to-day by those writers who have 
 undertaken to apply the evolutionary conception 
 to our thoughts. In consideration of this fact, 
 it may seem strange that Hobbes has received 
 so little attention in the field of psychology. No 
 doubt he has gone so long without credit for the 
 simple reason that his contributions had already 
 been assimilated by others. His influence upon 
 John Locke can hardly be questioned; it was 
 greater even than Locke knew. That his doc- 
 trines were well known among thinking men, is 
 apparent from the writings of Cudworth. Locke, 
 however, did not take the completely Hobbistic 
 viewpoint. Had he done this, he would not have 
 started thought on its reactionary tendency; 
 which we shall soon see he did. What he really 
 
HOBBES: DOGMATIC MATERIALISM. 47 
 
 did do, consciously or unconsciously, was to com- 
 promise the positions of the intuitionalists and 
 sensationalists. Thus, while in some respects he 
 was propounding the doctrines of Hobbes, he was 
 none the less reasserting the doctrines of Cud- 
 worth. 
 
 To revert to Hobbes, it must be asked: Is his 
 psychology out of harmony with his metaphysics? 
 Or, more definitely, is not his law of interest in- 
 consistent with his general position as to the 
 nature of mind and its place in the universe of 
 motion! It was found that, according to Hobbes' 
 metaphysics of motion, the mind is really an in- 
 tegral part of the universe of motion and of the 
 same essence with it; that its very constitution 
 of mental images caused by motion places it under 
 the complete sway of universal motion. Con- 
 sistently, then, the mind has no control over its 
 images, but on the contrary mind is merely the 
 playground of such images as are caused in it by 
 the motion of the universe. Now, we are told, 
 in the law of interest, which Hobbes so definitely 
 stated, that the mind can regulate and control 
 the play of its images either by seeking the means 
 that lead to some desired end or by imagining 
 the consequences that flow from the end attained. 
 Is this not giving the mind control over its trains 
 of thought? Manifestly. Is it not, then, incon- 
 sistent in our philosopher to thus cut his mind 
 off from the universe of which it is a homogeneous 
 part? And again, the use of arbitrary signs, of 
 
48 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 which he makes so much, only adds to the separa- 
 tion of the part from the whole. But if we are 
 to take the position of present-day teachers, 
 Hobbes is wise in allowing his experience of the 
 parts to outweigh his theory of an unexperienced 
 whole. He does not undertake to solve the in- 
 soluble riddle of the relation of the part to the 
 whole. In his position here he has taken a stand 
 similar to that of his neglect of the Cartesian 
 problem. He shows, too, his alliance with Bacon. 
 Such so-called metaphysical problems are purely 
 theoretical, and while they have undoubtedly their 
 own value in their own way, which Hobbes as a 
 theorist would not controvert, they must not be 
 confused with problems of a practical nature. 
 Problems of psychology are practical, and they 
 are subject to those checks that the problems of 
 any science are subject to. While Hobbes could 
 hardly be called an experimental psychologist, in 
 taking this fact for granted, he took the step that 
 rendered the appearance of experimental psy- 
 chology possible. 
 
 Indeed, throughout the whole of Hobbes one 
 thing is quite noticeable : stress is rarely laid upon 
 theoretical difficulties ; unbounding confidence is 
 always displayed; for 
 
 "nothing is produced by reasoning aright, but general, 
 eternal and immutable truth." C 1 ) 
 
 Leviathan (M. Ill, 664). 
 
HOBBES: DOGMATIC MATEKIALJSM. 49 
 
 It is, therefore, justly said that while Hobbes is 
 correctly regardel as the founder of both asso- 
 ciational and physiological psychology he was 
 nevertheless a thorough-going rationalist in 
 method. But this is bound up with his theory 
 that philosophy must always be of a practical 
 nature so far as results looked to are concerned. 
 This emphasis upon the practical saved Hobbes 
 from emphasis upon the separateness of our dif- 
 ferent sensations, the atomistic character of our 
 experience, and naturally from the need of a unit- 
 ing mind to systematize them by means of innate 
 forms or natural faculties. The mind simply regis- 
 ters and retains our experience; and in terms of 
 our past experience the future may be predicted 
 and controlled. 
 
n. 
 
 i 
 
 LOCKE: OPEN-MINDED DUALISM. 
 
n. 
 
 LOCKE: OPEN-MINDED DUALISM. 
 
 At the close of our study of Hobbes attention 
 was called to the dogmatic character of his meth- 
 od. This dogmatism was not peculiar to Hobbes ; 
 he was answered in the same kind by the even 
 more dogmatic intuitionalist, Ralph Cudworth. 
 It was out of the futility of dogmatic assertions 
 that the critical philosophy of Locke sprang. For 
 Locke anticipated Kant in his critical examina- 
 tion of the human understanding with a view to 
 setting forth its limitations. This is a fact be- 
 yond controversy. The manner in which Locke 
 went at his examination is quite different from 
 that of Kant; which gives Kant the opportunity 
 of praising what he is pleased to term Locke's 
 natural history of the human understanding. In 
 consequence of his careful investigation Locke is 
 generally spoken of as the founder of empirical 
 psychology. He approaches the subject from the 
 view-point of common sense, and proceeds, under 
 the influence of Hobbes and DesCartes, as nearly 
 as possible in harmony with the scientific knowl- 
 edge of his time. He had a more or less well- 
 defined critical theory to offer which may have in- 
 fluenced to some extent his work; when he had 
 delivered himself of this, he supposed that it might 
 then 
 
54 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 "be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man to be 
 more cautious in meddling with things exceeding its com- 
 prehension; to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its 
 tether; to sit down in quiet ignorance of those things 
 which, upon examination, are found to be beyond the reach 
 of our capacities." C 1 ) 
 
 Thus it will be seen that Locke's prime interest 
 is in knowledge and its necessary and inevitable 
 limitations, as he saw them. As knowledge for 
 him is of ideas and their compounds, the work has 
 much to do with psychology and has the value of 
 showing the importance of such a science in 
 theories of knowledge. It was incidental to this 
 larger purpose of Locke that he espoused Hob- 
 bistic sensationalism, since he found it convenient 
 to deny the doctrine of innate ideas ; whence Locke 
 is sometimes spoken of as the successor of Hobbes 
 and the founder of French sensationalism. Noth- 
 ing, I believe, could more adequately misrepresent 
 Locke's actual position than such a disconnected 
 statement. For it must not be forgotten that 
 Locke anticipated Kant. How Locke could an- 
 ticipate Kant and yet have the reputation of be- 
 ing a sensationalist, it is part of the purpose of 
 this paper to show. 
 
 It is taken for granted by our author that no 
 one will controvert the proposition that our minds 
 are stored with images, phantasms, thoughts, etc., 
 all of which he begs the privilege of classifying 
 under the common term, idea. The idea is, then, 
 any object of thought. That one's mind is stored 
 
 Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Introd. 
 
LOOKE: OPEN-MINDED DUALISM. 55- 
 
 with an endless variety of ideas, every man is 
 conscious to himself, and that all other men are 
 similarly furnished in mind, more or less, is ap- 
 parent from what they do and say. But whence 
 comes the mind by this furniture, "whence comes 
 it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless 
 fancy of man has painted on it with an almost 
 endless variety?" This is the first task for the 
 philosopher who would discipline the human mind 
 and bring it to know its limitations. And it is to 
 this great task that our author directs his atten- 
 tion with a vigor that is not usual among philoso- 
 phers. For it is by means of Hobbistie sensation- 
 alism that Locke would make his first point against 
 dogmatism. 
 
 That some men hold somewhat after the manner 
 of Plato that certain ideas, or principles, are di- 
 vinely implanted in the human mind, is a matter 
 that our author may have at first regarded as of 
 no great consequence. That is, if it be true, as 
 seems to be the case, that the first book of his 
 Essay was written last. For if it can be shown, 
 as Locke undertakes to do, "How men, barely by 
 the use of their natural faculties, may attain to 
 all the knowledge they have, without the help of 
 innate impressions," then, by the law of parsi- 
 mony, the theory of innate ideas ceases to be a 
 fruitful one. Although he does take this position 
 at one time in his Essay, and notwithstanding the- 
 fact that it is one that he could have maintained 
 with perfect consistency, he later adds the first 
 
56 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 book of his famous Essay in direct refutation of 
 the doctrine of innate ideas, which in the light of 
 the above seems to be a work of supererogation. 
 Perhaps the real explanation of why he added this 
 first book lies in the fact that the work is more 
 than a philosopher's treatise, it is also a polemic. 
 In that case we may regard the first book as a 
 vigorous and direct stroke at certain prominent 
 upholders of the intuitional doctrine in his day, 
 not Des Cartes, with whom Locke is in harmony, 
 but stragglers after good old Ralph Cudworth,who 
 so successfully "confuted the Scottish atheists, " 
 Hobbes and others. Add to this Locke's genuine 
 antipathy for the doctrine, which he felt very 
 strongly tended to hamper freedom of thought, 
 and we have sufficient explanation of the publica 
 tion of the first book. 
 
 Looked at from one aspect Locke 's flat denial of 
 the doctrine of innate ideas is indeed a revolution- 
 ary step; it so functioned in his day and genera- 
 tion and consequently it has so been treated by all 
 historians of philosophy. But if one views it in 
 the light of the general advance of thought, this 
 attack seems to have come late. The destructive 
 work had already been successfully consummated 
 in the constructive work of Hobbes. It must fur- 
 ther be noted that Locke in a great measure mis- 
 understood the doctrine of innate ideas, just as 
 the intuitionalists misunderstood Locke's posi- 
 tion. If I understand the argument of Locke, 
 what he attacks few intuitionalists would really 
 
LOCKE: OPEN-MINDED DUALISM. 57 
 
 care to defend ; while what he claims in a positive 
 way was certainly misunderstood. Locke attacks 
 the doctrine that the soul comes into the world 
 ready to think, that the mind is furnished with 
 ideas and is capable of thinking and knowing in- 
 dependent of sensation* This is a doctrine that 
 Ralph Cudworth certainly would not have cared to 
 defend. On the other hand, Locke did not mean 
 to deny to the mind a certain kind of activity 1 
 native to it. Indeed, he distinctly asserts this 
 in more than one place. The intuitional theory 
 that Locke attacks is one all his own, just as the 
 sensationalism that he defends is one all his own ; 
 in either case he was out of harmony with the gen- 
 erally accepted doctrine. 
 
 The contrast between Locke and Hobbes upon 
 this one point in regard to which they are gen- 
 erally supposed to be in agreement cannot be 
 stressed too much; for it is of great significance. 
 Hobbes ' denial of innate ideas is not direct; it 
 comes incidental to his statement of a construc- 
 tive program. Locke's denial of innate ideas 
 is flat and direct; and it is made the basis of his 
 attack upon the unbounding confidence in mind 
 and its capabilities so characteristic of dogma- 
 tism. Strangely enough the apparently destruc- 
 tive work of Locke in the end proves reactionary, 
 while Hobbes' denial of intuitionalism incidental 
 to his constructive program more sucessfully un- 
 dermines that ancient theory than the work of 
 
58 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Locke. The position of Locke, of course, was 
 not well defined. His introduction of sensational- 
 ism to replace intuitionalism, clinging as he did 
 to Des Cartes ' res cogitans, a mind active 
 through natural faculties, is highly inconsistent. 
 While Locke made a great noise over it all, he 
 was anything but thorough-going in his accept- 
 ance of sensationalism. The slightest movement 
 in this direction is, of course, thoroughly incon- 
 sistent with his whole position. Furthermore, 
 having destroyed so respected a theory as the doc- 
 trine of innate ideas, he replaces it with nothing 
 better than natural faculties through which the 
 mind works, the mind being active from the first. 
 And this active mind is by far the most import- 
 ant element in his doctrine. That is to say, 
 Locke's return to the past is of a subtle nature; 
 he attempts to re-interpret intuitionalism in 
 terms of sensationalism. Hobbes, on the other 
 hand, does not come at mind from the standpoint 
 of the past, but through the term imagination; 
 mind is mental images, images are motion, and 
 motion explains the mind's activity, its power of 
 retention and union. All of these are signifi- 
 cantly left to the powers of mind by Locke; they 
 are its faculties. 
 
 At the very outset, Locke makes his position 
 upon this point clear and it becomes increasingly 
 clear as his work advances. Even primary per- 
 ception is dependent upon the mind's activity: 
 
LOOKE: OPEN-MINDED DUALISM. 59 
 
 "This is certain, that whatever alterations are made in 
 the body, if they reach not the mind; whatever impres- 
 sions are made on the outward parts, if they are not taken 
 notice of within, there is no perception. * * * How 
 often may a man observe in himself, that whilst his mind 
 is intently employed in the contemplation of some objects, 
 and curiously surveying some ideas that are there, it 
 takes no notice of impressions of sounding bodies made 
 upon the organ of hearing, with the same alteration that 
 uses to be for the producing of the idea of sound? A 
 sufficient impulse there may be on the organ; but it 
 not reaching the observation of the mind, there follows 
 no perception: and though the motion that uses to pro- 
 duce the idea of sound be made in the ear, yet no sound 
 is heard." C 1 ) 
 
 No objection could be found to this statement in 
 its proper connection ; he is accurately describing 
 what takes place in perception. So, likewise, a 
 few paragraphs later, he makes still clearer the 
 mind's power to order our sensation and percep- 
 tions so as to interpret them correctly; how what 
 should really appear flat is made by the mind 
 to appear round. But Locke does not make clear, 
 after the manner of Hobbes, that what we have 
 is sense correcting sense, although he has every* 
 opportunity to do so in his work. And it is in 
 looking at the above passage in the light of all 
 that he has to say that its full meaning is brought 
 out. The mind, independent, originative, is 
 possessed of natural faculties; it waits merely 
 for the objects of thought to be gained through 
 sensation by means of these natural faculties. 
 That there are no innate ideas means simply that 
 
 Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, Chap. IX, 
 Pars. 3 and 4. 
 
60 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 ideas cannot exist before sensation; there must 
 be action upon the senses by some stimuli, motions 
 of external objects, first of all. Nihil est in in- 
 tellectu quod non antea fuerit in sensu; for the 
 mind is an unwritten sheet, tabula rasa, antece- 
 dent to sensation. We do not think, we do not 
 know, before sensation for the good reason that 
 we have nothing to think and nothing to know; 
 but not because there is no mind. 
 
 It is quite evident that Locke's ill-defined posi 
 tion here is capable of being stressed in two quite 
 different ways, leading to two entirely different 
 interpretations of his philosophy. If Locke is 
 denying the mind's original activity in his state- 
 ment that there are no innate ideas, then 
 Condillac and his school have carried Locke to his 
 implicit conclusions. If on the other hand Locke 
 in declaring that the mind 's activity waits on sen- 
 sation be an assertion of the mind's activity, then 
 Kant is his true interpreter. In the one case, 
 Locke, the sensationalist, is thinking of the brain ; 
 in the other he is not. Locke holds that there is 
 a thinking substance in some way connected with 
 us, in nature active and opposed to passive mat- 
 ter, which, nevertheless, in some way ordered of 
 God must be awakened into its activity by sensa- 
 tion. As to the nature of this substance he is not 
 sure; it may even be material, since it is within 
 the power of Divinity to endow matter in such a 
 way as to oppose it to base matter by the mere 
 
LOCKE: OPEN-MINDED DUALISM. 61 
 
 fact of this endowment. It is clear that Locke's 
 effort to take the middle road between Hobbes 
 and Cudworth places him in a position not easily 
 defended. We must simply take his word for it 
 that a mind has no more to be always thinking to 
 exist than a stomach has always to be digesting 
 to exist ; as the one waits for food the other may 
 wait on sensation for its objects of thought. In 
 other words thought is not the essence of mind 
 for Locke, but rather a function of the mind that 
 can be called into play. But is this position ten- 
 able? Either thought is the essence of mind, or 
 he must give up his res cogitans. But Locke 
 compromisingly clings to both sensationalism and 
 Cartesian dualism. All told this is not surpris- 
 ing; for Locke, throughout his entire work, is 
 constantly confusing the mind as known to him in 
 experience with his theoretical res cogitans. That 
 the one is contradictory of the other is clearly evi- 
 dent. 
 
 If the mind be, as our author declares, a tabula 
 rasa, 
 
 "How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by 
 that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of 
 man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? 
 Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge?" 
 To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE. In that 
 all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately 
 derives itself. Our observation employed either, about 
 external sensible objects, or about the internal operations 
 of our minds perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is 
 that which supplies our understanding with all the 
 materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of 
 
62 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 knowledge, from whence all the ideas that we have, or 
 can naturally have, do spring." (*) 
 
 It matters not to what heights the mind may 
 attain in all its varied activity, it stirs not one jot 
 beyond the ideas so gained. All lofty construc- 
 tions of the imagination must be reduced to these 
 same simple primary elements of our knowledge. 
 All of this, of course, suggests Hobbes at once. 
 But there is a significant difference between them 
 even here. In Locke the "materials of thinking " 
 alone are gained from experience; while in 
 Hobbes, on the other hand, the mind itself is the 
 product of experience. It is quite possible, there- 
 fore, that Locke, believing as he did in the mind 
 as the orderer of our experience, regarded his po- 
 sition here as independent of Hobbes. Certainly 
 it is agreed by all critics that Locke reached his 
 ^conclusions from his own observations, or he 
 would never have tabulated them as his own. 
 Hence it would generally be claimed that Locke 
 was influenced by Hobbes to a very slight degree. 
 There is no doubt, however, but that Locke had 
 read his Hobbes. 
 
 Experience is of two kinds ; that that has to do 
 with external sensible things and that that has to 
 do with the internal operations of the mind. The 
 former is called sensation, while the latter is 
 called reflection. Sensation is antecedent to re- 
 
 Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Chap. I, 
 Par. 2. 
 
LOCKE: OPEN-MINDED DUALJSM. 63 
 
 flection. From sensation, "such an impression, 
 or motion made in the parts of the body as pro- 
 duces some perception in the understanding, " the 
 most of our ideas spring. 
 
 "Our senses, conversant about particular sensible ob- 
 jects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions 
 of things, according to those various ways wherein those 
 objects do affect them. And thus we come by those ideas 
 we do have of yellow, white, cold, heat, soft, hard, bitter, 
 sweet, and all those which are called sensible qualities; 
 which when I say the senses convey into the mind I mean, 
 they from external objects convey into the mind what pro- 
 duces there those perceptions. * * * (The) other foun- 
 tain from which experience furnisheth the understanding 
 with ideas," reflection, "that notice that the mind takes of 
 its own states and operations, by which it has ideas of the 
 same/'C 1 ) 
 
 sustains in a measure the same relation to our 
 mental operations that sensation does to external 
 sensible objects. 
 
 Here in reflection we find the same activity of 
 the mind that was stressed a few pages back in 
 primary perception. The mind is active in the 
 same way in the perception of sensations that it 
 is in the perception of mental operations in re- 
 flection. There is no need to stress that point 
 again here; the difference is one of degree. It 
 must be understood, however, that there will be 
 found in Locke other explanations of the mind's 
 synthetic character, for he is not always consist- 
 ent. But not to take note of his position above 
 and its significance would, it seems to me, be to 
 
 ( l ) Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, C!h. I, 
 Pars. 3 and 4. 
 
64 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 ultimately misinterpret the general trend of 
 Locke's message in psychology. Quite generally 
 commentors of Locke are misleading here. They 
 say that the mind is passive in the reception of 
 simple ideas and active in the creation of com- 
 plex ones. And this is just what Locke does say 
 at one place, but Locke's general position cannot 
 be got at through that one statement. Through- 
 out the whole of his psychology there is a con- 
 tinual assumption of the mind as an independent, 
 self-existent, active entity, marshalling sensa- 
 tions and ideas alike. The mind may be said to 
 be unconscious in its action in primary percep- 
 tion, in which case Locke suggests the petites 
 perceptions of Leibnitz or anticipates the Kantian 
 doctrine as to the unconscious activity of the im- 
 agination in perception. Indeed, the function of 
 Locke's understanding is in a great way given 
 over to that of the imagination in Kant. Their 
 activity in primary perception in the interpre- 
 tation of independent sensation is one and the 
 same. If the commentors mean merely to say 
 that the mind is relatively passive in the recep- 
 tion of simple ideas, that is, as compared with its 
 activity in the creation of complex ones, why that 
 is quite correct. But my contention is that com- 
 mentators in stressing the importance of Locke's 
 revolutionary doctrine fail to notice the import- 
 ance of his reactionary trend. Locke simply took 
 for granted his soul with its natural faculties and 
 
LOOKE: OPEN-MINDED DUAIJSM. 65 
 
 original activity. To question its existence never 
 so much as entered his mind as a reasonable hy- 
 pothesis. In my opinion French sensationalism 
 gave a turn that would have caused him sleepless 
 nights could he ever have fully realized it. The 
 fact that Locke says that reflection might go by 
 the name of an internal sense only doubles his 
 emphasis upon mind. For the mind whose atten- 
 tion is necessary and presupposed even in primary 
 perception continues more and more to display its 
 activity. It is active in reflection; to its activity 
 are due all our ideas whether they be complex 
 ideas, ideas of relation or ideas of abstraction. 
 For as we shall see later, the mind displays its 
 activity through these natural faculties, or pow- 
 ers, of compounding, abstracting, etc. 
 
 To continue with the statement of Locke's posi- 
 tion: 
 
 "These two, I say, viz., external, material things, as ob- 
 jects of sensation, and the operations of our minds within, 
 as objects of reflection, are to me, the only originals from 
 whence all our ideas take their beginnings." (*) 
 
 Through sensation and reflection from the 
 above named sources the mind receives its simple 
 ideas, the ultimate foundation of all our knowl- 
 edge, its unanalysible elements, out of which are 
 created all other ideas, whether they be the idea 
 of the self, the external world, or God. 
 
 Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, Chap I,. 
 Par. 4. 
 
66 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 To examine sensation. Any external object of 
 which the mind takes notice is for Locke posses- 
 sed of certain real qualities, as solidity, extension, 
 figure, motion, and certain subjective qualities. 
 The former are inseparable from the external ob- 
 ject and are of its very essence, while the latter, 
 on the contrary, are separable from the object 
 and, although they are commonly supposed to re- 
 side in the object as is the case with primary 
 qualities, just referred to, they are for Locke ef- 
 fects in the observer. The one Locke called prim- 
 ary qualities and the other secondary, and des- 
 pite the fact that this distinction did not originate 
 with Locke, the terms which he applied to them 
 have taken a permanent place in philosophic dis- 
 cussion, a witness to the important place of their 
 author. Now, ideas are produced in the mind by 
 the action of these external bodies upon the 
 sense, the internal parts being set in motion by 
 the particles of the external bodies, provided the 
 mind attends. That the ideas thus aroused in the 
 mind in response to such external stimuli should 
 in any wise resemble the external cause is unne- 
 cessary and gratuitous; they need no more re- 
 semble their cause than words need resemble the 
 things they name. Nevertheless, it is quite true 
 that our ideas of primary qualities do correspond 
 to the qualities in external bodies, in some way or 
 other, but our ideas of secondary qualities do not; 
 .these exist in the things themselves only as modes 
 
DOOKE: OPEN-MINDED DUALJSM. 67 
 
 of primary qualities. In these statements Locke 
 is trying very hard to be consistent with the ad- 
 vance of science in his day. Elsewhere he writes 
 in the same connection significantly, 
 
 "Ideas it is certain I have, and God is the original 
 cause of my having them; but how I came by them * * * 
 in this I frankly confess my ignorance." (*) 
 
 Locke's position here is that of an undogmatic 
 mind: this is certainly beyond all question, but 
 it is essentially quite different from that of 
 Hobbes though this may not at first be so appar- 
 ent. In Hobbes we have seen that there is no dis- 
 position to make anything of the Cartesian prob- 
 lem ; to a certain extent it may be said that Locke 
 is in the same case. To his credit, he does neglect 
 the problem to some extent. But this is incon- 
 sistent with his general attitute towards mind ; for 
 mind and matter are for him heterogeneous, while 
 for Hobbes they were not. Hobbes, therefore, is 
 justified in his neglect of the problem, while Locke 
 is not. It is for this reason that we may over- 
 look the phenomenology of Hobbes, of which some 
 have seen fit to make to much capital. But the 
 case of Locke is quite different. He has not only 
 the two worlds of mind and matter but in agree- 
 ing with Hobbes that our own ideas do not have 
 to agree with their objects he has introduced as 
 a veil a system of ideas that intervene between 
 
 (*) Examination of Malebranche, Pars. 10-16, quoted from Vol. 
 I, p. 192; Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 
 
68 IDEALJSTIO BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 his two worlds. The significance of this three- 
 world position of Locke was fully realized by Irish 
 wit, when Berkeley stepped from the world of 
 matter by means of this newly discovered world 
 of ideas into the world of mind. Had it not been 
 for Locke's intervening ideas, or rather had 
 Locke not given the significance that he did to 
 these ideas, there would never have been the ex- 
 cuse that there undoubtedly was for Berkeley's 
 psychological idealism. For it arises out of the 
 simple Lockean definition of knowledge : and how 
 it does we shall see later in our study of Berkeley. 
 Let us examine these ideas and their genesis 
 and see what light they throw upon the question 
 of Locke, the sensationalist, and Locke, the men- 
 talist. Ideas are of two kinds : simple and com- 
 plex. The former constitute the unanalysible ele- 
 ments of all that we know, or can know ; they come 
 into the mind only as above set forth by sensation 
 and reflection, outer and inner perception. As 
 was pointed out above, it is usual to say that 
 simple ideas are received by the mind in a passive 
 state: whereas complex ones are the creation of 
 the mind's own activity. There can be no objec- 
 tion to this statement of the case so long as it is 
 remembered that the mind is always potentially 
 active for Locke, and never passive when it has 
 something to think or know. Eelatively, then, the 
 mind is passive here in contradistinction to its 
 greater activity in the higher mental processes, 
 or what he calls natural faculties. Simple ideas 
 
LOCKE: OPEN-MINDED DUAUSM. 69 
 
 are received either from without or within, when 
 the mind attends to some object, external or men- 
 tal; complex ideas are constructs of the mind, 
 formed out of simple ideas, with which the mind 
 has the power by means of its faculties to deal 
 as it will. It may construct the most lofty con- 
 ceptions, the most sublime ideas, but the most ex- 
 alted wit cannot come at a simple idea by any 
 other method than that of reception through sen- 
 sation and reflection. As the mind has no power 
 to create a simple idea, so likewise it has no power 
 to destroy one. Simple ideas come into the mind 
 through one sense, through several senses, by re- 
 flection, and by reflection and sensation together. 
 Thus the primary quality, solidity, comes into 
 the mind by the single sense, touch; by reflection 
 alone we come into the possession of the ideas of 
 willing and thinking, while by reflection and sen- 
 sation we gain the idea of power, pain and others. 
 Simple ideas are subject to certain limitations; 
 these one must gain and must gain them as they 
 are given in his experience, they cannot be altered. 
 On the other hand in the case of complex ideas, 
 the mind is free and originative. It can proceed 
 as it will ; for the reason that our complex ideas 
 do not have to conform to external objects. Simple 
 ideas are real, adequate and, for the most part, 
 true ; while on the other hand complex ideas need 
 not be either real or adequate or true. Both 
 simple and complex ideas may be either clear or 
 
70 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 obscure; simple ideas in the strength and fresh- 
 ness of their reception into the mind are certainly 
 clear, though if the perception is imperfect, or the 
 memory weak, they may be obscure. Complex 
 ideas are dependent upon simple ones for their 
 clearness. The validity of all science rests upon 
 the validity of simple ideas. 
 
 Of the ideas classified above, simple ideas are 
 the work of the mind and sense ; nothing is clearer 
 than this. While sensation is necessary for the 
 possibility of ideas; their coming into being de- 
 pends, as we have seen, upon the activity of the 
 mind. The mind must attend in sensation that 
 we may have simple ideas at all just as it must 
 attend in reflection that we may have simple ideas. 
 All other ideas are the product of the mind alone. 
 The position of Locke here suggests that of Kant 
 whose faculty of imagination organizes not only 
 perceptions under the pure forms of the mind, 
 but even the crude data of sensation under the 
 forms of space and time. In Locke as well as in 
 Kant simple and complex ideas alike are the work 
 of mind. In the one the mind acts through na- 
 tural faculties, while in the other the mind has 
 as its instruments forms. 
 
 Here we come to that part of the work of Locke 
 which, while it may be merely a matter of em- 
 phasis, seems to me to be much more than this,. 
 Locke's careful treatment of the faculties of mind, 
 which marks him off clearly from Hobbes. They 
 
LOOKE: OPEN-MINDED DUALJSM. 71 
 
 are for Locke something more than mere names 
 for the manner images play in the mind. While 
 Locke is careful to have us understand that they 
 are not beings or agents, he discusses them as 
 powers of the mind. Here again we come upon 
 Locke's leaning toward intuitionalism as against 
 Hobbes' thorough-going materialism. The mat- 
 ter may be approached in two ways: through a 
 consideration of the thinking substance, and that 
 of the law of association. An emphasis upon mind 
 substance to the exclusion of a formal explana- 
 tion of mind seems to make it clear that Locke 
 can have but one meaning for faculties. 
 
 What this thinking substance is, we do not 
 know and cannot know, but one of two things 
 is true: either it is an immaterial substance 
 superadded to matter, or it is matter. It rests as 
 much with spiritualists to show why their hypothe- 
 sis is acceptable as it does with materialists to 
 show that theirs is. 
 
 "For I see no contradiction in it, that the first Eternal 
 thinking Being should, if He pleased, give to certain sys- 
 tems of created senseless matter, put together as He 
 thinks fit, some degrees of sense, perception and 
 thought," C 1 ) 
 
 but, he significantly adds, 
 
 "Though, as I think I have proved, it is no less than a 
 contradiction to suppose matter (which is evidently in its 
 own nature void of sense and thought) should be that 
 eternal first thinking Being", C 1 ) 
 
 Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, Ch. Ill, 
 Par. 6. 
 
72 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 which so far as I can see rests Locke's case. Still 
 he would retain an open mind in the matter, as 
 may be seen : 
 
 "It is a point which seems to me to be put out ol 
 reach of our knowledge," (*) 
 
 but, he adds, because we find one hypothesis in- 
 conceivable that is no reason for throwing our- 
 selves violently into the contrary one, which is 
 "an unfair way some men take with themselves". 
 When Locke has completed his consideration 
 his position is no longer in doubt, despite the fact 
 that he professes an open mind. He defends the 
 Cartesian res cogitans, as we have already had 
 opportunity to discover. And it is in this think- 
 ing substance that we find the originative powers 
 of union, abstraction, comparing, etc. For these 
 are the instruments of the directing mind and it 
 is through these powers that its activity is dis- 
 played. It has been claimed above that these are 
 not, as they were with Hobbes, merely names for 
 the behavior of mind, purely descriptive in nature, 
 though they do have this character also. Indeed, 
 it must be here understood once and for all that 
 Locke here as elsewhere accurately describes the 
 mind's activities; the fault is to be found not so 
 much with Locke's description as with his theory. 
 It is contended that the very fact that Locke feels 
 it necessary merely to describe these activities as 
 
 *(*) Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, Ch. Ill, 
 Par. 6. 
 
LOCKE: OPEN-MINDED DUATJSM. 73 
 
 faculties makes clear his theory of mind. He 
 could have gone into a causal explanation of men- 
 tal phenomena. Notice how carefully Hobbes ex- 
 plains retention in terms of images that persist 
 through the law of motion; how carefully he ex- 
 plains the mind's synthetic activity in terms of 
 the law of association of ideas. What has Locke 
 to say here? These are all powers, or natural 
 faculties, that the mind has through which and in 
 which, its activities are made manifest. Here 
 again Locke betrays his mentalism. 
 
 But most striking of all the neglected oppor- 
 tunities that presented themselves to Locke by 
 which he might have made his position clear, is 
 that of his failure to employ the principal of as- 
 sociation. It cannot be said that he was unac- 
 quainted with this law; for in a negative way he 
 calls particular attention to it, when considering 
 its unfortunate aspect as displayed in the "con- 
 nection of ideas wholly owing to chance and cus- 
 tom " and the ill effects that flow from these as- 
 sociations of a peculiarly subjective character. 
 It may be that Locke did not emphasize the law 
 in a positive way for the reason that he antici- 
 pated what Hume later did. For the method that 
 Locke uses to explain subjective coherence 
 is the same that Hume used to explain 
 all creations of the imagination including 
 Locke's self, external world and Creator. 
 However that may be it is found that in 
 
74 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 most cases Locke concealed the operation of 
 this law under other names, but principally un- 
 der the faculties of the thinking substance. If 
 Locke did not understand the full significance of 
 this law, the reason that he did not is plain enough, 
 his predilections in favor of the Cartesian res 
 cogitans and his good intuitionalism (despite his 
 wonderful assault on innate ideas), really left no 
 place for such a law in his psychology. In this 
 connection it may be noted that interesting light 
 is here thrown on Locke's attitude towards the 
 principle by his introductory words : 
 
 "Some of our ideas have a natural correspondence and 
 connection one with another; it is the office and excellency 
 or our reason to trace these, and to hold them together 
 in that union and correspondence which is founded in 
 their particular beings. Besides this there is another 
 connection of ideas wholly owing to chance or custom." 
 
 That is to say, the true ideas though gained from 
 sensation and the correspondence between them 
 can be intuited by the reason just as the innate 
 ideas of Ralph Cudworth were. One of the prime 
 functions of the reason is to preserve the integ- 
 rity of this agreement against the on-slaughts of 
 false connections " wholly owing to chance and 
 custom". The intuitionalism of Locke has been 
 noticed by more than one commentator. A more 
 definite statement of it could hardly be called for. 
 It is generally thought that Locke, far from be- 
 ing an adherent of the faculty psychology, actually 
 
 (*) Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, Ch. 
 XXXIII, Par. 5. 
 
LOCKE: OPEN-MINDED DUALISM. 75 
 
 did much in opposition to such a doctrine. This, 
 it must be admitted, is partially true. Locke did 
 attack the? theory that a mental faculty is an in- 
 dependent agent. Here, as in the case of his at- 
 tack upon the theory of innate ideas, he attacks 
 not the genuine theory, but a popular misconcep- 
 tion of it. His position is made clear in a dis- 
 cussion of volition : 
 
 "But in all these it is not one power that operates on 
 another: but it is the mind that operates, and exerts these 
 powers; it is the man that does the action; it is the agent 
 that has power, or is able to do. For powers are relations, 
 not agents," etc. (*) 
 
 V\ hile these words have a particular pertinency 
 in his discussion of freedom, their bearing upon 
 the general position is quite apparent. For the 
 agent, or man, is always identified with his active 
 directing mind. 
 
 The activity of the mind observed in perception 
 is more and more evident the higher the faculties 
 discussed. Primary perception man has in com- 
 mon with all animals of the field; but the faculty 
 of abstraction belongs to man alone, and is highly 
 developed only in men of great intellectual power. 
 
 Perception is "the first operation of all intel- 
 lectual faculties, and the inlet of all knowledge in 
 our minds' 7 . The understanding displays its- 
 power in perception of ideas, in the perception 
 of the signification of signs, in the perception of 
 the agreement or disagreement of our ideas. The 
 
 C 1 ) Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, Ch. XXI. 
 
76 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 powers here set forth are those of the understand- 
 ing proper. There is another power that 
 shares with the understanding the activi- 
 ties of the soul, namely, the will. It 
 is from the observation of these faculties that the 
 mind derives the idea of power. How Locke's use 
 of these powers has led him to emphasize the 
 mind's activity has already been referred to. 
 
 Eetention is a power that the mind has of keep- 
 ing ideas actually under observation, called con- 
 templation. The mind also has "the power to 
 revive again in our minds those ideas which, after 
 imprinting have disappeared". Thus what con- 
 stitutes the essence of mind for Hobbes, namely 
 its conservation of experience, is for Locke merely 
 a power of mind. But memory must not be liter- 
 ally interpreted as a storehouse of ideas; Locke 
 carefully, if naively, fortifies himself against any 
 such in the following words : 
 
 "This laying up of our ideas in the repository of the 
 memory signifies no more but this, that the mind has a 
 power in many cases to revive perceptions which it has 
 had once, with this additional perception annexed to them, 
 that it has had them before. * * * They (ideas) are 
 actually nowhere; but only there is an ability in the mind 
 when it will to revive them again", etc.O 
 
 While this is true, there are cases where this 
 power of the mind is useless; for the ideas have 
 disappeared. 
 
 Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, Ch. X, 
 Par. 2. 
 
LOCKE: OPEN-MINDED DUALISM. 77 
 
 "Thus the ideas, as well as children, of our youth, often 
 die before us; and our minds represent to us those tombs 
 to which we are approaching; where, though the brass 
 and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by 
 time, and the imagery moulders away. The pictures drawn 
 in our minds are laid in fading colours; and if not some- 
 times refreshed, vanish and disappear." (') 
 
 Locke contends that our ideas disappear ; this was 
 for him a matter of common experience, and one 
 that could not be controverted. Here, in a way, 
 he opposed Hobbes, While our author contends 
 that ideas decay, Hobbes, on the other hand, - 
 holds that our ideas would never decay in fact, 
 but that to say that they decay is merely another 
 way of saying that they are crowded out of the 
 field of consciousness by other and newer impres- 
 sions only for the time being; their persistence in 
 the mind being due to the fundamental law of mo- 
 tion, the motion of the internal parts of the body 
 must be counteracted by other new motions from 
 without or the internal parts themselves must 
 have been destroyed. This retention of images is 
 the essence of mind for Hobbes ; it is merely a 
 power, or the accident, of mind for Locke. The 
 Hobbistic theory of mind as a moving sea of 
 images serves him in good stead when he comes 
 to explain what is for Locke a strange pheno- 
 menon, that is, how ideas 
 
 "start up in our minds of their own accord and offer them- 
 selves to the understanding; and very often are roused 
 
 (*) Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, Ch. X, 
 Par. 5. 
 
78 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 and tumbled out of their dark cells into open daylight, by 
 turbulent and tempestuous passions. "(*) 
 
 This our author allows to disturb him very little ; 
 the instances that are met with belong to the mind 
 in a relaxed state. In an active state the mind 
 orders to the fore certain dormant ideas through 
 the power of the will, or even seeks out some hid- 
 den idea by a careful search. All of which goes 
 to show that Locke in his discussion of the reten- 
 tion of ideas and their recurrence in the mind 
 is disposed to assign to the power of an unan- 
 alysed conception their control, which is in strik- 
 ing contrast with Hobbes in his careful analysis 
 of mental control. Locke points out carefully the 
 value of memory, without which man would be 
 helpless ; but not once does he seem to appreciate 
 the conception of mind as being essentially mem- 
 ory. 
 
 Very different from the faculties discussed 
 above are those of discerning, comparing and 
 compounding. The function of perception and re- 
 tention was to receive and keep the ideas with 
 which the last three faculties are to deal in quite 
 different ways. Discernment is that power of the 
 mind that enables it to distinguish clearly between 
 ideas; its importance cannot be overestimated. 
 
 "On this faculty of distinguishing one thing from an- 
 other depends the evidence and certainty of several, even 
 very general propositions, which have passed for innate 
 
 (') Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, Ch. X, 
 Par. 7. 
 
LOCKE: OPEN-MINDED DUALISM. 79 
 
 truths; because men, overlooking the true cause why 
 those propositions find universal assent impute it wholly 
 to native uniform impressions; whereas it in truth de- 
 pends upon this clear discerning faculty of the mind, 
 whereby it perceives two ideas to be the same, or differ- 
 ent." (') 
 
 Are we any wiser for such a discussion of this 
 faculty ? Without in any way denying that Locke 
 made a positive contribution here it is just as 
 evident that for him the sensation of difference is 
 a non-sensuous element. This is one of the divid- 
 ing lines between intuitionalism and sensational- 
 ism and Locke is plainly on the side of intuition. 
 
 Comparing is that power of the mind whereby 
 it compares its ideas one with another in res- 
 pect of extent, degree, time, place, or any other 
 circumstance upon which are dependent all that 
 large tribe of ideas comprehended under rela- 
 tion, which is of vast extent, as our author make's 
 clear. But here again Locke makes it clear that re- 
 lation belongs to ideas in the mind which is in- 
 tuited by the mind as it examines and compares 
 its ideas. 
 
 Compounding is that power of the mind where- 
 by it joins together simple ideas received from 
 sensation and reflection, creating thereby complex 
 ideas. Under this head is included the enlarging 
 of ideas, which is simply the combining of ideas 
 of the same kind, not at first apparent. Here, as 
 has been pointed out above, Locke misses a most 
 
 (*) Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Bk. II, Chap. XI, 
 Par. 1. 
 
80 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 excellent opportunity to employ to advantage the 
 principle of association of ideas with which he 
 was certainly not unfamiliar. The theory that one 
 experience has the power to call up another and 
 that this is the fundamental basis of mind would, 
 I feel, have been repulsive to Locke, whose whale 
 work is so closely allied with the conception of 
 an undivided active thinking substance. 
 
 The highest faculty of the mind is that of ab- 
 straction, the power that the mind has of separat- 
 ing the ideas that it has joined, or found joined, 
 in some particular thing as perceived by the 
 mind. Whiteness belongs both to snow and chalk 
 and can be abstracted from them. This the mind 
 does of necessity ; but for this faculty of abstrac- 
 tion, says Locke, names would be endless. This 
 is the power of mind that marks man off from the 
 brute just as perception, according to Locke, 
 marks all sentient creatures off from lower forms 
 of life. Here again Locke plainly avoids a scien- 
 tific explanation of the behavior of the mind. 
 What might have been gone into and analysed is 
 lumped as a power of mind. Locke's conception 
 of an abstract idea as a mental construction is 
 enough to convict him of mentalism even if there 
 were no other data at our disposal. 
 
 It can hardly be said Locke placed much em- 
 phasis upon the atomistic character of our sen- 
 suous experience, certainly not after the manner 
 of Hume. His conception of substance, whether 
 
LOCKE: OPEN-MINDED DUAUSM. 81 
 
 material or spiritual, held within it sufficient ex- 
 planation of how qualities are held together. 
 Bather did he emphasize the mere fact that sen- 
 sation is a necessary element in experience and 
 this he did in a manner in no wise different either 
 from his predecessor, Ealph Cudworth, with 
 whose doctrines he must have* been most thor- 
 oughly familiar, or from his renowned successor, 
 Immanuel Kant. But, as we have clearly shown, 
 the non-sensuous element in Locke is greatly pre- 
 dominant. This he has made clear in two ways: 
 by the continual emphasis upon the mind as an un- 
 divided, original, active, directing substance and 
 by his disposition to stress the non-sensory ele- 
 ment in his discussion of the faculties, or powers, 
 of mind. Locke clearly anticipated Kant, and the 
 chief element of difference that distinguishes the 
 work of Kant from that of Locke is that that was 
 introduced by his two successors, Berkeley and 
 Hume. 
 
III. 
 
 BERKELEY: DOGMATIC SPIRITUALISM. 
 
Of THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 III. 
 
 BERKELEY: DOGMATIC SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 Berkeley, like many other young men of his 
 time, was led into philosophy through the reading 
 of Locke. And yet two minds could not have been 
 more unlike than those of Berkeley and Locke; 
 Berkeley did not have that openness of mind so 
 characteristic of Locke. The position of compro- 
 mise that Locke had taken was not for him. 
 Locke's reference of the secondary qualities to 
 the sentient mind as well as his broad use of the 
 term idea at once suggested to Berkeley's mind 
 further development. Where Locke had restrain- 
 ed thought to those things that the mind seemed 
 capable of dealing with, Berkeley gave wings to 
 his fancy. Locke's Critique of the Human Under- 
 standing was totally without results for him. 
 Laying greater stress upon mind, he extended its 
 activity to all of reality; for it is plain that there 
 is no reality without mind. Matter melts under 
 his logic into sensuous experience; back of which 
 stands mind. There is in all the history of 
 thought no more brilliant example of reason's 
 being led captive by emotion. 
 
 Singularly enough the weapon that Berkeley 
 used in his attack upon Locke is good English 
 nominalism. He lays significant errors at the 
 
86 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 door of Locke's theory of abstraction, "the 
 opinion that the mind hath a power of forming 
 abstract ideas or notions of things. ' ' After care- 
 fully setting forth what he understands by ab- 
 straction, he declares with characteristic frank- 
 ness and vigor; 
 
 "Whether others have this wonderful faculty of abstract- 
 ing their ideas, they best can tell. For myself, I find I 
 have indeed a faculty of imagining, or representing to 
 myself, the idea of those particular things I have per- 
 ceived, and of variously compounding and dividing them. 
 I can imagine a man with two heads, or the upper parts 
 of a man joined to the body of a horse.. I can consider 
 the hand, the eye, the nose, each by itself abstracted or 
 separated from the "rest of the body. But then whatever 
 hand or eye I imagine, it must have some particular shape 
 and color. Likewise the idea of a man that I frame to 
 myself, must be either a white, or a black, or a tawny, a 
 straight, or a crooked, a tall or a low or a middle sized 
 man.'T) 
 
 As for being able to have an abstract idea such 
 as humanity, or any other abstract idea, our 
 author absolutely denies his ability to do so. Any 
 image that he can call up in his imagination is 
 that of some particular man, or member of a class. 
 What he claims in regard to himself he holds will 
 be found true of most men, provided they be not 
 learned ; 
 
 "and there is ground to think that most men will acknowl- 
 edge themselves to be in my case. The generality of men 
 which are simple and illiterate never pretend to abstract 
 notions. * * * (And those who claim this power) are 
 confined only to the learned," (*) 
 
 (') Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge 
 Introduction, Par. 10. 
 
BERKELEY: DOGMATIC SPIRITUALISM. 87 
 
 and citing Locke's case of the triangle that 
 
 "must be neither oblique nor rectangle, neither equi- 
 lateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these 
 at once. * * * to give the reader a yet clearer view 
 of the nature of abstract ideas," ( 2 ) 
 
 he declares: 
 
 "If any man has the faculty of framing in his mind such 
 an idea of a triangle as is here described, it is vain to pre- 
 tend to dispute him out of it, nor would I go about it. All 
 I desire is that the reader would fully and certainly 
 inform himself whether he has such an idea or no. And 
 this, methinks, can be no hard task for anyone to per- 
 form." (') 
 
 It must be understood that Berkeley does not 
 deny that we make use of general terms but that 
 there are such things as abstract general ideas, 
 that general ideas are not such mental creations 
 as Locke would have us think. Our use of such 
 general terms can be easily explained, as must be 
 admitted after the following citation: 
 
 "If we will annex a meaning to our words, and speak 
 only of what we can conceive, I believe we shall acknowl- 
 edge that an idea which, considered in itself, is particular, 
 becomes general by being made to represent or stand for 
 all other particular ideas of the same 
 
 That is to say, we think in examples. At this 
 point Berkeley suggests Kant; for his schema, by 
 which sense and reason get into touch with each 
 
 () Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge 
 
 Introduction, Par. 13. 
 (*) Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 
 
 Introduction, Par. 12. 
 
88 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 other, is a somewhat vague particular doing duty 
 as a universal. But this comparison would be 
 much to Kant's disadvantage, owing to Berkeley's 
 simplicity of statement, which when properly 
 interpreted is very near to our present-day ex- 
 planation of the same. 
 
 Continuing his attack upon abstract ideas, he 
 declares his inability to see the value of such ideas 
 either for communication or for the enlargement 
 of knowledge. Then, too, if we are to take the 
 words of Locke seriously, abstracting is no easy 
 operation of the mind, one far too 'difficult for the 
 tender ages and one for which adults find but 
 small opportunity. The source of the whole 
 trouble for Locke, according to Berkeley, lies in 
 language; had there been no universal signs, there 
 would have been no thought of abstraction. Be- 
 cause we have such signs, Locke would give us 
 such ideas, which for our author does not follow; 
 our images, or ideas, are particular. But this 
 does not interfere with the general accurate use of 
 our signs. To say that it did would mean that 
 ideas and words had to correspond, which is by no 
 means the case ; this would be to limit the useful- 
 ness of words. Words play the part that ideas 
 may have once played in arousing passions in an- 
 other; the promise of good things calls up no 
 image, though we are moved by it. Even proper 
 names are not intended always to call up the 
 image of the persons to whom they refer ; 
 
BERKELEY: DOGMATIC SPIRITUALISM. 89 
 
 "For example, when a schoolmen tells me 'Aristotle hath 
 it,' all I conceive he means by it is to dispose me to 
 embrace his opinion with the deference and submission 
 which custom has annexed to that name/'C 1 ) 
 
 In conclusion our author declares that if it be 
 correct as according to Locke that abstraction 
 marks man off from the brute, then he himself 
 must be so classified ; for he can discover in him- 
 self no such power of mind. 
 
 So much space has been given to Berkeley's at- 
 tack upon Locke for good reasons. Aside from its 
 intrinsic importance as a defense of nominalism 
 from the psychological viewpoint, it was regarded 
 by Hume as one of the great contributions to 
 thought, and consequently he was influenced by it 
 very much, as we shall see. But to say nothing 
 of its place in Berkeley's argument for the present, 
 it deserves particular attention for another rea- 
 son. His difference from Locke at this point de- 
 serves more than a casual explanation ; for it was 
 more than a mere whim. That Berkeley was a 
 good psychologist, few would deny; his exposition 
 of vision and his general discussion of the mind 
 and its operations, when separated from his 
 metaphysics, place him in the front rank of psycho- 
 logists. He, after Hobbes, is the first man to 
 clearly set forth mind as the power of one experi-] 
 ence to call up another. His ability to render 
 these contributions was due to the fact that he 
 
 Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 
 Introd., Par. 20. 
 
90 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 followed the method so earnestly urged by Locke. 
 He went to experience, thereby proving himself 
 a good Lockean and a good member of the Eng- 
 lish school. And yet, the results of their investiga- 
 tion appear to be totally different. Berkeley holds 
 that the generality of an idea is in its representa- 
 tive relation; Locke, that this generality is a con- 
 struction of the mind. Becent investigation has 
 shown that men are divided into two distinct 
 classes ; strong visualizers and poor ones. 
 
 While Berkeley deserves the name of psycholo- 
 gist, this is by accident rather than otherwise, des- 
 pite his work in this field his prime interests lay 
 not there. So, too, his brilliant defense of 
 nominalism must not be regarded as an effort to 
 uphold that doctrine for its own sake. His mo- 
 tive lay elsewhere. This attack upon the theory 
 of abstraction looked to his fundamental position 
 in metaphysics. For the greatest of all abstrac- 
 tions is matter; and with the overthrow of Locke's 
 doctrine materialism seemed undermined. Hence 
 Berkeley's great enthusiasm for nominalism. We 
 touch this merely in passing; the subject will later 
 be taken up in its logical order. 
 
 The significance of Locke's theory of knowledge 
 is best got at through his doctrine of ideas ; for we 
 can kno-^r ideas and their compounds only. That 
 ide'as are the only objects of our knowledge, Berke- 
 ley readily accepts. And he proceeds at once to 
 substantiate as well as to enlarge upon their al- 
 ready broad meaning. Thus, when I see an object, 
 
BERKELEY: DOGMATIC SPIRITUALISM. 91 
 
 or in any way sense one by some other sense, what 
 I know is the idea which is said to be impressed on 
 the senses; when I reflect, viewing the passions 
 and operations of the mind, what I know here 
 again, is ideas ; and when I call up in the imagina- 
 tion any of the above formed ideas, what I know 
 is still ideas and nothing different; for they all 
 alike are perceptions of the mind. That is to say, 
 all natural phenomena, whether actually per- 
 ceived, remembered or imagined, are to be known 
 as ideas. This use of the term idea, which Berke- 
 ley inherited from good old John Locke, helped 
 him to melt phenomena and the world back of it 
 into sensuous experience. The signification of 
 the experience of the external world became lost 
 in that of the term idea; for what we call a thing 
 is nothing but a collection of ideas, which the mind 
 has made. 
 
 "Thus, for example, a certain color, taste, smell, figure 
 and consistence having been observed to go together are 
 accounted one distinct thing signified by the name 
 apple." C 1 ) 
 
 Thus Berkeley clearly points out that the mind 
 creates reality out of data gained through sensa- 
 tion. If, now, there be such things as sensations, 
 i. e., colors, tastes, etc., if ideas exist and are 
 known, there must be some knower, or perceiver. 
 This is another consequence for Berkeley, which, 
 however, did not follow for Hume, as we shall see. 
 
 (*) Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 
 Rationale of Principles. Par. 1. 
 
92 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 "This perceiving active being is what I call MIND, SPIRIT, 
 SOUL, or MYSELF. By which words I do not denote any one 
 of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, 
 wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby 
 they are perceived, for the existence of an idea consists 
 in being perceived." ( a ) 
 
 And this, as Berkeley feels, is a statement that 
 all men will allow; 
 
 "Neither our thoughts nor passions, nor Ideas formed 
 by the imagination, exist without the mind"; C 1 ) 
 
 for their very existence depends on this relation 
 to mind, perception. So, too, for our author, it 
 is just as evident, and equally reasonable, that 
 
 "the various sensations, or ideas imprinted on the sense, 
 however blended or combined together (that is, whatever 
 objects they compose), cannot exist otherwise than in the 
 mind perceiving them. * * * For as to what is said of 
 the absolute existence of unthinking things without any 
 relation to their being perceived, that is to me perfectly 
 unintelligible. Their esse is percipi/'C 1 ) 
 
 This very strikingly precludes Cartesian dua- 
 lism ; for it would be contradictory to say that cer- 
 tain things exist outside of my mind, which my 
 ideas represent. This, in the light of Berkeley's 
 argument, would be to declare that colors cannot 
 be seen and that hard things are intangible. 
 
 This reply to Des Cartes and Locke and all 
 those who defend the representative theory of 
 knowledge, is, it seems, quite conclusive. There- 
 fore the esse of the external world is, as the esse 
 of our images, merely percipi, and there is no 
 
 Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 
 Rationale of Principles, Pars. 2 and 3. 
 
BERKELEY: DOGMATIC SPIRITUALISM. 93 
 
 substance but the res cogitans of Des Cartes. 
 Thus the ideas that Locke had thought of as in- 
 tervening between the world of mind and the 
 external world, proved to be all there is of an 
 external world. If ideas are the objects of our 
 knowledge, what use is there for another system 
 of things ? Thus we see, and it is not so illogical, 
 how Berkeley looks upon the external world, but 
 we must investigate how he came into this position 
 in more detail. 
 
 It was in the Lockean distinction between pri- 
 mary and .secondary qualities that Berkeley 
 found his ground already well prepared for his 
 labors. Though this distinction has become so 
 well associated with the name of Locke, it belongs 
 by equal and greater right to Des Cartes, Galileo, 
 and, as we have seen, to Hobbes, to say nothing of 
 Democritus. This distinction Berkeley completely 
 denies and that, too, in a way that enabled him to 
 play havoc with the conception of corporeal sub- 
 stance, as we have just seen. The position of 
 Locke at this point, cautious and wavering, did 
 not appeal to Berkeley, even though held by a 
 philosopher whom he professed to greatly admire ^ 
 nothing could be cited more characteristic of either 
 philosopher than that of their position at this 
 point. In fact we are led to believe that Berkeley 
 admires the position of the plain man here who* 
 takes as a matter of course that both qualities are 
 present in the external thing, more than he does 
 
94 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 that of Locke and Des Cartes. But so great is 
 the evidence, he would have us believe, for the 
 subjectivity of secondary qualities that even cau- 
 tious philosophers and scientists admit them as 
 such and that, too, when they are in the same 
 moment defending that inert senseless substance 
 called matter. 
 
 This is certainly material at hand for Berkeley. 
 For, as he essays to show, and that, too, without 
 much ado, all the arguments applicable in the one 
 case 1 apply with equal force in the other so far as 
 subjectivity goes. For him there is no half-way 
 ground. If color is dependent upon the perceiv- 
 ing mind, motion and c^i-'ntion aro likewise, and 
 no less. -For primary and secondary qualities 
 alike are subjective; in either case esse is percipi. 
 
 But our author professes an open mind. For 
 the sake of argument, he grants to these defend- 
 ers of corporeal substance that, if the mind deals 
 with these secondary qualities in a way that it 
 does not with the primary, then it must be admit- 
 ted that they have their case. This is a matter 
 open to investigation. Taking up one after 
 another of the primary qualities, he .finds himself 
 unable to represent any one of them to himself 
 in his imagination apart from concrete experience; 
 they cannot be separated or abstracted. Wher- 
 ever he calls up extension or motion, there he finds 
 that not only that it is some concrete, particular 
 case of motion, but also that it has some shape, or 
 s&i - . 
 
BERKELEY: DOGMATIC SPIRITUALISM. 95 
 
 color, etc. That is, the mind treats the primary 
 qualities in no wise differently from what it does 
 the secondary 
 
 "In short, extension, figure, and motion, abstracted from 
 all other qualities, are inconceivable. Where therefore the 
 other sensible qualities are, there must these be also, to 
 wit, in the mind and nowhere 
 
 The fault of these philosophers consists in the 
 fact that they come to persuade themselves that 
 the mind has this power of abstracting at all, an 
 error that, as was pointed out above, has grown 
 out of the abuse of language by philosophical 
 writers, such for instance as thinking that ideas 
 must correspond to signs. 
 
 Ideas, then, are not caused in our minds by some 
 external object, as set forth by Hobbes, Democri- 
 tus, Locke and others. Inert, senseless matter, 
 even if there were such a substance, which our 
 author denies, as seen above, has no such power 
 over our ideas. In thus striking at external mat- 
 ter, which for Hobbes is the cause of ideas and 
 therefore their objective coherence upon which the 
 law of association is ultimately based, Berkeley is 
 not out of harmony with himself, though it so ap- 
 pears. But he goes even further than this. One 
 idea has no power over another to call it up; for 
 it is contrary to the very nature of the idea, by 
 reason of its passive character, that it should pos- 
 sess any power or agency of this kind: 
 
 ( l ) Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 
 Rationale of Principles, Par. 10. 
 
96 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 "To be satisfied of the truth of this, there is nothing else 
 requisite but a bare observation of our ideas. For since 
 they and every part of them exist only in the mind, it fol- 
 lows that there is nothing in them but what is per- 
 ceived." () 
 
 This is true not only of our ideas of the imag- 
 ination, mental images, but also of our ideas of 
 sense, perceptions. There is no such thing as 
 either objective or subjective coherence, it appears 
 from what our author says ; but, he says : 
 
 "We perceive a continual succession of ideas; some are 
 anew excited, others are changed or totally disappear. 
 There is, therefore, some Cause of these ideas, whereon 
 they depend, and which produces and changes them."(*) 
 
 If the cause of our ideas and their coherence 
 is found neither in nature nor in the ideas them- 
 selves, 
 
 "it remains therefore that the cause of ideas is an incor- 
 poreal active substance or spirit." 
 
 Any human being as such an incorporeal mind 
 has power to call up ideas in his imagination; 
 such are the ideas of reflection, or images. As 
 to those other ideas of sense, or as we say, per- 
 ceptions, these are not under the control of human 
 minds; their appearance rests upon the will of a 
 more powerful agent than ourselves, the Eternal 
 Creator. The ideas he impresses upon us are 
 what ignorant men call the external world : 
 
 Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 
 Rationale of Principles, Pars. 25, 26. 
 
BERKELEY: DOGMATIC SPIRITUALISM. 97 
 
 "The ideas of Sense are more strong, lively, and distinct 
 than those of the Imagination; they have likewise a stead- 
 iness, order, and coherence, and are not excited at ran- 
 dom, as those which are the effects of human wills often 
 are, but in a regular train or series, the admirable con- 
 nection whereof sufficiently testifies the wisdom and 
 benevolence of its Author. Now the set rules, or estab- 
 lished methods, wherein the Mind we depend on excites in 
 us the ideas of sense, are called the laws of nature; and 
 these we learn by experience, which teaches us that such 
 and such ideas are attended with such and such other 
 ideas, in the ordinary course of things." C 1 ) 
 
 A better passage than the last given could not 
 be cited to show that while Berkeley makes no 
 conscious use of the law of association of ideas, 
 as do Hobbes and Hume, preferring rather to con- 
 ceal it under other terms, that despite this, no one 
 more thoroughly understood it. That is to say, 
 he does what Locke did in a way; he allows his 
 preconceptions to influence him in the selection 
 of terms. Little use there was for Berkeley to 
 do this. His works are strewn from one end to 
 the other with evidences that he consciously or 
 unconsciously looked upon the mind in much the 
 same way as did Hobbes and Hume. If one would 
 be thoroughly convinced that the modern concep- 
 tion of mind, the power of one experience to call 
 up another, is a fruitful one, then let him go read 
 Berkeley's Essay on Vision. 
 
 The power of the human mind to call up ideas 
 in the imagination is called the will; whereas the 
 power of the mind to perceive the impressed ideas 
 
 (*) Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 
 Rationale of Principles, Par. 30. 
 
98 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 of sense as well as those that have called up in 
 the imagination is denominated the understand- 
 ing. It is through the avenue of the will that the 
 mind really manifests its activity. Those who 
 question the power of the will to control ideas 
 need only carefully observe the operation of their 
 own mind for confirmation of the doctrine. To 
 speak of unthinking agents exciting these ideas 
 exclusive of volition is contrary to reason, accord- 
 ing to our author. Thus it would seem that these 
 great faculties of the mind are powers indeed, 
 
 " not mere names for the behavior of images in our 
 minds, they are the real powers of an active soul 
 substance. 
 
 It will be noticed that while our author over- 
 throws the representative theory of knowledge, 
 showing to his complete satisfaction that in know- 
 ing our ideas we are knowing all the objects of 
 knowledge, since there are no external things with 
 which our ideas may or may not agree, he never- 
 theless keeps the distinction between the world 
 of sensuous experience and that of the imagina- 
 tion, realizing the value of such a distinction. He 
 does not make clear, however, one point that 
 Hume makes something of later, that is, whether 
 the mind can of its own volition create new ideas, 
 
 - other than the ones that it has had in experience. 
 His attack upon abstraction is, it seems, apart 
 from this point ; it is the accident rather than the 
 essence that our ideas must have the concrete 
 look, that is so far as our having to have them 
 
BERKELEY: DOGMATIC SPIRITUALISM. 99 
 
 first as impression goes. To be clear, owing to 
 the closeness of all objects of knowledge the ques- 
 tion of the priority of sense to reflection loses its 
 real significance. And yet, owing to the fact that 
 Berkeley consistently maintained a distinction be- 
 tween our ideas of sense and those of reflection, 
 he should not be called a subjectivist. 
 
 Whatever may be said of this one aspect of the 
 subject, Berkeley certainly makes it clear that so 
 far as our understanding goes when we conceive 
 ideas we do the same thing that we do when we 
 perceive. Perception and conception are of the 
 same nature, the only difference being that in the 
 one case a more powerful will than that of the 
 individual brings up ideas for his perception with 
 a vividness that corresponds to its greater power ; 
 while on the other hand the individual will calls 
 up the idea of its own motion. But in either case 
 the mind must be active in perception or there are 
 no ideas. 
 
 The doctrine of Berkeley again suggests Kant; 
 for is not this the task that he really set himself 
 to? an explanation of the close relationship that 
 exists between .perception and conception. There 
 are those, who while they by no means subscribe 
 to the Berkleyan doctrine are prone to admire 
 these straightforward, consistent explanations of 
 Irish wit more than they feel disposed to ex- 
 tend the Copernican revolution in thought. The 
 priority of sensation has small significance for 
 Berkeley; ideas of imagination need not be the 
 
100 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 copies of those of sense ; they are not causally re- 
 lated, but both exist merely in as far as they are 
 perceived. This is not very different from what 
 Kant tried to do. He held that the phenomena 
 that we have in perception are the unconscious 
 creation of the imagination's activity just as our 
 conceptions are its conscious creation. The fact 
 that our sensations and perceptions have to be 
 subjected to unification under the forms space and 
 time is not to the point, as this has to do merely 
 with the machinery of Kant's psychology. The 
 point here made is that Kant and Berkeley each 
 tried to do the same thing, get in behind mech- 
 anism; that the statement of Berkeley is valu- 
 able at least for its simplicity. 
 
 There is much in the philosophy of Berkeley 
 that suggests the general position of Hobbes. For 
 both the fundamental nature of images in our 
 mind and perceptions of the external world is the 
 same. In Hobbes images of the mind as well as 
 phantasms of sense are dependent upon motion of 
 the internal parts of the body ; in the one case the 
 stimuli are present, in the other case, removed; 
 while for Berkeley ideas of sense no less than 
 ideas of the imagination are dependent absolutely 
 upon the activity of mind; in the one case the 
 mind is that of God and in the other that of the in- 
 dividual mind to whom it is given to have ideas. 
 The external world, which is a vast system of 
 motion for Hobbes, is for Berkeley the unlimited 
 field of the operation of the mind of God. This 
 
BERKELEY: DOGMATIC SPIRITUALISM. 101 
 
 fundamental likeness, concealed only in terms, is 
 not without reasonable explanation. This is to be 
 found in their introspective experimental investi- 
 gation. 
 
 Considering this likeness in psychology, : i\ : is 
 not surprising that while the one extended' the ' 
 domain of sense over that of the imagii^von^ttyi' 
 imagination being merely decaying sense, that the 
 other should extend the domain of mind over that 
 of sense; for the operation of calling up an idea 
 in the mind and experiencing a percept of an ex- : 
 ternal thing differs only in that one is a voluntary 
 while the other is an involuntary experience. It 
 is true that one is a more vivid idea than the other, 
 but they are nevertheless of the same nature fund- 
 amentally. The one no less than the other is a 
 perception of an idea by the mind and nothing 
 more. 
 
 Too much cannot be made of this similarity 
 between the most uniformly and consistently , 
 spiritual philosopher and the most consistent and 
 uniform defender of materialism. It goes far to- 
 wards marking the fundamental likeness that un- 
 derlies all interpretations of the universe when we 
 have robbed ourselves of anthropoinorhphic con- 
 ceptions and sensuous verbiage only to come into 
 the possession of the richer heritage of the more 
 exact terms of a scientific terminology. So, too, 
 nothing could better illustrate the significance of 
 terms in the history of thought. 
 
102 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 It is well to bear constantly in mind this funda- 
 mental similarity, but when we turn to their doc- 
 trines, the case is quite different. The most strik- 
 ing 'difference is then present in the Berkeleyan 
 use of the conception of will, the essential 
 faculty of mind. As we have seen, mind in the 
 system of Berkeley replaces motion in the system 
 of Hobbes. How different the content of these two 
 terms! There is the great Mind of the universe, 
 whence the order and continuity of nature ; there 
 is the individual mind, whence our ability to call 
 up our ideas in the imagination and to think con- 
 nectedly. Thus the order of the universe and 
 mental control flow from Berkeley's unanalysed 
 conception of mind. In Hobbes ' system of motion, 
 if we take it with its implicit consequences, the 
 human mind is but an insignificant corner into 
 which can come mere eddies of this universal 
 motion. What motions come into this mind de- 
 pend upon its location in the universe, and it must 
 continue to repeat these motions until new motions 
 break in from without to counteract them. It 
 possesses no original activity, but is the product 
 of experience. How different all this is from 
 Berkeley's soul that can make and unmake ideas 
 of its own volition, thereby displaying a freedom 
 and spontaneity almost inconceivable. For such 
 a soul while dependent upon universal mind is 
 none the less separate, independent and distinct, 
 this individuality being of its very essence. 
 
BERKELEY: DOGMATIC SPIRITUALISM. 103 
 
 The question at issue here is a most fundamental 
 one, is the term will a fruitful concept? Hobbes, 
 taking the present-day position, dismisses the 
 term will as unfruitful, while Berkeley regards it 
 as unanalysable and hence fundamental. For will 
 is just this originative, active essence of mind back 
 of which we cannot go. On this fundamental and 
 unanalysable character of the term will is staked 
 Berkeley's whole case. Mind cannot be explained 
 in terms of other things ; we have not the concept 
 capable of meeting the situation. But, according 
 to Berkeley, all other things can be explained in 
 terms of mind. Whence his psychological inter- 
 pretation of the universe. 
 
 But both philosophers are inconsistent. Hob- 
 bes, as we have seen, made use of what Berkeley 
 chooses to cover in the term will when he in- 
 troduced arbitrary signs and the law of interest, 
 thereby cutting his mind off from the universe of 
 which it was a part. While Berkeley was also in- 
 consistent, when after setting forth so clearly the 
 true nature of mind as the power of one experience 
 to call up another, and emphasizing the part that 
 custom and habit play in its building up, when in 
 direct opposition to all the genuine contributions 
 that he had made to the science of psychology he 
 chose to rest his case upon the unanalysed concep- 
 tion of will. 
 
IV. 
 HUME: CRITICAL POSITIVISM. 
 
IV. 
 HUME: CRITICAL POSITIVISM. 
 
 Locke had said that the mind gets its idea of 
 power from an observation of the will; Berkeley r 
 following in his wake, had taken the same popular, 
 unanalyzed conception of power and through it 
 had explained the behavior of not only mind but 
 also of the universe. The investigations of Hume 
 fail to uphold Berkeley's psychological interpre- 
 tation of the universe; nothing, he argues, is to 
 be gained by proceeding upon unanalyzed concep- 
 tions. We must, to have a true science, go back 
 to the original impressions upon the mind. In 
 terms of these impressions alone are we to know 
 in the scientific sense. Our author is thoroughly 
 convinced that if we employ this method, which is 
 the same as that employed in the natural sciences, 
 the results will be far from fruitless. In this con- 
 nection he says: 
 
 "For to me it seems evident, that the essence of the mind 
 being equally unknown to us with that of external bodies, 
 it must be equally impossible to form any notion of its 
 powers and qualities otherwise than from careful and 
 exact experiments, and the observation of those particular 
 effects, which result from its different circumstances and 
 situations * * * and any hypothesis that pretends to 
 discover the ultimate original qualities of human nature, 
 ought at first to be rejected as presumptuous and chimer- 
 ical.'T) 
 
 (*) A Treatise of Human Nature, Introd., page XXI. 
 
108 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Proper acquaintance with the extent and force 
 of the human understanding means much to the 
 race. 
 
 " Tis impossible to tell what changes and improvements 
 we might make in these sciences (mathematics, natural 
 philosophy and natural religion, i. e., through the study of 
 man) were we thoroughly acquainted with the extent and 
 force of the human understanding, and could we explain 
 the nature of the ideas we employ, and of the operations 
 we perform in our reasonings." (*) 
 
 In this our author may have been under the influ- 
 ence of Hobbes who saw fit in his study of the state 
 to prefix a study of man in which, as we have seen, 
 he had not a little to say about mental phenomena 
 and their relation to morality. But it must be said 
 that the contributions of Hume to this subject are 
 such that his independence should be recognized by 
 i.ll. Hume does not come at the subject with Hob- 
 bistic dogmatism; for the atmosphere of thought 
 in his day was far different from what it was in 
 the day of Hobbes. But be it to his credit that he 
 had faith ; for, if experiments that were made with 
 care were judiciously collected and compared, he 
 saw no reason why a science might not be built up 
 that would 
 
 "not be inferior in certainty, and much superior in utility 
 to any other of human comprehension." ( ] ) 
 
 With such faith in the possibility of such a sci- 
 ence, which certainly contrasts well with Comte, 
 
 Treatise of Human Nature, Introduction, pp. XIX and 
 XXIII. 
 
HUME: CRITICAL POSITIVISM. 109 
 
 Hume himself goes to work in serious earnest to 
 investigate mental phenomena. It is the results 
 of this investigation that we now have under con- 
 sideration. The method employed by Hume is 
 that of the individualistic introspective psychol- 
 ogy. There was a tentative acceptance of the Car- 
 tesian two-world theory. While his steps in part 
 retrace those of his predecessors, they possess suf- 
 ficient uniqueness and originality to demand full 
 treatment. The perspicuous manner with which 
 he details the results of his own investigation ; the 
 success with which he sums up and brings to ac- 
 count the work of his predecessors, is reason 
 enough for setting forth in some detail even at the 
 expense of repetition, what he has to say. 
 
 "All perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves 
 into two distinct kinds, which I shall call impressions 
 and ideas"; 
 
 the former are those perceptions that strike upon 
 the mind with most force and violence in entering 
 consciousness; under which are included also all 
 sensations, passions and emotions as they make 
 their first appearance in the soul. By ideas are 
 understood faint images, or copies, of the impres- 
 sions, that are found in our thinking and reason- 
 ing. There is no ground for confusion ; for broad- 
 ly speaking, the distinction is that commonly made 
 between feeling and thinking. 
 
 'Tho' it is not impossible but in particular instances 
 they may very nearly approach to each other. Thus In 
 
 (') A Treatise of Human Nature. Bk. 1, Sec. I, page 1. 
 
110 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 sleep, in a fever, in madness, or in any very violent emo- 
 tions of the soul, our ideas may approach to our impres- 
 sions: as on the other hand it sometimes happens, that 
 our impressions are so faint and low, that we cannot dis- 
 tinguish them from our ideas." C 1 ) 
 
 In this use of the term idea, Hume feels that he 
 is restoring the term to its proper signification: 
 while the term impression has been introduced to 
 supply a real need, there being no word in the lan- 
 guage used with just the meaning here given it. 
 Ideas, then, are for Hume not what they are for 
 Berkeley or even Locke; their meaning for this 
 term was entirely too broad. On the contrary 
 they are mental images, or what Berkeley calls 
 ideas of the imagination, and Hobbes, imagina- 
 tions, or fancies; in all cases the term is opposed 
 to phantasms of sense. 
 
 Perceptions are again divided into two classes : 
 Simple and Complex; the same distinction is car- 
 ried out consequently in ideas and impressions. 
 Simple perceptions admit of no distinction or sep- 
 aration ; while on the other hand complex ones may 
 be distinguished into parts, as in the case of an 
 apple, which may be distinguished into color, taste 
 and smell. 
 
 On first examination, it appears that our ideas 
 are exact copies of our impressions ; for they ap- 
 pear to always correspond, the only difference be- 
 ing the force and vivacity of the one as opposed 
 to the faintness of the other. But on further ex- 
 
 (i) ^ Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. 1, Sec. I, p. 2. 
 
HUME: CRITICAL POSITIVISM. Ill 
 
 amination, it may be seen that this is not the case ; 
 for it will be found that one may imagine things 
 that he has not seen and, on the other hand, see 
 things that it is impossible for him to conceive im- 
 ages of in the mind. For example, what is more 
 easy than for one to bring up in his imagination 
 an image of the New Jerusalem, whose pavements 
 are of gold, whose walls are of rubies ; on the other 
 hand, having seen Paris, it is impossible to call up 
 an image of that city that in any wise does it jus- 
 tice. It appears, then, that in the case of complex 
 ideas, strictly speaking, one could hardly say that 
 they are copies of their impressions. 
 
 But this is not the case with our simple impres- 
 sions ; in regard to these our author has this to 
 say: 
 
 "That the rule holds here without any exception, and 
 that every simple idea has a simple impression, which re- 
 sembles it; and every simple impression a correspondent 
 idea. That the idea of red, which we form in the dark, 
 and that impression, which strikes our eyes in the sun- 
 shine, differ only in degree, not in nature." (*) 
 
 By way of convincing those who doubt the truth 
 of this conclusion, our author challenges anyone 
 to point to a single simple impression that has not 
 its corresponding simple idea. 
 
 This constant conjunction does not arise from 
 chance ; either our ideas are caused by our impres- 
 sions or our impressions are caused by our ideas. 
 It is discovered that our impressions make their 
 
 (*) A Treatise on Human Nature, Bk. I, Sec. I, page 3. 
 
112 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 appearance first ; this fact added to an equally sig- 
 nificant one, that the loss of some faculty, as that 
 of sight, marks not only the loss of impressions 
 but also of ideas that correspond to those impres- 
 sions, leaves our author to conclude that our im- 
 pressions are the causes of our ideas, not our ideas 
 of our impressions. This is a matter beyond ques- 
 tion. The fact that it may be possible, indeed 
 doubtless is, for one by bare power of the imagina- 
 tion to supply a deficiency in the nature of one 
 member of a series of shades of colors, for in- 
 stance, is not held to invalidate the above law. It 
 is also true that there are such things as secondary 
 ideas, still fainter images of these faint copies of 
 the impressions ; this again is held to mark no ex- 
 ception to the above law, as to which there can 
 hardly be a question. 
 
 Impressions are of two kinds : those of sensation 
 and those of reflection. The former arise in the 
 soul from unknown causes (for our author does 
 not make the gratuitous assumptions of Des 
 Cartes, Hobbes, Berkeley and the plain man), 
 while the latter are derived for the most part 
 from our ideas. As impressions are prior to our 
 ideas, so impressions from unknown causes are 
 prior to those of reflection. The study of these 
 impressions that arise from unknown causes are 
 not within the task of the moral philosopher, such 
 as Hume regarded himself. This is rather the 
 province of the anatomist and natural scientist. 
 
HUME: CRITICAL, POSITIVISM. 113 
 
 Hence our author turns his attention to the im- 
 pressions of reflection and to ideas. 
 
 When an impression from some unknown cause 
 is made in the mind, its copy is taken ; this is what 
 is called an idea, or as we might say to-day, an 
 image. This idea, or mental image, arising in the 
 mind, may itself create an impression through 
 some passion ; this impression, again, is copied by 
 the mind and there exists a new idea, or image, in 
 the mind. This last idea may itself, so far as we 
 know, arise in the mind creating a new impression 
 with its corresponding idea, and so on indefinitely. 
 Such impressions as are thus gotton from ideas in 
 the mind are what are called impressions of reflec- 
 tion. Thus, for example, if one experiences the 
 sensation of cold, his mind from this impression 
 which is created by an unknown cause forms an 
 idea of cold. This idea of cold may again rise in 
 the mind, creating new impressions of desire or 
 pain. It is for this reason that our author feels 
 that control of the passions is intimately allied 
 with that of ideas. For this reason, again, he 
 turns his attention to ideas, the proper knowledge 
 of the behavior of which he thinks will greatly 
 simplify the problems of our passions and 
 emotions. 
 
 There are two faculties by which we repeat our 
 ideas: memory and imagination. Ideas repeated 
 by the former are more of the character of impres- 
 sions than those of the imagination, i. e. the former 
 
114 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 .are more strong, painted in much more vivid 
 colors, and what is a more important distinction, 
 tied down to a strict reproduction of impressions 
 without variation ; while those of the imagination, 
 on the other hand, are less distinct and more un- 
 -steady, but not bound down to the same order and 
 form of original impressions. Both classes of 
 ideas are dependent upon impressions; but while 
 this is true the liberty of the imagination in trans- 
 posing and changing its ideas is very great, far 
 more so, Hume would have us believe, than we are 
 ordinarily aware. Whence fiery dragons, winged 
 horses, etc. For the imagination plays to the ex- 
 treme in separating complex ideas and in uniting 
 simple ones, as is evident from such an idea as that 
 of a winged horse. But to the activity of the im- 
 .agination belong not merely such harmless mental 
 creations as those of the kind just noticed, but, it 
 may be, such principles as that of causality. 
 
 The many roles that the term, imagination, has 
 played in philosophy is noticed by Hume himself, 
 who in a note apologizes for his own lax use of it, 
 which he says is anything but philosophic, thus : 
 
 "By this expression it appears that the word, imagina- 
 tion, is commonly us'd in two different senses; and tho' 
 nothing be more contrary to true philosophy, than this in- 
 accuracy, yet in the following reasonings I have often 
 been oblig'd to fall into it. When I oppose the imagina- 
 tion to the memory, I mean the faculty, by which we form 
 our fainter ideas. When I oppose it to reason, I mean the 
 same faculty, excluding only our demonstrative and prob- 
 able reasonings", (*) 
 
 (>) A Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. I, Sec. IX, note p. 117. 
 
HUME: CRITICAL POSITIVISM. 115 
 
 while otherwise we are left to understand that the 
 context alone will be sufficient to explain its mean- 
 ing. This note by itself might easily be mislead- 
 ing; for the imagination is a far more funda- 
 mental term in the writings of Hume than these 
 words lead us to believe. We have hinted that it 
 is this faculty that may lead us to believe in such 
 a principle as that of causality and, as we shall 
 see later, the order of the external world, or in the 
 words of Hume. 
 
 "A much greater regularity among objects than what 
 they have when we look no further than our senses." 
 
 If we look a little more deeply into his use of 
 this term, we shall see that his use of it is just 
 about what Hobbes' use of it was. The imagina- 
 tion is the most fundamental term in mental 
 phenomena for both. Let us see. All images, or 
 ideas, are caused by impressions; when we call 
 them up as they were experienced in impressions, 
 we call this memory; when we call them up free 
 from these chains, we call this imagination. But 
 the fundamental nature is the same, just as it was 
 in the case of Hobbes, recall of images in consci- 
 ousness. So, too, our author may speak of reason, 
 the understanding and other faculties of the mind, 
 but this must not lead us to believe that he is an 
 advocate of the faculty psychology because he 
 makes use of its jargon, as indeed we all do ; for 
 these are all mere names for the one fundamental 
 thing, the imagination, viewed from different 
 
116 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 aspects. And yet we are told that the imagination 
 is not as significant as the understanding, which 
 none the less quite contradictorily is simply 
 
 "the general and more established properties of the imag- 
 ination." C 1 ) 
 
 which quotation it appears is in itself sufficient 
 witness to our author's Hobbistic use of the term 
 imagination. 
 
 "Were ideas entirely loose and unconnected, chance 
 alone wou'd join them";( 2 ) 
 
 but this is not the case. Ideas of memory must of 
 course reappear in the mind as they have been ex- 
 perienced as impressions, but particular reference 
 is had now to ideas of imagination. Manifestly to 
 place them under the same law as those of memory 
 would be simply to transpose them to that class, 
 and the distinction made between our ideas at the 
 outset would be a useless one. Ideas of the im- 
 agination are free and at the beck and call of the 
 imagination, but they are subject to the limitations 
 set above, i. e. no ideas are joined by chance. This 
 must mean that when our author makes them sub- 
 ject to the beck and call of the imagination he 
 means that they are appearing according to some 
 law of the mind that must be discovered. And 
 
 D A Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. 1, Part IV, Sec. VII, p. 
 
 267. 
 ( 2 ) A Treatise of Human Nature, Bk 1, Sec. IV, p. 10. 
 
HUME: CRITICAL POSITIVISM. 117 
 
 here we shall see that he goes back to Hobbes via 
 Berkeley and Locke. He says : 
 
 (There is a) "uniting principle among our ideas (which) 
 is not to be considered as an inseparable connexion; for 
 that has been already excluded from the imagination; nor 
 yet are we to conclude, that without it the mind cannot 
 join two ideas; for nothing is more free than that faculty; 
 but we are only to regard it as a gentle force, which com- 
 monly prevails." (*) 
 
 This use of "gentle force " looks very much as if 
 Hume were going to give us a causal law between 
 ideas that he is later to deny us in the case of 
 bodies. But we shall have to place the emphasis 
 here upon the "gentle" ; for this statement is soon 
 completely swallowed up in his definite statement 
 of the law of association. For back of this union 
 of ideas stands nature ; our experience in the way 
 of education, habit, custom, as well as reality 
 direct, is the basis of mental association. Nature 
 tells what simple ideas are most proper to be 
 united into complex ones, but the union of these 
 ideas is the work of the imagination. 
 
 There are three great qualities by which the 
 mind passes from one idea to another, to wit : Re- 
 semblance, Contiguity in time or space, and Cause 
 and Effect, out of which qualities comes the law 
 of association. The imagination runs easily from 
 one idea to another that resembles it; this is a 
 matter of too common observation to demand 
 proof from our author. As the senses are con- 
 stantly forced to pass from one object to another 
 
 A Treatise on Human Nature, Bk. 1, Sec. 4, page 10. 
 
118 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 that are contiguous in time or space; so the im- 
 agination by long habit comes to acquire the same 
 method in thinking, indeed, the best that can be 
 said of these relations so far as our author can 
 
 see, is that they are habits of mind. The most im- 
 portant of which is that of cause and effect; of 
 which later. 
 
 A comparison with Hobbes at this point is not 
 without interest. Hobbes accepts the law, though 
 he does not state it so clearly, more completely 
 
 -, than Hume ; for Hume will not admit that this is 
 the only way of mind. The imagination uses this 
 method, as is evident, but who knows what else 
 it may have at its disposal. He seems to be afraid 
 that to go further would commit him to some pre- 
 supposition such as Cartesian dualism, as in 
 Locke; or materialism, as in Hobbes; or spirit- 
 ualism, as in Berkeley. Which, of course, has its 
 very commendable aspect. 
 
 The position here taken by Hume had important 
 bearings; its relevancy in the matter of abstract 
 ideas, for instance, is much better understood 
 than it was in the case of Berkeley. Here we find 
 Hume in complete agreement with Berkeley. Ho 
 says that he considers the contribution of the 
 Bishop in this respect the greatest and most val- 
 uable discovery that has been made "of late 
 years in the republic of letter s." He would, there- 
 fore, endeavor merely to confirm it by some argu- 
 ments that will, he hopes, put it beyond all doubt 
 and controversy. He holds that it is utterly im- 
 
HUME: CRITICAL POSITIVISM. 
 
 possible to form the idea of quantity or quality 
 without forming a definite and concrete idea of 
 it ; to do otherwise would be both to have and not 
 have an idea at one and the same time, since to 
 have an idea is to have an idea of some object. 
 The image, then, that the mind brings up is a con- 
 crete particular image, but the mind not only 
 brings up such an image at such a time when 
 some word is mentioned, or the image in some way 
 called up, it does a great deal more ; it calls ur> 
 a certain custom and habit that has gone with 
 images of this character. So that when the mind 
 calls up one concrete image, it has all other kin- 
 dred concrete images in the antechamber of con- 
 sciousness ready to be summoned when needed. 
 Thus, if some one having in his mind the image 
 of an equilateral triangle, should say that the 
 angles of a triangle are equal, immediately in the 
 mind of the listening mathematician there would 
 arise the images of those triangles of which this 
 statement would not hold true. The ability to 
 deny the truth of such a general statement would 
 rest not as with Kant upon pure intuition by 
 means of the forms of space, but simply upon the 
 experience of the mathematician; for it is not 
 likely that any but one who has had such expe- 
 rience would be able to controvert the general 
 proposition. 
 
 Complex ideas formed by the association of 
 ideas are divided into three classes : Relations, 
 Modes and Substances. Relations are those qual- 
 
120 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 ities that make an object admit of comparison; 
 impressions such as these are prior to our ideas 
 of relations. A quality by which two ideas are con- 
 nected in the imagination, or that particular cir- 
 cumstance in which we think proper to compare 
 two ideas in the fancy, may be said to be a rela- 
 tion. These may be comprised under seven 
 general heads which are the sources of all philo- 
 sophical relation. They are resemblance, identity, 
 space and time, quantity, quality, contrariety, and 
 cause and effect; difference being really a nega- 
 tion of any relation, is for that reason excluded 
 from this list. 
 
 The idea of substance is one of peculiar in- 
 terest. On investigation our author finds that it 
 cannot be derived either from impressions of 
 sense or from those of reflection. For on the one 
 hand it would have to be a sound, or a taste, or an 
 odor ; while on the other hand it would have to be 
 an emotion. Neither of which seems to be the 
 case ; so our author concludes : 
 
 "We have therefore no idea of substance, distinct from 
 that of a collection of particular qualities." C 1 ) 
 
 What is said here of substance applies also to 
 modes. 
 
 "The idea of substance as well as that of a mode, is 
 nothing but a collection of simple ideas, that are united "by 
 the imagination, and have a particular name assigned 
 them, by which we are able to recall either to ourselves 
 or others, that collection. "(*) 
 
 '(*) A Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. 1, Sec. 6, page 16. 
 
HUME: CRITICAL POSITIVISM. 121 
 
 The difference between the ideas of substance 
 and that of a mode is this: in the one case the 
 qualities that form a substance are referred to 
 an unknown something in which they are sup- 
 posed to inhere; or to put the matter otherwise, 
 we may say that these qualities are supposed to 
 be inseparably connected in relations of contig- 
 uity and causation, association, in short. While 
 on the other hand, this is not true in the case of 
 the idea of a mode. From which it follows that, 
 if on observation it can be found that another 
 quality can be brought under the same relation 
 to the same substance that other qualities sustain 
 to the substance in question, this quality must 
 then be added to the substance, though it may not 
 have been so regarded before. In the case of a 
 mode, this again is not true ; for the uniting prin- 
 ciple here is not that of contiguity and causation, 
 or if it so appears, it is not the foundation of the 
 complex idea, as in the cases of the dance and 
 beauty, both of which, according to the definition, 
 are modes. 
 
 In his attack upon substance, we haive seen 
 Hume following in the wake of Locke and 
 Berkeley; but in each case he has plainly extended 
 their endeavors. Locke, though he strongly em- 
 phasized the mind and its activity, never got past 
 the notion of substance as the carrier of primary 
 qualities. Berkeley demolished the conception of 
 corporeal substance ; matter for him is a mere ab- 
 straction. From Hume's discussion of substance, 
 
122 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 wherein he made it clear that certain qualities at 
 the liberty of mind, or on its motion, may or may 
 not be qualities adhering in the substance, it be- 
 comes quite clear that the union of qualities for 
 him is not explained in terms of a substance that 
 
 . bears them but in terms of mental habit. It is the 
 mind that unites and holds in union the simple 
 ideas that constitute a substance. As Hume's 
 contributions at this point are far from insig- 
 nificant for the future history of philosophy it 
 may not be amiss to go into them at greater 
 detail. 
 
 Hume, as we have seen above, followed with 
 great interest Berkeley's attack upon abstraction. 
 Here, as well as in his Theory of Vision, he found 
 
 - Berkeley setting forth the part that custom plays 
 in building up mind. It cannot be said that either 
 Hobbes or Locke failed to appreciate to some ex- 
 tent the significance of habit for mind. Locke 
 certainly recognized it in its ill effects upon the 
 mind ; Hobbes gave full place to it in setting forth 
 his theory of mental phenomena under the head of 
 trains of thought. But it is to Berkeley's credit 
 that he was the first to clearly set forth the prin- 
 ciple. Though it is quite questionable whether 
 Berkeley fully understood the tremendous signifi- 
 cance of his discovery. His preconceptions were 
 such that it was hardly possible for him to do so. 
 It was, then, left to Hume to bring into complete 
 clearness this principle. In doing so, he opens the 
 question whether it is not wise to extend the sub- 
 
HUME: CRITICAL posnm>\;. 123 
 
 jective coherence that Locke referred to ; whether 
 the principle of causality which his predecessors 
 had assumed may not also come under the head of 
 subjective coherence, i. e., be an association of 
 ideas gained from experience. 
 
 Take for example causation. The idea of cause 
 must be derived from some relation among objects. 
 On examination we find that the relation of con- 
 tiguity is essential to that of causation ; but while 
 this is true, it by no means constitutes causation, 
 since there are many cases of this relation in which 
 there is not present any causation. There is a 
 necessary connection that must be taken into con- 
 sideration; this necessary connection, it may be 
 said, is the very essence of causation. The best 
 that can be got at in this investigation into the na- 
 ture of causation is that there exists in the mind 
 an expectation that certain phenomena will follow 
 certain other phenomena; and this expectation 
 comes of our experience. Causation, therefore, 
 reduces itself to a matter of habit and custom. 
 
 (A cause is) "an object precedent and contiguous to 
 another and so united with it in the imagination, that the 
 idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of 
 the other, and the impression of the one to form a more 
 lively idea of the other." C 1 ) 
 
 What it is that causes one thing to follow another ; 
 why one idea is led by a " gentle force ' ' to call up 
 another in our imagination, these are both alike 
 
 A Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. 1, Part III, Sec. XIV, p. 
 172. 
 
124 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 inexplicable. The law of causation cannot be es- 
 tablished logically; there is no contradiction in 
 saying that a thing originates without a cause. 
 Nor does an appeal to intuition render such a rela- 
 tion valid. Thus are brushed aside the proofs of 
 predecessors and contemporaries, and Hume is 
 said to have established the genuine problem of 
 causality, his marvelous contribution to thought. 
 The significance of this conclusion is realized on 
 reflection. If knowledge is of two kinds, as Leib- 
 nitz put it, knowledge of reason and of matter of 
 fact; why, what we know of the latter is based 
 upon the causal law and the other is really negligi- 
 ble in comparison. To a pragmatist, of course, it 
 matters little whether the causal law be established 
 or not ; if it holds good, why then it does hold good 
 and we may say that just in so far it is a true rela- 
 tion. In this respect as well as in others Hume 
 was a good pragmatist. For it must be understood 
 that he never doubted for one moment but that to 
 proceed on such trust would yield fruitful results. 
 This has a close relation to his emphasis upon the 
 value of the study of mind. For, as our author 
 puts it later in his Inquiry : 
 
 "When we say, therefore, that one object is connected 
 with another, we mean only that they have acquired a 
 connexion in our thought, and give rise to this inference, 
 by which they become proofs of each other's existence: A 
 conclusion which is somewhat extraordinary, but which 
 seems founded on sufficient evidence." (*) 
 
 Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Sec. 7, Part II, 
 p. 76. 
 
HUME: CRITICAL POSITIVISM. 125 
 
 Humean skepticism, if one chooses to give it 
 such a name, could never result in such stagna- 
 tion of human inquiry as is by common report said 
 to have resulted from the skeptical position of an- 
 cient philosophers; which leads to the suggestion 
 that that stagnation may have been due rather to 
 wars and rumors of wars. 
 
 There are, however, passages in Hume's writ- 
 ings that lead one to believe that he himself took 
 very seriously his analysis of this abstraction of 
 our experience; a thing that is quite remarkable 
 and noteworthy. Why should Hume, of all men, 
 after having made so clear that our habits of mind 
 <re due to our experience, worry so over this ab- 
 straction of the uniformity of all our experience! 
 The answer lies in the fact that he emphasized the 
 atomistic character of our experience, the sepa- 
 rateness of single states of consciousness, out of 
 proportion to the emphasis that he placed upon the 
 continuity of experience. The cause cannot be sep- 
 arated from the effect; they are a continuous 
 whole. But no one knew this better than Hume. 
 
 And yet we mark this same disposition to em- 
 phasize the discreetness of experience in his search 
 after the soul; separate states of consciousness far 
 outweigh for him that experience of identity that 
 is ever back of them. It was in this way that he 
 is said to have demolished the idea of spiritual sub- 
 stance. 
 
 "If any impression gives rise to the idea of self that im- 
 pression must continue invariably the same, thro' the 
 
126 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 whole course of our lives; since self is suppos'd to exist 
 after that manner. But there is no impression constant 
 and invariable. Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions 
 and sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at 
 the same time. It cannot, therefore, be from any of these 
 impressions, or from any other, that the idea of self is 
 deriv'd; and consequently there is no such idea. * * * 
 For my part, when I enter most intimately into what 1 
 call myself, I always stumble upon some particular per- 
 ception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or 
 hatred, pain or pleasure. I can never catch myself at any 
 time without a perception, and can never observe anything 
 fcut the perception. * * * And were all my percep- 
 tions remov'd by death, and cou'd I neither think, nor feel, 
 nor see, nor love, nor hate, after the dissolution of my 
 body I should be entirely annihilated nor do I conceive 
 what is further requisite to make me a perfect non- 
 entity." D 
 
 May we not with justice say that Hume here 
 again, to use a figure from mathematics, lays the 
 stress upon the points to the exclusion of his ex- 
 perience of the whole line. But Hume may well 
 answer in that case, and with warrant that is de- 
 nied him in the case of the principle of causality, 
 that these separate states are just what he does ex- 
 perience. This is quite true and the law of asso- 
 ciation is the best formal explanation of their 
 union in the imagination. But is there not a real 
 principle back of the formal one; otherwise how 
 is it when I wake up in the morning that my ex- 
 perence of yesterday is hitched on to that of to- 
 day? That is, unless Hume gives me a body in 
 which to carry these experiences, which he cannot 
 consistently do. It is but fair that it be borne in 
 mind, however, that the self that Hume here at- 
 tacks is the scholastic soul substance. 
 
 O) A Treatise of Human Nature, Part IV, Sec. VI, p. 251. 
 
HUME: CRITICAL POSITIVISM. 127 
 
 The question here raised by Hume however, is 
 of fundamental importance. In what terms shall 
 we look at the world! As the causal principal 
 turns out to be a mere habit_ofjpaiiid, giving us at 
 bottom a discontinuous world of reality; so the 
 spiritual substance of Berkeley proves also to 
 be a mere creation of the imagination, leav- 
 ing us as mind a mere flux of separate 
 images. The idea of power in the one case 
 (causation) as the idea of power in the other 
 case (will, mind) are but habits of mind. If 
 Hume was the first to set forth this theory of caus- 
 ation, he was not the first to maintain that will is 
 not really a power ; for this we saw to be the true 
 Hobbistic position. But Hume would deduce what 
 Hobbes merely stated with dogmatic emphasis. 
 The question is still an open one. There are those 
 who claim that the term will still deserves a place 
 in both psychology and metaphysics; that the fact 
 that the will is not a subject of observation need 
 not be prejudicial to its case, or interfere with the 
 fruitfulness of the use of such a term. For no 
 more can be said in favor of energy and motion; 
 it is only their effects, not their essence, that we 
 see and know. 
 
 After Hume has made his case, what has he left? 
 Nothing but two streams of experience. Whence, 
 then, all this world of our experience? What is 
 it, according to Hume, that has given ns these con- 
 cepts of causality, substance, self, the ordered 
 external world! The imagination. It is this fac- 
 
128 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 ulty that has given us the Lockean bearer of the 
 qualities of things, that leads us to believe in those 
 things that are not present to sensation, to infer 
 the future existence of the chick from the egg, to 
 conceive of an indivisible, immaterial soul, or 
 mind, to put the matter briefly, it is this faculty 
 that leads us to believe in the existence of an or- 
 dered external world and all that it has for us, as 
 Berkeley had already shown us ; as well as to be- 
 lieve in the existence of the world within, which 
 is Hume's own contribution. There is a sugges- 
 tion from nature, whereby we gain our experience, 
 and the imagination does the rest. This great uni- 
 formity of nature as well as this continuity of our 
 inner experience are alike the results of the magi- 
 cal activity of this faculty. 
 
 For, says Hume, if we look our experiences 
 squarely in the face, must we not openly confess 
 that they are singularly discontinuous and inco- 
 herent when compared with what we read into 
 them. It is this disposition of the' mind to read 
 things into nature that had been declared a weak- 
 ness of mankind by Bacon, who so wisely cautioned 
 us against its wiles. It was this same faculty 
 that had been noticed by Locke; that had been 
 made the most fundamental thing in the universe 
 by Berkeley, and that was yet to play the most 
 significant role ever played by any faculty in the 
 transcendental philosophy of Kant, it is before 
 this faculty and its magical works that Hume 
 stands appalled. Hume never pretends to get 
 
HUME: CRITICAL, POSITIVISM. 121> 
 
 around mental union. Nothing is clearer than 
 this. He attacks time and again these creations 
 of the mind, not to deny that they are creations of 
 the mind, but to make clear that they are just this 
 and no more. And yet, oddly enough, Hume's 
 most earnest efforts seem to be devoted to an en- 
 deavor to undermine belief in that with which he 
 was continually confronted, a uniting mind. 
 
 It was left Kant to about-face. And this is 
 how it is that Kantianism came to be, how his 
 Copernican revolution came about. It had already 
 been made possible, and Kant felt imperative, by 
 Hume. It was an easy matter for Kant to restore 
 to confidence, the ego, his transcedental unity of 
 apperception, which happens to be a new name 
 for Hume's faculty of the imagination, and then 
 to tell us in ambiguous German how it is that 
 macht zwar Verstand die Natur, aber er schafft 
 fie niclit. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 In the foregoing studies we have traced the 
 gradual development of the conception of the 
 uniting mind. 
 
 In Hobbes the mind was regarded as the prod- 
 uct of experience, the essential function of which 
 was that it preserved our experience. His posi- 
 tion we saw was not so different from that of 
 present-day teachers; the mind is an organ of 
 behavior that lifts man out of the slavery of his 
 immediate environment, enabling him to react to 
 stimuli not merely for the present. No stress 
 was laid upon the theoretical problems of episte- 
 mology. 
 
 Locke, as we have seen, while in many respects 
 advancing the cause of psychology, defends the 
 conception of the mind as an entity above and 
 opposed to matter. While he laid no great stress 
 upon the atomistic character of our experience, 
 he emphasized very much the representative 
 theory of knowledge, the doctrine that the mind 
 knows not external objects, but ideas whose 
 appearance depends entirely upon the mind's 
 activity, unless the mind attends there is no per- 
 ception. Qualities are carried by substance, just 
 as ideas are united in the thinking substance. The 
 mind is not the product of experience, as taught 
 by Hobbes, but the materials of thought are. The 
 essential function of mind for Locke is the organ- 
 
134 IDEALISTIC BEGINNINGS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 ization of these materials into the fabric of knowl- 
 edge. This organizing activity of mind was not, 
 as in the case of Hobbes, the subject of causal ex- 
 planation. The processes of mental operations 
 were described in his discussion of natural facul- 
 ties, but the nature of the mind's activity is sui 
 generis. 
 
 Berkeley again advances the causes of psychol- 
 ogy, unconsciously bringing to great clearness the 
 true nature of mind, the tendency of one expe- 
 rience to call up another. But while this is so, 
 through his attack upon abstract ideas he under- 
 mined the doctrine of substance; the union of 
 qualities, therefore, which for Locke was ex- 
 plained in terms of substance, had now to be ex- 
 plained in terms of spiritual substance. What- 
 ever union there is, whether in nature or in mind, 
 is due to the same uniting priciple. Esse is 
 percipi. 
 
 Hume even more than Berkeley emphasized the 
 discreteness of our experience. What we expe- 
 rience is singularly discontinuous when compared 
 with what we read into it. The order and co- 
 herence of nature arises out of the activity of 
 the imagination. But what this uniting principle 
 is and how it behaves are just as inexplicable 
 mysteries as the law of cause and effect. This 
 is Hume's theoretical position, although prac- 
 tically he betrayed a strong leaning towards 
 mechanism. Kantianism is a positive (i. e. 
 
CONCLUSION. 135 
 
 opposed to negative and sceptical) and system- 
 atic re-statement of Hume's position. Passage 
 after passage might be cited to prove this state- 
 ment, but it can be made clear by a single cita- 
 tion: 
 
 "However strange, therefore, it may appear at first, It 
 must nevertheless have become clear by this time that the 
 affinity of phenomena and with it their association, and 
 through that, lastly, their reproduction also according to 
 laws, that is, the whole of our experience, becomes pos- 
 sible only by means of that transcendental function of im- 
 agination, without which no concepts of objects could ever 
 come together in one experience." ( x ) 
 
 (') Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Analytic, Sec. III.. 
 
VITA. 
 
 The author of the foregoing studies, John Pickett Turner, 
 is the son of the Reverend William Allen Turner and Mary 
 Jane Pickett. He was born May 5, 1876, at Cedar Hill, Ten- 
 nessee. After elementary training in public and private 
 schools, he was sent to the Webb School, Bellbuckle, Tennessee, 
 where he was prepared for college. During 1896-7 he engaged 
 in secondary work. In September, 1897, he entered Vander- 
 bilt University, Nashville, Tennessee; the requirements for 
 the degree of Bachelor of Arts were completed June, 1900. 
 For the year following, 1900-'01, he was appointed Scholastic 
 Fellow in Vanderbilt University. During the tenure of this 
 fellowship he took courses in Classical Philology under 
 Chancellor J. H. Kirkland and Professor H. C. Tolman; in 
 Old English under Dr. B. M. Drake, and in Literature under 
 Professor Richard Jones under whose direction his Master's 
 thesis was written. In June, 1901, he received the degree of 
 Master of Arts. During 1901-3 he taught in Secondary Schools 
 of Atlanta, Georgia. June, 1903, he joined Mr. A. H. Hughey, 
 of Vanderbilt University, in establishing the Hughey & Turner 
 School at Weatherford, Texas. September, 1907, in accord- 
 ance with his plan, he gave up Secondary Education to enter 
 Columbia University. At this institution his work has been 
 in the Departments of Philosophy and Psychology. He has 
 taken courses under Professors John Dewey, F. J. E. Wood- 
 bridge, G. S. Fullerton, W. P. Montague, J. M. Cattell, R. S. 
 Woodworth, D. S. Miller, A. O. Lovejoy, Dr. W. T. Bush and 
 Dr. H. C. Brown. In February, 1908, he was appointed Tutor 
 in Mathematics in the College of the City of New York. The 
 present studies were written under the direction of Professor 
 Frederick J. E. Woodbridge. 
 
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