THE VEIL OF ISIS. 
 
 'UNIVERSITY 
 
 "SSwsfiS* 1 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THE INTELLECTUALISM OF LOCKE, 
 
 The following are EXTRACTS from Critical Notices of DR. WEBB'S 
 Work : 
 
 In the spirit of an earnest vindicator of 
 the truth, Mr. Webb undertakes to show 
 that Locke was an Intellectualist, in the 
 sense of Reid and of Kant. His treatise is 
 distinguished by a clear methodical arrange- 
 ment, by a perfect mastery over his details, 
 and by a style and language unusually per- 
 spicuous and precise. Courageously, but 
 without presumption, he assails some of the 
 highest modern authorities in philosophy ; 
 and while he always preserves the calmness 
 of temper proper for an undertaking really 
 arduous, he is evidently warmed by a feeling 
 of almost personal regard towards the ill- 
 requited benefactor of English philosophy. 
 . . . We should gladly have made some 
 extracts, had space permitted, from the veiy 
 able chapter in which Locke, Hume, and 
 Kant are compared. As far as we know, 
 this is Mr. Webb's first appearance as an 
 author before the general public. He must, 
 of course, expect some controversy. But 
 he has not ventured into the arena without 
 preparation. He need not fear that he will 
 be driven from it ingloriously ; and judging 
 from his present work, we may predict for 
 
 him, if he will persevere, a career second to 
 no living British metaphysician. Saturday 
 Review. 
 
 Mr. Webb's must henceforth be considered 
 the work on this subject. It is not only 
 conclusive, but exhaustive. And yet its 
 arrangement is so admirably logical and 
 consecutive, that the whole is brought 
 within a veiy limited compass. The author 
 never winds towards his conclusions, or 
 returns upon his path. The Essay is most 
 happily free from digression or repetition. 
 Let us add, that the style, the allusions, and 
 the illustrations, show thorough scholarship, 
 and that classical perfection of training and 
 taste in the use of language, which is rarer 
 still than scholarship. London Review. 
 
 We can assure our readers that The 
 Intellectualism of Locke Is really a great 
 essay, written by a man of no ordinary 
 grasp of mind, and capable of putting ab- 
 stract thoughts before the student in elo- 
 quent and attractive language. Christian 
 Examiner. 
 
 A book distinguished in no ordinary 
 degree by sagacity and learning. Critic, , 
 
 DUBLIN: M'GEE AND CO. 
 
 LONDON: LONGMANS AND CO. 
 
DUBLIN UNIVERSITY PRESS SERIES. 
 
 .THE VEIL OF ISIS: -*_ 
 
 SERIES OF ESSAYS ON IDEALISM, 
 
 BY ^ 
 
 /[ 
 
 THOS. E. WEBB, LL.D., 
 
 One of Her Majesty's Counsel ; 
 
 Sometime Fellow of Trinity College and Prof essor of Moral Philosophy, 
 
 Now Regius Professor of Laws and Public Orator, 
 
 In the University of Dublin. 
 
 Eyw et/xt TTOLV TO yeyovos, KCU 6V, Kat eo"d/xei/ov, Kai TOV 
 
 ^^>> OP THE ^ 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 ii^>\ 11 w *' 
 
 DUBLIN : HODGES, FIGGIS, & CO., GKAFTON-STEEET. 
 LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., PATEKNOSTER-ROW. 
 
 1885. 
 
0823 
 
 DUBLIN : 
 
 PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 
 BY PONSONBY AND WELDRICK. 
 
TO 
 
 THE RIGHT HON. GERALD FITZ GIBBON, 
 
 LORD JUSTICE OF APPEAL IN IRELAND, 
 IN MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE DAYS WHEN HE READ PHILOSOPHY 
 WITH 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 A CCOKDINGTto a French writer, quoted by Dugald 
 Stewart in his Dissertation, the comparative history 
 of philosophical systems is nothing else than a history of 
 the variations of philosophical schools, leaving no other 
 impression upon the reader than an insurmountable dis- 
 gust at all philosophical researches, and a demonstrated 
 conviction of the impossibility of raising an edifice on a 
 soil so void of consistency as that which philosophy 
 supplies. 
 
 I have long come to the conclusion that the general 
 conviction to which this passage gives expression is 
 erroneous, and that even the extent of the variations 
 of opinion on philosophical questions has been greatly 
 exaggerated by those who have written on the subject. 
 It cannot be doubted, as David Hume observes, that the 
 mind is endowed with several powers and faculties, that 
 these powers are distinct from each other, that what is 
 really distinct to the immediate perception may be dis- 
 tinguished by reflection, and consequently that there is a 
 truth or falsehood in all propositions on this subject which 
 
viii Preface. 
 
 are not beyond the compass of our understanding. If this 
 be so, there is no reason why philosophers should not arrive 
 at a practical agreement on such questions as the origin of 
 our knowledge and ideas, the classification of our mental 
 faculties, the nature of general reasoning and of reason- 
 ing by induction in short on all the questions which 
 the term psychology embraces. These are mere questions of 
 fact; and on all these points we are capable of knowledge 
 of knowledge similar in character and certainty to that 
 which we attain in the study of the phenomena of exter- 
 nal nature, supposing what we call external nature to 
 exist externally, and not to be itself a mere evolution 
 of the mind. 
 
 In point of fact, there is a much more extensive agree- 
 ment among philosophers upon these interesting questions 
 than is generally suspected. Their actual agreement [is 
 disguised by a variety of causes. In philosophy, as in 
 political economy, there are innumerable speculators, who 
 have set up trade, as it were, without any of that intel- 
 lectual capital which is found in the accumulated thought 
 of their predecessors, and whose divergences, for that 
 reason, may safely be discounted. Of those who have 
 endeavoured to prepare themselves for their vocation by a 
 previous course of reading, a large number have studied 
 the former philosophers in histories of philosophy, them- 
 selves compiled from previous histories, which are not his- 
 tories but misconceptions. Even when great thinkers, 
 like Hobbes, and Locke, and Hume, are studied in their 
 own writings, those writings contain so much equivocal 
 
Preface. ix 
 
 expression, so much misleading metaphor, so many im- 
 perfect statements, so many statements apparently con- 
 flicting, so many statements in which precision is sacrificed 
 to point, that the real meaning of the author, like a law 
 of nature lying latent in a chaos of phenomena, is only 
 to he elicited hy a process of patient induction, to the 
 drudgery of which amhitious spirits are unahle to suhmit. 
 The sense of originality, the reaction against assertion, 
 and the pride of confutation supervene, and thus impelled 
 the highest intelligences are apt to fancy themselves to 
 he opposed to those with whom, if they properly under- 
 stood them, they would find that they agreed. The very 
 conditions of all philosophical discussion are calculated 
 to aggravate the evil. There is no universal language in 
 philosophy, and to such an extent has mere difference of 
 expression heen mistaken for diversity of thought, that 
 the history of philosophy appears to the cynical spectator 
 to be a wild Babel of confusion. Even when a great 
 thinker, like Kant, invents a terminology which is gene- 
 rally adopted, the very novelty of his expression disguises 
 the identity of his thoughts with those which had been 
 previously expressed in more familiar language. Another 
 source of illusion though even this does not exhaust the 
 tale requires to be stated. Truth, as I have elsewhere 
 said, is a polygon and not a point ; but before the poly- 
 gon is constructed the sides must be described, and, by a 
 natural prejudice, the philosopher who insists on one as- 
 pect of a general question is supposed to ignore the exist- 
 ence or to deny the importance of the rest. 
 
x Preface. 
 
 Impressed with these considerations, some years ago I 
 wrote and published the Intellectualism of Locke with the 
 object of indicating the fundamental identity of opinion, 
 as far as mere matters of psychology are concerned, which 
 exists between Locke on the one hand and Eeid and Kant 
 upon the other. In the present work I have followed out 
 this idea, and have attempted to show that on the great 
 question of the theory of perception Hume is substantially 
 at one with Reid, and that on the still greater question 
 of the transcendental origin of our ideas of physical causa- 
 tion he anticipated both the principle and the results of 
 Kant. 
 
 As to those matters which transcend the sphere of con- 
 sciousness, and which concern, to use the familiar phrase, 
 the mystery of existence, the demonstrated conviction of 
 hopeless disagreement displays a show of reason. But 
 even here there is a tendency towards unanimity among 
 those who are competent to form an opinion on the subject. 
 On the question of the existence of an external world, to 
 take the simplest question of existence, the great thinkers, 
 who have formed an epoch in the history of thought during 
 the last century and a-half, have come to a practical agree- 
 ment. Berkeley started the question by asking how it is 
 possible for us to know that material substances exist ; and 
 having shown that we cannot know this either by sense or 
 reason, declined to believe in the existence of that of which 
 he had no knowledge. Hume, less sceptical than the dog- 
 matic theologian, admitted that the existence of material 
 things must be assumed as a fact in all our reasonings, 
 
Preface. xi 
 
 but contended that if the existence of an external world 
 be based on instinct it is contrary to reason, and that, if 
 referred to reason, it is unsupported by any evidence that 
 reason can accept. Generalized by Kant, the conclusion 
 of Hume assumed a more scientific form, and among 
 the philosophers of the present day there are few who 
 would venture to reject the critical conclusions that no 
 object external to ourselves is presented to our conscious- 
 ness; that if an object be not given, its existence cannot 
 possibly be proved; and that if it cannot be proved, its 
 existence must remain for ever a mere object of belief. 
 
 Whether the existence of the great realities with which 
 we are concerned is to be regarded as an object of know- 
 ledge or as an object of belief is a matter of small practical 
 importance to those who reflect that in the ordinary affairs 
 of life, as in the deepest mysteries of religion, we live by 
 faith and not by sight. But speculative curiosity remains 
 unsatisfied, and where the field of knowledge is closed, 
 the region of hypothesis expands before us. Are the ob- 
 jects of our knowledge distinct from the subject which 
 evolves them ? Are those objects three, or two, or one ? 
 Is the Deity, for example, to be excluded from the theory 
 of real existence ? Is the world, on the other hand, to 
 be regarded as nothing but a phantasm ? Is there no 
 real existence to be recognized except the soul? And as 
 to the soul itself, is it anything but a system of vanish- 
 ing ideas ? Is there any substance in existence ? The 
 answer involved in each of these questions is a system 
 of metaphysics. But these metaphysical hypotheses, unlike 
 
xii Preface. 
 
 the hypotheses which we form as to physical phenomena, 
 are incapable of verification, and accordingly all thinking 
 men are disposed to agree that mere ontologies are not 
 answers to a question of ascertainable fact, but answers 
 to a riddle which in our present state of existence cannot 
 by possibility be solved. 
 
 Yet even here, as it seems to me, we have an element 
 of science. Dugald Stewart has observed that from the 
 limited number of good stories, as they are called, which 
 we possess, the wit of man would seem to be a barrel- 
 organ with only a limited number of tunes. This remark 
 applies with more felicity to metaphysics. In India, in 
 Greece, in Egypt, in Mediaeval Europe, in Modern Ger- 
 many, in England, and in France, we see the constant 
 recurrence of those various guesses at the riddle of exist- 
 ence which are called systems of metaphysical philosophy. 
 They are all based on a limited number of fundamental 
 conceptions, the permutations and combinations of which 
 may be rigorously ascertained. To the curious mind it 
 cannot but be an object of interest to contemplate the 
 sum total of the hypotheses which the human mind is 
 competent to frame on a question which it is incompetent 
 to solve. To know the possibilities of thought is know- 
 ledge. It is not by a history of names, however, but 
 by an evolution of conceptions, that such a result is to 
 be attained, and, as an illustration of an idea rather 
 than as the accomplishment of an aim, I have sketched 
 the Ideal of Systems which concludes these Essays. 
 
 One word may be permitted as to the title of this 
 
Preface. xiii 
 
 book. The Veiled Isis, as we learn from Plutarch, was 
 the Egyptian symbol of the mystery of being. I have 
 endeavoured to illustrate the impossibility of solving this 
 mystery, even in its simplest form, by giving a sketch of 
 the speculations in relation to the external world which 
 have occupied thoughtful men for the last century and 
 a-half. In this attempt I have endeavoured to trace the 
 forms which idealism has assumed in the hands of the 
 great masters of speculation; and I trust I may be par- 
 doned if, instead of styling a work composed amid infi- 
 nite distractions a History of Philosophy from Locke to 
 Hegel, I revive an old fashion, and adopt, though at an 
 immeasurable distance, the precedents set by the Siris 
 of Berkeley and the Leviathan of Hobbes. 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN, 
 10th December, 1884. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 THEISTIC IDEALISM : OB. BERKELEY, ..... i 
 
 PROBLEMATICAL IDEALISM : OR HUME, . . . . -67 
 
 COSMOTHETICAL IDEALISM : OR REID, . . . . -125 
 
 TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM : OR KANT, . . . . -165 
 
 CATALEPTIC IDEALISM : OR HAMILTON, 235 
 
 ABSOLUTE IDEALISM : OR HEGEL, . . . . . -275 
 AN IDEAL OF SYSTEMS : OR THE NEW KRITIK, . . . 307 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 LOCKE ON THE ORIGIN OF IDEAS, . . . . -335 
 
 HOBBES ON GENERAL REASONING, . . . . -344 
 
 BACON ON INDUCTIVE REASONING, . . . . -353 
 
 HUME ON MIRACLE AND NATURE, . . . . .360 
 
POURTANT pouvons nous dire, que le desir d' entendre fcTverite est un desir de 
 la divinite, mesmement la verite de la nature des dieux, dont 1'estude et le 
 prochas de telle science est comme une profession et entree de religion, et 
 oeuvre plus saincte que n'est point le veu et F obligation de ehastete, ny de la 
 garde et closture d'aucun temple : et si est da vantage tres agreable a la deesse 
 que tu sers, attendu qu'elle est tres sage et tres S9avante, ainsi comme la 
 derivation mesme de son nom nous le donne a cognoistre, que Je S9avoir et la 
 science luy appartient plus qu'a nul autre, car c'est un mot grec que ISIS. 
 
 Et en la ville de Sais 1' image de Pallas, qu'ils estiment estre Isis, avait 
 une telle inscription : JE suis TOUT CE QUI A ESTE, QUI EST, ET QUI SEEA 
 
 JAMAIS, ET N'Y A ENCORE EU HOMME MORTEL QUI M ? AIT DESCOUVERTE DE 
 
 MON VOILE. 
 
 PLUTARQUE PAR AMYOT. 
 
THEISTIC IDEALISM: 
 
 OE 
 
 BERKELEY 
 
^ OF THE ^ 
 
 'nun :Y 
 
 THEISTIC IDEALISM; 
 
 OB, 
 
 BEKKELEY.* 
 
 Visa quaedam mitti a Deo velut ea quae in somnis videantur. 
 
 Cic. ACAD. ii. 15. 
 
 IRELAND may claim the distinction of having pro- 
 duced three philosophers, each of whom formed an 
 epoch in the history of thought. Johannes Scotus 
 Erigena, the founder of the Scholastic System 
 Hutcheson, the father of the modern School of 
 Speculative Philosophy in Scotland and Berkeley, 
 the first who explicitly maintained a Theory of 
 Absolute Idealism were all men of Irish birth, and 
 were marked, in a greater or less degree, by the 
 peculiar characteristics of Irish genius. 
 
 It has frequently been observed that the genius 
 of the Irish People is naturally borne to dialectics. 
 
 * The substance of this Essay was 
 originally given as a lecture from the 
 Chair of Moral Philosophy, and was 
 
 afterwards published ^as an article in 
 the North British Review for May, 
 1861. 
 
 B 
 
2 The Hibernian Logicians. 
 
 The author of Hudibras, indeed, selects 'the wild 
 Irish' as the types of that mystic learning and occult 
 philosophy which he ridicules in Ralpho. Nor was 
 this the mere fancy of the poet. As early as the 
 !tid\e ofx Charges ihe Bold, the contemporary chroni- 
 clr 4 .speaks Vf "the, multitude of philosophers who, 
 R1ie it feG&tii^,vCi:6sfeed l the sea from Ireland. At a later 
 period Bayle speaks of the Hibernians as renowned 
 for able logicians and metaphysicians ; and Stewart 
 describes them as distinguished in all the Continen- 
 tal Universities for their proficiency in the scholastic 
 logic. And the facts justify the statement. It was 
 to the uncouth i Hibernian figures' who prowled 
 about the halls of Oviedo that Lesage describes Gil 
 Bias as addressing himself when bent on disputation. 
 It is an Irish tutor whom Bayle selects as the man 
 to harass a Professor of Salamanca with sorites. It 
 was the Irish at the University of Paris whom Remi 
 describes as i rampant with reason and on fancies 
 fed.' The Irish logician, in fact, was as ubiquitous 
 as the Irish soldier of fortune, and like the philoso- 
 phic vagabond in the Vicar of Wakefield nay, if 
 we are to believe Boswell, like Goldsmith himself 
 he disputed his way through the Universities of 
 Europe. 
 
 The University of Dublin has from the first ac- 
 commodated itself to the national bent, and given 
 a prominent place in its curriculum to mental 
 science. Its statutes, drawn by Laud, enact that 
 the Isagoge of Porphyry and the Organon, the 
 Physics, and the Metaphysics of Aristotle, should 
 
The University of Dublin. 3 
 
 be the text-books of the different classes, and that 
 thrice in the week, at least, their topics should 
 be discussed in public disputation. Aristotle and 
 Porphyry in due time were superseded by Locke; 
 and when the heads of houses were conspiring to 
 ignore the existence of the Essay at Oxford, and 
 when it merely supplied an occasional thesis at 
 Cambridge, it was the recognized text-book of the 
 schools at Dublin. Nor have the graduates of the 
 Irish University been undistinguished in the prose- 
 cution of the favourite study. Dodwell, the an- 
 tagonist of Clarke Browne, the most original and 
 independent of the followers of Locke and Berkeley, 
 the forerunner of Hume and Kant were Fellows of 
 Trinity College.* King, the author of the Treatise 
 on the Origin of Evil Burke, among his other 
 claims to distinction, the writer of the Essay on the 
 Sublime and Beautiful and Archer Butler, the 
 historian of Ancient Philosophy were Scholars of 
 the House. To the present day philosophy still oc- 
 cupies its place of honour, and, without mentioning 
 less celebrated names, it is sufficient to point to the 
 historian of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of 
 Rationalism in Europe, as a proof that the philo- 
 sophic spirit is not extinct in the University of 
 Berkeley. 
 
 * Lord Macaulay, in his History of well was a Fellow of Trinity College, 
 England (ch. xiv.), states, that Dod- Dublin, though Lord Macaulay seems 
 well was attainted ' by the Popish only to have known him as ' Cam- 
 Parliament in Dublin,' for the *un- denian Professor of Ancient History 
 pardonable crime of having a small at Oxford.' 9 But even the remains of 
 estate in Mayo.' There was a more Berkeley lie at Oxford, and not at 
 obvious ground for his attainder. Dod- Dublin or at Cloyne. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 Berkeley's Character. 
 
 The estimation in which the character of the 
 illustrious Idealist was held by his contemporaries 
 is well known. Everyone knows how he charmed 
 the fierce misanthropy of Swift how Pope attri- 
 buted to him the possession of every virtue under 
 heaven how Atterbury exclaimed, that till he knew 
 him he did not think that so much understanding, 
 so much knowledge, so much innocence, and such 
 humility, had been the portion of any but the 
 angels. The range of his intellectual accomplish- 
 ments was almost as wonderful as his virtue was 
 unique. He was an accomplished musician ; he was 
 a connoisseur in painting ; he was a devoted stu- 
 dent of poetry and romance ; he was the master of 
 an eloquence which could rouse even the Scriblerus 
 Club into momentary enthusiasm for the mission 
 to Bermuda. At the age of twenty-six, he had 
 already produced the works which were to revolu- 
 tionise the philosophy of Europe. But the New 
 Theory of Vision, and the Principles of Human Know- 
 ledge, and the Dialogues by which they were eluci- 
 dated, were not the only labours of his life. His 
 Querist, to repeat the oft-repeated words of Mackin- 
 tosh, contains more hints, then original, and still 
 unapplied in legislation and political economy, than 
 are to be found in any equal space. In his Analyst 
 he anticipated Hegel in pointing out that seeming 
 inconsistency in the calculus of Newton which 
 Carnot attempted to explain by a compensation of 
 errors, which Lagrange endeavoured to evade by 
 his calculus of functions, and which Euler and 
 
Berkeley's Writings. 5 
 
 D'Alembert could only obviate by pointing out the 
 constant conformity of the mathematical conception 
 with ascertained results. In his Minute Philosopher 
 he shows himself master of the whole domain of 
 speculation, and, while tracking the free thought of 
 the day through its various evolutions, exhibits an 
 exquisite elegance of diction which is unsurpassed 
 by Addison himself ; and finally, in that wonderful 
 miscellany of physical hypothesis and metaphysical 
 research, which he denominated Siris, he seems to 
 have been borne aloft into the very atmosphere of 
 Plato, and has given to the world of speculation a 
 modern counterpart of the Parmenides and the 
 Timseus. 
 
 The Theory of Vision which established that 
 * all visible things are equally in the mind, and take 
 up no part of the external space' (s. cxi), was the 
 natural prelude to the Principles of Human Know- 
 ledge which proclaimed that " all the choir of 
 heaven and furniture of earth in a word, all those 
 bodies which compose the mighty frame of the 
 world, have not any subsistence without a mind " 
 (Prin. vi. xlvi). The conception indeed was no 
 novelty in the history of thought. It had been 
 realized in the prophetic trances of the Hebrew 
 seers, and in the apocalyptic vision of St. John. 
 The Hindoo sages had maintained that our system 
 of perception was a mere picture, and that the 
 world of matter was nothing but maya, or illusion. 
 The Philosophers of the West had long been waver- 
 ing over a similar conclusion. The Platonists had 
 
6 Intimations of Idealism. 
 
 held that matter was merely a supposition necessary 
 for the production of the phenomena of sense. The 
 Academics had suggested that the perception of 
 external things might possibly be nothing but a 
 dream presented by the gods. The Alexandrines 
 had intimated that the soul was not in the world, 
 but that the world was in the soul. The specula- 
 tion at an early period engaged the attention of 
 the Church. The Fathers had been compelled to 
 consider the question in the discussion of Marcion's 
 doctrine of the mere phenomenal nature of the In- 
 carnation. The Schoolmen had asked whether Grod 
 could not present to sense the species representing 
 an external world, when there was in reality no 
 external world for the species to represent. The 
 founders of the more modern Schools of philosophy 
 had been hovering around the same attractive 
 light. Malebranche had admitted that if God should 
 annihilate the material world, and present corre- 
 sponding ideas to the mind, the phenomena of sense 
 would be the same. Locke had allowed that the 
 idea might exist, though the reality had no exist- 
 ence. Even Leibnitz, in spite of his Monadology, 
 had confessed, not only that the existence of body 
 was not susceptible of demonstration, but that the 
 world, for aught that philosophy could teach, might 
 be merely a resplendent iris, an image on the glass, 
 a waking dream. 
 
 A pure Theistic Idealism, it is true, could not 
 well have been developed in the West before the 
 time of Berkeley, for the Pagan Idealists had no 
 
The Idealism of Collier. 7 
 
 abiding conception of the omnipresence and spiritu- 
 ality of God, and the Catholic philosophers not only 
 accepted the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantia- 
 tion, but conceived that the existence of the world of 
 matter had been positively revealed by Holy Writ. 
 However this may be, Idealism was the natural 
 product of the age, and of this the history of phi- 
 losophy affords a curious proof. Three years after 
 the publication of the Principles of Human Know- 
 ledge, another thinker combined the idealistic ele- 
 ments with which the speculations of the times were 
 fraught. In his Clavis Universalis, Collier, like 
 Berkeley, attempted a demonstration of the non- 
 existence of the world ; and the perfect correspon- 
 dence between the independent speculations of the 
 two idealists is one of the most curious facts in the 
 history of thought. It was the correspondence of 
 the clocks of Leibnitz. Collier, like Berkeley, de- 
 clined to allow the question to be decided by an 
 appeal to Holy Writ with Malebranche, or by an 
 appeal to common sense with Locke. Like Berkeley, 
 he started from the phenomena of vision, and proved 
 that the world of vision could have no existence but 
 in mind. Like Berkeley, he transferred his idealism 
 from the realm of vision to the realm of touch. 
 Like Berkeley, he held not only the non-existence, 
 but the impossibility of the existence, of a world of 
 matter. As to the mode of the production of our 
 ideas, the two philosophers were equally agreed. 
 Both rejected the doctrine of material efflux, and 
 the cognate doctrine of impressed species ; both 
 
8 The Reception of Berkeley. 
 
 rejected the hypothesis of seeing all things in God, 
 and also the egoistical idealism which declares 
 that the mind is the creator of its own ideas ; both 
 held that our sensible ideas are the immediate effect 
 of the agency of God. In some respects the ideal- 
 ism of Collier is more philosophical than that of 
 Berkeley. He is a more consecutive, if not a more 
 consistent, thinker. He shows what Berkeley 
 omitted to show, the ambiguity of the word idea. 
 He anticipates the analysis of Hamilton by raising 
 the question whether the idea exists in the mind 
 as in its proper place, or inheres in it as in its. 
 proper subject, or is dependent on it as on its 
 proper faculty. Above all, he shows, in opposition 
 to Berkeley's theory of vision, that the quasi-exter- 
 nality of visual objects is part and parcel of percep- 
 tion, and that it is as much an attribute of the 
 figments of imagination as of the facts of sense.* 
 
 But Berkeley and Collier were like the two 
 women grinding at the mill the one was taken and 
 the other left ; and while the name of the one is 
 known to few, except the antiquaries of philosophy, 
 the name of the other marks a philosophic epoch. 
 And yet even Berkeley has been subjected to all 
 the vicissitudes of fame. Though his great work 
 
 * This question is fully discussed, Introduction to Kuno Fischer's Kant, 
 
 and, in my opinion, finally determined p. xvi. Philosophers who, like Mr, 
 
 by Mr. Ahhott, in his work on Sight Mill and Professor Eraser, adopt the 
 
 and Touch. Mr. Ahbott satisfactorily theory of Berkeley, seem to me, in spite 
 
 shows that if the idea of outness is not of every artifice of language, to beg 
 
 primarily given it can never be sub- the question by assuming outness in 
 
 sequently acquired (chap. v). Mr. the medium they employ in their ef- 
 
 Mahaffy takes the same view in his forts to explain it. 
 
The Ridicule of Berkeley. g 
 
 did not, like that of Hume, fall still-born from the 
 press, the speculation which was to revolutionize 
 the philosophy of Europe was at first received with 
 the easy toleration of contempt. According to Swift 
 he made a proselyte of Smalridge, and a few other 
 people of position. But in the world in general he 
 was assailed with the ridicule with which Pyrrho 
 was mocked when he pursued his cook. Brown, 
 the famous opponent of Shaftesbury, tells us, in his 
 Essay on Satire, that ' coxcombs refuted Berkeley 
 with a grin.' But the grin was not confined to cox- 
 combs. Warburton laughed at the idealist as a mere 
 visionary. Arbuthnot could not suppress a sneer at 
 6 poor philosopher Berkeley/ and described him to 
 Swift as enjoying the idea of health after being 
 brought to death's door by the idea of a fever. 
 Voltaire said it was pleasant to think that ten 
 thousand cannon balls and ten thousand dead men 
 were only so many disagreeable ideas. Johnson 
 looked on the whole ideal system as worthy of no 
 better refutation than that supplied by his memorable 
 kick. Beattie professed to regard the reference of 
 everything to God as something atheistic. Even 
 Reid, who had himself been a Berkeleian, recanted 
 his heresy, did penance as a man of common sense, 
 and recommended his quondam friend the idealist 
 to run his head against a post, and to be clapped 
 into a madhouse for his pains (Works, 184). So 
 remote, indeed, was the idealist philosophy from 
 received opinions that even philosophers of a higher 
 mood were unable to accept it. At the instance 
 
io The Influence of Berkeley. 
 
 of Addison the great a priori philosopher of the age 
 met Berkeley in order to discuss the subject; but 
 Berkeley complained that Clarke, though he could 
 not answer him, had not the candour to own himself 
 convinced. Berkeley experienced equal difficulty 
 in convincing the rival philosopher who saw every- 
 thing Grod. He discussed the matter with Male- 
 branche in his cell, but so high did the philoso- 
 phical excitement rise that the visionary died in 
 consequence of his interview with the apostle of 
 ideas. Hume took a characteristic view of the sub- 
 ject. All Berkeley's arguments, he said, though 
 otherwise intended, were in reality sceptical ; for 
 while they admitted of no answer, they produced 
 no conviction (Works, iv. 181) a remark which 
 supplies the true justification of Clarke in his re- 
 fusal to own himself convinced. But the influence 
 which Berkeley was destined to exert was far more 
 powerful than any of his contemporaries suspected. 
 From his time philosophy ceased to concern itself 
 with matter. The authority of the Church was dis- 
 regarded ; the reference to revelation was ignored ; 
 and philosophy became ideal. It is scarcely too 
 much to say with Hamann that without Berkeley 
 there would have been no Hume, as without Hume 
 there would have been no Kant and as without 
 Kant there would have been no Hegel. 
 
 But, regarded as a matter of history, the antece- 
 dents of a philosophy are as much an object of curi- 
 osity as its results ; and looking at the subject in 
 this light, it is not to be denied that the idealism of 
 
Berkeley^ Relation to LocJce. 1 1 
 
 Berkeley had its starting point in the philosophy of 
 Locke. Locke had taught that the soul is conscious 
 only of its own ideas (i. i. 8) ; and that these bounds 
 were ample enough for the capacious mind of man 
 to expatiate in, though it takes its flight further 
 than the stars, and cannot be confined to the limits 
 of the world though it extends its thoughts beyond 
 the utmost expansion of matter, and makes incur- 
 sions into the incomprehensible inane (n. vii. 10). 
 Our ideas of the sensible qualities of matter Locke 
 had conceived to be produced by impulse. But how 
 little Hamilton was justified in identifying his doc- 
 trine with the materialism of Democritus and Digby 
 (Disc. 78. 81) is evident from Locke's qualification 
 of his own remark. He admits that motion, accord- 
 ing to the utmost reach of our ideas, is able to 
 produce nothing but motion, and that, when we 
 allow it to produce pleasure and pain, or the idea 
 of a colour or a sound, we are fain to quit our 
 reason, go beyond our ideas, and attribute it wholly 
 to the good pleasure of our Maker (n. iii. 6). In 
 strict accordance with this view, he holds that our 
 knowledge of the existence of spiritual is more cer- 
 tain than our knowledge of the existence of material 
 things. " Whilst I know, by seeing or hearing, &c., 
 that there is some corporeal being without me, the 
 object of that sensation," he says, " I do more cer- 
 tainly know, that there is some spiritual being 
 within me that sees and hears : this, I must be con- 
 vinced, cannot be the action of bare insensible 
 matter, nor ever could be without an immaterial 
 
12 Berkeley's Relation to Locke. 
 
 thinking being" (n. xxiii. 15). Reid deems it 
 strange that Locke, who wrote so much upon the 
 subject, should not see those consequences which 
 Berkeley thought so obviously deducible from the 
 doctrine of ideas. But this is an injustice to Locke's 
 philosophical acumen. " There can be nothing more 
 certain," he says, " than that the idea we receive 
 from an external object is in our minds; this is 
 intuitive knowledge; but whether there be any- 
 thing more than barely an idea in our minds, 
 whether we can thence certainly infer the existence 
 of anything without us which corresponds to that 
 idea, is that whereof some men think there may be 
 a question made, because men may have such ideas 
 in their minds when no such thing exists, no such 
 object affects their senses" (iv. ii. 14; iv. xi. i). 
 Locke, however, evaded the difficulty, and took 
 refuge in the arms of common sense. The confi- 
 dence that our faculties do not herein deceive us, 
 he said, is the greatest assurance we are capable 
 of, concerning the existence of material beings (iv. 
 xi. 3). " If after all," he said, " any one should be so 
 sceptical as to distrust his senses, and to affirm that 
 all we see and hear, feel and taste, think and do, 
 during our whole being, is but the series and delud- 
 ing appearances of a long dream, whereof there is 
 no reality, and therefore will question the existence 
 of all things, or our knowledge of anything ; I must 
 desire him to consider, that, if all be a dream, he 
 doth but dream that he makes the question, and so 
 it is not much matter that a waking man should 
 
Berkeley's Relation to the Cartesians. 13 
 
 answer him"' (iv. xi. 8) the " evidence is as great 
 as we can desire, being as certain to us as our plea- 
 sure or pain, that is, happiness or misery, beyond 
 which we have no concernment either of know- 
 ing or being" (ibid.). But the ultimate conclusion 
 of Locke was the very starting-point of Berkeley. 
 The knowledge of our own being, he said, we have 
 by intuition the existence of a God reason clearly 
 makes known to us and the knowledge of the 
 existence of any other being we can have only by 
 sensation, for there is no necessary connexion of 
 any other existence but that of God, with the exist- 
 ence of ourselves (iv. xi. i, 13). 
 
 The same point had been reached by the disciples 
 of a different school. It was a first principle in the 
 philosophy of Descartes, and Leibnitz, and Male- 
 branche, as it was in that of Locke, that the mind 
 is conscious only of its own ideas. These philoso- 
 phers, it is true, maintained the existence of a 
 material world without us; but they held that 
 mind and matter are essentially opposed; that, in 
 the words of Norris, they are separated by the 
 whole diameter of existence ; and that consequently 
 mind, if left to its own unaided force, can never 
 take cognizance of matter. To bridge this chasm 
 between mind and matter, different philosophical 
 structures had been framed. According to the Car- 
 tesians, God, on the occasion of the presence of the 
 external object, caused the mind to be so and so 
 affected. According to Leibnitz, God had so pre- 
 established the independent developments of mind 
 
14 Berkeley^ s Relation to Malebranche. 
 
 and matter, that there was an everlasting harmony 
 between them. According to Malebranche, God, 
 being cognizant of everything, was cognizant of 
 matter; and being cognizant of matter, admitted 
 man into a participation of his cognition, so that the 
 mind saw material things in God. The theories of 
 Occasional Causes, Pre-established Harmony, and 
 Vision of the Universe in God, thus conducted to 
 the same point as the Hyperphysical Realism of 
 Locke. The Dem ex machina was the last resource 
 of all; and all admitted that the world of matter 
 could only be brought into relation with the mind 
 by the intervention, direct or indirect, of God. 
 
 Of all the philosophers who preceded Berkeley, 
 the one who approached most nearly to his conclu- 
 sion was Malebranche. The French metaphysician 
 regarded it as an indisputable fact, that it is only by 
 means of ideas that the unextended mind can be- 
 come cognizant of extended objects.* He contemp- 
 tuously rejected the argument for the existence of 
 the external world which is based on common sense. 
 With equal contempt he rejected the theory which 
 maintains that external objects make us aware of 
 
 * Mais je parle principalement ici jen' entends ici autre chose quecequi 
 
 des choses materielles qui certainement est 1'objet immediat, ou la plus 
 
 ne peuvents' unir a notre ame de la proche de 1'esprit quand il aper9oit 
 
 faqon qui lui est necessaire afin qu' quelque objet (ibid.}. On ne s' arrete 
 
 elle les aperqoive ; parce qu' etant pas a expliquer plus au long ces 
 
 etendues, et 1'ame ne 1' etant pas, il belles choses et les diverses manieres 
 
 n' y a point de rapports entre eux dont diffe rents philosophes les con- 
 
 (Rech. L. iii. P. ii., c. i). C'est 9oivent (c. ii). On assure done qu' 
 
 incontestable qu' on ne peut voir les il n' est pas vraisemblable que les 
 
 choses materielles par elles-memes et objets envoient des images ou des 
 
 sans idees (ibid.}. Par ce mot idee especes qui leur resemblent (ibid.}. 
 
Berkeley^ Relation to Malebranche. 15 
 
 their existence by the emission of species or entity- 
 ideas. He avowed that according to his way of 
 thinking matter could not even be accepted as 
 the cause of our perceptions or sensations. The 
 experience of delirium and dreams, he said, estab- 
 lishes that there is no necessary connexion between 
 the presence of an idea and the existence of a cor- 
 responding thing without. He admitted, as we 
 have seen, that if the world were annihilated, 
 and if God should produce in our minds the ideas 
 which are now produced in them on the presence 
 of external objects, we should perceive everything 
 that we now perceive. How then are we to 
 account for the existence of our sensible ideas? 
 Malebranche considered it evident that these ideas 
 could not be created by the mind itself, for they 
 were not the creatures of the will, and the mind 
 must have had a knowledge of them before it could 
 produce them.* The obvious conclusion would 
 seem to be that the cause of our sensible ideas must 
 be God. But Malebranche recoiled from this con- 
 clusion. He was not only a philosopher but a theo- 
 logian. Having demonstrated God's existence from 
 
 * Pensez-vous, Ariste, que la ma- 1' existence de la chose qui cette idee 
 
 tiere, que vous ne jugez peut-etre pas represents, et ce qui arrive a ceux qui 
 
 capable de se remuer d'elle-meme, ni dorment ou qui sont en delire le 
 
 de se donner aucune modalite, puisse prouve suffisament (Rech. L. i. c. x). 
 
 jamais modifier un esprit, le rendre Dans la supposition que le monde fut 
 
 heureux ou malheureux, lui repre- aneanti, et que Dieu neanmoins pro- 
 
 senter des idees, lui donner divers duisit dans notre cerveau les memes 
 
 sentiments ? Pensez-y et repondez traces, ou plutot dans notre esprit 
 
 moi (Entret. vii). II n' y a point de les memes idees qui s' y produisent 
 
 liaison necessaire entre la presence de la presence des objets nous ver- 
 
 d'une idee a 1'esprit d'un homme et rions les. memes beautes (Entret. i). 
 
1 6 The Idealism of Malelranche. 
 
 the idea of infinity, lie proceeded to demonstrate 
 the existence of the world by a reference to the 
 word of God. The Scriptures, he said, inform us 
 of the Incarnation of our Lord ; the Scriptures in- 
 form us that in the beginning God created the hea- 
 vens and the earth. The existence of the material 
 world being thus established, all that remained was 
 to account for its perception. This Malebranche 
 did on the principles of the Cartesian School. The 
 essence, the primary conception, of matter, he said, 
 was extension ; and no extended thing could modify 
 the mind. Declining, therefore, to recognise any 
 secondary qualities in matter, he distinguished our 
 ideas from our sensations ; and while he regarded 
 the former as perceived by us in God, he regarded 
 the latter as simply caused by the Deity in us on the 
 occasion of the presence of external objects.* 
 
 But Berkeley treated the system and the scruples 
 of his illustrious predecessor with but scant respect. 
 God, he said, was not a musician, who required to 
 be directed by notes, in order to produce that har- 
 
 Un homme ne peut pas former 1'idee Le sentiment est une modification de 
 
 d'un objet s' il ne le connait au- notre ame et c'est Dieu qui la cause en 
 
 paravant, c'est-a-dire s' il n' en a nous, et il la peut causer quoiqu' il ne 
 
 deja 1'idee laquelle ne depend point 1'ait pas, parce qu' il voit, dans 1'idee 
 
 de sa volonte. Q,ue s'il en a deja une qu' il a de notre ame, qu'elle en est 
 
 idee, il connait cet objet, et il lui est capable. Pour 1'idee qui se trouve 
 
 inutile d'en former une nouvelle. II jointe avec le sentiment, elle est en 
 
 est done inutile d' attribuer a 1'esprit Dieu et nous le voyons, parce qu'il 
 
 de rhomme la puissance de produire lui plait de nous la decouvrir; et 
 
 ces idees (Eech. L. iii. P. ii. c. iii). Dieu joint la sensation a 1'idee lorsque 
 
 * Lorsque nous apercevons quelque les objets sont presents, afin que nous 
 
 chose de sensible il se trouve dans notre le croyions ainsi, et que nous entrions 
 
 perception sentiment et idee pure. dans les sentiments et dans les pas- 
 
The Idealism of Berkeley. 1 7 
 
 monious train and composition of sound that is called 
 a tune (Prin. Ixxi). He protested, in the person 
 of Philonous, that he could not understand how 
 our ideas, which are things altogether passive and 
 inert, can be the essence, or any part, or like any 
 part, of the essence or substance of God (Dial, ii).* 
 Eevelation, he said, had used words in their vulgar 
 acceptation ; and the ideal philosophy did not deny 
 the existence of anything which Holy Writ had de- 
 clared to be existent (Prin. Ixxxii). In fact, the 
 Scriptures themselves ascribed those effects to the 
 immediate agency of God which the heathen philo- 
 sophers ascribed to Nature (Prin. cl). But the 
 question at issue was one to be determined not by 
 revelation but by reason. And what were the dic- 
 tates of reason on the subject ? They were ob- 
 vious. If primary and secondary qualities are only 
 ' ideas existing in the mind' (Prin. ix), why should 
 we make any distinction between ideas and sensa- 
 tions ? If it is possible that we might be affected 
 with all the ideas that we have, although no bodies 
 
 sions que nous devons avoir par Demeurons done en ce sentiment, qiie 
 rapport a eux (Recherche de la Verite, Dieu est le monde intelligible ou le 
 L. iii. P. ii. c. vi). lieu des esprits, de meme que le monde 
 * II faut bien remarquer qu'on ne materiel estle lieu des corps; quec'est 
 peut pas conclure que les esprits de s& puissance qu'ils re9oivent toutes 
 voient V essence de Dieu de ce qu'ils leur modifications ; que c'est dans sa 
 voient toutes choses en Dieu de cette sagesse qu'ils trouvent toutes leur idees; 
 maniere. L'essence de Dieu, c'est et que c'est par son amour qu'il sont 
 son etre absolu, et les esprits ne voient agites de tous leur mouvements re- 
 point en substance divine prise absolu- gles (ibid.}. Locke, in his Examina- 
 ment, mais seulement en tant que re- tion of Malebranche's Opinion, falls 
 lative aux creatures ou participate into the same error as Berkeley on 
 par elles (Seek. L. iii. P. ii. c. vi). this point (Exam. 31). 
 
1 8 Berkeley's Argument. 
 
 existed without which resembled them (Prin. xviii), 
 why might not bodies be regarded as the percep- 
 tions of a waking dream? If the world is not 
 known as object, and cannot be inferred as cause 
 (ibid.), what reason have we to believe in its exist- 
 ence ? If, in fine, ' the being of a Spirit infinitely 
 wise, and good and powerful, is abundantly sufficient 
 to explain all the appearances of nature' (Prin. 
 Ixxii), why should we gratuitously assume the co- 
 operation or the co-existence of any other cause ? 
 But Berkeley pushed the argument still further. He 
 contended, not only that we are unable to demon- 
 strate the existence of the world of matter, but that 
 we are able to demonstrate its non-existence. The 
 supposition of an external material world, he said, 
 was unmeaning (Prin. xvii) it was replete with 
 contradictions (Prin. iv. xvii. Ixvii) it could not 
 even be conceived (Prin. xxiii). How can we con- 
 ceive objects existing unconceived, he asked, and 
 professed himself willing to put the whole contro- 
 versy upon that single issue (Prin. xxii). True, 
 the series of sensations of which we are conscious, 
 he said, must have some thinking substance or sub- 
 stratum to support them (Prin. ii), as well as some 
 active cause by which they are produced and changed 
 (Prin. xxvi). But what is the cause in question ? 
 Not a mere physical antecedent to be found in ante- 
 cedent ideas ; for our ideas are ' visibly inactive J 
 (Prin. xxv). Not corporeal substance; for it had 
 no existence (Prin. ix). Neither could the cause in 
 question be ourselves ; for the ideas perceived by 
 
Berkeley's Argument. 19 
 
 sense have no dependence on ourselves they are not 
 the creatures of the will (Prin. xxix). The cause 
 must, accordingly, be God. The whole argument 
 is neatly summarized by Hylas: "I find myself 
 affected with various ideas whereof I know I am not 
 the cause ; neither are they the cause of themselves, 
 or of one another, or capable of subsisting by them- 
 selves, as being altogether inactive, fleeting, de- 
 pendent beings; they have therefore some cause 
 distinct from me and them, of which I pretend to 
 know no more than that it is the cause of my ideas " 
 (Dial. ii). Hylas, it is true, makes an abortive at- 
 tempt to identify this primeval cause with matter ; 
 but the inexorable Philonous asks, * Though it 
 should be allowed to exist, yet, how can that which 
 is inactive be a cause, or that which is unthinking 
 be a cause of thought?' (ibid.). Hylas is coerced 
 into recognizing the agency of mind. " From [the 
 mere perceptions of the senses]," says Philonous, 
 " I conclude that there is a mind which affects me 
 every moment with all the sensible impressions I 
 perceive ; and, from the variety, order, and manner 
 of them, I conclude the Author of them to be wise, 
 powerful, and good, beyond comprehension" (ibid.}. 
 Thus while the attributes of the Infinite Mind 
 are collected from a ' contemplation of the contriv- 
 ance, order, and adjustment of things,' its existence 
 is ' necessarily inferred from the bare existence of 
 the sensible world ' and this consideration, in the 
 opinion of Philonous, at once baffles the most 
 strenuous advocate of atheism, and effectually dis- 
 
 C 2 
 
2o The Two Misconceptions. 
 
 poses of the wild imaginations of Hobbes, Vanini, 
 and Spinosa (Dial. ii). 
 
 Whatever may be the force of the argument 
 thus constructed, it is so clear that it might well 
 have been supposed to bid defiance to the powers of 
 misconception. But Berkeley has not escaped the 
 fate which has overtaken philosophers in every age. 
 He has been systematically misunderstood. Mr. 
 Mill has remarked that " he was excelled by none 
 who ever wrote in the clear expression of his mean- 
 ing, and the discrimination of it from what he did 
 not mean"; yet, he adds, " scarcely any thinker 
 has been more perseveringly misapprehended, or 
 has been the victim of such persistent ignoratio 
 elenchi, his numerous adversaries having generally 
 occupied themselves in proving what he never de- 
 nied, and denying what he never asserted." A 
 singular illustration of the truth of this remark is 
 furnished by the Scottish School. According to 
 Reid, the Idealism of Berkeley was the result of 
 two things the Ideal Theory which Reid erro- 
 neously attributed to the philosophers in general, 
 and the Theory of the Origin of Ideas which he 
 erroneously attributed to Locke. Men, he said, 
 who, like Hume and Berkeley, recognized no ideas 
 but those of sensation and reflection, were com- 
 pelled to repudiate the idea of substance (Works, 
 322) ; and anyone who accepted the theory univer- 
 sally received by philosophers concerning ideas 
 would find unanswerable arguments against the 
 existence of the material world (p. 282). In attri- 
 
The Ttuo Kinds of Knowledge. 21 
 
 buting these theories to Berkeley, Reid is followed 
 not only by Stewart and Brown, but by Hamilton 
 and Mansel nay, stranger still to say, by Mill 
 himself. And yet it is demonstrable that Berkeley 
 held neither of these obnoxious doctrines; and the 
 first duty of an expositor of his philosophy is, to 
 clear his memory from the charge.* 
 
 In arguing against the existence of Matter, 
 Berkeley anticipates a distinction which pervades 
 the whole of recent philosophy. The distinction is 
 taken in the following passages extracted from the 
 second of the Dialogues between Hylas and Philo- 
 nous, in which he popularizes and explains his 
 Principles of Human Knowledge. " Either you 
 perceive the being of matter immediately or me- 
 diately," says Philonous " if immediately, pray 
 inform me by which of the senses you perceive 
 it; if mediately, let me know by what reasoning 
 it is inferred from those things you perceive im- 
 mediately." " You neither perceive matter objec- 
 tively" he continues, " as you do an inactive being 
 or idea, nor know it, as you do yourself, by a 
 reflex act : neither do you mediately apprehend it by 
 similitude of the one or the other, nor yet collect it 
 by reasoning from that which you know immedi- 
 
 * As to the Ideal Theory, see Reid's Works, ii. 187 ; Hamilton's Lect. ii. 
 
 Works, i. 282; Stewart's Works, v. 198; Mansel's Proleg. 134; Mill, ut 
 
 S8, 422; Brown's Works, ii. 17; infra. In my Intellectualism of Locke 
 
 Hamilton's Reid, 288, and Disc., 69 ; I have endeavoured to free the prince 
 
 Mansel's Proleg. 318; Mill, ut infra. of the philosophers of England from 
 
 As to the Theory of the Origin of the charges to which, like the Irish 
 
 Ideas, see Reid's Works, 294, 322 ; philsopher, he has been exposed. I 
 
 Stewart's Works, v. 72; Brown's have recurred to the subject in note A. 
 
22 The Ideal Theory of Reid. 
 
 utely." In a word, he says, " I have no immediate 
 intuition thereof ; neither can I mediately from my 
 sensations, ideas, notions, actions, or passions, infer 
 an unthinking, unperceiving, inactive substance, 
 either by probable deduction or necessary conse- 
 quence. 77 From these passages it is plain that 
 Berkeley anticipates Hamilton's celebrated distinc- 
 tion between Presentative or Immediate and Eepre- 
 sentative or Mediate Cognition (Reid, 804); that 
 he repudiates his theory of Natural Realism ; and 
 that he adopts the Ideal Theory to this extent, that 
 he holds the mind is conscious of nothing but its 
 own ideas. 
 
 But what are the Ideas of which alone we are thus 
 asserted to be conscious ? According to the Scottish 
 School, the idea of Berkeley is a separate entity a 
 something numerically distinct from mind a some- 
 thing which may pass from the mind of man into 
 the mind of God an essence of the nature of that 
 tertium quid which, as Hamilton says, was originally 
 devised to explain the possibility of a knowledge by 
 an immaterial substance of an existence so dispro- 
 portioned to its nature as a material object. What 
 place a representative idea such as this could have 
 had in a system in which there was nothing to 
 represent it is hard to imagine. Brown clearly per- 
 ceived that the existence of ideas as separate from 
 the mind is an assumption as gratuitous as the 
 assumption of the external existence of matter itself 
 could have been, and that, in point of fact, perma- 
 nent and independent ideas are matter under another 
 
The Ideal Theory of Reid. 23 
 
 name (Led. xxiv). He clearly saw that to believe 
 that these entities exist in the mind is to materialize 
 intellect under the pretence of intellectualizing 
 matter (ibid.). But critics, when they imagine their 
 author to be preposterously absurd, are too much 
 carried away by their own sense of superiority to 
 entertain the thought that the author, instead of 
 being preposterously absurd, may possibly have been 
 egregiously misconceived. And that, in this respect, 
 Berkeley has been egregiously misconceived is cer- 
 tain. It is true he tells us that " ideas are inert, 
 fleeting, dependent beings, which subsist not by 
 themselves, but are supported by, or exist in, minds, 
 or spiritual substances" (Prin. Ixxxix). But Phi- 
 lonous has explained his meaning. " When I speak 
 of objects as existing in the mind, or impressed on 
 the senses," he says, " I would not be understood in 
 the gross literal sense, as when bodies are said to 
 exist in a place, or a seal to make an impression 
 upon wax my meaning is only that the mind com- 
 prehends or perceives them, and that it is affected 
 from without by some being distinct from itself " 
 (Dial. iii). Nor is Berkeley guilty of any incon- 
 sistency in this. States of mind exist, and may 
 therefore be called existences; they have a being in 
 the mind, and may therefore be properly denomi- 
 nated beings. It is true, as Mill remarks, that 
 " when we have occasion for a name which shall be 
 capable of denoting whatever exists, as contra- 
 distinguished from nonentity or nothing, there is 
 hardly a word applicable to the purpose, which is 
 
24 Berkeley's Ideas are mere Affections of the Mind. 
 
 not also, and even more familiarly, taken in a sense 
 in which it denotes only substances" (Log. i. 51). 
 But Berkeley, when he speaks of ideas as < existing 
 in the mind/ expressly warns us that they ' subsist 
 not by themselves' (Prin. Ixxxix). He tells us even 
 that " qualities are in the mind only as they are 
 perceived by it, that is, not by way of mode or 
 attribute, but only by way of idea" (Prin. xlix). 
 Nay, he has himself indicated the very fallacy 
 pointed out by Mill, and has formally, and re- 
 peatedly, explained what is meant by the words 
 thing, reality, existence, and being, when applied to 
 the objects of sense (Prin. iii. Ixxxix. cxlii). Nor 
 has he been less explicit as to the meaning which 
 he attaches to the word idea* His official statement 
 throughout the Principles of Human Knowledge is, 
 that l the existence of an idea consists in being 
 perceived' (Prin. ii); that it is not ' possible ideas 
 should have any existence out of the thinking 
 minds, or thinking things, that perceive them ' 
 (Prin. iii) ; that they are ' mere sensations that 
 exist no longer than they are perceived' (Prin. xlvi): 
 
 * In a note to his Prolegomena Lo- that I understand the significance of 
 
 ffica, Dr. Mansel, after some observa- this last remark. If it means that 
 
 tions to the nattering character of Berkeley did not regard the idea as a 
 
 which I cannot be insensible, pro- modification of the mental substance, 
 
 fesses himself unable to agree with I agree with Dr. Mansel. If it means 
 
 me in regarding Berkeley's theory of that Berkeley did not regard the idea 
 
 ideas as identical with that which as a modification of the mental sensi- 
 
 represents the idea to be a modifi- bility, I conceive it to be erroneous, 
 
 cation of the mind, and adds that But if it means that Berkeley did not 
 
 "in Berkeley's system the relation of recognize the principle of substance, 
 
 substance and mode has properly then, in my opinion, it is not only 
 
 noplace" (p. 318). I am not certain erroneous, but it is at variance with 
 
Berkeley's Theory of the Origin of Ideas. 25 
 
 and in the explanatory Dialogues, Hylas, as the 
 result of his discussion with Philonous, is compelled 
 to acknowledge that, "upon a fair observation of 
 what passes in his mind, he can discover nothing 
 else but that he is a thinking leing affected with a 
 variety of sensations" (Dial. i). 
 
 The first error of the Scottish School being 
 cleared away, it remains to clear away the second. 
 In the Principles of Human Knowledge, Berkeley 
 states it to be self-evident that the sole { objects of 
 human knowledge' are ideas ideas imprinted on 
 the senses, ideas formed by memory and imagina- 
 tion, or ideas perceived by attending to the pas- 
 sions and operations of the mind (Prin. i). But 
 nothing can be an object of knowledge unless 
 it be presented to something which knows, and 
 accordingly Berkeley assumes the existence of ' an 
 incorporeal, active substance or spirit' (Prin. xxvi) 
 'one simple, undivided, active being,' which, 
 * as it perceives ideas is called the understanding, 
 and as it produces or otherwise operates about them 
 is called the will' (Prin. xxvii). Of soul or spirit, 
 
 the fundamental principles of Berke- Realism is idle, for the phrases in the 
 
 ley's philosophy, in which it is laid mind and without the mind have no 
 
 down that all our sensible ideas must reference whatever to locality." But 
 
 have a cause, and that every cause Hamilton's analysis of the possible 
 
 must be a substance. This is clearly forms of the representative hypothesis 
 
 perceived by Professor Maguire, in is applied by him to the various forms 
 
 his masterly tract on Berkeley's No- of Idealism as freely as to Hypothetical 
 
 tion of Substance ; but as to the nature Eealism itself (Reid, 817). ' Berkeley,' 
 
 of Berkeley's idea, he says that, he says, 'is one of the philosophers 
 
 "with Dean Mansel and Professor who really held the doctrine of ideas, 
 
 Webb to force it into any one of erroneously, by Reid, attributed to 
 
 Hamilton's three forms of Hypothetic all' (Reid, 288). 
 
26 Ideas and Notions. 
 
 Berkeley admits, we can form no idea (ibid.)] nay, 
 he admits that ( such is the nature of spirit, or 
 that which acts, that it cannot be of itself perceived 
 but only by the effects which it produceth' (ibid.). 
 Still he contends that ' we have some notion of soul, 
 spirit, and the operations of the mind 7 (ibid.); and 
 accordingly he holds that ' human knowledge may 
 naturally be reduced to two heads, that of ideas and 
 that of spirits' (Prin. Ixxxvi). But Berkeley goes 
 still further. Not only does he insist that ' we may 
 be said to have some knowledge or notion of our 
 own minds, of spirits and active beings, whereof in 
 a strict sense we have not ideas ' ; but he also insists 
 that ' in like manner we know and have a notion of 
 relations between things or ideas, which relations 
 are distinct from the ideas or things related, inas- 
 much as the latter may be perceived by us without 
 our perceiving the former'; and he accordingly con- 
 cludes that ' ideas, spirits, and relations are, all in 
 their respective kinds, the object of human know- 
 ledge and subject of discourse 7 (Prin. Ixxxix). 
 
 In all this there is doubtless much confusion, 
 much variation of statement, much ambiguity of ex- 
 pression ; but it may be taken on the whole as cer- 
 tain that Berkeley divided the data of consciousness 
 into two classes, ideas and notions; that under the 
 head of ideas he comprehended Locke's ideas of re- 
 flection, and under that of notions those ideas of re- 
 lation which Locke regarded as i the creations and 
 inventions of the understanding.' Among these 
 conceptions of the understanding Berkeley, like his 
 
Sense and Understanding. 27 
 
 master, recognized the notions of essential sub- 
 stance and efficient cause as distinguished from our 
 notions of a mere permanent collection of qualities 
 and uniform series of events. It is true that Berke- 
 ley and it is the great defect of his philosophy 
 gave no systematic explanation of our notions, and 
 has even left his views in obscurity as to the mode 
 in which these notions are evolved. In his Princi- 
 ples he assumes the existence of a substantial cause 
 to account for the existence of our sensible ideas, 
 because, as he says, it is 'repugnant that they should 
 subsist by themselves' (Prin. cxlvi). In his Vindi- 
 cation of his Theory of Vision, he explains them to 
 be an ' inference of reason,' as distinguished from 
 an ' object of sense,' and maintains that < from our 
 ideas of sense the inference of reason is good to 
 power, cause, agent' (sect. xi). In his Siris, how- 
 ever, he is more explicit. He professes to effect a 
 compromise between the tabula rasa of Aristotle and 
 the innate ideas of Plato, and suggests that though 
 ' there are properly no ideas or passive objects but 
 what were derived from sense,' yet ' there are also 
 besides these her own acts or operations, such as 
 notions,' which must be referable to the under- 
 standing (Siris, 308). For here Berkeley clearly 
 approximates to Kant. ' As understanding perceiv- 
 eth not,' he says, ' so sense knoweth not' (s. 305). 
 He acknowledges with Kant that sensible objects 
 6 make the first impressions,' and that ' the mind 
 takes her first flight and spring, as it were, by rest- 
 ing her foot on these objects' (s. 292); but, with 
 
28 Berkeley and Kant. 
 
 Kant, he contends that ' the mind, her acts and 
 faculties, furnish a new and distinct class of ob- 
 jects, from the contemplation whereof arise certain 
 other notions, principles, and verities,' remote from 
 sense (s. 297) ; and maintains that i the mind con- 
 tains all, and acts all, and is to all created beings 
 the source of unity and identity, harmony and or- 
 der, existence and stability' throughout the world 
 (s. 295). 
 
 And yet it would be a mistake to identify the 
 psychology of Kant with that of Berkeley. Ac- 
 cording to Berkeley's official doctrine the mind is 
 purely passive in the reception of its sensible ideas, 
 and therefore contributes nothing to their forma- 
 tion. It does not frame them in any forms of sen- 
 sibility; it does not combine them into unity by 
 any synthetic power of apperception ; it does not 
 anticipate their permanence or their recurrence by 
 any category of the understanding. Time, accord- 
 ing to Berkeley, is nothing, abstracted from the suc- 
 cession of ideas (Prin. xcviii) ; space is nothing but 
 the absence of resistance (Prin. cxvi). Sensible 
 objects he regarded not as collected together by 
 the mind, but as presented in ' artificial and regular 
 combinations' by their author (Prin. Ixv). He re- 
 cognizes the * foresight ' which enables us to regu- 
 late our actions for the benefit of life (Prin. xxxi); 
 the i prognostics' which we form as to the perma- 
 nent coexistence of our ideas (Prin. xliv); the 
 ' predictions' which we make concerning the ideas 
 we shall be affected with pursuant to a train of 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 Berkeley and Kant. \jPj 
 
 N 
 actions (Prin. lix) : but the only way in w 
 
 offers to explain these anticipations of experience 
 is by saying that God operates by the ' established 
 methods ' which we call the laws of nature (Prin. 
 xxx ), and that they are derived ' from the expe- 
 rience we have had of the train and succession of 
 ideas in our minds ' (Prin. lix). But Berkeley 
 seems never to have raised the question which was 
 raised and answered by Hume, and answered still 
 more explicitly by Kant How is it that from the 
 experience we have had we can form any a priori 
 conclusion as to the experience we are about to 
 have ? He seems never to have asked himself why 
 it is that we form the expectation that God will 
 continue to act in the future, as we know that he 
 has acted in the past. He seems never to have 
 clearly seen that the permanence of the phenomena 
 of sense and the continuity of their sequences must 
 be assumed in every physical investigation, and that 
 being necessary assumptions they must be regarded 
 as anticipations of the understanding which antece- 
 dent experience may suggest, and which subsequent 
 experience may confirm, but which no modification 
 of mere experience can explain. 
 
 But if Berkeley does not explain the unity of 
 human knowledge by the Kantian synthetic unity 
 of apperception, there can be no doubt that he fully 
 recognizes in the mind a synthetic unity of sub- 
 stance ; and his consistent assertion that the soul 
 must be regarded as a thinking substance should, at 
 least, have saved him from one of the persistent 
 
30 Berkeley^ Relation to Hume. 
 
 misrepresentations to which his philosophy has been 
 exposed. According to Reid, the argument which 
 maintains that matter is merely i a bundle of sensa- 
 tions,' is equally applicable to the mind ; and accor- 
 dingly he gives Hume credit for consistency in 
 reducing mind itself to a mere c bundle of thoughts 
 and passions and emotions ' ( Works, 293). But Reid 
 failed to observe that while Berkeley recognized the 
 principle of substance in all its metaphysical reality, 
 Hume, differing from both him and Locke, ignored it. 
 He failed to recollect that, while Berkeley held that 
 matter was a mere bundle of sensations, he held that 
 it was a mere bundle of sensations in the mind, and 
 that mind, as the c substratum of those ideas,' must 
 of necessity be a substance (Prin. vii. xxvi. cxlvi). 
 If Berkeley denied material substance, it was not 
 because he thought that material qualities could 
 exist without a material substratum, but because 
 he thought that material qualities could not by 
 any possibility exist without a mind (Prin. Ixxiii). 
 But here again Reid's error is without excuse ; for 
 Berkeley anticipated this very objection, and met 
 it in advance. " In consequence of your own prin- 
 ciples," says Hylas to Philonous, "it should follow 
 that you are only a system of floating ideas, without 
 any substance to support them" (Dial. iii). " How 
 often must I repeat," says Philonous to Hylas, 
 " that I know, or am conscious of, my own being, 
 and that I myself am not my ideas, but somewhat 
 else a thinking, active principle that perceives, 
 knows, wills, and operates about ideas?" Philonous 
 
The Mistake of Mill 3 1 
 
 speaks of this fact as known by c consciousness ,' as he 
 previously speaks of it as known by a ' reflex actj 
 and by i reflection? But Berkeley's official doctrine 
 is, that the conception of substance, like the con- 
 ception of causation, is a notion which the mind is 
 compelled by its own necessities to form, since, 
 whatever our ideas may be, ' it is repugnant that 
 they should subsist by themselves' (Prin. cxlvi). 
 
 But even Mr. Mill is so carried away by the 
 prevailing error, that he falls into the pit which 
 he himself has pointed out. He too occupies him- 
 self in proving what Berkeley never denied, and 
 in denying what Berkeley never asserted nay, he 
 actually charges him for failing to say what he has 
 expressly said. Berkeley, according to Mr. Mill, 
 " supposed that the actual object of a sensible per- 
 ception, though, on his own showing, only a group 
 of sensations, etc., suspended so far as we are con- 
 cerned, when we cease to perceive it, comes back 
 literally the same the next time it is perceived by 
 us ; and, being the same, must have existed in 
 another mind. He did not see clearly that the sen- 
 sations I have to-day are not the same as those I 
 had yesterday, which are gone never to return, but 
 are only exactly similar ; and that which has been 
 kept in continuous existence is but a potentiality of 
 having such sensations, such potentiality implying 
 constancy in the order of phenomenon, but not a 
 spiritual substance for the phenomena to dwell 
 in, when not present to my own mind."* But 
 
 * Fortnightly Revieiv of November, 1872, p. 518. 
 
32 How our Ideas exist in the Minds of Others. 
 
 Berkeley puts the very words of Mill into the 
 mouth of Hylas. " The same idea which is in 
 my mind cannot be in yours, or in any other 
 mind," says Hylas " doth it not, therefore, fol- 
 low from your principles that no two can see the 
 same thing, and is not this highly absurd?" " If 
 the word same be taken in the vulgar acceptation," 
 replies Philonous, "it is certain (and not at all re- 
 pugnant to the principles I maintain) that different 
 persons may perceive the same thing, or the same 
 thing, or idea, exist in different minds. Words are 
 of arbitrary imposition ; and since men are used to 
 apply the word same where no distinction or va- 
 riety is perceived and I do not pretend to alter 
 their perceptions it follows that, as men have 
 said before, several saw the same thing, so they 
 may, upon like occasions, still continue to use the 
 same phrase without any deviation, either from 
 the propriety of language or the truth of things." 
 " But whether philosophers shall think fit to call 
 a thing the same or no," Philonous continues, " is 
 of small importance. Let us suppose several men 
 together, all endued with the same faculties, and 
 consequently affected in like sort by their senses, 
 and who had yet never known the use of lan- 
 guage; they would, without question, agree in 
 their perceptions, though, perhaps, when they 
 came to the use of speech some, regarding the 
 uniformness of what was perceived, might call 
 it the same thing ; others, especially regarding 
 the diversity of persons who perceived, might 
 
How our Ideas exist in the Mind of God. 33 
 
 choose the denomination of different things " 
 (Dial, iii).* 
 
 But the misapprehension of Mill reaches further 
 than Berkeley's theory of the world ; it reduces to 
 an absurdity his demonstration of the existence of 
 a God. That demonstration Mackintosh regarded 
 as the touchstone of metaphysical sagacity. But 
 what metaphysical sagacity is evinced by the Ber- 
 keleian who supposes that Berkeley postulated the 
 Deity as ' a spiritual substance for the phenomenon 
 to dwell in ' ? The conception of substance undoubt- 
 edly plays a conspicuous part in the philosophy of 
 Berkeley ; but in his demonstration of the exist- 
 ence of God the dominant idea is not substance, 
 but causation. Not only does Mill ignore this func- 
 tion of causation he reproduces in its crudest form 
 the blunder of Brown as to the nature of Berke- 
 ley's sensible ideas. " These," says Brown, " he 
 evidently considered not as states of the indivi- 
 dual mind, but as separate things existing in it, 
 
 * Collier makes a similar remark. hold the thing to be the same in this 
 
 " When I affirm that all matter exists as in any other case of sensation ; for 
 
 in mind, or that no matter is external, instance, that of sound. Here, two 
 
 I do not mean that the world, or any or more persons who are present at a 
 
 visible object of it, which I, for in- concert of music may, indeed, in some 
 
 stance, see, is dependent on the mind sense be said to hear the same notes 
 
 of any other person besides myself ; or melody ; but yet the truth is, that 
 
 or that the world, or matter, which the sound which one hears is not the 
 
 any other person sees is dependent on very same with the sound which ano- 
 
 mine, or any other person's mind or ther hears, because the souls, or per- 
 
 f acuity of perception. On the con- sons, are supposed to be different" 
 
 trary, I contend, as well as grant, that (Clavis, p. 6). Compare with this the 
 
 the world which John sees is external corresponding passage in the Clavis as 
 
 to Peter, and the world which Peter to the mundane idea existing in the 
 
 sees is external to John; that is, I mind of God (p. 79). 
 
 1) 
 
34 The Blunder of Brown. 
 
 and capable of existing in other rninds, but in them 
 alone; and it is in consequence of these assump- 
 tions that his system, if it were to be considered as 
 a system of scepticism, is chiefly defective. But 
 having, as he supposed, these ideas, and conceiving 
 that they did not perish when they ceased to exist 
 in his mind, since the same ideas recurred at inter- 
 vals, he deduced, from the necessity which there 
 seemed for some Omnipotent Mind, in which they 
 might exist during the intervals of recurrence, the 
 necessary existence of the Deity; and if, indeed, 
 as he supposed, ideas be something different from 
 the mind itself, recurring only at intervals to 
 created minds, and incapable of existing but in 
 mind, the demonstration of some Infinite Omnipre- 
 sent Mind, in which they exist during these inter- 
 vals of recurrence to finite minds, must be allowed 
 to be perfect" (Led. xxiv). But, says Brown, 
 "the whole force of the pious demonstration, which 
 Berkeley flattered himself with having urged irre- 
 sistibly, is completely obviated by the simple denial 
 that ideas are anything more than the mind itself 
 affected in a certain manner ; since in this case our 
 ideas exist no longer than our niind is affected in 
 that particular manner which constitutes each par- 
 ticular idea " (ibid.) . 
 
 And yet Berkeley adopts the very words of 
 Brown. * I can discover nothing else,' says Hylas, 
 6 but that I am a thinking being affected with a 
 variety of sensations ' (Dial, i) ; and it is from 
 this fact that Philonous concludes ' there is a mind 
 
The Recurrence of Ideas. 35 
 
 which affects me every moment with all the sen- 
 sible impressions I perceive' (Dial. ii). But what 
 significance could Brown have seen in that form 
 of the demonstration which he considers perfect ? 
 Ideas are separate entities, which can exist no- 
 where but in mind ; these ideas perpetually recur ; 
 therefore there must be some mind in which they 
 exist during the intervals of their recurrence ; 
 therefore there must be a God. What man in his 
 senses could imagine that anyone would be con- 
 verted to theism by reasoning such as this ? The 
 argument attributed by Brown to Berkeley is much 
 the same as the argument attributed by Cicero to 
 Epicurus.* But Epicurus was an atheist, and his 
 argumentation, according to Cicero, was nothing 
 but a make-believe. The only difference between 
 the theory of entity -images and the theory of entity- 
 ideas is one in favour of the former. The material- 
 ist made the image flow from God to man, and left 
 us some proof of his existence the immaterialist 
 makes the ideas flow from man to God, and leaves 
 us to postulate a God as a material receptacle for a 
 shoal of fugitive ideas a receptacle as material as 
 the crystal tank into which gold and silver fish may 
 be conceived as escaping from their crystal bowl.f 
 
 * Epicurus docet earn esse vim et simillimarum imaginum species ex 
 
 naturam Deorum, ut primum non innumerabilibus individuis existat, et 
 
 sensu, sed mente cernatur ; nee solidi- ad deos affluat " the avfipiQfji.ov y4- 
 
 tate quadam, nee ad numerum, ut ea Aao/ia of ideas in the ' pious demon- 
 
 quse ille propter firmitatem ffrepefjit'ia stration ' attributed to the Christian 
 
 appellat, sed imaginibus similitudine idealist by Brown. 
 et transitione perceptis" (De Nat. f Mansel, who substantially agrees 
 
 i. 1 8). Velleius adds, "cuminfinita with Brown, states the argument of 
 
 D 2 
 
36 The Ectypal World in Man. 
 
 Berkeley undoubtedly states that there must be 
 some other mind wherein ideas exist during the 
 intervals of our perception ; but the explanation of 
 this, after what has been already said, is easy. If 
 our sensible ideas are not the spontaneous product 
 of the mind itself, they must be produced from 
 without ; if they are produced from without, they 
 must be produced by some cause which has intelli- 
 gence of the effects which it produces ; and if that 
 cause has intelligence of the effects which it pro- 
 duces, the idea of the effect to be produced must 
 exist and pre-exist in its intelligence, as the idea of 
 the effect to be produced exists and pre-exists in 
 the mind of the musician, the painter, or the poet. 
 It is thus that Malebranche contends that the ideas 
 of all terrestrial things existed in the mind of the 
 Creator before the date of the creation. It is thus 
 that Collier admits the existence of the great mun- 
 dane idea of created matter by which all things are 
 produced, by which the great God gives sensations 
 
 Berkeley in the following form: they continue to exist when we do 
 "With this argument, which repre- not perceive them (and that they do 
 sents God as the efficient cause of our so is the irresistible conviction of all 
 ideas, Berkeley combined another, men), they must be perceived by some 
 in which the Deity is regarded as a other mind. Hence the continuous 
 constantly perceiving mind. Accept- duration of things implies the exist- 
 ing, as allowed on all hands, the ence of a constantly percipient mind : 
 opinion that sensible qualities cannot that is, of God" (Proleg. 317). But 
 subsist by themselves, and rejecting sensible qualities, according to Berke- 
 the ordinary hypothesis of their exist- ley's view, are only sensible ideas, and 
 ence in an insensible substratum, he sensible ideas themselves are nothing 
 concluded that they must, therefore, but sensations ; and the statement, 
 exist in a mind which perceives them, that sensible qualities, thus under- 
 and that they have no existence apart stood, continue to exist when we do 
 from being perceived. If, therefore, not perceive them, is ambiguous. Our 
 
The Archetypal World in God. 37 
 
 to all his thinking creatures, and by which things 
 which are not are preserved and ordered in the 
 same manner as if they were (Clavis, p. 7). It is in 
 this sense that Philonous acknowledges a two-fold 
 state of things the one ectypal or natural, the 
 other archetypal and eternal ; the one created in 
 time, the other existing from everlasting in the 
 mind of God (Dial, iii).* But the ideas which ex- 
 isted from everlasting in the mind of God are not 
 the same as the ideas which exist for a moment in 
 the mind of man ; and the ideas which cease to exist 
 in the mind of man are not the same as the ideas 
 which have no cesser of existence in the mind of 
 God. The eternal existence of objects in the mind 
 of God is, in fact, only another phrase for his 
 eternal knowledge. " All objects," says Philonous, 
 " are eternally known by God, or, which is the 
 same thing, have an eternal existence in his mind ; 
 but when things, before imperceptible to crea- 
 tures, are by a decree of God perceptible to them, 
 
 sensations cease to exist when our * II est indubitable qu' il n' y avait 
 perception of them ceases. Similar que Dieu seul avant que le monde 
 sensations, it is true, may be expe- fut crec, et qu' il n' a pu le produire 
 rienced by others, and thus, and thus sans connaisance et sans idee ; que par 
 only, things may have a continuous consequent ces idees, que Dieu en a 
 duration. The sensations so expe- cues ne sont point differentes de lui- 
 rienced require, on Berkeley's theory, meme, et qu' ainsi toutes les crea- 
 the intervention of an efficient cause, tures, meme les plus materielles et 
 which, being intelligent, must be per- les plus terrestres, sont en Dieu, 
 cipientof the eifect which it produces ; quoique d'une maniere toute spiritu- 
 and it is only in this sense that elle et que nous ne pouvons coin- 
 Berkeley contends that the continuous prendre (Rech. L. iii. P. ii. c. v). 
 duration of things implies the ex- With this compare the proof that our 
 istence of a constantly perceiving Ideas are not created by the mind 
 mind. (sup. p. 15). 
 
38 Evanescent Ideas. 
 
 then they are said to begin a relative existence 
 with respect to created minds" (Dial. iii). It is 
 this relative existence which, in the opinion of 
 Berkeley, constitutes the world to us. So com- 
 pletely relative is that existence, that it is relative 
 not only to the person but to the moment. The 
 world is nothing but successive phenomenon and 
 evanescence. Our ideas have no continuous exist- 
 ence. They disappear to be succeeded by ideas 
 which are similar, but not the same ; and these suc- 
 cessive ideas in their similar succession are mere 
 sparkles on the stream of thought mere bubbles on 
 the river, which glitter in the sun and burst.* 
 
 Berkeley carried out this view of the fleeting 
 nature of ideas to its most sublime result. If the 
 world exists only in idea, and if ideas are mere 
 evanescent states of mind, it follows that the Divine 
 Energy is for ever engaged in creating and re- 
 creating worlds. Accordingly, in the opinion of 
 
 * The following remarks of Ferrier, But instead of maintaining that it was 
 in his Institutes of Metaphysic, are the ego, or oneself, which clove in- 
 worthy of attention: "The system separably to all that could he known, 
 of Bishop Berkeley, also, was vitiated and that this element must he thought 
 hy the absence of this analysis, or by of along with all that is thought of, 
 the neglect to distinguish the neces- he rather held that it was the senses, 
 sary from the contingent conditions or our perceptive modes of cognition, 
 of cognition. He falls into the error which clove inseparably to all that 
 consequent on the adoption of the could be known, and that these re- 
 first of the alternatives just referred quired to be thought of along with all 
 to [that of elevating the senses, con- that could be thought of. These, just 
 sidered as elements of cognition, to as much as the ego, were held by him 
 the same footing of necessity with the to be the subjective part of the total 
 ego.] He saw that something subjec- synthesis of cognition, which could 
 tive was a necessary and inseparable not by any possibility be discon- 
 part of every object of cognition. nected. Hence the unsatisfactory cha- 
 
Constant Creation. 39 
 
 Berkeley, the work of the Creator did not termi- 
 nate upon the sixth day, but is continued through 
 the ages. The birth of each new creature is the 
 herald of a new creation. Each moment the uni- 
 verse is anew created in every individual mind. 
 Creation never ceases. When Alciphron, in the 
 Minute Philosopher (Dial, iv), objects to the notion 
 of Euphranor, that God daily speaks to our senses 
 in a manifest and clear dialect, Crito replies: 
 " This language hath a necessary connexion with 
 knowledge, wisdom, and goodness. It is equivalent 
 to a constant creation betokening an immediate act 
 of power and providence. It cannot be accounted 
 for by mechanical principles, by atoms, attractions, 
 or effluvia. The instantaneous production and re- 
 production of so many signs, combined, dissolved, 
 transposed, diversified, and adapted to such an end- 
 less variety of purposes, ever shifting with the occa- 
 sions and suited to them, being utterly inexplicable 
 
 racier of his ontology, which, when of Hylas. Philonous replies that 
 
 tried by a rigorous logic, will he found though God is ' the cause of our 
 
 to invest the Deity the supreme sensations,' and therefore must 'un- 
 
 mind, the infinite Ego which the derstand' what sensation is, yet he 
 
 terms of his system compel him to 'perceives nothing by sense,' and 
 
 place in synthesis with all things, cannot possibly be 'affected with 
 
 with human modes of apprehension, sensation' (Dial. iii). Malebranche 
 
 with such senses as belong to man ; gives a similar reply to the same ob- 
 
 and this, not as a matter of contin- jection (Recli. L. iii. P. ii. c. vi). But 
 
 gency, but as a matter of necessity" though this reply meets Terrier's objec- 
 
 (p. 389). How far Berkeley neglects tion, it suggests another. If the world 
 
 to distinguish the necessary from the in the mind of man is a mere series of 
 
 contingent conditions of cognition we sensations, where is the correspondence 
 
 have already seen. But the final ob- between the ectypal world existing in 
 
 jection made by Ferrier is anticipated the mind of man and the archetypal 
 
 by Berkeley, and put into the mouth world existing in the mind of God ? 
 
4<D The Standpoint of Berkeley. 
 
 and unaccountable by the laws of motion, by 
 chance, by fate, or the like blind principles, doth 
 set forth and testify the immediate operation of a 
 Spirit or thinking being, and not merely of a Spirit, 
 which every motion or gravitation may possibly in- 
 fer, but of one wise, good, and provident Spirit which 
 directs, and rules, and governs the world " (s. xiv). 
 
 Such is the standpoint of the philosophy of 
 Berkeley. That philosophy recognized the sub- 
 stantial existence of nothing but Spirits, Finite or 
 Divine. It ignored the world of matter; and it 
 ignored the world of entity-ideas. It allowed of 
 no mediation between the human mind and the 
 Divine ; it left the soul, as it were, face to face 
 with God. It is true, we did not see God; but 
 everything we saw, and heard, and felt, was an 
 effect of his wisdom an intimation of his presence. 
 God was not far from every one of us. He upheld 
 everything by the word of his power. His sound 
 was gone out into all lands, and his words into the 
 end of the world. In him we lived, and moved, 
 and had our being. Such, as expressed by himself 
 in the phraseology of Scripture, was the theory of 
 Berkeley. Such was the lofty conception of the great 
 Idealist a conception the loftiest, perhaps, to which 
 the mind of man, poised on the wings of imagina- 
 tion and intellect, has soared. 
 
 The criticism of Kant on the system of his 
 famous predecessor is well known. Berkeley's ideal- 
 ism, he said, was a mere dogmatical idealism (Kri- 
 tik, 1 66) ; holding that ' space, together with all 
 
The Criticism of Kant. 41 
 
 the objects of which it was the inseparable condi- 
 tion, is a thing which is in itself impossible/ he 
 was constrained to hold that 'the objects in space 
 are mere products of the imagination' (ibid.), and 
 to i degrade bodies to mere illusory appearances ' 
 (p. 42). That Berkeley regarded space not as a 
 form of sensibility which supplied a factor in the for- 
 mation of our sensible ideas, but as a child of ima- 
 gination grafted upon sense, we have already seen 
 (Siri*, 292). We have seen that he held our sen- 
 sible ideas to be passive and inert ; that he regarded 
 the world of a sense as a mere picture exhibited to 
 us by the Omnipresent and Eternal Mind. But still 
 he maintains that the appearances which are seen 
 on the theatre of the world are produced by an 
 artful hand which is concealed behind the scenes, 
 and that they are imprinted on the senses by a 
 constantly operating cause in accordance with un- 
 changing laws (Prin. Ixiv). It is this that consti- 
 tutes at once the permanence and the reality of the 
 world of sense. It is by this that real things are dis- 
 tinguished from chimeras (Prin. xxxiii). But the ob- 
 jection of Kant recoils in a measure on himself. If 
 he meets Fichte half way, and insists that sensible 
 objects are moulded by intuitions of time and space, 
 of which we are ourselves the source, he at the same 
 time maintains with Berkeley that the sensations, 
 without which the intuitions of time and space 
 would be mere empty forms, are produced by the 
 ceaseless operations of a Transcendent Cause which 
 lies beyond the sphere of sense, but which origi- 
 
42 Difficulty as to Finite Spirits. 
 
 nates the experience of the permanence and con- 
 stancy of which the categories are mere anticipa- 
 tions. 
 
 There is one point, however, in Berkeley's sys- 
 tem in which reality is conspicuously imperilled, 
 and that is, the existence of finite spirits other than 
 ourselves. This, indeed, is the weak point in every 
 idealistic system ; and Berkeley frankly admits that 
 it is a weak point in his own.* He grants that ' we 
 have neither an immediate evidence nor a demon- 
 strative knowledge of the existence of other finite 
 spirits' (Dial. iii). Human agents, he says, are 
 1 marked out and limited to our view by a particu- 
 lar finite collection of ideas' (Prin. Ivii); and the 
 knowledge we have of them ' depends on the inter- 
 vention of ideas by us referred to agents or spirits 
 distinct from ourselves, as effects or concomitant 
 signs ' (Prin. cxlv) ; but he confesses that it is God 
 alone who f maintains that intercourse between 
 spirits, whereby they are able to perceive the ex- 
 istence of each other' (Prin. cxlvii). This imme- 
 diately suggests a difficulty which it is sufficient to 
 indicate, and on which it is impossible to dwell. 
 " In making God the immediate author of all the 
 
 * Malebranche feels himself com- ne les connaissons que par conjecture. 
 
 pelled to make the admission that, on Nous ne les connaissons presentement 
 
 the principles of his philosophy, the ni en elles-memes ni par leurs idees ; 
 
 existence of finite spirits other than et, comme elles sont differentes de 
 
 ourselves is a mere conjecture: De nous, il n'est pas possible que nous les 
 
 tous les ohjets de notre connaissance, connaissions par conscience. Nous con- 
 
 il ne nous reste plus que les ames des jecturons que les ames des autres hom- 
 
 autres hommes et que les pures intelli- mes sont de meme espece que la notre 
 
 gences, et il est manifesto que noiis (Rech. L. iii. P. ii. c. vii). 
 
A Moral Difficulty. 43 
 
 motions in nature," says Hylas, u you make him 
 the author of murder, sacrilege, adultery, and the 
 like heinous sins " (Dial. iii). Philonous answers 
 that sin does not consist in the outward physical 
 act, but in the internal deviation of the will; and 
 that the denial of the existence of any agent but 
 spirit is ' consistent with allowing to thinking 
 rational beings, in the production of motions, the 
 use of limited powers, ultimately, indeed, derived 
 from God, but immediately under the direction of 
 their own wills.' But the answer of Philonouis 
 will scarcely be as satisfactory to the reader as it 
 was to honest Hylas. In one respect, indeed, the 
 works of man, on the principles of Berkeley, may 
 be said to take their place among the works of 
 nature. The creations of genius remain when artist 
 and architect have passed away. The Transfigura- 
 tion is as imperishable as any material thing that 
 can perish, and St. Paul's, while it endures, is as 
 much a portion of the sense- world as Ben Lomond. 
 God reproduces their ideas, and makes the creations 
 of man a portion of his own. But this does not 
 meet the point of the objection urged by Hylas. 
 The production of a motion in myself is very dif- 
 ferent from the production of a pleasurable sensa- 
 tion in another. A motion, on Berkeley's prin- 
 ciples, is only an idea (Prin. cxi), and on those 
 principles an idea cannot be the cause of an idea in 
 ourselves (Prin. xxv), and a fortiori cannot be the 
 cause of a sensation in another. Such a sensation, 
 it is true, may be referred to the preceding motion, 
 
44 Difficulty of Conception. 
 
 
 as its ' concomitant sign ' (Prin. cxlv) ; but the rela- 
 tion between sign and tiling signified is not the 
 relation of cause and effect (Prin. Ixv). Berkeley, 
 in fact, concedes the point. ' It is evident,' he 
 says, * that in affecting other persons the will of 
 man hath no other object than barely the motion 
 of the limbs of his body; but that such motion 
 should be attended by or excite any idea in the 
 mind of another depends on the will of the Creator ' 
 (Prin. cxlvii). Berkeley thus adopts the theory of 
 Divine Assistance, and admits that it is Grod who 
 causes certain sensations to exist in one on the 
 occasion of certain volitions in another. 
 
 But the great obstacle in the way of the Berke- 
 leian conception of the world is the difficulty of 
 realizing it in thought. The boundless abyss of 
 space with its infinitude of worlds, the immense 
 geologic periods through which our own world has 
 existed, the stupendous convulsions of which the 
 fabric of the earth has been the scene, the mighty 
 revolutions to which the human race itself has been 
 subjected ever since its first appearance on the pla- 
 net, and the mysterious social forces and miraculous 
 agencies of nature, which are constantly obtrud- 
 ing themselves upon our wondering gaze all these 
 potent realities persistently decline to be superseded 
 by ideas, and to be relegated to the realms of shade. 
 But not only does the ideal theory tax the imagi- 
 nation beyond its strength it positively reverses 
 all our natural modes of thought. We have been 
 accustomed to believe that the world contains the 
 
Reversal of Thought. 45 
 
 soul ; but we are required to believe that tlie soul 
 contains the world. We have been accustomed to 
 believe that the body contains the mind ; but we 
 must learn to believe that the mind contains the 
 body. We have been accustomed to believe that 
 our fellow-creatures exist without the mind ; but 
 we must constrain ourselves to believe that while 
 their souls exist without the mind, their bodies exist 
 within it. Nay, further, we have been accustomed 
 to think that c the great globe and all that it inhabit' 
 are contained in space ; but we have to learn that 
 within and ivithout are mere relative ideas, and that 
 space is nothing but the absence of resistance. We 
 have been accustomed to believe that we exist in 
 time ; but we have to learn that there is no time 
 for us to exist in that time is nothing abstracted 
 from the succession of our thoughts. All this must 
 be followed out to its rigorous results. If there is 
 no space but only the idea of space, then there is 
 no motion but only the idea of motion. If there is 
 no time but only the idea of time, then there is no 
 duration but only the idea of duration. The mind 
 therefore is motionless amid commotion ; it is a 
 mere punctam stans amid the lapse of years. These 
 paradoxes Berkeley fearlessly accepts, and trans- 
 fers them from the Enneads of Plotinus to the 
 Siris (ss. 270, 271). Speculations like these may 
 silence but they do not satisfy the mind. As 
 Hume remarks, they admit of no answer, but 
 they produce no conviction. Their only effect is to 
 cause that momentary amazement and irresolution 
 
46 Scepticism in Disguise. 
 
 and confusion which, as the great sceptic remarks, 
 is only scepticism in disguise ( Works, iv. 1 8 1 ). 
 
 For what, in a speculative point of view, is the 
 value of the idealist philosophy? Consider the 
 points which Berkeley endeavours to establish. He 
 maintains the absolute impossibility of matter; he 
 holds that our sensible ideas cannot be generated 
 from within ; he contends that the being of a Spirit 
 infinitely wise, good, and powerful, is abundantly 
 sufficient to explain all the appearances of nature 
 (Prin. Ixxii). That the contrary of this cannot be 
 proved against him may be well conceded. It is 
 possible that the world of matter may have no ex- 
 istence. It is possible that the soul may be en- 
 dowed with no originative powers of sense. It is 
 possible that all the sensible ideas which we expe- 
 rience may be the result of the immediate agency of 
 God. But possibility is not proof ; and what is the 
 proof which Berkeley adduces that these possibili- 
 ties are facts ? To establish his ultimate conclusion 
 he seems to follow a rigorously inductive method. 
 He professes first to ascertain the facts of conscious- 
 ness, and then by these facts to test the various 
 hypotheses which have been elaborated to explain 
 them. He collects the various anticipations of the 
 mind ; he effects the requisite exclusions or rejec- 
 tions; and he seemingly arrives at the necessary 
 conclusion by induction. The cause of sensation, 
 he says, must be either the world, the soul, or God ; 
 but it cannot be the world or the soul ; therefore it 
 must be God. But this is a mere travesty of the 
 
The Argument against Matter. 47 
 
 Baconian process. It is the form of induction with- 
 out the power. The principles which it assumes 
 are unverified ; the very facts by which he affects 
 to exclude the hypotheses which he rejects are in- 
 capable of proof. 
 
 For how does Berkeley attempt to prove, as a 
 substantive proposition, that there is no material 
 world ? In the first place, he assumes as an axiom, 
 that admits of no dispute, that the mind is conscious 
 only of its own ideas. If it be contended, as it is 
 contended by Hamilton, that the mind has a pre- 
 sentative, objective, intuitive knowledge of material 
 things that the material world is presented as an 
 existing object, and not merely inferred as an effi- 
 cient or as a co-operative cause the idealist appeals 
 to consciousness and denies the fact. We do not 
 perceive matter objectively, he says; we have no 
 immediate intuition of its existence ; we are con- 
 scious only of our own ideas. But, if matter be not 
 given, why may not its existence be inferred ? To 
 conceive matter as existing without the mind, says 
 Berkeley, you must conceive it as existing uncon- 
 ceived ; and this, he says, is a contradiction in the 
 very terms in which the so-called conception is 
 expressed (Prin. xxiii). But if, as Berkeley him- 
 self insists, we can conceive God and finite spirits 
 as existing independently of our conceptions, why 
 may we not conceive the world as similarly ex- 
 isting? The question is put by Hylas, and Phi- 
 lonous merely repeats that, as a matter of fact, we 
 neither objectively perceive, nor rationally appre- 
 
48 The Argument against Matter. 
 
 hend, the world of matter (Dial. iii). But, says 
 Berkeley, "what are sensible objects but the 
 things we perceive by sense ; and what do we 
 perceive besides our own ideas, or sensations ; and 
 is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these, 
 or any combination of them, should exist unper- 
 ceived?" (Prin. iv). But, as Berkeley's first con- 
 tradiction was a mere quibble, so his second is a 
 mere begging of the question. ' All extension exists 
 only in the mind,' he says (Prin. Ixvii). But why 
 may we not hold that there is an extension without 
 corresponding to the idea of extension which is 
 within ? why may we not hold, with Locke, that our 
 ideas of the primary qualities are resemblances ? 
 Berkeley answers, ' an idea can be like nothing 
 but an idea ; a colour or figure can be like nothing 
 but another colour or figure' (Prin. viii). But if 
 the ideas of the primary qualities may not be said 
 to resemble, why may they not be said to represent, 
 their objects ? Let us concede, however, that the 
 world is neither given as an object, nor to be ima- 
 gined as a counterpart of our ideas. Why may it 
 not be supposed as the cause of our sensations ? 
 That which is inactive and unthinking, says Berke- 
 ley, can never be regarded as the cause of thought. 
 But why ? To assert that matter is inactive is 
 again to beg the question ; to assert that that which 
 is unthinking cannot be the cause of thought, is to 
 maintain that like can only be produced by like ; 
 and to rely on either proposition is to maintain that 
 our human conceptions are the measure of the possi- 
 
The Argument against Matter. 49 
 
 bilities of things. Matter, though it should be 
 allowed to exist, says Philonous, is conceived as 
 essentially inactive (Dial. ii). But what if it be 
 maintained, with Democritus, that the world is a 
 congeries of atoms, each endued with the principle 
 of motion ? What if it be maintained, with Strato, 
 that the several parts of matter are endowed with a 
 plastic life, whereby they dispose themselves to the 
 best advantage ? What if we hold with Leibnitz 
 that the world is a system of metaphysical units, 
 each an atom of substance with an internal principle 
 of change ? What if we hold with Boscovich, that 
 the world is a system of mathematical points, each 
 a centre of attraction and repulsion, each alive with 
 force ? What, in fine, if we embrace the theory 
 which has been handed down from Pythagoras to 
 Pope, and say 
 
 All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
 Whose body Nature is, and God the soul ? 
 
 But granting matter to be active, Berkeley re- 
 joins, we must at least admit it to be incapable of 
 thought. And yet what Materialist will concede 
 him this ? Even if it be conceded, the conclusion 
 of Berkeley is unproved. How can that which is 
 unthinking, he asks, be considered as a cause of 
 thought ? But here again a whole world of specu- 
 lation is tacitly assumed. Is it certain that like 
 must be produced by like ? What if the theory of 
 Heraclitus be correct, and all effect be the result of 
 opposition ? Why, in any case, assume the truth of 
 the rival principle which Empedocles professed? 
 
 E 
 
50 Innate Principles of Belief. 
 
 That principle is not a law of nature it is not even 
 a law of thought. It is merely one of the oracular 
 utterances of the great Sicilian divini pectoris 
 ejus which was accepted as readily by Lucretius 
 in the interests of materialism as it was by Berke- 
 ley in support of the theory that there is no such 
 thing as matter. 
 
 But there is a psychological difficulty in the way 
 of Berkeley which aggravates the difficulties in the 
 way of his ontologic demonstration. He admits 
 that his system is opposed to vulgar notions. He 
 admits that ' it is an opinion strangely prevailing 
 amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and, 
 in a word, all sensible objects, have an existence 
 natural or real distinct from their being perceived 
 by the understanding' (Prin. iv). He admits that 
 men ' act as if the immediate cause of their sensa- 
 tions, which affects them every moment, and is so 
 nearly present to them, were some senseless un- 
 thinking being ' (Prin. liv). Even Mr. Mill, when 
 he reduces the whole material world to ' a perma- 
 nent possibility of sensation,' is compelled, in like 
 manner to admit that the majority of philosophers 
 fancy that it is something more, and that the world 
 at large would, if asked the question, undoubtedly 
 agree with the philosophers' (Exam. 235). Berkeley 
 boldly refers the belief to the vast number of preju- 
 dices and false opinions which are everywhere em- 
 braced with the utmost tenacity by the unreflecting 
 portion of mankind (Prin. Iv) ; and endeavours to 
 explain it by the knowledge that our ideas are 
 
Innate Principles of Error. 5 1 
 
 'imprinted from without' (Prin. Ivi) by the be- 
 lief that sensible qualities exist without the mind 
 (s. Ixxiii) by ' a nicer strain of abstraction' (s. v) 
 by the fact that ' we are apt to think every noun 
 substantive stands for a distinct idea' (s. cxvi).* 
 It is strange that Berkeley, whose whole system is 
 based on our natural belief in the principles of 
 substance and causation, should thus attempt to 
 explain away a belief which is equally natural, and 
 to banish it to the region of prejudice and false 
 opinion. Mill, who is quite as dogmatic, is more 
 consistent. When challenged on the point, he is not 
 content with resolving the most powerful belief of 
 the human race into ' the tendency of the human 
 mind to infer differences of things from differences 
 of names' (Exam. 235). He resolves our idea of 
 substance into ' the tendency to mistake mental 
 abstractions, even negative ones, for substantive 
 realities' (p. 236) ; he resolves our idea of causation 
 into ' our tendency to believe, that a relation which 
 subsists between every individual item of our ex- 
 perience and some other item, subsists also between 
 our experience as a whole and something not within 
 the sphere of our experience' (p. 237); and he 
 triumphantly adds, that ' if all these considerations 
 put together do not completely explain and account 
 for our conceiving these possibilities as a class of 
 independent and substantive entities, he knows 
 not what psychological analysis can be conclusive' 
 (p. 238). But what are all these tendencies on 
 
 * On Berkeley's views as to Abstract Ideas, see Note B. 
 E 2 
 
52 The Law of Parcimony. 
 
 which Mill so vigorously insists ? If they are na- 
 tural and necessary tendencies, then, as natural and 
 necessary, they are in reality a form of those innate 
 principles which he as strenuously assails ; if they 
 are neither natural nor necessary, then he gratui- 
 tously substitutes arbitrary principles of error for a 
 natural principle of belief, which can never be demon- 
 strated to be false. For the belief in the existence 
 of matter cannot be compared to the theory that the 
 earth is flat or to the theory that the sun revolves 
 around the earth. The existence of the antipodes 
 and the revolution of the planet are susceptible of 
 proof. The non-existence of the world of material 
 things cannot be proved ; and till a proof of its 
 non-existence is supplied by philosophy, the belief 
 of mankind will ever stand in the way of Idealism 
 Idealism can neither explain it, nor refute it, nor 
 remove it. 
 
 Berkeley argues that the being of a Spirit in- 
 finitely powerful and wise and good is abundantly 
 sufficient to explain all the appearances of nature 
 (Prin. Ixxii). Mill, in like manner, insists that 
 ( where there is a known cause adequate to ac- 
 count for a phenomenon there is no justification for 
 ascribing it to an unknown one' (Exam. 233). It is 
 strange that two philosophers who deal so freely 
 with the laws of human belief should appeal so 
 confidently to the Law of Parcimony the one to 
 establish the existence of an ontologic fact, the 
 other to establish the truth of the merest psycho- 
 logic guess. It is true that entities are not to be 
 
 
A Two-edged Weapon. 53 
 
 multiplied in vain. It is true that neither more 
 nor more onerous causes are to be assumed than are 
 necessary to account for the phenomena. That has 
 been the language of philosophers from Hamilton 
 to Occam. But this so-called law of parcimony is a 
 mere regulative principle of thought ; it is not a law 
 of logic, and still less is it a law of things. No one 
 has contended more vigorously than Mill that a 
 hypothesis is not to be received as probably true, 
 merely because it accounts for all the known phe- 
 nomena, when this is a condition which other hypo- 
 theses may satisfy as well (Log. ii. 20). Estimated 
 by this standard, what is the value of the hypothesis 
 that all our sensible ideas are inspired by God ? 
 Grant that it accounts for all the phenomena of 
 nature, there are other hypotheses which equally 
 explain them. It possesses no claim upon our intel- 
 lectual assent which is not equally possessed by the 
 theories of Physical Influence, of Occasional Causes, 
 of Pre-established Harmony, of the Vision of the 
 Universe in God ; while these various theories pos- 
 sess at least one advantage over that of Berkeley, 
 inasmuch as they do not bid defiance to the prime- 
 val instinct of the human race. 
 
 But the Law of Parcimony is a two-edged 
 weapon in the hands of Berkeley. If we assume 
 the existence of spirit as substance and as cause, 
 why may we not regard the Soul as sufficient to 
 account for all the appearances of nature ? Berke- 
 ley contends that ' the ideas actually perceived by 
 sense have no dependence on the will ' (Prin. xxix. 
 
54 Spontaneous Development of the Soul. 
 
 cxlvi). But this overlooks one of the most import- 
 ant of philosophical distinctions that between spon- 
 taneity and volition. It is well known that far 
 below the surface of consciousness and will, in the 
 depths of our mental being, there are agencies at 
 work which manifest their presence only by the 
 effects which they produce. Our instincts, our 
 tendencies, our appetites, affections and desires, 
 our very capacities of receiving sensations from 
 without, if indeed our sensations are to be re- 
 garded as determined from without, are instances 
 of this. The principle is recognized by Berkeley 
 himself as one of the fundamental principles of 
 human knowledge. The conceptions of causality 
 and substance are recognized by him as notions 
 which form part of the necessary and yet sponta- 
 neous development of the intellect of man. Why, 
 then, may not our sensible ideas be the necessary 
 and yet spontaneous development of our capa- 
 cities of sense ? and why may not their very 
 necessity be regarded as an indication of their 
 subjective source ? As Malebranche advanced half 
 way to Berkeley by acknowledging our sensations 
 to be caused by God, while he contended that our 
 ideas of extension are perceived in Him ; so Kant, 
 advanced half way to Fichte, by insisting that our 
 intuitions of space originate within, while he con- 
 tended that our sensations are determined from 
 without. But why may not the sensations which 
 supply the matter, as well as the intuitions which 
 supply the form, originate within ? Why may not 
 
Plastic Powers of the Soul. 55 
 
 the phenomena of sense be regarded as the mere 
 spray and sparkle thrown up by some central fount 
 of intuition ? Why may not the Soul be regarded 
 as the creator of the world, which, ex hypothesi, 
 exists within ? It is said the world is peopled. But 
 if we believe in the existence of finite spirits, we 
 believe as strongly in the existence of their material 
 bodies ; in fact, it is from believing in the existence 
 of their material bodies that we believe in the exist- 
 ence of finite spirits. But as we might possess all 
 the ideas which we possess, though no external 
 bodies resembling them existed, so we might possess 
 all the ideas which we refer to finite spirits, though 
 there were no finite spirits in existence. Berkeley, 
 in effect, concedes we might. It is God alone, he 
 says, who maintains that intercourse between spirits, 
 whereby they are able to perceive the existence of 
 each other (Prin. cxlvii). But why should philo- 
 sophy have recourse to God for this ? A soul which 
 could create the world within, and then project it 
 outward, could surely people its creation. For what 
 says Cudworth ? " There is also another more in- 
 terior plastic power in the soul, if we may so call it, 
 whereby it is formative of its own cognitions, which 
 itself is not always conscious of ; as when, in sleep 
 or dreams, it frames interlocutory discourses be- 
 twixt itself and other persons, in a long series, with 
 coherent sense and apt connexions, in which often- 
 times it seems to be surprised with unexpected 
 answers and repartees, though itself were all the 
 while the poet and inventor of the whole fable " 
 
56 Berkeley and Fichte. 
 
 (Works, i. 247). See, then, how Berkeley's argu- 
 ment from dreams and frenzies recoils upon him- 
 self ; see how the law of parcimony serves him. 
 " From my own being" says Philonous, " and 
 from the dependency I find in myself and my 
 ideas, I do, by an act of reason, necessarily infer 
 the existence of a God, and of all created things 
 in the mind of God " (Dial. iii). But what are 
 we to understand by necessary inference, by act of 
 reason? Men cannot believe in the existence of 
 a God more firmly than they believe in the exist- 
 ence of the world; and rejecting the most powerful 
 of the spontaneous beliefs of humanity, Berkeley 
 cannot consistently appeal to common sense. By 
 necessary inference, therefore, he must mean either 
 mathematical demonstration, or logical contradic- 
 tion. That the mathematical method has no appli- 
 cation in metaphysics is shown conclusively by 
 Hume and Kant. Where then is the logical con- 
 tradiction in the Egoistical doctrine, that there is 
 originally but one substance, the Ego, and that in 
 this one substance all possible accidents, all possible 
 realities, are placed. If we may idealize matter, 
 why may we not deify the mind ? On the prin- 
 ciples of Berkeley, there is no answer to Fichte 
 when he relies on the law of parcimony ; there is 
 no answer even when he contends that the notion 
 of God as a particular substance is contradictory 
 and impossible (Schwegler, 274). 
 
 The Idealism of Berkeley is a bold effort to solve 
 the mystery of existence an ingenious guess at the 
 
Berkeley and Malebranche. 5 7 
 
 eternal riddle of the sphinx an abortive attempt to 
 lift the impenetrable veil. It gives philosophical 
 expression to a vague and floating fancy which will 
 ever haunt the intellects of subtle and refining men. 
 But it is utterly incapable of proof, and it assumes 
 principles which, if we follow them, conduct us to 
 that vast abyss in which man sees nothing reflected 
 but his ignorance and terror. 
 
 Compare for a moment the rival theories of 
 Berkeley and Malebranche. The points of contact 
 between the systems of these famous philosophers 
 are many ; and yet each point of contact suggests a 
 point of contrast. Both of them believed that though 
 the mind is conscious of nothing but its own ideas, it 
 is able to reach the existence which lies beyond the 
 sphere of self. But while the Oratorian recognized 
 the existence of the three great ontological realities, 
 the Anglican recognized the existence of but two. 
 Both of them believed that the being and attributes 
 of God are susceptible of demonstration. But while 
 the Cartesian endeavoured to demonstrate these 
 momentous facts from our idea of infinity, the fol- 
 lower of Locke endeavoured to demonstrate them 
 from the existence and co-ordination of our sensible 
 ideas. Both of them were devout believers in the 
 infallible authority of revelation. But while the 
 Catholic, following the tradition of his Church, 
 clung to the literal interpretation of Scripture, and 
 held that in the beginning Grod created the heavens 
 and the earth ; the Protestant, exercising his right 
 of private judgment, adopted a different method of 
 
58 Malebranche. 
 
 interpretation, and held that the creation spoken of 
 by Moses was a mere metaphysical creation. Each 
 agreed that naturally we have no objective know- 
 ledge of the world of matter. But, while the one 
 admitted its existence on the supposed authority of 
 revelation, the other rejected its existence on the 
 supposed authority of reason. Each admitted that, 
 to explain the generation of our sensible ideas, we 
 must have recourse to God. But while the one 
 identified himself with God as the Universal Sub- 
 stance, the other recognized him rather as the Pri- 
 meval Cause. Both agreed that God is the cause 
 of our sensations. But while Malebranche, following 
 the footsteps of Parmenides and Plato, identified our 
 ideas of the primary qualities with the conceptions 
 of the reason ; Berkeley, pursuing the path of Pro- 
 tagoras, identified those ideas with sensation, and 
 referred them exclusively to sense. Identifying all 
 our sensible ideas with transient and mutable sen- 
 sation, Berkeley regarded them all as modifications 
 of the mind of man ; identifying our ideas of the 
 primary qualities with eternal and immutable con- 
 ceptions, Malebranche regarded these as cognitions 
 of the mind of God. Hence while the idea of Ber- 
 keley was a state of the mind of man subjectively 
 produced by God, the idea, as distinguished from the 
 sensation, of his rival was an act of the mind of God 
 objectively perceived by man. The system of the 
 one was, accordingly, the creation by God of an ideal 
 universe in man ; the system of the other was the 
 vision by man of an actual universe in God. 
 
Pantheism. 59 
 
 But the moment that Malebranche thus attained 
 reality, he was confronted by a perilous dilemma. 
 Is the Divine idea numerically distinct from that of 
 the human being who perceives it ? The cognition 
 of an act beyond the sphere of self is as difficult to 
 realize as the cognition of a world of matter. Is the 
 human idea identical with the divine ? The world 
 of matter, it is true, is gained, but forthwith the 
 phantom of Pantheism stares us in the face. Nor 
 did the Catholic philosopher recoil in the presence of 
 the dreaded apparition. He believed in the imper- 
 sonality of reason. He believed in the existence of 
 the Universal Being. He held that God is the place 
 of spirits, as space is the locus of material things. 
 He held that in God we really lived, and moved, and 
 had our being. And so the Vision of Malebranche 
 dilated into Pantheism, and all human personality 
 disappeared. The existence of God, it is true, was 
 not lost in the hallucinations of self ; but all self, all 
 individuality, was lost in the abyss of God.* 
 
 * II est absolument necessaire que voir ce qu'il y a dans Dieu qui repre- 
 
 Dieu ait en lui-meme les idees de tous sente les etres crees, puisque cela est 
 
 les etres qu'il a crees, puisqu' autre- tres-spirituel, tres-intelligible et tres- 
 
 ment il n'aurait pas pu les produire, et present a 1' esprit. Ainsi 1'esprit peut 
 
 qu'ainsi il voit tous ces etres en con- voir en Dieu les ouvrages de Dieu, 
 
 siderant les perfections qu'il renf erme, suppose que Dieu veuille bien lui 
 
 auxquelles ils ont rapport. II faut de decouvrir ce qu'il y a dans lui qui les 
 
 plus savoir que Dieu est tres-etroite- represente (Rech. L. iii. P. ii. c. vi). 
 ment uni a nos ames par sa presence, Ce qu'ils voient en Dieu est tres- 
 
 de sorte qu'on peut dire qu'il est le imparfait, et Dieu est tres-parfait. 
 
 lieu des esprits, de meme que les Ils voient de la matiere divisible, 
 
 espaces sont en un sens le lieu des figuree, etc., et en Dieu il n' y a rien 
 
 corps. Ces deux choses etant sup- qui soit divisible ou figure ; car Dieu 
 
 posees, il est certain que 1'esprit peut est tout etre, parce qu'il est infini et 
 
60 Fichte. 
 
 Berkeley endeavoured to avoid the precipice 
 which overhangs the Pantheistic gulf, but the path 
 which his philosophy pursued lay in an equally 
 perilous direction. Whatever the result of his phi- 
 losophy may be, Malebranche, at all events, accom- 
 plished his original design. He shared in the divine 
 intelligence ; he incorporated himself with the divine 
 substance ; he became part of God. In doing this 
 he transcended himself ; he grasped reality ; he at- 
 tained the object. / Berkeley attempted to reach 
 external existence by the principle of causality. But 
 the principle of causality is, at best, a mere principle 
 of reason ; and a principle of reason is essentially 
 subjective ; and how can a subjective principle give 
 us an objective fact ?/ The eagle, however powerful 
 his pinion, cannot soar out of, cannot outsoar, him- 
 self. The mind, however powerful its principles, 
 cannot, by their aid alone, transcend the mind. Let 
 it mount into the heavens, or plunge into the abyss, 
 it is still the soul, and nothing but the soul the soul 
 concentrated in itself and its beliefs. It may believe, 
 but what is the value of belief on the principles 
 
 qu'il comprend tout ; mais il n'est pressed himself horrified at the idea 
 
 aucun etre en particulier. Cependant that any resemhlance between the two 
 
 ce que nous voyons n'est qu'un ou systems should be detected. But as 
 
 plusieurs etres en particulier ; et nous M. Simon remarks : 'Avait-il quelque 
 
 ne comprenons point cette simplicite conscience confuse des rapports de sa 
 
 parfaite de Dieu qui renferme tous les philosophic avec celle de Spinosa ? 
 
 etres (ibid.). Ou cette profonde horreur venait-elle 
 
 The resemblance between the sys- seulementde 1' existence d'un analogie 
 
 tern of Malebranche and that of qui 1'irritait contre Spinosa sans qu'il 
 
 Spinosa was the subject of a corre- en reconnut le motif ?' 
 
 spondence between Malebranche and The words with which M. Simon 
 
 Dortous de Mairan. Malebranche ex- closes his Introduction to his edition 
 
Panegoism. 6 1 
 
 of Berkeley ? Repudiating the belief in matter, and 
 reducing it to a mere series of sensations repudiat- 
 ing the belief in space, and reducing it to the mere 
 absence of resistance repudiating the belief in time, 
 and reducing it to the mere succession of ideas how 
 can Berkeley, with any degree of plausibility, insist 
 on the belief that every quality must be supported 
 by a substance, and that every change must be pro- 
 duced by an efficient cause ? But even if the vali- 
 dity of the principles of substance and causation be 
 conceded^-if it be conceded that the soul is at once 
 a substance and a cause the concession is in vain. 
 The being of a Spirit powerful, and wise, and good 
 may be sufficient to account for all the phenomena 
 presented to the mind ; but then comes the Egoist, 
 with his irreverent and inexorable law. You have 
 the principle of causality why postulate the exist- 
 ence of any cause beyond yourself ? If the soul can 
 create the world, and people it with finite spirits, 
 why may not it create the Infinite himself ? The 
 Infinite is the mere imagination of the finite God, 
 like the giant phantom of the Hartz, is the mere 
 
 of the works of Malebranche, are mode pour le vulgaire de se debarasser 
 
 equally applicable to Berkeley, who, ainsi du fardeau de 1' admiration, et 
 
 notwithstanding the vast stimulus d' avoir pitie des hommes de genie ! 
 
 which he has given to speculation, Ce fou de Malebranche est une de nos 
 
 has been assailed by the same shallow grandes gloires nationales ; ses visions 
 
 wit which said of Malebranche metaphysiques sont une ecole de sa- 
 
 He who in God sees all things pass, gesse et de prof onde philosophic, et 
 
 Sees he not there that he's an ass ? plaise a Dieu, pour 1'honneur de la 
 
 I In mechant vers de Faydit philosophic et les progres de 1'esprit 
 
 Lui qui voit tout en Dieu, humain, qu'il puisse naitre encore des 
 
 N'y voit pas qu'il est fou ? reveurs comme lui ! (Oeuvres de Male- 
 
 eut une fortune immense. II est com- branc/ic, i. 27). 
 
62 Hume. 
 
 self -projection of the soul God is nothing but the 
 moral order. Here, then, we find ourselves at the 
 opposite end of the diameter of thought. Flying 
 from Malebranche, we are met by Fichte. The 
 Pantheism of the one philosopher is exchanged for 
 the Panegoism of the other. The world of matter 
 fades into a dream ; all finite spirits vanish ; God 
 is a mere vision of the night ; and the soul is left 
 the solitary of the universe the universe is ab- 
 sorbed in self. 
 
 But even this utter desolation is not the end. 
 The substantial existence of the soul is inferred by 
 Berkeley from the principle of substance, just as 
 the existence of God is inferred by him from the 
 principle of causation. But if the finite spirit is a 
 substance, the infinite spirit is a substance also ; 
 and this suggests a problem the existence of which 
 Berkeley does not seem to have suspected. What is 
 the relation of the two substances, which in kind 
 are one ? Is the finite substance part and parcel of 
 the infinite ? We then have a single absolutely in- 
 finite substance, but it is the substance of Spinoza. 
 Is the finite substance additional to the infinite ? 
 The infinite then ceases to be infinite, and we are 
 involved in a contradiction more dangerous than 
 any attributed to Newton. But what is true of the 
 principle of causality is true of the principle of sub- 
 stance also ; it is only a belief insisted on by one 
 who disregards beliefs. In fact Berkeley admits 
 that it will be found no easy task to abstract the 
 existence of a spirit from its cogitation (Prin. xcviii). 
 
Mill. 63 
 
 Here, then, the theological idealist reaches the 
 position where Hume and Hegel are entrenched, 
 and proclaims the identity of thought with being. 
 In the system of Berkeley this element lies 
 latent; but in the system of Hume it is evolved, 
 developed, and avowed. Hume denies the exist- 
 ence, not only of corporeal, but of incorporeal 
 substance (Works, i. 33). He maintains that 'the 
 idea of existence is the very same with the idea of 
 what we conceive to be existent' (i. 96). He holds 
 that ' our perceptions may exist separately, and 
 have no need of anything else to support their 
 existence' (i. 299). He boldly asserts that man is 
 * nothing but a bundle or collection of different per- 
 ceptions, which succeed each other with an incon- 
 ceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and 
 movement' (i. 321). It is true that, in his Essays, 
 the work which he expressly desired to be regarded 
 as alone containing his philosophical opinions, he 
 does not repeat these various assertions. But his 
 earlier creed has survived him, and is the creed 
 of his disciples. Following in the footsteps of 
 Berkeley, Mill defines matter to be a permanent 
 possibility of sensation (Exam. 233) ; following in 
 the footsteps of Hume, he defines mind to be a 
 permanent possibility of feeling (p. 241). Claiming 
 to be a Berkeleian, he discards the ministering prin- 
 ciples of the philosophy of Berkeley, causality and 
 substance. He accepts the doctrine that the mind 
 is a mere series of sensations a series which is 
 destitute of substance a thread of consciousness, 
 
64 Nihilism. 
 
 which, though it may be prolonged for ever, is not 
 a thread, but an abstraction (Exam. 246). 
 
 This, then, is the result in which the philosophy 
 of Berkeley ends. The philosophy which was to 
 banish atheism, and idolatry, and irreligion from 
 the world ; the philosophy which was to renovate 
 the sciences, which was to purify morals, which 
 was to spiritualize religion, which was to bring man 
 face to face with Grod this high and aspiring phi- 
 losophy but ends in this. Denying all objective 
 knowledge of existence, it restricts itself to the 
 region of belief ; denying the most powerful of be- 
 liefs, it enters upon the desert waste of speculation, 
 with no guide but the wandering gleam, the ignis 
 fatuus of fancy. Led by this delusive light, it 
 glides past the Pantheism of Malebranche; it tra- 
 verses the Panegoism of Fichte ; it ends in the 
 Nihilism of Mill. Bereft of all metaphysical aid, it 
 sees nothing in the world but self; in self it sees 
 nothing but sensation. It beholds all reality, all 
 existence, fade away. It recognises nothing but 
 images, which are images of nothing. The con- 
 ception of the poet is realised 
 
 And Nought is everything, and everything is Xought. 
 
PROBLEMATICAL IDEALISM: 
 
 OE 
 
 HUME. 
 

PROBLEMATICAL IDEALISM: 
 
 HUME. 
 
 wttfl contentio quae adhuc permamerit ; nam illud, 
 nulli rei assensurum esse sapientem nihil ad hoc controversiam pertine- 
 bat; licebat enim nihil percipere et tamen opinari, quod a Carneade 
 dicitur probatum. Cic. ACAD. ii. 24. 
 
 WHEN David Hume, at the age of twenty-sever^ was 
 concluding the Treatise which contained the germ 
 of the Kritik of the Pure Reason, he professed him- 
 self to be affrighted and confounded with the forlorn 
 solitude in which he was placed by his philosophy. 
 He fancied himself some strange, uncouth monster, 
 who had been expelled all human converse, and left 
 utterly abandoned. " Everyone keeps at a dis- 
 tance," he said, u and dreads the storm which beats 
 upon me from every side. I have exposed myself 
 to the enmity of all metaphysicians, logicians, 
 mathematicians, and even theologians ; and can 
 I wonder at the insults I must suffer ? I have 
 
 F 2 
 
68 Dead-lorn. 
 
 declared my disapprobation of their systems; and 
 can I be surprised if they should express a hatred of 
 mine, and of my person ? When I look abroad, I 
 foresee on every side dispute, contradiction, anger, 
 calumny, and detraction" (Works, i. 335). 
 
 Never was expectation more fully realized ; 
 never was prophecy more literally fulfilled. It 
 is true that the Treatise of Human Nature, like 
 the Kritik of the Pure Reason, fell apparently 
 6 dead-born ' from the press. It is true that, to 
 take Hume's own account of the matter, it did not 
 even reach such distinction as to excite a murmur 
 among ' the zealots.' But the dead birth of the new 
 philosophy was only a case of suspended animation, 
 and the absence of the murmur was only the pre- 
 lude to the storm. Never since the days when, in 
 the words of Warburton, the whole Church militant 
 was thundering on the steel cap of the philosopher 
 of Malmesbury, had there been developed so fierce a 
 manifestation of general dislike as was roused by 
 the philosophy of Hume. The effect on the for- 
 tunes of the philosopher was injurious enough. He 
 was denounced before the General Assembly of the 
 Church of Scotland. He was rejected as a candi- 
 date for the Chair of Morals in the University of 
 Edinburgh. He was compelled to resign his ap- 
 pointment of Librarian to the Faculty of Advocates. 
 Even his fast friend, Lord Hertford, was afraid to 
 take him to Ireland when he was appointed to 
 the Lord Lieutenancy, and left the obnoxious 
 philosopher as Secretary of the Embassy at Paris. 
 
Detraction. 69 
 
 Among the Parisian freethinkers and fine ladies, 
 Hume, to use his own description of his course of 
 life, ate nothing but ambrosia, drank nothing but 
 nectar, breathed nothing but incense, and trod on 
 nothing but flowers. But among his own country- 
 men, again to use his own expression, he was looked 
 on as a monster. As the type of the sentiments with 
 which he was regarded by his contemporaries, 
 we may take Johnson and the literary circle of 
 which he was the centre. The contemptuous lan- 
 guage iii which Johnson habitually indulged, when 
 speaking of him, is familiar to every reader of Bos- 
 well. The philosopher, whom Reid acknowledged 
 as his master, and who aroused Kant from his dog- 
 matic slumber, was derided as a mere sciolist. He 
 was a shallow fellow, a vain creature, a mere imi- 
 tator of Voltaire. He was an enemy of the human 
 race, from whom all the courtesies of contro- 
 versy might be lawfully withheld. He was to be 
 jostled down as a chimney-sweep ; he was to be 
 knocked on the head like a highwayman ; he was to 
 be treated with as little ceremony as a detected de- 
 bauchee. He had only lumieres enough to light him 
 on his way to hell. This was the language habitu- 
 ally employed by the most eminent literary man of 
 the age, when speaking of the philosopher who was 
 known in foreign society as ' the good David,' who 
 was delineated by Mackenzie as * the good La Roche,' 
 who was acknowledged even by Bos well to be better 
 than his books, and who was said by the author of 
 the Wealth of Nations to have approached as nearly 
 
70 Misconceptions. 
 
 to the ideal of a perfectly wise and good man as the 
 imperfection of humanity would permit. 
 
 Nor has Hume's philosophy escaped the detrac- 
 tion to which his character has been exposed. The 
 great thinker, who determined the whole subsequent 
 development of European thought, has been de- 
 scribed as a paradoxical philosopher, who believed 
 that there could be no belief. Upon the principles he 
 borrowed from Locke and Berkeley, Hume, accord- 
 ing to Reid, reared a system of absolute scepticism, 
 which leaves no rational ground to believe any one 
 proposition rather than its contrary (Works, 295). 
 Hume, says Stewart, ended where Descartes began, 
 and considered no one proposition as more certain, or 
 even as more probable, than another (Works, i. 437). 
 The great speculator, says Mackintosh, aimed at 
 proving that from the structure of the understand- 
 ing we are doomed for ever to dwell in absolute 
 and universal ignorance (Works, i. 136). In fact, 
 the scepticism attributed to Hume by the Scot- 
 tish School was that which the doctor expounds 
 to Sganarelle : Notre philosophe ordonne de ne 
 point e*noncer de proposition decisive, de parler de 
 tout avec incertitude, de suspendre toujours son 
 jugement. Sir William Hamilton, it is true, offers to 
 explain away this ultra- Pyrrhonian doubt. "Hume," 
 he says, " as a legitimate sceptic, could not assail the 
 foundations of knowledge in themselves ; his rea- 
 soning is from their subsequent contradiction to 
 their original falsehood ; and his principles, not 
 established by himself, are accepted only as princi- 
 
True Position. 71 
 
 pies universally conceded in the previous schools " 
 (Disc. 87). But even this, as we shall see, involves 
 an error as palpable as that of Mackintosh, of 
 Stewart, and of Reid. The only member of the 
 Scottish school who seems to have formed any just 
 conception of the scope of Hume's philosophy was 
 Brown. On the question of the existence of an ex- 
 ternal world he saw that Hume was, in reality, at 
 one with Reid (Works, ii. 89). But even Brown 
 should have gone still further, for it may be demon- 
 strated that on all the leading questions of philo- 
 sophy Hume was in reality at one with Kant. 
 
 The Treatise of Human Nature was principally 
 composed a La Fleche the little town in Anjou, in 
 the Jesuits' College of which Descartes received his 
 education. Planned before he was twenty-one, 
 composed before he was twenty-five, and published 
 before he was twenty-seven, the Treatise antici- 
 pating, as it does, the problem, the method, the 
 solution, and the results, which Kant proclaimed 
 in the Kritik at the age of sixty, must ever be 
 regarded as one of the miracles of precocious genius. 
 The leading doctrines of the Treatise of Human 
 Nature, as is well known, were subsequently repro- 
 duced in the Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, 
 which Hume, in his advertisement, desired might be 
 regarded as alone containing his philosophical sen- 
 timents and principles. But the general complexion 
 of the two productions is the same qualis decet 
 esse sororum and the elder bears the palm. The 
 Treatise is immortal, though disowned. It em- 
 
72 Copernicus and Newton. 
 
 bodies one of the permanent types of philosophi- 
 cal opinion. Men may differ as to the justice of 
 the conclusions at which it arrived ; but its impor- 
 tance is to be estimated by the influence which it 
 exerted rather than by the information which it 
 conveyed. It imparted a stimulus more powerful 
 than science. Its dogmatism dispelled the ideal- 
 istic dreams of Reid. Its scepticism disturbed the 
 dogmatic sleep of Kant. Its attempt to construct a 
 universe of thought without any metaphysical ad- 
 mixture is the true antecedent of the absolute of 
 Hegel. And, finally, its nihilistic idealism, and 
 empirical conception of geometry, repudiated by 
 Hume himself in his Inquiry, have, in our own 
 time, been revived and offered to the world as a 
 discovery in philosophy by Mill. 
 
 It is by a comparison with Kant that the true 
 philosophical position of Hume is best determined. 
 Paradoxical as the assertion may appear, until it is 
 shown to be the truth, Hume was to Kant what 
 Quesnai was to Smith, and what Copernicus or 
 Kepler was to Newton. With inferior powers of 
 analysis, with less genius for system, with a lower 
 tone of enthusiasm, and with a feebler interest in 
 science, Hume rivalled his illustrious successor, in 
 the clearness of his insight into the nature of the 
 problem to be solved, and the justness of his concep- 
 tion of the method of solution. In every direction 
 he approached, and on many of its most important 
 points he actually reached, the position which was 
 assumed by Kant. In fact his Treatise of Human 
 
The Treatise and the KritiJc. 73 
 
 Nature may be described as the Kritik of the Pure 
 Reason in its rudimentary and undeveloped state. 
 It was the premier ebauche of that great design ; and, 
 if it had proceeded from the same author, might be 
 considered in the same light (to borrow a metaphor 
 from an early and forgotten critic of the Treatise) 
 as a juvenile work of Milton, or the first manner of 
 Raphael, compared with the masterpieces of their 
 genius when matured by time. 
 
 The tone of sad but lofty eloquence with which 
 Kant commences his Kritik of the Pure Reason is 
 familiar to every student of philosophy. Metaphy- 
 sics, once the queen of the sciences, he said, had 
 been deposed. Like Hecuba modo maxima rerum 
 she was condemned to poverty and exile. Like 
 Rome, once the mistress of the world, she had been 
 destroyed by internecine feuds, and was the spoil of 
 the barbarians. She was the object of universal in- 
 difference, contempt, and scorn. With an eloquence 
 less lofty, and perhaps with a feeling less profound, 
 the predecessor of Kant indulges in a strain of simi- 
 lar reflection. Philosophy, he said, was in a most 
 unsatisfactory condition. The very rabble out of 
 doors might judge, from the noise and clamour 
 which they heard, that all was not going well 
 within (i. 5). The victory in the field of specula- 
 tion was not gained by the men-at-arms, but by the 
 trumpeters and drummers of the army (i. 6). The 
 philosophers, like the angels, had covered their eyes 
 and obscured their vision with their wings (i. 339). 
 Popular superstitions, like robbers chased from the 
 
74 The Capital of Science. 
 
 open country, had fled into the forest, and lay in 
 wait to break in upon every unguarded avenue of 
 the mind (iv. 10). But Hume, like Kant, perceived 
 that the metaphysical spirit was immortal in the 
 mind of man. It was vain, he said, to hope that 
 men, from frequent disappintment, would abandon 
 such airy speculations (iv. 10). The motive of blind 
 despair could have no place in science. Every ad- 
 venturous genius would find himself stimulated, 
 rather than discouraged, by the failure of his pre- 
 decessors (iv. 1 1 ). " The only expedient from which 
 we can hope for success in our philosophic re- 
 searches/' he says in the Treatise, " is to leave the 
 tedious, lingering method, which we have hitherto 
 followed, and instead of taking now and then a castle 
 or village on the frontier, to march up directly to 
 the capital or centre of these sciences, to human na- 
 ture itself ; which being once masters of, we may 
 everywhere else hope for an easy victory " (i. 8). 
 " The only method of freeing learning at once from 
 these abstruse questions," he says in his later work, 
 "is to inquire seriously into the nature of human 
 understanding, and show, from an exact analysis of 
 its powers and capacity, that it is by no means fitted 
 for such remote and abstruse subjects " (iv. 1 1). 
 It is only ( after deliberate inquiry' that we can 
 reject ; the most uncertain and disagreeable part 
 of learning' (ibid.)] and ' we must submit to this 
 fatigue,' he says, anticipating the very words of 
 Kant, 'in order that we may live at ease for ever 
 after' (ibid.). 
 
The Critique of Reason. 75 
 
 It is true that a dissertation upon the absolute 
 necessity of self-examination as the preliminary step 
 in mental science was no novelty in the history of 
 thought. Bacon had insisted on a thorough purifi- 
 cation of the intellect, before the marriage of the 
 rational and the empirical faculties could be cele- 
 brated for the glory of God and for the benefit of 
 man. Hobbes had proclaimed that philosophy, the 
 child of the world and the mind, was all within; 
 and that it was the function of the thinker, as it 
 was that of the statuary, to remove the superfluous 
 mass, and not to make the image, but to find it. 
 Locke, with still greater distinctness, had enounced 
 the true method of philosophical inquiry ; and his 
 sense of its importance had suggested the composi- 
 tion of his immortal Essay. He had seen that the 
 first step towards satisfying the curiosity of man, in 
 the remote inquiries into which it was so apt to run, 
 was to take a view of the understanding, to examine 
 its powers, and to ascertain the subjects to which it 
 was adapted. It was in vain, he said, that we let 
 loose our thoughts into the vast ocean of being ; it 
 was in vain that we chased the horizon of know- 
 ledge, that ever fled before us. Our prime object 
 should be to consider the capacities of our under- 
 standings ; to discover the extent of our knowledge ; 
 to determine the line which sets the bound between 
 the dark and the enlightened parts of things, be- 
 tween what is and what is not comprehensible by 
 us ; and we should then with less scruple acquiesce 
 in the avowed ignorance of the one, and employ 
 
76 The Practical and Speculative Interest. 
 
 our thoughts and discourse with more advantage 
 and satisfaction on the other. 
 
 In his examination of human nature, the first 
 thing which attracted the observation of Hume was 
 the profound difference which subsists between its 
 practical and its speculative interests. * Nature, by 
 an absolute and uncontrollable necessity,' he says 
 in the Treatise, when speaking of Scepticism with 
 regard to Reason, c has determined us to judge, as 
 well as to breathe or feel ; nor can we any more 
 forbear viewing certain objects in a stronger and 
 fuller light, upon account of their customary con- 
 nexion with a present impression, than we can 
 hinder ourselves from thinking, as long as we are 
 awake, or seeing the surrounding bodies, when we 
 turn our eyes towards them in broad sunshine. 7 
 < Whoever has taken the pains to refute the cavils 
 of this total scepticism,' he adds, ' has really dis- 
 puted without an antagonist, and endeavoured by 
 arguments to establish a faculty, which nature has 
 antecedently implanted in the mind, and rendered 
 unavoidable ' (i. 240). His view of Scepticism with 
 regard to the Senses is as clear as his view of Scep- 
 ticism with regard to Reason. ' The sceptic,' he 
 says, 'still continues to reason and believe, even 
 though he asserts that he cannot defend his reason 
 by reason ; and by the same rule he must assent to 
 the principle concerning the existence of body, 
 though he cannot pretend, by any arguments of 
 philosophy, to maintain its veracity. Nature has 
 not left this to his choice, and has doubtless es- 
 
Reid^s Ignoratio Elenchi. 77 
 
 teemed it an affair of too great importance to be 
 trusted to our uncertain reasonings and speculations. 
 We may well ask, what causes induce us to believe 
 in the existence of body ? but it is in vain to ask 
 whether there be body or not. That is a point 
 which we must take for granted in all our reason- 
 ings ' (i. 245). This distinction of itself dispels a 
 cloud of error. It shows that the Scepticism of 
 Hume is not the contradiction of Mackintosh a 
 belief that there can be no belief (Works, i. 137); 
 for the utmost it can be reduced to is a belief 
 that there can be no knowledge. It shows, more- 
 over, that a considerable portion of the subsequent 
 philosophy of common sense and natural belief was 
 a mere ignoratio elenchi. Hume himself defines his 
 philosophical position. ' My practice you say refutes 
 my doubts,' he says, in speaking of our belief in 
 what is called the uniformity of nature ' but you 
 mistake the purport of my question. As an agent, I 
 am quite satisfied in the point ; but as a philosopher, 
 who has some share of curiosity I will not say 
 scepticism I want to learn the foundation of this 
 inference ' (iv. 47). 
 
 But in point of fact Hume does not even enter- 
 tain the belief that there can be no knowledge ; for 
 nothing can be more dogmatic than the tone which 
 he adopts when, as a philosopher, he proceeds to 
 lay the foundations of his system. l It cannot be 
 doubted,' he says, * that the mind is endowed with 
 several powers and faculties ; that these powers are 
 distinct from each other ; that what is really dis- 
 
78 The Idealist Position. 
 
 tinct to the immediate perception may be distin- 
 guished by reflection ; and consequently that there is 
 a truth and falsehood in all propositions on this sub- 
 ject, and a truth and falsehood which lie not beyond 
 the compass of human understanding ' (iv. 12). Nor 
 did Hume despair of discovering the laws to which 
 our mental phenomena are subjected. Astronomers, 
 he said, had long contented themselves with proving, 
 from the phenomena, the true motions, order, and 
 magnitude of the heavenly bodies, till a philosopher 
 at last arose who seems, from the happiest reason- 
 ing, to have at last determined the laws and forces 
 by which the revolutions of the planets are governed 
 and directed. The like, he said, had been per- 
 formed with regard to other parts of nature ; and 
 there was no reason to despair of equal success in 
 our inquiries concerning the mental powers and 
 economy, if prosecuted with equal capacity and 
 caution (iv. 14). 
 
 In investigating the domain of Human Nature, 
 Hume occupies the idealist position at the very out- 
 set. "It is universally allowed by philosophers," 
 he says, " and is, besides, pretty obvious in itself, 
 that nothing is ever really present with the mind 
 but its perceptions, or impressions and ideas, and 
 that external objects become known to us only by 
 those perceptions they occasion" (i. 97). And he 
 does not shrink from the logical consequence of 
 this. " Since nothing," he says, "is ever present 
 to the mind but perceptions, and since all ideas are 
 derived from something antecedently present to the 
 
The Universe of Imagination. 79 
 
 mind, it follows that it is impossible for us so much 
 as to conceive or form an idea of anything speci- 
 fically different from ideas and impressions. Let 
 us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as pos- 
 sible ; let us chase our imagination to the heavens, 
 or to the utmost limits of the universe ; we never 
 really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can 
 conceive any kind of existence but those percep- 
 tions which have appeared in that narrow compass. 
 This is the universe of imagination, nor have we 
 any idea but what is there produced " (i. 97). 
 
 Such being the universe of imagination, let us 
 see how Hume proceeds to determine the ' mental 
 geography 7 of this ideal realm. All the perceptions 
 of the human mind, he says, resolve themselves 
 into two distinct kinds, which he calls impressions 
 and ideas (i. 15). By the term impression, he would 
 not be understood to express the manner in which 
 our lively perceptions are produced in the soul, but 
 merely the perceptions themselves (i. . 1 6). These 
 impressions might be divided into two kinds, those 
 of sensation and those of reflection (i. 22). " The 
 first kind," he says, " arises in the soul originally, 
 from unknown causes the second is derived in a 
 great measure from our ideas "(ibid.}. An impres- 
 sion first strikes upon the senses of this impres- 
 sion there is a copy taken by the mind, and this we 
 call an idea the idea, when it returns upon the soul, 
 produces passions, emotions, and desires, which may 
 be called impressions of reflection these, again, are 
 copied by the memory and imagination, and become 
 
So Hume's Challenge. 
 
 ideas (ibid.). Ideas are thus the copies of impres- 
 sions. This is the cardinal point of Hume's philo- 
 sophy. " Every one," he says, "may satisfy himself 
 in this point by running over as many ideas as he 
 pleases. But if anyone should deny this universal 
 resemblance, I know no way of convincing him but 
 by desiring him to show a simple impression which 
 has not a corresponding idea, or a simple idea which 
 has not a corresponding impression. If he does not 
 answer this challenge, as it is certain he cannot, we 
 may, from his silence and our own observation, es- 
 tablish our conclusion." " The full examination 
 of this subject," he says, " is the subject of the pre- 
 sent treatise; and therefore we shall here content 
 ourselves with establishing one general proposition 
 That all our simple ideas, in their first appearance, 
 are derived from simple impressions, which are cor- 
 respondent to them, and which they exactly repre- 
 sent "(i. 1 8). 
 
 In professing to have established this general 
 proposition, Hume, it is evident, is so far from scep- 
 tically accepting his premises from Locke, that he 
 dogmatically rejects one of Locke's most important 
 doctrines. Locke, it is true, holds that the simple 
 ideas, which are the ' materials ' of our knowledge, 
 are suggested and furnished by sensation and reflec- 
 tion ; but he also recognizes certain relative ideas, 
 such as those of substance and causation, which are 
 'superadded' to these materials by the action of the 
 understanding, and which, in his controversy with 
 Stillingfleet, he terms < rational ideas.' But Hume 
 
Hume's Dogma. 
 
 refused to follow Locke in this. He dogmatically^ 
 lays it down as an ' obvious principle ' that ' reason 
 alone can never give rise to any original idea,' and 
 this dogma determined the whole subsequent course 
 of his philosophy, and constitutes its most con- 
 spicuous blemish. 
 
 Mr. Hodgson, in his Metaphysical Essay on 
 Time and Space, attributes to Hume the merit of 
 being one of those philosophers who have kept 
 closest to phenomena themselves, without mixing 
 up with their analysis any considerations of their 
 possible origin or causes ; but in doing this, he 
 says, he produced a picture of the universe as if 
 it were ' unconnected,' * incoherent,' and < the work 
 of chance'; and this was especially the case with 
 his theory of causation (p. 33). Curiously enough, 
 Hume anticipated this very objection, and was 
 most anxious to avert its force. " Were ideas en- 
 tirely loose and unconnected," he says, "chance alone 
 would join them ; and it is impossible the same 
 simple ideas should fall regularly into complex ones, 
 as they commonly do, without some bond of union 
 among them, some associating quality, by which 
 one idea naturally introduces another" (i. 26). 
 
 The faculty by which our simple ideas are com- 
 bined is the Imagination; and the principles of asso- 
 ciation by means of which it combines them are 
 resemblance, contiguity, and causation (i. 26). "It 
 is plain," says Hume, "that in the course of our 
 thinking, and in the constant revolution of our 
 
 G 
 
82 HumJs Synthesis. 
 
 ideas, our imagination runs easily from one idea to 
 any other that resembles it, and that this quality 
 alone is to the fancy a sufficient bond and associa- 
 tion. It is likewise evident that as the senses, in 
 changing their objects, are necessitated to change 
 them regularly, and take them as they lie contigu- 
 ous to each other, the imagination must, by long 
 custom, acquire the same method of thinking, and 
 run along the parts of space and time in conceiving 
 its objects. As to the connexion of cause and effect 
 we shall have occasion afterwards to examine it to 
 the bottom, and therefore shall not at present insist 
 upon it" (i. 27). u Here," says Hume, " is a kind 
 of attraction, which in the mental world will be 
 found to have as extraordinary effects as in the 
 natural" " its effects are everywhere conspicuous; 
 but as to its causes, they are mostly unknown, and 
 must be resolved into original qualities of human 
 nature, which I pretend not to explain " (i. 29). 
 
 But in Hume's philosophy, as in Kant's, the 
 work of the imagination is only preliminary to the 
 work of the Understanding proper. " Among the 
 effects of this union or association of ideas," he 
 says, " there are none more remarkable than those 
 complex ideas, which are the common subjects of 
 our thoughts and reasoning, and generally arise 
 from some principle of union among our simple 
 ideas" (i. 29). These complex ideas, following the 
 example of Locke, he divides into modes, substances, 
 and relations (ibid.]. Modes are artificial and arbi- 
 
Hume's Categories. 83 
 
 trary combinations (i. 34). l The idea of a sub- 
 stance is nothing but a collection of simple ideas 
 that are united by the imagination,' and are ' sup- 
 posed to be closely and inseparably connected by 
 the relations of contiguity and causation ' (i. 33). 
 This is evidently Kant's synthesis of the imagina- 
 tion. But if anyone wishes to see how nearly 
 Hume approached the Kantian position, we must 
 examine his analysis of philosophical relations. 
 
 " It may, perhaps, be esteemed an endless task," 
 says Hume, " to enumerate all those qualities which 
 make objects admit of comparison, and by which the 
 ideas of philosophical relation are produced" (i. 30). 
 " But," he continues, u if we diligently consider 
 them, we shall find that, without difficulty, they 
 may be comprised under seven general heads, which 
 may be considered as the sources of all philosophical 
 relation " (ibid.). These seven general heads are 
 Resemblance Identity the relations of Space and 
 Time the relations of Quantity and Number the 
 relations of Quality and Degree the relation of 
 Contrariety and the relation of Causes and Effects 
 (i. 30, 98). These relations are the Categories of 
 Hume. The defects of his analysis are patent. It 
 is guided by 110 definite preconception. It mingles 
 analytic principles such as identity and contrariety 
 with synthetic principles, such as quantity and qua- 
 lity and relation proper. It makes no distinction 
 between the forms of space and time and the cate- 
 gories of substance and causation. It excludes sub- 
 stance from the list of relations, and treats of it 
 
 G 2 
 
84 Hume's Analytic of Principles. 
 
 under an independent head.* But it is quite evi- 
 dent that, whatever may be its defects, this ana- 
 lysis of philosophical relations contains the germ of 
 Kant's Analytic of Conceptions, and that the rela- 
 tions of Hume are the categories of Kant in their 
 rudimentary or embryo condition. 
 
 But Hume not only gives an Analytic of Con- 
 ceptions he gives an Analytic of the Principles 
 in which they are embodied. In his chapter on 
 Knowledge he divides the seven relations into two 
 classes ' into such as depend entirely on the ideas 
 which we compare together, and such as may be 
 changed without any change in the ideas ' (p. 98). 
 If we follow out this distinction, " it appears," he 
 says, " that of these seven philosophical relations 
 there remain only four which, depending solely on 
 ideas, can be the objects of knowledge and cer- 
 tainty. These four are resemblance, contrariety, 
 degrees in quality, and proportions in quantity and 
 number. Three of these relations are discoverable 
 at first sight, and fall more properly under the 
 province of intuition than demonstration" (i. 99), 
 which, as we shall see, is restricted to the relations 
 of quantity and number (iv. 190). " This," says 
 Hume in his chapter on Probability, " is all I think 
 necessary to observe concerning those four relations 
 which are the foundation science ; but as to the 
 
 * Kant, however, admits that sub- (p. 140) ; and he also admits that 
 
 stance is to be regarded as a category, substance is more easily recognized 
 
 not because it is itself relative, but through the conception of action than 
 
 because it is the condition of relation through that of permanence (p. 151). 
 
Hume's Second Challenge. 85 
 
 other three, which depend not on the idea, and may 
 be absent or present while that remains the same, it 
 will be proper to explain them more particularly. 
 These three relations are identity, the situations in 
 time and place, and causation" (i. 103). Of these 
 the most important is causation, for "it is only 
 causation which produces such a connexion as to 
 give us assurance from the existence or action of 
 one object that it was followed or preceded by any 
 other existence or action. Nor can the other two 
 relations ever be made use of in reasoning, except 
 so far as they either affect or are affected by it ' 
 (i. 104). With reference to the principles thus 
 established, Hume gives a second challenge to phi- 
 losophers to adduce any proposition which is in- 
 tuitively certain besides those which he admits. 
 " Anyone who would assert it to be intuitively cer- 
 tain," he says, " must deny these to be the only in- 
 fallible relations, and must find some other relation 
 of that kind to be implied in it, which it will then 
 be time enough to examine " (i. 1 10). 
 
 It is evident from this that while Hume rejects 
 what is roughly called Locke's Theory of the Origin 
 of Ideas, he accepts his Theory of the Origin of 
 Knowledge, which distinguishes between certain 
 and universal knowledge on the one hand, and ex- 
 perimental knowledge on the other (iv. iii. 29), and 
 which bases the latter on * experience ' and refers 
 the former to ' intuitive evidence ' and to ' reason ' 
 (iv. xii. 9). But whether we have regard to our 
 conceptions or to the principles which they suggest ; 
 
86 Essential Substance. 
 
 whether we consider Hume's theory of ideas or his 
 theory of knowledge, Locke's philosophy supplies an 
 answer to the double challenge of Hume, and shows 
 at once that all our ideas are not copied from our 
 impressions, and that the relations of quantity and 
 number are not the only principles of which we 
 may be intuitively certain. 
 
 Of the creatures and inventions of the under- 
 standing which were recognised by Locke, he places 
 in the forefront of his philosophy the idea of Sub- 
 stance which all our ideas of substances suppose. 
 1 c When we talk or think of any particular sort of 
 corporeal substances," he says, " though the idea 
 we have of them be but a complication or collection 
 of those several simple ideas of sensible qualities 
 which we used to find united in the thing," yet, 
 " because we cannot conceive how they should sub- 
 sist alone, nor one in another, we suppose them ex- 
 isting in, and supported by, some common subject " 
 (ii. xxiii. 4). This was the supposition of we know 
 not what, which in the Indian story underlay the 
 tortoise which supported the elephant which sus- 
 tained the world (s. 2). All this was foolishness to 
 Hume. " The opinions of the philosophers about 
 substance and accident," he said, " are like the 
 spectres in the dark, and are derived from prin- 
 ciples which, however common, are neither uni- 
 versal nor unavoidable in human nature" (i. 290). 
 1 We have no idea of substance ' he said, ' distinct 
 from that of a collection of particular qualities ' 
 (i. 33). He repeats his challenge. " I desire those 
 
Efficient Cause. 87 
 
 philosophers," he says, "who pretend we have an 
 idea of the substance of our minds, to point out the 
 impression that produces it, and tell distinctly after 
 what manner that impression operates, and from 
 what object it is derived" (i. 298). His " conclu- 
 sion" is "that since all our perceptions are different 
 from each other, and from everything else in the 
 universe, they are also distinct and separable, and 
 may be considered as separately existing, and may 
 exist separately, and have no need of anything else 
 to support their existence " (i. 299). 
 
 Or take the idea of Causation, which plays as 
 prominent a part in the philosophy of Hume as the 
 idea of substance does in that of Locke. According 
 to Hume, every impression of sensation c arises in 
 the soul originally from unknown causes ' (i. 22 ). 
 This is a recognition of the non-sensuous cause of 
 our sensations, the nescio quid of Kant. How, then, 
 does Hume account for the idea of Efficient Causes ? 
 Hume is undoubtedly entitled to the credit of seeing 
 that, as far as the external senses are concerned, we 
 only find that one fact is followed by another (iv. 74). 
 He is entitled to the credit of having shown, by an 
 exhaustive analysis, that we have no intuition of 
 efficiency, either in the consciousness of motion, or 
 in the consciousness of effort, or in the conscious- 
 ness of volition, whether exerted on the object, or 
 the organ, or the will (ibid.). But why may we 
 not form the conception of an efficiency of which 
 we have no intuition? Hume's challenge to the 
 philosophers was ' to show a simple impression 
 
88 HumJs Circle. 
 
 which has not a corresponding idea, or a simple 
 idea which has not a corresponding impression ' 
 (i. 1 8). The philosopher produces the conception 
 the simple idea, as Hume calls it of efficient cause. 
 Again, what is Hume's reply? " As we can have 
 no idea of anything which never appeared to our 
 outward sense or inward sentiment," he says, " the 
 necessary conclusion seems to be, that we have no 
 idea of connexion and power at all, and that these 
 words are absolutely without any meaning whatso- 
 ever" (iv. 87). Hume challenges the philosophers to 
 produce any proposition that is intuitively certain 
 besides those of mathematics. The philosopher 
 produces the principle which asserts that whatever 
 began to exist must have a cause of existence ; and 
 Hume replies, that ' anyone who would assert it to 
 be intuitively certain must deny these to the only 
 infallible relations,' which are unalterable so long 
 as the ideas to which they relate remain the same 
 (i. no). Here it is evident that Hume only eludes 
 his adversary by shifting in a circle. " I believe," 
 says Hume, referring to Locke's celebrated chapter 
 upon Power, "that the most general and most 
 popular explication of this matter is to say, that 
 finding from experience that there are several new 
 productions in matter, such as the motions and varia- 
 tions of body, and concluding there must somewhere 
 be a power capable of producing them, we arrive at 
 last, by this reasoning, at the idea of power and 
 efficiency " (i. 208). "But," says Hume, "to be 
 convinced that this explication is more popular than 
 
Hume's Protestation. . 89 
 
 philosophical, we need but reflect on two very 
 obvious principles : first, that reason alone can 
 never give rise to any original idea ; and secondly, 
 that reason, as distinguished from experience, can 
 never make us conclude that a cause or productive 
 quality is absolutely requisite to every beginning of 
 existence" (i. 209, 227). 
 
 Whether any particular intelligence can con- 
 ceive a collection of qualities as existing without 
 essential substance, or can conceive the collection 
 as beginning to exist without an efficient cause, is 
 one of those questions which that particular intelli- 
 gence must determine for itself. Locke found him- 
 self unable to form such a conception, and recognized 
 substance and causation as * relative ideas.' Berkeley 
 found himself unable to form such a conception, and 
 admitted substance and causation into his philoso- 
 phy as ( notions.' Hume protested he could conceive 
 what was inconceivable to Berkeley and to Locke. 
 Rejecting the Berkeleian notion, he consistently 
 rejected the Berkeleian theory in both its aspects. 
 Ignoring the conception of efficiency, he saw no 
 necessity for ascribing our ideas to the Deity as 
 cause ; and ignoring the conception of inhesion, he 
 saw no necessity for looking on the mind as the 
 substance in which ideas must subsist. 
 
 In thus confining himself to the phenomena of 
 the mind, analyzing their laws, and excluding all 
 consideration of their efficient causes and of their 
 subjects of inherence, Hume developed a system of 
 psychological idealism without any metaphysical 
 
QO Thought and Being. 
 
 admixture whatsoever. Recognizing nothing in the 
 world but mind, and recognizing nothing in the 
 mind but a system of perceptions, he regarded per- 
 ception as the sole existence. " There is no impres- 
 sion nor idea of any kind of which we have any 
 consciousness or memory," he says, " that is not 
 conceived as existent ; and it is evident that, from 
 this consciousness, the most perfect idea and assur- 
 rance of being is derived" (i. 95). " From hence," 
 he continues, " we may form a dilemma, the most 
 clear and conclusive that can be imagined, viz., that 
 since we never remember any idea or impression 
 without attributing existence to it, the idea of exist- 
 ence must either be derived from a distinct impres- 
 sion, conjoined with every perception or object of 
 our thought, or must be the very same with the idea 
 of the perception or object " (ibid.). His determina- 
 tion is, that " the idea of existence is the very same 
 with the idea of what we conceive to be existent " 
 (i. 96). He thus reaches the conclusion which 
 Parmenides, from a different starting-point, had 
 reached 
 
 ravTov 8' ecrrt vo&v re Kal OVVCKCV ecrri vo^pa. 
 
 He teaches the doctrine which was taught by Ploti- 
 nus in the Alexandrian schools. He anticipates, in 
 fine, the famous postulate of Hegel, and proclaims 
 the identity of thought and being. 
 
 But if being is identical with thought, the 
 greater is the necessity for thinking. If the ideas 
 of body, which form so large a portion of the sys- 
 
Necessary Connexion. 91 
 
 tern of perceptions, which is called the mind, are 
 mere ' collections,' there must be some process of 
 thinking to collect them. If the mind is but a sys- 
 tem of perceptions linked together by the relation 
 of cause and effect, even in its mere psychological 
 aspect, that relation must be thought. Nor does 
 Hume evade his obligations in this respect, for the 
 main characteristic of his philosophy is his theory 
 of Physical Causation. It is here that he is most con- 
 spicuously on the track of Kant. He anticipates the 
 Kantian view in stating that "the only relation that 
 can be traced beyond our senses, and informs us of 
 existence and objects which we do not see or feel, 
 is causation" (i. 104) that "it is only causation 
 which produces such a connexion as to give us 
 assurance from the existence or action of one object 
 that it was followed or preceded by any other exist- 
 ence or action" (ibid.). He anticipates the Kantian 
 view in stating that the relation of cause and effect 
 is the only relation which involves the idea of a 
 4 necessary connexion' (i. 206). Again he antici- 
 pates the Kantian view when he proclaims that this 
 idea of necessary connexion can never be discovered 
 in the object. " I turn the object on all sides," 
 says Hume, " in order to discover the nature of this 
 necessary connexion, and find the impression, or im- 
 pressions, from which its idea may be derived. 
 When I cast my eye on the known qualities of 
 objects, I immediately discover that the relation of 
 cause and effect depends not in the least on them. 
 When I consider their relations, I can find none but 
 
92 The Copernican Hypothesis. 
 
 those of contiguity and succession, which I have 
 already regarded as imperfect and unsatisfactory. 
 Shall the despair of success make me assert that I 
 am here possessed of an idea, which is not preceded 
 by any similar impression ? This would be too 
 strong a proof of levity and inconsistency ; since 
 the contrary principle has been already so firmly 
 established as to admit of no further doubt, at least, 
 till we have more fully examined the present diffi- 
 culty" (i. 1 08). 
 
 Hume accordingly devotes himself to the investi- 
 gation of the origin of this idea. In this investiga- 
 tion he resolves to " proceed like those who, being 
 in search of anything that lies concealed from them, 
 and not finding it in the place they expected, beat 
 about all the neighbouring fields, without any cer- 
 tain view or design, in hopes their good fortune will 
 at last guide them to what they search for" (i. 108). 
 Like Kant, he resolves to reverse the process. In- 
 stead of regarding the conception as conforming to 
 the object, he asks whether the object might not pos- 
 sibly be regarded as conforming to the conception. 
 " Having found," he says, "that after the discovery 
 of the constant conjunction of any objects, we always 
 draw an inference from one object to another, we 
 shall now examine the nature of that inference, and 
 of the transition from the impression to the idea " ; 
 and " perhaps," he sa}^s, "it will appear in the end 
 that the necessary connexion depends on the infe- 
 rence, instead of the inference's depending on the 
 necessary connexion' (i. 123). 
 
The Kantian Argument. 93 
 
 The argument by which Hume proceeds to esta- 
 blish this position so completely corresponds with 
 that of Kant that it might well be mistaken for an 
 extract from the Kritik. What is the authority for 
 our inference that objects are necessarily connected, 
 and that the future will be a reproduction of the 
 past ? According to Hume, " there can be no de- 
 monstrative arguments to prove that those instances 
 of which we have had no experience resemble those 
 of which we have had experience " ; for " we can at 
 least conceive a change in the course of nature, 
 which sufficiently proves that such a change is not 
 absolutely impossible ' (i. 123). Neither, according 
 to Hume, can the proposition be proved by any 
 arguments from probability ; for " probability is 
 founded on the presumption of a resemblance be- 
 twixt those objects of which we have had expe- 
 rience, and those of which we have had none ; and 
 therefore it is impossible this presumption can arise 
 from probability," inasmuch as "the same principle 
 cannot be both the cause and effect of another " 
 an axiom which Hume regards as i the only propo- 
 sition concerning that relation which is either in- 
 tuitively or demonstratively certain ? (i. 124). But 
 arguments from probability are only arguments 
 from experience, and Hume treats the argument from 
 experience thus : " Should it be said that we have 
 experience that the same power continues united to 
 the same object, and that like objects are endowed 
 with like powers, I would renew my question, why 
 from this experience we form any conclusion be- 
 
94 Hume's Main Question. 
 
 yond those past instances of which we have had ex- 
 perience ? If you answer this question in the same 
 manner as the preceding, your answer gives still 
 occasion to a new question of the same kind, even 
 in infinitum, which clearly proves that the fore- 
 going reasoning had no just foundation" (i. 126). 
 But not only does Hume propose the Kantian 
 question and pursue the Kantian method, but he 
 arrives at the Kantian conclusion. He doubts not 
 but his sentiments will be treated by many as ex- 
 travagant and ridiculous (i. 222), but his conclusion 
 is that " the necessity of power, which unites causes 
 and effects, lies in the determination of the mind to 
 pass from the one to the other," just " as the neces- 
 sity which makes two times two equal to four, or 
 three angles of a triangle equal to two right ones, 
 lies only in the act of the understanding by which 
 we consider and compare these ideas " (i. 220). 
 
 So impressed was Hume with the novelty of his 
 principle and the importance of his discovery that 
 the object of his Inquiry was little more than to 
 popularize the theory of the Treatise on this subject 
 of causation. It was the main question with which 
 he was concerned. "Hume," says Kant, "was 
 wrong in inferring from the contingency of the 
 determination according to law, the contingency of 
 the law itself ; and the passing beyond the concep- 
 tion of a thing to possible experience (which is an a 
 priori proceeding, constituting the objective reality 
 of the conception), he confounded with our synthesis 
 of objects in actual experience, which is always, of 
 
Hume's Formula. 
 
 95 
 
 course, empirical" (p. 466). But, unfortunately for 
 Kant, Hume takes the very distinction which Kant 
 charges him with having overlooked. " These two 
 propositions " " are far from being the same I have 
 found that such an object has always been attended 
 with such an effect ; and I foresee that other objects 
 which are in appearance similar will be attended 
 with similar effects " (iv. 42). " As to past expe- 
 rience" he says, "it can be allowed to give direct 
 and certain information of those precise objects 
 only, and that precise period of time which fell 
 under its cognizance ; but why this experience 
 should be extended to future times and to other ob- 
 jects, which, for aught we know, may be only in 
 appearance similar ; this," he says, " is the main 
 question on which I would insist" (iv. 42). This 
 main question of Hume, it is evident was the 
 question, which, according to Kant, constituted 
 the grand problem of the Transcendental Philo- 
 sophy How are synthetic judgments a priori 
 possible? (pp. 12, 44.) "All our experimental 
 conclusions," he says, "proceed upon the suppo- 
 sition that the future will be conformable to the 
 past : to endeavour, therefore, the proof of this last 
 supposition by probable arguments, or arguments 
 regarding existence, must be evidentally going in 
 a circle, and taking that for granted which is the 
 very point in question" (iv. 44). This may be 
 regarded as the formula of Hume, " To say the 
 inference is experimental," he says, "is begging 
 the question, for all inferences from experience 
 
96 Hume's Pre-established Harmony. 
 
 suppose as their foundation that the future will 
 resemble the past, and that similar powers will be 
 conjoined with similar visible qualities" (iv. 46). 
 " It is impossible," he repeats, " that any arguments 
 from experience can prove this resemblance of the 
 past to the future, since all these arguments are 
 founded on the supposition of that resemblance" 
 (ibid.). How then is the inference to be explained ? 
 It is not an intuitive principle, he says; for "it 
 implies no contradiction that the course of nature 
 may change" (iv. 43). Neither is it a demonstrative 
 truth ; for " there is required a medium which may 
 enable the mind to draw such an inference." How 
 then is it to be explained ? No reading, no inquiry, 
 he says, had been able to remove his difficulty, or 
 give him satisfaction on a matter of such impor- 
 tance (iv. 47). His conclusion was a simple one, 
 though, he confessed, pretty remote from the com- 
 mon theories of philosophy (iv. 56). It was that 
 " as nature has taught us the use of our limbs 
 without giving us the knowledge of the muscles 
 and nerves by which they are actuated, so she has 
 implanted in us an instinct which carries forward the 
 thought in a corresponding course to that which 
 she has established among external objects" (iv. 
 66) ; and that thus there is ' a kind of pre-estab- 
 lished harmony between the course of nature and 
 the succession of our ideas ' (iv. 65) the very con- 
 clusion at which, as we shall hereafter see, the great 
 Transcendentalist himself arrived. 
 
 Hume's anticipation of Kant's theory of causation 
 
Hume's Psychological Dogma. 97 
 
 might have been regarded as complete had it not 
 been for his unfortunate dogma that reason can 
 supply us with no original idea, and that every idea 
 is the copy of an impression. This compelled him, 
 in considering the relation of cause and effect, whe- 
 ther as a philosophical or as a natural relation 
 whether as a comparison of two ideas, or as an asso- 
 ciation between them (i. 225) to confine himself to 
 the related ideas, and ignore the idea of relation. 
 Hence it is that he defines a cause to be < an object 
 precedent and contiguous to another, and so united 
 with it 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' 
 (ibid.). Hence it is that he regards ' the impression 
 which affords us the idea of necessity ' as being the 
 < determination of the mind ' when, ' upon the ap- 
 pearance of one of the objects, the mind is deter- 
 mined by custom to consider its usual attendant, 
 and to consider it in a stronger light upon account 
 of its relation to the first object' (i. 207). But his 
 dogma not only compels Hume to ignore the con- 
 ception of causation, and to distort the conception 
 of necessity which accompanies it, but it compels 
 him to misrepresent the important operation of the 
 mind by which the conception is attended. Ac- 
 cording to Hume, flame is constantly conjoined 
 with heat, and snow is constantly conjoined with 
 cold ; and if, after experience of this constant con- 
 junction, says Hume, ' flame or snow be presented 
 anew to the senses, the mind is carried by custom 
 
 Ji 
 
g8 The Nature of Belief. 
 
 to expect heat or cold, *and to believe that such a 
 quality does exist, and will discover itself upon a 
 nearer approach' (iv. 56). Belief, according to 
 Hume, ' is more properly an act of the sensitive 
 than of the cogitative part of our natures ' (i. 240). 
 Being thus referred to the sensitive portion of our 
 nature, belief comes under the purview of the 
 dogma. According to Hume, it does nothing but 
 vary the manner in which we conceive an object, 
 and can only bestow on our ideas additional vivacity 
 and force ; and accordingly ' belief,' he says, ' may 
 be most accurately defined a lively idea related to 
 or associated with a present impression' (i. 132). 
 It is evident that it would have been far wiser 
 for Hume to have modified his dogma in order to 
 explain these various ideas, rather than to have mu- 
 tilated the ideas in order to retain the dogma. But 
 even in the dogma there is an element of truth. As 
 Hume truly remarks, 'it is impossible for us to think 
 of anything which we have not antecedently felt, 
 either by our external or internal senses' (iv. 73). 
 This is the doctrine of the Kritik; but Kant goes 
 further in his approach to Hume. Though he re- 
 cognises the Categories as the great instrument of 
 thinking, he admits that in themselves they are 
 mere < forms of thought' (p. 174) l mere functions 
 of the understanding' (p. 113) mere rules for the 
 anticipation of experience (p. 160) mere abstrac- 
 tions which, without the aid of the process which he 
 calls schematism, could never be represented as an 
 image (p. no) mere conceptions of the under- 
 
The Effect of Custom. 99 
 
 standing which, apart from intuitions of sense, are 
 absolutely void (p. 46). 
 
 Whether Hume was consistent, in regarding 
 custom as the chronological condition of the deve- 
 lopment of the idea of causation, may well be 
 doubted. If, as he consistently holds, the idea of 
 causation is presupposed in all our experimental 
 conclusions, it must be presupposed in the first of 
 such conclusions as much as in the last. It may be 
 true, as Archer Butler remarks in his Lectures on the 
 History of Ancient Philosophy ', that though habit can- 
 not originate the belief, it may confirm it, and that 
 Hume's theory derives its plausibility from that fact 
 (ii. 87). It may be true, as Bishop Butler remarks 
 in his Analogy, that probable evidence is essentially 
 distinguished from demonstrative by this, that it 
 admits of degrees, and that though a man's having 
 observed the ebb and flow of the tide to-day affords 
 some sort of presumption that it may happen again 
 to-morrow, yet it is only the long-continued expe- 
 rience of mankind which gives us full assurance 
 that it will (pp. i. 2). But in the consideration of 
 Hume's philosophy this is a minor point. The main 
 point is, that he refers the belief in the uniformity 
 of nature not to experience but to instinct. " This 
 instinct," he says, "it is true, arises from past ob- 
 servation and experience ; but can anyone give the 
 ultimate reason why past experience and observa- 
 tion produces such an effect, any more than why 
 nature alone should produce it?" (i. 235). 
 
 It is evident from what precedes that, in his 
 H 2 
 
ioo Hume's View of Space and Time. 
 
 position that all our experimental arguments are 
 based on the anticipation of experience which is 
 implied in the law of physical causation, and that 
 therefore this law must be regarded as a determina- 
 tion of the mind itself, Hume not only recognized 
 the existence of synthetic a priori judgments in all 
 physical science, but showed how such synthetic a 
 priori judgments were possible, by referring them to 
 a determination of the mind. But there is another 
 class of synthetic a priori judgments which Hume 
 recognized, though he did not explain their possi- 
 bility by applying to our intuitions of space and 
 time the reasoning which he had applied to our 
 conception of causation. He held that "the ideas 
 of space and time are no separate or distinct ideas, 
 but merely those of the manner or order in which 
 objects exist" (i. 62); and that " as it is from the 
 disposition of visible and tangible objects we receive 
 the idea of space, so from the succession of ideas 
 and impressions we form the idea of time" (i. 56). 
 But Kant went utterly astray when he charged 
 Locke and Hume with attempting to explain mathe- 
 matical science by an ' empirical derivation' (p. 79). 
 He did not observe that though Hume rejected 
 Locke's theory of the origin of ideas, he accepted 
 Locke's theory of knowledge ; and he did not 
 observe that Locke's theory of knowledge referred 
 the first principles of mathematics to ' intuitive 
 evidence ' and i reason,' just as his theory of ideas 
 recognized the ideas of relation which were the 
 creatures and inventions of the understanding. 
 
Hume's View of Mathematics. 101 
 
 As to Hume's opinion with reference to the 
 a priori character of mathematics, there can be no 
 intelligent diversity of opinion. " All the objects 
 of human reason or inquiry," he says, " may natu- 
 rally be divided into two kinds to wit, Relations of 
 Ideas and Matters of Fact. Of the first tin^a,re the 
 sciences of geometry, algebra, and arithmetic; and;' 
 in short, every affirmation which is eitJier ir*faftivb?y 
 or demonstratively certain. That the square of the 
 hypotenuse is equal to the square of the two sides 
 is a proposition which expresses a relation between 
 these figures. That three times five is equal to the 
 half of thirty expresses a relation between these 
 numbers. Propositions of this kind," he says, " are 
 discoverable by the mere operation of thought with- 
 out dependence on what is anywhere existent in the 
 universe" (iv. 32). In his earlier work, Hume, it 
 is true, had made a distinction between geometry 
 on the one hand, and algebra and arithmetic upon 
 the other. Holding all the primary mathematical 
 relations to be ' discoverable at first sight/ and to 
 fall 'under the province of intuition' (i. 99), he 
 nevertheless had held that geometry never attained 
 perfect precision and exactness, and therefore could 
 scarcely be regarded as a perfect science (i. 100). 
 The objects of geometry, he had said, not only 
 never did, but never could, exist in nature ; no one 
 could pretend to draw a line, or make a surface con- 
 formable to the definition (i. 66). The standard of 
 equality in geometry was, therefore, loose (i. 73), 
 and the mind only proceeds to imagine a standard 
 
IO2 Relations of Ideas and Matter of Existence. 
 
 more correct, as a galley, put in motion by its oars, 
 is carried on its course without a new impulsion 
 (i. 258). But Hume, upon reconsideration, did not 
 care to reaffirm the tenet of his youth. He aban- 
 doned the doctrine of the Treatise, and left it dere- 
 lifct, to 156 r a|)pifopriated as a discovery in the logic 
 of the sciences by his successors. In his Inquiry he 
 nolcls witn^Eo'cke and with Kant that, " though there 
 never were a circle or triangle in nature, the truths 
 demonstrated by Euclid would ever retain their cer- 
 tainty and evidence' 7 (iv. 32), and maintains that all 
 mathematical propositions alike are independent of 
 experience, and that they are alike discoverable by 
 the mere operation of thought. 
 
 Nor was Hume ignorant of the different charac- 
 teristics which distinguish our synthetical a priori 
 judgments in mathematics from our synthetical a 
 priori judgments in experimental science. " All other 
 inquiries of men," he says, " regard only Matter of 
 Fact and Existence; and these are evidently incapable 
 of demonstration," since ' the existence of any being 
 can only be proved by arguments from its cause or 
 its effect' (iv. 34). Nor are the physical sciences 
 an exception to this general assertion ; for though 
 6 every part of mixed mathematics proceeds upon 
 the supposition that certain laws are established by 
 nature in her operations ' still ' the discovery of the 
 law itself is owing merely to experience ' (iv. 39). 
 * The contrary of every matter of fact is still 
 possible, because it can never imply a contradic- 
 tion, and is conceived by the mind with the same 
 
Mathematical and Dynamical Principles. 103 
 
 facility and distinctness as if ever so conformable 
 to reality,' and therefore the evidence of its truth, 
 however great, is not of a like nature with the 
 evidence of mathematics (iv. 33). And Hume 
 proceeds to develop the difference between them. 
 1 The component parts of quantity and number,' 
 he says, i are entirely similar J whereas ' all other 
 ideas are clearly distinct and different from each 
 other ' (iv. 1 90) for c in this kind of reasoning 
 from causation we employ materials which are of 
 a mixed or heterogeneous nature ' (i. 117). Although 
 necessity is always ascribed to causes and effects, 
 yet ' we have no notice of any necessity of con- 
 nexion' beyond 'the constant conjunction of simi- 
 lar objects and the consequent inference from one 
 to the other ' in the course of our experience 
 (iv. 97 ; i. 206) ; for l it is only experience which 
 teaches us the nature and bounds of cause and 
 effect, and enables us to infer the existence of one 
 object from that of another' (iv. 191). But i while 
 we cannot give a satisfactory reason why we believe 
 after a thousand experiments, that a stone will fall, 
 or fire burn ; can we ever satisfy ourselves concern- 
 ing any determination which we may form with 
 regard to the origin of worlds, and the situation of 
 nature from and to eternity ? ' (iv. 1 90). ( It seems 
 to me,' then, says Hume, ' that the only objects 
 of the abstract sciences, or of demonstration, are 
 quality and number, and that all attempts to extend 
 this more perfect species of knowledge beyond their 
 bounds are mere sophistry and illusion' (iv. 191). 
 
IO4 Hume's Rational Psychology. 
 
 It must be clear to the student of the Kantian 
 philosophy that Hume's Relations of Ideas and 
 Matter of Fact correspond to the Mathematical and 
 Dynamical Principles of the Understanding, as Kant 
 explains them in the Kritik the one relating to 
 intuition alone, the other to the existence of phe- 
 nomena (p. 121) the one effecting a synthesis of 
 the homogeneous, the other a synthesis of things 
 which, although heterogeneous, are represented a 
 priori as connected by the principles of causality 
 and substance (p. 122); the one constitutive of 
 the phenomena so as to determine their existence, 
 the other regulative of the understanding, so as to 
 render possible their apprehension (p. 135) ; the one 
 characterized by an absolute necessity, the other 
 only conditionally (p. 121), and hypothetically 
 (p. 170) necessary; the one, in fine, supplying a 
 basis for mathematics as an apodeictic science, the 
 other supplying a basis for natural science within 
 the limits of experience, but supplying no basis for 
 a science of metaphysics, considered as a science of 
 supersensible existence (p. 328). 
 
 And in showing that metaphysics, as contrasted 
 with the physical sciences and mathematics, are 
 mere sophistry and illusion, Hume again antici- 
 pates the method and the arguments of Kant. If 
 Kant in his Rational Psychology declares that the 
 mind has no intuition of itself, and that we can 
 never ascertain by reasoning whether there exists 
 any object to correspond to our conception of the 
 soul as a substance, simple, identical, and distinct 
 
Hume's Transcendental Theology. 105 
 
 from body (pp. 239, 244) Hume maintains that 
 others 'may perceive something simple and con- 
 tinued which he calls himself: but he is certain 
 that there is no such principle in him (i. 321); 
 and the fact that we have no satisfactory notice of 
 substance, whether mental or material, seems to him 
 a sufficient reason for abandoning utterly that dis- 
 pute concerning the materiality and immateriality 
 of the soul and makes him absolutely condemn the 
 very question (i. 299). In his Transcendental The- 
 ology Kant proclaims that the fallacy of every 
 attempt of the speculative reason to establish the 
 existence of a Grod by way of demonstration is 
 shown by this that "in whatever way the under- 
 standing may have attained to a conception, the 
 existence of the object of the conception cannot be 
 discovered in it by analysis, because the cognition 
 of the existence of the object depends upon the 
 object's being posited and given in itself apart from 
 the conception " (p. 392). These are the very 
 words of Hume. " In the proposition God is, or 
 indeed any other which regards existence, the idea 
 of existence is no distinct idea which we unite with 
 that of the object, and which is capable of forming 
 a compound idea by the union" (i. 132). The 
 inference of an Intelligent Cause is uncertain ' be- 
 cause the subject lies entirely beyond the reach of 
 human experience ' (iv. 166) ; and ' it is only expe- 
 rience which teaches us the nature and bounds of 
 cause and effect, and enables us to infer the exist- 
 ence of one object from that of another ' (iv. 191). 
 
io6 Hume's Rational Cosmology. 
 
 But nowhere, according to Hume, is the so- 
 phistry and illusion of the so-called metaphysical 
 sciences more patent than in the attempts that have 
 been made to establish a system of Rational Cosmo- 
 logy r , and to demonstrate the existence of an external 
 world of matter. It was with regard to the Senses 
 that his scepticism was most pronounced. The trite 
 topics which Cicero, as the representative of the 
 Academic school, had adduced, when arguing with 
 Lucullus, Hume did not insist on. He proposed an 
 argument more profound than that based upon the 
 crooked appearance of the oar in water, or the 
 shifting colours on the bosom of the dove (iv. 176). 
 He acknowledged it to be evident that " men are 
 carried by a natural instinct, or prepossession, to 
 repose faith in their senses ; and that, without any 
 reasoning, or even almost before the use of rea- 
 son, we always suppose an external universe which 
 depends not on our perception, but would exist 
 though we and every sensible creature were absent 
 or annihilated" (iv. 177). But, he said, " it seems 
 also evident, that when men follow this blind and 
 powerful instinct of nature, they always suppose the 
 very images presented by their senses to be the 
 external objects, and never entertain any suspicion 
 that the one are nothing but representations of the 
 other" (iv. 177). "But this universal and primary 
 opinion of all men," he says, "is soon destroyed by 
 the slightest philosphy, which teaches us that no- 
 thing can ever be present to the mind but an image 
 or perception, and that the senses are only the in- 
 
Hume's Cosmological Dialectic. 107 
 
 lets through which these images are conveyed, with- 
 out being able to produce any immediate intercourse 
 between the mind and the object" (iv. 177). " So 
 far, then/' he continues, " are we necessitated by 
 reasoning to contradict, or depart from, the primary 
 instincts of nature, and to embrace a new system 
 with regard to the evidence of our senses "(iv. 178). 
 " But here philosophy finds herself extremely em- 
 barrassed when she would justify this new system, 
 and obviate the cavils and objections of the scep- 
 tics" (iv. 178). It is evident that ' it is a question of 
 fact whether the perceptions of the senses be pro- 
 duced by external objects resembling them'; and 
 this question of fact, like all other questions of fact, 
 must be determined by experience. " But here," says 
 Hume, " experience is and must be silent, for the 
 mind has never anything present to it but the per- 
 ceptions, and cannot possibly reach any experience 
 of their connexion with objects' (iv. 179). Is the 
 question then to be determined by reason ? ' To 
 justify the pretended philosophical system by a 
 chain of clear and consistent argument exceeds the 
 power of all human capacity' (iv. 178); " for by 
 what argument," he asks, " can it be proved that 
 the perceptions of the mind must be caused by ex- 
 ternal objects, entirely different from them, though 
 resembling them, if that be possible, and could not 
 arise either from the energy of the mind itself, or 
 from the suggestion of some invisible or unknown 
 spirit, or from some other cause still more unknown 
 to us?" (iv. 178; i. 117). This, then, is the philo- 
 
io8 Hume's Cosmological Dilemma. 
 
 sophical position. "Do you follow the instincts and 
 propensities of nature in assenting to the veracity of 
 sense ? But these lead you to believe that the very 
 perception or sensible image is the external object. 
 Do you disclaim this principle in order to embrace 
 a more rational opinion that the perceptions are 
 only representatives of something external ? You 
 here depart from your natural propensities and 
 more obvious sentiments, and yet are not able to 
 satisfy your reason, which can never find any con- 
 vincing argument from experience to prove that the 
 perceptions are connected with any external ob- 
 jects" (iv. 179). This is Hume's dilemma. The 
 opinion of external existence, he says, " if rested 
 on natural instinct, is contrary to reason, and, if 
 referred to reason, is contrary to natural instinct, 
 and at the same time carries no rational evi- 
 dence with it, to convince an impartial inquirer" 
 (iv. 181). 
 
 In thus pointing out the sophistical and illusive 
 character of the ordinary arguments by which meta- 
 physicians propose to demonstrate the existence of 
 the external world, Hume anticipated the philosophy 
 of Reid. But he went further, and again antici- 
 pated the more profound philosophy of Kant. When 
 men follow the blind and powerful instinct of nature, 
 they always suppose the very images presented by 
 the senses to be the external objects (iv. 177). This 
 is the Transcendental Realism of the Kritik ; for l the 
 realist in the transcendental sense regards the modi- 
 fications of our sensibility, its mere representations, 
 
Hume's Cosmological Antithetic. 109 
 
 as things subsisting by themselves' (p. 307). But 
 this Transcendental Illusion, as Kant calls it, involves 
 the human reason in a conflict with itself. Had the 
 world a beginning, or had it not ? Is matter infi- 
 nitely divisible or not ? Is a free causality neces- 
 sary to originate the phenomena of the world or no ? 
 Is there, or is there not, a necessary being re- 
 quired to account for the existence of the world ? 
 On each of these questions the thesis and antithesis 
 are alike sustainable by reason, and this conflict of 
 reason with itself was the Transcendental Antithetic. 
 Kant settles the dispute by proclaiming that the 
 combatants are fighting about nothing, and that it 
 is no transcendental reality that is presented to us, 
 but phenomena only (p. 3 1 5). Again, this is the philo- 
 sophy of Hume. He, too, contemplated this conflict 
 of reason, and perceived the true solution (i. 78). 
 " As long as we confine our speculations to the 
 appearances of objects to our senses," he says in the 
 Treatise, " without entering into disquisitions con- 
 cerning their real nature and operations, we are safe 
 from all difficulties, and can never be embarrassed 
 by any question " (i. 92, 93). "It seems to me not 
 impossible to avoid these absurdities and contradic- 
 tions," he says in the Inquiry, "if it be admitted 
 that there is no such thing as abstract, or general 
 ideas, properly speaking," and "that all the ideas 
 of quantity, upon which mathematicians reason, are 
 nothing but particular, and such as are suggested 
 by the senses and imagination, and consequently 
 cannot be infinitely divisible" (iv. 184). "It is 
 
1 10 Hume's Practical Reason. 
 
 sufficient to have dropped this hint/' he says," with- 
 out prosecuting it any further " (ibid.). The further 
 prosecution was reserved for Kant; and the hint 
 dropped by Hume was elevated by his successor 
 into the Critical Solution of the Cosmologic Prob- 
 lem (p. 310). 
 
 But while Hume, like Kant, pronounces meta- 
 physics to be mere sophistry and illusion, he at the 
 same time, like Kant, pronounces it to be mere 
 sophistry and illusion when considered in the light 
 of demonstration. " We may well ask," he says, 
 " what causes induce us to believe in the existence 
 of body ? But it is vain to ask, whether there be 
 body or not that is a point which we must take 
 for granted in all our reasonings " (i. 245). Though 
 no ' logic ' or * process of argument ' can secure us 
 from the supposition that the course of nature may 
 change, yet as ' agents ' we are * quite satisfied in 
 the point' (iv. 47). And in the same manner, 
 though Hume contends that we cannot demonstrate 
 the existence of a Deity in mathematical form, yet 
 he admits that ' the whole frame of nature bespeaks 
 an Intelligent Author,' and that ' no rational in- 
 quirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief 
 a moment with regard to the primary principles of 
 genuine theism and religion ' (iv. 435). In fact, 
 the whole scope of his argument is shown in the 
 sentences with which he concludes his discussion 
 as to the materiality or immateriality of the soul- 
 sentences so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of 
 Kant that they read like an extract from the 
 
Kanfs Practical Reason. 1 1 1 
 
 Kritik: "In both cases the metaphysical argu- 
 ments for the immortality of the soul are equally 
 inconclusive; and in both cases the moral arguments, 
 and those derived from the analogy of nature, are 
 equally convincing. If my philosophy, therefore, 
 makes no addition to the arguments for religion, I 
 have, at least, the satisfaction to think it takes 
 nothing from them, but that everything remains 
 precisely as before" (i. 319). 
 
 This contrast between the speculative demands 
 and the practical necessities of human nature is 
 constantly insisted on by Kant. Indeed, he pro- 
 fesses to have abolished knowledge in the domain 
 of metaphysics for no other purpose than to make 
 way for belief (p. xxxv). " If anyone could free 
 himself entirely from all considerations of interest," 
 he says, " and weigh without partiality the asser- 
 tions of reason, attending only to their content, 
 irrespective of the consequences which follow from 
 them, such a person, on the supposition that he 
 knew no other way out of the confusion than to 
 settle the truth of one or other of the conflicting 
 doctrines, would live in a state of continued hesi- 
 tation." " But," continues Kant, "if he were called 
 to action, the play of the mere speculative reason 
 would disappear like the shapes of a dream, and 
 practical interest would dictate his choice of prin- 
 ciples" (p. 298). This passage, again, might pass 
 for a paraphrase of a dozen passages to be found 
 in Hume. " Though a Pyrrhoiiian," he says, 
 " may throw himself or others into a momentary 
 
1 1 2 The Philosopher and the Man. 
 
 amazement and confusion by his profound reason- 
 ings, the first and most trivial event in life will put 
 to flight all his doubts and scruples" ; and, " when 
 he wakes from his dream, he will be the first to 
 join in the laugh against himself, and to confess 
 that all his objections are mere amusement, and can 
 have no other tendency than to show the whimsical 
 condition of mankind, who must act, and reason, 
 and believe, though they are not able by the most 
 diligent inquiry to satisfy themselves concerning 
 the foundation of these operations, or to remove 
 the objections which may be raised against them" 
 (iv. 187). " These principles," he says, " may flou- 
 rish and triumph in the schools, where it is indeed 
 difficult, if not impossible, to refute them. But as 
 soon as they leave the schools, and by the presence 
 of the real objects which actuate our passions and 
 sentiments, are put in opposition to the more power- 
 ful principles of our nature, they vanish like smoke, 
 and leave the most determined sceptic in the same 
 condition as other mortals" (iv. 185). 
 
 Such being the condition of human nature, the 
 advice which Hume gives to the philosopher has 
 been strangely overlooked. 'Be a philosopher,' he 
 says, ' but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a 
 man' (iv. 7). And it is the manly character of 
 Hume's philosophy that constitutes one of its best 
 titles to our respect. In point of fact, he was 
 neither a Dogmatist nor a Sceptic he was the 
 Sapient of the Academics. Like Carneades, he 
 abolished perception to make way for assent. Like 
 
The Dogmatist and the Sceptic. 1 13 
 
 Kant, he abolished knowledge to make way for 
 belief. He saw, in fact, that the dispute between 
 the Dogmatist and Sceptic was little better than 
 a dispute about words a dispute as to whether it 
 was the convex or the concave side of the cir- 
 cumference that formed the circle a dispute as to 
 whether the suspended shield of the errant knights 
 was made of silver or was made of gold. In his 
 posthumous Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, 
 which he modelled on the form of Cicero's Dis- 
 courses concerning the Nature of the Gods, and 
 which, in elevation of tone, in eloquence of lan- 
 guage, and in comprehensiveness of thought, is 
 worthy of its original, Hume thus describes the 
 nature of the controversy which distracts the rival 
 schools, and effects a compromise between them : 
 "It seems evident," he says, "that the dispute be- 
 tween the Sceptics and Dogmatists is entirely verbal, 
 or at least regards only the degrees of doubt and 
 assurance which we ought to indulge with regard to 
 all reasoning ; and such disputes are commonly at 
 the bottom verbal, and admit not of any precise 
 determination. No philosophical Dogmatist denies 
 that there are difficulties both with regard to the 
 senses and to all science, and that these difficulties 
 are, in a regular logical method, absolutely insolv- 
 able. No Sceptic denies that we lie under an abso- 
 lute necessity, notwithstanding these difficulties, of 
 thinking and believing and reasoning with regard 
 to all kinds of subjects, and even of frequently 
 assenting with confidence and security. The only 
 
H4 The Criticism of Kant. 
 
 difference, then, between these sects, if they merit 
 that name, is, that the Sceptic, from habit, caprice, 
 or inclination, insists most on the difficulties, the 
 Dogmatist, for like reasons, on the necessity " 
 
 (ii- 537)- 
 
 The criticism which Kant passed upon the philo- 
 sopher who awoke him from his dogmatic slumber 
 is well known. Hume, he says, stopped short at 
 the synthetical proposition of the connexion of an 
 effect with its cause, and insisted that such a propo- 
 sition a priori was impossible (p. 12). He adopted the 
 empirical derivation of Locke, and therefore could 
 not explain how it was possible that conceptions 
 which are not connected with one another in the 
 understanding must nevertheless be thought as 
 necessarily connected in the object (p. 78). He 
 never clearly developed the notion that we proceed 
 in judgments of a certain class beyond our concep- 
 tion of the object (p. 464). He confounded the 
 passing beyond the conception of a thing to pos- 
 sible experience with our synthesis of objects in 
 actual experience, which is, of course, empiric 
 (p. 466). He made no distinction between the 
 well-grounded claims of the understanding and the 
 dialectical pretensions of the reason (Hid.). He 
 merely declared the understanding to be limited, 
 instead of showing what its limits were; and he 
 created a general mistrust in the power of our 
 faculties, without giving us any determinate know- 
 ledge of the bounds of our necessary and unavoid- 
 able ignorance (ibid.). 
 
The Injustice to Hume. 115 
 
 The injustice of this criticism is obvious from 
 what precedes. In proposing the question, why 
 experience should be extended to future times and 
 other objects, Hume suggested the Transcendental 
 Problem of the Reason. In arguing that the con- 
 ception of causation could not be derived from 
 experience because all our experimental conclusions 
 are based on the conception of causation, Hume 
 employed the Transcendental Method. In holding 
 that nothing can be present to the mind but an 
 image or perception, and in denying that the 
 images presented to the senses are external objects, 
 or things subsisting by themselves, he enounced the 
 conclusion which the Transcendental ^Esthetic pro- 
 fessed to have established (Kritilc, 307). In hold- 
 ing that the existence of any being can only be 
 proved by arguments from its cause or its effect, 
 and that it is only experience which teaches us the 
 nature and bounds of cause and effect, and enables 
 us to infer the existence of one object from that of 
 another, he, in effect, held that the understanding 
 is competent to effect nothing a priori except the 
 anticipation of the form of a possible expression, 
 and reached the result at which the Transcendental 
 Analytic afterwards arrived (KritiJc, 183). And 
 finally, his position, < that the only objects of the 
 abstract sciences or of demonstration, are quantity 
 and number, and that all attempts to extend this 
 more perfect species of knowledge beyond these 
 bounds are mere sophistry and illusion,' is the very 
 conclusion of the Transcendental Dialectic the con- 
 
 i 2 
 
1 1 6 The Identity of Thought. 
 
 elusion to the ultimate establishment of which the 
 whole of the Kritik was directed (Kritilc, 429). 
 
 If it should be asked how these resemblances 
 between the conclusions of the two greatest of the 
 philosophers of modern Europe have been over- 
 looked, the answer is obvious. It is the result of 
 the confusion of tongues in which the Babel of Phi- 
 losophy is involved. The one of the great think- 
 ers spoke English, and the other Greek. Hume 
 saw as clearly as Kant that men will never be in- 
 duced to abandon the airy sciences from disappoint- 
 ment ; that the only method of freeing learning 
 from those abstruse inquiries was to make an exact 
 analysis of the powers and capacities of the human 
 understanding ; and that we must submit to this 
 fatigue in order to live at ease for ever after 
 (iv. 10) ; but, unfortunately, he did not style his 
 analysis a Propcedeutic or a Kritik. He saw that the 
 mind in all its experimental conclusions anticipates 
 its experience without seeing this was a Synthetic a 
 priori Judgment ; and when he saw that such judg- 
 ments could not be formed without a determination 
 of the mind, he failed to see that this was the solu- 
 tion of the grand Transcendental Problem of Pure 
 Reason. He said that the law of causation could 
 not be founded on arguments from experience, be- 
 cause all arguments from experience are founded on 
 the law of causation (iv. 46, 7) ; but he had no sus- 
 picion that this should be called the Transcendental 
 Method. He said the mind was a centre of percep- 
 tions ; but he did not baptize it the Transcendental 
 
The Difference of Language. 1 1 7 
 
 Unity of Consciousness. He held that objects are no- 
 thing but a collection of simple ideas that are united 
 by the imagination into one (i. 33) ; but he did not 
 confer upon the collection the title of the Tran- 
 scendental Synthesis of the Imagination. He saw that 
 the philosophical relations which the understanding 
 framed might be classified under seven different 
 heads; but he did not dub them Categories of the 
 Understanding. He divided philosophical relations 
 into two classes (i. 98), and the objects of human 
 inquiry into two kinds (iv. 32); but he never dreamt 
 that his relations of ideas and matters of existence 
 were to be elevated to the rank of the Mathematical 
 and Dynamical Synthesis of Thought. He saw that 
 when men follow the instincts of their nature they 
 suppose the images presented by the senses to be 
 the external objects (iv. 177) ; but he did not dream 
 that this was Transcendental Realism. He dropped 
 the hint that all our ideas of quantity are nothing 
 but particular, and such as are suggested by the 
 senses ^(iv. 1 84) ; but he had no notion that this 
 hint would ever be developed into the Critical Solu- 
 tion of the Cosmologic Problem. He saw that the mind 
 was involved in absurdities and contradictions in its 
 ideas of the world, and that its conclusions as to the 
 nature and essence of the soul were inconclusive ; 
 but words of such pretence as the Antinomies of Cos- 
 mology, or the Paralogisms of Psychology, were foreign 
 to his simple tastes. He saw, in fine, that the mind, 
 in straining after the infinite and absolute, was con- 
 strained to form the last and most ennobling of ideas; 
 
1 1 8 The Transcendentalist and the Sceptic. 
 
 but he never thought of Prototypon Transcendentale as 
 a name for God. 
 
 The fact is that Hume employed the simple lan- 
 guage of ordinary men, while Kant invented an 
 artificial language for the schools. And the effect 
 of this diversity has been decisive. The two philo- 
 sophers have spoken a different language, and they 
 have been regarded as holding hostile views. Hence, 
 too, the reputation of the transcendentalist has been 
 exalted, while that of the sceptic has been depressed. 
 In the system of the one there was nothing to im- 
 pede the progress, and the treacherous facility be- 
 trayed the reader into the belief that he was learning 
 nothing; in the system of the other there was a lan- 
 guage to be mastered, and the difficulty of master- 
 ing it inspired the student with a respect for the 
 thinker who imposed upon him such laborious toil. 
 Nor did the effect terminate in this. The Kantian 
 student is apt to mistake the mastery of a language 
 for the acquisition of a science. Conscious of the 
 possession of a recondite learning, he is inspired 
 with the conceit of a superior knowledge. The vul- 
 gar, too, are apt to look with mysterious awe upon 
 what they cannot understand, because they cannot 
 understand it ; and hence the different estimation 
 in which the two great philosophers of modern 
 Europe have been held. In the one, the stream of 
 speculation has appeared to be shallow because it 
 was so clear ; in the other, it has been regarded as 
 a dark profound, and has been deemed to be the 
 deeper because it was so dark. 
 
The Problem of the World. 1 1 9 
 
 The moral deduced from the paralysis of the 
 speculative reason by the transcendentalist and the 
 sceptic was the same. Each, while he surrendered 
 the power of cognising, reserved the power of cogi- 
 tating, the supersensible. Each, while he abolished 
 knowledge, made room for belief. Each left the 
 space which had been left vacant by speculation to 
 be filled by the principles of action. According to 
 both, the weakness of our intelligence should induce 
 us to moderate the strength of our assertions. Ac- 
 cording to both, the fallaciousness of sense, and the 
 incompetence of reason, should teach us modesty 
 and mutual toleration and reserve. According to 
 both, the result of the most profound philosophy 
 was the limitation of our inquiries to such subjects 
 as are best adapted to the narrow capacity of hu- 
 man understanding. The lesson taught by both, in 
 fine, was that which was taught centuries before by 
 Socrates, and which generations before Socrates had 
 been inculcated by that first and saddest of books, 
 the inspired idyll, in which the Idumean patriarch 
 bewailed the weakness and the ignorance of man. 
 
 What then is the attitude assumed by Hume 
 with regard to the great mystery of sense, the 
 problem of the world ? By anticipation he rejects 
 the Natural Realism, or, as it might be better 
 named, the Cataleptic Idealism of Hamilton; for he 
 denies that there can be any immediate intercourse 
 between the mind and the object (iv. 177), and 
 maintains that in perception l the mind has never 
 anything present to it but the perceptions, and can- 
 
I2O The Idealisms of Reid and Berkeley. 
 
 not possibly reach any experience of their con- 
 nexion with objects' (iv. 179). In like manner he 
 repudiates the Cosmothetical Idealism of Beid ; for he 
 agrees with Berkeley that the primary qualities of 
 the objects of sense stand on the same footing as 
 the secondary, and that the secondary qualities are 
 ' perceptions of the mind without any external arche- 
 type or model which they represent ' (iv. 1 80) . In 
 holding that the mind is nothing but a collection 
 of different perceptions which succeed each other 
 with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a per- 
 petual flux and movement (i. 321) above all, in 
 holding that ' the idea of existence is the very same 
 with the idea of what we conceive to be existent ' 
 (i. 96) he seems to accept the Psychological Idealism 
 of Mill. But though in his psychology he refuses 
 to recognize either the conceptions or the principles 
 of efficient causation and essential substance, yet in 
 his metaphysics he finds himself compelled to admit 
 that our impressions have a cause, and thus to re- 
 cognize with Kant the existence of a non-sensuous 
 cause of our sensations. This cause, however, he 
 regards as essentially unknown, and accordingly he 
 refuses to identify it with God, and rejects the 
 Theistic Idealism of Berkeley. For the same reason 
 he refuses to identify it with the soul, and rejects 
 the Egoistical Idealism of Fichte. "As to those 
 impressions which arise from the senses," he says 
 in the Treatise, "their ultimate cause is, in my 
 opinion, perfectly inexplicable by human reason, 
 and it will always be impossible to decide with cer- 
 
The Idealisms of Hume and Kant. 121 
 
 tainty whether they arise immediately from the ob- 
 ject, or are produced by the creative power of the 
 mind, or are derived from the Author of our being" 
 (i. 117). " By what argument can it be proved," 
 he asks in the Inquiry, " that the perceptions of the 
 mind must be caused by external objects, entirely 
 different from them, though resembling them (if 
 that be possible), and could not arise from the 
 energy of the mind itself, or from the suggestion of 
 some invisible and unknown spirit, or from some 
 other cause still more unknown to us?" (iv. 178). 
 In short, Hume agrees with Kant when he says 
 that the non-sensuous cause of our sensations is "an 
 object of which we are quite unable to say whether 
 it can be met with in ourselves or out of us, whether 
 it would be annihilated together with sensibility, or, 
 if this were taken away, would continue to exist " 
 (p. 206). But although Hume thus agrees with 
 Kant, he formed no conception of the Transcen- 
 dental Idealism of the Kritik. He held that 'the 
 ideas of space and time are no separate and dis- 
 tinct ideas, but merely those of the manner or order 
 in which objects exist' (i. 62) ; and he seems never 
 to have thought of applying the formula by which 
 he had determined the nature of our conception of 
 causation to the determination of the nature of our 
 ideas of time and space. Indeed, so far is Hume 
 from dogmatically denying the existence of an ex- 
 ternal world in external space that he systematically 
 assumes it (i. 245). He admits that the arguments 
 against the existence of material things produce 
 
1 2 2 Problematical Idealism. 
 
 no conviction, though they admit of no answer 
 (iv. 181). His idealism was merely a Problematical 
 Idealism. He proposed to philosophy a problem, 
 and he confronted it with a dilemma. His prob- 
 lem was, the ground of the opinion of external 
 existence; and his dilemma was, that " the opi- 
 nion of external existence, if rested on natural 
 instinct, is contrary to reason, and if referred to 
 reason, is contrary to natural instinct, and at the 
 same time carries no rational evidence with it to 
 convince an impartial inquirer" (iv. 181). 
 
 This then was the position of the problem as to 
 the external world when Hume transmitted it to 
 Reid. Hume had professed to show the whimsical 
 condition of mankind, who must act, and reason, and 
 believe, though they are not able, by their most di- 
 ligent inquiry, to satisfy themselves concerning the 
 foundation of these operations, or to remove the objec- 
 tions which may be brought against them" (iv. 187). 
 Let us see how Reid satisfied himself concerning 
 the foundation of the operations in question , and 
 how he proposed to remove the various objections 
 which had been advanced by Hume. 
 
COSMOTHETICAL IDEALISM: 
 
 REID. 
 
COSMOTHETICAL IDEALISM: 
 
 Rerum ignarus Imagine gaudet. VIEG. 
 
 THE influence exerted by Reid on the development 
 of European thought has been neither slight nor 
 transitory. Though Hutcheson is regarded as the 
 founder of the Scottish school, it was Eeid who 
 gave it character, and consistency, and strength. 
 Stewart avowedly regarded him as his master ; and 
 if Brown disputed his authority, the influence of 
 Reid's speculations is everywhere risible in the 
 writings of that brilliant thinker. Attracted by the 
 masculine simplicity and sober common sense of the 
 Scottish sage, men of a far higher order of meta- 
 physical ability, have devoted themselves to the 
 diffusion and elucidation of his writings. The phi- 
 losophy of the chief of the Scottish school was 
 taught by Royer-Collard, and his complete works 
 
126 The A byss of A c her on . 
 
 were translated for the benefit of continental readers 
 by Jouffroy. The most learned of the philosophers 
 of modern times devoted himself to the development 
 of his doctrine ; and Sir William Hamilton's edition 
 of the works of Reid, defective as it may be in 
 point of consistency and form, contains the richest 
 deposit of materials for metaphysical speculation 
 that the literature of philosophy can furnish. 
 
 The position of Eeid as a philosopher was a 
 peculiar one. He had himself been an idealist 
 ( Works, p. 88). He had not only been an idealist, 
 but he had been a Berkeleian (p. 283). He had 
 been a Berkeleian though he believed that Berkeley, 
 while rejecting the world of material things, had 
 accepted a world of material ideas (p. 263). Nay, 
 he had been a Berkeleian although he professed 
 himself unable to understand Berkeley's theory of 
 notions, and regarded all his ideas as resolvable 
 into ideas of sensation (p. 289). But the idealism 
 of Hume aroused him from his ideal dreams. He 
 was shocked at the discovery that the mind in 
 which he had supposed the world of ideas to exist 
 was destitute of substance. He found that in de- 
 scending the winding pathway of ideas he had 
 been conducted, unaware, to the abyss 
 
 Hie specus horrendum, saevi spiracula Ditis 
 Monstrantur ; ruptoque ingens Acheronte vorago 
 Pestiferas aperit fauces. 
 
 Descartes and Locke, he said, had taken the same 
 road, but they did not see the end. Berkeley saw 
 the danger, and endeavoured to avoid it. But the 
 
The Dethronement of Jove. 127 
 
 author of the Treatise of Human Nature was more 
 daring he turned neither to the right hand nor to 
 the left, and like Virgil's Alecto shot boldly and di- 
 rectly into the yawning gulf (pp. 207-8). 
 
 When Reid thus fancied that Acheron had burst 
 its borders, in the first paroxysm of terror, he seems 
 to have reproached philosophy with the pernicious 
 and malignant ray which it supplied, and to have 
 declared his determination to renounce its guidance, 
 and to allow his soul to dwell with common sense 
 (p. 101). He railed at philosophy like the old fel- 
 low in one of Goldsmith's plays. This same philo- 
 sophy, said Jarvis, is a good horse in the stable, 
 but an arrant jade upon a journey. Philosophy, 
 said Reid, is a hobby-horse, which a sick man 
 might mount in his closet but could not ride to 
 the exchange (p. no). Scepticism was the lunacy 
 of metaphysics (p. 209). If the sceptic were sin- 
 cere, he should run his head against the post, he 
 should step into the kennel, he should walk over the 
 precipice, and the only way to save him would be 
 to clap him into a lunatic asylum (p. 184). Some- 
 times, indeed, Reid takes a loftier tone. The phi- 
 losophers, he said, had carried on an unequal 
 contest with common sense. They had engaged in 
 an attempt no less audacious and abortive than the 
 attempt of the giants to dethrone great Jove (p. 101). 
 The principles of common sense were the inspira- 
 tion of the Almighty, and those who disowned their 
 authority proclaimed God himself to be a mere de- 
 ceiver (pp. 130, 329). 
 
128 The Birth of Time. 
 
 So far Reid would seem to be the mere dema- 
 gogue of philosophy, appealing to the populace 
 against the aristocracy of thought, and Hume might 
 have addressed him as Cicero addressed Lucullus : 
 quid me in invidiam, et tanquam in concionem, 
 vocas, et quidem, ut seditiosi tribuni solent, occludi 
 tabernas jubes ?(Acad. ii. 47). But Reid, in his own 
 opinion, was no seditious tribune of the people. 
 He considered himself the Cincinnatus, not the 
 Clodius, of philosophy. He was the sober dictator, 
 summoned, as it were, from the plough, to repel the 
 inroads of the sceptics, and to regulate and har- 
 monize the state. He was the inventor of a new 
 method. He regarded himself as the new Bacon. 
 His principles were a novum organum for the science 
 of the mind ; and, like the Baconian induction, his 
 method was the birth of time. 
 
 " The merit of what you are pleased to call my 
 philosophy," he says to one of his correspondents, 
 "lies, I think, chiefly in having called in question 
 the common theory of ideas or images of things in 
 the mind, being the only objects of thought; a 
 theory founded on natural prejudices, and so uni- 
 versally received as to be interwoven with the 
 structure of the language" (p. 88). He himself, 
 he said, had long held this theory, and regarded 
 it a self-evident and unquestionable truth. It was 
 the unsuspected consequences to which it led that 
 occasioned his misgivings. ' The discovery,' he said, 
 6 was the birth of time, and Berkeley and Hume did 
 more to bring it to light than the man that hit on 
 
The Capital Discovery. 129 
 
 it' (ibid.). In the chapter of his Essays in which he 
 gives an historical sketch of the sentiments of phi- 
 losophers about the perception of external objects, 
 he tells us what this capital discovery was. "All 
 philosophers, from Plato to Mr. Hume," he says, 
 " agree in this that we do not perceive external 
 objects immediately, and that the immediate object 
 of perception must be some image present to the 
 mind" (p. 263). It was in the detection of this 
 prejudice that Reid himself rested his reputation 
 as a thinker, and it was on its refutation that 
 his fame is rested by the most eminent of his dis- 
 ciples. 
 
 That we do not perceive external objects imme- 
 diately is, undoubtedly, the accredited doctrine of 
 philosophy. The predominant opinion cannot be 
 better expressed than in the language of the Cy- 
 renaic philosophers : Negant esse quidquam quod 
 percipi possit extrinsecus ; ea se sola percipere quae 
 tactu intimo sentiant, ut dolorem, ut voluptatem ; 
 neque se, quo quid colore, aut quo sono, sit scire, sed 
 tantum sentire, adfici se quodam modo (Acad. ii. 24). 
 The great majority of philosophers have agreed 
 with Descartes that all our knowledge, whatever its 
 extent, is essentially subjective. They have agreed 
 with Locke, that though the mind of man may take 
 its flight beyond the stars, and make incursions into 
 the incomprehensible inane, it never goes beyond 
 its own ideas (n. vii. 10). They have agreed with 
 Berkeley, that all the choir of heaven and all the 
 furniture of earth, so far as they are objects of con- 
 ic 
 
130 The Philosophical Idea. 
 
 sciousness, or immediate intuition, have no exist- 
 ence but in mind (Prin. vi). They have agreed 
 with Hume, that if we chase our imagination to the 
 heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe, we 
 never really advance a step beyond ourselves (i. 97). 
 They have agreed with Condillac, that whether we 
 ascend to the heavens, or descend to the abyss, we 
 never issue from ourselves, or perceive anything 
 beyond our own perceptions. They hold with Kant 
 that in whatever way our knowledge may relate to 
 objects, the only manner in which it immediately 
 relates to them is by means of intuitions (p. 21). 
 They hold with Cousin that neither the outward 
 world, nor God, nor the soul itself, as substance, 
 are objects of consciousness, and that the only 
 objects of consciousness are the operations of the 
 mind its ideas, conceptions, and beliefs (Psych. 
 p. 101). 
 
 But this was not the doctrine of the philosophers 
 which Eeid selected for attack. He conceived that 
 all the philosophers before him held our sensible 
 ideas to be ' self-existent and independent ' entities 
 (p. 109). He conceived them to hold that the ideas 
 furnished through the senses are ' objects that are 
 present in the mind or in the brain,' on which i the 
 operations of the mind, like the tools of an artificer,' 
 are employed (p. 277). The ideas of the existence 
 of which he required a proof were ' not the opera- 
 tions of the mind, but the supposed objects of those 
 operations' (p. 298). They were ideas distinguished 
 at once from the external object and from the per- 
 
The Idea of Reid. 131 
 
 cipient sense. In the words of his editor, commen- 
 tator, and disciple, he always ' understands by idea, 
 image, phantasm, species, etc., a tertium quid, numeri- 
 cally different both from the object existing and from 
 the subject knowing' (Psych, p. 106) he 'under- 
 stands always certain representative entities dis- 
 tinct from the knowing mind ' (p. 326). These ideas, 
 says Reid, were first introduced into philosophy in 
 the humble character of representatives of things ; 
 but by degrees they supplanted their constituents 
 (p. 109). They had led to the negation of material 
 things by Berkeley, and to the negation of all sub- 
 stantial reality by Hume (ibid.). These ' self -ex- 
 istent and independent ideas,' he said, were thus 
 ' left alone in the universe ' (ibid.) i free and inde- 
 pendent as the birds of the air,' or as the atoms of 
 Epicurus l when they pursued their journey in the 
 vast inane' (p. 109). According to Reid, the sha- 
 dows of the subterranean cave of Plato, and the 
 pictures in the darkened room of Locke might be 
 applied to all the systems of perception that had 
 been invented (p. 263). All philosophers, from 
 Plato to Hume, he said, were agreed that these re- 
 presentative entities were the sole object of percep- 
 tion (ibid.). 
 
 Whether the philosophers, in reality, held this 
 imputed doctrine, has been made the subject of a 
 most acrimonious dispute. The dispute was com- 
 menced by Priestley, and was taken up by Brown. 
 Brown contends that, with the exception of Male- 
 branche and Berkeley, who, he says, entertained 
 
 K 2 
 
132 Brotwtfs Position. 
 
 peculiar notions on the subject, the philosophers 
 whom Reid considered himself as opposing would 
 all, if they had been questioned by him, have ad- 
 mitted, before they heard a single argument on his 
 part, that their opinions with respect to ideas were 
 precisely the same as his (Led. xxvii). Hamilton, 
 on the other hand, maintains that " the attempt to 
 show that Reid in his refutation of the previous 
 theory of perception was only fighting with a sha- 
 dow was only combating philosophers who, on the 
 point in question, really coincided with himself 
 would, if successful, prove not merely that the 
 philosophical reputation of Reid is based upon a 
 blunder, but would, in fact, leave us no rational 
 conclusion, short not of idealism only, but of abso- 
 lute scepticism" (Led. ii. 44). But this controversy 
 must be decided in favour of the views of Brown. 
 It is true that the followers of Democritus held, in 
 the language of their laureate, that our sensible 
 ideas are the effigies and spectral forms of things 
 simulacra stripped from the surface of the object 
 films flitting in every direction through the air. 
 But seventeen centuries before Reid this theory of 
 entity images had been overwhelmed with ridicule. 
 What are these images of yours, said Cicero to 
 Velleius, and whence are they derived ? How is it 
 that one image comes into my mind, and another 
 into yours? How do you explain the image of a 
 scylla, a chimaera, or a hippo-centaur? How do you 
 stamp the image not only on the eye but on the 
 mind ? Such, in effect, was Cicero's polemic against 
 
Hamilton's Palinode. 
 
 133 
 
 the Epicurean doctrine in the Tusculan Questions, 
 and the Discourses on the Nature of the Grods. As 
 to the great mass of ancient and modern philoso- 
 phers, it would be a vain affectation to turn against 
 Hamilton the learning derived from Hamilton him- 
 self. For Hamilton sings a palinode in his edition 
 of the works of Reid. In that admirable production 
 he shows that the doctrine of membranes, and 
 images, and films, received no countenance from 
 Plato (p. 262). He shows that the doctrine of in- 
 tentional species can only be attributed to Aristotle 
 on the ground of vague and metaphorical expres- 
 sions, and is inconsistent with the whole spirit of 
 his philosophy (p. 827). He shows that the School- 
 men distinguished the physical impression from the 
 mental act (p. 267). He shows that Descartes and 
 Leibnitz identified idea with perception, and only 
 admitted a logical difference between them (p. 877). 
 He expressly says, "that from the period of Des- 
 cartes we may confidently affirm that the hypothesis 
 of a representative perception, where the immediate 
 object was something different from the mind, had 
 been almost universally superseded by the represen- 
 tative hypothesis, in which the vicarious object was 
 held only for a modification of the mind itself " 
 (P- 957)- The case, he says, is different with 
 Malebranche and Berkeley (p. 207). But even 
 Malebranche held, as already has been shown, that 
 ideas were modifications, not of the mental essence, 
 but the mental action ; and it is the cardinal point of 
 Berkeley's system that ideas are mere affections of 
 
134 The English Psychologists. 
 
 the mind. Hamilton, it is true, stigmatizes the 
 generality of the English psychologists as mecha- 
 nical, and maintains that the theory of entity ideas 
 was held by Hobbes, and Locke, and Hume ; by 
 Newton, and by Norris, and by Clarke, to say 
 nothing of Willis, and Porterfield, and Hook (Disc. 
 80, 85). But the great English psychologists are 
 precisely those whom Hamilton would seem never 
 to have studied. Hobbes ridicules the visible and 
 audible species of the philosophy schools (Works, 
 iii. 3), and defines a phantasm to be the act of sense 
 (i. 392). Locke speaks with scorn of the intentional 
 species of the Schoolmen (m. x. 14), and declares 
 that our ideas are nothing but actual perceptions in 
 the mind (u. x. 2). Hume takes the trouble to 
 explain that by the term impression he would not 
 be understood to express the manner in which our 
 lively perceptions are produced in the soul, but 
 merely the perceptions themselves (i. 16). Cud- 
 worth, in his Immutable Morality, tells us that sen- 
 sations, formally considered, are certain passions or 
 affections of the soul, fatally connected with some 
 local motions in the body (p. 82). Clarke, in his 
 Discourse on the Being and Attributes of God, de- 
 clares that our sensible ideas are plainly thoughts 
 or modifications of the mind itself, which is an 
 intelligent being, and are not properly caused, but 
 only occasioned by the impressions of figure and 
 motion (p. 54). Even Norris, in his Theory of the 
 Ideal World, repudiates the ideal theory with as 
 much scorn, and in much the same style of Ian- 
 
The Physical Antecedent. 135 
 
 guage as Reid himself (pp. 184, 5). He sneers at 
 this pretty metaphysical furniture, as he styles it. 
 He inquires how the action of external bodies could 
 make such fine engravings and artificial images of 
 things upon the fluid brain. He laughs at the 
 notion that the head of a man should be like a 
 gallery hung round with pictures. He wants to be 
 informed, in fine, how a corporeal image, consisting 
 of material lineaments, should be the immediate 
 object of thought, or be any way, by itself, intelli- 
 gible to the mind, or how body should be enabled 
 to enlighten spirit. 
 
 What, then, becomes of the great discovery of 
 Reid ? It is clear that the entity- idea which he 
 fancied he saw in the systems of the philosophers 
 had no existence there. His whole philosophy in 
 this respect was nothing but a blunder, and the 
 philosopher was in the predicament of the astro- 
 nomer who, with the dead fly on the glass of his 
 telescope, imagined he had discovered a monster 
 in the moon. 
 
 The causes which could have seduced so sage and 
 sensible a writer into such a marvellous series of mis- 
 conceptions may well be made the subject of inquiry, 
 the more so as these causes still continue to operate 
 insensibly upon the minds of both philosophers and 
 critics, and, till detected and exposed, will never cease 
 their operation. In the first place, then, there is 
 always a something which, though unknown to 
 consciousness, is intermediate between the perception 
 and the things perceived the physical antecedent of 
 
136 The Ideal Existence. 
 
 sensation. Unless the ray alights upon the eye, 
 unless the pulsation strikes upon the ear, there is 
 neither sight nor sound. Hence the language of 
 emission and impulse and impression ; hence the 
 supposition of vibrations and vibratiuncles in the 
 nerves, of traces and motions in the brain. All 
 these physical facts have abusively been named 
 ideas, and it required the learning and the power of 
 subtle distinction of Hamilton to show that the 
 philosophers had distinguished between the cogni- 
 tive reason within and the motion or image from 
 without ; between the species expressa of perception 
 and the species impressa from the object ; between 
 the idea in the mind, of which we are conscious, and 
 the idea in the brain, of which we have no con- 
 sciousness whatever ; between the idea which is an 
 intellectual notion and the corporeal species which 
 is the mere affection of the organ ; between the sen- 
 sible idea, which is properly styled an idea, and the 
 material idea, which is a mere abuse of language. 
 
 But a still subtler cause of confusion is to be 
 found in the language in which the psychological 
 phenomenon itself, the idea proper, is expressed. 
 Granting that the idea is nothing but a condition or 
 an act of mind, the condition or the act of mind 
 exists, and therefore may be denominated an exist- 
 ence. The ideas of the mind, accordingly, have 
 been styled beings, existences, and things. They 
 have been so denominated, for instance, by Male- 
 branche, by Berkeley, and by Cudworth ; they 
 have occasionally been so denominated by Locke 
 
The Mental Modification. 137 
 
 and Hume. But, as Mill remarks, whenever we 
 speak of an existence, we are apt to regard it as 
 a separate existence ; whenever we speak of a thing 
 we are apt to regard it as a separate thing, and 
 presume it to denote a substance. The operation 
 of this principle is obvious in the case of Cudworth. 
 An avowed disciple of Plato, he reproduces the 
 theory of the Platonic ideas. He invests these 
 ideas with certain immutable natures of their own. 
 He attributes to them not only an eternal but a 
 necessary existence. He confers upon them a con- 
 stant and never-failing entity. He tells us that 
 they always are, whether our particular minds 
 think of them or not. He endows them with a 
 constant being, and denominates them things. But 
 what are the explanations of Cudworth explana- 
 tions which, doubtless, would have been those of 
 Plato also ? " The rationes or essences of things," 
 he says, " are not dead things, like so many statues, 
 images, or pictures, hung up somewhere by them- 
 selves alone in a world ; neither are truths mere 
 sentences and propositions written down with ink 
 upon a book ; but they are living things, and 
 nothing but modifications of intellect or mind." 
 
 It is true that in the opinion of many philo- 
 sophers the ideas of the mind which we style 
 perceptions, though not conceived as having a 
 separate, may still be conceived as having a sub- 
 stantial existence. They may be considered not 
 as modifications of thought, but as modifications of 
 mind ; not as modifications of the mental action, 
 
138 The Objective Presence. 
 
 but as modifications of the mental substance. It 
 was owing to this ambiguity of the word modifica- 
 tion that Malebranche was misunderstood by Locke 
 and Berkeley. It was owing to the same ambiguity 
 that Locke himself was misunderstood by Hamilton. 
 And though Reid does not seem to have distinctly 
 considered this form of the ideal theory though 
 the idea he assailed was regarded by him as a 
 separate entity, not as a substantial modification of 
 the mind itself there can be no doubt that the 
 error operated insensibly on his judgment, and 
 prevented him from seeing that the idea of the 
 philosophers, like his own, was nothing but the 
 mental act. 
 
 But what seems in a peculiar manner to have 
 misled the mind of Reid was the philosophical em- 
 ployment of the words object and objective. Grant- 
 ing ideas to be mere states or acts of mind, the 
 mind can turn inwards on itself, reflect on its own 
 operations, and make those operations the object of 
 reflective thought. As an object of thought, ac- 
 cordingly, philosophers denominated perception an 
 idea ; as a primary act of thought they left it the 
 title of perception. But Reid, forgetting that in 
 the philosophy of Locke the mind takes notice of 
 its own operations, and that these operations are 
 the appropriate objects of reflection forgetting 
 that Arnauld employed the word objective to de- 
 note the mental presence of a thought, as distin- 
 guished from the local presence of a thing (p. 296) 
 forgetting all this, Reid strangely imagined that the 
 
The Representative Character. 139 
 
 philosophers, when they spoke of ideas as objects, 
 necessarily regarded them as objects endowed with 
 a separate existence, and that, accordingly, they 
 maintained that the operations of the mind, like 
 the tools of an artificer, could only be employed 
 on objects which are present in the mind, or in 
 the brain, where the mind is supposed to be re- 
 siding (p. 277). 
 
 The sources of error already indicated have a 
 tendency to vitiate our conceptions when we con- 
 sider even the ideal systems of philosophy. But if 
 it be held that the mind is conscious only of its own 
 ideas, and if it be held at the same time that these 
 ideas must nevertheless be regarded as representative 
 of realities without the mind, then a new source of 
 error and illusion rises. Cousin, who on this subject 
 reproduces and systematizes all the misconceptions 
 of all the preceding and succeeding critics, reduces 
 the matter to a species of sorites. The recognition 
 of ideas, he says in effect, supposes representation ; 
 all representation implies resemblance ; all resem- 
 blance involves an image ; every image comprises 
 figure; 1 figure is one of the qualities of matter; 
 and therefore the ideas of the idealists are material 
 idea-images. The same misconception operated on 
 the mind of Stewart. From the word representa- 
 tion employed byBuffier, he says, " it would appear 
 that even he conceived the idea or notion of the 
 mind to bear a resemblance to the external corre- 
 sponding object (Works, ii. 167). In the same 
 manner he charges Leibnitz as holding the ideal 
 
140 Metaphorical Language. 
 
 theory, because he held every human mind to be 
 a living mirror of the universe (Works, i. 459). 
 Nay, on the same ground he charges even Kant 
 and the German school with holding the theory 
 assailed by Reid. But the solution of this difficulty 
 was obvious enough to the practised intellect of 
 Hamilton. "If," he says, " we modify the ob- 
 noxious language of Descartes and Locke, and 
 instead of saying that the ideas or notions of the 
 primary qualities resemble, merely assert that they 
 truly represent, their objects, that is, afford us such 
 a knowledge of their nature as we should have, 
 were an immediate intuition of the extended reality 
 in itself competent to man and this is certainly all 
 that one, probably all that either philosopher in- 
 tended Reid's doctrine and theirs would be found 
 in perfect unison" (Reid, p. 842). 
 
 The remaining cause of misconception in the 
 mind of Reid was peculiar to himself. The sage 
 of common sense was an unimaginative man. The 
 great philosophers who had preceded him were not 
 only profound thinkers, but they were men of deep 
 feeling and poetic fancy. They delighted in com- 
 paring our ideas to the shadows flying over fields 
 of corn. They dwelt on the pictures which were 
 laid in fading colours on the mind. They described 
 the flames of fever as calcining into dust the images 
 which seemed as lasting as inscriptions graved on 
 marble. With touching pathos they mourned over 
 the ideas which die before us, like the children of 
 our youth. They described our minds as represent- 
 
Reid? s Confutation. 141 
 
 ing the tombs to which we are hastening/ where, 
 though the brass and the marble may remain, yet 
 the imagery moulders and the inscriptions are 
 effaced by time. But the language of high poetry 
 Eeid took for sober prose. He mistook the play of 
 the imagination for a form of spurious science. He 
 converted a metaphor into a theory. He realised, 
 in short, the fable of the fairy gifts he received 
 the fine gold of fancy and imagination and found it 
 transmuted in his hands to lead. 
 
 It is difficult to conceive how Reid could, by any 
 possibility, have imagined that, by a refutation of 
 the theory of entity ideas, he was refuting idealism. 
 So far indeed is the confutation of the ideal hypo- 
 thesis from being a confutation of the sceptical 
 argument that, as Brown observes, we have only to 
 change the word ideas into the synonymous phrase 
 affections of the mind, and the scepticism, if not 
 stronger, is at least in strength exactly what it was 
 before (Lect. xxviii). To attempt to confute the 
 idealism of one who founds his argument on con- 
 sciousness merely, and professes to have no know- 
 ledge of anything beyond it, would be as idle, to 
 use the words of Brown, as it would have been for 
 a Cartesian to attempt to confute the Newtonian 
 system of attraction by a denial of the Ptolemaic 
 spheres. But these considerations seem never to 
 have occurred to Reid. The theory of ideas, he 
 said, was the Trojan horse, which the philosophers 
 had admitted within their walls, though it carried in 
 it death and destruction to science and to common 
 
142 The Error Juris. 
 
 sense (p. 132). It originated in a vain attempt to 
 account for what is unaccountable (p. 326); it led 
 to a demand for proof in the case of those elemen- 
 tary truths which could not possibly be proved 
 (p. 306) ; and it ended in the denial of what could 
 not rationally be denied (p. 109). 
 
 But this was not the only point of view from 
 which Reid looked upon the question. Disbelief in 
 the existence of a material world, he said, was not 
 only an error personae which supposes a world made 
 up of ideas, but it was also an error juris, inasmuch 
 as it presupposed that we have no ideas but those of 
 sensation and reflection (p. 128). If the senses fur- 
 nished us with no materials of thought but sensa- 
 tions, he said, the conclusions of Berkeley must be 
 just ; for no sensation can give us the conception 
 of material things (p. 313). Hume, he said, adopts 
 Locke's account of the origin of ideas, and from 
 that principle infers that we have no idea of sub- 
 stance, corporeal or spiritual, no idea of power, no 
 other idea of a cause but that it is antecedent, and 
 constantly conjoined to that which we call the effect 
 (p. 294). To refute these paradoxes, he conceived 
 it sufficient to show that there were ' certain princi- 
 ples which the constitution of our nature leads us to 
 believe, and which we are under a necessity to take 
 for granted in the common concerns of life' (p. 108). 
 These were the principles of common sense, the 
 foundation of which is laid in a class of natural 
 signs which on the presence of a mere sensation 
 suggest the conception of an object, and create a 
 
Reid's Error. 143 
 
 belief in its existence (p. 122). This was a part 
 of human nature which had never been explained 
 (p. 122). This was a department of the mind which 
 did not tally with any system of the human faculties 
 which had ever been advanced (p. 126). 
 
 In thus virtually attributing the sensualistic doc- 
 trine to the great mass of the philosophers who 
 preceded him, Reid was betrayed into a grave mis- 
 conception, and into an injustice still more grave. 
 Under a different name the conceptions which he 
 regarded as the natural suggestions of the reason, 
 and their concomitant beliefs, which he dignified 
 with the name of the principles of common sense, 
 had been recognised by the most eminent of his 
 predecessors. The tSecu of Plato, the vovs of Aris- 
 totle, the cWoicu of the Stoics, the lumen naturale of 
 the Schoolmen, the innate ideas of Descartes, the 
 relative ideas of Locke, the rational ideas of Cum- 
 berland and Cudworth, and the notions of Berkeley, 
 were in reality the same as Reid's conceptions. 
 
 But it is with reference to his three immediate 
 predecessors that Reid's criticism is the most con- 
 spicuously unjust. As far as Locke is concerned, 
 it is difficult to believe that Reid could ever have 
 consecutively studied the Essay concerning Human 
 Understanding. Like the other critics of Locke's 
 philosophy, he would seem to have neglected to 
 read the fourth book of the Essay in conjunction 
 with the second ; and in reading the second he 
 would seem to have read no further than the open- 
 ing chapter, which declares that l all the materials 
 
144 Reid as a Critic. 
 
 of reason and knowledge' are derived from expe- 
 rience, and that the only forms which human ex- 
 perience assumes are sensation and reflection. He 
 seems to have had no notion of what Locke meant 
 by l simple ideas,' or by ' the origin of ideas,' or 
 by < ideas of relation,' or by c knowledge' itself, as 
 distinguished from its ' materials.' He seems, in 
 short, to have had no glimpse of the fact that Locke 
 regarded the conceptions of cause and substance as 
 
 * creatures and inventions of the understanding,' 
 and that he attributed all our ' certain and universal 
 knowledge ' not to ' experience,' but to ' reason.' 
 
 Misunderstanding the philosophy of Locke, it is 
 no wonder that Reid misunderstood the philosophies 
 of Berkeley and Hume, and the relation in which 
 they stood to Locke and to each other. He con- 
 fesses that he found it difficult to understand what 
 Berkeley meant by notions as distinguished from 
 ideas (p. 289) ; and never dreaming that Berkeley's 
 
 * notion ' was in reality his own ' conception,' he 
 reduced it to a mere idea of imagination (p. 290). 
 His misconception of Hume's psychology is more 
 curious still. He never saw that Hume accepted 
 Locke's theory of knowledge, though he rejected 
 his theory of ideas ; and he never saw that Hume 
 accepted the principles of common sense as prin- 
 ciples of action, though he refused to rely upon 
 them as principles of speculative science. 
 
 The characteristic feature of Eeid's philosophy 
 is its attempt to convert the principles of common 
 sense into an organon of the speculative reason. 
 
Reid as a Philosopher. 145 
 
 
 
 And this opens before us a new vista for investi- 
 gation. We have considered the critical portion of 
 Reid's philosophy ; let us now examine its construc- 
 tive aspect. Did Reid admit the fundamental posi- 
 tion of idealism, that the mind is conscious only of its 
 own ideas ? According to Brown, he did ; according 
 to Hamilton, he did not. Hamilton is i decidedly 
 of opinion that, as the great end, the governing 
 principle, of Reid's doctrine was to reconcile phi- 
 losophy with the necessary convictions of mankind, 
 he intended a doctrine of natural, consequently a 
 doctrine of presentative, realism ; and that he would 
 at once have surrendered every statement which was 
 found at variance with such a doctrine ' (Reid, 820). 
 But the question is not what he would have sur- 
 rendered, but what he actually held ; and he syste- 
 matically held that we have no presentative, no 
 objective, knowledge of external objects. In fact, 
 if he had surrendered this position, he would have 
 abandoned the whole of his philosophy; so that here 
 again the palm is carried off by Brown. 
 
 Reid, it must be conceded, in a variety of pas- 
 sages, asserts our knowledge of the external world 
 to be immediate. But by the word immediate he 
 does not mean, as Hamilton supposes, the negation 
 of the intermediation of any third thing between 
 the reality perceived and the percipient mind (Reid, 
 296); he merely means, as he himself tells us, that 
 perception is ' the immediate effect of our constitu- 
 tion' (pp. 183, 332), and that 'it is not by a train 
 of reasoning that we come to be convinced of the 
 
 L 
 
146 Natural Suggestion. 
 
 existence of what we perceive 7 (pp. 259, 183). He 
 expressly denies that there is any necessity for an 
 ( immediate intercourse ' between the percipient 
 mind and the object of perception (pp. 302, 368). 
 He expressly asserts that there are certain means 
 and instruments, a certain train of machinery, that 
 must intervene between perception and its object 
 (pp. 1 86, 248). He repudiates, in fine, the theory 
 which represents all our senses to be different modi- 
 fications of touch, and describes it as i a theory which 
 serves only to confound things that are different, 
 and to perplex and darken things that are clear 7 
 
 (P- 305). 
 
 In Reid's philosophy, in fact, touch itself is 
 regarded as essentially subjective; for he holds that 
 touch merely supplies us with ' certain sensations,' 
 and that i extension, solidity and motion,' are merely 
 1 conceptions ' which these sensations, by the consti- 
 tution of the mind, l suggest' (p. in). And it 
 is on this theory of Natural Suggestion that Reid's 
 whole theory of perception rests. Hamilton, it is 
 true, asserts that the theory of suggestion and natu- 
 ral signs, so explicitly maintained in the Inquiry, is 
 not repeated in the Essays (Reid, 821). But this is 
 not correct. Even in the Essays he holds that < in 
 perception, whether original or acquired, there is 
 something which may be called the sign, and some- 
 thing which is signified to us, or brought to our 
 knowledge, by that sign ' ; and that ' in original 
 perception the signs are the various sensations, 
 which are produced by the impressions made upon 
 
Natural Signs. 147 
 
 our organs' (p. 332). In point of fact, Reid's theory 
 of perception is identically the same in his earlier 
 and in his later work. In both he holds that the 
 presence of the object is followed by an impression 
 on the organ, and that the impression on the organ 
 is followed by a sensation, and that the sensation is 
 followed by a perception, and that this perception 
 is nothing but the conception of the object and a 
 belief in its existence (pp. 186, 248). In both he 
 holds that rays of light, vibrations of air, and efflu- 
 via of scent, must pass from the object to the organ 
 before the impression is produced. In both he holds 
 that the impression on the organ must be trans- 
 mitted to the brain in order to produce sensation. 
 In both he holds that there is not any necessary 
 connexion between the sensation and the perception. 
 In both he holds that ' we are inspired with the 
 sensation, and we are inspired with the correspond- 
 ing perception, by means unknown ' (pp. 188, 329). 
 In both he builds his philosophy on a system of 
 natural signs, c which, though we never before had 
 any notion or conception of the thing signified, do 
 suggest it, or conjure it up, as it were, by a natural 
 kind of magic, and at once give us a conception 
 and create a belief in its existence (pp. 122, 332). 
 In both he officially defines perception to be 
 nothing but conception and belief (pp. 183, 318). 
 It appears, then, that Reid professes to have 
 accomplished two results by his philosophy first, 
 to have superseded the ideas of the philosophers by 
 conceptions; and, secondly, to have vivified these 
 
 L 2 
 
148 Cosmothetical Idealism. 
 
 conceptions by the beliefs of common sense. But, 
 in thus resolving our knowledge of material things 
 into mere conception and belief, Reid, it is evident, 
 adopts the principle of the ideal theory which he 
 rejects, and practically admits that in perception 
 the mind is conscious of nothing but its own ideas. 
 Arid this determines his philosophical position. On 
 the basis of his idea he posits a cosmos; and is 
 therefore what Sir William has termed, a Cosmothe- 
 tical Idealist. But the difficulty in the way of every 
 system of cosmothetical idealism is the same. How 
 can we know that the idea truly represents the 
 cosmos ? How can we know that the picture is a 
 portrait ? How can we know that there is any 
 original beyond, the picture ? Sir William Hamil- 
 ton puts the difficulty with his usual point * How 
 can we deny to the mind all immediate cognisance 
 of matter, and yet confer upon it the inconceivable 
 power of truly representing to itself the external 
 world, which, ex hypothesi, it does not know ? ' 
 (Reid, 755 ; Disc. 66.) This is a crucial question 
 for the philosophy of Reid let us see how he 
 attempts to meet it. 
 
 Reid's immediate perception, as we have seen, 
 is nothing but an immediate inspiration, and his 
 natural realism is nothing but a natural magic. Let 
 us consider his theory of perception, then, in its 
 theological aspect as a Divine Inspiration (p. 329). 
 His system compelled him to adopt the Cartesian 
 theory of Divine Assistance ; for he holds that our 
 impressions are not the efficient cause of our per- 
 
Divine Inspiration. 149 
 
 ceptions that there is no necessary connexion 
 between them and that 'we perceive because 
 God has given us the power of perceiving, and 
 not because we have impressions from objects' 
 (p. 257). And as he adopted the principal hypo- 
 thesis of the Cartesians, so he adopted the subsidiary 
 hypothesis by which they endeavoured to support 
 it. He supplemented the theory of Divine Assist- 
 ance by an appeal to the Divine Veracity to estab- 
 lish the veracity of the senses. If we are deceived 
 in the evidence of the senses, he said, we are 
 deceived by Him that made us (pp. 130, 329). 
 But to have recourse to the veracity of the Supreme 
 Being in order to prove the veracity of the senses, 
 as Hume observes, is to make an unexpected circuit 
 (Works, iv. 179). The existence of God is not clearer 
 than the existence of the world ; and if the divine 
 veracity were concerned in the matter our senses 
 would be infallible on every point. But the divine 
 veracity is not concerned. The informations of 
 sense are sufficient for all the purposes of life and 
 action, but the Deity has given us no reason to 
 believe that they are sufficient for any other pur- 
 pose. For the purpose of discipline He has left us 
 liable to error; and we have no reason to believe 
 that we are any more exempt from error here than 
 in any other department of human speculation. If 
 we draw erroneous conclusions from the evidence of 
 sense the fault is not in the evidence but in the con- 
 clusions which we draw. Poets may sing that ' the 
 voice of nature is the voice of God,' just as politi- 
 
1 50 Natural Magic. 
 
 cians may profess to hear the voice of God in the 
 voices of the people. But philosophers should leave 
 such platitudes to the politicians and the poets. 
 The theory which Reid adopts from the Cartesians 
 is only an instance of that unwholesome admixture 
 of things, human and divine, which Bacon describes 
 as the apotheosis of error, and which, he says, pro- 
 duces not only fantastic philosophy but heretical 
 religion. 
 
 As the religious aspect of Reid's theory of 
 perception is displayed in his theory of Divine 
 Assistance, so its fantastic aspect is displayed in 
 his theory of Natural Magic. There is a story 
 in the Turkish Tales, which is told by Addison in 
 one of the earlier numbers of the Spectator, which 
 may illustrate the point in question. An unbeliev- 
 ing Sultan had ridiculed the famous passage in the 
 Koran which records how the Angel Gabriel, having 
 taken Mahomet out of his bed one morning, gave 
 the Prophet a full view of hell, conducted him 
 through the seven heavens of paradise, enabled 
 him to hold ninety thousand conferences with God, 
 and brought him back again to his bed before the 
 bed was cold, and before the pitcher, which was 
 capsized at the moment the Angel carried him 
 away, was emptied. A doctor in the law, who 
 had the gift of working miracles, undertook to 
 convince the Sultan of the truth of this passage 
 in the history of the Prophet. The holy man 
 bade him plunge his head into a tub of water. 
 The Sultan did as he was bid, and found himself 
 
The Enchanted Sultan. 1 5 1 
 
 alone at the foot of a solitary mountain by the sea. 
 He made for a forest which he saw in the distance, 
 and met some woodcutters who conducted him 
 to a neighbouring town. He married a lady of the 
 land by whom he had seven sons and seven daugh- 
 ters. He was afterwards reduced to abject poverty, 
 and was compelled to ply as a porter for his living. 
 Walking one day by the seashore he was seized 
 with a fit of devotion, and threw off his clothes 
 with the design of performing his ablutions after 
 the manner of the followers of the Prophet. He 
 plunged headforemost into the water, rose to the 
 surface, when, lo and behold, he found himself still 
 standing by the tub, with the great men of his court 
 around him, and the holy man, who had performed 
 the miracle, beside him. He had not stirred from 
 the place where he originally stood. He had been 
 leading a magical existence he had been enchanted. 
 Told by Addison, to illustrate the doctrine of Male- 
 branche and Locke as to the relativity of time, the 
 story admirably illustrates Reid's doctrine of the 
 natural magic of perception. By a stroke of magic 
 the enchanted Sultan perceived the mountain and 
 the sea. He perceived the forest and the sun. He 
 conversed with the woodcutters, married his wife, 
 and begat his sons and daughters. He had a vivid 
 conception of all these various objects, and an un- 
 wavering belief in their existence. Everything was 
 intensely real, and yet everything was mere illusion. 
 He was the fool of a false conception and belief. 
 But leaving these fanciful speculations of Natural 
 
152 Immediate Perception. 
 
 Magic and Divine Assistance, let us direct our at- 
 tention to the Constitution of our Nature. In the case 
 of the belief in the existence of material things, as in 
 the belief in the continuance of the course of nature, 
 the belief, according to Reid, f is not the effect of 
 reasoning, nor does it arise from intuitive evidence 
 in the thing believed ; it is,' as he apprehends, ( the 
 immediate effect of our constitution ' (pp. 332, 209). 
 Let us see what is the result of Reid's theory of per- 
 ception regarded in this aspect of the question. ' It 
 seems ' to be admitted as a first principle by the 
 learned and unlearned,' he says, 'that what is really 
 perceived must exist, and that to perceive what does 
 not exist is impossible ' (p. 274). But the possibility 
 of perceiving what does not exist, in Reid's sense 
 of perception, may be submitted to a crucial test. 
 Astronomers tell us that there are fixed stars at such 
 an immeasurable distance from the earth, that their 
 light, with all its inconceivable velocity, takes a 
 period of years to reach us. They tell us, also, that 
 stars are extinguished and disappear for ever from 
 the wilderness of worlds. Suppose, then, the case of 
 an extinguished star. Suppose the rays which it 
 emitted during the period immediately preceding 
 its extinction to reach the earth. The ray would 
 strike upon the organ, the impression would be fol- 
 lowed by the sensation, and the sensation would be 
 followed by the conception and belief which consti- 
 tute perception. For years we should be forced by 
 the constitution of our nature to form a conception 
 of the non-existent star, and a belief in its existence. 
 
The Extinguished Star. 153 
 
 According to Reid's theory we should perceive the 
 non-existent star; and the non-existent star, because 
 we perceived it, would exist. 
 
 Let us next consider the constitution of our 
 nature, with reference to ' the more profound philo- 
 sophy' of Hume (Works, iv. 176). Hume concedes 
 to Reid that men are carried by a natural instinct 
 or prepossession to repose faith in their senses, and 
 without any reasoning to suppose the existence of 
 an external world which has no dependence on per- 
 ception (p. 177). But this prepossession involves 
 something more than a belief that the external 
 world exists. " When men follow this blind and 
 powerful instinct of nature," as Hume observes, 
 " they always suppose the very images presented 
 by the senses to be the external objects, and never 
 entertain any suspicion that one are nothing but 
 representations of the other" (ibid.). The fact 
 that such a supposition is made is attested by con- 
 sciousness, and cannot for a moment be denied. If 
 authority be required for the establishment of a fact 
 so patent, take the authorities adduced by Hamilton 
 (Reid, pp. 747-8). As Descartes remarks, we be- 
 lieve we see the torch and hear the bell. As Berke- 
 ley contends, the vulgar are of opinion that the 
 things which they immediately perceive (that is, their 
 perceptions) are the real things. As Schelling says, 
 the man of common sense believes, and will not but 
 believe, that the object he is conscious of perceiving 
 is the real one. As Stiedenroth asserts, it appears 
 as if the sense actually apprehended things out of 
 
154 Hume's Dilemma. 
 
 itself and in their proper place. Reid himself 
 admits the fact as readily as Hume or Berkeley, 
 as Stiedenroth or Schelling. "The vulgar," he says, 
 "undoubtedly believe that it is the external objects 
 which we immediately perceive, and not a represen- 
 tative image of it only " (p. 274). But this natural 
 and irresistible belief is false. Hamilton admits it to 
 be false, for he says we do not see the sun, i but only 
 certain rays in connexion with the eye' (Reid, 303). 
 Eeid admits it to be false, for, holding that we merely 
 form a conception of the sun, and entertain a belief 
 of its existence, he says, " that the object per- 
 ceived is one thing, and the perception of that 
 object another, I am as certain as I can be of any- 
 thing" (p. 292). But everyone may be as certain 
 as anyone can be of anything, that common sense 
 and natural instinct confound the two. Men believe, 
 and irresistibly believe, the conception of the thing 
 to be the thing conceived. But this belief is con- 
 fessedly erroneous. As Hume remarks, this univer- 
 sal and primary opinion of all men is destroyed by 
 the slightest philosophy. Here, then, Reid is con- 
 fronted with the dilemma of the sceptic. The 
 opinion of external existence, if rested on natural 
 instinct, is contrary to reason ; and, if referred to 
 reason, is contrary to natural instinct (iv. 181). 
 
 But we may test the constitution of the human 
 mind, not only by the application of Hume's dilem- 
 ma, but by reference to one of the ' repugnancies ' 
 of Berkeley. This is the second topic of ' the more 
 profound philosophy' on which Hume insists; and 
 
Berkeley's Contradiction. 155 
 
 which he avowedly adopts from his immediate pre- 
 decessor' (iv. 1 80). Reid, with the vulgar, con- 
 siders it lunacy to question the existence of external 
 objects (p. 274). But what is the external object 
 of the vulgar? If the vulgar regard it as supremely 
 ridiculous to prove by metaphysical arguments the 
 existence of the earth, and sea, and sky (p. 306) ; 
 they regard it as equally ridiculous to question whe- 
 ther the sky and the sea are blue, and whether the 
 earth is decorated with all its tints, and shades, and 
 harmonies of colour. Reid saw the difficulty, and 
 endeavoured to evade it. " When philosophers," 
 he says, " affirm that colour is not in bodies, but in 
 the mind, and the vulgar affirm that colour is not 
 in the mind, but is a quality of bodies, there is no 
 difference between them about things, but only 
 about the meaning of a word" (p. 139). The word 
 colour, he says in effect, is both a quality in bodies 
 and an appearance in the mind. But this is scarcely 
 a fair statement of the case. The question at issue 
 relates, not to the cause of colour, of which the 
 vulgar never think, but to the appearance of colour, 
 which can exist only in the mind, though the vulgar 
 regard it as existing in the external object. What 
 then, once more, is the external object ? To the 
 eyes of the vulgar it is something coloured and 
 extended. To vulgar apprehension the colour is 
 inseparable from the extension, and the extension is 
 inseparable from the colour. No man of common 
 sense will admit that the extended colour is within, 
 and that the coloured extension is without. Accord- 
 
156 Reid's Compromise. 
 
 ingly Berkeley contended that both colour and ex- 
 tension are within. What has Reid, the quondam 
 Berkeleian, to reply ? Again he is involved in a 
 dilemma. He cannot assert that the total thing per- 
 ceived exists without, for that would be an outrage 
 upon reason ; he cannot assert that the total thing 
 perceived exists within, for that would be an .outrage 
 upon common sense. Again reason and natural in- 
 stinct are at issue. In this division of the house 
 against itself Reid, in the first instance, takes the 
 side of reason ; for he is as certain that our sensa- 
 tions are not like any quality of body as that the 
 toothache has no resemblance to a triangle (p. 131). 
 But as a set-off he again shifts to common sense ; 
 for he is as certain that the material world exists 
 as he is that no quality of body can resemble our 
 sensations. But what is gained by a compromise 
 such as this ? Suppose the existence of an exter- 
 nal world of matter to be admitted on the autho- 
 rity of natural belief, what is the condition to which 
 it is reduced by reason ? Reid's compromise loaves 
 it uncoloured, if not unextended. He degrades it 
 to an unknown something, which is destitute of 
 causal energy and force. He unconsciously iden- 
 tifies it with the materia prima of the Schoolmen. 
 Again he falls into the hands of Hume. If 
 you " bereave matter of all its intelligible quali- 
 ties, both primary and secondary," says Hume, 
 " you in a manner annihilate it, and leave only 
 a certain unknown, inexplicable something as the 
 cause of our perceptions a notion so imperfect 
 
Reid's Common Sense. 157 
 
 tliat no sceptic will think it worth while to con- 
 tend against it" (iv. 181). 
 
 What, then, is the position in which Reid's 
 philosophy is placed by its appeal to Common Sense 
 against the conclusions of the sceptic ? On the 
 question of the external world he is involved in 
 vacillations as ridiculous as those in which Panurge 
 was involved on the question of his marriage. 
 Perplexed with the dilemmas with which he was 
 posed by Hume, Reid resolved to take counsel 
 of the common man, just as Panurge, when per- 
 plexed with the contradictions of the Ephectic and 
 Pyrrhonian Philosopher, resolved to take coun- 
 sel of the fool. But as the Pantagruelist found 
 no more comfort from the fool than from the 
 philosopher, so the sage of common sense found as 
 little satisfaction in his morosoph as he did in the 
 metaphysician whom he acknowledged as his mas- 
 ter. His philosophy, in fact, was a constant see-saw 
 between what common men call sense and what 
 common men call nonsense. The vulgar, he says 
 in reply to Hume, believe that we immediately per- 
 ceive external objects; and in this division, to my 
 great humiliation, I find myself ranked among the 
 vulgar (p. 302). He turns the matter in his mind, 
 and comes to the conclusion that perception is 
 different from the thing perceived; and he aban- 
 dons the vulgar, and ranks himself with the philoso- 
 phers whom he had derided. The vulgar protest that 
 the earth is green and that the sky is blue, and that 
 the sea is the same colour as the sky, and Reid 
 
158 Reid^s Relation to Berkeley. 
 
 is again found shifting to the vulgar (p. 138). The 
 philosophers maintain that colour as perceived is 
 nothing but a mere appearance in the mind ; and 
 Eeid acknowledges that a sensation is no more like 
 a quality of body than a toothache is like a tri- 
 angle, and finds himself a philosopher once more. 
 He makes a last desperate attempt to reconcile 
 philosophy and common sense, and distinguishes 
 between colour as a perceived appearance in the 
 mind and as an unperceived quality in body ; but 
 both philosopher and vulgar repudiate the compro- 
 mise, and the conflict between the reason of specu- 
 lation and the common sense of practice is left as 
 irreconcilable as ever. 
 
 While Reid was thus oscillating between reason 
 and common sense, it is plain that, so far as he 
 consulted reason, he was still almost, if not alto- 
 gether, a Berkeleian. He agreed with Berkeley 
 that we have no presentative or objective know- 
 ledge of the material world. He agreed with him 
 that the object is not the efficient cause of the 
 impression, and that the impression has no neces- 
 sary connexion with the sensation by which it was 
 immediately followed (p. 257). He admitted that our 
 sensations, whether agreeable or disagreeable, are 
 the same on Berkeley's system as upon any other 
 (p. 285). He admitted that if sensation be pro- 
 duced the corresponding perception follows even 
 where there is no object (p. 320). He admitted 
 that ' we are inspired with the sensation, and that 
 we are inspired with the corresponding perception ' 
 
Reid^s Relation to Hume. 159 
 
 (p. 1 88); and that our < original and natural judg- 
 ments/ as well as our ' notions or simple appre- 
 hensions/ are ' the inspirations of the Almighty ' 
 (pp. 209, 329). It is true he resolved perception 
 into conception and belief, and on the authority of 
 the belief which accompanies the conception of ex- 
 ternal things, seceded from his master. Yet even 
 in insisting on the authority of belief, he was 
 obliged to admit with Berkeley that belief may be 
 erroneous (p. 320), and was fain to fortify it by 
 an appeal to the veracity of God. 
 
 But as Reid, when he listened to reason, was 
 a follower of Berkeley, so when he became a man 
 of common sense he was merely a follower of 
 Hume. In holding that the mind in perception is 
 conscious of nothing but conception and belief, 
 Reid conceded Hume's fundamental position that 
 nothing can ever be present to the mind but an 
 image or perception. In holding that there is no 
 necessary connexion between our perceptions and 
 material things, he conceded to Hume that the 
 mind cannot attain to any experience of the con- 
 nexion of material things with our perceptions. 
 In holding, as he systematically held, that it is not 
 by a train of reasoning and argumentation that we 
 come to be convinced of the existence of what we 
 perceive (pp. 183, 259), he in like manner conceded 
 Hume's position that by no possible argument could 
 it be proved that the perceptions of the mind must 
 be caused by external and resembling objects. But 
 as Reid conceded to Hume that the existence of the 
 
160 Reid's Relation to Hume. 
 
 external world cannot be established by argument, 
 so Hume in his turn conceded to Reid that the 
 existence of the external world is suggested by 
 natural belief. He conceded in the amplest man- 
 ner that men are carried by a natural instinct or 
 prepossession to repose faith in their senses, and 
 to believe in the existence of an external universe, 
 which has no dependence on perception. But Hume 
 insisted that this natural belief, though sufficient for 
 the purposes of life and action, was insufficient for 
 the purposes of science. He showed that it con- 
 founded perception with the thing perceived. He 
 showed that it transferred to the thing perceived 
 what was confessedly mere perception. He con- 
 fronted it with its inconsistencies and its errors. 
 He formulated his objections in his dilemma and 
 his contradiction ; and he called upon it to vindi- 
 cate its character, and to substantiate its claims 
 to be regarded as the oracle of truth. But, again, 
 Reid virtually admitted everything for which Hume 
 contended. He admitted that the process of per- 
 ception could not possibly be explained (p. 326). 
 He admitted that the mystery of sense was in- 
 volved in impenetrable darkness. All he had to 
 say was, what was virtually said by Hume, that 
 in spite of all the contradictions and inconsisten- 
 cies of sense, the statesman continues to scheme, 
 the soldier to fight, and the merchant to buy 
 and sell, without being affected by the reason- 
 ings of philosophy ; and that a man might as well 
 attempt to draw the moon from its orbit as to 
 
Brown's View of that Relation. 161 
 
 destroy our belief in the existence of external 
 things (p. 329). 
 
 It is evident, therefore, that Brown's opinion as 
 to the relation in which Reid stood to Hume is 
 critically correct. The sceptic and the orthodox 
 philosopher arrive at precisely the same conclusion. 
 " The creed of each," says Brown, " is composed of 
 two propositions, and of the same two propositions 
 the first of which is, that the existence of a system 
 of things, such as we understand when we speak of 
 an external world, cannot be proved by argument ; 
 and the second, that the belief of it is of a force 
 which is paramount to that of argument, and abso- 
 lutely irresistible" (Lect. xxviii.). Brown proceeds 
 to state the difference between the two philosophers 
 in his Lectures ; but he stated it far more pointedly 
 in conversation. When talking on the subject with 
 Mackintosh, he agreed that the difference between 
 Reid and Hume was more in words than in opinion. 
 Hume, he said, shouted, we can give no reason for 
 our belief in an external world, but whispered, we 
 cannot help believing; Reid, on the other hand, 
 shouted, we cannot help believing in an external 
 world, but whispered, we can give no reason in 
 support of our belief. This was the very distinc- 
 tion which Hume himself took when he said that 
 the dispute between the sceptic and the dogmatist 
 was verbal (ii. 537). Reid did not deny that there 
 are insolvable difficulties with regard to the senses, 
 though he maintained the absolute necessity of 
 thinking and believing. Hume did not deny the 
 
 M 
 
1 62 The Scandal to Philosophy. 
 
 absolute necessity of thinking and believing, though 
 he maintained that the difficulties with regard to 
 the senses were incapable of a solution. The only- 
 difference between them was that Hume from habit, 
 inclination or caprice, insisted on the difficulties, 
 while Reid, for the like reasons, insisted on the 
 necessity of our belief. 
 
 According to Kant, 'however harmless idealism 
 may be considered although in reality it is not 
 harmless it must still remain a scandal to philo- 
 sophy to be obliged to assume, as an article of mere 
 belief, the existence of things external to ourselves, 
 and not to be able to oppose a satisfactory proof to 
 anyone who may call it into question ' (p. xl.). To 
 this scandal Reid left philosophy exposed. Let us 
 see how Kant proposed to obviate the scandal. 
 
TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM 
 
 OR 
 
 KANT. 
 
 M 2 
 
TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM: 
 
 OB 
 
 KANT. 
 
 Visae correptus imagine Formae 
 Rem sine corpore amat. 
 
 OYID. 
 
 THE opinion which Kant entertained of his own 
 philosophical position is reflected in a passage from 
 the preface to the Instauratio Magna which he pre- 
 fixed to his own great work. He compared his 
 Kritik to the Novum Organum of Bacon. Like 
 Bacon, he claimed to have opened a new road to 
 the human mind, and to have supplied it with fresh 
 aids to knowledge. He demanded that men should 
 regard his method, as not a mere opinion, but an 
 opus. Let them know, he said, that we are not 
 founding a sect, or system, but are laying the foun- 
 dations of the happiness and dignity of man. Let 
 them adopt the method, he said, and share the toil. 
 Let them be of good cheer, and let them not con- 
 
1 66 The Motto from Bacon. 
 
 sider the task to be something endless, and beyond 
 mortal reach, for in reality it is the end of an end- 
 less error, and its appointed term. 
 
 While Kant thus claimed to be the Bacon of the 
 eighteenth century, he reproduced, in his own per- 
 son, many of the characteristics of the great original 
 whom he thought to rival. Like him he was ani- 
 mated by an intense egotism of genius. To read 
 the works of Bacon, no one would suspect that he 
 had been preceded by Telesio and Campanella, or 
 that anything had been done by Galileo or Gilbert. 
 To read the works of Kant, the reader would ima- 
 gine that Descartes and Leibnitz were children in 
 philosophy, that Locke had done nothing for the 
 human understanding, and that Berkeley and Hume 
 were honest, well-intentioned men who had mistaken 
 their vocation. And it is this intellectual arrogance 
 which is one of the secrets of his fame. His pre- 
 cise nomenclature, his systematic exposition, his 
 philosophical epigrams, his bursts of eloquence, his 
 flights of elevated thought, and, above all, his pro- 
 found mastery of his subject these constitute his 
 real claims to the consideration of posterity. But a 
 man of ability is generally taken for what he claims 
 to be. Assumption is a source of authority. To 
 speak confidently begets confidence; and the dog- 
 matism of Kant, like the dogmatism of Hobbes, is 
 one of the causes of the intellectual predominance 
 which he has achieved. 
 
 But there are points of contact between the phi- 
 losopher of Koenigsberg and the great English Chan- 
 
The Inductive Philosophy. 167 
 
 cellor, which are far deeper and more significant 
 than the points of resemblance to which we have 
 alluded. When Bacon had set forth his method in 
 the preface, from which Kant selected his motto , 
 he sums up the matter in these weighty words : 
 Atque hoc modo, inter empiricam et rationalem 
 facultatem (quarum morosa et inauspicata divortia 
 et repudia, omnia in humana familia turbavere) con- 
 jugium verum et legitimum, in perpetuum nos fir- 
 masse existimamus. In this passage Bacon states 
 the whole aim of the inductive philosophy ; and it 
 might well have been selected as a motto for the 
 philosophy of Kant. The transcendental philosophy, 
 like the inductive, aims to effect a union between 
 the rational and the empiric faculties. It refers all 
 the disputes which had agitated philosophy to their 
 estrangement ; it sees the only hope of progress and 
 improvement in their reconciliation ; and the Kritik 
 of the Reason, like the Instauratio Magna, to use the 
 phrase of Bacon, is a mere epithalamium to cele- 
 brate their marriage. 
 
 The Novum Organum is an instrument for the 
 advancement of physical science ; but even in phy- 
 sical investigations Bacon, so strangely considered 
 as the leader of the empiric school, is constantly 
 insisting on the necessity of the initiative of the 
 mind. Whether in the conduct of our experience, 
 or in the process of induction whether in interro- 
 gating nature in order to ascertain the fact, or in 
 interpreting the answers of nature in order to ascer- 
 tain the form the mind, according to Bacon, must 
 
1 68 Philosophia Prima. 
 
 invariably assume the lead with nature. In the 
 interrogation of nature he accepted the maxim of 
 Plato qui aliquid quaerit id ipsum, quod quaerit, 
 generali quadam notione comprehendit ; aliter, qui 
 fieri potest, ut illud, cum fuerit inventum, agnoscat? 
 In the interpretation of the evidence of nature, it 
 was by the anticipatio mentis that the physical phi- 
 losopher first caught sight of the differentia vera, 
 the natura naturans, the fons emanationis, which 
 the moderns style laws of nature, and which Bacon, 
 in his determination to follow antiquity to the very 
 altar, denominated forms. 
 
 But we must dig still deeper, and beneath the 
 very foundations of the Baconian philosophy, before 
 we discover the real point of contact between Kant 
 and Bacon. Below the Baconian anticipatio mentis 
 there is another and more latent anticipation. With 
 his rapid philosophical insight, which seemed akin 
 to inspiration, Bacon sketched the outlines of a 
 universal science which he designated Philosophia 
 Prima, and described as the mother of the rest. 
 The different sciences, he said, are not lines spring- 
 ing from an angle, but they are branches shooting 
 from a trunk which had its roots in nature. There 
 are certain common notions and common principles 
 which all the sciences involve. These common 
 principles he called the axioms of philosophy ; these 
 common notions he named transcendents; and the 
 First Philosophy was the repository, the receptacle, 
 of these. A more remarkable anticipation of the 
 language of the Kritik of the Reason can scarcely be 
 
Transcenden tal Philosophy . 169 
 
 imagined. But it was also an anticipation of its 
 aim. The transcendents which he enumerates in 
 the fifth book of the De Augmentis are majus, 
 minus ; multum, paucum ; prius, posterius ; idem, 
 diversum; potentia, actus; habitus, privatio; totum, 
 partes ; agens, patiens ; motus, quies ; ens, non-ens ; 
 et similia (c. iv). These evidently were the cate- 
 gories in their embryo state. Bacon, it is true, was 
 infelicitous in the instances which he selected to 
 illustrate his thought, and it is not without reason 
 that Macaulay ridicules his illustrations. But Mac- 
 aulay failed to see the true scope and comprehension 
 of this remarkable First Philosophy of Bacon, which 
 in reality was a foreshadowing of the Transcenden- 
 tal Philosophy of Kant. 
 
 The Transcendental Philosophy ', as Kant described 
 it, is the idea of a science which should contain a 
 complete exposition of all the analytic and synthetic 
 judgments, which, prior to experience, are presup- 
 posed in all our physical investigations. It is con- 
 ceived as a system of all the principles of pure 
 reason employed by the mind in acquiring a 
 knowledge of the phenomena of nature (Kritik, 16, 
 17). Its relationship to the Baconian philosophy 
 is recognized by Kant himself. The wise Bacon, 
 he says, gave a new direction to physical studies. 
 When Galileo experimented with balls of a definite 
 weight on the inclined plane when Torricelli caused 
 the air to sustain a weight which he had calculated 
 beforehand to be equal to that of a definite column 
 of water when Stahl, at a later period, converted 
 
1 70 Physical Science. 
 
 metals into lime and reconverted lime into metals 
 by the addition and subtraction of certain elements 
 they recognized the importance of the truth which 
 had been taught by Bacon, that reason only per- 
 ceives that which it produces after its own design ; 
 and that it must not be content to follow, as it were, 
 the leading strings of nature, but must proceed in 
 advance with principles of judgment according to 
 unvarying laws, and compel nature to give an 
 answer to its questions (p. xxvii.). 
 
 In all the physical sciences, in fact, there are 
 certain principles, certain unvarying laws, which 
 must be presupposed. Every minister and interpre- 
 ter of nature assumes that all the changes which 
 he observes take place in accordance with a law of 
 succession and connexion, and that the law elicited 
 from a mass of existing facts will continue to be the 
 law of similar combinations whenever they recur. 
 The illustrious chemists who tracked matter through 
 its Protean transformations, and weighed the at- 
 mosphere, and detected the latent laws of light, 
 and electricity, and heat, all of them assumed as 
 the very basis of their speculations that the quantity 
 of matter in the world is constant. The great geo- 
 meters who observed the facts and ascertained the 
 laws of the heavenly motions, and thus augmented 
 the number of those mixed mathematics which 
 Bacon with his prophetic vision had foreseen, all of 
 them assumed that, even in the most inaccessible 
 recesses of the universe, phenomena are subjected 
 to the laws of time and space, and quantity and 
 
Physical Principles. 171 
 
 number. Take the simplest objects of physical 
 inquiry. What is the weight of smoke ? We as- 
 sume the quantity of matter in the world to be 
 constant, and the answer is, subtract from the 
 weight of the burnt wood the weight of the re- 
 maining ashes and you will have the weight of 
 smoke (p. 139). What is the cause of the melting 
 of a piece of wax ? We assume that phenomena, 
 as objects of experience, succeed each other in a 
 settled order, and that they do not drift at random 
 down the stream of time (p. 144); and the answer 
 to the question is, that we know a priori that there 
 must have been something the sun's heat preced- 
 ing, which the effect follows according to a fixed 
 law (p. 465). In short, as Kant observes, we have 
 only to look at the different propositions which are 
 commonly stated at the commencement of every 
 treatise on physical science those, for example, 
 relating to the continuance of the laws of nature, 
 the permanence of the quantity of matter, the vis 
 inertiae, the equality of action and reaction, and 
 the like to be convinced that they form a science 
 of pure physics which, whatever its extent, deserves 
 to be separately expounded (p. 13). 
 
 The question of the origin of these transcenden- 
 tal principles was one which fell within the peculiar 
 province of the Essay concerning Human Under- 
 standing. But though Locke's treatment of the 
 subject is defective, he did not merit the reproach 
 of Kant by attempting a physiological derivation or 
 deduction (p. 73). While he held that our simple 
 
172 Locke's Anticipations of Kant. 
 
 ideas, the equivalent of Kant's intuitions, are de- 
 rived from sensation and reflection, he held that 
 our ideas of relation, which correspond with Kant's 
 conceptions, are the creatures and inventions of the 
 understanding. While he held that ' all the mate- 
 rials of reason and knowledge ' are derived from 
 c experience' (n. i. 2), he held that ' our highest de- 
 gree of knowledge' is that supplied by immediate 
 intuition (iv. ii. i ; xvii. 14). He anticipated the 
 division of our intuitive judgments into analytic 
 and synthetic (iv. viii. 8), and furnished an ' infal- 
 lible rule' by which the one might be distinguished 
 from the other (iv. viii. 13). He anticipated the 
 distinction of our synthetic judgments into judg- 
 ments a priori, such as those of mathematics ; and 
 judgments a posteriori, such as those of experimen- 
 tal science (iv. iii. 29), and signalized their contrast 
 by attributing the one to ' reason,' and the other to 
 ' experience' (iv. xii. 9). He even anticipated Kant 
 in enunciating the criterion by which rational and 
 empiric knowledge are to be distinguished the 
 c necessary connexion ' and ' necessity ' which are 
 absent from all mere ' experimental knowledge' 
 (iv. xii. 9), and the c universality ' which cannot be 
 known 'from experience,' but is to be discovered 
 only ' in our minds' (iv. iii. 31). Nor did Locke 
 fail to see that even in our experimental knowledge 
 there is an element which is not experimental. 
 Having stated that ' in some of our ideas there are 
 certain relations, habitudes, and connexions, so visi- 
 bly included in the nature of the ideas themselves, 
 
Hume's Anticipation of Kant. 173 
 
 that we cannot conceive them separable from them 
 by any power whatsoever,' he goes on to say that 
 i the things which, as far as our observation reaches, 
 we constantly find to proceed regularly, we may con- 
 clude do act by a law set them, but yet by a law we 
 know not, whereby, though causes work steadily, 
 and effects constantly flow from them, yet, their 
 connexions and dependencies being not discover- 
 able in our ideas, we can have but an experimental 
 knowledge of them' (iv. iii. 29). But Locke did 
 not ask himself what right have we to ( conclude ' 
 that causes work ' steadily,' and that effects ' con- 
 stantly ' flow from them. He saw that this was a 
 synthetic a priori judgment ; but he did not ask 
 himself how is such a judgment possible he did 
 not recognize the importance of the question. 
 
 Hume in this respect evinced a more inquiring 
 spirit and a more penetrating genius than had been 
 evinced by Locke. As Locke fastened on the con- 
 ception of substance, so Hume fastened on the con- 
 ception of causation ; and as Locke had resolved 
 substance into a collection of attributes, together 
 with a supposition of something we know not what, 
 so Hume resolved causation into a succession of phe- 
 nomena, together with an anticipation of something 
 we know not why. What is the origin of that antici- 
 pation ? On this point, Hume, as we have seen, pro- 
 fessed to have discovered no light in anything that 
 he had read. "I have/oemJ that such an object has 
 always been attended with such an effect, and I fore- 
 see that other objects, which are in appearance simi- 
 
174 The Main Question of Hume. 
 
 lar, will be attended with similar effects " these two 
 propositions, he said, are far from being the same 
 (Works, iv. 42). The latter, in fact, was a synthetic 
 a priori judgment. " Why past experience should 
 be extended to future times, and to other objects, 
 which, for aught we know, may be only in appear- 
 ance similar this," says Hume, " is the main ques- 
 tion on which I would insist" (iv. 42). This 
 question, it is evident, is identical with the ques- 
 tion which Kant regards as ' the grand problem of 
 transcendental philosophy ' (p. 44) c how are syn- 
 thetical propositions a priori possible ?' (ibid.). But 
 Hume not only anticipated the problem he antici- 
 pated the method to be pursued for its solution. 
 The conception of causation cannot be educed from 
 experience, he said, for experience only reveals the 
 ' constant conjunction ' of two objects in the past, 
 whereas the conception of cause and effect involves 
 the idea of their l necessary connexion ' in all time 
 past, present, and to come. ' It is impossible,' he 
 says, that any arguments from experience can 
 prove this resemblance of the past to the future, 
 since all these arguments are founded on the sup- 
 position of that resemblance ' (iv. 46). Hume 
 accordingly, as we have seen, arrives at the con- 
 clusion that the efficacy of causes lies in the de- 
 termination of the mind,' as distinguished from a 
 determination of the object (i. 222); and holds that 
 when we draw an inference from one object to 
 another, after the discovery of their constant con- 
 junction, Hhe necessary connexion depends upon 
 
The Copernican Theory. 175 
 
 the inference, instead of the inference's depending 
 on the necessary connexion' (i. 123). 
 
 The Kritik of Kant is nothing but a generali- 
 sation of this idea; and the full scope and significance 
 of Hume's reasoning on the subject of causation can- 
 not be more clearly brought into evidence than by 
 reference to the reasoning of the Kritik. 'It has 
 hitherto been assumed that our cognition must con- 
 form to the objects,' says Kant in his Second Pre- 
 face ; ' but all attempts to ascertain anything about 
 these objects a priori, by means of conceptions, and 
 thus to extend the range of our knowledge, have 
 been rendered abortive by this assumption. Let 
 us then make the experiment whether we may not 
 be more successful in metaphysics if we assume 
 that the objects must conform to our cognition' 
 (p. xxviii.). 'Here,' says Kant, 'we propose to 
 do just what Copernicus did in attempting to ex- 
 plain the celestial movements.* When he found 
 that he could make no progress by assuming that 
 all the heavenly bodies revolved around the specta- 
 tor, he reversed the process, and tried the experi- 
 
 * The scope of Kant's astronomical hypothesis, as Cousin and Professor 
 
 illustration has been made the subject Webb suppose' (p 36). But though 
 
 of dispute. ' It is with reference to either the earth's rotation on its axis 
 
 this and the accounting for the a or its revolution round the sun would 
 
 priori or necessary element in intui- equally have answered his purpose, 
 
 tions and concepts,' says Mr. Mahaffy Kant himself refers to the central 
 
 in his Translation of Kuno Fischer's laws of the movements of the heavenly 
 
 Commentary on the Kritik, 'that bodies (p. xxx.). It is strange anyone 
 
 Kant in his Second Preface compares should have thought that it refers to 
 
 himself and his system to Copernicus, ' the supposed laws of being as being, 
 
 and to the rotation of the earth as dis- the fixed stars of metaphysics,' as 
 
 covered by him, not to the heliocentric Mr. Mahaffy seems to think (p. 37). 
 
176 The Transcendental Method. 
 
 merit of assuming that the spectator revolved while 
 the stars remained at rest ' (p. xxix.). 
 
 Hume's argument, that a given conception can- 
 not be given by experience, because all conclusions 
 from experience are based on the conception, may 
 be regarded as the formula of the Transcendental 
 Method. That method lays it down that whatever 
 is presupposed by experience must be regarded as 
 necessary to experience, and as prior to experience, 
 and as transcending experience, and therefore as 
 transcendental and a product of the mind. The 
 difference between this mode of reasoning and 
 the ordinary procedure of the a priori school is 
 obvious. The transcendental method does not 
 argue that certain principles must be regarded as 
 a priori because experience is incompetent to ex- 
 plain them ; it argues that they must be regarded 
 as a priori because they themselves are necessary 
 to the explanation of experience. And this again 
 shows the true character of the Transcendental Crite- 
 rion (p. 21). The transcendental philosopher does 
 not argue that certain principles cannot be educed 
 from experience merely because they are necessary 
 and universal; he argues that they are necessary 
 and universal, because they are essential to the con- 
 ception of that experience from which they are said 
 to be educed. All this is involved in Hume's posi- 
 tion, that the mental inference in causation is not de- 
 termined by any necessary connexion in the objects, 
 but that the supposed necessary connexion in the 
 objects is merely the result of the mental inference. 
 
The Transcendental Problem. 177 
 
 But if Hume was the Copernicus of the new 
 method of investigating the phenomena of the 
 inind, Kant must be regarded as its Newton. While 
 Hume applied the method to determine the nature 
 and origin of a single conception, the Transcendental 
 Kritik proposes to ' lay before us a complete enume- 
 ration of all the radical conceptions which constitute 
 pure knowledge ' (p. 17) ; and if it c does not assume 
 the title of Transcendental Philosophy, it is only be- 
 cause, to be a complete system, it ought to contain 
 a full analysis of all human knowledge a priori ' 
 (ibid.), whereas it pretermits the consideration of 
 our analytical a priori knowledge, and confines it- 
 self to the consideration of our synthetical a priori 
 knowledge only (p. 16). The Transcendental Prob- 
 lem, therefore, which the Kritik of the Reason under- 
 takes to solve is embodied in the question how are 
 synthetical a priori judgments possible? (pp. 12, 44); 
 and in answering this question Kant traverses the 
 whole domain of speculation, and completes the 
 work of Hume. 
 
 The general principles of Kant's psychology, 
 allowing for variations of language, are identical 
 with those of Locke's. Pure Reason is a perfect 
 unity (p. xx). There are two sources of knowledge 
 which perhaps spring from a common but unknown 
 root, Sensibility and Understanding (p. 1 8) the one 
 being a receptivity for impressions, the other a 
 spontaneity in the productions of conceptions (p. 45). 
 Intuitions and conceptions, therefore, constitute the 
 elements of knowledge (p. 45). But as sensibility 
 
 N 
 
178 Empiric Cognition. 
 
 and understanding may spring from a common root, 
 so they can only operate in conjunction (p. 189). 
 Without the one no object would be given; with- 
 out the other no object would be thought (p. 46). 
 Intuitions without conceptions would be blind ; con- 
 ceptions without intuitions would be empty forms 
 (p. 46). Sensibility manifests itself under the two- 
 fold form of the external senses and the internal 
 sense (pp. 23, 43); and understanding employs itself 
 with the twofold aim of anticipating experience by 
 means of its conceptions, in which case it retains 
 its name as understanding, and of attempting to 
 transcend the sphere of experience by means of its 
 ideas, in which case it assumes the name of reason 
 
 (P- 54> 
 
 The opening sentence of the Kritik contains the 
 substance of the polemic against innate ideas with 
 which Locke opens the Essay concerning Human 
 Understanding. " That all our knowledge begins 
 with experience there can be no doubt," says Kant ; 
 "for how is it possible that the faculty of cognition 
 should be awakened into exercise otherwise than 
 by means of objects which affect our senses, and 
 partly of themselves produce representations, partly 
 rouse our powers of understanding into activity, 
 to compare, to connect, or to separate these, and so 
 to convert the raw material of our sensuous impres- 
 sions into a knowledge of objects which is called 
 experience" (p. i). But what, according to Kant, 
 are the objects the knowledge of which we are thus 
 supposed to be able to attain? " In whatsoever 
 
The Transcendental Object. 179 
 
 mode, or by whatsoever means, our knowledge may 
 relate to objects," says Kant, "it is at least quite 
 clear, that the only manner in which it immediately 
 relates to them is by means of intuition" (p. 21). Is 
 Kant's intuition, then, objective ? No. "Our mode 
 of intuition," he says, " is not such as to give us the 
 existence of its object"; for that is "a mode which, 
 so far as we can judge, belongs only to the Creator" 
 (p. 43). But though our mode of intuition does not 
 give us the existence of the object, he holds that it 
 is ' dependent on the existence of the object' for its 
 manifestations, because it is ' possible only on con- 
 dition that the representative faculty of the subject 
 is affected by the object' (ibid.). 
 
 What, then, in the Transcendental Philosophy, 
 is the object which affects the subject ? and what is 
 the subject which is affected by the object ? Both 
 are presupposed in Kant's conception of experience ; 
 and both, therefore, must be viewed as transcen- 
 dental. Accordingly, throughout the Kritik of the 
 Reason, Kant assumes the existence of a Transcen- 
 dental Object, which he regards as the non-sensuous 
 cause of our sensations (p. 309). It is true ' the 
 transcendental ground of this unity of subjective 
 and objective' constitutes 'the mystery of the origin 
 and source of our faculty of sense ' ; and, therefore, 
 he regards the transcendental object as a mere 
 nescio quid, the nature of which we could not under- 
 stand, though some one were found able to tell us 
 what it is (p. 200). But it must be postulated by 
 the understanding as ' the mental correlate of sensi- 
 
 N 2 
 
180 The Transcendental Subject. 
 
 bility ' (p. 309). And hence it is that phenomena, or 
 the sensuous existences which are the sole objects of 
 our knowledge, present a double aspect one turned 
 to the object as a thing in itself, and the other 
 turned to our own form of intuition (p. 33) ; so that 
 the name of phenomenon is given to that which is 
 not found in the object itself, but which is only 
 found in the relation of the object to the subject, 
 and forms our representation of it (p. 42). The 
 conception of a noumenon, therefore, must be admit- 
 ted as the correlative of phenomena ; and, though 
 such a conception is problematical, it is not only 
 admissible, but must of necessity be admitted (p. 187). 
 Phenomena must have a transcendental object as a 
 foundation which determines them as representa- 
 tions (p. 333); and "to this transcendental object 
 we may attribute the whole connexion and extent 
 of our possible perceptions, and say that it is 
 given and exists in itself prior to all experience" 
 
 (P- 309). 
 
 As Kant assumes the existence of a Transcen- 
 dental Object as the mental correlate of sense, so 
 he assumes the existence of a Transcendental Subject 
 as the mental correlate of thought (p. 239). But as 
 he regards the one as a mere nescio quid, of which, 
 beyond the fact of its existence, nothing can be 
 known, so he regards the other as a mere unknown 
 quantity, the equivalent of an algebraic x. The 
 Transcendental Object and the Transcendental 
 Subject are thus the two foci around which the 
 Transcendental Philosophy revolves. But these 
 
The Transcenden ta I JEs the tic . 1 8 1 
 
 foci are invisible to the eye of sense, and the intro- 
 duction of these metaphysical elements into the 
 Kantian system does not exercise any influence on 
 the purely psychological development of its world 
 of intuitions, conceptions and ideas. Kant, indeed, 
 gives us a critical admonition on the subject. " The 
 transcendental conception of phenomena in space," 
 he says, " is a critical admonition, that, in general, 
 nothing which is intuited in space is a thing in 
 itself, and that space is not a form which belongs, 
 as a property, to things ; but that objects are quite 
 unknown to us in themselves, and what we call out- 
 ward objects are nothing else but mere representa- 
 tions of our sensibility, whose form is space, but 
 whose real correlate, the thing in itself, is not known 
 by means of those representations, nor ever can be, 
 but respecting which, in experience, no inquiry is 
 ever made" (p. 28). 
 
 In thus asserting that space, as known to us, is 
 a mere form of our sensibility, and not an in- 
 dependently existing thing, Kant separates himself 
 from all previous philosophers, idealist and realist 
 alike ; and it is by the establishment of this propo- 
 sition that the Transcendental ^Esthetic professes to 
 have proved " that all things intuited in space 
 and time, and therefore all objects of possible ex- 
 perience, are nothing but phenomena, that is, mere 
 representations; and that these, whether regarded 
 as extended bodies or as series of changes, have no 
 self-subsistent existence apart from human thought" 
 (P- 307). 
 
1 82 Theories as to Space. 
 
 What, then, according to the transcendentalist, 
 are Space and Time? By means of the external 
 senses we represent objects as without us, and that 
 in space ; and, by means of the internal sense, the 
 mind contemplates the phenomena of its internal 
 state, and represents them as in time (p. 23). But 
 our internal experience is only possible under the 
 previous assumption of external experience (p. 167); 
 for Kant holds, with Locke, that ideas of reflection 
 must be preceded by ideas of sensation. Space, 
 therefore, in this sense, is anterior to time. Time, 
 moreover, is in a state of continual flow, while space 
 is permanent, and determines things as such (p. 176). 
 Let us, therefore, restrict our inquiry to space. 
 
 The theories as to the nature of Space advanced 
 by the philosophers who preceded Kant were nu- 
 merous and discordant. The Schoolmen had started 
 a notion, which was afterwards adopted by Grave - 
 sande, that space is a self-subsisting but unthinking 
 substance. Newton had broached the doctrine, 
 which was afterwards developed by Clarke, that it 
 is an attribute of the eternal and infinite existence. 
 Locke had maintained that, though space is neces- 
 sary to the existence of body, the two things are 
 distinct; but, in reply to the question whether space 
 is attribute or substance, had frankly answered that 
 he did not know(n. xiii, 1 1, 17). Leibnitz regarded 
 it as neither substance nor accident, and, defining it 
 to be nothing but the order of things coexistent, 
 reduced it to a mere relation. Berkeley, as we 
 have seen, maintained that extension, figure, and 
 
The Transcendental Ideality of Space. 183 
 
 motion were only ideas existing in the mind (Prin. 
 ix.), and that space was nothing but the absence of 
 resistance (Prin. cxvi). Collier, in this respect, 
 more philosophical than Berkeley, held that 'the 
 quasi-externeity of visible objects is not only the 
 effect of the will of Grod/ but ' a natural and ne- 
 cessary condition of their visibility' (Olavis, 4). 
 Hume, on the contrary, maintained that ' the idea 
 of space or extension is nothing but the idea of 
 visible or tangible points distributed in a certain 
 order' (i. 80). And, finally, some fifty years before 
 the publication of the Kritik, Law, the translator of 
 the de Origine Mali of Archbishop King, anticipated 
 the very phraseology of Kant, and, denying that 
 the idea of space required any external ideatum, 
 asserted that its formality existed nowhere but in 
 mind, and had no foundation but the power which 
 the mind possessed to form it (Trans. 7) . 
 
 But what was a mere passing conjecture in the 
 mind of Law was converted by Kant into a syste- 
 matic exposition of the Transcendental Ideality of 
 Space. To establish his point Kant employs the 
 formula of Hume in a department of our mental 
 phenomena in which Hume never dreamt of em- 
 ploying it. The idea of space, he said, does not 
 represent any property of objects as things in 
 themselves or any relation between them; for 
 things in themselves are not presented to our in- 
 tuition (p. 25). Neither is it a general conception; 
 for the idea of space is one, and is not abstracted 
 from a multitude of spaces (p. 24). Neither, he 
 
1 84 The Empiric Reality of Space. 
 
 said, can it be derived from our external expe- 
 rience; for before we can represent things as ex- 
 isting in space we must have the representation 
 (p. 23). The representation, therefore, must be 
 regarded as an a priori representation which serves 
 as the foundation for all external intuition (p. 24). 
 Accordingly Kant arrives at the conclusion that 
 'we find existing in the mind a priori the pure 
 form of sensuous intuitions in general, in which the 
 manifold content of the phenomenal world is ar- 
 ranged and viewed under certain relations' (p. 22). 
 It is true ' we cannot convert the special conditions 
 of sensibility into conditions of the possibility of 
 things ' (p. 26). It is true that empty space ' may 
 exist where our perceptions cannot exist, inasmuch 
 as they cannot reach it ' (p. 158). But space in 
 this sense is not an object of possible experience 
 (ibid.) ; and ' in the human point of view,' space is 
 nothing but a permanent form of sensibility in 
 which the sensations with which we are transcen- 
 dentally supplied are moulded (p. 26). 
 
 The Empiric Reality of Space is the necessary 
 consequence of its Transcendental Ideality (p. 27). 
 The objects of external intuition, whenever they 
 may be presented to us, 'must correspond to the 
 formal conditions of sensibility existing a priori 
 in the mind,' because c without them they could not 
 be objects to us ' (p. 76). Phenomena in the future 
 as in the past must necessarily correspond with the 
 formal condition of sensibility, because it is only 
 through such formal condition that phenomena exist 
 
The Mathematical Sciences. 185 
 
 (p. 77). True the phenomenon has its twofold 
 aspect; true it has relation to the transcendental 
 object. But as long as the relation of the object 
 to the subject is maintained (p. 42), as long as the 
 unknown cause of our sensations continues to affect 
 the senses, so long will sensibility, like the cloud in 
 Comus, continue to ' turn forth her silver lining on the 
 night/ and so long will the objective reality of our 
 external intuitions as phenomena in space continue. 
 If empirical intuition is possible only through 
 the pure intuition of space and time, it follows that 
 what geometry affirms of the latter is indisputably 
 valid of the former (p. 125). But the principle 
 which accounts for the validity of our mathematical 
 preconceptions accounts for their existence also. 
 No synthetic a priori judgment would be possible 
 except by means of some a priori determination of 
 the mind, and the a priori determination of the 
 mind is discovered in the forms of sense. In show- 
 ing the transcendental ideality of space, therefore, 
 Kant professes to have solved one portion of the 
 grand general problem of the transcendental phi- 
 losophy. He professes to have shown how synthetic 
 a priori propositions are possible in mathematics by 
 showing ' that we are in possession of pure a priori 
 intuitions, namely, space and time, in which we find, 
 when in a judgment a priori we pass out beyond the 
 given conception, something which is not discover- 
 able in that conception, but is certainly found a priori 
 in the intuition which corresponds to the conception, 
 and can be united synthetically with it ' (p. 44). 
 
1 86 The Transcendental Logic. 
 
 But this solution, though true as far as it goes, 
 is only a partial solution of the problem, even as 
 far as mathematics are concerned. As ' understand- 
 ing and sensibility, with| us, can determine objects 
 only in conjunction' (p. 189), so 'in no other 
 way than from the united operation of both can 
 knowledge rise' (p. 46). The conclusions of the 
 Transcendental Aesthetic, therefore, require to be 
 supplemented by the Transcendental Logic. The 
 Transcendental Logic finds lying before it the 
 manifold content which the Transcendental Aesthe- 
 tic presents in order to furnish material for the 
 pure conceptions of the understanding ; and the 
 spontaneity of thought requires that the diversity 
 presented by the senses should be examined in a 
 certain manner, and connected together, so as to 
 convert it into knowledge (p. 62). 
 
 The Understanding is variously defined by Kant 
 as the faculty of thinking, the faculty of conceiv- 
 ing, the faculty of judging, and the faculty of rules. 
 But in its most general character it is " nothing 
 but the faculty of conjoining a priori, and of bring- 
 ing the variety of given representations under the 
 unity of apperception," or self-conscious thought 
 (p. 83). It is only by a synthesis of apprehension 
 that the manifold in any empirical intuition is com- 
 bined into the object which we call a phenomenon 
 (p. 98). It is only by a synthesis of imagination 
 that the objects which we have once combined in 
 apprehension are permanently associated as objects 
 of experience (p. 63). It is only by a synthesis 
 
The Transcendental Unity. 187 
 
 of conception that the scattered data of experience are 
 combined into a system of scientific knowledge, 
 This threefold synthesis is the work of the under- 
 standing, and is presupposed in all a priori empi- 
 rical cognition (p. 63). But even this synthesis 
 necessitates a transcendental pre- conception. It is 
 true we have no intuition of the mind as object; 
 it is true the transcendental subject is an unknown 
 quantity an algebraic x. But in every act of syn- 
 thesis, whether of apprehension, or imagination, or 
 conception, the act is regarded as mine, and as per- 
 formed by me. The unity of conception, therefore, 
 involves the conception of a unity which Kant 
 styles the Originally Synthetic Unity of Apperception 
 (p. 81) the Transcendental Unity of Self 'Consciousness, 
 to indicate the possibility of any a priori know- 
 ledge (p. 82). This, in fact, is 'the first pure cog- 
 nition of the understanding' (p. 85) i the supreme 
 principle of all our synthetic judgments' (p. 117). 
 The original synthetic unity of apperception is ' the 
 form of the understanding ' in relation to ' the 
 forms of sense' (p. 103); and accordingly the first 
 lesson which the Transcendental Logic teaches is, 
 that it is the supreme principle of the possibility 
 of all intuition in relation to the understanding; 
 just as the Transcendental Aesthetic teaches that 
 the formal conditions of space and time are the 
 supreme principle of the possibility of all intuition 
 in relation to our capacities of sense (p. 84). 
 
 The synthetic power, which Kant thus attri- 
 butes to the understanding, is merely the scientific 
 
1 88 The Transcendental Analytic. 
 
 expression of what Locke and Hume had intimated 
 in more popular language, when they said that the 
 understanding has the power of perceiving, com- 
 pounding, and comparing the simple ideas with 
 which it is furnished by the senses, and that the 
 ideas of substances are mere collections of the simple 
 ideas which the understanding joins together. But 
 Kant, in the Transcendental Analytic, advanced far 
 beyond this point, and penetrated to the very 
 centre of the subject. He gave an exact analysis 
 of the various a priori conceptions which the under- 
 standing employs in dealing with its sensible intui- 
 tions, and also an analysis of the various synthetic 
 a priori principles into which those various concep- 
 tions enter (p. 53). The Analytic of Conceptions 
 professes to trace the pure conceptions of the un- 
 derstanding to their very germs and beginnings in 
 the mind, until they are developed on the occa- 
 sions which experience presents (p. 55). And the 
 Analytic of Principles professes to show that c a 
 priori synthetical judgments are possible, when we 
 apply the formal conditions of a priori intuition, 
 the synthesis of imagination, and the necessary 
 unity of that synthesis in a transcendental apper- 
 ception, to a possible cognition of experience, and 
 say : the conditions of the possibility of experience 
 in general are at the same time conditions of the 
 possibility of the objects of experience, and have 
 for that reason objective validity in an a priori 
 synthetic judgment' (p. 119). 
 
 The first thing to be studied, then, is the Analytic 
 
The Analytic of Conceptions. 189 
 
 of Conceptions. As the Transcendental ^Esthetic 
 professes to have proved that all objects of possible 
 experience are nothing but phenomena, which have 
 no self-subsistent existence apart from human 
 thought (p. 307), so the Transcendental Analytic 
 professes to have established that ( the understand- 
 ing is competent to effect nothing a priori except 
 the anticipation of the form of a possible experience 
 in general ' (p. 1 83). What, then, are the conceptions 
 of the understanding by means of which it antici- 
 pates experience ? Here, again, the subject diverges 
 into two branches. The object of the Transcen- 
 dental Discovery is to determine* the precise number 
 of these conceptions, and the object of the Trans- 
 cendental Deduction is to show that without their 
 aid all anticipation of experience would be impos- 
 sible for us. 
 
 It is in the Transcendental Discovery that Kant's 
 claims as a discoverer in mental science are most 
 conspicuous and least disputed. Bacon, it is true, 
 had recognized the necessity of a philosophia prima, 
 which was to be the repository of the conceptions 
 and axioms common to all the sciences, and among 
 his transcendents, had enumerated such conceptions 
 as rnajus minus ; multum paucum ; prius, posterius ; 
 idem, diversum ; potentia, actus ; habitus, privatio ; 
 totum, partes ; agens, patiens ; motus, quies ; ens, 
 non-ens; and the like. Hobbes had followed the ex- 
 ample of his master, and had acknowledged the im- 
 portance of a philosophia prima, which should treat 
 of such fundamental notions as body, time, place, 
 
i go The Transcendental Discovery. 
 
 matter, form, essence, subject, substance, accident, 
 power, act, finite, infinite, quantity, quality, motion, 
 action, passion, and divers others, necessary to the 
 explaining of man's conceptions concerning the na- 
 ture and generation of bodies (iii. 671 ; vii. 226). 
 Locke had divided our complex ideas into modes, 
 substances, and relations ; and had treated in suc- 
 cessive chapters of space, of duration, of infinity, of 
 power, of substances, of cause and effect, of identity 
 and diversity, and of other relations. Berkeley had 
 intimated the necessity of ' an inquiry concerning 
 those transcendental maxims which influence all the 
 particular sciences ' (Prin. cxviii), and had talked in 
 a vague way of the mind containing all, and acting 
 all, and being to all created things the source of 
 unity and identity, harmony and order, existence 
 and stability (Siris, 295). Hume had accepted 
 Locke's division of our complex ideas into modes, 
 substances, and relations ; and had classified rela- 
 tions under the heads of resemblance, identity, 
 space and time, quantity and number, quality and 
 degree, contrariety and causation (Works, i. 30, 
 98). But none of them, except Hume, had set any 
 definite aim before them. They followed no guid- 
 ing principle in their investigations. They fastened 
 on one conception after another as they occurred, 
 and their whole procedure was hap-hazard. 
 
 The understanding being the faculty of judg- 
 ment, Kant conceived that by examining the forms 
 of judgment he would be able to determine the 
 number of the a priori conceptions of the under- 
 
The Transcendental Clue. 191 
 
 standing. It was this which supplied him with the 
 Transcendental Clue (p. 56). Judgments, according 
 to the logicians, can be contemplated under four 
 aspects only, those of quantity, quality, relation, 
 and modality; and if a physical content be intro- 
 duced into these forms of logic, a transcendental 
 element, according to Kant, will be detected (p. 58). 
 The sun is the centre of the planetary system; 
 some of the planets are mere asteroids; all the 
 planets revolve around the sun. What is involved 
 in the words < the,' [and < some/ and 'all'? Evi- 
 dently the conceptions of unity, plurality, and 
 totality. The earth revolves around its axis; the 
 sun does not revolve around the earth ; glass is a 
 non-conductor. These judgments involve the con- 
 ceptions of reality, negation, and limitation, the 
 limitation of a class of things, not by the presence, 
 but by the absence, of a certain characteristic. If 
 we assert categorically that gold has such and such 
 properties, there is implied a conception of inhe- 
 rence and subsistence ; when we assert hypotheti- 
 cally that if the sun shines the wax will melt, there 
 is implied the conception of causality and depen- 
 dence ; and if we assert disjunctively that a thing 
 is either this or that or the other, the coordination 
 of the whole, and the reciprocal exclusion of each, 
 involve a conception of community or reciprocity 
 between agent and patient (p. 64). Finally, what 
 is assumed in propositions such as these : as a 
 matter of fact, man does exist upon the earth ; as 
 a matter of possibility, life may be existent in 
 
1 92 The Categories of the Understanding. 
 
 the moon ; as a matter of necessary inference from 
 what we have perceived, man must have existed 
 in the glacial period ? Clearly the conceptions of 
 actuality, possibility, and necessity. This com- 
 pletes the tale. We have discovered the twelve 
 Categories of the Understanding. These are the con- 
 ceptions which guide the understanding in its an- 
 ticipations of experience. These suggest the ruling 
 principles which regulate and pre-determine the 
 domain of knowledge. These are the Di Majores 
 of the Kantian system. 
 
 Or consider the matter in another aspect. We 
 may conceive an object as one, as many, or as at 
 once both one and many; we may conceive it as 
 an object of which something may be affirmed, or 
 of which something may be denied, or of which 
 something may be affirmed with an element of de- 
 nial ; we may conceive it as inherent in some sub- 
 stance, or as produced by some cause, or as reacting 
 on other objects in the form of cause and substance ; 
 we may conceive it as possible, or we may conceive 
 it as existent, or we may conceive it as necessary, 
 that is, as existent from the mere fact of the possibi- 
 lity of its existence. We have thus the Categories of 
 Unity, Plurality, and Totality; of Eeality, Nega- 
 tion, and Limitation ; of Substance, Causality, and 
 Community of Action ; of Possibility, Existence, and 
 Necessity. These are the transcendental concep- 
 tions elicited from the Quantity, Quality, Relation, 
 and Modality of the logicians. In each of the four 
 classes the number of the categories is three, and 
 
The Transcendental Deduction. 193 
 
 in each triad the third is the synthesis of the other 
 two (p. 67). The four forms of judgment are thus 
 like the four rivers of Paradise in the picture in the 
 old Bibles. They are placed at right angles to one 
 another, each with a convenient bridge erected in 
 the middle, and the tree of knowledge, with the 
 serpent round it, is planted in the centre of the four. 
 
 Why the Categories should be twelve and twelve 
 only we can no more explain than we can explain 
 why the functions of judgment should be four, or 
 why the kinds of syllogism should be three, or 
 why the forms of sensible intuition should be only 
 two (p. 89). We can only answer that the fact is 
 so. The Transcendental Discovery being completed, 
 Kant proceeds to the Transcendental Deduction, the 
 object of which is Ho show that these conceptions 
 are a priori conditions of the possibility of all expe- 
 rience ' (p. 78), considered as a system of empirical 
 cognition (p. 160). But the categories are not in 
 themselves cognitions, but are mere forms of thought 
 for the construction of cognitions from given intui- 
 tions ; so that from them alone no synthetical pro- 
 positions can be made (p. 174). And this again 
 raises the question, What are the synthetic a priori 
 propositions which the physical sciences assume ? 
 And how are such judgments possible ? 
 
 The Analytic of Principles is the complement of 
 the Analytic of Conceptions. Fastening on the four 
 forms of judgment, Kant discovers that ' all intui- 
 tions are extensive quantities 7 (p. 122) that 'in all 
 phenomena the real, or that which is an object of 
 
 o 
 
194 The Principles of the Understanding. 
 
 sensation, has degree' (p. 125) that 'in all changes 
 of phenomena substance is permanent' (p. 136); 
 and c all changes take place according to the law of 
 connexion of cause and effect' (p. 141); and i all 
 substances, in so far as they can be perceived in 
 space at the same time exist in a state of complete 
 reciprocity of action' (p. 156) and, finally, that 
 as a thing agrees with the formal, or coheres with 
 the material and universal, conditions of experience, 
 it is possible, real, or necessary (p. 161). These are 
 the Axioms of Intuition the Anticipations of Percep- 
 tion the Analogies of Experience and the Postulates of 
 Empiric Thought (p. 121 ). Not only are these prin- 
 ciples assumed in all our physical inquiries, but it 
 would be impossible to form any system of physical 
 science without assuming them. Unless we assumed 
 that all phenomena are subject to the laws of mathe- 
 matics (p. 125), unless we assumed that substance in 
 the world of phenomena is constant (p. 137), unless 
 we assumed that the sequence of phenomena is sub- 
 ject to the law of causation (p. 142), we could pre- 
 determine nothing whatsoever as to the phenomena 
 with which we are to be presented (p. 141). This 
 shows the true nature of cognition a priori. 
 'All cognition by means of which we are able 
 to cognise and determine a priori what belongs to 
 empirical cognition may be called an anticipation' 
 (p. 126); and the principles which we are discussing 
 are only ' rules of synthetic unity a priori by means 
 of which we can anticipate experience' (pp. 160 i). 
 By means of the Axioms of Intuition we know a 
 
The Anticipations of Experience. 195 
 
 priori that phenomena, when presented to us, will 
 conform to the laws of time and space (p. 125). 
 The Anticipations of Perception enable us to ' fore- 
 stall experience' in its very matter, the sensation 
 (p. 127). The Analogies of Experience are merely 
 rules by means of which ' we anticipate our own 
 apprehensions' (p. 155), and < intuite the future by 
 anticipation' (p. 164). Even in connexion with the 
 Postulates of Empiric Thought the great objection 
 to the existing systems of idealism was, that by not 
 admitting time and space to be the forms of sense, 
 they gave no objective validity to sensible phe- 
 nomena, and left the mind without any rational 
 ground for anticipating their recurrence (p. 166). 
 In point of fact, it is only by the existence of the 
 principles of the understanding which anticipate 
 experience that our possession of synthetic a priori 
 judgments is proved (p. 463); and, accordingly, the 
 Transcendental Analytic, to repeat the words of 
 Kant, "has this important result, to wit, that the 
 understanding is competent to effect nothing a 
 priori, except the anticipation of the form of a pos- 
 sible experience in general 7 (p. 183); or, as he else- 
 where expresses himself, it shows how the mere 
 logical form of our cognition can contain the origin 
 of pure conceptions a priori conceptions which 
 represent objects antecedently to all experience, or 
 rather, indicate the synthetical unity which alone 
 renders possible an empirical cognition of objects " 
 
 (P- 22 5> 
 
 Kuno Fischer, in his Commentary, tells us that 
 
 02 
 
ig6 The Transcendental Anticipation. 
 
 6 the whole summary of the Transcendental Ana- 
 lytic ' is contained in the proposition that ' the pure 
 concepts of the understanding are not produced 
 by experience, but themselves produce experience, 
 though they cannot produce any other cognition 
 than experience' (p. 129) they produce its very 
 objects like the forms of sense (p. 78). But Kant 
 asserts the very opposite of this. He asserts that 
 the conception of the understanding ' does not pro- 
 duce the object as to its existence/ but is only ' a 
 priori determinative in regard to that object' (p. 77). 
 It is true that the word experience is used in two 
 senses by Kant, and sometimes in a single sentence. 
 Thus in the opening sentence of the Kritik he says 
 that i all our knowledge begins with experience ,' and 
 then goes on to say that unless our senses were 
 affected the powers of the understanding would not 
 be roused ' to compare, to connect, or to separate 
 our representations, so as to convert the raw mate- 
 rial of our sensuous impressions into a knowledge 
 of objects, which is called experience ' (p. i). Here 
 it is evident that the word experience is used first 
 as meaning sensuous impression, and afterwards as 
 meaning scientific knowledge. It is in the latter 
 sense that the word is used by Kant when he says 
 that ' the rules of the understanding ' form ' the 
 basis of the possibility of experience.' " These 
 rules of the understanding," he says, " are not only 
 a priori true, but the very source of all truth, that 
 is, of the accordance of our cognition with objects, 
 and on this ground, that they contain the basis of 
 
The Transcendental Enigma. 197 
 
 the possibility of experience, as the complex the 
 inbegriff of all cognition" (p. 179). 
 
 But this suggests another aspect in which the 
 question must be viewed. If truth be the accor- 
 dance of our cognition with its objects (pp. 50, 179), 
 how can we guarantee the accordance of objects 
 with our cognition ? Our cognition can possess 
 no ' objective reality' unless we are supplied with 
 1 intuitions to correspond with our conceptions ' 
 (p. 201) how, then, can we guarantee that our 
 conceptions will be supplied with the 'corresponding 
 intuitions ? If experience in its higher sense is 
 dependent on the categories for its possibility, it is 
 plain that the categories are dependent on expe- 
 rience in its lower sense for their objective validity 
 and confirmation (p. xxix). How is it, then, that 
 the categories can be 'the keys to possible expe- 
 riences 7 ? (p. 221). In fact, Kant himself suggests 
 the problem. He raises the question, 'how the 
 categories can determine a priori the synthesis 
 of the manifold in nature, and yet not derive 
 their origin from her 7 'how it is conceivable 
 that nature must regulate herself according to 
 them 9 when they have their origin not in her but 
 in the mind (p. 100). He finds himself 'involved 
 in a difficulty ' when he is asked ' how the subjec- 
 tive conditions of thought can have objective vali- 
 dity ; in other words, can become the conditions of 
 the possibility of all cognition of objects' (p. 75). 
 He puts it thus: "That objects of sensuous in- 
 tuition must correspond to the formal conditions 
 
198 The Transcendental Harmony. 
 
 of sensibility existing a priori in the mind, is quite 
 evident from the fact that without these they could 
 not be objects for us; but that they must also cor- 
 respond to the conditions which the understanding 
 requires for the synthetical unity of thought, is an 
 assertion the grounds of which are not so easily 
 discovered ; for phenomena might be so constituted 
 as not to correspond to the unity of thought, and 
 all things might be in such confusion that, for 
 example, nothing could be met with in the sphere 
 of phenomena to suggest a law of synthesis, and so 
 correspond with the conception of cause and effect ; 
 so that this conception would be quite void, null, 
 and without significance" (p. 76). 
 
 The solution of this enigma as Kant regards it 
 (p. 100) is supplied by the Transcendental Object. 
 Nature in its subjective aspect -formaliter spectata 
 may be regulated by the categories ; but nature in 
 its objective aspect materialiter spectata must be 
 regulated by the object which is the non-sensuous 
 cause of the phenomena presented to the mind 
 (p. 309). ' To this Transcendental Object,' as we 
 have been already told, ' we may attribute the 
 whole connexion and extent of our possible percep- 
 tions ' (p. 309). The action of this Transcendental 
 Cause when ' phenomenized ' is ' in perfect accord- 
 ance with the laws of empirical causation ' (p. 337). 
 It is thus that objects are found to conform to our 
 cognition (p. xxviii). It is thus that the antici- 
 pations of the understanding are confirmed by sub- 
 sequent experience (p. xxix). Hence it is that when 
 
The Transcendental Dialectic. 199 
 
 the understanding supplies the conception, expe- 
 rience supplies the case (p. 120). Hence it is that 
 phenomena are presented to us ' in harmony with 
 the category' (p. 113). ' The categories never 
 mislead us,' in short, because ' outward objects are 
 always in perfect harmony therewith ' (p. 394) 
 in the words of Hume, because there is t a kind 
 of pre-established harmony between the course of 
 nature and the succession of our ideas' (iv. 65). 
 
 The consideration of the Transcendental Object 
 leads us from the Transcendental Logic to the 
 Transcendental Dialectic from the domain of Phy- 
 sical Science to the domain of Metaphysics from 
 the region of anticipation which experience can 
 confirm to the region of anticipation which admits 
 of no confirmation from experience in our present 
 state (p. xxix). Here the Understanding expands 
 its Conceptions into Ideas, and assumes the name of 
 Reason. The ideas of Kant are not, like those of 
 Plato, the archetypes of things themselves (p. 221). 
 They are nothing but the categories elevated to the 
 unconditioned (p. 257), or rather, aspiring to an 
 unconditioned which they cannot possibly attain 
 (p. 311). They are necessary conceptions of rea- 
 son to which no corresponding object can be dis- 
 covered in the world of sense (p. 228), conceptions 
 which carry their synthesis far above all possible 
 experience (p. 263), and of the object corresponding 
 to which we can have no knowledge (p. 235). And 
 as the clue to the discovery of the categories was 
 supplied by the forms of judgment, so the clue to 
 
200 The Three Ideas. 
 
 the discovery of the ideas is supplied by the forms 
 of syllogism, to which all reasoning is restricted 
 (p. 225). The three forms of syllogism correspond 
 to the three categories of subsistence, causality, and 
 community of action (p. 226); and, following the 
 thread of these categories, metaphysicians have 
 attempted to demonstrate the nature of the Soul, the 
 World, and God. 
 
 The futility of all these attempted demonstra- 
 tions, according to Kant, is evinced by demon- 
 strating the impossibility of making any dogmatical 
 assertion concerning any object which lies beyond 
 the boundaries of experience (p. 250). All a priori 
 knowledge, he says, is obtained either from the 
 anticipation of possible experience or from the 
 analysis of conceptions (p. 477). But i in whatever 
 way the understanding may have attained to a con- 
 ception, the existence of the object of the conception 
 cannot be discovered in it by analysis, because the 
 cognition of the existence of the object depends 
 upon the object's being posited and given in itself, 
 apart from the conception' (p. 392). The objects 
 which correspond to our ideas are not so given ; for 
 we have no power of intellectual intuition, and the 
 intuition of the senses can never give the existence 
 of an object in itself (p. 43). It is in vain, there- 
 fore, that the reason poised on the wings of its 
 ideas attempts to transcend experience. As well 
 might the dove attempt to pass beyond the atmo- 
 sphere by which it is supported, and to extend its 
 flight into the void. 
 
The Rational Psychology. 201 
 
 The Transcendental Dialectic is only a develop- 
 ment of the principles which are thus laid down. 
 The Rational Psychology attempts to demonstrate 
 from the very nature of thought that the Tran- 
 scendental Subject is a substance simple in its 
 essence identical through the whole period of its 
 existence and distinct from body (p. 239). But 
 the conception of a thing which can exist per se 
 only as a subject possesses no objective reality, 
 because we can never know whether there exists 
 any object to correspond with that conception 
 (p. 244). The argument, therefore, is a mere 
 Paralogism of the Reason (ibid.); and the transcen- 
 dental illusion which gives it plausibility is found 
 in the fact, that the unity of consciousness which 
 lies at the basis of the categories is considered to 
 be an intuition of the subject as an object, and 
 the category of substance is applied to the fancied 
 intuition (p. 249). 
 
 The Rational Cosmology which attempts to demon- 
 strate the existence of a world resembling our ideas 
 fares worse with Kant than the Rational Psychology. 
 It not only begs the question, but in begging the 
 question it finds itself involved in a variety of con- 
 tradictions which are styled the Antinomies of the 
 Reason. Whether Reason contemplates the compo- 
 sition, the division, the origination, or the depen- 
 dence of phenomena (p. 260), so long as it supposes 
 that it is dealing with things in themselves, it finds 
 itself involved in a natural antithetic (p. 255). In 
 the discussion of any one of these questions thesis 
 
2O2 The Rational Cosmology. 
 
 and antithesis spring from the Reason at the mere 
 suggestion, just as the two serpents which tormented 
 Zohab sprang living from his shoulder at the devil's 
 kiss. Had the world a beginning or had it not? 
 Does or does not every composite substance consist 
 of simple parts ? Is a free causality necessary to 
 account for the phenomena of nature, or is no 
 such free causality required ? Does any absolutely 
 necessary being exist or no ? (pp. 266-284). As 
 long as we suppose we are dealing with things in 
 themselves, thesis and thesis may be with equal 
 plausibility maintained. But the combatants are 
 the victims of a transcendental illusion (p. 315). 
 They fancy that the mere modifications of their 
 sensibility are things subsisting by themselves 
 (p- 37)- Once informed that all they are con- 
 scious of is phenomenal, they will see that the first 
 two antinomies are a contest about nothing (p. 313), 
 and that in the second two the antinomy is only 
 apparent, as it is not impossible that both the con- 
 tradictory statements may be true one, in the world 
 of sense, the other, in the world beyond it (p. 346). 
 The Rational Cosmology recognizes the neces- 
 sity of admitting the existence of a Transcendental 
 Object as the unknown cause of our known sen- 
 sations ; and the recognition of this necessity is 
 an inducement to the Transcendental Theology to 
 identify the Transcendental Object, as Berkeley 
 identified it, with God. But the fallacy of all 
 attempts to prove the existence of God by way of 
 demonstration is shown by the mere definition of 
 
The Transcendental Theology. 203 
 
 the conception of existence (p. 367) by the fact that 
 the existence of an object corresponding to a con- 
 ception cannot be known by a mere analysis of the 
 conception, and can only be shown by actual expe- 
 rience (p. 392). Hence it is that Kant describes 
 the ontological demonstration which Descartes based 
 on the innate idea of a God, as an illusive augmen- 
 tation of our intellectual wealth by the addition of 
 noughts to our account (p. 370). Hence it is that 
 he describes the cosmological proof, which Leibnitz 
 based on the idea of the contingency of the world, 
 as the ontological demonstration in masquerade, an 
 argument which had changed its dress and disguised 
 its voice, for the purpose of passing itself off as an 
 additional witness before the judgment-seat of rea- 
 son (p. 372). The claims of the physico-theological 
 argument, based upon the principle of final causes, 
 are treated, it is true, by the critic of the reason 
 with deference and respect (p. 382). But, accord- 
 ing to Kant, this argument is merely an introduc- 
 tion to the ontological argument, which contains 
 the only possible ground of proof possessed by the 
 speculative reason for the existence of the Supreme 
 Being (p. 383). Theoretically it is open to the 
 various objections brought against its sufficiency by 
 Hume. It reasons from the analogy of human art, 
 and assimilates the creation of the world to the 
 manufacture of a watch. At most it demonstrates 
 the existence of an architect, but not the existence 
 of a creator, of the world. At most, it proves the 
 existence of a cause proportionate to the order and 
 
2O4 The Speculative Reason. 
 
 harmony which we observe, but not the existence 
 of a cause, omnipotent, omniscient, and omni- 
 present, such as that which reason sees in its 
 supreme ideal. But beyond this, it is open to the 
 one insuperable difficulty in the mind of Kant. 
 The physico-theological argument is unable to 
 bridge the abyss which yawns between reality and 
 thought ; and the physico-theologians, after follow- 
 ing the path of nature and experience, suddenly 
 turn aside and pass into the region of pure possi- 
 bility, where they hope to reach, upon the wings 
 of ideas, what had eluded their empirical investi- 
 gations, and, extending their conceptions over the 
 whole sphere of creation, imagine they have at- 
 tained to the transcendent reality of which they 
 are in quest (pp. 386, 7). 
 
 We have now traversed the whole domain of the 
 Transcendental Philosophy, and pursued our way 
 as best we could in the uncertain glimpses of the 
 moon which illuminates that shadowy realm 
 
 Quale per incertam lunam sub luce maligna 
 Est iter in silvis. 
 
 In the Transcendental Aesthetic Kant professes to 
 have established that all things intuited in space 
 and time all objects of possible experience are 
 nothing but phenomena, which, whether considered 
 as extended bodies or as series of changes, have 
 no existence apart from human thought (p. 307). 
 In the Transcendental Analytic he professes to have 
 shown that the understanding is competent to 
 
The Practical Reason. 205 
 
 effect nothing a priori except the anticipation of 
 the form of a possible experience in general, and 
 that, as that which is not phenomenon cannot be an 
 object of experience, it can never overstep the limits 
 of sensibility within which alone objects are pre- 
 sented (pp. 183, 225, 429). The Transcendental 
 Dialectic professes to have demonstrated that " hu- 
 man reason, in one sphere of its speculation, is 
 called upon to consider questions which it cannot 
 decline, as they are presented by its own nature, 
 but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every 
 faculty which it possesses" (p. xvii); and teaches the 
 lesson that it ought never to attempt to soar above 
 the sphere of possible experience, beyond which 
 there lies nothing for us but the incomprehensible 
 inane (p. 429). 
 
 But it is with the Kantian philosophy as with 
 the nether world of Virgil there is a double exit ; 
 and as the Speculative Eeason is the porter of the 
 gate of horn which gives egress to mere shadowy 
 shapes, so the Practical Reason is seated by the 
 ivory gate from which living realities emerge. 
 Though we surrender the power of ' knowing,' we 
 reserve the power of ' thinking,' supersensible ex- 
 istence (p. xxxiii). There is nothing to prevent us 
 from admitting that the objects which correspond to 
 our ideas of the soul and God have an actual ex- 
 istence (p. 412). We are not only authorised, but 
 we are in fact compelled to realise them, and to 
 posit real objects corresponding to our conceptions, 
 though we cannot be said to know them (p. 415). 
 
206 Moral Certainty. 
 
 Even in a purely theoretical connexion we may as- 
 sert that we firmly believe in the existence of God, 
 and in a future state, while, in the moral aspect of 
 the question, we are irresistibly constrained to be- 
 lieve in those momentous facts (p. 501). The proofs 
 which have been current among men in justification 
 of these high beliefs not only i preserve their value 
 undiminished,' but l gain in clearness and unsophis- 
 ticated power by the rejection of the dogmatic as- 
 sumptions of the speculative reason' (p. 251). The 
 practical proofs derived from i the analogy of na- 
 ture ' and ( the moral law ' remain after the pre- 
 tended demonstrations have been finally confuted. 
 " This mighty, irresistible proof," says Kant " ac- 
 companied, as it is, by an ever-increasing knowledge 
 of the conform ability to a purpose in everything we 
 see around us, by the conviction of the boundless 
 immensity of creation, by the consciousness of a 
 certain illimitableness in the possible extension of 
 our knowledge, and by a desire commensurate there- 
 with remains to humanity, even after the theoreti- 
 cal cognition of ourselves has failed to establish the 
 necessity of an existence after death" (p. 251). 
 
 What then has Kant the Destroyer the Alles- 
 zermalmender as he is called by his countrymen 
 destroyed? He himself informs us. He has ef- 
 fected nothing but a c destruction of cobwebs ' 
 (p. xxxviii). He has confuted all i metaphysical 
 demonstrations ; ' but he has left us ' practical 
 proofs' to take their place' (p. 251). He denies 
 that we can have any ( logical conviction ' in sup- 
 
Logical Conviction. 207 
 
 port of our belief in God and in a future state, but he 
 admits that we may have a ' moral certainty ' upon 
 the subject (p. 502). He recognizes the fact as 
 established on the subjective ground of sentiment 
 which he refuses to regard as established on the 
 objective ground of reason (ibid.). ' It is not 
 the matter which may give occasion to dispute/ he 
 says, i but the manner ' ; and ' even after we have 
 been obliged to renounce all pretensions to know- 
 ledge? it is ' perfectly permissible to employ, in the 
 presence of reason, the language of a firmly rooted 
 faith* (p. 453). Faith fills the space left vacant by 
 the reason (p. xxxi) ; and if Kant abolishes know- 
 ledge, it is only to make way for belief (p. xxxv). 
 
 When knowledge and belief are thus sharply 
 contrasted, it may be well to examine a little 
 more closely into the true character of knowledge, 
 under the conditions of the Kantian system. For 
 what is Kant's Cognition ? Kant holds that we 
 have no intuition but the intuition of the senses, 
 and that besides the intuition of the senses we 
 have no mode of cognition, except cognition by 
 conceptions (p. 57). What, then, is Cognition ly 
 Conceptions ? According to Kant, ' the conceptions 
 of the understanding are cogitated a priori ante- 
 cedently to experience' (p. 219); and, conse- 
 quently, * all cognition, by means of which we 
 are enabled to cognize and determine a priori what 
 belongs to empirical cognition, may be called an 
 anticipation' (p. 126). Accordingly, as we have 
 seen, the Analytic arrives at the result that 
 
208 The Presuppositions of Reason. 
 
 ' ' the understanding is competent to effect nothing 
 a priori, except the anticipation of the form of a 
 possible experience in general " (p. 183). But what 
 is the nature of Anticipation ? It is not a mere con- 
 ception of the intuition which will be presented, it 
 is in reality, to use the words of Reid, a conception 
 of the object accompanied by a belief. For what, 
 in fact, is the category of substance but a belief 
 that the phenomenal substance of the universe is 
 constant ? What is the category of causation but 
 a belief that the succession of phenomena is subject 
 to a constant law ? What then is the difference in 
 this respect between the conceptions of the under- 
 derstanding and the ideas of the reason ? It is 
 merely this. The conceptions of the understanding, 
 being restricted to the domain of experience, admit 
 of confirmation, while the ideas of the reason, at- 
 tempting to transcend experience, admits of no 
 confirmation in our present state (p. xxix). 
 
 Yet it is not exactly true that the ideas of the 
 reason receive no confirmation from experience even 
 here. There are certain principles of the reason 
 which are assumed in physical investigations. With 
 Occam and Leibnitz, Kant has propounded certain 
 laws as to the multiplication of entities, the variety 
 of species, and the continuity of forms, which he 
 denominates the law of parcimony, the law of spe- 
 cification, the law of continuity, and the like (pp. 
 399-410). These laws, though merely ideas of the 
 reason, have a physical significance and use. They 
 are presuppositions that, amid the seemingly infinite 
 
The Maxims of Reason. 209 
 
 diversity of the phenomena of nature, there will 
 be found a latent unity of fundamental properties 
 (p. 400) ; presuppositions which impose upon the 
 understanding the duty of searching for sub-species 
 in every species, and minor differences in every 
 difference (p. 402); presuppositions which have 
 their source in reason, and to which no adequate 
 object can be discovered in experience (pp. 404, 5). 
 The laws in question are not laws of nature ; they 
 are Maxims of Reason maxims which are not de- 
 rived from observation of the constitution of the 
 object, but are subjective principles arising from 
 the interest which reason has in producing a certain 
 completeness in its ideas (p. 408). And yet under the 
 guidance of these principles experimentalists have 
 determined the nature of the elements (p. 396), 
 have reduced all salts to alkalis and acids (p. 400), 
 have ascertained the various species of absorbent 
 earths (p. 403), and have detected in the orbit of 
 the planet and the trajectory of the comet the ex- 
 istence and the laws of the all-pervading and con- 
 tinuous force of gravitatiou (p. 406) . It might 
 have happened that reason, in thus following the 
 path of its ideas, was pursuing a path contrary to 
 that prescribed by nature (pp. 399, 405), just as 
 it might have happened that phenomena might 
 have been so constituted as not to correspond with 
 our conceptions (p. 76). But in our actual expe- 
 rience it is not so. The preconceptions of these 
 1 anticipatory laws of reason, 7 as Kant denominates 
 them, are confirmed (p. 403). They are shown to 
 
 p 
 
2io The Scandal to Philosophy. 
 
 possess an ' objective, though undetermined vali- 
 dity ' within the sphere of our actual experience 
 (p. 407); and this proof of their validity inspires us 
 with confidence in the other conclusions of reason, 
 and leads us to believe that they too, in some future 
 experience, may be eventually confirmed.* 
 
 It is at this point that Kant's approximation to 
 the philosophy of the Scottish school becomes appa- 
 rent. Reid, as we have seen, had resolved sensible 
 perception into conception and belief, and on the 
 authority of mere belief had assumed the existence 
 of an external world of matter. According to Karit, 
 as we have also seen, it must remain a scandal to 
 philosophy to be obliged to assume the existence of 
 things external to ourselves as an article of mere 
 belief, and not be able to oppose a satisfactory 
 proof to anyone who may call the fact in question 
 (p. xl). We are now in a position to examine 
 how he proposes to remove this scandal to phi- 
 losophy, and how he proposes to supply a satis- 
 
 * How nature can regulate herself question they suggest hy saying that 
 
 in accordance with the maxims of without these principles ' ' nature her- 
 
 reason is presented hy the most recent self (i.e. ohjects of experience) could 
 
 of the Kantian expositors as one of not exist" (p. 152). I have already 
 
 the most difficult problems in the given my reasons for rejecting this 
 
 Kritik. How nature must regulate solution of the difficulty, and shown 
 
 herself in accordance with the prin- that the word nature is amhiguous. 
 
 ciples of the understanding is a ques- But while differing from Mr. Monck 
 
 tion proposed hy Kant himself as a in this respect, I take this opportunity 
 
 transcendental enigma. The two dif- of expressing my obligations to that 
 
 ficulties in reality are hut one. Mr. acute metaphysician for the numerous 
 
 Monck, in his Introduction to the hints and suggestions with which he 
 
 Critical Philosophy, follows the Ger- has favoured me during the composi- 
 
 man commentators, and answers the tion of the present essay. 
 
The Removal of the Scandal. 211 
 
 factory proof of the existence of things external to 
 ourselves. 
 
 Kant's c strict demonstration of the objective 
 reality of external intuition 7 has been strangely 
 misunderstood. One class of commentators of 
 whom Hamilton is the representative has fancied, 
 that in opposition to the whole scope of his phi- 
 losophy he attempted to demonstrate the existence 
 of external things as existing in external space. 
 Another class has supposed with Mr. Mahaffy that 
 his object was merely to prove, in opposition to 
 Descartes and Berkeley, that external perception 
 was not mere imagination, and that phenomena were 
 something more than mere appearance (Fisch. li). 
 It is difficult to demonstrate the true nature of a 
 demonstration which is left involved in such a mist 
 of words; but the momenta of Kant's argument 
 would seem to be as follows : I am conscious of 
 my own existence as determined in time ; and all 
 determination with regard to time presupposes the 
 existence of something permanent in perception 
 (p. 167). My existence in time is determined by 
 my intuitions in space (p. 167); and space as the 
 permanent form of my sensibility is permanent, 
 and determines things as such (p. 176). But the 
 permanent something which determines my exist- 
 ence in me cannot be the mere permanent intui- 
 tion of space, because the permanent intuition of 
 space itself requires to be determined. The ex- 
 ternal sense of which it is the form implies a rela- 
 tion to something real, which must affect the senses 
 
 P 2 
 
2 1 2 The Greater Scandal. 
 
 before the form of external sensibility can be evolved 
 (p. xl). There must, therefore, be something perma- 
 nent in existence, as well as something permanent 
 in representation (p. xli.) something permanent in 
 existence which is the cause of our representations 
 (p. 167), and which can be no other than the tran- 
 scendental object (p. 309). But if the transcen- 
 dental object and the transcendental ideality of 
 space be granted, the objective reality of external 
 intuition, that is, its empirical reality, follows, as a 
 matter of course; and the proof of ' the objective 
 reality of external intuition ' is all that Kant con- 
 templates by his proof of ' the existence of things 
 external to ourselves ' (p. xl). 
 
 But Kant's demonstration of the existence of 
 things external to ourselves is in reality a demon- 
 stration that things external to ourselves, in the 
 ordinary sense of the term, have no existence. It 
 establishes that when the transcendental object 
 acts it produces certain modifications of our sensi- 
 bility, and that when these modifications are pro- 
 duced, they are moulded in the forms of sense, of 
 which the transcendental ideality of space is the 
 result. Thus moulded, they are mere phenomena, 
 which have no existence apart from human thought ; 
 and it is the fundamental position of the Transcen- 
 dental ^Esthetic that these phenomena constitute the 
 only objects of which we have experience (p. 307). 
 It is true, as Hume observes, that by a universal 
 and necessary belief men regard phenomena as 
 things subsisting by themselves (iv. 178). But 
 
Transcendental Belief. 213 
 
 Kant, like Hume, though in more learned lan- 
 guage, stigmatizes this as a mere transcendental 
 illusion. And this shows the true effect of the 
 Kantian demonstration. It establishes the exist- 
 ence of things external to ourselves, by showing 
 that, properly speaking, they are not external. It 
 demonstrates the objective validity of external in- 
 tuition by showing that, properly speaking, it is 
 not objective. Kant professes to have removed the 
 scandal to philosophy which, in his opinion, is 
 involved in accepting the existence of things ex- 
 ternal to ourselves, as an article of mere belief; 
 but he removes the scandal to philosophy of ap- 
 pealing to belief, by the greater scandal of denying 
 the validity of the belief to which philosophy ap- 
 peals. 
 
 It is true that by insisting that all our ideas of 
 sensation are moulded in the forms of sense, and 
 that the forms of sense are constituent and essential 
 elements of human nature, Kant attempted to im- 
 part to the sensible world the reality cf the human 
 nature in which it is moulded, and by which it is 
 projected into fancied space. But this does not 
 free philosophy from the scandal of accepting the 
 existence of things external as an article of mere 
 belief. It is mere matter of belief that the consti- 
 tution of human nature, in respect to its capacities 
 of sense, will continue as it is. It is mere matter 
 of belief that the transcendental object will con- 
 tinue to act in its accustomed manner. It is mere 
 matter of belief that the quantity of phenomenal 
 
214 Presentative Realism. 
 
 substance will continue constant. It is mere mat- 
 ter of belief that the succession of phenomena will 
 continue to be regulated by a constant law. The 
 law of continuance itself the law which, in the 
 words of Bishop Butler, leads us to believe that all 
 things will continue as they are, except in those 
 respects in which we have reason to believe that 
 they will be altered even this fundamental law, 
 by its very terms, is nothing but an expression of 
 belief. 
 
 We are now in a position to form an estimate of 
 Kant's theory of perception by comparing it with 
 the various theories which he rejects. In the first 
 place, he rejected, by anticipation, the Presentative 
 Realism which Hamilton proclaimed. He held that 
 the only manner in which our knowledge relates to 
 external objects is by means of intuition (p. 21); 
 and he held that our mode of intuition was sensuous 
 merely, and could never give the existence of the 
 object (p. 43). A fortiori he rejected the Transcen- 
 dental Realism, which regards the mere modifications 
 of our sensibility as things subsisting by themselves 
 (p. 307). This was a mere transcendental illusion 
 (p. 315) a universal and primary opinion of all 
 men, it is true, but one which, in the words of 
 Hume, the slightest philosophy was sufficient to 
 destroy (iv. 177). In the same way the principles 
 of Kant's philosophy compelled him to reject the 
 Hypothetical Realism, which supposes the existence 
 of an external world corresponding to our ideas of 
 extension. In the first edition of the Kritik, although 
 
Hypothetical Realism. 215 
 
 he maintains that we must admit the existence 
 of something which, by affecting our senses in a 
 certain manner, produces in us the idea of exten- 
 sion; yet he maintains that this something is not 
 extended, impenetrable, or composite, because all 
 these predicates only concern sensibility and intui- 
 tion, in so far as we are affected by the transcen- 
 dental object (Fischer, 341). In the Prolegomena 
 he sarcastically exclaims, " I suppose I must say, 
 not only that the representation of space is perfectly 
 conformable to the relation which our sensibility has 
 to objects, for that I have said, but also that it is 
 quite similar to them an assertion in which I can 
 find as little meaning as if I had said that the 
 sensation of red has a similarity to the property of 
 vermilion which excites this sensation in me " (p. 
 56). In the second edition of the Kritik he states 
 his opinion with respect to the fundamental nature 
 of our sensuous cognition to be, " that the things 
 which we intuite are not in themselves the same as 
 our representations of them in intuition, nor are 
 their relations in themselves so constituted as they 
 appear to us" (p. 35). Whether Kant was consis- 
 tent in making these dogmatic assertions may well 
 be doubted. But his dogmatism goes still further. 
 While he admits that objects corresponding to the 
 psychological and theological ideas may possess 'an 
 objective and hyperbolic existence, 7 he contends 
 that there can be no objects corresponding to the 
 cosmological ideas, because they are antinomial, 
 and involve a contradiction (pp. 300, 412); and he 
 
2 1 6 Psychological Idealism. 
 
 holds that this affords an indirect proof of the 
 transcendental ideality of the phenomena of sense 
 
 And as Kant rejected these various forms of 
 realism, so in recognizing the existence of a tran- 
 scendental object, he repudiates that form of Psy- 
 chological Idealism, which, ignoring the necessity of 
 conceiving essential substance and efficient cause, 
 regards the sensible world as a mere series of sensa- 
 tions, unsubstantial and uncaused. But he equally 
 repudiated that form of Psychological Idealism 
 which he variously described as Material Idealism, 
 to distinguish it from Formal, and as Empirical 
 Idealism, to distinguish it from Transcendental. 
 Although Material Idealism recognized a cause by 
 which our sensible ideas are produced, and a sub- 
 stance in which they inhere, it did not recognize 
 the intuitions of space and time in which they are 
 moulded, and thus left them, in his opinion, without 
 form and void. It was upon this ground that he 
 rejected the Problematical Idealism of Descartes, 
 which, commencing with the famous Cogito, declared 
 the existence of objects in space without us to be 
 doubtful. According to Kant, it ignored the fact 
 
 * The most intelligible and com- principal passages in the original 
 
 pendious comment on the Kantian Kritik of the Eeason, which were 
 
 philosophy which has hitherto been altered in the second and following 
 
 published is to be found in Kant's editions, and by so doing has demon- 
 
 Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysic strated, against the German critics, 
 
 which can claim to be a Science, and that there is no substantial difference 
 
 Mr. Mahaffy has laid the philosophical between the earlier and the latt- r forms 
 
 world under great obligation by his of the philosophy of Kant. The same 
 
 translation of that work. To this trans- passages are also given in his Trans- 
 
 lation Mr. Mahaffy has appended the lation of Fischer. 
 
Theological Idealism. 217 
 
 that our internal experience is determined by our 
 external experience ; and it ignored the fact that 
 our external experience is determined by the Tran- 
 scendental Ideality of Space. 
 
 In the same way he rejected the Theological 
 Idealism, or, as he calls it, the Dogmatic Idealism, of 
 Berkeley. Berkeley, it is true, admitted that all 
 human experience must commence with sense, and 
 recognized the existence of a non-sensuous cause of 
 our sensations. But he held that space was the 
 mere absence of resistance, and that absolute space 
 was the mere phantom of the geometric mechanical 
 philosophers. Hence he left our sensations with- 
 out any natural bond or basis. Hence he repre- 
 sented the mind as entirely passive in the reception 
 of its sensible ideas. Hence he reduced phenomena 
 to mere appearance, and regarded the sensible 
 world as a mere vanity of the Divine Art a mere 
 insubstantial pageant, such as that which the ma- 
 gician exhibited to Miranda in the enchanted isle. 
 But this was not the only ground on which Kant 
 objected to the Theological Idealism of Berke- 
 ley. Not only did Berkeley ignore the transcen- 
 dental ideality of space ; but he professed to 
 determine the nature of the transcendental object. 
 Kant, it is true, reproduces the main argument 
 of Berkeley. " The world around us," he says, 
 " opens before our view so magnificent a spec- 
 tacle of order, variety, beauty, and conformity 
 to ends, that, whether we pursue our observa- 
 tions into the infinity of space in one direction, 
 
2 1 8 Theological Idealism. 
 
 or into its illimitable divisions on the other, 
 whether we regard the world in its greatest or 
 in its least manifestations, even after we have at- 
 tained the highest summit of knowledge which our 
 weak minds can reach, we find that in the presence 
 of wonders so inconceivable language has lost 
 its force, and number can no longer reckon, nay, 
 even thought fails adequately to conceive ; and 
 our conception of the whole dissolves into an asto- 
 nishment without the power of expression all the 
 more eloquent that it is dumb " (p. 382). But while 
 Kant is compelled to recognize the existence of 
 something which is primal and self-subsistent 
 something which, as the cause of this phenomenal 
 world, secures its continuance and preservation' 
 (ibid.), he refuses to recognize this primal and self- 
 subsistent cause as Grod. He is prevented from so 
 doing by the exigencies of his Dialectic. The prin- 
 ciple of efficient causation, he says, is a principle 
 without significance in the sensuous world (p. 374). 
 It is impossible to discover any mode of transition 
 from that which exists to something entirely diffe- 
 rent termed a cause (p. 390). The knowledge of 
 the existence of an object depends upon the object's 
 being posited and given in itself, apart from the 
 conception (p. 392). The fact is not susceptible 
 of demonstration. It is strange that Kant should 
 have forgotten that, on his own showing, what can- 
 not be mathematically demonstrated may be prac- 
 tically proved, It is stranger still that he should 
 have recognized the principle of efficient causation 
 
Egoistical Idealism. 219 
 
 when lie assumed the existence of a Transcen- 
 dental Object, but should have repudiated its 
 authority when he came to prove the existence of 
 a God. 
 
 Kant was more self-consistent when he declined 
 to adopt the Egoistical Idealism of Fichte, and to 
 hold that there is only one single substance in the 
 universe the Ego. We are told by Schwegler that 
 Kant, in his first edition, stated it to be possible 
 that the ego and the thing in itself, which lies 
 behind the appearances of sense, might be one and 
 the same thinking substance, and that in his second 
 edition he expunged the conjecture (Schw. 220). 
 But this is a mere misapprehension. In the second 
 edition Kant repeats the language of the first. He 
 gives a premonition that the two fountains of 
 human knowledge may possibly spring from a com- 
 mon but an unknown source (p. 18). He states 
 " that it is quite possible that the cause of our 
 representations may lie in ourselves, and that we 
 ascribe it falsely to external things" (p. 167). He 
 considers that " that which lies at the basis of phe- 
 nomena, as a thing in itself, may not be hetero- 
 geneous" from the object of the inner sense, the 
 soul (p. 252). But he declined to accept an admit- 
 ted, possibility for an established fact. All the 
 manifestations of our consciousness are determined 
 by our external intuitions (p. 167); but though our 
 external intuitions are determined by some tran- 
 scendental object, we possess no intuition which 
 gives the determining in ourselves prior to the act 
 
22O Egoistical Idealism. 
 
 of determination (p. 96). On the contrary, we have 
 the consciousness, not of a determining, but only of 
 a determinable, self (p. 241). In one passage Kant 
 seems to agree with Berkeley, that the permanent 
 something to which we are related cannot be ( some- 
 thing in us' (p. 167); but he subsequently modi- 
 fies the statement, and contents himself with saying 
 that this permanen t cannot be an intuition in us ' 
 (p. xl). Nor could Kant consistently have made 
 any dogmatic assertion on the subject. His official 
 doctrine, constantly repeated, is expressed in lan- 
 guage which admits of no dispute. He does not 
 hold, as Fichte seems to have imagined him to hold, 
 that sensation is to be explained by reference to a 
 transcendental object independently existent with- 
 out us' (Schw. 260). What he holds is, that the 
 transcendental object which is the basis of phe- 
 nomena is a mere nescio quid (p. 206) . He insists 
 that the transcendental ground of the unity of 
 subjective and objective lies too deeply concealed 
 for us, who know ourselves only through the in- 
 ternal sense, and consequently as phenomena, to 
 be able to discover in our existence anything but 
 phenomena, the non-sensuous cause of which consti- 
 tutes the mystery of the origin and source of sense 
 (p. 200). In fine, he persistently maintains, against 
 Fichte as against Berkeley, that the transcendental 
 object which is the cause of phenomena is ' an 
 object of which we are quite unable to say whether 
 it can be met with in ourselves, or out of ourselves 
 whether it would be annihilated together with 
 
Transcenden tal Idealism . 221 
 
 sensibility, or, if this were taken away, would 
 continue to exist' (p. 206). 
 
 But while Kant thus protested his ignorance of the 
 nature of the transcendental object, he entertained 
 no misgivings as to the transcendental ideality of 
 space. It is in this transcendental ideality that 
 the peculiarity of his Transcendental Idealism is to be 
 sought and found. It is true he admitted that the 
 faculty of cognition could not be awakened into 
 exercise unless our senses were affected (pp. i. 21, 
 45). It is true he held that our senses could not 
 be affected except by the operation of some efficient 
 cause (pp. 206, 333, 337). It is true he recognized 
 as c the non-sensuous cause of phenomena ' (p. 309) 
 i a non-empirical and intelligible causality ' which 
 4 phenomenises ' itself though it is not * phenomenal ' 
 (p. 337), and which as transcending the sensations 
 of which it is the cause may be styled the transcen- 
 dental object (pp. 200, 309, 333, 337). But the 
 transcendental object merely supplies the material 
 of knowledge, and it is the transcendental ideality 
 which supplies the form (p. 36). Our sensations are 
 nothing till they are moulded in the forms of sense. 
 Accordingly Kant contended, not only that the 
 rainbow with its various colours has no existence, 
 except in the mind, but that even the raindrops 
 themselves, with their globular form and the space 
 through which they fall, are merely fundamental 
 dispositions of our sensuous intuition (p. 38). It 
 was by the establishment of this that the Transcen- 
 dental ^Esthetic established the fundamental position 
 
222 The Ideality of Space. 
 
 of Transcendental Idealism, which proclaims that all 
 things perceived by us in space and time, and there- 
 fore all objects of any experience which is possible 
 to us whether they be regarded as extended bodies, 
 or whether they be regarded as series of changes 
 are nothing but phenomena which have no existence 
 apart from human thought (p. 307). 
 
 Kant tells us that we are not justified in con- 
 verting the forms of our sensibility into condi- 
 tions of the possibility of things (p. 27). He tells 
 us that he does not deny that empty space may 
 possibly exist, though he holds that we cannot 
 possibly perceive it (p. 158). But he maintains 
 that, from * the human point of view,' space is 
 nothing but a form of human sensibility (p. 27); 
 and that, though things may be related in space as 
 a form of sense, they have no relation to space 
 considered as a reality independent of the senses 
 (p. 267).* To test the doctrine which thus reduces 
 space, from the human point of view, to a mere 
 transcendental ideality, let us take the famous pas- 
 
 * Mr. Mahaffy considers that I am the possibility of a knowledge of the 
 wrong in my view of Kant's theory objective, and yet dogmatically have 
 of space. In his Translation of Fis- affirmed the objective non-existence of 
 cher's Commentary he says" How, what possesses empiric reality ' " Ma- 
 in the face of these reiterated asser- haffy's Fischer, p. 55. But Kant ex- 
 tions, Professor Webb could write pressly says that it is only from the 
 (Intellectualism, p. 173), 'whether human point of view that we can 
 Kant held that space was nothing but speak of space (p. 26) ; and he ex- 
 a form of sensibility may be doubted,' pressly says that he does not intend to 
 seems to me marvellous. And the combat the notion of empty space ; 
 ground of the assertion is still more for, he says, ' ' it may exist where our 
 so : 'it is inconceivable that so sys- perceptions cannot exist, inasmuch as 
 tematic a thinker should have denied they cannot reach thereto" (p. 158). 
 
The Starry Heavens Above. 223 
 
 sage in the Theory of Ethics which is familiar to 
 every student of philosophy. " Two things there 
 are," says Kant, " which, the oftener and the more 
 steadfastly we consider them, fill the mind with an 
 ever new and ever rising admiration and reverence 
 the Starry Heavens above and the Moral Law 
 within. Of neither am I compelled to seek out the 
 reality, as veiled in darkness, or only to conjecture 
 the possibility, as beyond the hemisphere of know- 
 ledge. Both I contemplate lying clear before me, 
 and I connect both immediately with my conscious- 
 ness of existence. The one departs from the place 
 I occupy in the outer world of sense expands, be- 
 yond the bounds of imagination, the connexion of 
 my body with worlds rising beyond worlds, and 
 systems blending into systems and protends it into 
 the illimitable times of their periodic movement, its 
 commencement and perpetuity. The other departs 
 from my invisible self, from my personality, and 
 represents me in a world truly infinite, indeed, but 
 whose infinity can be tracked out only by the intel- 
 lect, and my connexion with which, unlike the for- 
 tuitous relation in which I stand to the world of 
 sense, I am compelled to recognize as universal and 
 necessary. In the one, the first view of a countless 
 multitude of worlds annihilates, as it were, my im- 
 portance as an animal product, which, after a brief 
 and incomprehensible endowment with the powers 
 of life, is compelled to refund its constituent matter 
 to the planet itself an atom in the universe on 
 which it grew. The other, on the contrary, elevates 
 
224 The Moral Law Within. 
 
 my worth as an intelligence, even without a limit, 
 and that through my personality, in which the 
 moral law reveals the faculty of life independent of 
 my animal nature, nay, of the whole material world 
 at least, if it be permitted to infer as much from 
 the regulation of my being, which a conformity 
 with that law enacts, proposing, as it does, my 
 moral worth for the absolute end of my activity, 
 conceding no surrender of its imperative to a ne- 
 cessitation of nature, and spurning in its infinity the 
 conditions and boundaries of my present transitory 
 life."* 
 
 This passage shows how difficult it is for any 
 idealist to realise his own idealism, or to reconcile 
 it with the unsophisticated view of common sense. 
 For why contrast the moral law within with the 
 starry heavens above, if the starry heavens above 
 in reality exist within ? Why talk of my con- 
 nexion with worlds upon worlds, and systems upon 
 systems, if worlds upon worlds, and systems upon 
 systems, have no external existence, and are but 
 modifications of myself ? Why should the countless 
 multitude of worlds annihilate my importance as an 
 animal nature, when it is in my nature alone that 
 all the countless multitude of worlds exists ? How 
 is the constituent matter of the animal product to be 
 given back to the planet it inhabits, if the matter of 
 
 * I have slightly modified the trans- or Practical Philosophy, by the Eev. 
 lation of this magnificent passage as T. K. Abbott, Fellow of Trinity Col- 
 given in Hamilton's Discussions (p. lege another valuable contribution to 
 310). A more literal translation is to the study of the Kantian Philosophy 
 be found in Kant's Theory of Ethics supplied by the University of Dublin. 
 
The Material World Without. 225 
 
 which it is formed, and the planet which it inhabits, 
 and the universe of which that planet is a speck, are 
 all mere transcendental idealities, which have no 
 existence whatever apart from human thought ? 
 And where is the majesty of the moral law in a 
 world which exists only in idea ? The moral law 
 supposes me to be a member of a moral system a 
 system in which I am related to other beings, and 
 in which each member has his rights and duties, and 
 is under obligation to the others. But if there is no 
 external world, there are no external bodies ; and if 
 there are no external bodies, what proof have I of 
 the existence of other moral beings ? How can I 
 prove, or believe in, the existence of my fellow- 
 creatures, if I cannot prove, and am not to believe 
 in, the existence of the corporeal frames in which 
 they are embodied, and by which they are revealed? 
 On the principles of idealism not only is the sub- 
 limity of the contrast lost, but its very significance 
 is gone. The starry heavens fade away into a 
 sensuous image, and the empire of the moral law 
 dissolves into a domain of dreams. 
 
 The imagination encounters still greater difficul- 
 ties when it attempts to realise the purely idealist 
 conception of time. Hegel ridicules the passage in 
 which Haller describes eternity as awful, with its 
 mountains of millions, its ages piled on ages. The 
 only really awful thing about it, he says, is the 
 awful wearisomeness of ever fixing, and anon un- 
 fixing, a limit, without advancing a single step 
 (Log. s. 104). But the wearisomeness of the effort 
 
 Q 
 
226 Time as a Subjective Form. 
 
 to contemplate the everlasting Now, which is the 
 only idea of objective time which the idealist 
 admits, is quite as awful. The effort, moreover, 
 from the very nature of the case, must prove 
 abortive. We cannot divest ourselves of the idea 
 of an objective time in which all objective change 
 occurs. Changes are real. Time may be a mere 
 form, in so far as it is the form of the continual 
 change in our representations (p. 32). But there 
 are objective changes. We ourselves, whatever we 
 may be, begin to exist, and have therefore an ob- 
 jective beginning of existence. Of such an objec- 
 tive fact no subjective form can be the explanation. 
 As far as we can judge objective changes can only 
 occur in an objective time. Nor does Kant, when 
 properly understood, deny the existence of such an 
 object. It is true, he says that time is not some- 
 thing which subsists of itself ( p. 30) that if we 
 take objects as they are in themselves then time is 
 nothing (p. 31) that time cannot be reckoned as 
 subsisting or inhering in objects as things in them- 
 selves, independently of its relation to our intuition 
 (p. 32). But, in this connexion, what are we to 
 understand by time ? According to the doctrine of 
 the Kritik, time regarded as a real object is not 
 presented to any of our perceptive powers (p. 30). 
 As in the case of every other real object, the only 
 mode in which our knowledge can relate to it is by 
 means of our intuition (p. 21); and here, as else- 
 where, our intuition, being merely sensuous, can 
 never give us the object of intuition in itself (p. 43). 
 
Time as an Objective Fact. 227 
 
 But if the object be not given by intuition, its ex- 
 istence, according to the teaching of the Kritik, can 
 never be discovered by any analysis of our concep- 
 tions (p. 392). Time, therefore, as an absolute 
 reality, is something which, for us, remains un- 
 presented and unknown. It is only presented to us 
 as a form of sense. Consequently it is only as a 
 necessary representation lying at the foundation of 
 all our intuitions of sense (p. 28), and all our concep- 
 tions of change (p. 29) that we have any cognisance 
 of time. As the real form of our internal intuition, 
 it is something real (p. 32), but this reality is not 
 the absolute reality of a thing subsisting by itself 
 (p. 34). To regard any mere modification of our 
 sensibility as a thing subsisting by itself would be 
 to maintain that obnoxious transcendental realism 
 against which the whole Kritik is one continued 
 protest (p. 307). As a form of intuition, therefore, 
 time is nothing when abstracted from the pheno- 
 menon of sense (p. 31); as a form of intuition, it 
 cannot be reckoned as an attribute of things (p. 32). 
 But the existence of things in themselves is recog- 
 nised by Kant, and in addition to the time which is 
 a form of sense there may be a time which is an 
 existing thing. If time, as an absolute reality, is 
 not given, it does not follow that it does not exist. 
 If time, as an objective existence, is not known, it 
 does not follow that its existence may not be an 
 obj ect of belief. Kant has met all such inconsequen- 
 tial reasoning in advance. He answers both those 
 who deny his doctrine and those who would extend 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 The Lesson of the Krltik. 
 
 it. They do not reflect, he says, that both space 
 and time, without question of their reality as re- 
 presentations, belong only to the genus phenomenon, 
 which has always two aspects the one, the object 
 considered as a thing in itself, the other, the form 
 of our intuition of the object (p. 33). 
 
 To conclude that space and time have no exist- 
 ence because we do not know them as existing would 
 be to disregard the wisest lesson and the most 
 earnest warning of the Kritik. True, the great 
 metaphysician professed to have abolished meta- 
 physics. True, he ridiculed the so-called science 
 with all the richness of metaphor which his imagina- 
 tion could supply. It was a stormy ocean in which 
 nothing could be discerned but the fog-bank and 
 the mist. It was a Serbonian morass in which man 
 could neither stand nor swim. It was a shadowy 
 Walhalla which was the everlasting battle-field of 
 shades. It was a Babel of confusion in which men, 
 like the builders on the plain of Shinar, strove in 
 vain to build them a city and a tower which might 
 reach to heaven. But, in the opinion of Kant, the 
 very severity of his criticism had rendered an im- 
 portant service to the interest of thought. By 
 showing the impossibility of making any dogma- 
 tical affirmation concerning objects beyond the 
 boundaries of experience it had fortified the mind 
 against all counter affirmations (p. 250). If it had 
 shown the inability of human reason to supply any 
 demonstration of the existence of a Supreme Being, 
 it had also shown the utter fatuity of denying his 
 
Our Practical Beliefs. 229 
 
 existence (p. 393). If it had shown that mere 
 reason is incompetent to demonstrate the freedom 
 of the will and the immortality of the soul, it had 
 shown that reason was equally incompetent to de- 
 monstrate that we are not immortal and that we are 
 not free (p. 458). In fact, according to Kant, the 
 greatest if not the only use of a philosophy of pure 
 reason was to be found in its purely negative cha- 
 racter (p. 482) in the protection which its very 
 negation of knowledge supplies to our practical 
 beliefs in freedom, immortality, and God (p. 
 xxx v) . 
 
 But our practical beliefs in freedom, immortality, 
 and God can scarcely be considered stronger than 
 our practical belief in the absolute reality of space 
 and time. The principles of space and time stand 
 on the same level of authority as the principles of 
 causation, which Kant recognises without reluctance 
 or reserve. Kant admits that there is an objective 
 course of physical causation which confirms all the 
 anticipations of experience suggested by the cate- 
 gories of the understanding. He admits the objec- 
 tive existence of an efficient cause which operates 
 beyond the region of mere physical causation, and 
 which he styles the transcendental object. He 
 even admits the validity of the principle of final 
 causes, and again transcending the domain of nature, 
 insists on the existence of a great first cause which 
 sustains and regulates the world of sense (pp. 251, 
 382). In all these cases belief surpasses knowledge. 
 In all these cases belief supplies a ground of expec- 
 
230 Transcendental Hypothesis. 
 
 tation and a principle of action. But what principle 
 of action can be justified, if one of the most power- 
 ful of our practical beliefs is to be belied? The 
 belief in the existence of space and time is as strong 
 as any belief which the human mind can entertain 
 and to give that belief the lie is to destroy all con- 
 fidence in our faculties and to cut the very nerves 
 of action. 
 
 The tendency of the mind of Kant was essen- 
 tially idealistic. It was his boast that the Kritik 
 had struck at the root of materialism and destroyed 
 the fatalism and atheism which are its malignant 
 growth (p. xxxvii.). Nor was the boast unfounded. 
 In spite of its loud appeals to experience, material- 
 ism is nothing but a form of metaphysic. The meta- 
 physic of matter is as incapable of verification as 
 that of mind. To convert the principles of experience 
 into conditions of the possibility of things, and to 
 reduce the universe to matter, is just as transcendent 
 a procedure as that which appeals to the principles 
 of thought, and affects to demonstrate the existence 
 of the objects of our ideals and ideas (p. 474). 
 Materialism may be one of the possibilities of 
 things ; but even if materialism be possible it does 
 not exhaust the sphere of possibility (p. 474). There 
 are other possibilities which are equally worthy of 
 regard. It is possible, for instance, that our actual 
 life is nothing but a sensuous representation of a 
 pure spiritual existence that the sensible world is 
 but an image hovering before our faculty of sense 
 that, if we could see ourselves as we actually are, 
 
A bsolu te Idealism . 231 
 
 we should see ourselves in a world of spiritual 
 natures, our connexion with which did not begin 
 at our birth, and will not cease with the destruction 
 of our bodies (p. 473). But Kant struck at the root 
 of idealism as vigorously as he struck at the root of 
 materialism (p. xxxvii. ). Idealism, he said, is not to 
 be obtruded as a dogma it is not even to be re- 
 garded as a fixed opinion (p. 474). It is a mere 
 transcendental hypothesis (p. 473) a hypothesis which 
 is not to be valued as an instrument of discovery, 
 but as a weapon of defence (p. 472). As a weapon 
 of defence it is available against the attacks of 
 materialism, but that is all. It is a weapon which 
 has not been steeled in the armoury of experience 
 its metal is not steel, but lead (p. 473). 
 
 But this wise reserve was contemptuously 
 disregarded by the philosophers of Germany who 
 succeeded Kant. They professed to be in earnest 
 about idealism. They proclaimed the transcen- 
 dental ideality to be the only valuable portion of 
 the philosophy of their master. They denied that 
 space and time had any ontological existence. They 
 treated the principles of substance and causation as 
 they treated the principles of space and time. They 
 repudiated the transcendental object. Resolving the 
 World into a sensuous phantom, and God into the 
 moral order, Fichte declared the Ego to be the 
 only substance (Schw. 267), while Hegel resolved 
 the Ego itself into its ideas left ideas without 
 any origin in causation or any support in substance 
 made the Absolute Idea the sum total of existence 
 
232 The Neo-Scottish School. 
 
 and declared Absolute Idealism to be the last 
 word of philosophy, the culminating point of human 
 thought (Schw. 435). 
 
 But every revolutionary excess is followed by 
 reaction. In opposition to these extravagances the 
 Neo-Scottish school reverted to the principles of 
 Reid. They recognised the practical authority of 
 belief, and reasserted the objective validity of the 
 principles of space and time, and substance and 
 causation. But they also, with a certain reserve, 
 adopted the principles of Kant. They admitted that 
 unless the object were actually given, its existence 
 could never be positively known ; and they admitted 
 that in whatever way our knowledge relates to 
 material objects, it can only immediately relate to 
 them by means of an intuition. But is our intuition 
 merely sensuous ? Is all our knowledge essentially 
 subjective? Is it true that the object is never 
 given to us in intuition ? Is it true that the ob- 
 ject is never actually known ? These were the 
 questions which engaged the attention of the 
 Neo-Scottish school, and they cannot be more 
 satisfactorily discussed than in connexion with 
 the philosophy of Hamilton, its founder. 
 
CATALEPTIC IDEALISM: 
 
 OB 
 
 HAMILTON. 
 
CATALEPTIC IDEALISM: 
 
 OR 
 
 HAMILTON. 
 
 Tactus enim, Tactus, proh Divom numina sancta ! 
 Corporis ext sensus. 
 
 LUCRETIUS. 
 
 THE history of philosophy is little more than a 
 history of refutations. For upwards of two hun- 
 dred years the church militant was thundering on 
 the morion of Hobbes. A whole library might 
 be formed of the answerers of Locke. The name 
 of the antagonists of Hume is legion. But nowhere 
 has this rage of refutation been more conspicuous 
 than in the Scottish School. In the succession of 
 
 * The substance of this Essay was between the Examination and the 
 
 originally published under the title present Essay are coincidences only, 
 
 of The Metaphysician in Frazer's Those who travel the same road will 
 
 Magazine for April, 1860, four or five see the same objects, and those who 
 
 years before the publication of Mr. set the same objects will describe 
 
 Mill's Examination. Any coincidences, them in similar terms and make the 
 
 therefore, which mav be detected same observations on them. 
 
236 Hamilton's Influence. 
 
 writers, by whom it is represented, we have not 
 only a series of refutations, but a series of refuta- 
 tions in which the great man, who for the moment 
 was lord of the ascendant, refuted the refutation of 
 his predecessor. The philosophy of Reid was nothing 
 but an attack on the speculative edifice which was 
 reared by Hume. But as Reid refuted Hume, so 
 Brown refuted Reid ; and as Brown refuted Reid, so 
 Hamilton refuted Brown ; and as Hamilton refuted 
 Brown, so the whirligig of time brought in its 
 revenges, and Mill, in his turn, refuted Hamilton. 
 The whole intellectual movement, in fact if it 
 is not beneath the dignity of the subject to employ 
 such an illustration is the exact counterpart of the 
 performances of the cow, the dog, the cat, and the 
 rat, which are celebrated in the jingling history of 
 the House that Jack built. 
 
 Hamilton, after Hume, is the greatest of the 
 metaphysicians whom Scotland has produced. He 
 occupied a large space in the view of his contem- 
 poraries ; and of all his contemporaries none, per- 
 haps, exerted a greater influence upon thought. Of 
 the state of philosophy in the year 1833, when he 
 first appeared as a writer, we cannot require better 
 evidence than that of a celebrated work which 
 was published in that year the England and the 
 English of the first Lord Lytton. According to that 
 brilliant writer, it was the age of political econo- 
 mists. The stream of thought had been diverted 
 into political science, and had left the fountains of 
 metaphysics and of ethics dry. All the recent 
 
Hamilton's Learning. 237 
 
 moralists were of the school of Helvetius, and all 
 the recent metaphysicians were of the school of 
 Hartley. There was no idealizing school to coun- 
 terbalance the attraction towards speculations which 
 dealt with the unelevating practices of the world. 
 The lamp of a purer naphtha, to use Lord Lytton's 
 expression, was extinct. Compare this description 
 with the present state of thought, and it will be 
 seen how wide a distance separates the epochs. 
 The lamp which was extinguished is re-lit. The 
 fountain which had run dry is all aflow. Instead of 
 metaphysics being material, physical science has 
 become metaphysical. In this revolution by far 
 the most conspicuous figure is that of Hamilton ; 
 and the power of his personality is evidenced by 
 the influence which he exercised upon such minds as 
 Hansel, and Fraser, and M'Cosh, and Veitch. 
 
 The first thing which strikes the student of the 
 works of Hamilton is the appearance of stupendous 
 learning. The philosophy of Aristotle and Plato, 
 the mystical speculations of the Alexandrine and 
 Arabian schools, the infinite subtilties of the School- 
 men, and all the developments of modern thought 
 whether British, French, or German appear to be 
 reflected in his mind. Nay, the physiologists and 
 anatomists of all ages seemed to have been as 
 familiar to him as the philosophers ; and even on 
 the question of the worms in the frontal sinus, 
 when attacking the phrenologists, he could in his 
 medical ignorance, as with the pride which apes 
 humility he styles it, refer to authorities which he 
 
238 Hamilton's Criticism. 
 
 could scarcely summon patience to recount (Lect. i. 
 427). But if we test his knowledge by a reference 
 to the writers with whom we are familiar if we 
 test it by a reference to Locke, to Berkeley, or to 
 Hume it will be apparent that his learning was 
 too multifarious to be precise. Take, for example, 
 the case of Hume. Hamilton conceived that Hume 
 had no philosophical principles of his own, but 
 merely accepted the principles adopted by the 
 previous schools. He did not see that while Hume 
 rejected Locke's theory of the origin of ideas, he 
 accepted his theory of the origin of knowledge. 
 He did not perceive that on the question of the 
 existence of an external world Hume recognised 
 the practical authority of the common sense of 
 Reid. He did not see that in his discussion of 
 the question of causation Hume enunciated and 
 employed the method which is deemed the dis- 
 covery of Kant. He identified Hume with the sen- 
 sualistic school, though Hume insisted on the a priori 
 character of mathematics. He saw in Hume no- 
 thing but the sceptic, and even the nature of his 
 scepticism itself he misconceived, identifying him 
 with Pyrrho and with Sextus, instead of identify- 
 ing him with Pascal and with Kant. 
 
 And yet the view of his enormous intellectual 
 acquisitions occasions a feeling of regret that he did 
 not employ them in satisfying the one great desi- 
 deratum of the philosophic world. Studious, subtle, 
 and systematic, the intellect of Hamilton was pecu- 
 liarly fitted for the task of contabulating all the 
 
Hamilton's System. 239 
 
 various speculations of philosophers, exhibiting them 
 in their mutual relations, . and presenting a synop- 
 sis of the various systems. His analysis of all the 
 possible theories of causation, and his analysis of 
 all the possible theories of perception, show what 
 he could have effected on a larger scale. But 
 Hamilton mistook his mission. He aspired to be 
 a great original thinker, and despised the humbler 
 function of expounding the various possibilities of 
 thought. He did not see that the resources of 
 conjecture were practically exhausted, and instead 
 of supplementing the work of Kant by giving the 
 world a Kritik of Systems, he added to the con- 
 fusion and the conflict which distract philosophy 
 by elaborating a system of his own. 
 
 Regarded as a system, the philosophy of Hamil- 
 ton presents an appearance which is strangely unsys- 
 tematic. He seems to have been overwhelmed with 
 the mass of his materials. His sentiments are to 
 be collected with infinite labour by a collation of 
 passages extracted from a variety of dissertations 
 historical, critical, and dogmatic. His works are 
 full of repetitions, and inconsistent statements of 
 opinion. Not one of them, in a literary point 
 of view, is artistically complete. He had collected 
 materials for a noble superstructure, but his phi- 
 losophy presents the appearance of a builder's yard 
 rather than the appearance of a building. 
 
 Unfortunately for his permanent influence, Hamil- 
 ton was misled by his patriotic bias as a Scotchman, 
 and mainly applied his genius to the service of 
 
240 Reid's Question. 
 
 the Scottish School. With the self-abnegation of a 
 Dumont, he devoted himself to the exposition and 
 development of the philosophy of Reid with this 
 difference, however, that Reid was as inferior to 
 Hamilton as Mirabeau and Bentham were superior 
 to D union t. But it was clearly impossible for a 
 mind so enterprising and so energetic to confine 
 itself within the narrow limits of the philosophy of 
 common sense. It would have been strange, in- 
 deed, if the genius of Kant had not fascinated the 
 imagination, and cast a spell over the intellect, of 
 Hamilton. Hamilton, in fact, was a composite of 
 Eeid and Kant. His philosophy was a confluence 
 of the two streams of speculation which had their 
 fountain-head in Hume. But, like the rivers in the 
 Iliad, the two incongruous tides would never mingle ; 
 and hence, while the professions of common sense, 
 like the stream of oil, lay glistening on the surface 
 of his philosophy, the Kantian stream, like the off- 
 shoot of the waters of the Styx, rolled deep and 
 dark beneath. 
 
 The influence, however, which Reid exerted 
 over the mind of Harnilon was so great that, in his 
 view, it invested with paramount importance the 
 primary question of Reid's philosophy the theory 
 of perception, and the proof of the existence of the 
 world of matter. This question had been brought 
 into prominence by Berkeley, and had been pro- 
 nounced to be incapable of solution in the way of 
 philosophy by Hume. Reid undertook to solve it. 
 Hume's position was that the opinion of external 
 
Common Sense. 241 
 
 existence, if rested on natural instinct, is contrary 
 to reason, and if referred to reason is contrary to 
 reason, and at the same time carries no rational 
 evidence with it, to convince an impartial inquirer 
 of its truth (iv. 181). This position Reid undertook 
 to turn; but his mode of procedure was peculiar. 
 He conceded the premises of Hume. He conceded 
 that in perception there is nothing present to the 
 mind but the perception. He conceded that there 
 is no immediate intercourse between mind and 
 matter, and that we have no experience of the 
 connexion between our perceptions and material 
 things. He conceded that the existence of the world 
 of matter cannot possibly be proved by reason. It 
 is true he insisted on what Hume admitted that 
 we are irresistibly led by a natural instinct to 
 believe in the existence of an external world which 
 is independent of our perceptions ; but it is equally 
 true he admitted what Hume insisted on that when 
 we yield to this natural instinct we are irresistibly 
 led to believe that our perceptions are themselves 
 external. Reid, therefore, could not deny the exist- 
 ence of the conflict signalised in Hume's dilemma. 
 All he could say was what had been previously said 
 by Hume that, conflict or no conflict, we must 
 follow the instincts of our nature. It was the 
 governing principle of his doctrine, according to 
 Hamilton, to reconcile philosophy with the neces- 
 sary convictions of mankind (Reid, 820); but his 
 only resource was to disguise the conflict between 
 
 R 
 
242 The Common Man. 
 
 them by conferring on each of the conflicting prin- 
 ciples the equivocal name of common sense. 
 
 The impossibility of basing a system of philo- 
 sophy on common sense in any consistent meaning 
 of the term is apparent from Hamilton's treat- 
 ment of the subject. " Common Sense," he says, 
 " is li-ke Common Law each may be laid down as 
 the general rule of decision ; but in the one case it 
 must be left to the jurist, in the other to the philo- 
 sopher, to ascertain what are the contents of the 
 rule ; and, though in both instances the common 
 man may be cited as a witness, for the custom or 
 the fact, in neither can he be allowed to officiate as 
 advocate or judge " (p. 752). But Hamilton does 
 not seem to have perceived the inevitable conse- 
 quences of this distinction. For observe the results 
 of the examination of the common man if he be 
 cited as a witness for the custom or the fact on this 
 question of perception. Undoubtedly the common 
 man would depose, if he could express himself in 
 the language of philosophers, that he believes the 
 world to exist, because he is immediately cognisant 
 of its existence (Reid, 750). But submit the witness 
 to cross-examination, and what will be the result ? 
 He will inevitably admit to Hume that he believes 
 the images presented by the senses to be the exter- 
 nal objects (iv. 177). He will inevitably admit 
 to Hume that the sensible qualities, such as colour, 
 heat, and cold, which are mere sensations of the 
 mind, are, in his opinion, inherent in the object 
 
The Common Philosopher. 243 
 
 (iv. 1 80). He will admit, in fine, that he thinks 
 he sees the sky above him, and the fields around 
 him, and the fruit tree in his garden, and that to the 
 best of his belief the sky is blue, and the fields are 
 green, and the cherries on the cherry-tree are 
 .red. But these beliefs Hamilton admits to be at 
 once inevitable and erroneous. He holds that it 
 is incorrect to say that the sun, or moon, or stars 
 are, or can be, perceived by us as existent, and in 
 their real distance in the heavens (Reid, 299) ; and 
 he repudiates the natural realism of the vulgar, 
 which transfers our sensations of colour to the ob- 
 ject (Reid, 8 1 6). But in admitting this, Hamilton 
 admits everything for which Hume contends. He 
 admits that reason and natural instinct are in con- 
 flict. He admits that what is common is not 
 sense, and that what is sense is not common 
 that what is natural is not real, and that what is 
 real is not natural, In short, he virtually admits 
 that Common Sense and Natural Realism, as far as 
 perception is concerned, are contradictions. 
 
 Nor is Hamilton more fortunate in his appeal to 
 the philosophers on the question of law than he is in 
 his appeal to the common man on the question of 
 the facts. " For reasons to which we cannot at 
 present advert," he says, "it has been almost uni- 
 versally denied by philosophers, that in sensitive 
 perception we are conscious of any external reality 
 on the contrary, they have maintained, with sin- 
 gular unanimity, that what we are immediately cog- 
 nitive of, in that act, is only an ideal object in the 
 
 R 2 
 
244 Hamilton's Position. 
 
 mind itself" (Disc. 193). He repeats this in his 
 edition of Reid (pp. 749, 817); he repeats it in his 
 Lectures (i. 295). What then, according to Hamil- 
 ton, is common sense ? Not the common sense of 
 the vulgar, for they are incompetent, to form a 
 judgment ; not the common sense of the philoso- 
 phers, for the judgment they pronounce is wrong. 
 Hamilton's common sense, therefore, would appear to 
 be merely the common sense of one uncommon man ; 
 and, as far as his immediate purpose is concerned, 
 he is merely in a position to verify the saying which 
 Voltaire borrowed from Buffier that common sense 
 is anything but common. The fact is, that common 
 sense is incompetent to give any satisfactory answer 
 either as to law or as to fact ; and the appeal to 
 such an authority can have no result but that of 
 arraying the prejudices of the vulgar against the 
 speculations of an opponent. It is not an argument 
 addressed to a judge, neither is it the examination 
 of a witness. To carry out the analogy, it is a 
 mere speaking to the gallery an appeal to the 
 prejudices of the mob. 
 
 Abandoning the shifting ground of common 
 sense, and taking his stand upon the ground of 
 reason, Hamilton deviated from the procedure 
 of Reid in dealing with the idealistic question. 
 In reducing perception to mere conception and 
 belief, Reid had unconsciously admitted that in 
 perception there is nothing present to the mind but 
 its ideas, and had gone off on a false track, misled 
 by the idle fancy that the idea of the philosophers 
 
 
Natural Realism. 245 
 
 was a tertium quid. Hamilton was too subtle to be 
 betrayed into any such fiasco. He attacked Hume 
 in his central position. Hume had laid it down as a 
 principle, conceded by all philosophers, that, in per- 
 ception * the mind has never anything present to it 
 but the perceptions and cannot possibly reach any 
 experience of their connexion with objects'(iv. 177, 
 179). This Hamilton denied. ' In the act of per- 
 ception, 7 he said, i I am conscious of two things 
 of myself, as the perceiving subject, and of an ex- 
 ternal reality, in relation with my sense, as the 
 object perceived' (Reid, 747). This he said was 
 1 the cardinal point of philosophy ' (ibid.\ and it was 
 to the establishment of this point that his philoso- 
 phy of perception was devoted. 
 
 As this theory must be regarded as one of the 
 permanent possibilities of speculative thought, it 
 may be well to consider it in the various lights in 
 which it was presented by its author. What Hamil- 
 ton conceived himself to have conclusively estab- 
 lished was a system of Natural Realism founded on 
 ' the datum of the natural consciousness, or com- 
 mon sense, of mankind' (Reid, 816), which pro- 
 claims that ' in perception we are conscious of the 
 external object immediately and in itself (p. 866). 
 He maintained that we have an Immediate Knowledge 
 of the existence of the external world (pp. 750, 805). 
 He maintained that we have Intuitive Perception 
 of things, and that ' the mind, when a material 
 existence is brought into relation with its organs 
 of sense, obtains two concomitant and immediate 
 
246 Hypothetical Realism. 
 
 cognitions' one 'the consciousness of certain subjec- 
 tive modifications in us, which we refer, as effects, 
 to certain unknown powers, as causes in the exter- 
 nal reality'- the other 'the consciousness of certain 
 objective attributes in the external reality itself, as, 
 or as in relation to, our sensible organism' (Reid, 
 820). He developed a doctrine viReal Presentation- 
 ism which asserts ' the consciousness, or immediate 
 perception, of certain essential attributes, of matter 
 objectively existing, while it admits that other 
 properties of body are unknown in themselves, and 
 only inferred as causes to account for certain sub- 
 jective affections of which we are cognisant in our- 
 selves' (p. 825). What he advanced was a theory of 
 Dualistic Realism the fundamental position of which 
 is that ' our cognitions of extension and its modes 
 are not wholly ideal that although space be a 
 native, necessary, a priori, form of imagination, 
 and so far, therefore, a mere subjective state, there 
 is, at the same time, competent to us in an imme- 
 diate perception of external things, the conscious- 
 ness of a really existent, of a really objective, 
 extended world ' (p. 840). 
 
 The theory of Natural Realism was intended to 
 displace the Hypothetical Realism of the Cosmotheti- 
 cal Idealists a compromise between common sense 
 and speculation, which was the favourite theory 
 of the philosophers (p. 749), and which supposed 
 ' that behind the non-existent world perceived 
 there lurks a correspondent but unknown world 
 existing' (p. 817). The Cosmothetical Idealist 
 
Cosmothetical Idealism. 247 
 
 argues that 'the external world exists, because 
 we naturally believe it to exist ' ; but this illation 
 Hamilton conceived to be incompetent (p. 749). 
 In a remarkable passage he contrasts his views on 
 this subject with those of Reid. " Our belief 
 of a material universe," he says, "is not ultimate, 
 and that universe is not unknown. This belief 
 is not a supernatural inspiration, it is not an in- 
 fused faith. We are not compelled by a blind 
 impulse to believe in the external world as in an 
 unknown something; on the contrary, we believe 
 it to exist only because we are immediately cog- 
 nisant of it as existing. If asked indeed how we 
 know that we know it ? how we know that what 
 we apprehend in sensible perception is, as conscious- 
 ness assures us, an object, external, extended, and 
 numerically different from the conscious subject ? 
 how we know that this object is not a mere mode 
 of mind, illusively presented to us as a mode of 
 matter ? then indeed we must reply, that we do 
 not in propriety know that what we are compelled 
 to perceive as not self is not a perception of self, 
 and that we can only on reflection believe such to be 
 the case, in reliance on the original necessity of so 
 believing imposed on us by our nature " (Reid, 750). 
 This resolves the question at issue between 
 Hamilton and the philosophers into one of fact. 
 We know that we necessarily believe in the exist- 
 ence of the material world. Do we necessarily 
 believe that we know it as existing ? To test the 
 necessity of such a belief, let us take the condi- 
 
248 The World of Vision. 
 
 tions of the possibility of such a knowledge as laid 
 down by the natural realist himself. They are laid 
 down with italicised precision. "A tiling to be 
 known in itself must be known as actually existing ; 
 and it cannot be known as actually existing, unless 
 it be known as existing in its When and its Where. 
 But the When and Where of an object are immedi- 
 ately cognisable by the subject, only if the When be 
 now (i.e. at the same moment with the cognitive 
 act), and the Where be here (i.e. within the sphere 
 of the cognitive faculty); therefore a presentative 
 or intuitive knowledge is only competent of an 
 object present to the mind, both in time and space " 
 (Reid, 809). Let us mark the consequence of this. 
 
 The first consequence is the exclusion of the 
 whole World of Vision from the range of intuitive 
 perception and immediate knowledge, and a diver- 
 gence from the views of Reid and Stewart as to the 
 object of perception (Eeid, 814). If < we are per- 
 cipient of nothing but what is in proximate contact, 
 in immediate relation, with our organs of sense,' it 
 follows that we can never be said to perceive a 
 distant object (ibid.). l Distant realities we reach, 
 not by perception,' says Hamilton, ' but by a sub- 
 sequent process of inference founded thereon : and 
 so far, as Reid somewhere says (p. 284), from all 
 men who look upon the sun perceiving the same 
 object, in reality every individual perceives a 
 different object, nay, a different object in each 
 several eye' (p. 814). 'Vision,' he says, 'is only a 
 perception, by which we take immediate cognisance 
 
The Vision of the World. 249 
 
 of light in relation to our organ ' ; and ( the total 
 object of visual perception is neither the rays in 
 themselves nor the organ in itself, but the rays and 
 living organ in reciprocity' (p. 160). Whether this 
 be the total object of visual perception may possibly 
 be disputed. It may be said that we see neither 
 the organ nor the ray, whether in their reciprocity 
 or in their isolation. It may be said that the total 
 object of visual perception is the coloured and ex- 
 tended object which is seen. But how is it that we 
 see the coloured and extended object ? A ray 
 alights upon the eye an inverted image is depicted 
 on a small expanse of nerve and on the instant, as 
 if by the touch of an enchanter's wand, an ideal uni- 
 verse exists. In this ideal universe the material 
 reality is absent the existence of the inverted 
 image is unknown the idea, the inference, is all in 
 all. Vision is literally what Swift described it to 
 be the art of seeing things which are invisible. 
 Malebranche was right in saying that the science of 
 optics is merely an explanation of our optical illu- 
 sions. The theory of Berkeley is triumphant, and 
 the world of vision turns out to be nothing but the 
 vision of a world. 
 
 And vet sight, if we regard the information which 
 it conveys, is the most objective of the senses. "If," 
 says Reid, "we shall suppose an order of beings, 
 endued with every human faculty but that of sight, 
 how incredible would it be to such beings, accus- 
 tomed only to the slow informations of touch, that, 
 by the addition of an organ, consisting of a ball and 
 
250 The World of Touch. 
 
 socket of an inch in diameter, they might be en- 
 abled in an instant of time, without changing their 
 place, to perceive the disposition of a whole army, 
 or the order of a battle, the figure of a magnificent 
 palace, or all the variety of a landscape " ( Works, 
 133). It is no marvel that Reid should have re- 
 garded such a perception as a revelation, as an 
 inspiration, as a species of natural magic. This 
 language Hamilton denounces. " These expres- 
 sions," he says, "in which the cosmothetic ideal- 
 ists shadow forth the difficulty they create, and 
 attempt to solve, are wholly inapplicable to the 
 real fact " (Reid, 749). But in visual perception 
 the real fact, as stated by Hamilton himself, sup- 
 plies their justification. Here at all events we 
 cannot believe that we are immediately cognisant 
 of the world of matter as existing. The world of 
 vision, so far as it is perceived, exists merely in idea, 
 and, natural realism, so far as it recognises the exist- 
 ence of a world beyond perception, is cosmothetical 
 idealism, open and avowed. 
 
 Abandoning the world of vision, the natural 
 realist takes his stand upon the World of Touch. 
 " There is in reality no medium in any sense," 
 says Hamilton, " and, as Democritus long ago 
 shrewdly observed, all the senses are only modi- 
 fications of touch" (Reid, 104). But here again 
 let us attend to Reid. " If a man were by feeling 
 to find out the figure of the Peak of Teneriffe," he 
 says, " or even of St. Peter's Church at Rome, it 
 would be the work of a lifetime" (Works, 133). 
 
The Diffusion of the Soul. 251 
 
 " The thing would be impossible," says Hamilton 
 " let anyone try, by touch, to ascertain the 
 figure of a room, with which he is previously un- 
 acquainted, and not altogether of the usual shape, 
 and he will find that touch will afford him but 
 slender aid." (ibid.). On such slender aid, however, 
 the natural realist is necessitated to rely. And 
 what is the result? Once more, let us apply his 
 own condition. Select the simplest phenomenon of 
 touch. You touch an object with the tip of your 
 finger ; you have a sensation in the organ of sense : 
 do you know the object ? On Hamilton's own 
 showing, only if the percipient knows it in its where. 
 But if, as the Cartesians held, the soul be seated on 
 the pineal gland if, like a spider in the centre of 
 its web, it be localised at any point within the body 
 it is seated at a distance from the scene of sense. 
 The informations of sense must be telegraphed, as it 
 were, along the nerves, and the recognition of the 
 object can never be regarded as immediate. Be- 
 fore, therefore, we can accept the doctrine of natural 
 realism, we must reject the Cartesian doctrine, which 
 centralizes the seat of thought we must maintain 
 that the soul is literally at our finger's end we 
 must adopt the doctrine of Aristotle, that the soul 
 contains the body, rather than the body the soul 
 we must embrace the dogma of the schools, that the 
 soul is all in the whole body, and all in every of its 
 parts (Beid, 86 1). But even this will not avail us, 
 In order to cognise the object in its where, not only 
 must we assume that the soul is at the finger's end 
 
252 Contact with the Object. 
 
 we must assume that the finger's end is in contact 
 with the object touched. But if the theory of 
 Boscovich be true if matter be nothing but a 
 system of acting and reacting forces it is impos- 
 sible that there should be any such thing as con- 
 tact; and, on Hamilton's concessions, if there be 
 no contact there can be no cognition. If the organ 
 and the object be separated by the merest diffe- 
 rential which the mind of the mathematician can 
 conceive, it is evident that, for all purposes of 
 intuition, they might as well be separated by 
 what Norris calls the whole diameter of existence. 
 Before we can accept the conclusions of natural 
 realism, therefore, we must reject the theory of 
 Boscovich, which reduces matter to a system of 
 forces, and adopt the theory of Democritus, which 
 not only reduces every sense to a modification of 
 touch, but explains touch by a contiguity of atoms. 
 But suppose the contiguity effected, we are as far 
 from a cognition of the objective as ever. For 
 what is contact ? A mere community of surface, 
 which of itself conveys no knowledge of diversity 
 of being. " Suppose a man," says Hume, " to be 
 supported in the air, and to be softly conveyed 
 along by some invisible power, it is evident he is 
 sensible of nothing, and never receives the idea of 
 extension, nor indeed any idea from this invariable 
 motion" (i. 82). Sense, therefore, might be in 
 contact with an object, and yet receive no know- 
 ledge of its existence from the contact. If the 
 object should exert pressure and evoke resistance 
 
Resistance from Without. 253 
 
 a new sensation would be determined, a new infer- 
 ence drawn ; but consciousness would be affected, 
 not by contact, but by pressure. Here, then, 
 it is evident we must abandon atoms and have 
 recourse to force ; and as the theory of Boscovich 
 was abandoned for that of Democritus to effect a 
 contact, so the theory of Democritus must be aban- 
 doned for that of Boscovich to secure resistance. 
 
 And it is to force that Hamilton avowedly has 
 recourse in order to secure the knowledge of a 
 world without. " The existence of the Extra- 
 organic World" he says, "is apprehended, not in a 
 perception of the primary qualities of matter, but 
 in a perception of the quasi-primary phasis of the 
 secundo-primary ; that is, in the consciousness that 
 our locomotive energy is resisted, and not resisted by 
 aught in our organism itself " (Reid, 882). This at 
 first sight would seem to be the theory maintained 
 by Brown. Brown virtually argues, "I am con- 
 scious of the feeling of resistance ; in myself I am 
 conscious of no difference ; and I therefore infer 
 the cause to be something not myself on the ground 
 that a different consequent necessarily implies a dif- 
 ference of the antecedent " (Lect. xxiv.). But Hamil- 
 ton denies that the conclusion rests on inference. 
 "I am conscious" he says, "that my locomotive 
 energy is not resisted by aught in my organism 
 itself." That is the pinch of the whole ques- 
 tion. As incubus originates within, though it ap- 
 pears to be an oppression from without, why may 
 not the external world be what Fichte conceived it 
 
254 The World beyond the Organs. 
 
 to be, an anstoss, a self -limitation, in which the 
 radiating activity of the ego is drawn backward 
 on itself? (Schw. 268). "I cannot," says Hamil- 
 ton, " be conscious of myself as the resisted rela- 
 tive, without at the same time being conscious, 
 being immediately percipient, of a not-self as the 
 resisting correlative " (Reid, 866). But why may 
 not this correlative be the transcendental cause of 
 Kant ? Why must it necessarily be the material 
 thing of Reid ? " The experience of external re- 
 sistance," says Hamilton, u supposes a possession of 
 the notions of space and motion in space" (Reid, 
 p. 882). But here the natural realist is involved 
 in a dilemma. Is the notion of space a mere idea ? 
 Then external space, and all that it embosoms, may, 
 for aught we know, be a mere obj edification of a 
 form of sense, a self projection of the mind, a mere 
 metaphysical mirage ; and natural realism is lost in 
 the transcendental idealism of Kant. Is this notion 
 of space an apprehension of space in its objective 
 externality ? In this case we believe in the exist- 
 ence of an external world of matter, because we 
 believe in the existence of motion in an external 
 world of space; and natural realism is enveloped 
 in a mist of paralogism and again is lost. 
 
 In fact, the extra -organic world of touch, like 
 the extra-organic world of vision, is at last avowedly 
 abandoned to the cosmothetical idealist. " The pri- 
 mary qualities of things external to our organism," 
 says Hamilton, "we do not perceive i.e. imme- 
 diately know for these we only learn to infer } from 
 
Knowledge of the Unknown. 255 
 
 the affections which we come to find, that they 
 determine in our organs; affections which, yield- 
 ing us a perception of organic extension, we at 
 length discover, by observation and induction, to 
 imply a corresponding extension in the extra- 
 organic agents" (p. 88 1). But how can we know 
 that the extension of the extra-organic agent which 
 ex hypothesi is unknown, corresponds to the or- 
 ganic extension which, for the moment, we may 
 admit that we perceive ? Here it is evident that 
 Hamilton is betrayed into the very absurdity with 
 which he constantly taunts his opponents, and 
 which he regards as decisive of the fate of that 
 form of philosophy which the cosmothetical idealist 
 maintains. How can you deny to mind all cog- 
 nisance of matter, he asks, yet bestow upon it the 
 inconceivable power of truly representing to itself 
 the external world which is ex hypothesi un- 
 known ? This was the argument which Hamilton 
 constantly employed (p. 755). It was by this 
 question that he demolished the Master of Sub- 
 tilties (p. 815). It was by this question that he 
 overwhelmed Descartes and Locke (pp. 839, 840). 
 It was by this question that he annihilated Brown 
 (Disc. 64). It was by this question that he held up 
 the whole race of cosmothetical idealists and hypo- 
 thetical realists to scorn (Reid, 749). But here his 
 argument unexpectedly recoils upon his own philo- 
 sophy ; and it recoils with a peculiar force. The 
 cosmothetical idealist does not profess to know that 
 the idea corresponds to the unknown; he only 
 
256 The Microcosm of the Organs. 
 
 professes to believe it. The natural realist, on the 
 contrary, professes to know that an extra organic 
 extension, which is confessedly unknown, corre- 
 sponds with an organic extension which, as we shall 
 see, itself escapes his knowledge. 
 
 Driven from position to position, the natural 
 realist falls back upon the Organic World, the mi- 
 crocosm of the organs. * The organism,' says 
 Hamilton, ' is the field of apprehension, both to 
 sensation proper and perception proper ' (Reid, 880). 
 And here again he calls upon us to concede a para- 
 dox. ' The organism,' he says, ' is, at once, within 
 and without the mind; is, at once, subjective and 
 objective; is, at once, ego and nori-ego' (ibid.). 
 ( Such is the fact,' he says ; ' but how the imma- 
 terial can be united with matter, how the unex- 
 tended can apprehend extension, how the indivisible 
 can measure the divided this is the mystery of 
 mysteries to man' (ibid.). To preclude all confusion 
 and ambiguity with respect to this cardinal distinc- 
 tion, Hamilton maintains that " our nervous organ- 
 ism, in contrast to all exterior to itself, appertains 
 to the concrete human ego, and in this respect is 
 subjective, internal; whereas, in contrast to the ab- 
 stract immaterial ego, the pure mind, it belongs to 
 the non-ego, and in this respect is objective, external" 
 (p. 858). But even, in so far as our organism is 
 objective and external, a discrimination must be 
 made ; for the body may be viewed as a body 
 simply or as an animated body. Hence, while 
 some of its phenomena are "to be considered as 
 
The Objective Object. 257 
 
 subjective, being the modes of our organism as 
 animated by, or in union with, the mind, and 
 therefore states of the ego," there are other phe- 
 nomena which are " to be considered as objective, 
 being modes of our organism, viewed as a mere 
 portion of matter, and in this respect a non-ego" 
 (ibid.). ' As an animated body' our nervous organ- 
 ism, we are told, i actually exists, and is actually 
 known to exist, only as it is susceptible of certain 
 affections, which, and the causes of which, have 
 been ambiguously called the secondary qualities of 
 matter/ while ' as a body simply it can possibly 
 exist, and can possibly be known as existent, only 
 under those necessary conditions of all matter, 
 which have been denominated its primary qualities ' 
 (ibid.). Of these primary qualities we are con- 
 scious. Hamilton concedes that u by a law of our 
 nature we are not conscious of the existence of our 
 organism, consequently not conscious of any of its 
 primary qualities, unless when we are conscious of 
 it as modified by a secondary quality, or some 
 other of its affections, as an animated body " (ibid.). 
 But he holds that while the object of the one con- 
 sciousness is merely * a contingent passion of the 
 organism, as a constituent of the human self,' which 
 is recognised as i a subjective object J the object of 
 the other consciousness is i some essential property 
 of the organism as a portion of the universe of 
 matter ' a property which, ' though apprehended 
 by,' is ' not an affection proper to, the conscious 
 self at all,' and which, ' as a common property of 
 
258 Con tac tual Extension. 
 
 matter,' must be ' recognised to be an objective 
 object' (ibid.). 
 
 But even from this position Hamilton finds him- 
 self necessitated to retreat. He is compelled to 
 admit that, as far as our knowledge of the primary 
 qualities of objects in immediate contact with our 
 organs is concerned, our ignorance of their real 
 magnitude is as complete as our ignorance of the 
 magnitude of the most distant object. He acknow- 
 ledges that magnitude appears greater or less in 
 proportion to the different size of the tactile organ 
 in different subjects ; as an apple seems larger to 
 the hand of a child than to the hand of an adult 
 (Reid, 303). Experiment, he admits, establishes 
 the curious fact that even in the same individual 
 the same object appears greater or less, according 
 as it is touched by one part of the body or by 
 another (pp. 126, 303). In short he is compelled 
 to allow that ' the magnitude perceived through 
 touch is as purely relative as that perceived through 
 vision or any other sense ' (p. 885). 
 
 Nor, on Hamilton's own admission, have we 
 any more accurate knowledge of the real extension 
 of our organism than we have of that of objects in 
 contact with our organs. Here again physiology 
 is fatal to his claims. ' As perceived,' he says, 
 6 extension is only the recognition of one organic 
 affection in its outness from another ' (p. 882). But, 
 ' as a minimum of extension,' he continues, ' is thus to 
 perception the smallest extent of organism in which 
 sensations can be discriminated as plural ; and as 
 
Organic Extension. 
 
 in one part of the organism this smallest extent is 
 perhaps some million, certainly some myriad, times 
 smaller than in others; it follows that, to percep- 
 tion, the same real extension will appear, in this 
 place of the body, some million or myriad times 
 greater than in that' (ibid.). Hamilton, accordingly, 
 admits that in no part of the organism have we 
 any apprehension, any immediate knowledge, of 
 extension in its true and absolute magnitude ' 
 (p. 88i)--an admission which leaves no pre- 
 tence for saying that we are, or can be, conscious 
 of any essential property of our organism as a 
 portion of the universe of matter. 
 
 As far, then, as our knowledge of the primary 
 qualities of the universe of matter is concerned, the 
 natural realist takes his final stand on the position 
 that, ' Perception proper is an apprehension of the 
 relations of sensations to each other, primarily in 
 Space, and secondarily in Time and Degree ' (Reid, 
 881). But whatever may be our ultimate opinion 
 of the logical coherence or philosophic value of this 
 theory of perception, it is evident that it is not the 
 theory of perception which Hamilton originally led 
 us to expect he would establish. The consciousness 
 of the relations of sensations to each other is not the 
 consciousness which gives us an immediate know- 
 ledge of the world of matter in itself (p. 747) as 
 actually existing (p. 805), as existing in its when 
 and where (p. 809). It is not 'the consciousness, or 
 immediate perception, of certain essential attributes 
 of matter objectively existing ' (p. 825). It is not 
 
 S 2 
 
2 oo Intuitive Perception. 
 
 c the immediate perception of external things, the 
 consciousness of a really existent, of a really objec- 
 tive, extended world' (p. 841). It is not 'the im- 
 mediate knowledge or consciousness of the external 
 object, as extended' (p. 842). It is not the ' sensitive 
 perception,' in which ' the extension as known, 
 and the extension as existing, are convertible- 
 known, because existing, and existing, since known ' 
 (ibid.). Indeed so far is it from being so that it is 
 a perception in which extension as existing, whether 
 in things external to our organism or in the organ- 
 ism itself, is confessedly un perceived, un appre- 
 hended, and unknown (p. 88 1). 
 
 Hamilton nevertheless contends that ' an exten- 
 sion is apprehended in the apprehension of the 
 reciprocal externality of all sensations ' (Reid, 885). 
 He holds that "in the consciousness of sensations 
 out of each other, contrasted, limited, and variously 
 arranged, we have a perception proper of the pri- 
 mary qualities, in an externality to the mind, though 
 not to the nervous organism, as an immediate cog- 
 nition, and not merely as a notion or concept of 
 something extended, figured, &c." (p. 883). Nay 
 he asserts that even when consciousness projects its 
 sensations beyond the bounds of the existing organ- 
 ism into external space, as in the case of an ampu- 
 tated limb, the sensations thus falsely localised 
 i being now, as heretofore, manifested out of each 
 other, must afford the condition of a perceived ex- 
 tension, not less real than that which they afforded 
 prior to the amputation' (p. 86 1). But in what 
 
Empiric Intuition. 261 
 
 sense can the extension thus perceived be said to be 
 real ? and in what sense can it be said to be exter- 
 nal to the mind ? As perceived, extension is defined 
 to be the recognition of one organic affection in its 
 outness not from the mind, but from another 
 (p. 882). The term ' outness,' therefore, is used in 
 the sense not of externality but of distance. To speak 
 of the distance between one sensation and another 
 is sheer nonsense ; and, accordingly, the distance to 
 be considered is the distance between one sentient 
 point in the organism and another. But this is 
 admittedly unperceived. All that we perceive is ad- 
 mittedly an extension which varies with the sentient 
 mind which differs with the seat of sense 
 which may be presented by a falsely localised sen- 
 sation which corresponds with nothing that is real 
 in the proper acceptation of the term and which, 
 appearing in this part of the body some million or 
 myriad times greater than in that, can be nothing 
 but appearance. If this be so, what is presented to 
 us is not extension but an idea of extension; and 
 what Hamilton calls the intuitive perception of ex- 
 tension is only another name for what Kant has 
 termed its empiric intuition. 
 
 If we wish to see how thin is the partition 
 which divides the bounds of Hamilton's intuitive 
 perception from those of the transcendental ideality 
 of Kant, we have only to examine the views of the 
 Scottish philosopher with regard to Space. In his 
 notes to Reid, he tells us that * we have a twofold 
 cognition of space an a priori or native imagin- 
 
262 The Adventitious Percept. 
 
 ation of it, in general, as a necessary condition 
 of the possibility of thought ; and, under that, an 
 a posteriori or adventitious percept of it, in parti- 
 cular, as contingently apprehended in this or that 
 actual complexus of sensations' (p. 882). In his 
 Lectures, he designates this adventitious percept 
 by the word extension, and reserves the term 
 space for space considered as ' a form or funda- 
 mental law of thought' (ii. 114). But what is the 
 source to which this adventitious percept is in- 
 debted for its advent ? It is not furnished to the 
 mind by the extension of external things ; for 
 Hamilton admits that the extension of external 
 things is only an inference from it. Neither is it 
 furnished to the mind by any organic extension ; for 
 Hamilton concedes that our actual organic extension 
 is not apprehended by perception. The adventitious 
 percept, therefore, must be essentially subjective as 
 subjective as the sensations of the relations between 
 which it is the apprehension. We are led to the same 
 conclusion if we consider Hamilton's theory of space. 
 In the first edition of his Discussions he tells us 
 that "it is one merit of the Philosophy of the Con- 
 ditioned that it proves space to be only a law of 
 thought, and not a law of things" (p. 582). True, 
 in his second edition, published a year after the 
 first, he modifies his statement. The merit of his 
 philosophy, he says, consists in this " that it proves 
 space to be by a law of thought and not ~by a law of 
 things " (p. 607). But in what sense can Hamilton 
 maintain that space exists only by a law of thought ? 
 
The Necessary Form. 263 
 
 As a natural realist he must maintain that, inde- 
 pendently of our perceptions and conceptions, there 
 is an external universe of things existing in an ex- 
 ternal infinitude of space. His proposition, there- 
 fore, must mean that it is only by a law of thought 
 that space exists for us that the space of con- 
 sciousness is not a conception which has been 
 derived from outward experience, or an intuition 
 which presents any property of objects as things in 
 themselves, or which presents their objective rela- 
 tions to each other (Kritik, 23-26) in other words, 
 that space, as known by us, is merely an evolution 
 of the a priori form of sense, which Hamilton de- 
 scribes as a necessary condition of the possibility 
 of thought. But if this be so, what is the doctrine 
 of the natural realist but the doctrine of the cos- 
 mothetical idealist whom he derides ? To use his 
 own emphasised expressions, ' the qualities which 
 we call material extension, figure, &c. exist for 
 us only as they are known by us ; and, on this hypo- 
 thesis, they are known by us only as modes of mind J 
 (Reid, 751). 
 
 The affinity which exists between the natural 
 realism of Hamilton and the transcendental ideali&m 
 of Kant will be brought into evidence if we view 
 the subject in another light. Hamilton, as we have 
 seen, resolves perception into an apprehension of 
 relations. Now this is the very fact on which Kant 
 relies as affording confirmation to his theory of the 
 ideality of the external as well as the internal sense 
 (KritiJc, 40). He remarks that ' all in our cogni- 
 tion that belongs to intuition contains nothing more 
 
264 The Nescio Quid. 
 
 than mere relations ' (ibid.) ; he observes that l by 
 means of mere relations, a thing cannot be known 
 in itself ' (ibid.) ; and he thinks i it may be fairly con- 
 cluded that, as through the external sense nothing 
 but mere representations of relations are given us, 
 the external sense in its representation can con- 
 tain only the relation of the object to the subject, 
 but not the essential nature of the object as a thing 
 in itself ' (ibid. ). From this conclusion Hamilton 
 recoils. He admits that in saying l a thing is known 
 in itself/ he does ' not mean that this object is 
 known in its absolute existence, that is, out of rela- 
 tion to us ' ( this,' he says, ' is impossible, for 
 our knowledge is only of the relative ' (Reid, p. 
 866). He admits that ' of things absolutely or in 
 themselves, be they external, be they internal, we 
 know nothing, or know them as incognisable, and 
 become aware of their existence only as this is in- 
 directly and accidentally revealed to us, through 
 certain qualities related to our faculties of know- 
 ledge, and which qualities, again, w r e cannot think 
 as unconditioned, irrelative, existent in and of 
 themselves ' (Disc. 643 ). He admits, in fine, em- 
 ploying the very phraseology of the Kritik, that 
 1 all we know is phenomenal phenomenal of the 
 unknown' (ibid.). But instead of acquiescing in 
 Kant's conclusion, that what is thus confessedly 
 unknown is to human consciousness a mere nescio 
 quid, he conceives that its nature is partially re- 
 vealed to us through certain qualities related to our 
 faculties of knowledge. But what are the qualities 
 of external things which are thus related ? Not 
 
The Resisting Something. 265 
 
 the primary qualities, for they are confessedly un- 
 known (p. 88 1); not the secondary qualities, for, 
 as manifested to us, they are merely pheno- 
 menal affections determined by causes which are 
 essentially occult (p. 854). This brings the ques- 
 tion to the very point to which it was brought by 
 Hume ' bereave matter of all its intelligible qua- 
 lities, both primary and secondary, and you in a 
 manner annihilate it, and leave only a certain un- 
 known inexplicable something, as the cause of our 
 perceptions' (Hume, iv. 181).* 
 
 Hamilton holds that, at all events, we have the 
 perception of ' a resisting something external to our 
 lody" 1 (p. 883). But it is as difficult to show that 
 this something is external, as it is to show that it 
 is extended. It is in reality something transcen- 
 dental. Yielding to the coercion of the principle of 
 metaphysical causality, Kant postulates its existence 
 as an efficient cause; yielding to the natural in- 
 stinct of the human race, Hamilton professes to 
 apprehend it as an external object. Regarding it as 
 an efficient cause, Kant accepts the conclusion of 
 Hume (iv. 178), and insists that by no argument can 
 
 * Since writing the above, I have philosophy of Perception. Do we ac- 
 had the privilege of reading Professor tually perceive and conceive in those 
 Veitch's valuable monograph entitled primary qualities body as body, per 
 Hamilton, and it is a source of satis- se as that which exists and subsists 
 faction to be able to cite the following whether we perceive it or not in 
 passage from the work of the disciple, its own actual, absolute reality the 
 to show that in the foregoing criticism transcendent thing in existence ? My 
 I have been guilty of no injustice view is, that Hamilton says no to this 
 to the master: "This reference [to question" (Hamilton, 145-6). Mr. 
 the thing in itself] what we may Veitch even questions whether Hamil- 
 ask the Ontological is, no doubt, the ton held that perceived extension sub- 
 least explained point in Hamilton's sists after the act of perception (p. 179). 
 
266 The Double Saltus. 
 
 it be proved that our perceptions do riot arise either 
 from the energy of the soul itself, or from the sug- 
 gestion of some invisible spirit, or from some other 
 cause which is equally unknown (Kritik, 206). Re- 
 garding it as an external object, Hamilton accepts, 
 in a modified form, the conclusions of Reid and 
 Brown, and insists that its existence is given in the 
 consciousness that our locomotive energy is resisted, 
 and not resisted by aught in our organism itself 
 (Reid, 882). But what is the consciousness to which 
 Hamilton appeals? Undoubtedly, in the world of 
 motion we seem to be resisted from without, and we 
 seem to behold the very objects which resist us. 
 But sight is, confessedly, mere inference, and why 
 should we not regard this seeming of material re- 
 sistance as mere inference also V The great philo- 
 sophers who have written on the subject must be 
 presumed to have known what they were conscious 
 of, and to have been conscious of what they knew. 
 And yet what are the philosophical conclusions as to 
 the true nature of this resisting object ? To Hamilton, 
 it is true, it was a material thing ; but to Berkeley 
 it was a divine agent to Fichte it was a subjective 
 anstoss to Kant it was a nescio quid and to Hegel 
 it was nothing. The philosophical difficulties which 
 Hamilton's theory encounters are not less than those 
 encountered by the theories of Berkeley and Fichte. 
 The fact is, that Hamilton's criticism of Kant's only 
 possible demonstration of the reality of an external 
 world recoils upon himself, and he only reaches his 
 external reality by a double saltus, which overleaps 
 
Cognition of the Object. 267 
 
 the foundations of both the egoistic idealism and 
 the mystic (Disc. 93). 
 
 In these interesting discussions, however, there 
 is one point on which Hamilton is entitled to 
 peculiar credit. He saw more clearly than any 
 contemporary philosopher where the real pinch of 
 the difficulty lay. He accepted the position of 
 Kant, that " in whatever way the understanding 
 may have attained to a conception, the existence of 
 the object of the conception cannot be discovered in 
 it by analysis, because the cognition of the existence 
 of the object depends upon the object's being posited 
 and given in itself apart from the conception" 
 (Kritik, 392). He adopted the words of Fichte 
 when he says: u From cognition to pass out to an 
 object of cognition this is impossible ; we must, 
 therefore, depart from the reality, otherwise we 
 should remain for ever unable to reach it " (Reid, 
 799). Hence it was that he declared it to be the 
 very cardinal point of philosophy to show that in 
 the act of sensible perception we are conscious not 
 only of ourselves as the perceiving subject, but of 
 an external reality, in relation with our sense, as 
 the object perceived (Reid, 747); and hence it was 
 that he concentrated all his powers on the attack of 
 Hume's position that in perception the mind has 
 never anything present to it but its perceptions, 
 and cannot attain any experience of their connexion 
 with resembling objects (Hume, iv. 178). 
 
 But, notwithstanding the loud promise of the 
 new departure, Hamilton is eventually forced to 
 
268 Nat and Realism. 
 
 yield the supremacy to Hume. He is compelled to 
 confess that " the primary qualities of things ex- 
 ternal to our organism we do not perceive, that is, 
 immediately know" (p. 88 1). He is compelled to 
 confess that "in no part of the organism have we 
 any apprehension, any immediate knowledge, of 
 extension in its true and absolute magnitude" 
 (p. 88 1). He is compelled, in fine, to resolve our 
 perception of extension into a mere recognition of 
 one organic affection in its outness from another 
 (p. 882) a recognition which is infinitely variable 
 and confessedly deceptive an extension which is 
 not extension in its reality, but only an idea of 
 extension. To avoid the inevitable conclusion that 
 in perception the mind has nothing present to it but 
 its perceptions, Hamilton exhausts the resources of 
 his learning, but in vain. In vain he contends that 
 all our senses are modifications of touch. In vain 
 he revives the scholastic doctrine that the soul is all 
 in the whole body, and all in every of its parts. In 
 vain he calls upon us to admit that the organism is 
 at once within and without the mind. In vain he 
 distinguishes between the abstract immaterial ego 
 and the concrete human ego incorporate in matter ; 
 between the animated organism and the material 
 things without it ; between the contiguous world of 
 touch and the distant universe of vision. The 
 world of vision, the extraorganic world of touch, 
 and the world of the sentient organism are succes- 
 sively surrendered to the idealist and sceptic. 
 Natural realism is foiled at every point. Thrice 
 
Cataleptic Idealism. 269 
 
 lias it essayed to grasp reality, but thrice lias reality 
 escaped its grasp. 
 
 Ter conatus ibi collo dare brachia circum 
 Ter frustra comprensa manus effugit imago. 
 
 Hamilton's theory of Perception is not, in fact, 
 the Natural Realism of common sense, but a Catalep- 
 tic Idealism, similar to that which Cicero attributes 
 to the Stoics (Acad. i. 11). The propositions on 
 which Hume challenged contradiction from the 
 philosophers were three. Nothing, he said, can 
 ever be present to the mind but an image 01; percep- 
 tion ; true, we are carried by a natural instinct 
 to suppose an external universe, which exists inde- 
 pendently of our perceptions ; but when we follow 
 this natural instinct, we suppose the images pre- 
 sented by the senses to be the external objects (Hume, 
 iv. 177). Regarding these propositions as the 
 expression of the facts of consciousness, Hume 
 accepted what he calls the whimsical condition of 
 mankind, who must act, and reason, and believe, 
 though they are not able, by their most diligent 
 inquiry, to satisfy themselves concerning the foun- 
 dation of these operations, or to remove the objec- 
 tions which maybe raised against them (iv. 187). 
 In this admixture of speculative scepticism with 
 practical belief, Philosophy refused to acquiesce, 
 and proceeded to deal with the three propositions 
 of Hume as best it could. Rejecting the natural 
 instinct which leads us to believe in the existence of 
 an external world, Berkeley accepted the natural 
 
270 Difficulties. 
 
 instinct which leads us to believe that our sensible 
 ideas are external objects, and boldly identified 
 object and idea. Accepting the natural instinct 
 which leads us to believe in the existence of an 
 external world, Reid rejected the natural instinct 
 which identifies the object with the idea, and, in 
 effect, regarded the idea as a representation of the 
 object. Struck with the inconsistency of rejecting 
 one natural instinct and relying on another, Hamil- 
 ton neither identified the object and the idea with 
 Berkeley, nor made the idea the representative of 
 the object with Reid, but recognizing the co- 
 existence of object and idea, brought the idea 
 into contact with the object, and conceived that 
 the material thing was apprehended KCLTOX^TTTOV 
 manu comprehensum in the contact. 
 
 But Hamilton seems to have closed his eyes to 
 the difficulties and inconsistencies in which his sys- 
 tem is involved. His system postulates the abso- 
 lute veracity of consciousness in every instance 
 (Reid, 745). He holds that 'the immediate or 
 mediate repugnance of any two of its data being 
 established, the presumption in favour of the gene- 
 ral veracity of consciousness is abolished, or rather 
 reversed' (p. 746). He appeals to the judgments of 
 consciousness, in fact, as Torquatus appealed to the 
 judgments of the senses quibus si semel aliquid 
 falsi pro vero probatum sit, sublatum esse omne 
 judicium veri et falsi putat (De Fin. i. 7). But 
 he admits that to consciousness < it appears as if 
 the sense actually apprehended the things out of 
 
Dilemmas. 2 7 1 
 
 itself, and in their proper space ' (Reid, 748), and 
 nevertheless holds that we reach distant realities, 
 not by perception, but by a subsequent process of in- 
 ference founded thereon (p. 814). Ubi igitur illud 
 semel ? Even if it could be established against 
 Hume, that in certain limited relations of contact 
 we apprehend the object in the image, this would 
 not evince the veracity of consciousness in those 
 wider relations of vision where we admittedly mis- 
 take the image for the object. Hamilton, then, at 
 the outset is met with the dilemma with which he 
 confronted Brown if he adhere to his hypothesis, 
 he must renounce his argument ; and if he apply 
 his argument, he must renounce his hypothesis 
 (Reid, 750). But, apart from this, what is the 
 value of the inference by which he professes to 
 bring distant realities within his reach ? He in- 
 sists that when Locke is asked, how he became 
 aware that the known idea truly represents the un- 
 known reality, he can make no answer (Reid, 839). 
 But what answer can Hamilton make when the 
 same interrogatory is administered to himself ? 
 He stands confronted by Hume's dilemma, and 
 has nothing to say when the great Academic 
 maintains that ' the opinion of external existence, if 
 rested on natural instinct, is contrary to reason, and, 
 if referred to reason, is contrary to natural instinct, 
 and at the same time carries no rational evidence 
 with it to convince an impartial inquirer. 7 Hamilton 
 insists that we know from consciousness that the 
 agent which produces the sense of tension, and 
 
272 Doubts. 
 
 pressure, and resistance, is something beyond the 
 limit of the mind and its subservient organs (Reid, 
 859, 883). But the testimony of consciousness to 
 this is not more to be depended on than its testi- 
 mony to the effect that in vision we apprehend the 
 external object in external space. Hamilton admits 
 that " sensations of light and colours are determined, 
 among other causes, from within, by a sanguineous 
 congestion in the capillary vessels of the optic nerve, 
 or by various chemical agents which affect it through 
 the medium of the blood ; from without, by the appli- 
 cation to the same nerve of a mechanical force, as a 
 blow, a compression, a wound, or of an imponder- 
 able influence, as electricity or galvanism" (p. 855). 
 Natural Realism therefore supplies no proof, in 
 opposition to Hume, that "the perceptions of the 
 mind must be caused by external objects entirely 
 different from them, though resembling them, if that 
 be possible " (Hume, iv. 178). It stands confronted 
 by Berkeley's dilemma, and has no answer to give 
 when the idealist contends that " if there were ex- 
 ternal bodies, it is impossible we should ever come 
 to know it ; and, if there were not, we might have 
 the very same reasons to think there were that 
 we have now" (Prin. xx.). 
 
ABSOLUTE IDEALISM: 
 
 HEGEL. 
 
ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 
 
 OR 
 
 HEGEL. 
 
 Quid Democritus, qui turn imagines earumque circuitus in Deorum 
 numero refert, turn illam naturam quae imagines fundat ac mittat, 
 turn scientiam intelligentiamque nostram, nonne in maxima errore 
 versatur ? Cic. de NAT. DEOR. 
 
 THE nature of the Scottish reaction against the 
 philosophy of Kant has been described. The coun- 
 ter-revolution which occurred in Germany remains 
 to be considered. 
 
 Kant, as we have seen, regarded it as a scandal 
 to philosophy that it should assume the existence 
 of things external to ourselves as an article of irra- 
 tional belief (KritiJc^ xl.) He admitted that the 
 external object is not given by any faculty of in- 
 tuition ; and he showed that, if the external object 
 be not originally given, its existence is incapable of 
 proof. But while Kant made these concessions to 
 philosophy, he made concessions more important 
 
 T 2 
 
276 The Common Sense of Kant. 
 
 still to common sense. The phenomena of sense, 
 he acknowledged, must be produced by some effi- 
 cient cause, and relying upon what he called the 
 " intellectual conception " of causality, he admitted 
 the existence of a transcendental cause of sensation, 
 which he styled the transcendental object. Our 
 anticipations of the future he saw could never be 
 explained by our recollections of the past, and 
 presuming the existence of the law of physical 
 causation, and others of the same character, in the 
 course of nature, he postulated certain anticipations 
 of these natural laws in thought, and named them 
 the categories of the understanding. All physical 
 science was thus the result of the categories of the 
 understanding applied to the experience of the 
 past ; and all experience whatsoever was due to the 
 conjoint action of the transcendental object and 
 our faculties of sense. 
 
 The impossibility of building a system of philo- 
 sophy on mere irrational belief is obvious; for if 
 natural instinct accredits natural realism by assert- 
 ing the existence of external things, reflection ac- 
 credits absolute idealism by asserting that what we 
 assume to be external things are nothing but our 
 own ideas. It is the same with regard to demon- 
 stration. That the existence of external things 
 cannot be proved by any process of reasoning is 
 admitted by Reid as readily as by Hume, and by 
 Hamilton as readily as by Kant. But the propo- 
 sition that the external object is not given by any 
 
The Intuition of Schelling. 277 
 
 faculty of intuition has not received as general an 
 acceptance. Hamilton, as we have seen, contended 
 that in certain limited relations the external object 
 is given by the intuition of the senses. But in 
 Germany a still bolder attempt to show that objec- 
 tive reality, even in its highest forms, might be 
 grasped, was made by Schelling, who, soaring 
 high above the region of the senses, revived the 
 doctrine of Plotinus, and maintained that absolute 
 reality might be reached by the vision and the 
 faculty divine, which he denominated intellectual 
 intuition. The possibility of such a philodoxy, as 
 he would have styled it, had been clearly seen by 
 Kant ; but here, as everywhere, the common sense 
 of that illustrious man preserved him from illusion. 
 He disclaimed the exercise of the arts of magic. He 
 was a plain man, he said, who knew of no intuition 
 but the vulgar intuition of the senses. He saw 
 nothing in the understanding but a certain faculty 
 of judgment; and the intellectual intuition, with 
 its ecstacies and its absorptions and its unintel- 
 ligible swoons, he left with the Teutonic Theoso- 
 pher, the Alexandrine Mystic and the Indian Mouni. 
 But it was not on the side of intuition that the 
 serious attack was made on the philosophy of Kant; 
 it was on the side of the categories and the tran- 
 scendental object. If the existence of objects ex- 
 ternal to ourselves can neither be perceived nor 
 proved, why, it was asked, should we insist on their 
 existence ? Philosophy for centuries had plagued 
 
278 The Revolt of Ficlite. 
 
 itself with abortive attempts to determine the rela- 
 tions subsisting between the subject and the object. 
 Kant had shown that the development of the sub- 
 ject was not the mere result of the action of the 
 object ; why not assume that the object is the mere 
 creation and projection of the subject ? Kant him- 
 self had approached this point of view, but with his 
 characteristic caution he had declined to take it as 
 his standpoint. In assuming the existence of the 
 transcendental object, he had taken care to guard 
 himself by saying that it was " an object of which 
 we are quite unable to say whether it can be met 
 with in ourselves or out of us ; whether it would be 
 annihilated together with sensibility, or if this were 
 taken away, would continue to exist " (Kritik, 206). 
 But what Kant was unable to say, his successors 
 dogmatically said. They professed to be in earnest 
 about idealism. They gave out a series of ideal- 
 isms subjective, objective, and absolute as be- 
 wildering and as transient as the northern lights. 
 Fichte, a self-confident and overbearing thinker, 
 commenced the revolution. Schelling first the fol- 
 lower of Fichte, then the successor of Spinosa, then 
 posing as a new Plotinus, and finally lost in the 
 Aurora or Morning Red of Jacob Boehmen asto- 
 nished the world by his versatility and genius, but 
 was too fitful and erratic to produce any perma- 
 nent effect upon the world of thought. He was 
 succeeded by a more imperial spirit. Idealism 
 was in the ascendant in Germany, and the crown- 
 
The Advent of Hegel. 279 
 
 ing victory of German idealism was achieved by 
 Hegel. 
 
 The influence exerted by this extraordinary man 
 is one of the most remarkable events in the history 
 of modern speculation. At first he was rapturously 
 hailed as the founder of a new religion. He was 
 regarded as a new Messiah. He was styled a God. 
 Even among the more sober of his admirers the 
 language in which he was described, if less blasphe- 
 mous than that of Marheinecke, was equally ex- 
 travagant. He was styled the King of Thought. 
 Forster compared him to Alexander, and said that 
 on his death the throne of philosophy became 
 vacant, and the provinces of thought could only 
 be governed by his satraps. Scherer compared him 
 to Napoleon, and Professor Graham, making the 
 same comparison, exclaims, " they were two lions 
 littered in one year, but the elder and more terrible 
 was Hegel." * 
 
 Nor, if Hegel had accomplished all that he is 
 said to have accomplished, would he have been un- 
 worthy of his fame. Professor Graham tells us that 
 the system of Hegel is the most transcend ant attempt 
 ever essayed by the aspiring sons of men to solve 
 at once, and by one principle, all the problems of 
 philosophy, and all the sphinx enigmas of existence, 
 
 * Idealism : An Essay, Metaphysi- suggestiveness, even to those who do 
 
 cal and Critical, by William Graham, not accept the doctrine which it 
 
 M.A., of Trinity College, Dublin a preaches, or the estimate of Hegel 
 
 work of great eloquence, and full of which it forms. 
 
280 The Obscurity of Hegel. 
 
 as well as the riddle of the painful earth (Ideal. 69). 
 But even this falls short of the pretensions of the 
 great hierophant himself. His logic, he said, was 
 not the mere scientific exposition of the pure notions 
 of the reason ; it was the exhibition of truth without 
 her veil it was the exposition of God in his eternal 
 essence it was the display of the diamond net in 
 which the universe is held (Schw. 323). 
 
 Mr. Graham maintains that for years to come 
 it will be the business of philosophy not to refute 
 Hegel, but to try and understand him (p. 41). 
 Confessedly this is not an easy task. Hegel himself 
 has said that to learn his system is to learn to walk 
 upon one's head'; and in speaking of his philoso- 
 phy, shortly before his death, he was fain to admit 
 that of all his disciples one only understood it and 
 that even he did not. Terrier tells us that, with 
 peaks more lucent than the sun, his intervals are 
 filled with a sea of darkness, unnavigable by the 
 aid of any compass, and overhung by an atmo- 
 sphere, or rather by a vacuum, which no human 
 intellect can breathe. Stirling, who has devoted 
 a lifetime to the study of his system, and who has 
 written two large octavos on his Secret, is no less 
 eloquent on the obscurity of the modern Heraclitus. 
 His system is a Cyclopean edifice a palace of 
 Oriental dream a Chinese puzzle a thing of in- 
 finite meddle and make a map of infinite join- 
 ings, of endless seams and sutures, whose opposing 
 edges no cunning of gum, or glue, or paint, can 
 
The Principle of Hegel. 281 
 
 ever hide. Mr. Wallace, who has translated his 
 Logic, has to confess that to the neophyte the 
 atmosphere of Hegelian thought is a vacuum which 
 we cannot breathe, and which is merely tenanted 
 by ghosts.* In point of fact the most practised and 
 patient of metaphysicians is at fault when he strives 
 to catch the evanescent meanings and interpret the 
 uncouth phraseology of this portentous thinker, 
 while the ordinary man of letters who dips into 
 his works is compelled to quit them in despair, 
 reminded only of the Rosicrucian jargon with which 
 the Adept endeavoured to confound the Antiquary, 
 or the problematical dialogisms, and the conca- 
 tenations of self-existence with 'which the Squire 
 smoked Moses in the parlour of the Vicar. 
 
 Mr. Graham tells us that the Hegelian system 
 is the final result of philosophy, and that Hegel had 
 the genius to discover and the courage to proclaim 
 that a universal thought is the absolute, and the 
 sole existence (Ideal. 19). But if the position that 
 thought is the sole and absolute existence is the last 
 result of philosophy, it was also one of its earliest 
 results. The Greeks, who anticipated everything, 
 anticipated even this. Centuries before the Chris- 
 tian era Parmenides had proclaimed in sounding 
 hexameters that thought and its objects are the 
 
 * The Logic of Hegel translated from Merton College, Oxford. This is the 
 
 the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical most intelligent and the most intelli- 
 
 Sciences, with Prolegomena by William gible account of Hegel's system that 
 
 Wallace, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of the English reader can be referred to. 
 
282 The Hegelianism of Heraclitus. 
 
 same. Gorgias had amused the youth of Athens 
 with the paradox which proclaims the identity of 
 Nought and Being. In fact Heraclitus, in meta- 
 phors which darkened knowledge, had given forth 
 adumbrations of the whole Hegelian doctrine. 
 When he said that all things are in ceaseless flow, 
 he announced the dogma, according to Hegel him- 
 self, that Becoming was the fundamental category 
 of all that is (Log. 144). When he proclaimed that 
 strife is the parent of all things, he proclaimed the 
 Hegelian axiom that plurality and contrast were 
 the conditions of knowledge and perception. Nay, 
 when he said that the world is an ever-living fire 
 which is alternately extinguished and rekindled by 
 itself, he merely anticipated the words of Hegel 
 when he said, u the Becoming is as it were a fire, 
 which dies out in itself, when it consumes its mate- 
 rial " (p. 146). 
 
 Nor was the theory of Absolute Idealism un- 
 known in modern Europe. The marvellous meta- 
 physical genius which had anticipated Kant had 
 also anticipated Hegel. In his youthful Treatise 
 of Human Nature, Hume had unconsciously re- 
 produced the ideas of Parmenides and Heraclitus, 
 and laid the lines of the Hegelian Logic. He 
 said to himself that "as long as we confine our 
 speculations to the appearances of objects to our 
 senses, without entering into disquisitions concern- 
 ing their real nature and operations, we are safe 
 from all difficulties, and can never be embarrassed 
 
The Hegelianism of Hume. 283 
 
 by any question" (Works, i. 92). Confining his 
 attention to the appearances of objects, he re- 
 garded human nature as the capital of science, and 
 boldly marched upon it (i. 8). He declared that all 
 the perceptions of the mind may be divided into 
 impressions and ideas (i. 15). He attempted to 
 classify all the relations, natural and philosophi- 
 cal, by which our ideas are united (i. 30). He 
 stigmatised the ordinary division of the acts of 
 the understanding into three as a vulgar error, and 
 endeavoured to show that judgment and reasoning 
 were nothing but conception (i. 132). He denied 
 that there was any necessity for supposing that 
 every beginning of existence should be attended 
 by a cause (i. 227); and he even professed that 
 our perceptions may exist separately, and have no 
 need of any substance to support their being (i. 299). 
 But the speculations of the youthful sceptic had 
 a wider reach. He examined the idea of exist- 
 ence (i. 95). " There is no impression nor idea of 
 any kind, of which we have any consciousness or 
 memory," he says, " that is not conceived as exist- 
 ent ; and it is evident that from this consciousness 
 the most perfect idea and assurance of being is de- 
 rived " (ibid.). " From hence," he continues, "we 
 may form a dilemma the most clear and conclusive 
 that can be imagined, viz., that, since we never 
 remember any idea or impression without attri- 
 buting existence to it, the idea of existence must 
 
284 The Hegelianism of Hume. 
 
 either be derived from a distinct impression, con- 
 joined with every perception or object of our 
 thought, or must be the very same with the idea 
 of the perception or object " (ibid.). That there 
 was no distinct impression from which it could be 
 derived he considered obvious, and accordingly 
 he concluded that " to reflect on anything simply, 
 and to reflect on it as existent, are nothing different 
 from each other " that " any idea we please to 
 form is the idea of a being, and the idea of a being 
 is any idea we please to form" in fine, that " the 
 idea of existence is the very same with the idea of 
 what we conceive to be existent " (i. 96). By the 
 same reasoning he came to the conclusion that exter- 
 nal existence was nothing but a mere idea (i. 97). 
 "Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much 
 as possible," he said "let us chase our imagina- 
 tion to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the 
 universe; we never really advance a step beyond 
 ourselves " (ibid.). The consequence of principles 
 such as these was obvious. According to the 
 Treatise, Space was nothing but " the manner in 
 which objects exist" (i. 62) Body was nothing but 
 " a collection, formed by the mind, of the ideas 
 of the several distinct sensible qualities of which 
 objects are composed, and which we find to have 
 a constant union with each other" (i. 282) Mind 
 was nothing but " a system of different percep- 
 tions, or different existences, which are linked to- 
 
The Hegelianism of Fichte. 285 
 
 gether by the relation of cause and effect, and 
 mutually produce, destroy, influence, and modify 
 each other" (i. 331). 
 
 In broaching this system of absolute idealism, 
 however, Hume was not one of the men of bright 
 fancies who, to use his own simile, are like the 
 angels that Scripture represents as covering their 
 eyes with their wings. When the wing of the 
 angel was removed, no eye could be keener than his 
 in detecting the contradictions and imperfections of 
 his system; no man of common sense could be 
 readier to acknowledge its unsatisfying nature. 
 Philosophy such as this, he said, was mere philo- 
 sophical melancholy and delirium of which nature 
 is the cure (i. 341) ; it was a mere dream, on waking 
 from which the philosopher would be the first to join 
 in the laugh against himself (iv. 187). But it was 
 in no such spirit that Fichte reproduced the philo- 
 sophemes of Hume. The Great Ego, as he was 
 styled by Goethe and by Schiller, is said to have 
 publicly imprecated everlasting damnation on him- 
 self if he ever swerved in the smallest degree from 
 any of the doctrines which he had propounded (Reid, 
 796). He submitted the question of external exist- 
 ence to the experiment to which Hume had previously 
 submitted it, and to which, for that matter, it had 
 been previously submitted by Berkeley. Try, he 
 said, the experiment of thinking any given object, 
 and then of thinking the ego, and you will infallibly 
 find that the object thought and the ego thinking 
 
286 The Hegelianism of Fichte. 
 
 are the same (Fichte, 156).* He rejects, with even 
 more contempt than Hume, "the wonderful as- 
 sumption that the ego is something different from 
 its own consciousness of itself, and that something, 
 heaven knows what, lying beyond this conscious- 
 ness, is the foundation of it" (ibid. 145). The 
 ego, it is true, was the only substance; but sub- 
 stance was nothing but thought vicissitude in gene- 
 ral (Schwegler, 267). It was as thought vicissitude 
 in general that the ego comprehended the sum 
 total of reality, the entire compass of existence (ibid.). 
 The world of sense in short was nothing but a spon- 
 taneous conception of the ego when recoiling from 
 its own limitations (p. 268), and God was nothing 
 but the moral order of the universe (p. 274) the 
 moral order of our own ideas. 
 
 But there is a breach of continuity in the specu- 
 lations of Fichte, of which Hume at all events was 
 guiltless. The ego from which Fichte's theory of 
 knowledge starts is nothing but the identity of the 
 conscious subject with the object of which it is con- 
 scious (Fichte^ 149). But Fichte goes on to say that 
 the ego referred to is not to be identified with the 
 individual or a person (p. 157). All individual 
 finite spirits, he says, are merely modes of the in- 
 finite life, which is God (p. 203). He holds in fine 
 
 * Fichte ^j Robert Adamson, M. A., Blackwood Series which contains the 
 
 Professor of Logic in the Owens Col- most intelligible account of Fichte's 
 
 lege, Victoria University, Manches- philosophy which I haA r e met with, 
 ter a monogram published in the 
 
The Logic of Hegel. 287 
 
 that " the one reality, the one life, the life of con- 
 sciousness, which is the manifestation of God, breaks 
 itself up into an endless multiplicity of individual 
 forms forms which in the experience of the finite 
 spirit must present themselves as independent self- 
 existing facts, but which for thought are only modes 
 of the one infinite life (p. 209). Panegoism is thus 
 exchanged for Pantheism, and the absolute idea of 
 Hegel is foreshadowed in the infinite life of which 
 all individual lives are modes. 
 
 Logic and Metaphysics, if thought be identical 
 with being, are different aspects of the same thing. 
 But even in the logical aspect of Hegel's system 
 there is little that is absolutely new. The prin- 
 ciple that there is no thought without plurality 
 and contrast is as old as Heraclitus, and had been 
 made one of the commonplaces of philosophy by 
 Hobbes. The axiom that the science of opposites 
 is one dates back to the Stagyrite. The famous 
 dogma that all position is negation had been enun- 
 ciated by Spinosa. The secret of the triple nisus, 
 the mystery that reasoning and judgment are only 
 forms of simple apprehension, had been revealed 
 by Hume. The paradox that Pure Being and Pure 
 Nothing are the same is merely a disguise for the 
 platitude that there is no such thing in the world as 
 pure Being, and even that had been propounded by 
 the brilliant Sophist. In declaring that to be un- 
 true means much the same as to be bad (Log. 306), 
 
288 The Metaphysic of Hegel 
 
 Hegel merely reproduces the theory of Wollas- 
 ton that morality is conformity with truth ; and in 
 attacking the fluxions of Newton and the infinitesi- 
 mals of Leibnitz he merely reproduces the Analyst 
 of Berkeley. 
 
 Mr. Wallace tells us that the interpreters of 
 Hegel have contradicted each other as variously as 
 the commentators on the Bible (Proleg. xiii.). Nor 
 is this matter of surprise. The metaphysical aspect 
 of his system is constantly changing, and the true 
 method of interpretation is to observe its changes. 
 It is clear that he rejected the transcendental object 
 and the transcendental subject and the transcen- 
 dental ideality of Kant. The thing-in-itself, he 
 said, whether mind of man or God, was a mere 
 abstraction (Log. 77); and time and space, arising 
 as they did in the negative movement of the mind, 
 were nothing but negations. In like manner he 
 repudiated the ego of Fichte and its anstoss. The 
 anstoss, he said, was merely the transcendental 
 object in disguise, and the ego being dependent on 
 it for its impulse was not a free spontaneous force 
 (p. 102). Accordingly, for the ego he substituted the 
 " self-actualising universal," Thought (p. 30). This 
 self-actualising universal, in its onward movement 
 through the categories of being, relation, and deve- 
 lopment, evolved the Notion which constitutes the 
 actual thing (Proleg. cxxiii.). In this manner ex- 
 ternal objects corresponded with our conceptions; 
 
The Absolute Idea. 289 
 
 but 'our conceptions, if they were to be regarded as 
 expressions of the truth, should also correspond with 
 the Idea (p. 304). Up to this point the idealist was 
 consistent. Thought and existence had been treated 
 as the development of the self-actualising univer- 
 sal subject and object had been identified all 
 dualism had been consistently ignored. But here 
 occurs the fissure which has already been remarked 
 in Fichte. Over and above the specific system of 
 ideas which the self-actuating universal calls itself, 
 the idealist admits another system. " The Abso- 
 lute" he says, " is the universal and one idea, 
 which, as discerning, or in the act of judgment, 
 specialises itself to the system of specific ideas, 
 which, after all, are constrained by their nature to 
 come back to the one idea where their truth lies " 
 (P- 3 O 5)' Here the distinction between subject and 
 object once again emerges, and the transcendental 
 object looms before us in the form of the Absolute 
 Idea. And the very nature of phenomena seems 
 to undergo a change. They cease to be purely 
 subjective conceptions, hemmed in by the im- 
 penetrable barrier of Fichte (p. 207) they cease 
 to be subjective intuitions moulded in the forms 
 of Kant they become objective in their nature. 
 This, in contradistinction to the subjective ideal- 
 isms of previous philosophy, is Absolute Idealism. 
 This is the main point of difference between 
 Kant and Hegel, and the difference is stated by 
 Hegel in the following words : " The things that 
 
The Categories of Kant. 
 
 we immediately know about are mere phenomena, 
 not for us only, but in their own nature and without 
 our interference; and these things, finite as they 
 are, are appropriately described when we say that 
 their being is established not on themselves, but on 
 the divine and universal idea" (Log. 79). 
 
 Before we consider this theory of absolute ideal- 
 ism in its metaphysical aspect, let us examine it in 
 its relation to the categories of the understanding. 
 In holding the categories to be nothing but anticipa- 
 tions of a course of nature which was determined by 
 the operation of a transcendental cause, the critic 
 of the reason found himself met with the ques- 
 tion, how is it to be conceived that nature must 
 regulate herself so as to agree with our anticipa- 
 tions ? According to Kant, this was a transcen- 
 dental enigma which he solved on the principle 
 of a pre-established harmony, such as had been con- 
 ceived by Leibnitz. A similar solution had been 
 given by David Hume. Nature, he said, "has im- 
 planted in us an instinct which carries forward the 
 thought in a correspondent course to that which she 
 has established among external objects" (iv. 66) 
 she has constituted " a kind of pre-established 
 harmony between the course of nature and the suc- 
 cession of our ideas " (iv. 65) . This was not satis- 
 factory either to Fichte or to Hegel. In getting 
 rid of the transcendental object they fancied that 
 they had got rid of the transcendental enigma also. 
 The categories, they said, were nothing but the 
 
The Categories of Hegel. 291 
 
 necessary modes of the action of the self-conscious 
 ego viewed in an objective aspect (Fichte, 158). 
 They were "not instruments which the mind uses, 
 but elements in a whole, or stages in a complex 
 process, which in its unity the mind is " (Hegel, 157). 
 In a word, the categories were not the mere anti- 
 cipations of experience they were the essential 
 constituents of thought. 
 
 But it is obvious that this is not a solution, but a 
 mere evasion of the difficulty to be solved. Even if 
 we suppose that nature is nothing but the evolution 
 of a self-actualising universal, we must admit that 
 nature has a course ; and even if we suppose that 
 such course is merely subjective and ideal, we must 
 calculate upon its continuance, whether we engage in 
 scientific inquirv or in action. Though we admit that 
 there is no course of nature but the course of thought, 
 the course of thought requires to be anticipated as 
 much as the course of nature. The anticipation 
 that to-morrow I shall have the idea of a sunrise 
 is as much a preconception of the understanding 
 as the anticipation that the sun will rise to-morrow. 
 How is this anticipation to be explained ? It cannot 
 be explained by saying that the categories are con- 
 stituents of thought. Thought may be developed 
 according to the laws of thought, but what guarantee 
 do we possess that the laws of thought will be con- 
 tinued ? The acute thinker who first observed that 
 the supposition of the continuance of the laws of 
 nature could not be derived from experience, because 
 
 u 2 
 
2 g 2 The Postulate of Mill. 
 
 all experimental conclusions presupposed it, ob- 
 served also that it could not be regarded as matter 
 of demonstration, because it involves no contra- 
 diction that the course of things may change. 
 This reasoning, it is evident, is equally just, whether 
 we regard the course of nature as something which 
 exists without us, or as something which exists 
 within. If it be regarded as developed fiom within 
 we must anticipate our own development. Such an 
 anticipation cannot be regarded as the constituent of 
 that which ex hypothesi is not yet constituted it 
 can only be regarded as a pre-conception, whether 
 we consider it as a mere instinct with Hume, or ele- 
 vate it to the rank of a category of the understand- 
 ing with his successor Kant. 
 
 The impossibility of evading this conclusion is 
 conspicuous in Mill. Holding, as he did, that we 
 have knowledge of nothing but our sensations, and 
 the laws of their occurrence, Mill adopted an idealism 
 as absolute as that of Hegel. But while he held with 
 Hegel that " the whole variety of the facts of nature, 
 as we know it, is given in the mere existence of sen- 
 sations, and in the laws or order of their occurrence" 
 (Exam. 257), he repudiated the Hegelian conclusion 
 that "the laws of physical nature were deduced by 
 ratiocination from subjective deliverances of the 
 mind" (p. 628). Nay, after many a bewildering 
 statement in the contrary sense, Mill ultimately 
 accepted the view of Hume and Kant, and among 
 the first principles on which his psychological theory 
 
The Duality of Hegel. 293 
 
 reposed was content to " postulate that the human 
 mind is capable of expectation " (p. 225) . " The real 
 stumbling-block," he said, " is, perhaps, not in any 
 theory of the fact, but in the fact itself"; and "the 
 true incomprehensibility perhaps is, that something 
 which has ceased, or is not yet in existence, can still 
 be, in a manner, present ; that a series of feelings, 
 the infinitely greater part of which is past or future, 
 can be gathered up, as it were, into a single present 
 conception, accompanied by a belief of reality" 
 
 ( P . 248). 
 
 Nor was Hegel more successful with respect to 
 the primary aim of his philosophy than with respect 
 to the categories of the understanding. In contrast- 
 ing the philosophy of Hegel with that of Locke and 
 Kant, Mr. Wallace remarks that the latter philoso- 
 phers admitted two independent centres in subject 
 and object, and were puzzled, like other philoso- 
 phers, in their attempt to get from one to the other 
 (Proleg. Iviii.). Hegel, it is true, by identifying 
 subject and object, seemed to have escaped the 
 puzzle ; but it was only seeming. In declaring all 
 objects to be merely the development of a self- 
 actualising universal, he undoubtedly concentrates 
 all objective existence in the subject. The rigorous 
 result of this would be, as stated by Mr. Hodgson 
 in his Time and Space, that " the world is produced 
 and developed according to the laws which govern 
 consciousness " that " we make the world by know- 
 ing it " (p. 392). But Hegel shrinks from this rigor- 
 
294 Inorganic Nature. 
 
 ous result. He admits the existence of something 
 antecedent to the world a time when the earth was 
 without form and void, and when darkness was on 
 the bosom of the deep. While professing to have 
 abolished the distinction between object and sub- 
 ject, he leaves the subject confronted by an object 
 as independent of itself as matter. " The living 
 being," he says, " stands face to face with an in- 
 organic nature, and conducts itself as a power over 
 that nature, and assimilates it to itself" (Log. 312). 
 " The nature of the universe," he elsewhere says, 
 " hidden and shut up as it is at first, has no power 
 which can permanently resist the courageous efforts 
 of the intelligence ; it must at last open itself up ; 
 it must reveal all its depth and riches to the spirit, 
 and surrender them to be enjoyed by \i" (Hegel, 
 195).* But what is inorganic nature in the de- 
 velopment of conscious thought? Here we are 
 met with the most unintelligible of all the unin- 
 telligibilities of Hegel. Let us revert to Professor 
 Graham for its exposition. The development of 
 the self-actualising universal has been character- 
 ised by progress. The Phenomenology is a history 
 of the successive stages through which conscious- 
 ness has passed. Eeason has advanced from the 
 age when man made weapons of flint, to the age 
 in which we live (Ideal. 37). But nature must 
 
 * Hegel, by Edward Caird, LL.D., monogram, published in the Black - 
 Professor of Moral Philosophy, Uni- wood Series of Philosophical Clas- 
 versity of Glasgow another admirable sics. 
 
Unconscious Thought. 295 
 
 have existed in geological periods long before the 
 advent of humanity and how? As unconscious 
 thought (p. 23). And this explains the origin of the 
 world and man. Unconscious thought may cast up 
 existences as it did in those geological periods, albeit 
 there was no real existence till conscious thought 
 appeared (p. 65). Mr. Graham tells us we must 
 not try to refute Hegel, we must only try to under- 
 stand him. Let the reader try. " It will be better," 
 says Hegel, "if we use the term thought at all, to 
 speak of nature as the system of unconscious thought, 
 or, to use Schelling's expression, a fossilized intelli- 
 gence" (Log. 39). This fossilized intelligence is 
 the new materia prima nay, it is the primum mobile 
 as well. Such is the beginning of world in the 
 Genesis of Hegel, and Mr. Graham tells us that it 
 is only an example of his great principle, "that 
 being and non-being are the same" (Ideal. 65). 
 But it is not merely in the inorganic nature 
 which existed in the geological periods before the 
 advent of humanity that the Hegelian encounters 
 the inevitable object. He admits the existence of 
 self-actualising universals other than himself ; and 
 it is perfectly clear that if there be a number of 
 self-actualising universals, every self-actualising uni- 
 versal other than himself is an object external to 
 himself, which escapes his apprehension as com- 
 pletely as any material or any transcendental ob- 
 ject. The generations of men who preceded him, 
 mere systems of ideas as they are supposed to be, 
 
296 The Absolute Mind. 
 
 were not his system of ideas. The great battle, 
 amid the thunders of which the Phenomenology 
 was finished, was fought by spirits, to whom his 
 spirit was a stranger. The past was the creation of 
 other minds than his; and the future is an object 
 which his mind may anticipate, but cannot possibly 
 evolve. Above all, the Absolute Idea, in which he 
 supposes himself to live and move and have his 
 being, is a Being far transcending him, a God 
 whose thoughts are not his thoughts, and whose 
 ways are not as his. 
 
 Hegel at times gives a great elevation to his 
 language, and a great appearance of orthodoxy to his 
 doctrine, by dilating on the might and majesty of 
 God. Indeed Mr. Graham informs us that " the 
 Hegelian sees God everywhere beneath the world of 
 nature, which is merely his woven veil, and knows 
 him in the high soul of man, which is the manifesta- 
 tion of his spiritual presence" (Ideal. 32); and Stir- 
 ling goes so far as to say that Hegel, in vindicating 
 thought alone as the substantial element in the uni- 
 verse, has extended an immense support to every 
 spiritual influence, and supplied the most powerful 
 bulwark to religion (Schw. 443). But the question 
 is not what Hegel believes or says, but what are his 
 principles, and what is the result to which they lead. 
 Let us therefore examine the theology of Hegel. 
 
 Mr. Wallace tells us that " the Hegelian system 
 has the all-embracing and encyclopaedic character 
 by which Scholastic thought threw its arms around 
 
The Adamantine Circle. 
 
 297 
 
 heaven and. earth"; and that "Hegel's theory is 
 the explication of God, but of God in the actuality 
 and plenitude of the world, and not as a transcend- 
 ent Being in the solitude of a world beyond " 
 (Proleg. xxvi.). Professor Caird adopts the same 
 metaphor, and tells us that "the essential unity 
 of all things with each other and with the mind 
 that knows them is the adamantine circle, within 
 which the strife of opposites is waged, and which 
 their utmost violence of conflict cannot break" 
 (Hegel, 141).* But how is the existence of this 
 Absolute Mind arrived at? The Absolute Idea, 
 transcending as it does all finite intelligence, is an 
 object as transcendent as the transcendental object 
 which it endeavours to supplant. Hegel tells us 
 that " when we hear the Idea spoken of we need 
 not imagine something far away beyond this mortal 
 sphere" "the Idea is rather what is completely 
 present, and it is found in every consciousness, 
 although it may be in an indistinct and stunted 
 form " (Log. 306) . But, before we can say that 
 the Idea is completely present, its presence must 
 
 * These metaphors may afford the quern appellat Deum (De ^^ JD. i. 11). 
 
 explanation of a seemingly absurd and The interpretation of this passage on 
 
 incongruous doctrine, which is attri- Hegelian principles is quite consistent 
 
 buted by Cicero to Parmenides, the with what follows Multaque ejusdem 
 
 philosopher who first proclaimed that monstra, quippe qui helium, qui dis- 
 
 thought and its object are the same. cordiam, qui cupiditatem, ceteraque 
 
 Nam Parmenides commenticium quid- generis ejusdem ad Deum revocat. A 1 
 
 dam coronae simile efficit stcphanen these things, as existing realities, are 
 
 appellat continentem ardore [#w:ar- clearly comprehended in Hegel's Ab- 
 
 dores] lucis orbem, qui cingit coelum, solute Idea. 
 
298 The Addition of Noughts. 
 
 be proved, and before we can prove its presence we 
 must prove that it exists. What, then, is Hegel's 
 proof of God's existence ? It is the old Cartesian 
 proof. God, he says, " can only be thought as exist- 
 ing" " his Notion involves Being " u it is this 
 unity of the Notion and Being that constitutes the 
 only notion of God" (Log. 92). But the futility of 
 this argument had been shown by Hume. " In the 
 proposition, God is " he said, "or indeed any other 
 which regards existence, the idea of existence is no 
 distinct idea, which we unite with that of the object, 
 and which is capable of forming a compound idea 
 by the union" (i. 132). The futility of the on- 
 tological argument had been still more clearly 
 pointed out by Kant. The definition of the idea of 
 existence showed that it was futile (Kritik, 367). 
 The word leing did not really predicate existence, 
 it was merely the copula of logic (p. 368). The 
 analysis of a conception could never establish the 
 existence of its object (p. 392) ; and we might as 
 well hope to increase our store of knowledge by the 
 aid of mere ideas, as to augment our wealth by the 
 addition of a multitude of noughts (p. 370). 
 
 But what is the nature of the God whose exist- 
 ence is supposed to be thus established ? The Abso- 
 solute Idealist informs us. " The Absolute," he 
 says, "is intended, and ought to express God in 
 the style and character of thought " (Log. 134). In 
 the style and character of thought he is "the fulness 
 of objectivity, confronted with which our particu- 
 
The Ens Realissimum. 299 
 
 lar or subjective opinions and desires have no truth 
 and no validity " (p. 289). " God, far from being 
 a Being or Essence, even the highest, is the Being 
 or Essence" (p. 180). In fine, " God, who is abso- 
 lutely infinite, is not something out of, and beside 
 whom, there are other essences" " all else out of 
 God, if separated from him, possesses no essenti- 
 ality " whatever (p. 1 80). But what is the relation 
 between this transcendent essence and our own ? 
 Professor Caird tells us that the universe of Hegel 
 is "a universe in which every thought is a truth, 
 and every particle of dust an organisation a ma- 
 crocosm made up of microcosms, which is all in 
 every part" (Hegel, 179). If we accept this pro- 
 position in the literal sense, then God would seem 
 to be merely the sum total of the infinitesimals of 
 finite thought, a mere integration of existence ; and 
 war, and discord, and lust, and every evil thought, 
 as Cicero said of Parmenides, must be referred to 
 God. But if God is not the integral of humanity, 
 is man an infinitesimal of God ? Every individual 
 being, Hegel tells us, is some one aspect of the Idea ; 
 and he tells us that in God we live and move and 
 have our Being. This is the language of Male- 
 branche the language of Berkeley the language 
 which was borrowed from Epicharmus by St. Paul. 
 But language so variously applied means anything 
 or nothing. Let us take some intelligible utterance 
 of Hegel. The universal and one idea, he says, 
 specialises itself to a system of specific ideas, which 
 
300 The Shadoivy Universal. 
 
 after all are constrained by their nature to come 
 back to the one idea where their truth lies (Log. 
 305). This would seem to be merely another form 
 of the infinite impersonal life of Fichte. If this 
 be the case, Hegel would seem, like Fichte, to be 
 merely an idealised Spinosa. For what is the doc- 
 trine of Spinosa ? Spinosa holds that there is one 
 infinite and extended substance of which all finite 
 existences are modes waves, as it were, of the 
 ocean of being, which rise and swell and subside, 
 but never really are (Schw. 173).* If we eliminate 
 the ideas of substance and extension from this con- 
 ception, we may form some dim adumbration of the 
 Absolute Idea. But if this be the true concep- 
 tion, what is God ? According to Stirling himself, 
 nothing but a shadowy universal (Schw. 435). And 
 if God be nothing but a shadowy universal, what 
 is man ? Let Professor Graham answer. Some- 
 thing as unsubstantial as the cloud, something as 
 evanescent as the foam (Ideal. 45). 
 
 * Goethe, though he changes the metaphor at the close, would seem to have 
 had this idea of Spinosa' s in his mind, when he put the following words into 
 the mouth of the Spirit of the Earth : 
 
 In the floods of life, in the storm of strife, 
 On the crest of the wave, 
 
 In the depths of the sea, 
 I am birth and grave 
 
 Eternally ! 
 
 As I weave my tissues, 
 Life glows and issues ; 
 For the thunderous loom of time is mine, 
 
 Which clothes the world with its life divine ! 
 
 Fanst, p. 37- 
 
The Salto Mortale. 301 
 
 But even here the difficulties of the Hegelian 
 system do not end. A doctrine which insists upon 
 the co-existence of the Absolute Idea and specific 
 systems of ideas is as dualistic as the doctrine which 
 assumes the mutual co-operation and correspond- 
 ence of a transcendental object and a transcenden- 
 tal subject. Here the criticism of the Absolute 
 Idealist recoils upon himself. "In every dualistic 
 system," says Hegel, "and especially in that of 
 Kant, the fundamental defect makes itself visible 
 in unifying at one moment what a moment before 
 had been explained to be independent and incapable 
 of unification " (Log. 98). But things may be similar 
 in essence without being unified in thought ; and not- 
 withstanding any similarity of essence, the question 
 of dualism recurs How can I know any essence 
 but my own ? The Absolute Idea is something 
 supersensible, and Hegel admits that "the rise of 
 thought beyond the world of sense, its passage from 
 the finite to the infinite, the leap into the supersen- 
 sible which it takes when it snaps asunder the links 
 of the chain of sense all this transition is thought, 
 and nothing but thought " (Log. 87). But if thought 
 leaps into the supersensible, the supersensible into 
 which it leaps is not something out of and beyond 
 itself. Out of and beyond itself not even thought 
 can leap. What thought as thinker thinks, on the 
 principles of Hegel, it creates. If it thinks a Being 
 or Essence which is God, then God himself is its 
 creation. And it is in this sense that Fichte must 
 
3O2 The Truth Unveiled. 
 
 be understood when he proclaimed to his astonished 
 audience that in his next lecture he was going to 
 create God. But if this be so, the Hegelian sys- 
 tem is absolutely inverted and reversed. The mind 
 of man does not exist in God; on the contrary, 
 God exists only in the mind of man. Pantheism 
 is thus metamorphosed into Panegoism the ego is 
 declared to be the All the world, the soul, and God 
 are nothing but imaginations of the ego and the 
 ego is nothing but a system of shadowy ideas, 
 without any existence in space or time, and without 
 any ground of existence in substance or in cause. 
 
 The Absolute Idealism of Hegel, notwithstand- 
 ing its pretensions, is, in fact, the metaphysical 
 lunacy which Reid attributed to Hume (Reid, 127, 
 209). Nor, after all, can it be more graphically de- 
 scribed than in the homely language of the sage of 
 common sense. Like the Treatise of Human Na- 
 ture the Logic discards spirit and body from the 
 world and leaves impressions and ideas the sole ex- 
 istences in nature (p. 109). Its ideas are as free and 
 independent as the birds of the air, or as the atoms 
 of Epicurus when they pursued their journey through 
 the vast inane (ibid.). They are set adrift in the 
 world without connexion or support (ibid.). "But 
 why," said Reid, " should we seek to compare them 
 with anything, since there is nothing in nature 
 but themselves ? They make the whole furniture 
 of the universe ; starting into existence, or out of 
 it, without any cause ; combining into parcels, which 
 
 
The Diamond Net. 303 
 
 the vulgar call minds, and succeeding one another 
 by fixed laws, without time, place, or author of 
 those law T s " (ibid.). 
 
 How then have the promises of Hegel been ful- 
 filled ? Has he exhibited the diamond net in which 
 the universe is held ? Has he given an exposition 
 of God in his eternal essence ? Has he exhibited 
 truth without her veil ? He has done none of these 
 things. He professes to have displayed the diamond 
 net in which the universe is held ; but he has only 
 shown that the universe is a mere evanescence with 
 no diamond net to hold it. He professes to have 
 given an exposition of God in his eternal essence ; 
 but he has only shown that God in his eternal 
 essence is a shadowy universal. He professes to 
 have exhibited the form of truth without a veil; but 
 like the Grecian painter, it is only the veil itself that 
 he has painted. And what of the sphinx enigmas 
 of existence, and the problem of the painful earth ? 
 Hegel solves the enigma by declaring there is no 
 enigma to be solved. He finds no difficulty in con- 
 ceiving that things may subsist without a substance 
 and originate without a cause. He assumes the 
 existence of our sensations without inquiry as to 
 where they come from, and how it is that they 
 arise. He assumes their co- existences and their suc- 
 cessions and their laws without asking how the co- 
 existences and successions are determined, by what 
 power those laws have been imposed. The logic of 
 Hegel gives no answer to the questions which can- 
 
304 The Eternal Essence. 
 
 not be evaded by the philosopher any more than 
 they can be evaded by the common man. " Where 
 am I, or what ? From what causes do I derive my 
 existence, and to what condition shall I return ? 
 Whose favours shall I court, and whose anger must 
 I dread ?" Hume asked himself these questions, and 
 professed himself to be confounded (i. 340). Kant 
 asked them, and left reason trembling on the verge 
 of the abyss of necessity, which he regarded as the 
 ultimate support of all existing things (p. 376). 
 These questions the philosophy of Hegel ignores ; it 
 ignores the very craving of intelligence by which 
 they are suggested. He is content to regard God 
 as a shadowy universal with no existence but a 
 shadow's ; he is content to regard the universe as 
 only another name for that shadowy universal ; and 
 oscillating between Pantheism on the one hand and 
 Panegoism on the other, he is driven to regard man 
 as either a mere shifting shadow of a shade, or an 
 unessential essence which constitutes the universe of 
 things. 
 
AN IDEAL OF SYSTEMS: 
 
 THE NEW KRITIK. 
 
AN IDEAL OF SYSTEMS: 
 
 OE 
 
 THE NEW KBITIK. 
 
 Sedjam, ut omni me invidia liberem, ponam in medio sententias philo- 
 sophorum ; quo quidem loco convocandi omnes videntur, qui quae 
 sit earum verajudicent. DE NAT. DEOE. 
 
 THE advent of Hegel, as we have seen, was regarded 
 as the advent of a new Messiah ; and in the hour of 
 his triumph all Germany hailed him with hosannas. 
 But the hosannas were followed by a crucifixion. 
 A reaction set in against the absolute philosophy. 
 Unbelievers began to ridicule its empty abstrac- 
 tions, its shadowy universals, its artificial tricho- 
 tomies, its affectation of omniscience, and its 
 wearisome iteration of barbaric and unintelligible 
 terms.* Heine described the Hegelian system as 
 a harlequinade of thought; and Schopenhauer 
 derided its author as a philosophical acrobat, 
 
 * The following details are derived Philosophic Allemande Moderne depuis 
 from a very interesting work HEGEL Kant jusq' a nos jours. Par A. Foucher 
 et SCHOPENHAUER, Etudes sur la de Careil. Paris, 1862. 
 
 X 2 
 
308 The Discovery of Schopenhauer. 
 
 who had the misfortune to have lost his body. 
 Schopenhauer went still further further perhaps 
 than he was justified in going. He denounced 
 Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel as three sophists who 
 made a trade of philosophy, and were the intellec- 
 tual mercenaries of the state ready to abandon 
 pantheism for pietism if adequately paid, and, like 
 Bottom the weaver, equally prepared to roar as the 
 lion or to whisper as the sucking dove. 
 
 Schopenhauer professed to have supplied an ele- 
 ment which he said was wanting in Hegel's theory 
 of the evolution and self-development of thought. 
 "My great discovery," he said, "is a Thebes with 
 a hundred gates ; it is that, at the base of all things, 
 there is a force which is one and identical, always 
 equal and eternally the same ; and that this force, 
 which slumbers in the plant, which awakes in the 
 animal, and which becomes conscious of itself in 
 man, is will"* But Stirling is right (Schw. 446). 
 Although Schopenhauer must take a high rank 
 among German philosophers, it is clear that German 
 philosophy is closed with Hegel. The shadowy uni- 
 versal, with no existence in space or time and with 
 
 * Goethe, who was a friend of Schopenhauer, probably had this theory in 
 view when he makes Faust hesitate as to how he should translate the \6yos of 
 the famous passage of St. John : 
 
 Is it mere thought evolves all nature's course ? 
 
 Surely in the beginning there was force ! 
 
 Still as the word is traced beneath my hand, 
 
 A something warns me not to let it stand. 
 
 The Spirit aids me all is now exact 
 
 I write, In the beginning was the act ! Faust, p. 73. 
 
The Prophecy of Comte. 309 
 
 no ground of existence in substance or in cause, was 
 the last word of idealism. Even the power of 
 absurdity, which Hobbes regards as the privilege 
 of reason, could go no further. 
 
 The history of philosophy from Berkeley to 
 Hegel would seem to justify the positive philosopher 
 in his prophecy that the educated intellects of the 
 future would abandon all metaphysical speculation, 
 and devote themselves exclusively to the study of 
 the phenomena of nature and their laws. But as 
 Schopenhauer remarks and the remark had pre- 
 viously been made by Kant there is a meta- 
 physical instinct in human nature which is as 
 ineradicable as any of its other instincts. The 
 energetic intellect of youth, when it feels the first 
 stirrings of intellectual life, conceives everything to 
 be open to its efforts, and with unconscious auda- 
 city looks the mystery of existence in the face and 
 fancies it can solve it. It may be that this is a 
 mere beating of the air, but it is the beating of 
 the air which develops the muscles of the athlete. 
 Nor is this the only factor in the case. In every 
 free state and this is the most obvious indication 
 of its freedom there will ever be men who, by 
 the bias of their genius, will devote themselves to 
 philosophy, as others devote themselves to poetry 
 and art ; and as poetry and art are never exhausted, 
 so philosophy will everlastingly assume new forms. 
 The object which the philosopher sets before him 
 may be as far beyond the reach of human knowledge 
 
3 1 o The Spirit of Metaphysic. 
 
 as the grand arcanum or the great elixir. But the 
 spirit of metaphysics never dies. Its destruction 
 is as illusory as that of the visionary maid which 
 Dryden's Theodore beheld when " more than a mile 
 immersed within the wood." The hounds may 
 fasten on her side and the knight may plunge his 
 sword into her back ; but an irrevocable sentence 
 has been past. The pursuit must for ever be con- 
 tinued, and the phantom is no sooner slain than 
 it revives 
 
 Renewed to life, that she might daily die, 
 We daily doomed to follow, she to fly. 
 
 But is philosophy, after all, the visionary pur- 
 suit that is imagined ? As Hume has remarked, it 
 is no inconsiderable part of science to know the 
 different operations of the mind, to separate them 
 from each other, to classify them under their appro- 
 priate heads, and to remove all the seeming disorder 
 in which they are involved, when made the subject 
 of reflection (iv. 12). But there is an element of 
 science, even in the books of metaphysics, which the 
 sceptic wished to burn. In the attempt to solve the 
 metaphysical problem of the world a number of 
 hypotheses have been framed by philosophers, and 
 though none of these hypotheses can claim to rank 
 as science, yet in their totality they possess a scien- 
 tific value. In themselves they may be the mere 
 play of philosophic imagination, the romance of 
 reason. But reason, confronted with the great mys- 
 tery of existence, cannot choose but make its guesses 
 
A Kritik of Systems. 3 1 1 
 
 at the riddle. Every philosophy is such a guess ; and 
 a complete system of philosophies will constitute 
 the sum total of the guesses which reason is compe- 
 tent to make. Such a system, even as a matter of 
 curiosity, would be interesting, and, as a fact ex- 
 pressive of the limitation of the powers of reason, 
 would come within the strict domain of science. 
 Nor is it impossible to imagine such a system. In 
 every department of mental philosophy a conspectus 
 of the various theories which have been invented 
 may be made. The theories as to the origin of 
 knowledge, or as to the nature of universals, or as 
 to the true character of the process of induction, 
 may be contabulated so as to see where they di- 
 verge, how far they differ, and in what respect they 
 are expressions of the truth. Such a synopsis of 
 systems would not only facilitate study, but would 
 go far to remove the opprobrium of philosophy 
 the fatal differences of opinion which seem to 
 exist among its masters. For truth is a polygon, 
 and not a point; and apparent differences of opi- 
 nion are caused by the different sides of the poly- 
 gon on which the attention of philosophers is fixed. 
 It is thus that a Kritik of Systems is required to sup- 
 plement the Kritik of Reason. Let us see whether 
 on the subject of the great cosmological problem 
 the outlines of such a Kritik can be traced. 
 
 " It seems evident," says Hume, " that men are 
 carried by a natural instinct or prepossession to 
 
3 1 2 Natural Realism. 
 
 repose faith in their senses, and that without any 
 reasoning, or even almost before the use of reason, 
 we always suppose an external universe which de- 
 pends not on our perception, but would exist though 
 we and every sensible creature were absent or anni- 
 hilated." While we are under the influence of this 
 natural instinct, not only do we suppose an external 
 universe, which depends not on our perception, but 
 we suppose that we immediately perceive it. It 
 appears to us as if sense actually apprehended 
 things out of itself and in their proper space. We 
 make no distinction between the object existing and 
 the object known. We presume not only that the 
 world exists, but that we know it as existing. We 
 presume that we know it not as a mere cause, but as 
 an object. This is the conclusion to which we are 
 led by the instinct of our nature ; and this instinctive 
 determination of the human race is Natural Realism 
 in its only intelligible sense. 
 
 " But," as Hume continues, "this universal and 
 primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by 
 the slightest philosophy, which teaches us that 
 nothing can ever be present to the mind but the 
 image or perception, and that the senses are only 
 the inlets through which these images are conveyed, 
 without being able to produce any immediate inter- 
 course between the mind and the object." And 
 in this, as a statement of the fact, the philosopher 
 is right. The blue of the ocean and the sky, the 
 
Hypothetical Realism. 313 
 
 green of the forest and the field, all the variegated 
 colours of creation, are admitted to be mere sensa- 
 tions. Everything which seems presented from 
 without by vision is admittedly projected from 
 within. What we take to be reality turns out to 
 be a mere conception of the mind. It is the idea 
 of which we are conscious, and not the actual thing. 
 But with the instinct of reality still strong upon us, 
 we are unable to accept the doctrine of a pure, un- 
 qualified idealism, which admits the existence of 
 nothing but the mere idea. Convinced that in the 
 perception of the distant we are only conscious of 
 an idea, we nevertheless regard the idea within as 
 representative of the thing without. The theory 
 of Representative Perception thus emerges. We 
 suppose the existence of a reality which our idea 
 represents, and Hypothetical Realism, to employ the 
 phrase of Sir William Hamilton, is the first conclu- 
 sion which we adopt when we abandon common 
 sense and instinct for philosophy and reason. 
 
 But how can we know that our ideas are repre- 
 sentative of objects which are thus assumed to be 
 unknown ? The question did not escape the Atom- 
 ists of old, and their answer is given by the poet 
 who beautified the sect which was otherwise infe- 
 rior to the rest. We are told by Lucretius that, 
 stripped from the surface of external things, light 
 films are incessantly emitted, which, borne upon 
 the air, are received by the various appliances of 
 
3 1 4 The Theory of Emission. 
 
 sense, and are the Sensible Eidola, which represent 
 the realities from which they come. 
 
 The slender form and effigy of things, 
 By things emitted, from their surface springs ; 
 Membranes, or films, they bear, whate'er their name, 
 The image of the thing from whence they came, 
 The species similar the form the same. 
 
 Such was the theory which Democritus bequeathed 
 to Epicurus such was the theory which Reid attri- 
 buted to all philosophers from Plato down to 
 Hume. And undoubtedly there is an element of 
 truth in this, the earliest of the theories of per- 
 ception. Unless the rays of light impinge upon 
 the retina of the eye, unless the tympanum of the 
 ear be struck by the vibrations of the air, unless 
 there be an effluvium of the particles of odour soli- 
 citing the membrane of the nose, we neither see, 
 nor hear, nor smell. But a material antecedent is 
 not of necessity a material efflux; and a material 
 efflux is not of necessity a material film ; and the 
 presence of a material film is one thing, and the 
 sensation of which it is the antecedent is another. 
 How, then, is the mental fact, the fact of conscious- 
 ness, to be explained ? This was a question to 
 which the theory of Democritus, as far as we are 
 acquainted with it, gave no answer. An answer was 
 essayed by Aristotle. Perception, the Stagyrite 
 said, is the reception not of a material film, but of 
 an immaterial form. The mind receives the form 
 of things perceived without the matter, just as 
 
Physical Influx. 3 1 5 
 
 wax, when impressed by a seal, receives nothing 
 but the mere impression. What we are conscious of 
 is not a sensible eidolon, which is a modification of 
 matter, but a Sensible Idea, which is a modification 
 of the mind itself. Here, too, there is an element 
 of plausibility or truth. As far as appears, our 
 organs of sense stand in relation to certain specific 
 qualities of body, and each sensation receives its 
 development, its form, from the operation of the 
 quality to which it corresponds (Reid, 827). But 
 the rationale of the doctrine escaped the apprehen- 
 sion of the men who proclaimed themselves the fol- 
 lowers of the great master. The form with which 
 he conceived the mind to be impressed they seem 
 to have regarded as a matterless efflux from matter. 
 A system of entities, distinct from matter and from 
 mind, was thus devised ; and the material films of 
 Democritus were superseded by the Intentional Species 
 of the schoolmen. A simpler doctrine, one perhaps 
 identical with that of Aristotle, was afterwards em- 
 braced. The sensible idea was regarded as a mere 
 act of sense ; the act of sense was conceived to be 
 determined by the secret powers of matter ; and 
 thus, with a minimum admixture of hypothesis, was 
 developed the theory of Physical Influence or Influx. 
 A film emitted, a form impressed, a fact of con- 
 sciousness determined, such are the three aspects 
 under which our ideas of sensation may be re- 
 garded as the representatives of material things. 
 But the difficulties of the case were not exhausted. 
 
3 1 6 The Plastic Medium and the Gnostic Reasons. 
 
 A deeper and more serious question arose. Matter 
 and xnind, it was said, are different in their 
 nature ; they are separated by the whole diame- 
 ter of being. Not only must philosophy explain 
 how the mind can perceive matter at a distance 
 it must explain how mind can perceive matter 
 in contact, or at all. The hypothesis of a Plas- 
 tic Medium a medium which was neither mind 
 nor matter, but which had affinities with each - 
 was excogitated in order to bring the two dis- 
 cordant elements into relation. But the Plastic 
 Medium was a mere hypothesis, with nothing in 
 experience to suggest it ; and the interposition of 
 a medium between mind and matter scarcely 
 disguised and did not solve the problem. To solve 
 the problem the Alexandrine philosophers devised 
 the theory of Gnostic Reasons. They supposed cer- 
 tain forms and representatives of things which, 
 prior to the act of perception, have a latent exist- 
 ence in the soul;* and they held that on the 
 occasion of the impression made on the external 
 organ by the object, the mind, being roused to 
 action, mingles the image from without with the 
 
 * Turn mentis vigor excitus, failed to observe the approximation of 
 
 Quas intus species tenet the theory of Gnostic Eeasons to the 
 
 Ad motus similes vocans, Kantian doctrine of the Forms of 
 
 Notis applicat exteris, Sense, although he observed its ap- 
 
 Introrsumque reconditis proximation to the hypotheses of 
 
 Formis miscet imagines. Descartes and Leibnitz (Reid, 263). 
 
 The Alexandrine theory was adopted 
 
 It is strange that Hamilton, in citing by Kant's immediate predecessor, 
 
 these verses of Boethius, should have Wolff (Log. i. 6). 
 
 
The Hyper physical Influence of Matter. 3 1 7 
 
 form within, and elicits into consciousness the repre- 
 sentation through which the reality is known (Reid, 
 263). In thus mingling the image with the form, 
 the theory of gnostic reasons, it is obvious, ap- 
 proximates to the transcendental ideality of Kant. 
 But its defects are obvious. It assumes the exist- 
 ence of the external world, for our knowledge of 
 which it professes to account ; and while admitting 
 the action of matter on the living body and the 
 stimulated mind, it in effect merely gives a state- 
 ment of the difficulty which it was invented to 
 explain. 
 
 It was at this point the discussion of the question 
 was resumed in modern times. The material world, 
 it was conceded, was not given as an object; the 
 question was, could matter be regarded as a cause. 
 Matter, it was said, is conceived as passive and 
 inert ; how, then, can it be conceived as cause ? It 
 is conceived as essentially unthinking ; how, then, 
 can it be conceived as the cause of thought ? Re- 
 stricting the conception of causation to that of effi- 
 ciency, and assuming that the conceptions of the 
 human mind are the measure of the possibilities of 
 things, philosophy once more embarked on the sea 
 of speculation. Though matter be conceived as in 
 its own nature incapable of thinking or producing 
 thought, might it not be regarded as invested by 
 Omnipotence with powers which it did not of itself 
 possess ? This was the theory of Locke. We may 
 conceive that God, if he pleases, can superadd to 
 
318 Occasional Causes. 
 
 matter a faculty of thinking; and though motion, 
 according to the utmost stretch of our ideas, can 
 produce nothing but motion, we may still allow it 
 to produce sensation, if we attribute it wholly to 
 the good pleasure of our Maker (Essay iv. iii. 6). 
 Philosophy thus effected an alliance with Theology, 
 and the first fruits of the connexion was this theory 
 of the Hyperphysical Influence of Matter. But this 
 conception, it is plain, could scarcely stand the test 
 of logic. If motion can produce nothing but 
 motion, if the production of sensation is resolved 
 into the good pleasure of our Maker, it is God and 
 not matter that is the cause of thought. A new 
 hypothesis was therefore started. God, said the 
 Cartesian, by the incessant action of his omnipo- 
 tence, produces all the changes in material things, 
 but he does not operate on matter so as to enable 
 it to manifest itself to mind ; he operates on mind 
 so as to enable it to take cognizance of matter. 
 On the occasion of the presence of the material 
 object, God, as the efficient cause of thought, de- 
 termines the mind to the formation of a repre- 
 sentative idea. Such was the theory of Occasional 
 Causes or Divine Assistance. But this theory also 
 was open to attack. According to its opponents it 
 postulated a perpetual miracle. It condemned the 
 Creator to create for ever. In the vigorous phrase 
 of Aristotle, it compelled the Deity to put his hand 
 to everything. It degraded the Demiurgus to a 
 drudge. In opposition to the theory of the inces- 
 
Pre-established Harmony. 3 1 9 
 
 sant agency of God, it was maintained that the series 
 of causes and effects spontaneously evolves itself as a 
 consequence of the original constitution of the 
 world. The music of the spheres was not that of 
 an organ on which the musician strikes every note, 
 nor that of a cylinder which the maker was him- 
 self obliged to turn : it was that of a mechanism 
 which the great artist had cunningly contrived, and 
 which, when once set going, never ceased its chime. 
 There was a Pre-established Harmony between mind 
 and matter. According to Leibnitz the mind of 
 man was a monad, a unit of substance, endowed 
 with a representative power, and the various repre- 
 sentations which it evolves were pre-adjusted so as 
 to correspond with the pre-adjusted evolution of ma- 
 terial monads. The soul and the world were clocks 
 with independent springs, and set to correspond. 
 But this theory, like its predecessors, failed to 
 satisfy the exigencies of speculative thought. It in- 
 troduced the principle of mechanism into incorporeal 
 things. It postulated what it did not prove, the ex- 
 istence of the world. It postulated what it did not 
 prove, the existence of a God. It did not even solve 
 the difficulty which it was framed to solve. If, as the 
 Leibnitzian averred, everything goes on in mind as if 
 there were no matter, and everything goes on in mat- 
 ter as if there were no mind, the chasm between mind 
 and matter, it is evident, remains unbridged, and phi- 
 losophy stands helpless on its verge. To bridge the 
 chasm, recourse was had to theology once more. 
 
32O Vision in God. 
 
 Philosophy accepted from theology not merely the 
 agency of a God, but the existence of a revelation, 
 to enable it to solve its problem. On the authority 
 of revelation it assumed the existence of an external 
 world, and then it had recourse to reason to ex- 
 plain the knowledge of the existence so assumed. 
 "In the beginning God created the heavens and 
 the earth " and therefore, said Malebranche, the 
 heavens and the earth have a material existence. 
 Of that material existence we can have no know- 
 ledge, for mind cannot take cognisance of matter. 
 But God takes cognisance of the world, the exist- 
 ence of which he has revealed, and he can com- 
 municate that cognisance to us. In him we live 
 and move and have our being. Our sensations are 
 the production of his power ; our perceptions are 
 a participation of his knowledge. What he sees 
 we see, what he thinks we think we are parts 
 of him. We are partakers of his heavenly vision, 
 and the world of sense is the Vision of the Universe 
 in God. 
 
 Matter operated on by God so as to reveal itself 
 to mind; mind operated on by God so as to take 
 cognisance of matter; matter and mind each ope- 
 rated on by God so that their modifications should 
 correspond ; mind admitted by God to a participa- 
 tion of his knowledge of material things such are 
 the four great forms of Theological Realism a realism 
 which recognises the existence of a world of matter, 
 but professes itself unable to explain our knowledge 
 
Theological Idealism. 3 2 1 
 
 of that existence without the intervention of a God. 
 From such a realism the transition to a pure Theolo- 
 gical Idealism was as inevitable as it was obvious. If, 
 as Malebranche said, God produces our sensations 
 why not allow him to produce our perceptions also ? 
 If all that the mind is conscious of is a series of con- 
 ceptions; if that series of conceptions in the mind 
 can never be produced by matter ; if the Deity must 
 be invoked to account for the appearances of sense 
 why suppose the existence of material things ? 
 Their existence could not possibly be proved. 
 True, there must be some cause of the continual 
 succession of ideas which we experience ; but that 
 cause must be an incorporeal active substance other 
 than ourselves (Prin. xxvi.). The existence of a 
 Spirit infinitely wise and powerful and good is 
 sufficient to explain all the appearances of nature 
 ( Ixxii.). But if we come to the conclusion that 
 there is " a mind which affects us every moment with 
 all the sensible impressions we perceive " (Dial, ii.), 
 the consequence is clear. The soul does not exist 
 in the world ; the world, on the contrary, exists only 
 in the soul. Space cannot exist without the mind, 
 and its idea is a mere abstraction (Prin. cxvi.) ; even 
 time itself has no existence abstracted from the 
 succession of our thoughts ( xcviii.). 
 
 Berkeley fondly imagined that with materialism 
 and atheism he had also banished Scepticism from 
 the world. But his idealism in reality evoked the 
 sceptic. This was shown by Hume. The arguments 
 
322 Academic Scepticism. 
 
 of Berkeley, he said, admit of no answer, and 
 produce no conviction (iv. 181). Nature, by an 
 absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has deter- 
 mined us to judge as well as to breathe and feel 
 (i. 240), and if we listen to the dictates of nature, 
 the existence of body must be taken for granted 
 in all our reasonings (i. 245). As an agent, he said, 
 I am quite satisfied with this ; but as a philosopher 
 I want to learn the ground of my belief (iv. 47). 
 The ground of the belief, according to Berkeley, 
 was a mere illusion arising from our consciousness 
 that our sensations are imprinted from without. 
 The tenet in question involved a contradiction. 
 Strictly speaking, there was and could be no belief 
 in the existence of objects independent of the mind 
 (Prin. Ivi.). This, it is evident, was a new depar- 
 ture. In recognising the existence of matter, pre- 
 ceding philosophers had deferred to the authority of 
 common sense ; in denying the existence of matter, 
 Berkeley committed common sense and philosophy 
 to an internecine conflict. If we wish to know the 
 issue of the conflict, we have only to pursue the his- 
 tory of idealism from its rise with Berkeley to its 
 culminating point in Hegel. 
 
 Hume prepared the way for Kant. His un- 
 known cause (iv. 178) was in reality the transcen- 
 dental object. His principle, that nothing can be 
 inferred from experience which every inference from 
 experience presupposes (iv. 46) was the principle of 
 the categories of the understanding. Above all, his 
 
Transcenden tal Idealism. 323 
 
 position that the ideas of space and time are not 
 separate and distinct ideas, but merely those of the 
 manner in which objects exist (i. 62), was, in effect, 
 a declaration that- space and time were transcen- 
 dentally ideal. The transition from positions such 
 as these to the Transcendental Idealism of Kant was 
 but a step. If space and time be merely ideas of 
 the manner in which sensible appearances exist, 
 why should we postulate their absolute existence ? 
 If space and time are presupposed in all sensible 
 experience, why should we not regard them as 
 the forms of sense ? The things which we intuite 
 in space and time are nothing but phenomena, and 
 phenomena are nothing but representations moulded 
 in the forms of sense, which have no self-subsistent 
 existence apart from human thought (Kritik, 307). 
 It is true we must suppose the existence of some 
 transcendental object as an originating cause which 
 stimulates our sensibility ; but the nature of that 
 object is essentially unknown. We know not whe- 
 ther it exists within ourselves or whether it is to be 
 found without. Such was the reasoning of Kant. 
 The Deity of Berkeley was superseded by a nescio 
 quid ; his abstractions were declared to be the con- 
 stituent forms of sense ; and, in spite of his con- 
 sciousness that our sensations are imprinted from 
 without, it was held that the ideal world, in part at 
 least, was originated from within. 
 
 The Subjective Idealism of Fichte was the outcome 
 of the Transcendental Idealism of Kant. Where was 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 Subjective Idealism. 
 
 the necessity for assuming a transcendental object ? 
 If a cause for the world of sense must be assumed, 
 why should we seek the cause beyond ourselves ? 
 The activity of the ego was manifest in conscious- 
 ness. In its action it evolved all the conceptions 
 with which philosophy was concerned : why should 
 we deem it insufficient to account for the appear- 
 ances of sense ? In its onward movement, it is 
 true, it seemed to encounter an insurmountable 
 obstacle which drove it back upon itself. But this 
 obstacle was merely an anstoss which, like the sense 
 of incubus, had its origin within. It was this which 
 induced the ego to form the notion of a thing with- 
 out ; it was thus that it formed the conception of 
 objects occupying space. But all this was nothing 
 but conception. The objects which appear to be 
 external were the various breakings of the action 
 of the ego against an incomprehensible obstacle 
 (Schw. 268) they were the mere spray of the 
 billow when recoiling from its bound. 
 
 The subjective idealism of Fichte, after its brief 
 hour of triumph, gave way to the Absolute Idealism of 
 his rival. The incomprehensible obstacle of Fichte, 
 it was said, was merely the transcendental object in 
 disguise (Log. 102) ; his idealism left us hemmed in 
 by an impenetrable barrier, and confined us to our 
 subjective conceptions for a world (p. 207). The 
 transcendental object, whatever form it might as- 
 sume, was nothing but a mere abstraction (p. 77). 
 The things which we immediately know were phe- 
 
Absolute Idealism. 325 
 
 nomena, it is true ; but phenomena were neither 
 subjective intuitions moulded in our forms of sense, 
 nor subjective conceptions formed by our under- 
 standing in its recoil from nothing ; they were 
 simple appearances existing in their own nature, 
 and without our interference (p. 79). Genuine 
 idealism was in fact the Transcendental Realism which 
 the critic of the reason had rejected (KritiJc, 307). 
 Phenomena were things subsisting in themselves 
 (ibid.). There was no essence behind or beyond 
 the appearance ; existence was nothing but appear- 
 ance, and appearance was all that essentially exists 
 {Log. 206). Appearances supplied the content of the 
 absolute idea (p. 307); of this absolute idea every 
 individual was an aspect (p. 305) ; and in these 
 aspects " God, who is the essence, lends existence 
 to the passing stages of his own show in himself," 
 and is " the infinite kindness which lets its own 
 show freely issue into immediacy, and graciously 
 allows it the joy of being" (p. 206).* 
 
 But even Fichte and Hegel recoiled from the 
 rigorous results of their respective systems. Their 
 common purpose was to solve the problem of objec- 
 
 * Goethe, who was the friend and benefactor of Hegel, would seem to have 
 had some such idea as this in view when writing the closing words of the Pro- 
 logue in Heaven : 
 
 But ye, true Sons of God, surrender 
 
 Your spirits to the rich and living Splendor ! 
 
 The teeming Whole which ever works and lives 
 
 Bind you together with its blessed linking ! 
 And all the shifting shows its essence gives 
 
 Substantiate by unremitted thinking ! Faust, p. 24. 
 
326 Egois tical Idealism. 
 
 tive knowledge by abolishing the difference between 
 the subject and the object. Rejecting the dogma 
 that the non-ego produces the ego, Fichte propounded 
 the counter dogma that the ego produces the non- 
 ego, and regarded the object as a mere conception 
 of the subject. Rejecting the dogma that the object 
 is a mere conception of the subject, Hegel pro- 
 pounded the dogma that there is no objectivity 
 apart from universal thought, and regarded the 
 subject as an aspect of the object. But objectivity 
 remained. The subjective idealist recognised an 
 infinite life, of which every individual is a mode ; 
 the absolute idealist recognised an absolute idea, 
 of which every individual is a phase. Both of 
 them admitted that personality is inconceivable, un- 
 less we assume the existence of a multiplicity of 
 persons ; and each of them, accordingly, assumed 
 the existence of a system of egos coexistent with 
 himself (Fichte, 182, 202). But on the slope of 
 speculation the descent of down-lapsing thought is 
 not to be arrested. To the reflecting ego a system 
 of egos other than itself is as much an external 
 object as an external world of matter. If conscious- 
 ness is unable to transcend itself, then the infinite 
 life and the absolute idea are as far beyond its 
 reach as the most transcendental, the most tran- 
 scendent, object. It is in vain to resolve the ele- 
 ments of the universe into thought, and to exclaim, 
 Alles ist Ich ; that is a position which cannot be 
 consistently maintained unless we are prepared to 
 
Absolute Nihilism. 327 
 
 hold that Ich 1st Allcs. Egoistic Idealism, therefore, 
 with its world of subjective conceptions, is the 
 bourne for which all idealism is ultimately bound. 
 This is shown by the philosophy of Fichte in its 
 earlier form. There the Deity was nothing but the 
 moral order of the universe (Schw. 274); the uni- 
 verse was merely the sum total of the conceptions 
 of the ego (p. 267); and the ego itself was merely 
 thought vicissitude in general (ibid.). The ego was 
 thus converted into the egomet ; the egomet de- 
 clared itself to be the All ; and Panegoism was the 
 last expression of the " philosophical delirium" of 
 Hume. 
 
 Yet not the last. For what is Panegoism itself when 
 the ego is destitute of substance ? On the acknow- 
 ledgment of Fichte it is merely Nihilism in disguise. 
 " The sum of all", he says, u is this. There is 
 absolutely nothing permanent either without me 
 or within me, but only an unceasing change. I 
 know absolutely nothing of any existence, not even 
 of my own. I myself know nothing, and am 
 nothing. Images there are ; they constitute all that 
 apparently exists, and what they know of them- 
 selves is after the manner of images ; images that 
 pass and vanish without there being aught to wit- 
 ness their transition that consist, in fact, of the 
 images of images without significance and without 
 an aim. I myself am one of these images ; nay, 
 I am not even thus much, but only a confused image 
 of images. All reality is converted into a marvel- 
 
328 The Spirit of Speculation. 
 
 lous dream, without a life to dream of, and without 
 a mind to dream into a dream made up only of a 
 dream of itself. Perception is a dream ; thought 
 the source of all the existence, and all the reality 
 which I imagine to myself of my existence, of my 
 power, of my destination is the dream of that 
 dream". That is the last word which idealism has 
 to utter. That, according to one of the greatest 
 of the idealists, is the sum of all. 
 
 Such is the natural and almost the historical de- 
 velopment of the various theories which have been 
 propounded to explain the phenomena of sense. 
 Like the unquiet spirit in the gospel, for two thou- 
 sand years and more, the spirit of speculation has 
 wandered to and fro through the wilderness of 
 thought, seeking evermore for rest and finding 
 none. Impelled by an unreflecting instinct, we first 
 imagine that we grasp the thing; instructed by 
 awakened reason, we are fain to confess that what 
 we are conscious of is nothing but the idea. With 
 the instinct of reality still strong upon us, we are 
 prompted to regard our ideas as representatives 
 of things, and forthwith atoms, forms, and films 
 are invented as intermediaries between the reality 
 without and the conception of the reality within. 
 Baffled in the endeavour to conceive the nature 
 of the relation between mind and matter, in our 
 inability to explain the inexplicable, we invoke 
 the Deity, and speculation enters the domain of 
 hyperphysical influences, miraculous causes, ima- 
 
The Intellectual Result. 329 
 
 ginary harmonies, and theosophic visions. The 
 Deity having being invoked to account for our 
 knowledge of the world of matter, the existence of 
 the world of matter is ignored as unnecessary to 
 the operation of the Deity, and our ideas of sense 
 are conceived to be excited in our minds by the un- 
 assisted agency of God. But as the world was 
 superseded by God, so God in his turn is super- 
 seded by the soul. The mind, which first rushed 
 into materialism, then burst into the region of 
 theology, falls back exhausted on itself. It first 
 declares space and time to be mere forms of sense ; 
 it next denies the existence of all external causes; 
 and, finally, it ignores all substance. It resolves 
 the universe into unsubstantial thought, and hails 
 this unsubstantial entity which trembles on the 
 verge of non-existence as the All. 
 
 What, then, is the impression left upon the mind 
 by the contemplation of so many shadowy and shift- 
 ing systems ? In these lofty solitudes of thought 
 we see nothing but the mists which boil around the 
 glaciers, and, like Manfred on the summit of the 
 Jungfrau, we are giddy. But it is not in vain we 
 have reached these silent heights. It is something 
 to have climbed the mountain ; it is something to 
 have seen the mists. We have tried our powers; 
 we have satisfied our curiosity ; we are content. 
 But is this the only benefit that those high spe- 
 culations are calculated to confer ? By no means. 
 
33O Agnosticism. 
 
 They have shown us our ignorance, it is true, but 
 in ascertaining our ignorance we have increased 
 our knowledge. We know what we may aspire to 
 know, and we know what cannot possibly be known. 
 To use the phrase of Locke, we have learned 
 the length of our tether, and we are satisfied to sit 
 down in quiet ignorance of the things which lie 
 beyond the reach of our faculties of knowledge. 
 And our ignorance as to these subjects is quiet 
 because it is complete. We have learned to regard 
 with indifference any new demonstrations of the old 
 indemonstrable dogmas. We know that it is as im- 
 possible to prove thought to be a function of matter 
 as it is to prove matter to be a phantasy of thought. 
 We know that the materialist cannot prove the 
 existence of the molecules which he would substi- 
 tute for ideas nay, that he cannot prove the very 
 existence of that matter by means of which he 
 would fain supersede the necessity of recognising 
 any spiritual existence either within us or beyond us. 
 But what is this absence of knowledge of which the 
 agnostic so bitterly complains ? In reality it is of 
 no significance whatever. We are so constituted, 
 that upon those all-important subjects which we 
 cannot know we are compelled to think ; and in 
 thinking on them there are things which we cannot 
 but believe; and even in the absence of grounds 
 for unwavering belief there are probabilities on 
 which, as reasonable men, we may well be satis- 
 
Action. 331 
 
 fied to act.* For probability is the guide of life. 
 In enterprises of the highest moment we are con- 
 stantly compelled to take action in the midst of 
 uncertainty and doubt. The great practical intel- 
 lects which have swayed the minds of men and 
 shaped the destinies of nations have been the most 
 conspicuous for the promptitude with which they 
 calculated probabilities and took their chance. And 
 in the same spirit they were ready to take their 
 chance in higher things. Bacon would rather be- 
 lieve all the fables of the Legend, the Talmud, and 
 the Koran, than that this universal frame was with- 
 out a mind ; and Napoleon, looking up into the 
 star-lit heavens, appealed to the principle of final 
 causes as confidently as Butler or as Paley. 
 
 The fact is, we hold the possessions of our higher 
 life by the same tenure as that on which we hold 
 our possessions in the world of sense. And it is 
 here that philosophy, even in its negative or agnos- 
 tic side, has rendered a service to religion. It has 
 shown that we can live upon a world the existence 
 of which we cannot prove. It has shown that we 
 can safely calculate on the continuance of a course 
 of nature in the future which we do not know. 
 It has shown that we can associate and act with 
 
 * Turn Catulus, Egone? inquit ad multa sequitur probabilia non compre- 
 
 patris revolver sententiam, quam qui- hensa, neque percepta, neque assensa, 
 
 dem ille Carneadeam esse dicebat, ut sed similia veri, quae nisi probet om- 
 
 percipi nibil putcm posse, assensurum nis vita tollatur (Ibid. 31). Tbis is 
 
 autem non percepto (Acad. iv. 48). Is alike the language of Butler and of 
 
 quoque qui a vobis sapiens inducitur, Hume. 
 
332 The Veiled Statue. 
 
 a multitude of fellow-creatures whose existence is 
 as incapable of demonstration as that of the Deity 
 himself. It has shown, in fine, that in the most 
 ordinary events of life, as in the deepest mysteries 
 of religion, we live by faith and not by sight. For 
 the whole universe is concealed from us by the veil 
 of our ideas. What is it that exists beyond the 
 veil ? That is a question which we can neither 
 answer nor evade. The mind of man is haunted 
 by the supposition of something, he knows not 
 what, which is beyond him. It is in this sense 
 of the unknown that all philosophy and all reli- 
 gion have their source. But the highest intelli- 
 gence is as helpless as the lowest when it tries to 
 grasp it. The mystery of existence is as inscru- 
 table to the modern philosopher as it was to Plato ; 
 and it was as inscrutable to Plato as it was to the 
 ignorant Egyptian who forty centuries ago bowed 
 before the Veiled Statue of Isis, and worshipped 
 the symbol of existence as the Unknown God. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 NOTE A. LOCKE: ON THE ORIGIN OF IDEAS. 
 NOTE B. HOBBES: ON GENERAL REASONING. 
 NOTE C. BACON : ON INDUCTIVE REASONING. 
 NOTE D. HUME : ON MIRACLE AND NATURE. 
 
APPENDIX, 
 
 NOTE A. 
 
 LOCKE I ON THE OBIGIN OF IDEAS. 
 
 LOCKE, as his philosophy for two hundred years has been under- 
 stood, is the father of modem empiricism, and as such the source 
 to which we must trace the sensualism of Condillac, the selfish- 
 ness of Helvetius, and the atheism of La Mettrie and Mirabaud. 
 In opposition to this view, I published the Intellectualism of Locke, 
 in which I endeavoured to show that Locke, when properly un- 
 derstood, is to be ranked with Eeid and Kant, and not with 
 Helvetius and Condillac. As that work has long been out of 
 print and may never be republished, I propose in this note to 
 recall the reasons which conducted me to that conclusion. 
 
 The purpose of Locke, as he himself expresses it, was " to in- 
 quire into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge, 
 together with the grounds of belief, opinion, and assent" (Essay i. 
 i. 2). As the basis of his inquiry he assumes that no object is pre- 
 sented to the understanding but ideas, and, accordingly, he makes 
 the word idea "stand for whatsoever is the object of the under- 
 standing when a man thinks " (i. i. 8). Knowledge he subsequently 
 demies to be "the perception of the connexion and agreement, 
 or disagreement and repugnancy, of any of our ideas " (iv. i. 2). 
 In order to ascertain the origin of knowledge, therefore, it is 
 necessary to ascertain the origin of ideas, and, accordingly, 
 Locke's first inquiry is, how ideas come into the mind(i. i. 8). 
 
 The controversy raised by Eeid and continued by Hamilton 
 
33 ^ Locke* s Inherent Faculties. 
 
 as to the nature of Locke's ideas may happily be considered 
 obsolete. No one now-a-days contends with Eeid that Locke's 
 idea was a tertium quid, existing in the mind like a wafer in a 
 box ; everbody believes it to be, what Locke persistently asserts 
 it to be, an act of perception (n. x. 2) a modification of think- 
 ing (n. xix. 1) a mere act or affection of the mind (n. xxvii. 25). 
 How, then, do these actual perceptions or modifications of think- 
 ing first arise ? 
 
 The first book of the Essay contains a negative answer to this 
 question we have none that are innate. The criticism of Leibnitz 
 on this doctrine of Locke is well known, and it supplies a key 
 to all the misunderstandings and misrepresentations which have 
 followed. " Experience is necessary, I admit", says Theophilus to 
 Philalethes, in the New Essays, " in order that the mind should 
 be determined to such or such thoughts, and in order that it 
 should take note of the ideas that are in us ; but what of the 
 means by which experience and the senses are competent to sup- 
 ply ideas ? Is the mind a window ? Does it resemble a tablet ? 
 Is it like wax ? It is clear that all who think thus make the 
 mind material. I shall be met with the received maxim, that 
 there is nothing in the soul which comes not from the senses ; 
 but we must make an exception in favour of the soul itself and its 
 affections. Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu nisi in- 
 tellectus ipse". But on this point there is no difference between 
 Locke and Leibnitz. The exception, so far as it has any real 
 significance, Locke readily admits. He admits that the mind 
 possesses certain " inherent faculties " (i. ii. 2), certain " powers 
 intrinsical and proper to itself" (n. i. 24), certain " natural pro- 
 pensities of thought" (i. iv. 11), certain "principles of common 
 reason " (i. iv. 10), certain principles of " common sense " (i. iii. 
 4 ; iv. viii. 2 ; iv. xviii. 11). All he denies is the existence of 
 innate principles in the form of " characters, as it were, stamped 
 upon the mind of man, which the soul receives in its very first 
 being, and brings into the world with it " (i. ii. 1). He does not 
 deny the modern principle of ' heredity ' ; but he denies the 
 pre-existence of Pythagoras (n. xxvii. 14), the reminiscence of 
 Plato (i. iv. 20), the latent modifications of Leibnitz (i. ii. 5), the 
 
Locke* s Intuitive Truths. 337 
 
 innate ideas commonly attributed to Descartes in brief, the 
 " cognita adtulit" which Cicero adopted from Plato (Tusc. i. 24), 
 and which Locke regarded as the " established opinion" of the 
 times (i. ii. 1). It may be that the controversy in which Locke 
 thus engaged was in a measure verbal. He repeatedly admits 
 that it was (i. ii. 5 ; i. ii. 27 ; i. iii. 13). But it is one thing to 
 contend against misleading phraseology, and another thing to 
 contend against the truth. Locke admits everything for which any 
 reasonable advocate of innate principles can contend. The 
 capacity is innate, he says, though the knowledge is acquired 
 (i. ii. 5). The admission of self-evident principles, he says, 
 depends not on "native inscription" (i. ii. 11), but on their 
 " native evidence " (iv. vii. 10), and the " immediate intuition " 
 of their truth (iv. ii. 1). " Locke", says Eeid, " endeavours to 
 show that axioms or intuitive truths are not innate " (Reid, 465). 
 " He does more", says Sir William Hamilton " he attempts to 
 show that they are all generalisations from experience ; whereas 
 experience only affords the occasion on which the native, not 
 innate, or a priori cognitions virtually possessed by the mind 
 itself actually manifest their existence " (ibid.). Strange to say, 
 this is the very language of Locke himself in his reply to Lowde. 
 Locke objects to the phraseology of Lowde as " misleading men's 
 thoughts by an insinuation, as if those notions were in the mind 
 before the soul exerts them, i. e. before they are known ; ivhereas 
 truly", he says, " before they are known there is nothing of 
 them in the mind but a capacity to know them when the concur- 
 rence of the circumstances which this ingenious author thinks 
 necessary in order to the soul's exerting them brings them 
 into our knowledge". 
 
 The passage with which Kant commences the Kritik of the 
 Eeason may be regarded as the expression of the doctrine with 
 which Locke commences the second book of his Essay on the 
 Understanding : " That all our knowledge begins with experi- 
 ence there can be no doubt ; for how is it possible that the 
 faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise otherwise 
 than by means of objects which affect our senses, and partly of 
 themselves produce representations, partly rouse our powers of 
 
 Z 
 
338 Locke* s Simple Ideas. 
 
 understanding to compare, to connect, or to separate them, 
 and so to convert the raw material of our sensuous impres- 
 sions into a knowledge of objects, which is called experience". 
 What, then, is the function of experience, in the philosophy of 
 Locke, and what is its nature and extent ? Not only does it 
 supply the chronological condition for the development of know- 
 ledge, but it supplies its material content. In answer to the 
 question, Whence has the mind all the materials of reason and 
 knowledge ? Locke replies, " in one word, from experience ; in 
 that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately 
 derives itself" (n. i. 2). This one word unfortunately supplies 
 the sum and substance of all that the critics seem to know of the 
 philosophy of Locke ; and they never ask themselves what the 
 one word means. In the first place, what are the materials 
 which experience supplies ? The answer of Condillac and his fol- 
 lowers is, sensations only. But the theory of transformed sensa- 
 tions ignores the fact that, on its own showing, sensations are 
 transformed. It ignores the fact that if sensations are trans- 
 formed, they can only be transformed by certain operations of 
 the mind. It ignores the fact that of these operations of the 
 mind the mind itself must sooner or later, in point of time, take 
 notice. It ignores the fact that the mind could not take note of 
 its own operations, unless it possessed a capacity of reflection. 
 None of these considerations were ignored by Locke, and accord- 
 ingly he agrees with Kant in regarding the fountain of experi- 
 ence as comprising two sources, sensation and reflection (n. i. 2), 
 or, as he elsewhere terms them, in the very language of the 
 Kritik, external and internal sense (n. i. 4 ; n. xi. 17). 
 
 But Locke went further in the path of Kant. In the Kritik 
 it is laid down that our knowledge springs from two main sources 
 in the mind, sensibility and understanding the one a " recepti- 
 vity for impressions," the other a "spontaneity in the production 
 of conceptions." Does Locke recognise the spontaneous produc- 
 tion of conceptions by the understanding ? It is here that the philo- 
 sophy of Locke has been in a peculiar manner misunderstood ; 
 and it is here that his own language has most materially contri- 
 buted to the misunderstanding. Locke undoubtedly lays it down 
 
LocJcds Ideas of Relation. 339 
 
 that "simple ideas, the materials of all our knowledge, are 
 suggested and furnished to the mind only by the two ways, 
 sensation and reflection" (n, ii. 2) ; he undoubtedly lays it down 
 that " all relation terminates in, and is ultimately founded on, 
 those simple ideas we have got from sensation or reflection " 
 (n. xxviii. 18) ; nay, he says that " external and internal sensa- 
 tion are the only passages he can find of knowledge to the under- 
 standing " (n. xi. 17). But this says nothing more than Kant 
 himself has said. Locke's simple ideas, being merely the ideas 
 which the mind passively receives through sense (n. i. 25), cor- 
 respond with the sensible intuitions of the Kritik ; and in holding 
 that these constitute " the materials " of all our knowledge, 
 Locke merely holds with Kant that the senses external and in- 
 ternal supply " the matter", as distinguished from the form 
 of thought. True, he holds that if a conception of the 
 understanding be " removed from all simple ideas quite, it 
 signifies nothing at all" (n. xxviii. 18); but in this he merely 
 holds with Kant that without material content thoughts are 
 void. For Locke, to do him justice, has abundantly ex- 
 plained himself. Though he tells us that the simple ideas of 
 sense are " the materials and foundations of the rest," he also 
 tells us that there are other ideas which, though not " simple", 
 but "complex", are uncompounded (n. xii. 1), and which the 
 understanding, when " employed about " the simple ideas of the 
 senses, must inevitably " attain unto " (n. xii. 8). Not 
 only does he admit that the understanding can separate, com- 
 pound, and compare the ideas with which it has been furnished 
 by the senses (n. xii. 1), but he admits that, over and above the 
 simple ideas which the understanding gets from the senses, "there 
 are others it gets from their comparison with one another" (n. 
 xxv. 1). These are the ideas of relation which are " added by 
 the mind " (in. iii. 11). Such is the idea of causation which the 
 mind "collects" in observing the constant changes which occur 
 around it (n. xxi. 4 ; n. xxvi. 1). Such is the idea of substance, 
 which the mind " supposes ", when we find that " we cannot con- 
 ceive" how the simple ideas of which substances are composed 
 can possibly subsist alone or in each other (n. xxiii. 4). Such 
 
 Z 2 
 
340 Locke's Conceptions of the Understanding. 
 
 also are the ideas of identity and diversity which we " form " on 
 comparing a thing with itself, and ' ' never finding or conceiving it 
 possible that two things of the same kind should exist in the same 
 place at the same time " (n.xxvii. 1). These ideas of relation, it is 
 true, " terminate in and are concerned about " ideas of sensation 
 and reflection (n. xxv. 9), but, in their abstract nature, they are 
 neither ideas of sensation nor ideas of reflection they are "the 
 inventions and creatures of the UNDEK STANDING " (in. iii. 11). 
 
 Nor is this seeing in Homer more than Homer saw. Locke 
 has not left himself at the mercy of the careless reader or the 
 hostile critic. The point was presented to him in a manner 
 which it was impossible for him to evade. The question of the 
 co-operation of the understanding with our faculties of sense in the 
 development of knowledge was forced upon him in his corre- 
 spondence with the Bishop of Worcester. Stillingfleet raised 
 the question of the origin of ideas and the origin of knowledge as 
 explicitly as Eeid or Stewart, as explicitly as Kant or Cousin. In 
 the course of the discussion, Locke admits that the principle of 
 causation is "a true principle of reason", on the ground of our 
 " perceiving that the idea of beginning to be is necessarilycon- 
 nected with the idea of some operation, and the idea of opera- 
 tion with the idea of something operating which we call a cause" 
 (Works, iii. 61). But it is on the question of substance that he 
 is most explicit. It was the idea which Stillingfleet had selected 
 in proof that sensation and reflection were insufficient to explain 
 " the ideas necessary to reason " (iii. 11). "If the idea of sub- 
 stance be grounded upon plain and evident reason", said Stilling- 
 fleet, " then we must allow an idea of substance which comes not 
 in by sensation or reflection" (iii. 19). Locke admits the fact, 
 but says, " lam sure the author of the Essay of Human Under- 
 standing never thought, nor in that Essay hath anywhere said, that 
 the ideas which come into the mind by sensation and reflection 
 are all the ideas that are necessary to reason, or that reason is 
 exercised about" (iii. 11). " I never said that the general idea of 
 substance comes in by sensation and reflection, or that it is a simple idea 
 of sensation or reflection, though it be ultimately founded on them ; 
 for it is a complex idea, made up of the general idea of some thing 
 
Locke's Principles of Reason. 341 
 
 or being with the relation of a support to accidents. For general 
 ideas come not into the mind by sensation or reflection, but are the crea- 
 tures or inventions of the UNDEKSTANDING, as I think I have shown" 
 (iii. 19). Locke is not content with even this. He makes a further 
 effort to explain himself. " To explain myself and clear my mean- 
 ing in this matter", he says, " all the ideas of all the sensible qua- 
 lities of a cherry come into my mind by sensation ; the ideas of 
 perceiving, thinking, reasoning, knowing, &c., come into my mind 
 by reflection: the ideas of these qualities and actions, or powers, 
 are perceived by THE MIND to be by themselves inconsistent with 
 existence ; or, as your Lordship well expresses it, ' we find that we 
 can have no true conception of any modes or accidents, but we 
 must conceive a substratum, or subject, wherein they are, i. e. that 
 they cannot exist or subsist of themselves'. Hence the MIND per- 
 ceives their necessary connexion with inherence, or being sup- 
 ported, which being a relative idea, superadded to the red colour in 
 a cherry, or to thinking in a man, the mind frames the correlative 
 idea of a support. For I never denied that THE MIND could frame to 
 itself ideas of relation, but have shown the quite contrary in my 
 chapters on Relation" (iii. 21). 
 
 Let us now consider Locke's views on the origin of know- 
 ledge. Our knowledge, he says, is of two kinds one relating 
 to the agreement or disagreement of our ideas, the other to 
 the correspondence of our ideas with external objects (iv. xi. 13). 
 As to the agreement or disagreement of our ideas with each 
 other, the key-note of misrepresentation has again been struck 
 by Leibnitz. "If Locke", says Leibnitz, "had sufficiently 
 considered the truths which are necessary and demonstra- 
 tive, and those which we infer from induction alone, he would 
 have perceived that necessary truths could only be proved from 
 principles which command our assent by their intuitive evidence, 
 inasmuch as our senses can inform us only of what is, not of 
 what must necessarily be". Yet, not only did Locke consider the 
 necessary and demonstrative truths in question, but the considera- 
 tion of them pervades the whole of the fourth book of the Essay 
 Concerning Human Understanding. He repeats, till the reader 
 is weary of the repetition, that all demonstration must be based 
 
342 Locke's Necessary Truths. 
 
 on "intuitive principles", which are " irresistible as sunshine" 
 (rv. ii. 1) which are known by their ' ' native evidence ' ' (iv. vii. 10) 
 which " neither require nor admit of proof " (iv. vii. 19). Not 
 only does he distinguish between what is and what must neces- 
 sarily be, but he gives the criterion by which they are to be dis- 
 tinguished the absence or presence of "necessary connexion", 
 of "necessary coexistence", of "necessary dependence and visible 
 connexion", of " evident dependence, or necessary connexion", of 
 "the necessary connexion of the ideas themselves" (iv. iii. 14). 
 Kant himself has not more accurately distinguished between 
 a priori and a posteriori knowledge than Locke has done. He 
 contrasts the " necessary dependence" which is discoverable in 
 our ideas themselves with "the constant and regular connexion" 
 of ideas which we attribute to the " arbitrary determination " of 
 the Creator, and which are discoverable only by " experience " 
 (iv. iii. 28 . "In some of our ideas", he says, "there are 
 certain relations, habitudes, and connexions, so visibly in- 
 cluded in the nature of the ideas themselves that we cannot 
 conceive them separable from them by any power whatsoever, 
 and in these only we are capable of certain and universal know- 
 ledge" (iv. iii. 29); because, as he proceeds to argue, "the 
 things that, as far as our observation reaches, we constantly find to 
 proceed regularly, we may conclude do act by a law set them, 
 but yet by a law we know not, whereby, though causes work 
 steadily, and effects flow from them, yet their connexions and de- 
 pendencies being not discoverable in our ideas, we can have but an 
 experimental knowledge of them" (ibid.). Or, take another passage. 
 " General and certain truths", he says, " are only founded in the 
 habitudes and relations of abstract ideas", and "a sagacious and 
 methodical application of our thoughts, for the finding out these 
 relations, is the only way to discover all that can be put with 
 truth and certainty concerning them into general propositions" 
 (iv. xii. 7). " What, then", he asks, " are we to do for the improve- 
 ment of our knowledge of substantial beings ? " " Here", he says, 
 * ' we are to take a quite contrary course ; the want of ideas of their 
 real essences sends us from our own thoughts to the things them- 
 selves as they exist EXPERIENCE here must teach us what REASON 
 
Locke and Kant. 343 
 
 cannot, and it is by trying alone that I can certainly know what other 
 qualities coexist with those of my complex idea " (iv. xii. 9). 
 
 What is it then that Locke, on the principles of Kant, has 
 left undone ? He distinguishes between objective and subjective 
 knowledge (iv. iv. 3 ; iv. xi. 13). He distinguishes between 
 analytic and synthetic propositions (iv. viii. 8), and lays down 
 the "infallible rule" by which they are to be distinguished 
 (iv. viii. 13) He distinguishes between synthetic a priori and 
 synthetic a posteriori judgments (iv. iii. 29 ; iv. xii. 7). He dis- 
 tinguishes between experience and reason (ibid.). And hence it 
 is that he is enabled to accomplish his design and to give an 
 answer to the inquiries with which he started (i. i. 2). The 
 " original " of knowledge is to be discovered in experience 
 (n. i. 2) ; its " certainty" is based on intuition (iv. ii. 2) ; its 
 "extent" is determined by our perception of the identity, co- 
 existence, and relation of our ideas, and the existence of their 
 corresponding objects (iv. iii. 7), so far as it is revealed to us 
 by intuition on the one hand, or by experience on the other 
 (iv. iii. 29). On these principles Locke holds that mathematics, as 
 based on ideas the agreement or disagreement of which may be 
 " intuitively perceived", is capable of demonstration (iv. ii. 9). On 
 these principles he shows that moral science may be deduced 
 " from self-evident propositions, by necessary consequences as in- 
 contestable as those in mathematics " (iv. iii. 18). On these 
 principles he contends that the existence of God may be proved 
 by " a regular deduction of it from some part of our intuitive 
 knowledge," with an " evidence equal to mathematical certainty " 
 (iv. x. 1). Such is the empiricism such is the sensualism of 
 John Locke. But, unfortunately for philosophy, the error as to 
 his true character has become inveterate. It is embodied in all 
 the histories of philosophy. It is stamped with the authority of 
 great men, whose writings are in every hand, and whose names 
 are upon every tongue. For two hundred years Locke has been 
 regarded as a mere empiric ; and it is to be feared that, in spite 
 of all that may be said to the contrary, he will be so regarded to 
 the end of time. 
 
344 The Influence of Holies, 
 
 NOTE B. 
 
 HOBBES : ON GENEKAL REASONING. 
 
 No exposition of the philosophy of either Locke or Berkeley would 
 be complete without a consideration of their opinions as to ab- 
 stract ideas and general names ; and to discuss this question 
 with effect we must go still farther back, and examine the views 
 of the founder of modern Nominalism Hobbes. 
 
 The life of Hobbes was unusually protracted. He was born 
 atMalmesbury in 1588, the year of the Armada, and he died at 
 Hardwicke, in 1679, the year of the Exclusion Bill. He lived 
 under five sovereigns. He was the amanuensis of Bacon. He 
 was twenty-eight when Shakspere died. He was twenty when 
 Milton was born, and he survived him. He died when Locke was 
 forty-seven. His life therefore covers the whole period from the 
 Novum Organum, which he translated into Latin, to the Essay 
 Concerning Human Understanding, which was in preparation 
 when he died. In the interval Hobbes wrote and published the 
 De Cive, the Leviathan, and the Human Nature. Though he 
 did not commence his philosophical writings till he was close 
 upon the verge of sixty, he produced the most powerful effect, not 
 only upon his own age but upon succeeding ages. He was the 
 founder of modern political philosophy. In enunciating the prin- 
 ciples of the utilitarian system he anticipated Bentham. In all 
 that is essential to the science of jurisprudence he anticipated 
 Austin. The influence of his philosophy is visible in Locke, in 
 Berkeley, and in Hume. But his passion for paradox was so 
 great, and he clothed the most innocent truisms in such obnoxious 
 forms, that he aroused a feeling of personal hatred so violent that 
 not only was the whole church militant thundering on his head- 
 piece during his life, but nearly two hundred years afterwards an 
 election mob greeted the editor of his works with the cry ' ' No 
 
Realism and Nominalism. 345 
 
 Obbes!" As usual, detraction followed in the footsteps of dis- 
 like, and no philosopher in the annals of misrepresentation has 
 been so systematically misrepresented as the founder of the 
 Nominalism of modern times. 
 
 The controversy between the Kealists and Nominalists is one 
 of the most remarkable in the history of the world. The schools 
 resounded with its discussion ; but the discussion was not con- 
 fined to the limits of the schools. It was maintained by rival 
 theologians, who mutually accused each other of the unpardon- 
 able sin. It procured the martyrdom of Huss. It deluged the 
 streets of Paris with blood. Like the controversy of the Guelfs 
 and Ghibellines, it distracted medieval Europe. Emperors and 
 kings took up arms on the question of universals a parte rei; 
 and, according to John of Salisbury, more money was expended 
 on the contest than was laid up in the treasure-house of Croesus, 
 more time was consumed in its discussion than was required to 
 consolidate the empire of the Caesars. 
 
 To the ordinary reader the dispute as to the nature of univer- 
 sals which thus convulsed the middle ages is apt to suggest the 
 dispute as to the primitive way of breaking eggs which embroiled 
 the Emperor of Lilliput and the Emperor of Blefuscu. But to 
 the philosopher it suggests topics of interest, which, even in 
 these days when physical science is predominant, continue to 
 agitate the minds of men. The question as to the origin of 
 species is only another form of the inquiry as to the nature of 
 universals a parte rei ; and though the hypothesis of protoplasm 
 and evolution has taken the place of the hypothesis of substantial 
 forms, they equally belong to that metaphysical aspect of the 
 question which every physical science of necessity presents. The 
 questions as to the origin of language, again, which within 
 the last few years have been popularised by the ability of 
 Max Miiller, are only a phase of the question raised by the 
 Nominalists as to the origin of general terms. These ques- 
 tions, however, belong to the domains of physiology and philo- 
 logy rather than to the domain of abstract thought ; and the 
 question in which the mere philosopher is interested relates 
 exclusively to the nature of universals in the mind. What 
 
346 The Intelligible Species of Cudworth. 
 
 is the object present to the mind in its general reasonings? 
 Is it a thing, an idea, or a name ? Is the Eealist or the Con- 
 ceptualist, or the Nominalist, right ? 
 
 Unfortunately, such are the ambiguities of language, that 
 before we can discuss the subject we must consider the prelimi- 
 nary question, What are the doctrines which the Kealist, the 
 Conceptualist, and the Nominalist actually held ? This question 
 is exhaustively discussed by Brown, and we cannot do better 
 than take the opinions attributed to the contending sects from him. 
 According to Brown, the Eealist maintained that the universal a 
 parte mentis is a " species distinct from the mind, which, of course, 
 could not be particular, like the sensible species, but universal, 
 so as to correspond with the universality of the notion and the 
 generic term " (Lect. ii. 458). The Nominalist is supposed not 
 only to deny the existence of intelligible species, but also to 
 " deny the existence of that peculiar class of feelings or states 
 of mind which have been denominated general notions, or general 
 ideas, asserting the existence only of individual objects perceived, 
 and of general terms that comprehend them, without any peculiar 
 mental state denoted by the general term" (p. 464). The Con- 
 ceptualist, in his turn, is supposed to maintain that the object of 
 the mind in reasoning is not an arbitrary symbol, but an abstract 
 idea, " a. notion of an object uniting at once all the qualities of 
 the individual objects, yet excluding every quality which distin- 
 tinguishes each from each " (p. 483). 
 
 But the more absurd a doctrine appears to be, the less likely 
 is it to have been actually held by any reasonable man ; and 
 when a critic, however intelligent, conceives a great philosopher 
 to have been a fool, it is within the limits of possibility that the 
 fool after all may be, not the philosopher, but the critic. Before 
 we ridicule we should refute, and before we refute we should 
 strive to understand, and before we can understand we must care- 
 fully weigh the language of our author. Let us try, then, in the 
 first place to understand what was meant by the intelligible species 
 of the schools. As the type of modern Eealism we may take the 
 modern Platonist, who was the greatest of the antagonists of 
 Hobbes. Cudworth, like his master, holds that " the immediate 
 
The General Names of Holies. 347 
 
 objects of intellection and science are eternal, necessarily exist- 
 ing, and incorruptible". But he immediately proceeds to obviate 
 the misconception into which Brown was betrayed upon the 
 point. He tells us that " the rationes and essences of things are 
 not dead things, like so many statues, images, or pictures hung 
 up somewhere by themselves alone in a world : neither are 
 truths mere sentences and propositions written down with ink 
 upon a book " (ibid). He tells us that, on the contrary, " the 
 rationes, intelligible essences, and verities of things, are nothing 
 but noemata, that is, objective notions or knowledge, which are 
 things which cannot exist alone ; but together with that actual 
 knowledge in which they are comprehended they are the modifi- 
 cations of some mind or intellect " (ibid). As modifications of 
 intellect or mind, in other words, as cognitive acts, intelligible 
 species were not denied by the founders of Nominalism (Reid, 954), 
 and accordingly on this point Cudworth and Ockham are agreed. 
 The criticism of Leibnitz upon the sage of Malmesbury is one 
 of the commonplaces of the history of philosophy. According to 
 Leibnitz, Hobbes was plus quam Nominalis a Nominalist and 
 something more non contentus enim cum Nominalibus universalia 
 ad nomina reducere, ipsam rerum veritatem ait in nominibus consis- 
 tere, ac, quod majus est, pendere ab humano arbitrio, guia veritaspen- 
 deat a defmitionibus terminorum, deftnitiones autem terminorum ab ar- 
 bitrio humano. Now Hobbes, in his Computation, undoubtedly 
 states that " the first truths were arbitrarily made by those that first 
 of all imposed names upon things, or received them from the 
 imposition of others" (Works, i. 36). But his paradox that all 
 truth is arbitrary is of a piece with his paradox that no law can be 
 unjust. All depends on what we are to understand by truth and 
 law. The fact is, that each proposition is a platitude rather than 
 a paradox. If truth be thought expressed in words, and if words 
 be arbitrarily selected, then it is an identical proposition that 
 truths are arbitrarily made. The whole mystery is cleared away 
 in the Leviathan. Though " true and false are attributes of 
 speech, not of things", and though, " where speech is not, there 
 is neither truth nor falsehood", yet "error there may be, as when 
 we expect that which shall not be, or suspect what hath not 
 
348 Hobbes and Locke. 
 
 been", albeit, "in neither case can a man be charged with un- 
 truth" (iii. 23). Whether Hobbes was right or wrong in consi- 
 dering language to be arbitrary, he is undoubtedly right [in [his 
 conception of the relations which subsist between the thing, the 
 idea, and the name. " A name is a word taken at pleasure, to 
 serve for a mark which may raise in our mind a thought like to 
 some thought we had before, and which, being pronounced to 
 others, may be to them a sign of what thought the speaker 
 had, or had not, before in his mind " (i. 16). But names are 
 "signs of our conceptions" (i. 17); and, "one universal name 
 is imposed on many things for their similitude in some quality 
 or other accident " (iii. 21). Accordingly Hobbes tells us that 
 " a man that seeketh precious truth had need to remember 
 what every name he uses stands for, and to place it accord- 
 ingly, or else he will find himself entangled in words, as a 
 bird in lime-twigs the more he struggles the more belimed " 
 (p. 23). He tells us "that in the right definition of names 
 lies the first use of speech, which is the acquisition of science " 
 (p. 24) ; and he concludes his discussion with the weighty 
 apophthegm, that " words are wise men's counters, they do 
 but reckon by them ; but they are the money of fools, that 
 value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a 
 Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man " (p. 25). 
 
 What then were the views of Locke upon the subject ? The 
 philosopher of the revolution was no admirer of the philoso- 
 pher of the restoration. He professed to be but slightly ac- 
 quainted with his works, and seems to have thought so slightly 
 of them that, in enumerating the works on the original of 
 society, and the extent of political power, which had appeared 
 within the previous sixty years, he is silent on the Leviathan 
 and the De Cive, and mentions only the Ecclesiastical Polity 
 of Mr. Hooker, the Discourses on Government of Mr. Alger- 
 non Sydney, and a Treatise of Civil Polity by Mr. Paxton 
 (Works, ii. 408). But the similarity of the views of Hobbes 
 and Locke on the question of universals is not to be concealed. 
 Locke holds that " truth and falsehood properly belong to propo- 
 sitions " (n. xxxii. 1). He holds that mixed modes are arbitrary 
 
LoMs Abstract Ideas. 349 
 
 (in. v. 8). He ''would not be thought to forget, much less to 
 deny, that nature in the production of things makes several of 
 them alike"; but he thinks "we may say the sorting of them 
 under names is the workmanship of the understanding, taking 
 occasion, from the similitude it observes among them, to make 
 abstract general ideas and set them up in the mind, with 
 names annexed to them, as patterns or forms to which as 
 particular things existing are found to agree, so they came to 
 be of that species, have that denomination, or are put into that 
 classis " (in. hi. 13) ; or, as he elsewhere expresses it, are deter- 
 mined to be of that "sort" (in. iii. 6, 12). "Ideas", he says, 
 " become general by separating from them the circumstances 
 of time and place, and any other ideas that may determine them 
 to this or that particular existence " (in. iii. 6). This process 
 of abstraction he regards as the prerogative of man ; and he 
 delights in magnifying the difficulties that attend it. " General 
 ideas", he says, " are fictions and contrivances of the mind, that 
 carry difficulty with them, and do not so easily offer themselves 
 as we are apt to imagine". " Does it not require some pains 
 and skill", he asks, "to form the general idea of a triangle 
 (which is yet none of the most abstract, comprehensive, and 
 difficult), for it must be neither oblique, nor rectangle, neither 
 equilateral, equicrural nor scalenon ; but all and none of these 
 at once" "in effect it is something imperfect that cannot 
 exist ; an idea wherein some parts of several different and incon- 
 sistent ideas are put together " (iv. vii. 9). 
 
 But it is never with impunity that a writer sacrifices precision 
 to point. Locke's abstract idea of a triangle is as enigmati- 
 cal as the Aelia Laelia Crispis of the schoolmen ; and accord- 
 ingly from the first it has been the butt of philosophers and 
 wits. Arbuthnot, in the Memoirs of Scriblerus, could find no 
 parallel for it but Crambe's Abstract of a Lord Mayor. Berkeley, 
 in the Introduction to his Principles of Human Knowledge, found 
 it hard to imagine that a couple of children could not prate of 
 their sugar-plums and rattles till they had tacked together 
 a number of inconsistencies and framed abstract general ideas 
 (Intr. xiv.). Brown considers the passage as unworthy of its great 
 
350 Locke and Berkeley. 
 
 author, and as abundantly ridiculous (Lect. xlvii.) ; while 
 Hamilton declares that Locke held the conceptualist doctrine in 
 its most revolting absurdity, contending that the general notion 
 must be realised in spite of the principle of contradiction (Lect. 
 ii. 300). But Locke's critics, to use Locke's metaphor, have all 
 been lost in the great wood of words. They have failed to 
 observe that parts of inconsistent ideas are not necessarily in- 
 consistent, and that ideas may be obtained by abstraction with- 
 out being capable of being imaged in the abstract. The 
 abstract idea is not so much an idea as a "measure of name" 
 (in. iii. 14), and it is the very essence of a definition that it should 
 comprehend all particulars and be identified with none. Locke, 
 in fact, repudiates the absurdity with which he has been 
 charged. "If", he says, "I put in my ideas of mixed modes 
 or relations any inconsistent ideas together, I fill my head also 
 with chimeras ; since such ideas, if well examined, cannot so 
 much as exist in the mind, much less any real being ever be 
 denominated from them " (in. x. 33). 
 
 The doctrine which Hume attributes to Berkeley is, that 
 " all general ideas are nothing but particular ones annexed 
 to a certain term, which gives them a more extensive signi- 
 fication, and makes them recall upon occasion other indivi- 
 duals which are similar to them " ; and Hume looks on this as 
 " one of the greatest and most valuable discoveries that had been 
 made of late years in the republic of letters" (i. 34). But Berkeley 
 said nothing which had not previously been said by Locke. He 
 says it is true in fancied opposition to Locke that he does not 
 " deny that there are general ideas, but only that there are any 
 abstract general ideas " (Intr. xii.), and that " it is one thing for 
 to keep a name constantly to the same definition, and another 
 to make it stand everywhere for the same idea " ( xviii.). 
 But these are mere verbal misunderstandings. Berkeley 
 acknowledges that "a man may consider a figure merely as 
 triangular without attending to the particular qualities of the 
 angles or relations of the sides" ( xvi.). He holds that " an 
 idea, which considered in itself is particular, becomes general 
 by being made to represent or stand for all other particular 
 
The Reconciliation. 351 
 
 ideas of the same sort " (Int. xii.). He insists it is true that 
 "it is not necessary, even in the strictest reasonings", that 
 " significant names which stand for ideas should, every time 
 they are used, excite in the understanding the ideas they are 
 made to stand for " ( xix.). But on this point Locke agrees 
 with Berkeley. He admits everything for which a Nominalist 
 can reasonably contend. He concedes that "most men, if not 
 all, in their thinking and reasonings make use of words instead 
 of ideas " (iv. v. 4). He does not contend that " a man need 
 stand to recollect and make an analysis " of the meaning of the 
 word every time he happens to employ it (in. xi. 9) all he 
 insists on is, " that he have so examined the signification of that 
 name, and settled the idea of all its parts in his mind, that he 
 can do it when he pleases " (ibid.) 
 
 How then are we to arbitrate between the contending sects ? 
 The materials for an arbitration exist, and, if not obvious, yet 
 when pointed out must be admitted by reasonable men. It must 
 be admitted that in our general reasonings we employ words, 
 without any conscious reference to their meaning, and merely as 
 algebraic symbols. It must be admitted, at the same time, that, 
 if our reasonings are not to end in nonsense, our words must 
 have a meaning, and that their meaning must be determined 
 by their definition, whether denominated abstract idea, scheme, 
 or concept. It must be admitted, moreover, that if our general 
 reasonings are to conduct to any practical result, our conceptions 
 should not be mere chimeras, but should accord with the facts of 
 nature and the realities of things. But then again it must be 
 admitted that everything which exists, whatever maybe the phy- 
 sical cause that determines the mode of its existence, is particular. 
 At the same time it cannot be denied that in contemplating a 
 multitude of particulars the mind is struck with a sense of their 
 resemblance, and that it selects the point of resemblance by a pro- 
 cess of abstraction and combines them into a scheme or concept. 
 But can this scheme or concept be present to the mind as an 
 image or idea ? No ; and even if it could be, it would be parti - 
 ticular. The only means of generalising it and keeping its ab- 
 stracted elements together is by the imposition of a name. The 
 
352 The Abandonment. 
 
 name, the idea, and the thing, are thus relegated to their natural 
 rights, and are placed in their natural relations. What, then, is 
 each party called on to renounce ? Nothing but the privilege of 
 attributing absurdity to its opponents. The mental facts are all 
 agreed on, and nothing is to be abandoned but the ^intelligible 
 species attributed to Scotus, the unmeaning symbolism attri- 
 buted to Hobbes, and the self -contradictory ideas attributed to 
 Locke. 
 
The Rational Faculty in Bacon. 353 
 
 NOTE C. 
 
 BACON I ON INDUCTIVE SEASONING. 
 
 THE three first names in English philosophy are Bacon, Hobbes 
 and Locke ; and it is hard to say which of these great men hag 
 been most generally magnified, and, at the same time, most 
 generally misunderstood. In one point Locke and Bacon have 
 been subjected to a common error. Both have been regarded 
 as champions of the Empiricism which, according to the critics, 
 is characteristic of their nation (Schw. 153, 181). 
 
 So far was Bacon from being a mere empiric, that the whole 
 object of his philosophy, as stated in his Distributio Operis, 
 was to effect a reconciliation between the rational and the em- 
 piric faculties, the divorce of which, he said, had thrown all 
 human affairs into confusion. The true process of science, he 
 said in his Novum Organum, was neither that of the ant, which 
 merely stores what it has collected from without, nor that of th 
 spider, which spins everything from within, but that of the bee, 
 which gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and 
 the field, and by its own faculty digests them and converts them 
 into honey. The influence of reason in the development of 
 science from experience is never for a single moment either de- 
 nied or ignored by Bacon. In his Philosophic/, Prima he antici- 
 pates Kant, and attempts to enumerate the transcendental axioms 
 and notions which are assumed in all physical investigation. 
 In his Topica Particulars he adopts the words of Plato, and 
 declares that he who seeks anything in nature must comprehend 
 it in some general notion, in order to recognize it when he 
 finds it. In his Interprctatio Naturae he analyzes the process by 
 which the form is elicited by reason from the facts furnished 
 by experience, and makes mental anticipation the first step iu 
 the process of induction, 
 
 2 A 
 
354 The Baconian Induction. 
 
 The nature of the inductive process has been the subject of 
 bitter and long -continued controversies. But the fact is, the 
 word induction, like every other philosophical term, is used in 
 a variety of senses, and this occasions an apparent variety of 
 opinions where, in reality, none exists. Logical Induction, as it 
 may be called, is a process which goes upon the self-evident fact, 
 that what belongs or does not belong to all the constituent 
 parts, belongs or does not belong to the constituted whole. It 
 is merely the converse of the syllogistic process, and belongs 
 exclusively to the domain of logic. A like remark may be 
 made with respect to the Psychological Induction, as it may be 
 termed, of Mill, who defines induction to be "the operation of 
 the mind, by which we infer that what we know to be true in 
 a particular case, or cases, will be true in all cases which re- 
 semble the former in certain assignable respects " (Log. i. 319). 
 But this inference from the known to the unknown is merely 
 an expression of our belief in the continuance of the laws of 
 nature ; and this belief, though the basis of all our experi- 
 mental inquiries, and the condition of their application, is not 
 so much an inference from experimental data as an anticipation 
 of experience ; and whether it be regarded as an instinct, as a 
 category, or as a transcendent, it must be relegated to psycho- 
 logy, as the logical induction was to logic. The object of induc- 
 tion, as Bacon conceived the process, was to ascertain the laws 
 of nature, and not to explain our belief in their continuance. 
 The cause, the law, or, to use Bacon's term, the form, of any set 
 of phenomenon can only be elicited from the facts ; and the facts 
 can only be ascertained by a patient interrogation of nature, con- 
 ducted on a preconceived plan (topica particularis), the results of 
 which, to be available, should be methodically recorded (experi- 
 entia literata). But the interpretation of nature should follow 
 its interrogation ; and the form which explains the facts ascer- 
 tained by observation and experiment must be discovered by 
 induction. This process may be styled Physical Induction, for 
 the purpose of distinction ; and, according to Bacon, there are 
 two ways in which it may proceed. The form being unknown 
 can, in the first instance, be merely matter of conjecture ; but 
 
Bacon's Canons of Induction. 355 
 
 when the mind has formed its conjecture it must proceed to test 
 its truth by a reference to the facts. This it may do, in a hasty 
 and perfunctory manner, by an enumeration of the particular 
 instances in which the form appears to exist, without inquiring 
 into the analogous instances in which it does not exist, and so 
 conclude that it is the form. This is the Induction by Simple 
 Enumeration which Bacon considered a precarious method of 
 inquiry a method leading to results which may be neutralized 
 by the first contradictory instance that presents itself a method 
 which affords no exit from the labyrinth of facts into the light of 
 law. Precario concludit, et periculo ab instantia contradictoria 
 exponitur, et consueta tantum. intuetur, nee exitum reperit. 
 In opposition to this, he insists on the employment of an Induc- 
 tion by Exclusion a form of induction quae experientiam solvat 
 et separet, et per exclusiones ac rejectiones debitas necessario 
 concludat a process which considers the facts that experience 
 has furnished, forms hypotheses as to their laws, rejects every 
 hypothesis which is inconsistent with the facts observed, and 
 inducts the true hypothesis after the rejection of those which are 
 d emonstrably false 
 
 In his Impetus Philosophies Bacon supplies a formula to deter- 
 mine whether any given hypothesis for the explanation of a set 
 of observed phenomena should be rejected. Omnes naturae quae 
 aut data natura praesente adsunt, aut data natura absente ad- 
 sunt, ex forma non sunt ; atque post rejectionem aut negatio- 
 nem completam manet forma et affirmatio. This, he said, was 
 a brief remark, but it embodied a conclusion at which he had 
 only arrived by a long and patient course of thought. In the 
 Novum Organum, however, after still deeper meditation on the 
 subject, he gives a formula more comprehensive and correct. 
 Invenienda est enim super comparentiam omnium et singularium 
 instantiarum natura talis, quae cum natura data perpetuo adsit, 
 absit, atque crescat et decrescat (n. xv.). These formulae, it is 
 plain, are a compendious expression of Mill's canons of agree- 
 ment, difference, and concomitant variations, and they show how 
 completely Bacon, in the infancy of physical science, anticipated 
 all the logical principles on which, in its maturity, it proceeds. 
 
 2 A 2 
 
356 Bacon's Inductive Method. 
 
 Instead of illustrating the Baconian method by trivial or 
 ridiculous instances, let us illustrate it by the process which 
 conducted physical investigation to its greatest triumph the 
 discovery of the laws which regulate the planetary movements. 
 The facts of the celestial motions had been observed from the 
 earliest times, and records of those observations had been made 
 generations ago by the Assyrian, the Egyptian, and the 
 Greek. But what was the law of those familiar motions ? 
 It was not known; and in the first place it could only be 
 provisionally guessed. Was the motion in a line, a spiral, or 
 a curve? Did the earth revolve around the heavenly bodies, 
 or did the heavenly bodies revolve around the earth? The 
 hypothesis of sidereal revolution was embraced. It explained the 
 more obvious phenomena of the heavens ; but fact after fact was 
 observed which it was incompetent to explain. It was in vain 
 that astronomers strove to modify the original hypothesis by 
 subsidiary hypotheses, and imagined " cycle and epicycle, orb 
 on orb". In the felicitous language of Whewell, the conception 
 could not colligate the facts. Accordingly, the hypothesis of 
 Hipparchus was at last rejected ; and Copernicus, in order 
 to explain the facts of the celestial movements, embraced the 
 hypothesis that the earth revolved around the planets in a 
 circle. But though the circular hypothesis explained a multi- 
 tude of facts, there were facts which even it was unable to 
 explain. It was in vain that Copernicus again introduced the 
 epicycle in the form of an equalizing circle ; his hypothesis was 
 in its turn rejected. After so many rejections a new hypothesis 
 was formed by Kepler the hypothesis of an elliptic orbit. The 
 problem of the heavens was solved. The hypothesis of an ellip- 
 tic orbit explained every phenomenon that had been observed. 
 The infinitesimal calculus was invented by Newton ; astronomy 
 was converted into a branch of mathematics ; and, after so many 
 anticipations and so many rejections, the great cosmical hypo- 
 thesis was inducted to its place of honour as the highest type 
 of science. 
 
 It is evident from what has been said, that in point of logic 
 the Baconian induction is a disjunctive syllogism, of which the 
 
Bacotfs Deductive Method. 357 
 
 major premiss is the sum total of the hypotheses which the 
 mind can form in order to explain the facts. The law of the 
 phenomena must be either this or that or the other theory ; it is 
 neither this nor that ; therefore it must be the other. The major 
 is thus supplied by the anticipations of the mind ; the minor is 
 the rejection of all anticipations which are inconsistent with the 
 facts of nature ; the conclusion is the induction. As Bacon 
 himself expresses it, a variety of opinions are formed ; all vola- 
 tile opinions disappear as smoke ; and the true solid and affirma- 
 tive result remains. 
 
 The mention of syllogism suggests another matter in which 
 injustice has been done to Bacon. According to Mill, he " leaves 
 no room for the discovery of new principles by way of deduc- 
 tion" ; and he adds, that "it is not to be conceived that a man 
 of Bacon's sagacity could have fallen into this mistake, if there 
 had existed in his time among the sciences which treat of 
 successive phenomena one single deductive science, such as 
 mechanics, astronomy, optics, acoustics, &c., now are" (Logic, 
 ii. 451). This is as curious a misrepresentation as could well 
 be made. In Bacon's correspondence there is a letter to the 
 Eedemptorist Father Baranzan, in which he distinctly states 
 that when the original facts and primary laws of nature have 
 been ascertained by induction the syllogistic method may be 
 used. In physica prudenter notas, et idem tecum sentio, post 
 notiones primae classis, et axiomata super ipsas per inductio- 
 nem bene eruta et terminata, tuto adhiberi syllogismum, modo 
 inhibeatur saltus ad generalissima et fiat progressus per scalam 
 convenientem. Nay, so far was Bacon from being betrayed into 
 the alleged mistake by the fact that no deductive science existed 
 in his time, that he actually predicts the advent of the very 
 sciences which were destined to form the proudest triumph of 
 the deductive method. Multae naturae partes, nee satis sub- 
 tiliter comprehendi, nee satis perspicue demonstrari, nee satis 
 dextre et certo ad usum accommodari, possunt sine ope et inter- 
 ventu mathematicae ; cujus generis sunt perspectiva, musica, 
 astronomia, cosmographia, machinaria, et nonnullae aliae. Cae- 
 terum in mathematicis mixtis integras aliquas portiones deside- 
 
358 The Key of Bacon's Philosophy. 
 
 ratas jamnon reperio, sed multas in posterum praedico si homines 
 non ferientur ; prout enim physica majora indies incrementa 
 capiet, et nova axiomata educet, eo mathematicae opera nova in 
 multis indigebit, et plures fient mathematicae mixtae (De Aug. 
 iii. vi.). 
 
 One word still remains to be said. The tendency of Lord 
 Macaulay's celebrated essay on Bacon is to give his philosophy a 
 far more material and utilitarian aspect than it really bears. 
 We are told that Bacon indulged in ^o rants about the fitness 
 of things, or the dignity of human nature that he said nothing 
 about the grounds of moral obligation or the freedom of the 
 human will that he paid no attention to the casuistical sub- 
 tleties which occupied the attention of the keenest spirits of the 
 age. Nothing could be more misleading. The book of the De Aug- 
 mentis, which he devotes to moral philosophy, contains a refutation 
 of all these statements. He praises the philosophers, for the man- 
 ner in which they had treated ideal excellence. He regards 
 them, however, as surpassed by the pious and strenuous diligence 
 of the theologians, in their treatment of the moral virtues and 
 cases of conscience, and the delimitations of sin. He speaks of 
 the higher power and dignity of the borwm communionis and the 
 bonum activum, as compared with the selfish cares and passive 
 enjoyment of life. He speaks of an approach to the divine or 
 angelic nature as the perfection of our moral form ; and with 
 Aristotle, he proposes heroic and divine virtue as the scope of 
 all our moral aims. The two words, says Lord Macaulay, 
 which are the key of Bacon's philosophy are, utility and pro- 
 gress. Even this is not correct. The key of his doctrine was 
 not utility and progress, but utility and truth. Propositum a 
 nobis est, non rerum pulchritudinem sed usum et veritatem 
 sectari. Nay more, the great experimental philosopher places 
 truth before utility in his estimate of their relations. In his 
 Aphorisms he asserts that the contemplation of truth is some- 
 thing for higher and worthier than any mere utility esse 
 contemplationem veritatis omni operum utilitate et magni- 
 tudine digniorem et celsiorem (Nov. Org. i. Ixxiv). And in 
 his Essays are the words, which every man of education has by 
 
Bacon's Summum Bonum. 359 
 
 heart : " Howsoever these things are in men's depraved judg- 
 ments and affections ; yet truth, which only doth judge itself, 
 teacheth, that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making 
 or wooing of it ; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of 
 it ; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it ; is the 
 sovereign good of human nature". 
 
360 Hume's Scepticism, 
 
 NOTE D. 
 
 HUME I ON MIKACLE AND NATURE. 
 
 SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH, in his Dissertation on the Progress of 
 Ethical Philosophy, which still maintains its time -honoured 
 place in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, regards Hume as a profes- 
 sor of UNIVERSAL SCEPTICISM, and remarks that "the Sceptic boasts 
 of having involved the results of experience and the elements of 
 geometry in the same ruin with the doctrines of religion and the 
 principles of philosophy " (Works, i. 137). How erroneous this 
 criticism is we have already seen. We have seen that Hume 
 systematically distinguishes between the results of experience 
 and the elements of geometry (iv. 190) that he protests against 
 confounding the principles of philosophy with the principles of 
 action (iv. 47) that he maintains we are under the necessity of 
 acting upon beliefs which no reasoning is able either to produce 
 or to prevent (iv. 56), and that he holds the fundamental 
 doctrines of religion to be based on the principle of natural and 
 necessary faith (iv. 192 . 
 
 Sir James Mackintosh, still speaking of Hume, remarks, 
 with reference to his views on NATURAL EELIGION, that " to those 
 who are strangers to the seductions of paradox, to the intoxica- 
 tion of fame, and to the bewitchment of prohibited opinions, it 
 must be unaccountable, that he who revered benevolence should, 
 without apparent regret, cease to see it on the throne of the uni- 
 verse " (i. 185). But to those who are strangers to the bewitch- 
 ments of criticism it must be equally unaccountable that 
 Mackintosh should have been betrayed into such a miscon- 
 ception of Hume's opinions, and that he should have considered 
 it necessary to deprive natural religion of the authority of the 
 most profound metaphysical thinker that these countries have 
 produced. Twice has Hume written on the subject of Natural 
 
Hume on Natural Religion. 361 
 
 Religion, once in his Natural History, and again in the Dialogues 
 which were posthumously published, and in each of those works 
 he repudiates the atheism which is attributed to him by his 
 critic. In his Natural History of Eeligion he protests that " the 
 whole frame of Nature bespeaks an Intelligent Author", and that 
 " no rational inquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his 
 belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine 
 Theism and Eeligion " (Works, iv. 485). In his Dialogues con- 
 cerning Natural Religion he is still more emphatic. Cleanthes, 
 whose opinions he accepts (ii. 548), maintains that ''the most 
 agreeable reflection which it is possible for human imagination 
 to suggest is that of genuine Theism, which represents us as the 
 workmanship of a Being perfectly good, wise and powerful, who 
 created us for happiness, and who, having implanted in us im- 
 measurable desires of good, will prolong our existence to all 
 eternity, and will transfer us into an infinite variety of scenes, in 
 order to satisfy those desires, and render our felicity complete 
 and durable " (ii. 543). He insists on " the curious adapting of 
 means to ends", which is found " throughout all nature", as 
 supplying an argument by which we prove at once the existence 
 of " the Author of Nature " and his wisdom (ii. 440). He says 
 that the conscience of the Sceptic or Atheist must be scru- 
 pulous, indeed, if he refuses to call the universal unknown cause 
 a Deity or God (ii. 459). And, finally, in the following passage 
 he lays aside the philosophic calm which he generally affects, 
 and bursts into an impassioned strain of eloquence, which might 
 well be mistaken for one of the pious rhapsodies of Berkeley. 
 " The order and arrangement of nature, the curious adjustment of 
 final causes, the plain use and intention of every part and organ, 
 all these bespeak in the clearest language an intelligent cause or 
 author. The heavens and the earth join in the same testimony. 
 The whole chorus of nature raises one hymn to the praises of its 
 Creator. You [the Sceptic] alone, or almost alone, disturb this 
 general harmony. You start abstruse doubts, cavils, and objec- 
 tions. You ask me what is the cause of this cause ? I know 
 not ; I care not ; that concerns not me. I have found a Deity, 
 and here I stop my inquiry " (ii. 465, 6). 
 
362 Hume on Causation. 
 
 These passages reflect a vivid light on Hume's opinion on the 
 general subject of CAUSATION. " Mr. Hume's theory of causa- 
 tion", says Mackintosh, " is used as an answer to arguments for 
 the existence of the Deity, without warning the reader that it 
 would equally lead him not to expect that the sun will rise to- 
 morrow " (Works, i. 138). Here again we have a criticism which 
 not only misrepresents Hume, but involves a number of philo- 
 sophical questions in confusion. Hume, as we have seen, recog- 
 nises the principle of efficient causes as the ground of our belief in 
 the existence of a God, while he recognises the principle of final 
 causes as the ground of our belief in his intelligence and goodness. 
 As regards natural causes, he has the conspicuous merit of being 
 the first to popularise, if not to establish, what is now an 
 accepted truth, that the sole object of the physical inquirer is to 
 ascertain the constant conjunction of phenomena in the vast 
 sequence of changes which constitute the laws of nature. This 
 is Hume's theory of causation in the proper sense. But the ex- 
 istence of these constant conjunctions in the past is no guarantee 
 for their continuance in the future. That the sun rose yesterday 
 is no proof that he will rise to-morrow. Our belief in the future 
 continuance of the conjunctions which we have experienced is not 
 to be accounted for by mere experience, according to Hume, but 
 by an instinct of our nature called into play by the recurrence of 
 the phenomena which we have experienced, and supplying a 
 fresh instance of the principle of final causes (iv. 65). 
 
 Hume's theory of causation naturally suggests a topic which 
 has subjected him to greater obloquy than even his supposed 
 scepticism his views as to the nature of MIRACLES, and the 
 evidence by which they are supported. He defines a miracle to 
 be " a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of 
 the Deity, or by an interposition of some invisible agent " (iv. 134). 
 Let us consider the question in its philosophic aspect merely. 
 Eecognising as he does the existence of a Deity, Hume, by 
 the principles of his philosophy, is bound to admit that there is 
 no a priori objection to accepting a mere volition for a cause. 
 " If we reason a priori", he says, " anything may appear able to 
 produce anything " " the falling of a pebble may, for aught we 
 
Hume on Miracles. 363 
 
 know, extinguish the sun, or the wish of a man control the 
 planets in their orbits " (iv. 191 ; i. 315). The existence of any 
 matter of fact, on his theory, is incapable of demonstration ; and 
 all arguments for its existence must be based upon experience 
 alone (iv. 191). In short, it is a " general maxim " with Hume, 
 " that no objects have any discoverable connexion together, and 
 that all the inferences which we can draw from one to another are 
 founded merely on our experience of their constant and regular 
 conjunction " (iv. 130. 
 
 Let us then view the matter a posteriori. " A miracle", 
 says Hume, " is a violation of the laws of nature, and as a firm 
 and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof 
 against a miracle is as entire as any argument from experience 
 can possibly be imagined " (iv. 133). But this, surely, is a mere 
 begging of the question. For in the first place, is a miracle a 
 violation of a law of nature ? On Hume's theory of causation 
 nature is a mere series of antecedents and consequents, and the 
 expression of a law of nature is simply this the antecedent A, in 
 our past experience, has been constantly followed by the conse- 
 quent B, the death of a man, for instance, by the dissolution of 
 his body. A miracle is confessedly an unusual occurrence, and 
 on the theory of observed sequences its expression would be this 
 the antecedent X, has been followed by the consequent Y, the 
 volition of a divine person, for instance, by a resurrection from 
 the dead. Here a new antecedent has been introduced, and a new 
 consequent has followed, This, it is evident, is not a violation 
 of the old sequence, but the introduction of a new one. If the 
 new consequent, the resurrection from the dead, be regarded as 
 an interference with the old consequent, the dissolution of the 
 body, even this cannot be regarded as a violation of the laws of 
 nature, for it is a contingency to which every law of nature is 
 subject the intervention of a counteracting cause. 
 
 To say, then, that the laws of nature are established by an 
 unalterable experience is misleading. Dr. Haughton, in his ad- 
 mirable Lectures on Physical Geography, published in the Dub- 
 lin University Series, describes the scientific law of the uniformity 
 of nature as " a shallow creed " refuted by the science of Geology, 
 
364 Hume's General Maxims. 
 
 11 from which we learn that the present is unlike the past, and 
 will probably be still more unlike the future" (p. 75). But 
 neither Hume nor Dr. Haughton, as I venture to think, has formed 
 a true conception of the law in question. Its true expression is 
 to be found in the opening chapter of the Analogy. " There is 
 in every case a probability," says Butler, "that all things will 
 continue as we experience they are, in all respects, except those in 
 which we have some reason to think they will be altered". 
 
 "It is a miracle that a dead man should come to life", says 
 Hume, "because that has never been observed in any age or 
 country" (p. 134). Again, this begs the question. The question 
 we are discussing is whether a resurrection, such as that of 
 Lazarus, has been observed. This can only be determined by the 
 testimony of observers. Hume lays it down as " a maxim that 
 no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle" 
 (iv. 150). But a miracle, after all, as distinguished from a law 
 of nature, is merely an extraordinary occurrence. It may well 
 be that, if we were admitted to a wider view of the universe, as 
 Butler suggests, we might find that the occurrence of miracles 
 is subjected to a law as rigorous as, for instance, the secular 
 appearance of a comet. All we can say is, that a miracle, if it 
 occurred, was an extraordinary, or, if you will, a singular occur- 
 rence. But if a singular occurrence cannot be established by tes- 
 timony, nothing can be so established. The repeated occurrence 
 of the most ordinary event is merely the repetition of a series 
 of singular occurrences, and if the evidence for each of them be 
 regarded as a cypher, it is plain that no multiplication of cyphers 
 will constitute a unit. 
 
 This brings us to the real point of the whole matter. What 
 is the evidence in favour of miracles, and how is that evidence 
 to be regarded? Hume lays down another "general maxim" 
 (iv. 184). He says that " no testimony is sufficient to establish a 
 miracle unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood 
 would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to 
 establish" (p. 184). This is merely a play on the word miracu- 
 lous. The true statement of the case is made by Mr. Mill. 
 " The improbability, or, in other words, the unusualness, of any 
 
Hume's Conclusion. 365 
 
 fact is no reason for disbelieving it, if the nature of the case 
 renders it certain that either that or something equally improb- 
 able, that is, equally unusual, did happen" (Log. ii. 168). " All, 
 therefore, which Hume has made out", again to use the words of 
 Mr. Mill, " is that no evidence can prove a miracle to anyone 
 who did not previously believe the existence of a being or beings 
 with supernatural powers ; or who believes himself to have full 
 proof that the character of the Being whom he recognises is in- 
 consistent with his having seen fit to interfere on the occasion in 
 question" (p. 162). But Hume, with all his dogmatism, never 
 pretended to be furnished with any such proof ; and Hume, with 
 all his scepticism, was a firm believer in the being and attributes 
 of God. 
 
DUBLIN UNIVERSITY PRESS SERIES, 
 
 THE PROVOST and SENIOR FELLOWS of Trinity College have undertaken 
 the publication of a Series of Works, chiefly Educational, to be entitled 
 the DUBLIN UNIVERSITY PRESS SERIES. 
 
 The following volumes of the Series are now ready, viz. : 
 
 Six Lectures on Physical Geography. By the REV. S. HAUGHTON, 
 M.D., Dubl., D.C.L., Oxon., F.R.S., Fellow of Trinity College, and Pro- 
 fessor of Geology in the University of Dublin, i$s. 
 
 An Introduction to the Systematic Zoology and Morphology of 
 
 Vertebrate Animals. By ALEXANDER MACALISTER, M.D., Dubl., Professor of 
 Comparative Anatomy in the University of Dublin. ios. 6d. 
 
 The Codex Rescriptus Dublinensis of St. Matthew's Gospel (Z). 
 First Published by Dr. Barrett in 1801. A New Edition, Revised and Augmented. 
 Also, Fragments of the Book of Isaiah, in the LXX. Version, from an Ancient 
 Palimpsest, now first Published. Together with a newly discovered Fragment 
 of the Codex Palatinus. By T. K. ABBOTT, B. D., Fellow of Trinity College, and 
 Professor of Biblical Greek in the University of Dublin. With two Plates of 
 Facsimiles. 215. 
 
 The Parabola, Ellipse, and Hyperbola, treated Geometrically. By 
 
 ROBERT WILLIAM GRIFFIN, A.M., LL.D., Ex-Scholar, Trinity College, Dublin. 
 6s. 
 
 An Introduction to Logic. By WILLIAM HENRY STANLEY MONCK, 
 
 M.A. Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Dublin. $s. 
 
 Essays in Political and Moral Philosophy. By T. E. CLIFFE LESLIE, 
 
 Hon. LL.D., Dubl., of Lincoln's Inn, Barrister-at-Law, late Examiner in Poli- 
 tical Economy in the University of London, Professor of Jurisprudence and 
 Political Economy in the Queen's University. los. 6d. 
 
 The Correspondence of Cicero : a revised Text, with Notes and Prole- 
 gomena. Vol. I., The Letters to the end of Cicero's Exile. By ROBERT Y. 
 TYRRELL, M. A., Fellow of Trinity College, and Professor of Latin in the Uni 
 versify of Dublin, izs. 
 
 Faust, from the German of Goethe. BY THOMAS E. WEBB, LL.D., 
 
 Q.C., Regius Professor of Laws, and Public Orator in the University of 
 Dublin, izs. 6d. 
 
 The Veil of Isis ; a series of Essays on Idealism. By THOMAS E. 
 WEBB, LL.D., Q.C., Regius Professor of Laws, and Public Orator ; sometime 
 Fellow of Trinity College and Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University 
 of Dublin. 
 
 [Ovr. 
 
DUBLIN UNIVERSITY PRESS SERIES Continued, 
 
 The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles : 
 
 to which are added Correspondence with Shelley, and Southey's Dreams' 
 Edited, with an Introduction, by EDWARD DOWDEN, LL.D., Professor of English 
 Literature in the University of Dublin. i^s. 
 
 The Mathematical and other Tracts of the late James M'Cullagh, 
 F.T.C.D., Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Dublin. Now 
 first collected, and edited by REV. J. H. JELLETT, B.D., and REV. SAMUEL 
 HAUGHTON, M.D., Fellows of Trinity College, Dublin. 155-. 
 
 A Sequel to the First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid, con- 
 taining an Easy Introduction to Modern Geometry. With numerous Examples. 
 By JOHN CASEY, LL.D., F.R.S., Vice- President, Royal Irish Academy ; Member 
 of the London Mathematical Society ; and Professor of the Higher Mathematics 
 and Mathematical Physics in the Catholic University of Ireland. 35. 6d. 
 
 Theory of Equations : with an Introduction to the Theory of Binary 
 Algebraic Forms. By WILLIAM SNOW BURNSIDE, M. A., Erasmus Smith's 
 Professor of Mathematics in the University of Dublin : and ARTHUR WILLIAM 
 PANTON, M.A., Fellow and Tutor, Trinity College, Dublin. los. 6d. 
 
 The Parmenides of Plato : with Introduction, Analysis, and Notes. 
 By THOMAS MAGUIRE, LL.D., D. LIT., Fellow and Tutor, Trinity College, 
 Dublin, ^s. 6d. 
 
 The Medical Language of St. Luke : a Proof from Internal Evi- 
 dence that "The Gospel according to St. Luke" and "The Acts of the 
 Apostles" were written by the same Person, and that the writer was a Medical 
 Man. By the REV. WILLIAM KIRK HOBART, LL.D., Ex-Scholar, Trinity 
 College, Dublin. i6s. 
 
 Life of Sir Wm. Rowan Hamilton, Knt., LL.D., D.C.L., M.R.I.A., 
 
 Andrews Professor of Astronomy in the University of Dublin, and Royal Astro- 
 nomer of Ireland, &c. &c. : including Selections from his Poems, Correspon- 
 dence, and Miscellaneous Writings. By ROBERT PERCEVAL GRAVES, M.A. 
 Sub-Dean of the Chapel Royal, Dublin, and formerly Curate in charge of 
 Windermere. Vol. I. 15*. 
 
 Dublin Translations : Translations into Greek and Latin Verse, by 
 Members of Trinity College, Dublin. Edited by ROBERT YELVERTON TYRRKLL, 
 M.A. Dublin, D.Lit. Q. Univ., Fellow of Trinity College, and Regius Prof essor 
 of Greek in the University of Dublin. 12$. 6d. 
 
 The Acharnians of Aristophanes. Translated into English Verse by 
 ROBERT YELVERTON TYRRELL, M.A.Dublin, D. Lit. Q.Univ., Fellow of Trinity 
 College, Dublin, and Regius Professor of Greek. 
 
 Evangelia Antehieronymiana ex Codice vetusto Dublinensi. 
 Ed. T. K. ABBOTT, B.D. 
 
 DUBLIN: HODGES, FIGGIS, AND CO. 
 LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 F.A.TJST 
 
 FROM THE GERMAN OF GOETHE 
 
 The following are EXTRACTS from Critical Notices of DR. WEBB'S 
 Translation : 
 
 The College Series Committee is highly to 
 be congratulated on the appearance of such 
 a book under their auspices ; and so is Dr. 
 Webb himseif, who in the midst of multi- 
 farious professorial and professional avoca- 
 tions has produced certainly the finest 
 English poem which has appeared since the 
 Epic of Hades. -Daily depress. 
 
 We feel little hesitation in venturing to 
 predict that this version will speedily be 
 assigned by German proficients and by 
 students of the Goethe- culrus an unique 
 preeminence over all its predecessors, and 
 that for many a day Webb's Faust will be the 
 English Faust. It is, in truth, a reproduction 
 rather than a translation of Goethe's drama ; 
 and it is this because it is so exquisitely 
 faithful to the words, idioms, construction, 
 and spirit of the original. The versification 
 is a marvel, whether regarded as a fac-simile 
 or as a spontaneous outpouring; and, indeed, 
 the whole translation might well pass for the 
 latter. Freeman's Journal. 
 
 In rendering the solemn and sublime 
 passages the translator gives proof of great 
 mastery over the resources of English versi- 
 fication and poetic language. The fidelity 
 with which he adheres to the author's mean- 
 ing, while compressing it into the same 
 space as that of the original, is most remark- 
 able. Scarcely any idea, even though merely 
 conveyed by one of the joints of a German 
 composite word, is omitted, and yet nearly 
 always the version has all the force of un- 
 trammelled original writing of a high order. 
 This is all the more praiseworthy from the 
 tact that Dr. Webb, believing that much of 
 the charm of Faust resides in the curiosa 
 felicitas of the wording, has set himself to 
 giving English equivalents for the incessant 
 changes of rhythm, the alliteration and asso- 
 nance, and the double and even triple rhyme 
 of the German. Irish Times. 
 
 Although it is by far the best translation 
 of the Faust, we fancy the chief effect of its 
 publication will be to set readers thinking 
 of the aim, the tendency, the history of the 
 original poem, rather than of the skill with 
 which it has been rendered into English. 
 Dr. Webb's prolegomena and the copious 
 and instructive notes at the end of the 
 volume will interest a wider circle of 
 readers than the translation itself, and are 
 
 of the kind can be. He has cleared up many 
 difficulties, as regards the time the drama 
 is supposed to occupy, and by so doing has 
 brought out the meaning of many subtle 
 and profound beauties which have hitherto 
 escaped attention. As to his translation, 
 he imposed on himself conditions such as 
 would have made the task impossible to any 
 hand but that one who was himself a poet, 
 and who was master of all the resources of 
 the English tongue. He adheres with mar- 
 
 vellous fidelity to the ever- varying metre of 
 the original : in every line and sentence he 
 places the emphasis precisely where it was 
 placed by Goethe ; there is not a weak nor 
 an inept word in his version from beginning 
 to end. Evening Mail. 
 
 His explanation of the minute chronology 
 of the action is extremely ingenious ; it puts 
 some parts of the dramatic effect in a new 
 light, and clears up some points which have 
 formerly been taken as showing on Goethe's 
 part either carelessness or forgetfulness of 
 ordinary dramatic rules. An indication is 
 expressly given in the text, but overlooked 
 by some of the commentators, that the Wal- 
 purgisnacht follows closely on the slaying 
 of Valentine. In the first scene, again 
 Faust speaks of the moon as at the full ; 
 on Walpurgis-night it is still waxing (die 
 unvollkommne Scheibe des rothen Monds). 
 Hence Dr. Webb concludes that the whole 
 action (down to the Walpurgis-night) must 
 take place within three weeks; and, work- 
 ing out the time disposable for the loves of 
 Faust and Margaret, he fixes the scene of 
 Valentine's death to the very night following 
 the last dialogue between Faust and Mar- 
 garet in the garden. This reading not only 
 makes the dramatic interest concentrated 
 instead of diffuse, but gives a distinct signi- 
 ficance, as Dr. Webb argues in detail, to 
 every incident. Saturday Review. 
 
 While Professor Webb deals freely with 
 many passages, there are times when he 
 comes as near the original as it is possible 
 for any translator to do, and this is notably 
 the case in the dancing metres of the poem. 
 In the lines beginning Der Shafer putzte 
 sich zum Tanz, he has managed to convey 
 in a remarkable degree the spirit which 
 pervades them. The exquisite passage in 
 which Faust begins 
 
 gliicklich, wer noch hoffen kann, 
 Aus diesem Meer des Irrthums 
 
 aufzutauchen ! 
 
 rich as it is in Professor Blackie's latest 
 translations we must think comes out richer 
 and with more brilliancy in Professor 
 Webb's. Academy. 
 
 The translator has made a long and con- 
 scientious study of Goethe and of Faust. 
 His principles of criticism and translation 
 are well considered and trustworthy. Many 
 passages are rendered with singular felicity 
 of expression, and we have lighted upon 
 none which we are forced to pronounce 
 erroneous. Daily News., 
 
 His verse moves freely, while retaining a 
 large measure of metrical conformity to the 
 original, and his grammatical and critical 
 notes are a proof of the care which he has 
 exercised to render the German correctly. 
 Guardian. 
 
 DUBLIN: HODGES, FIGGIS, AND CO. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
DUBLIN UNIVERSITY PRESS SERIES Continued, 
 
 The Correspondence of Robert Southey -with Caroline Bowles : 
 
 to which are added Correspondence with Shelley, and Southey's Dreams' 
 Edited, with an Introduction, by EDWARD DOWDEN, LL.D., Professor of English 
 Literature in the University of Dublin. 14$. 
 
 The Mathematical and other Tracts of the late James M'Cullagrh, 
 F.T.C.D., Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Dublin. Now 
 first collected, and edited by REV. J. H. JELLETT, B.D., and REV. SAMUEL 
 HAUGHTON, M.D., Fellows of Trinity College, Dublin. 15^. 
 
 A Sequel to the First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid, con- 
 taining an Easy Introduction to Modern Geometry. With numerous Examples. 
 By JOHN CASEY, LL.D., F.R.S., Vice- President, Royal Irish Academy ; Member 
 of the London Mathematical Society ; and Professor of the Higher Mathematics 
 and Mathematical Physics in the Catholic University of Ireland. 35. 6d. 
 
 Theory of Equations : with an Introduction to the Theory of Binary 
 Algebraic Forms. By WILLIAM SNOW BURNSIDE, M. A., Erasmus Smith's 
 Professor of Mathematics in the University of Dublin : and ARTHUR WILLIAM 
 PANTON, M.A., Fellow and Tutor, Trinity College, Dublin. los. 6d. 
 
 The Parmenides of Plato : with Introduction, Analysis, and Notes. 
 By THOMAS MAGUIRE, LL.D., D. LIT., Fellow and Tutor, Trinity College, 
 Dublin, is. 6d. 
 
 The Medical Lang-uagre of St. Luke : a Proof from Internal Evi- 
 dence that "The Gospel according to St. Luke" and "The Acts of the 
 Apostles" were written by the same Person, and that the writer was a Medical 
 Man. By the REV. WILLIAM KIRK HOBART, LL.D., Ex-Scholar, Trinity 
 College, Dublin. i6s. 
 
 Life of Sir Wm. Rowan Hamilton, Knt., LL.D., D.C.L., M.R.I. A., 
 
 Andrews Professor of Astronomy in the University of Dublin, and Royal Astro- 
 nomer of Ireland, &rc. <W. . including Selections from his Poems, Correspon- 
 dence, and Miscellaneous Writings. By ROBERT PERCEVAL GRAVES, M.A. 
 Sub-Dean of the Chapel Royal, Dublin, and formerly Curate in charge of 
 Windermere. Vol. I. i$s. 
 
 Dublin Translations : Translations into Greek and Latin Verse, by 
 Members of Trinity College, Dublin. Edited by ROBERT YELVERTON TYRRELL, 
 M.A. Dublin, D.Lit. Q. Univ., Fellow of Trinity College, and Regius Professor 
 of Greek in the University of Dublin. 125. bd. 
 
 The Acharnians of Aristophanes. Translated into English Verse by 
 R.OBERT YELVERTON TYRRELL, M.A.Dublin, D. Lit. Q.Univ., Fellow of Trinity 
 College, Dublin, and Regius Professor of Greek. 
 
 Evang-elia Antehieronymiana ex Codice vetusto Dublinensi. 
 Ed. T. K. ABBOTT, B.D. 
 
 DUBLIN: HODGES, FJGGIS, AND CO. 
 LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 IF.A.TJST 
 
 FROM THE GERMAN OF GOETHE 
 
 The following are EXTRACTS from Critical Notices of DR. WEBB'S 
 Translation : 
 
 The College Series Committee is highly to 
 be congratulated on the appearance of such 
 a book under their auspices ; and so is Dr. 
 Webb himseif, who in the midst of multi- 
 farious professorial and professional avoca- 
 tions has produced certainly the finest 
 English poem which has appeared since the 
 Epic of Hades. Daily Express. 
 
 We feel little hesitation in venturing to 
 predict that this version will speedily be 
 assigned by German proficients and by 
 students of the Goethe- cultus an unique 
 preeminence over all its predecessors, and 
 that for many a day Webb's Faust will be the 
 English Faust. It is, in truth, a reproduction 
 rather than a translation of Goethe's drama ; 
 and it is this because it is so exquisitely 
 faithful to the words, idioms, construction, 
 and spirit of the original. The versification 
 is a marvel, whether regarded as a fac-simile 
 or as a spontaneous outpouring ; and, indeed, 
 the whole translation might well pass for the 
 latter. Freeman's Journal. 
 
 In rendering the solemn and sublime 
 passages the translator gives proof of great 
 mastery over the resources of English versi- 
 fication and poetic language. The fidelity 
 with which he adheres to the author's mean- 
 ing, while compressing it into the same 
 space as that of the original, is most remark- 
 able. Scarcely any idea, even though merely 
 conveyed by one of the joints of a German 
 composite word, is omitted, and yet nearly 
 always the version has all the force of un- 
 trammelled original writing of a high order. 
 This is all the more praiseworthy from the 
 tact that Dr. Webb, believing that much of 
 the charm of Faust resides in the curiosa 
 felidtas of the wording, has set himself to 
 giving English equivalents for the incessant 
 changes of rhythm, the alliteration and asso- 
 nance, and the double and even triple rhyme 
 of the German. Irish Times. 
 
 Although it is by far the best translation 
 of the Faust, we fancy the chief effect of its 
 publication will be to set readers thinking 
 of the aim, the tendency, the history of the 
 original poem, rather than of the skiU with 
 which it has been rendered into English. 
 Dr. Webb's prolegomena and the copious 
 and instructive notes at the end of the 
 volume will interest a wider circle of 
 readers than the translation itself, and are 
 as stimulating and as suggestive as anything 
 of the kind can be. He has cleared up many 
 difficulties, as regards the time the drama 
 is supposed to occupy, and by so doing has 
 brought out the meaning of many subtle 
 and profound beauties which have hitherto 
 escaped attention. As to his translation, 
 he imposed on himself conditions such as 
 would have made the task impossible to any 
 hand but that one who was himself a poet, 
 and who was master of all the resources of 
 the English tongue. He adheres with mar- 
 
 vellous fidelity to the ever-varying metre of 
 the original : in every line and sentence he 
 places the emphasis precisely where it was 
 placed by Goethe ; there is not a weak nor 
 an inept word in his version from beginning 
 to end. Evening Mail. 
 
 His explanation of the minute chronology 
 of the action is extremely ingenious ; it puts 
 some parts of the dramatic effect in a new 
 light, and clears up some points which have 
 formerly been taken as showing on Goethe's 
 part either carelessness or forgetfulness of 
 ordinary dramatic rules. An indication is 
 expressly given in the text, but overlooked 
 by some of the commentators, that the Wal- 
 purgisnacht follows closely on the slaying 
 of Valentine. In the first scene, again 
 Faust speaks of the moon as at the full ; 
 on Walpurgis-night it is still waxing (die 
 unvollkommne Scheibe des rothen Monds). 
 Hence Dr. Webb concludes that the whole 
 action (down to the Walpurgis-night) must 
 take place within three weeks; and, work- 
 ing out the time disposable for the loves of 
 Faust and Margaret, he fixes the scene of 
 Valentine's death to the very night following 
 the last dialogue between Faust and Mar- 
 garet in the garden. This reading not only 
 makes the dramatic interest concentrated 
 instead of diffuse, but gives a distinct signi- 
 ficance, as Dr. Webb argues in detail, to 
 every incident. Saturday Review. 
 
 While Professor Webb deals freely with 
 many passages, there are times when he 
 comes as near the original as it is possible 
 for any translator to do, and this is notably 
 the case in the dancing metres of the poem. 
 In the lines beginning Der Shafer putzte 
 sich zum Tanz, he has managed to convey 
 in a remarkable degree the spirit which 
 pervades them. The exquisite passage in 
 which Faust begins 
 
 gliicklich, wer noch hoffen kann, 
 Aus diesem Meer des Irrthums 
 
 aufzutauchen ! 
 
 rich as it is in Professor Blackie's latest 
 translations we must think conies out richer 
 and with more brilliancy in Professor 
 Webb's. Academy. 
 
 The translator has made a long and con- 
 scientious study of Goethe and of Faust. 
 His principles of criticism and translation 
 are well considered and trustworthy. Many 
 passages are rendered with singular felicity 
 of expression, and we have lighted upon 
 none which we are forced to pronounce 
 erroneous. Daily News.. 
 
 His verse moves freely, while retaining a 
 large measure of metrical conformity to the 
 original, and his grammatical and critical 
 notes are a proof of the care which he has 
 exercised to render the German correctly. 
 Guardian. 
 
 DUBLIN: HODGES, FIGGIS, AND CO. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
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