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 r^ OC
 
 Philosophies Ancient and Modern 
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL 
 REALISM
 
 PHILOSOPHIES 
 
 ANCIENT AND MODERN 
 
 Presenting the salient features of the Philosophies of 
 
 Greece and Rome and of the Middle Ages, 
 
 as well as of modern Europe. 
 
 Cloth, 50 cents net. 
 
 Early Greek Philosopliy. By A. W. Benn, author of The Philo- 
 sophy oj Greece, Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century. 
 
 Stoicism. By Professor St. George Stock, Lecturer at 
 Birmingham University. 
 
 Plato. By Professor A. E. Taylor, St. Andrews University, 
 author of The Problem of Gonduct. 
 
 Scholasticism. By Father Rickaby, S.J. 
 
 Hobbes. By Professor A. E. Taylor, late Professor at M'Gill 
 College, Montreal. 
 
 Locke. By Professor Alexander, of Owens College, Man- 
 chester. 
 
 Comte and Mill. By T. W. Whittaker, author of The 
 Neoplatonists, Apollonius of Tyana and other Essays. 
 
 Herbert Spencer. By W. H. Hudson, author ol An Intro- 
 dxiction to Spencer's Philosophy. 
 
 Schopenhauer. By T. W. Whittaker. 
 
 Berkeley. By Professor Campbell Fraser, D. C.L., LL.D. 
 
 Bergson. By Father Tyrrell. 
 
 Lucretius and the Atomists. By Edward Clodd, author of 
 
 The Story of the Creation.
 
 BERKELEY AND 
 SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 By 
 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL FRASER 
 
 HON. D.C.L. oxford; fellow of the BRITISH ACADEMY; PROFESSOR 
 
 (emeritus) of logic and METAPHYSICS IN THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH 
 
 NEW YORK 
 DODGE PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 214-220 EAST 23RD STREET
 
 
 FOREWOED 
 
 Spinoza and Berkeley: a coincidence. — Among 
 modern philosophers Spinoza and Berkeley rank 
 together in the manner of their reception. For 
 more than a century after they died both were 
 misinterpreted or neglected. Within the last 
 century each in his way has become an influential 
 factor in the excitement and formation of philo- 
 sophical thought. 
 
 Both tardily recognised. — Spinoza died in 
 1677, and for more than a hundred years after 
 was vaguely regarded as an impious atheist, under 
 the ban of civil and ecclesiastical authority. 
 Berkeley died in 1753, and for a century was 
 ridiculed as an eccentric visionary, who denied 
 the reality of the earth on which he trod, and of 
 the human beings by whom he was surrounded. 
 
 Each now an influential philosophical factor. 
 — To-day the contemplative reverence of Spinoza's 
 temper is freely acknowledged, and his works are 
 accepted as classics in the philosophical litera-
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 ture of Europe, the productions of one who 
 devoted his short life to reasoned meditation 
 about God, or the Universe which he identified 
 with God. And the philosophy of Berkeley is 
 now interpreted as a serious endeavour to vindi- 
 cate the ultimate spirituality of the universe, and 
 the moral or supernatural agency constantly at 
 work in nature. Within the last forty years (in 
 1871 and 1901) two large editions of his Collected 
 Works have issued from the Oxford Clarendon 
 Press, besides about ten thousand copies of anno- 
 tated ' Selections from Berkeley,' much used as 
 a text-book in the colleges and universities of 
 Britain and America. Within the same period, 
 too, Berkeley has been the subject of numerous 
 criticisms in the periodical literature of France, 
 Italy, Germany, and America, as well as in this 
 country. 
 
 Questions common to both, but diflferently 
 answered by each.— Spinoza and Berkeley had 
 this in common, that they found their supreme 
 interest in the final problem of the universe into 
 which we are all ushered as strangers at birth, 
 and in which we now find ourselves transitory 
 visitors, trying to forecast our final destiny. Is 
 Matter or Mind, Body or Spirit, or Something 
 that transcends both, at the root of all ? Is the 
 vi
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 Reality with which we have constantly to do 
 blind, uninterpretable, meaningless; or is it the 
 revelation of perfect reason and goodness ? Is 
 the world, underneath its continuous transforma- 
 tions, a settled Cosmos, and thus trustworthy and 
 interpretable ; or is it ultimately a Chaos, which 
 for a time takes the appearance of Cosmos, but 
 which may become a chaotic enigma, unfit to 
 yield science, or to enable us to regulate our 
 actions for the benefit of life ? Must I regard 
 myself as a transitory bubble on the endless 
 stream, or as destined for continuous personal 
 or morally responsible life, after this embodied 
 self loses its present embodiment in death ? 
 Is Pessimism or Optimism the final goal of 
 the evolution in which I find my embodied self 
 involved ? 
 
 To which this Age is more alive than any 
 preceding one. — These are questions to which 
 this age has become more awake than any pre- 
 ceding one ; which may account for its being 
 attracted, at opposite poles, by the Pantheistic 
 reasonings of Spinoza and the Spiritual Realism 
 cf Berkeley. Spinoza in his final Unity finds 
 God in the evil as well as in the good, in the 
 lives of Caligula and Borgia as much as in 
 the lives of the wisest or holiest of mankind, 
 vii
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 Berkeley, on the other hand, less adventurous 
 intellectually, accepts in faith the fact of man's 
 independent power to make himself wicked, and 
 thus refers to the man himself, apart from God, 
 the evil acts of which man accordingly is the 
 creator. 
 
 Can they be disposed of in science of nature 
 alone ? — Is a final settlement of these questions 
 to be looked for in a scientific study of nature 
 and so-called natural causes? Can they be dis- 
 posed of (positively or negatively) by observation 
 and physical induction ? or is spiritual insight, 
 under necessary presuppositions of reason, re- 
 quired? In short, is the true philosophy Material- 
 ism or Spiritual Realism ? 
 
 Materialism and Spiritual Realism. — Berke- 
 ley's Realism belongs to one of the two forms, 
 which philosophy has been apt to assume from 
 the beginning ; — the shallower, which stops short 
 amidst the visible and tangible phenomena of 
 the material world and their laws; and the 
 deeper, which is dissatisfied till it reaches the 
 spiritual Avorld, on which physical phenomena 
 depend, and from which they derive their scien- 
 tific significance. He thus contrasts them : — 
 ' There are two sorts of philosophers. The one 
 placed Body first in the order of things, and 
 viii
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 made the faculty of thinking depend there- 
 upon ; supposing that the principles of all things 
 are corporeal ; that Body most really or prin- 
 cipally exists, and all other things in a secondary 
 sense and by virtue of that. Others, making 
 all corporeal things to be dependent upon Soul or 
 Mind, think this to exist in the first place and 
 primary sense, and the being of bodies to be 
 altogether derived from, and presuppose that of 
 Spirit or Mind.' ^ 
 
 The Sequel. — The ground in reason, and the 
 moral implicates of the second of those philoso- 
 phies are presented for critical consideration in 
 the following chapters ; but perhaps this was a 
 presumptuous undertaking for one in his nine- 
 tieth year. 
 
 ^ Siris, sec. 263. 
 October 1908. 
 
 IX
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 FAOK 
 
 I. Berkeley, 1 
 
 II. The Material World and its Natural Order, 17 
 
 III. The Human World and Moral Disorder, . 45 
 
 IV. God, or the Universal Mind, and Theistic 
 
 Optimism, 62 
 
 A Short List of Books bearing on the Sub- 
 ject, 85 
 
 Dates in the Life of Berkeley, . . .86 
 
 XI
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL 
 REALISM 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 BERKELEY 
 
 Berkeley's Place in the Modern Philosophical 
 Movement. — John Locke, George Berkeley, and 
 David Hume were in their times the leading 
 representatives of European philosophy. England 
 was represented by the cautious and sagacious 
 Locke, watchful of the limits of human know- 
 ledge ; Ireland by Berkeley, the subtle spiritual 
 realist, with his finally moral and religious con- 
 ception of the universe ; and Scotland by Hume, 
 the agnostic critic of the supernatural. Locke's 
 Essay or book of ideas belongs to the seven- 
 teenth century ; the earlier part of the eighteenth 
 was illuminated by Berkeley ; and its later years 
 were stimulated intellectually by Hume. Prior to 
 this memorable trio, the philosophic centre had 
 A I
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 been in France, under Descartes and Malebranche, 
 and with Spinoza in Holland; after Hume, but 
 by reaction, the centre shifted from Britain to 
 Germany under Kant and Hegel, and Lotze, the 
 successors of Leibniz. 
 
 Berkeley's Personality. — In personal charm, 
 spiritual fervour, benevolent activity, pleasing 
 imagination, and graceful literary expression, all 
 combined, Berkeley is a prince among philo- 
 sophers and philanthropists. His subtle thought 
 evoked the sceptical intelligence of Hume, and 
 his ardent human interest made the social 
 economy of Ireland, and the Christian civilisa- 
 tion of the world beyond the Atlantic inspiring 
 ideals in his life. 
 
 Kilkenny and Trinity College, Dublin.— The 
 record of his opening years is scanty. We know 
 that he was born in the county of Kilkenny in 
 1685, and that he was trained in the local 
 academy at Kilkenny. At the age of fifteen he 
 entered Trinity College, Dublin, where he gradu- 
 ated in 1704, the year in which Locke died. Three 
 years later he was admitted to a Fellowship with 
 high distinction in Mathematics and Philosophy, 
 and afterwards took orders in the Irish Church. 
 
 Inspired by a new Far-reaching Thought.— 
 When hardly twenty, a new and far-reaching 
 
 2
 
 BERKELEY 
 
 thought about the material world, and what its 
 reality means, had somehow taken possession of 
 him. His 'Commonplace Book,' first published 
 in my Life and Letters of Berkeley in 1871, is a 
 striking revelation of his singular state of mind, 
 between the age of nineteen and twenty-four — 
 fervid hostility to empty abstractions, about which 
 philosophers were apt to busy themselves, and 
 reaction in favour of concrete realities and living 
 experience. Through its pages he is under the 
 inspiration of this far-reaching thought, anon 
 calling forth flashes of philosophical enthusiasm. 
 It is constantly referred to by Berkeley as the 
 way of escape from sceptical despair, and as 
 what, notwithstanding the misunderstanding and 
 opposition it was sure to encounter, he was 
 resolved to press upon the world with all con- 
 venient speed. 
 
 This Thought pervades the 'Commonplace 
 Book ' of his Youth. — Here are a few sentences, 
 like many others in the ' Commonplace Book ' : 
 ' The reverse of the Principle I take to have been 
 the chief source of all that scepticism and foUy, 
 all those contradictory and inexplicable puzzling 
 absurdities that have in all ages been a reproach 
 to human reason. I know there is a mighty 
 sect of men wlio will oppose me. I am young, I 
 
 3
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 am an upstart, I am vain. Very well, I will 
 patiently bear up under the most lessening, 
 vilifying appellations the pride and rage of man 
 can devise. One thing I am not guilty of. I do 
 not pin my faith on the sleeve of any great man. 
 . . . 'Tis on the discovery of the nature and mean- 
 ing of Existence that I chiefly insist. This puts 
 the wide difference between the sceptics and me. 
 This I think wholly new. I am sure it is new 
 in me. ... I take not away Substances. I only 
 reject the philosophic sense, which is in effect 
 nonsense, of the word Substance. Ask a man 
 not tainted with philosophic jargon, what he 
 means by Corporeal Substance. He shall answer, 
 bulk, solidity, and such like sensible qualities. 
 These I retain. The 'p^^'i^osophic Substance, of 
 which I have no idea, I discard; if a man may 
 be said to discard that which never had any 
 being, was never so much as imagined. ... I know 
 not what they mean by " things considered in 
 themselves." This is nonsense, jargon. . . . Thing 
 and idea are much words of the same extent 
 and meaning. By idea I mean any sensible 
 or imaginable thing. . . . Real existence is not 
 conceivable without perception and volition. 
 Existence is perceiving and willing, or being 
 perceived and willed. ... I am the farthest 
 
 4
 
 BERKELEY 
 
 from scepticism of any man. I know with an 
 intuitive knowledge tlie existence of other things 
 as well as my own soul. The chief thing I pre- 
 tend to do is only to remove the mist or veil 
 of words.' 1 In short, if men would lay aside 
 abstract words and betake themselves to real 
 ideas, they could not err, unless by misinter- 
 preting the real ideas actually present to their 
 senses. 
 
 Presented to the World in * Essay on Vision,* 
 ' Principles,' and * Dialogues ' (1709-13).— Berke- 
 ley hastened to give the world the pregnant 
 thought which thus early inspired him. He 
 restrained himself, however, so far as to pro- 
 pose it at first only in one of its applications. 
 The eye, the hand, and the organs of locomotion 
 are our chief media of intercourse with the ma- 
 terial world outside our own bodies. That we 
 cannot see anything not in contact with the 
 organ of seeing, and that all at any distance 
 from the eye is not actually seen, but only 
 signified by what is seen, is the governing 
 thought of his Essay towards a Neiu Tlceory oj 
 Vision^ in which he made his first appearance 
 as a philosopher in 1709. This explanation of 
 seeing was followed in 1710 by the Principles of 
 
 1 See Life and Letters of Berkeley, pp. 30-33. 
 
 5
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 Human Knowledge, in which the chief causes of 
 error and difficulty in the sciences and the grounds 
 of scepticism are inquired into, not as in the eye 
 alone, but in all the five senses. The whole 
 material world is presented as a system of mind- 
 dependent sensible signs, in a measure interpret- 
 able by man, and which men are more or less able 
 to turn to their own uses. The Spiritual Realism, 
 argued for in the Principles, was presented anew 
 in 1713 in Three Dialogues, which revive Plato 
 and Cicero in modern philosophy. They recom- 
 mend the new conception of the reality of the 
 material world to readers who might be repelled 
 by its less lively presentation in the Principles. 
 These three books are the unprecedented achieve- 
 ment of a youth between his twenty-fourth and 
 his twenty-eighth year. 
 
 Leaves Trinity College to see the World. — 
 The continuous philosophical strain at Trinity 
 College made relaxation and change of scene 
 needful. The retired thinker was now to mix 
 with the world. Soon after the appearance of 
 the Dialogues, a Queen's Letter to the Provost 
 of Trinity tells how 'humble suit having been 
 made on behalf of our trusty and well-beloved 
 George Berkeley, one of the Junior Fellows of 
 that our College, that we would give him leave 
 
 6
 
 BERKELEY 
 
 to travel and remain abroad during the space 
 of two years, for the recovery of his health and 
 his improvement in learning, we have thought 
 fit to dispense with the articles of residence on 
 his behalf. The two years' leave of absence was in 
 the end extended to seven, and for twenty years 
 after the date of the Queen's Letter, Berkeley's 
 visits to Ireland were infrequent. His middle life 
 was devoted to philanthropic enterprise more than 
 to philosophical ideas. 
 
 In London and Italy (1713-20).— Berkeley's 
 first social experience away from Dublin was 
 among the brilliant circles in London that made 
 the reign of Anne illustrious in the history of 
 English literature. Introduced by Swift to Addi- 1 
 son and Steele and Pope, the youthful author of I 
 the Dialogues was a favourite in London coffee- 
 houses and saloons in 1713. In the folloAving 
 year he found his way to Italy, where he lingered 
 for some years, amidst scenes congenial to one 
 attracted to art by the associations of history, and 
 already enriched by ancient learning. A record 
 of his movements during some of those years is 
 contained in the 'Journal of a Tour in Italy,' 
 first published in the Life and Letters of 
 Berkeley. 
 
 7
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 Publication of 'De Motu. — He returned to 
 Ireland in 1721. During this prolonged absence 
 the 'New Principle' was not forgotten. One 
 of his resting-places on his way home was at 
 Lyons. There he prepared a Latin Essay on 
 Causation, entitled De Motu, which was pub- 
 lished soon after he reached London. It insists 
 that spiritual agency, human and divine, is 
 the only efficient and final cause of motion 
 in the material world. This is an application 
 to the phenomena of motion of the thought 
 that inspired Berkeley when he was hardly 
 twenty. 
 
 A Philanthropic Project. — Soon after his return 
 to Ireland we find him somehow possessed by the 
 philanthropic inspiration which shaped his life 
 during the next ten years. The philosopher be- 
 came the philanthropic missionary of Christian 
 civilisation in America, ready to sacrifice for this 
 ideal the social attractions of the Old World in 
 which he had grown into middle life. His official 
 connection with Trinity College ended in 1724, 
 when he was made Dean of Derry, one of the most 
 valuable appointments in the Irish Church. But 
 the American project carried him in the same 
 year to London, ready to resign the Deanery in its 
 behalf. It had been much in his mind for 
 
 8
 
 BERKELEY 
 
 three years. ^ Dean Swift thus described the case 
 in a letter to Lord Carteret, then the Irish Lord 
 Lieutenant : — ' There is a gentleman of this king- 
 dom just gone for England. It is Dr. George 
 Berkeley, Dean of Derry. He was a Fellow of the 
 University here; and going to England very 
 young, about thirteen years ago, he became the 
 founder of a sect called the Immaterialists, by the 
 force of a very curious book upon that subject. 
 I am now to mention his errand. He is an abso- 
 lute philosopher with regard to money, titles, and 
 power ; and for three years past has been struck 
 with a notion of founding a university at Bermu- 
 das, by a charter from the Crown. He showed 
 me a little tract which he designs to publish; and 
 there your Excellency will see his whole scheme 
 i of a life academico-philosophical, of a College for 
 j Indian scholars and missionaries ; Avhere he most 
 exorbitantly proposes a whole hundred pounds 
 a year for himself. His heart will break if his 
 Deanery be not taken from him. I discouraged 
 him by the coldness of courts and ministers ; but 
 nothing will do. And therefore I humbly entreat 
 your Excellency either to use such persuasions as 
 will keep one of the first men in the kingdom for 
 
 ^ In 1724 he published a ' Proposal ' to erect a College in 
 the Isles of Bermuda, ' for converting the savage Americans to 
 Christianity,' 
 
 9
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 learning and virtue, quiet at home, or assist liim 
 by your credit to compass his romantic design ; 
 which, however, is very noble and generous.' ^ 
 
 A College at Bermuda. — After years of anxious 
 negotiation in London, where he experienced ' the 
 coldness of courts and ministers,' of which Swift 
 had warned him, Berkeley, with his newly-married 
 wife, sailed on his way to Bermuda, in the faith of 
 a supposed promise by Sir Robert Walpole of a 
 charter, and financial help for the proposed college 
 there, which was to be a fountain of Christian 
 civilisation for the vast Indian population of 
 North America. 
 
 Berkeley in Rhode Island.— He halted on his 
 way for two years in Rhode Island, waiting there 
 in vain for the charter and the grant; but he 
 never saw Bermuda. He had been deluded by 
 the fair words of the minister. )Yet he was not 
 idle in Rhode Island. He bought a little farm 
 and built a house in a pleasant valley in the 
 interior of the island, and there resumed the 
 studies of his early years. 
 
 American Samuel Johnson. — Congenial society 
 was not wanting. Soon after his arrival he was 
 visited by the Reverend Samuel Johnson, dis- 
 tinguished along with Jonathan Edwards as one 
 1 Lift and Letters of Berkeley, pp. 102-3. 
 lO
 
 BERKELEY 
 
 of the two representatives of early American 
 philosophy. Berkeley's letters to Johnson^ are 
 explanations of disputed points in his spiritual 
 realism, to which Johnson was converted, and 
 afterwards defended in his own works, in a man- 
 ner that entitles him to an eminent place among 
 American thinkers. 
 
 Fruits of Study in Rhode Island : ' Alciphron ' 
 and 'Theory of Visual Language' (1732-3).— 
 Some fruits of Berkeley's studies in the secluded 
 American valley were given to the world in 
 1732, immediately after his return to England. 
 Alciphron, or tlte Minute Philosopher, made its 
 appearance in March of that year. In the form 
 of Dialogues he criticised the prevailing material- 
 ism, and presented his spiritual philosophy in 
 aspects fitted to restore faith in the omnipresence 
 of Omnipotent Spirit, in the moral order of the 
 universe, and in the Christian revelation of God. 
 Of the seven Dialogues, the fourth and the last 
 are probably the most interesting. The former 
 expands the visual symbolism of Berkeley's 
 juvenile Essay on Seeing into a universal 
 sense symbolism, which recognises in the ordered 
 sequences of the material world the language 
 of the Omnipotent Spirit in whom we live and 
 
 ^ Life and LcUers of Berkeley, pp. 175-81. 
 II
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 have our being. A hostile critic moved Berkeley 
 to reply. The Theory of Visual Language, show- 
 ing the imviediate Presence and Providence of 
 a Deity, Vindicated and Explained, appeared 
 early in 1733, in answer to strictures on the 
 Fourth Dialogue in Alciphron. 
 
 Bishop of Cloyne. — Berkeley's wanderings in 
 Europe and America during middle life were now 
 ended. Two years after the return from a mission 
 in which he had embarked with so much enthu- 
 siasm, he was made Bishop of Cloyne, through 
 the influence, as it seems, of the philosophic 
 Queen Caroline, and perhaps with some regard to 
 what was due on account of the disillusion of 
 the American vision. This remote diocese in the 
 south of Ireland was his home for twenty years. 
 His cherished hopes had faded. The ideal of 
 America in the future, civilised and Christianised, 
 was dissolved. In his remaining years signs of 
 chastened enthusiasm and failing health abound. 
 Still he resumed at Cloyne the work which 
 cheered the recluse life at Rhode Island and 
 inspired him in far-off years at Trinity College ; 
 now in a more meditative temper, less contro- 
 versial, more disposed to lean for support upon 
 illustrious philosophers of the ancient world, 
 
 12
 
 BERKELEY 
 
 above all on Plato and Aristotle, Plotinus and 
 Proclus. 
 
 ' The Querist ' and the Social State of Ireland 
 (1735-37). — Berkeley's temper was too human 
 and philanthropic for indulgence in merely 
 contemjDlative thought. He was once more in 
 his native country after a long absence. Ireland 
 took the place of America. Industrious self- 
 reliance was lacking among Irishmen, and his 
 own fiivourite motto was ' non sibi sed toti.' The 
 crisis was the occasion of what some may 
 consider the most useful of his books. It took 
 the form of questions, five hundred and ninetv- 
 five in number. The first instalment of The 
 Querist appeared in 1735, and the last in 1737. 
 The sympathy of the Protestant bishop was not 
 confined to the English colony of Protestants. 
 It included all classes of his countrymen. He 
 asked 'whether a scheme for the welfare of 
 Ireland should not take in the whole inhabitants ' ; 
 and ' whether it was not " a vain " attempt to pro- 
 ject the flourishing of our Protestant gentry exclu- 
 sive of the bulk of the natives.' He engaged the 
 co-operation of the Roman communion by a letter 
 to their clergy, asking for their help in trying 
 to induce Irishmen to be industrious. 
 
 * Siris ' and the Medical Virtues of Tar- water. 
 13
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 — Some of his early years at Cloyne were years 
 of famine and disease. This reminded him of 
 American experience of the virtues of tar- water. 
 He became the ardent apostle of this medicine, 
 and connected it by curious links with his spiritual 
 idealism. Contemplating the beneficence of tar- 
 water, he was led by subtle associations to the 
 constitution of the whole material world of which 
 tar was a part; and thence to the efficient and 
 final cause of a universe in which everything is 
 connected with everything else, through the 
 Omnipotent Spirit in Whom the Whole has its 
 being. Although such ' phantoms ' as ' corporeal 
 forces ' pass in the natural sciences as true causes, 
 and are supposed by some to explain every- 
 thing, yet in truth they explain nothing, for all 
 true explanation lies deeper. It is found in 
 Spirit or Mind, not in impotent corporeal 
 things; while all corporeal things depend on 
 Spirit ; this containing, connecting, enlivening the 
 entire material frame, so that those things which 
 before seemed to constitute the whole of exist- 
 ence, prove to be but fleeting phantoms. Such is 
 the spirit of Shns, Berkeley's last addition to the 
 literature of philosophy, described as ' a chain of 
 philosophical reflections and inquiries concerning 
 the virtues of tar-water, and divers other subjects 
 
 14
 
 BERKELEY 
 
 connected together and arising out of one another.' 
 It was his legacy to the world in 1744. 
 
 Old Age and Death in Oxford. — A period of 
 declining health followed. 'I submit to years 
 and infirmity,' he writes to Dean Gervais in 1752. 
 ' My views in this world are mean and narrow ; 
 it is a thinof in which I have small share, and 
 which ought to give me small concern. The 
 evening of life I choose to pass in a quiet retreat. 
 Ambitious projects, intrigues and quarrels of 
 statesmen, are things I have formerly been amused 
 with, but now they seem to be a vain fugitive 
 dream.' He had long been possessed by a roman- 
 tic desire to end his days in Oxford. The time 
 was now come. In the summer of 1752 he found 
 his home in the historic city of colleges. He was 
 not permitted to enjoy it long. On a Sunday in 
 January 1753, surrounded by his family, he was 
 suddenly overtaken by the mystery of death, and 
 the material world, about which he had speculated 
 so long, ceased to be his medium of intercourse 
 with his fellow-men. 
 
 Berkeley's Modest Estimate of his own Philo- 
 sophy. — In the seven philosophical tractates 
 already mentioned — three issued in sanguine 
 impetuous youth, three others in active middle 
 
 15
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 life, and the last in contemplative old age 
 — Berkeley has unfolded and applied the 
 Spiritual Realism of which he is an illustrious 
 modern representative. He recognised how apt 
 his conception of the material world is to be mis- 
 interpreted, and he renounced all claim to a fully 
 elaborated philosophy. ' I do not indeed wonder,' 
 he tells his American friend Johnson, 'that on 
 first reading what I have written, men are not 
 thoroughly convinced. On the contrary, I should 
 very much wonder if prejudices, which have been 
 many years taking root, should be extirpated in 
 a few hours' reading. I had no intention to 
 trouble the world with large volumes. What I 
 have done was rather with a view of giving hints to 
 thinking men, who had leisure and curiosity to go 
 to the bottom of things, and pursue them in their 
 own minds.' ^ 
 
 ^ Life and Letters of Berlceley, p. 181. See also Berkeley's 
 correspondence with Sir John Percival, in Chapter v. of the 
 Berkeley, in Blackwood's Philosophical Classics. 
 
 i6
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE MATERIAL WORLD AND ITS NATURAL ORDER 
 
 The Material World is Real in and through 
 Percipient Mind. Its esse is percipi. — We 
 
 put ourselves at Berkeley's point of view when 
 we try in vain to conceive the material uni- 
 verse and its ambient space existing in all 
 their present reality, yet unfelt, unperceived, 
 unrealised in any intelligence, finite or divine, a 
 dead universe, living mind in every form non- 
 existent. Try to suppose this wholly abstracted 
 material world ' as the sum total of reality. Is 
 the conception possible ? Is it not repugnant to 
 reason ? Must not a dead material universe, 
 abstracted from all activities of living spirit, 
 human or other, be wholly destitute of qualities ? 
 What can be meant by an unseen colour, or an 
 unheard sound, or untouched, unresisted hard- 
 ness ? Is not human perception of tliese the 
 deepest and truest conception we can form of 
 what their existence or reality means ? May we 
 B 17
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 not even say that the material world exists only 
 in order that it may be perceived, so that its 
 changes may thus be signs to each of lis of the 
 reality of other bodies and spirits, — a world 
 J external to ourselves ? When I try honestly to 
 make this experiment of abstracting matter from 
 all living spirit, I find, Berkeley would say, 
 that the material world inevitably loses reality 
 and becomes an unthinkable abstraction, which 
 we may coll ' matter ' or ' corporeal substance,' 
 using words, nevertheless, that have no meaning. 
 Must not j)erciin, in short, be the esse of the 
 things of sense ? 
 
 That Perception is needed to make the 
 Material World Real is Self-evident. — By 
 Berkeley, in his youthful ardour, no proof or 
 argument was required to sustain this proposition ; 
 to him the constant dependence of the material 
 world upon the activities of living spirit seemed 
 self-evident. It was but looking into one's own 
 "^ thoughts and trying whether one could conceive 
 as possible, or in no way repugnant to reason, 
 a figure or a motion, or a sound, or a colour, 
 existing as an unperceived reality. If any one 
 could do this, he was ready to abandon his 
 favourite principle of the absolute dependence of 
 the data of the senses for their reality upon living 
 i8
 
 THE MATERIAL WORLD 
 
 Mind or Spirit. It could not be. ' Some truths ^ 
 then are so near and obvious,' he exclaims, ' that a S^ 
 man need only open his eyes to see them. Such 
 I take this important one to be, 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 substance Avithout a 
 mind; that ihdr being is to be perceived or 
 known; and that so long as they are not per- 
 ceived by me, or do not exist in my mind, or in 
 that of any other created spirit, they must either 
 have no existence at all, or else subsist in the 
 mind of some Eternal Spirit ; it being perfectly 
 unintelligible, and involving all the absurdity of 
 abstraction, to attribute to any single part of 
 them an existence independent of Spirit. To 
 be convinced of which one has only to try to 
 separate the h'ioig of a sensible thing from its 
 being ijerceived: '^ In short, if there was no 
 living spirit in existence to maintain the reality 
 of the things of sense, the material world could 
 have no reality. This alleged self-evident truth 
 is above all what the student of Berkeley has to 
 ponder and test, by prolonged and varied mental 
 experiments of his own. 
 
 1 Principles of Human Knoivledge, sec. 6. Sec also the first 
 of the Three Dialogues. 
 
 19
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 An Objection answered. — It is not obvious at 
 first, or indeed at last, to the unreflecting. They 
 are ready to say that nothing is easier than to 
 suppose books existing on a table, or trees exist- 
 ing in a park, or the stars existing in the ambient 
 space, and no one all the time perceiving or 
 thinking about them. Quite true, Berkeley 
 Avould reply; but, in that case, the necessary 
 conditions of the experiment have not been com- 
 plied with. The living mind of the objector 
 himself has not been withdrawn, and so the 
 abstraction of spirit has not been complete. 
 ' What,' he asks, ' is all this, I beseech you, more 
 than framing in your own mind ideas of books, 
 trees, and stars, and at the same time omitting 
 to frame the idea of any one that may perceive 
 them ? ' So that is nothing to the purpose. It 
 only shows that the objector is able to perceive 
 and imagine; not that things can have intelli- 
 gible reality without a living perception of them. 
 It shows that a man forgetting to take notice of 
 himself has been in consequence deluded into 
 supposing that he has found bodies existing 
 wholly divorced from realising spirit; although 
 all the while they were being realised in the 
 objector's own experience. 
 
 The Material World consists of Sense-pre- 
 
 20
 
 THE MATERIAL WORLD 
 
 sented Appearances.— Accordingly the material 
 world consists wholly of what we may call sense- 
 presented phenomena or appearances, sensible 
 qualities, ideas of sense as Berkeley calls them, on 
 account of their dependence on being perceived. 
 Colours are presented when we see, motions and 
 resistances when we touch or move, and sounds 
 in their varieties when we hear. 
 
 The Individual ' Things ' of Sense are Bundles 
 of Appearances. — The appearances presented 
 to our senses do not come and go as isolated 
 units. They appear blended together in separate 
 bundles. Being found to cohere, the resembling 
 bundles ' come to be marked by one name, and 
 to be reputed one thing.' Thus a certain colour, 
 taste, smell, jBgure, and consistence, having been 
 observed to go together, are accounted one distinct 
 thing, signified by the name apple. Other col- 
 lections constitute a stone, a tree, a book, and the 
 like sensible things ; which, as they are pleasing 
 or disagreeable, excite in us the passions of love, 
 hatred, joy, grief, and so forth. 
 
 What Material 'Substances' and 'Causes' 
 mean according to Spiritual Realism. — The 
 different bundles of sensible qualities, or, as 
 Berkeley calls them, ' collections of the real 
 ideas that are presented to the senses,' are all 
 
 21
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 that he meant by ' material substances.' A sub- 
 stance is nothing more than an isolated aggre- 
 gate of qualities, somehow held together, and 
 subject to continuous orderly changes of appear- 
 ance. The united qualities undergo transforma- 
 tions in an order commonly called the order 
 of nature. The steadiness of the order in which 
 their transformations proceed enables us, after 
 sufficient observation of their habits, to predict 
 coming forms that they must assume, so that 
 present phenomena become signs of absent 
 phenomena with which they are connected under 
 natural law ; thus ' giving us a sort of foresight, 
 which enables us to regulate our conduct in the 
 material world for the benefit of life, and without 
 which we should be eternally at a loss.'^ And 
 as 'substances,' in the material world, are only 
 bundles of qualities, so 'causes,' in the material 
 world, are only natural signs of coming changes. 
 My habitual observation of apples enables me 
 to foresee the taste of an apple before I eat it. 
 Experience of the motions of heavenly bodies, 
 those huge material substances, enables science to 
 forecast the times of sunrise and sunset centuries 
 in advance. But we know no more about material 
 substance than that it is a bundle of sense- 
 
 ^ See Principles, sec. 31. 
 22
 
 THE MATERIAL WORLD 
 
 presented qualities, and no more about their 
 material causes than that the transformations 
 in nature occur in a constant reliable order. 
 What Power keeps the appearances united in 
 bundles, or why the transformations which the 
 bundles undergo are orderly and not chaotic, our 
 senses do not tell us. ' That food nourishes, sleep 
 refreshes, and fire warms us ; that to sow in the 
 seed-time is the way to reap in the harvest, and 
 in general that to obtain such and such ends, 
 such and such means are conducive — all this 
 we know, not by discovering any necessary con- 
 nection between our ideas and sense, but only 
 by the observation of the settled laws of nature, 
 without which we should be all in uncertainty 
 and confusion, and a grown man no more know 
 how to manage himself in the affairs of life than 
 an infant just born.' ^ 
 
 Natural Co-existences and Natural Sequences. 
 — In short, we find that the phenomena of which 
 the material world consists coexist in separate 
 so-called 'substances,' and that they follow one 
 another in a steady and therefore calculable 
 succession, called ' causal ' order. But all we are 
 entitled to mean by material substance is this 
 coexistence of qualities; and all we are entitled 
 
 ^ Principles, sec. 31. 
 23
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM • 
 
 to mean by material causation is this orderlj'', 
 calculable succession of facts, which all depend 
 for their realit}^ on being perceived. 
 
 Percipient Spirits and Self-consciousness.— 
 
 But this is not the whole or the chief part. 
 Objects in the material world depend for their real 
 existence on being perceived. Is there nothing 
 to tell about the percipients as well as the per- 
 ceived ? The inconsiderate are apt to forget this 
 question, because percipient spirits are not visible 
 objects of sense, with which all are familiar; and 
 yet percipient spirits are at the root of all things. 
 So besides all that endless variety of ideas or 
 objects of knowledge, aggregated in their (so- 
 called) substances, and naturally ordered accord- 
 ing to their (so-called) natural causes — besides 
 these, Berkeley finds a ' something ' which knows 
 or perceives them, and exercises divers operations, 
 as willing, imagining, remembering, about them. 
 ' This perceiving active being is what I call Mind, 
 Spirit, Soul, or Myself. By which words I do not 
 denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely 
 distinct from them, wherein they exist ; or, which 
 is the same thing, whereby they are perceived.' ^ 
 Thus the universe in which I am living con- 
 
 ^ Principles, sec. 2. 
 24
 
 THE MATERIAL WORLD 
 
 sists of bundles of sensible appearances, con- 
 stantly undergoing transformations, in an orderly 
 calculable manner, all dependent on Spirit or 
 Mind. 
 
 Signified by the Personal Pronouns. — But 
 what of this ' something,' signified by the personal 
 pronoun ' I,' — not to speak of ' you ' or ' he "? ' I' is 
 neither a quality nor a bundle of qualities, like the 
 things of sense ; nor can it be an empty abstrac- 
 tion, like the abstract material substance of some 
 philosophers 1 For ' I ' continues the same person ; 
 but the world of the senses, including my own 
 body, is continually changing. In the whole 
 world of sense-presented appearances, I find no- 
 thing corresponding to the ' self ' that I am obliged 
 to presuppose in all perceptions ; and that is in a 
 manner revealed when in memory I recall the 
 past, and recognise that ' I ' am a person who 
 is still the same ijerson as I was years before. 
 
 My personal Identity. — I find nothing in 
 the world of the senses corresponding to this 
 cord, as it were, of personal identity. I cannot 
 remember the past without being sure that ' I ' 
 existed in that past. To suppose that my memory 
 can go back to what happened before I existed 
 would subvert the basis of knowledge. And my 
 present feelings and thoughts are not thus 
 
 25
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 identical with past ones. The pain or pleasure 
 of to-day is not identical with the pain or pleasure 
 I felt this day last year, however much it may 
 resemble it. Without this personal identity ' I ' 
 could not be responsible for actions. Not so with 
 the things of sense. When I call my body, or 
 any other of the things of sense, ' the same ' to- 
 day as it was last year, this is only in a con- 
 ventional meaning of the term ' same,' for they 
 have undergone much change of their constituent 
 phenomena in the interval ; and the phenomena 
 are the whole of them, nothing permanent 
 underlying, as in the unique case of the identity 
 of the * I.' Moreover, things of sense are only 
 sigfns of other thino^s of sense, under laws over 
 which the things themselves have no control. 
 Intending personal volitions are absolutely self- 
 caused ; so that the self as their originating 
 cause is alone responsible for them. On the 
 other hand, the so-called natural 'causes' within 
 the material world are only signs, connected 
 with preceding signs, in Avhat may be an un- 
 beginning and endless procession. Morally 
 responsible acts of will must originate in the 
 persons who are responsible for them, if moral 
 responsibility is real. It cannot be transferred 
 to preceding (so-called) causes in an endless 
 26
 
 THE MATERIAL WORLD 
 
 regress, as in the sense-symbolism of the natural 
 world. 
 The only Real Agent in Existence is Spirit. 
 
 — Spirit in fact is the one finally sustaining and 
 finally active Reality in the universe, so far, at any 
 rate, as the universe has any practical relation to 
 me. The 'substances' and 'causes' in the material 
 world are all subordinate to spirit. Matter con- 
 sists of aggregates of appearances presented in 
 the senses. The things of sense per se are wholly 
 passive and impotent ; persons are the only active 
 originative powers.^ 
 
 Is an Impotent Material World therefore use- 
 less ?— Does all this imply that the material 
 world is a powerless illusion, and that only 
 spiritual beings are real ? Have the appearances 
 of sense no office to discharge in the economy 
 of human life and the universe? Far from it. 
 According to Berkeley, they play indispensable 
 parts in the world-drama. Look at some of these. 
 
 The Material World reveals to each Person 
 that he is not the only Person in Existence.— 
 1. In the first place, it is through the sense-pre- 
 sented signs commonly called ' matter,' that I find 
 
 I Principles, sec. 25, where the total impotence of matter is 
 deduced from its dependence on being perceived ; also Siris; 
 sees. 154, 155, 252-258, etc. 
 
 27
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 that I am not alone in the universe, a solitary 
 percipient and voluntary agent. I find some 
 presented appearances dependent on my percep- 
 tions and obedient to my will ; but over the great 
 majority I find that I have no control. Most 
 of them come and go whether I will or not. In 
 particular I perceive motions and other sensible 
 changes which signify to me that spiritual agents, 
 not myself, co-operate in their production. I 
 recognise these appearances as the actions of 
 embodied human spirits, in whose company I thus 
 find myself, by means of this natural language of 
 the senses, supplemented as it is by the various 
 artificial languages of mankind, spoken and 
 written, all due to our senses. 
 
 'My body' and its Office as a Medium.— In 
 particular I find that my power over the different 
 bundles of passive phenomena which form the 
 things of sense is immediately confined to the 
 small mass of matter in which I find myself 
 embodied, and which I call my body, it being my 
 special portion of the material world. It is by 
 movements of my body or some of its organs 
 that I signify my spiritual existence to other 
 persons, and it is through like means that they 
 signify their existence to me. None of my senses 
 gives me an immediate perception of things that 
 28
 
 THE MATERIAL WORLD 
 
 are not in actual contact with my body. We are 
 apt to suppose that we see and hear things and 
 persons that are at a distance from our bodies. 
 It was by disproof of this, in his New Theory of 
 Vision, that Berkeley, in 1709, opened the way 
 to a full disclosure of his spiritual reahsm in the 
 years following. Instead of seeing distant things 
 or distant persons, we can see only visual signs 
 of their presence, and of their distance from our 
 bodies, the distance being signified by the amount 
 of locomotive experience we should have to pass 
 through to be in contact with their bodies. 
 For the appearances we see vary in distinct- 
 ness and otherwise, in proportion as the distant 
 objects are near or far off. Visual and aud- 
 ible signs, especially their own bodily motions, in 
 like manner introduce me to other spirits— other 
 human beings — embodied like myself, and also 
 to the Avhole Avorld outside my own body. Our 
 opportunities are multiplied indefinitely by the 
 mechanical devices which things of sense supply 
 for increasing this knowledge. Telescopes and 
 microscopes are familiar examples. 
 
 The World of Sensible Signs shows above all 
 
 the Constant Activity of pervading Omnipotent 
 
 Spirit. — But the sensible signs which show the 
 
 existence and activity of other human spirits 
 
 29
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 like myself are few and far between, among the 
 innumerable changes in the world opened to us 
 through our senses. Though there are some 
 changes in the things of sense, ' which convince 
 us that human agents are concerned in producing 
 them, it is nevertheless evident to every one that 
 those things which are called the works of Nature, 
 that is by far the greater part of the changes 
 presented to our senses, are not produced by, or 
 dependent on, the wills of men.' ' There is, there- 
 fore, some other Spirit that causes them ; since it 
 is repugnant to reason that they should subsist 
 by themselves or uncaused. But if we attentively 
 consider the constant regularity, order, and con- 
 catenation of all sensible things, we shall clearly 
 perceive that they belong to the aforesaid Spirit 
 Who works all in all, and by Whom all things con- 
 sist.' ^ Thus the universe of sense-signs constantly 
 signifies Omniscient and Omnipotent Spirit, even 
 as their bodily signs reveal to me the thoughts 
 and feelings and intending vohtions of my fellow- 
 men. 
 
 God speaks to all Men through the Data of 
 their Senses as one Man to another through 
 Spoken Words. — That all sensible signs signify the 
 presence and agency of Omnipotent Spirit, in like 
 
 ^ Principles, sec, 14S. 
 30
 
 THE MATERIAL WORLD 
 
 manner as some sense-signs signify the presence 
 and agency of a fellow human spirit, does not satisfy 
 the sceptic. Alciphron, in the Fourth Dialogue, 
 asks: 'Do you pretend that you can have the 
 same assurance of the being of God that you can 
 have of mine, whom you actually see stand before 
 you and talk to you ? ' ' The very same, if not 
 greater,' Euphranor replies. 'For by the person 
 Alciphron is meant an individual thinking thing 
 or spirit, and not the hair, skin, and visible surface, 
 or any part of the outward shape, form, and colour 
 of Alciphron. And in granting this (as you have 
 done), you grant that, in strict sense, I do not see 
 Alciphron, that is, that individual thing or Spirit, 
 but only such visible signs as infer the being of 
 that invisible thinking Soul. Even so it seems to 
 me that though I cannot with eyes of flesh behold 
 the invisible God, yet I do in the strictest sense 
 perceive, by all my senses, such signs, such effects, 
 as demonstrate the invisible God, with the same 
 evidence at least as other signs perceived by 
 sense suggest the existence of your Soul or Spirit, 
 of which I am convinced by only a few sensible 
 signs ; whereas I do at all times and in all places 
 perceive sensible signs of the being of God,' ' But 
 it is my hearing you talk,' Alciphron rejoins, 
 'that is in strict philosophical truth the best 
 
 31
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 argument for your being. And this is inappli- 
 cable to your purpose ; for you will not, I suppose, 
 pretend that God speaks to men through their 
 senses as one man doth to another ? ' ' But what 
 if it shall appear,' replies Euphranor, ' that God 
 speaks to men by the intervention of arbitrary, 
 outward, sensible signs, having no resemblance or 
 necessary connection with the things they stand 
 for ; if it shall appear that by innumerable com- 
 binations of these signs in nature an endless 
 variety of things is discovered to us, and that we 
 are thereby taught and admonished what to shun 
 and what to pursue, and are directed how to 
 regulate our motions, and how to act with regard 
 to things distant from us, will this content you ? ' 
 Being assured that it would, Euphranor proceeds 
 to fortify his position by illustrations of the sense- 
 symbolism which makes the material world to us 
 as really a language of God as spoken or written 
 words constitute the language of men. 
 
 The Material World is charged with Pleasures 
 and Pains, which by Interpretation of its Pheno- 
 mena we can secure or avoid. — 2. Through my 
 senses I not only find that 1 am not solitary in 
 the universe, but through my embodiments parti- 
 cipate in innumerable pains and pleasures. The 
 
 32
 
 THE MATERIAL WORLD 
 
 world of the senses is charged with signs of possible 
 bodily pains and bodily pleasures; and it is by in- 
 terpreting the phenomena presented to our senses 
 that we distinguish health-giving signs from those 
 which forecast bodily injury, so that we are able to 
 avail ourselves of the one sort and to avoid the 
 other. We find that bread will nourish our bodies, 
 and that arsenic will destroy them. My body is a 
 part of the universal system of sensible signs, and 
 it is also, in this life, virtually a part of myself. 
 But neither my body nor any other portion of 
 the material world is supposed by the spiritual 
 realist to be so dependent on human spirits as to 
 go in and out of existence as it is perceived or not 
 perceived by them, having thus only an inter- 
 rupted reality, perceived now by one person and 
 again by another. The things of sense are, on the 
 contrary, always kept in existence in and by the 
 Universal World-Mind that sustains and gives 
 reality to the whole material world. Thus there 
 is an established harmony, which enables the 
 embodied spirit to regulate his actions for the 
 benefit of his life. 
 
 Beattie's Travesty of Spiritual Realism. — 
 Yet it has been strangely supposed that this 
 spiritual realism requires us to alter our conduct 
 in the atfairs of life, and to act as if we were in 
 
 c 33
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 an iminterpretable chaos. Read, for example, 
 what the poet Beattie says about Berkeley in 
 his Essay on Truth: — 'If a man believe this 
 strange doctrine of Berkeley as steadily and with 
 as little distrust as I believe the contrary, he will, 
 I am afraid, have but little reason to applaud 
 himself on this new acquisition in science ; he will 
 soon find that it had been better for him to have 
 reasoned and believed and acted like the rest of 
 the world. If he fall down a precipice, or be 
 trampled under foot by horses, it will avail him 
 little that he once had the honour to be a dis- 
 ciple of Berkeley, and that those dangerous 
 objects are nothing but ideas in the mind. And 
 yet if such a man be seen to avoid a precipice, or 
 to get out of the way of a coach and six horses at 
 full speed, he acts as inconsistently with his belief 
 as if he ran away from a picture of an angry man, 
 even while he believed it to be only a picture . , , 
 I will not say that this man runs a greater risk of 
 universal scepticism than of universal credulity. 
 Either the one, or the other, or both, must be his 
 portion ; and either the one or the other would 
 be sufficient to embitter my whole life, and to 
 disqualify me for every duty of a rational creature, 
 . . . But that I may no longer suppose what I 
 maintain to be impossible, i.e. that mankind in 
 34
 
 THE MATERIAL WORLD 
 
 general, or even one rational being, could, by force 
 of argument, be convinced that this absurd doctrine 
 is true — what if all men were in one instant 
 (miraculously) deprived of their understanding by 
 almighty power, and made to believe that matter 
 has no existence but as an idea in the mind, all 
 other things remaining as they are. Doubtless 
 this catastrophe would, according to our meta- 
 physicians, throw a wonderful light upon all parts 
 of knowledge. But of this I am certain, that in 
 less than a month after, there could not, without 
 another miracle, be one human creature alive on 
 the face of the earth.' 
 
 Berkeley's use of the term 'Idea' apt to 
 mislead.— For Beattie's travesty of Berkeley's 
 conception of the material world Berkeley is him- 
 self responsible so far as, by his application of 
 the term 'idea' to what is actually presented 
 to our senses, he seems to say that the objects 
 present in the senses are only unmeaning fancies, 
 that actual sense is identical with imagined 
 sense. Berkeley himself thus anticipates Beattie's 
 intended reductio ad ahsurdum : — ' It will be 
 objected that by the foregoing principles, all that 
 is real and substantial in nature is banished 
 out of the world, and instead thereof a chimerical 
 scheme of ideas takes its place. All things 
 
 35
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 that exist, exist only in the mind. What there- 
 fore becomes of the sun, moon and stars ? What - 
 must we think of houses, mountains, rivers, 
 trees, stones, nay even of our own bodies ? 
 Are all these but so many chimeras and illu- 
 sions of the fancy ? To all which I answer, 
 that by my principles we are not deprived of any 
 one thing in nature. Whatever we see, feel, hear, 
 or in any wise understand remains as secure as 
 ever, and is as real as ever. There is still a 
 rerum natura, and the distinction between 
 realities and chimeras remains in full force. This 
 is evident from what I have shown is meant by 
 real things, in opposition to chimeras, or ideas of 
 our own framing.'^ Yet experience has shown 
 that this application of the word ' idea,' alike to 
 realities and to chimeras, is apt to suggest that 
 the so-called ' real ' is only chimerical. A bundle 
 of signs that is seen or touched ought not to be 
 even verbally identified with an imagined bundle. 
 The Material Universe exercises the Scien- 
 tific Understanding. — 3. Another function which 
 Berkeley's material world discharges is that it 
 exercises the understanding in interpreting 
 scientifically the phenomena of which it is com- 
 posed. These phenomena are interpretable and 
 
 1 Principles, sec. 34 ; also 29, .30, 33. 
 36
 
 THE MATERIAL WORLD 
 
 calculable, because they are evolved in constant 
 order; as we commonly say, they are under 
 natural laws. Their interpretability is founded 
 on the constancy of the order in which their 
 changes proceed. 
 
 Why do we believe that the Universe is a 
 Cosmos ? — How do we know that there must be 
 steady order pervading what on the surface 
 often appears chaotic ? Berkeley refers the uni- 
 versal belief in the uniformity of nature to 
 observation, ' Having always observed that our 
 perception of a certain round, luminous figure 
 which we call the sun is accompanied by a sensa- 
 tion called heat, we conclude that the sun and 
 heat are constantly connected ; so that the appear- 
 ance of the one is a sign of the appearance of the 
 other, and so the one is called the cause of the 
 other.' But oar narrow observation is not enough 
 to explain faith in constant order underlying all 
 natural changes. For ' observation ' is necessarily 
 confined to the present and the past; I cannot 
 observe the future : indeed I can only observe a 
 small portion of the present and the past. Even 
 if I had reasonable assurance that natural order 
 had been universally maintained hitherto, what 
 guarantee have I for its continuance? Do I 
 know a priori enough of the universe in which I 
 37
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 find myself, to be assured that it is a universe in 
 which the cosmos of the past may not become 
 chaos in the future ? It is not enough to say that 
 uniform order in the past has accustomed us to 
 expect a like uniformity in future; that an irresist- 
 ible habit of expectation is thus formed, and that 
 we could not live if we were to resist this habit. 
 That is true ; but to convert the habit into reaso7i- 
 ahle faith we must presuppose that we are living 
 in a reasonably conducted or trustworthy uni- 
 verse. We must receive the data of the senses 
 in reasonable confidence, that the habits which 
 they form are in harmony with actual Reason 
 immanent in things, — that we are living in a 
 natural cosmos, not in what may turn out in 
 the end to be chaos. But more of this in the 
 sequel. 
 
 The Material World is fitted to evoke Philo- 
 sophic Thought. — 4. The material world, under 
 Berkeley's conception of it, is not only fit to 
 exercise the scientific understanding, but the con- 
 ception itself signally exercises philosophic reason 
 and imagination, and sustains faith in the re- 
 ligious conception of the universe. Berkeley's 
 immaterialism, as Sir James Mackintosh remarks, 
 'is chiefly valuable as a touchstone of meta- 
 physical sagacity, showing those to be altogether 
 38
 
 THE MATERIAL WORLD 
 
 I without it, who, like Johnson and Beattie, believed 
 I that his speculations were sceptical, that they { 
 j implied any distrust of the senses, or that they \ 
 ! had the smallest tendency to disturb reason or to 
 alter conduct.' And to think of the material 
 world as itself impotent, and necessarily depen- 
 dent for its real existence and its natural , 
 order upon omniscient and omnipotent World- \ 
 Mind, is at least a step to a more definite 1 
 religious conception of the spirituality, intelligi- 
 bility, and morality that underlies the universe. 
 Virgil and Wordsworth are among many examples 
 of how visible nature touches the imagination of 
 the poet. 
 
 Does Berkeley's Conception of the Material 
 World satisfy the Human Mind?— But after 
 all one may ask whether this way of thinking 
 about the ordered world presented to our senses 
 fully satisfies the human mind, as a sufficient 
 expression of our relations to matter and its 
 changes. 
 
 'Sameness' versus 'Similarity' in things. — 
 Does the continued existence of things visible 
 and tangible, and their orderly changes, through 
 their dependence on the omnipotence of the 
 Universal World-Mind, adequately express the 
 
 39
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 sameness, for example, of this book on my table, as 
 seen and bandied by two different persons ; or of 
 the table itself on which the book was resting ? 
 When a hundred persons are perceiving a tree 
 simultaneously, are there really a hundred trees, 
 all similar but not the same ? Can two persons 
 ever be properly said to perceive the same thing, 
 if the appearances presented to each of them are 
 not numerically the same, but only similar ? Can 
 what is within my mind be identically, at the 
 same time, within the mind of another ? Is 
 the material ' substance,' against which Philonous 
 argues so strenuously in the Dialogues, only 
 an empty abstraction ? Does the bundle of 
 impotent sense-appearances which, according to 
 Berkeley, alone makes individual material sub- 
 stances, — does this exist, when they are unper- 
 ceived, thus preserving its objective identity 
 when presented to innumerable percipients ? 
 
 Berkeley's Answer. — Philonous, who personates 
 Berkeley in the Dialogues, seems more embarrassed 
 by this difficulty than by any other, when he tries 
 to vindicate 'perceived similarity, as practically 
 objective sameness, in the case of a thing present 
 to the senses of different percipients. Hylas 
 objects that the same idea which one man has 
 ' in his mind ' cannot be in the mind of another 
 40
 
 THE MATERIAL WORLD 
 
 man, any more than his consciousness can be the 
 consciousness of another. ' Doth it not therefore 
 follow,' he asks, ' that no two persons can perceive 
 the same thing ? and is not this highly absurd ? ' 
 ' If the term same be taken in the vulgar accepta- 
 tion,' Philonous replies, ' it is certain (and not at 
 all repugnant to the principles I maintain) that 
 different persons may perceive the same thing, or 
 the same thing exist in different minds. Words 
 are of arbitrary imposition, and since we are used 
 to apply the word same when no distinction or 
 variety 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 the like occasion still continue to use the 
 same phrase, without any deviation either from 
 propriety of language or from the truth of things. 
 But if the term same be used in the acceptation 
 of philosophers, who pretend to an abstracted 
 notion of identity, then, according to their sundry 
 definitions of this notion, it may or may not be 
 possible for divers persons to perceive the same 
 thing. But whether philosophers shall think fit 
 to call a sensible thing the same or no is, I conceive, 
 of small importance. Let us suppose several men 
 together, all affected in liUe sort by their senses, 
 and who had yet never known the use of language, 
 41
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 they "would without question agree in their per- 
 ceptions. 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 choose the de- 
 nomination of different things. But who sees 
 not that all the dispute is about a word, i.e. 
 whether what is perceived by different persons 
 may yet have the denomination ' same ' applied to 
 it ? Or suppose a house, whose walls remaining 
 unaltered, the chambers are all pulled down, and 
 new ones built in their place, and that you 
 should call this the same, and I should say it was 
 not the same house, would we not for all this 
 perfectly agree in our thought of the house, 
 considered in itself ? and would not all the differ- 
 ence consist in a sound ? If you should still say, 
 we differed in our notions, for that you superadded 
 to your idea of the house the abstracted idea of 
 identity, whereas I did not ; I would tell you, I 
 know not what you mean by the abstracted idea 
 of identity, and should desire you to look into 
 your own thoughts and be sure you understood it 
 yourself.' ^ 
 Inadequacy of a Conception of the Things of 
 
 ^ See Third Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous. 
 42
 
 THE MATERIAL WORLD 
 
 Sense which excludes ' Sameness.'— Notwith- 
 standing all that Philonous says, this transla- 
 tion of sameness into similarity, in what are 
 commonly called 'the same things' seems to 
 leave us still dissatisfied. For it offers us as 
 many material worlds as there are percipient 
 spirits in existence; multiplied too by the 
 perceptions of 'the same thing' by the same 
 person at different times. One might say that it 
 also implies as many percipients as there are 
 perceptions, were it not for our consciousness of 
 personal sameness, which makes the difference 
 between individual spirits and the collections 
 of impotent j)henomcna conventionally called 
 ' material substances.' 
 
 Sameness not mere Similarity.— But although 
 nothing corresponding to personal identity in the 
 spiritual world is presupposed in the presented 
 appearances that compose the things of sense, 
 may not the ajjpearances that are perceived by 
 me to-day be objectively identical Avith those per- 
 ceived by me to-morrow; and may not the appear- 
 ances perceived by a hundred persons at once 
 be not merely similar but objectively identical ? 
 ' Similarity ' is as much an empty abstraction 
 as ' identity,' if either is so. The mere fancies 
 that arise in my mind to-day, however similar, 
 43
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 are not identical with those that arose yesterday ; 
 and those that arise in one imagination are not 
 identical with those that arise in the imagination 
 of other persons, however much they may re- 
 semble them. Does not the difference between 
 what is presented to us in sense and what rises 
 in imagination appear in this ? 
 
 A Question proposed. — The question comes to 
 be whether the permanent dependence of the 
 material world on the Omnipotent Spirit is an 
 adequate account of the continued objective exist- 
 ence of sense-presented phenomena. Are human 
 spirits so related, sub-consciously it may be, to the 
 Universal Spirit, as well as to one another, in and 
 through the Universal Spirit, that objects pre- 
 sented to the senses of one man can in this way 
 be numerically the same as those presented to 
 different men, or to the same man at different 
 times ? This question may be left for the con- 
 sideration of the reader. 
 
 44
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 EMBODIED SPIRITS AND MORAL ORDER — BIRTH 
 AND DEATH 
 
 The Material World becomes real in in- 
 numerable Spirits. — In interpreting the sense 
 signs that compose the material world, I find 
 that / am not the only human percipient and 
 asrent in existence. I find millions of com- 
 ^ panions, embodied like myself, revealing their 
 spiritual reality and activity to one another, 
 through their bodies and their bodily move- 
 ments. The material world is realised at this 
 moment in the perceptions of more than a 
 thousand millions of individual human spirits 
 embodied on our planet. To this multipli- 
 cation of sense-perceptions in the minds of the 
 millions of mankind now living must be added 
 tall like experiences in departed generations, as 
 ' well as in generations yet unborn. Whether the 
 sense-presented appearances of which each person 
 45
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 is aware are objectively the same, or whether 
 they must in all cases be separate spiritual edi- 
 tions of similar sense-appearances, is, as we have 
 seen, an alternative ambiguously determined by 
 Berkeley. At any rate the world of sensible 
 signs is somehow real in millions of embodied 
 human spirits. 
 
 Does the Human Spirit die with the Human 
 Body ?— But what of the individual human beings 
 who thus contribute to reality, and help to pro- 
 duce changes, in the evolving world present to 
 their senses ? Generations of persons come and 
 depart, ceasing to present visible or other sensible 
 signs of their continued existence. Their bodies 
 are born and die. Is the life of the human spirit 
 contemporaneous with the birth and dissolution 
 of the bodily organism which signifies its exist- 
 ence ? Memory, which bears witness to the exist- 
 ence of the identical reminiscent spirit for a few 
 past years, cannot recall an experience preceding 
 the birth of its body ; and the now living spirit 
 can of course have had no experience of the con- 
 sequence of the death of the body. His embodied 
 life lasts, as it were for a moment, between a 
 mysterious unbeginning Past and a mysterious 
 unending Future. Does the spirit live only as long 
 as the organised body lasts ? 
 46
 
 EMBODIED SPIRITS 
 
 Is there a Plurality of Spiritual Worlds? 
 — Human spirits are the only ones that come 
 within the range of human experience. Whether 
 others, more or less like them, in other worlds, 
 present there sensible signs of their existence, is an 
 interesting question. The advance of astronomy 
 has vastly enlarged the modern conception of 
 the material world, and made it difficult to 
 suppose that this small and remote planet is 
 the only one, among innumerable stars and 
 planets, that is the abode of embodied spirits. 
 What of the other planets in our own solar 
 system, and what of their central sun ? What of 
 the millions of other suns with their attendant 
 planets, still inadequately explored by telescopes, 
 or interpreted in the inferences of science ? Is 
 there a plurality of worlds occupied by embodied 
 spirits ? 
 
 Micromegas the Celestial Traveller. — At 
 any rate we have no sensible signs of their 
 existence, such as we have of our human 
 companions. We cannot, like Micromegas, the 
 supposed inhabitant of one of the planets of the 
 Dog Star, in Voltaire's romance, ask a native of 
 the planet Saturn, how many senses the persons 
 on his globe have. ' We have seventy-two senses,' 
 the Saturnian is made to say, ' and we are every 
 47
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 day complaining of the smallness of the number. 
 Our imagination goes far beyond our wants.' ' I 
 can very well believe it,' Micromegas replies, ' for 
 on our globe we have very near one thousand 
 senses, and yet with all these we feel a constant 
 inquietude, telling us that there are beings in- 
 finitely nearer perfection than ourselves.' 
 
 The Qualities of Matter must differ accord- 
 ing to the Senses of the Percipients.— But if we 
 cannot directly perceive signs of embodied spirits 
 on neighbouring planets, even such signs as the 
 supposed canals on Mars, there may be more or 
 less probable inferences. Our own planet was 
 long desolate, and may be desolate again. The 
 history of the other heavenly bodies may be 
 similar. And, as the planetary tour of Microme- 
 gas suggests, the sense organs of embodied spirits 
 in different regions may vary in innumerable 
 ways, and so the perceived appearances of mat- 
 ter may be different in each from the qualities 
 matter presents to us. Our five senses may 
 all be wanting in other stellar races ; their offices 
 being discharged by the seventy-two senses of the 
 Saturnian, or the thousand senses of Micromegas ; 
 their respective material worlds consisting in corb- 
 sequence of qualities wholly unimaginable by 
 man. What we call ' matter ' would thus present 
 48
 
 EMBODIED SPIRITS 
 
 qualities on each planet corresponding to the 
 senses and sense experiences of its inhabitants, — 
 all inconceivable to us. 
 
 Embodied Spirits in relation to Space and 
 Time. — What precedes is onl}- speculation. We 
 must confine our inquiries about possible material 
 worlds of embodied spirits, and the relation of 
 spirits to their embodiments, to what is found in 
 this corner of Space, and to what can reason- 
 ably be inferred from our own human experience. 
 And what of human spirits under relations of 
 Time ? Has Spiritual Realism anything to tell 
 about them before the birth or after the death 
 of their bodies ? 
 
 The Human Spirit, although Embodied, is 
 Unextended, according to Berkeley. — That the 
 human spirit, although embodied, must not be 
 thought of as extended in space like the body, 
 is involved in Berkeley's fundamental principle. 
 A spirit cannot be located like a piece of matter. 
 I animate my body ' all in the whole and all in 
 every part ' ; so that it is practically pervaded 
 by me. But this cannot mean that the sentient, 
 thinking agent called myself, occupies a place in 
 some part of my body, e.g. i\\ the brain, or the 
 heart, or the stomach. We cannot speak of the 
 size of a pain or the shape of a volition, or the 
 
 D 49
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 colour of a thought, unless metaphorically. The 
 identical person of whom there is a conscious- 
 ness in memory as having existed continuously 
 throughout remembered experience, cannot be 
 conceived as existing in a place, although its 
 body must. One must not think of the spiritual \ 
 personality as something to be measured by a 
 foot-rule, and if one could, this would throw no 
 light upon the mystery of self-consciousness. 
 
 Pre-natal Immortality. — Again, I may trace ! 
 back the physical antecedents of my body before ' 
 its birth, as I can trace back the constituents 
 of any other mass of material phenomena; 
 but I cannot retrace in memory any history 
 of my spiritual life before my body was born. 
 The physical antecedents or ' natural causes ' 
 out of which my body has been evolved may 
 even form an unbeginning succession of changes 
 in material phenomena. My spirit has no 
 memory of itself before birth. My incarnation 
 is the utmost past limit of my self-recollection, 
 through ordinary consciousness at any rate. 
 It may be that ' our birth is but a sleep and a 
 forgetting,' that ' the soul that rises with us, our 
 life's star hath had elsewhere its setting, and 
 Cometh from afar; not in entire forgetfulness, 
 but trailing clouds of glory, from God who is 
 SO
 
 EMBODIED SPIRITS 
 
 our home.' But unless pre-natal experiences are 
 
 now subconscious, ready to be revived under 
 
 \ future conditions, we are not concerned with 
 
 ; them. A pre-natal immortality of this sort 
 
 i is practically non-existent, and a post-mortem 
 
 immortality of like sort would be practically 
 
 personal annihilation. 
 
 Post-mortem Immortality does not neces- 
 sarily depend upon Pre-natal Immortality. — We 
 have no right to assume that faith in posf- 
 m^ortem immortality is dependent on assurance 
 of pre-natal immortality ; although some ancient 
 and modern thinkers seem inclined to make this 
 assumption. Why may not my spirit live after 
 death, even if I began to exist individually 
 only at birth ? May a moral agent not begin an 
 individual life that is endless, or at least that 
 does not end when the matter organically asso- 
 ciated with it dissolves in physical death ? 
 Berkeley on Physical Death. — Berkeley does 
 I little to bring spiritual realism to bear upon the 
 I destiny of the human spirit after death — the most 
 stupendous question concerning man that can 
 engage human thought. The total impotence 
 of the appearances that compose the things of 
 sense, including our own bodies, on which he is 
 fond of insisting, suggests continued life of the 
 51
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 spirit. The body, as conceived by spiritual real- 
 ism, cannot be the active cause of anything; 
 and so its dissolution need not involve the con- 
 temporaneous extinction of the associated indi- 
 vidual spirit. Here is Avhat he says in one of his 
 letters to his New England friend, Samuel John- 
 son : — ' I see no difficulty in conceiving a change 
 of state such as is vulgarly called Death, as 
 well without as with material substances. It is 
 sufficient for that purpose that we allow sensible 
 bodies, i.e. such as are immediately perceived by 
 sisht and touch; the existence of Avhich I am 
 so far from questioning (as philosophers are used 
 to do) that I establish it, I think, upon evident 
 principles. Now it seems very easy to conceive 
 the soul or self to exist consciously in a separate 
 state, i.e. divested from those limits and laws of 
 motion and perception with which she is em- 
 barrassed here, and to exercise herself in new 
 ideas, without the intervention of those tangible 
 things we call our bodies. It is even very 
 possible to apprehend how the soul may have 
 ideas of colour without the eye, or of sounds 
 " without the ear." ' ^ That we might have all our 
 present experiences in sense in an unbodied state 
 is not incredible; nor that, without our bodily 
 
 * Life and Letters of Berkeley y p. 181. 
 52
 
 EMBODIED SPIRITS 
 
 intervention, we might, by a purely spiritual 
 volition, produce changes in sensible phenomena, 
 thus continuing to make them signs of our 
 thoughts and intentions to other spirits, bodied 
 or unbodied; nor that other spirits in return 
 might in like manner make signs to us. But, 
 unless under conditions now inconceivable, should 
 we not be more embarrassed in maintaining social 
 intercourse thus discarnate than when incarnate 
 as we now are ? 
 
 Berkeley's Negative Argument for Post- 
 mortem Immortality, founded on the Total 
 Impotence of Matter. — He has nothing to say 
 about a pre-natal existence of individual human 
 spirits, but he applies his conception of body to 
 strengthen faith in post-mortem immortality, in 
 this way: — 'It must not be supposed,' he says, 'that 
 they who assert the natural immortality of the 
 human soul are of opinion that the soul is absolutely 
 incapable of annihilation, even by the infinite 
 power of the Creator who gave it being ; but only 
 that it is not liable to he dissolved by the ordin- 
 ary laivs of matter and motion. They indeed 
 who hold the soul of man to be only a thin vital 
 flame, or a system of vital spirits, make it perish- 
 able and corruptible with the body; since there 
 is nothing more easily dissipated than such a 
 53
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 (compound) being, which it is naturally impos- 
 sible should survive the ruin of the tabernacle 
 wherein it is inclosed. But it hath been made 
 evident that bodies, of what frame or texture 
 soever, are only passive ideas of the mind ; which 
 is more distant and heterogeneous from them 
 than light is from darkness. Nothing can be 
 plainer than that the motions, changes, decays, 
 dissolutions, which hourly befall natural bodies 
 (and which is what we mean by the course of 
 nature) cannot possibly affect active, simple, un- 
 compounded substance such as we are.' ^ Such a 
 being therefore is indissoluble by any force in the 
 material universe, which per se is powerless. But 
 this is only negative evidence of the continued 
 life of the spirit, after so unique and unparalleled an 
 event as the death of his body is to the owner of 
 that body. One still asks whether bodily dis- 
 solution may not be the sensible sign, if not 
 the cause, of the extinction of the spiritual indi- 
 viduality ; and the only reply would be that there 
 is no sufficient reason for putting this interpreta- 
 tion on the signs presented in bodily dissolution. 
 The Physical Order in Contrast with the 
 Moral Disorder. — But are there not positive signs 
 that death of their bodies does not mean contem- 
 
 ^ Principles, sec. 141. 
 
 54
 
 EMBODIED SPIRITS 
 
 poraneous extinction of human spirits now incar- 
 nate? Consider the state of those spirits during 
 their short embodiment between birth and death. 
 Their disordered moral condition, and the unequal 
 possession of happiness in proportion to good- 
 ness, gravely contrasts with the steady obedience 
 to physical law in the material world. The 
 world of the senses is in continuous orderly 
 natural evolution; our spiritual world is at its 
 best an often interrupted struggle towards in- 
 tellectual and moral order. Natural order is 
 universal; moral order is unattained. The voice 
 of the patriarch expresses the thought of many : 
 ' Let the day perish wherein I was born ; let 
 darkness dwell upon it; let it not be joined 
 unto the days of the year. Wherefore is light 
 given to him that is in misery, and life unto the 
 bitter in soul ; which long for death and it cometh 
 not, and dig for it more than for hid treasures ; 
 which rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they 
 can find the grave.' If the total impotence of 
 their bodies offers at the most negative evi- 
 dence of what happens to the spirit when the 
 body dissolves, may not this moral disorder afford 
 to the theist some signs of the inadequacy of 
 our present condition to our final destiny, under 
 Omnipotent Goodness ? 
 
 55
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 A 'Preponderance' of Goodness and Happi- 
 ness not enough. — Spiritual realism in Berkeley 
 adds little that is new or distinctive of him- 
 self in answer to this question. He points out 
 that there is a ' preponderance of happiness ' on 
 the whole, and he suggests that sentient pleasure 
 is not after all the purpose of a human life. But 
 this does not meet the dilemma that confronts 
 us when we are asked whether the presence of 
 Evil in any form, or to any extent, is reconcil- 
 able with omnipotent goodness being at the heart 
 of the universe. The existence of one wicked man, 
 or of one miserable man, seems as irreconcilable 
 with omnipotent and omniscient goodness as the 
 existence of millions. A mere 'preponderance' 
 suggests defect either of goodness or of power ; 
 unless a universe morally perfect from the begin- 
 ning involves a contradiction, for this even 
 Omnipotence cannot overcome. 
 
 Berkeley on the Mixture of Pain and Happi- 
 ness in the World.— This is what Berkeley has 
 to say : — ' As for the mixture of pain and un- 
 easiness which is in the world, pursuant to the 
 general laws of nature, and the actions of finite 
 imperfect spirits, this in the state we are in at 
 present, is indispensably necessary to our well- 
 being. But our prospects are too narrow. We 
 
 56
 
 EMBODIED SPIRITS 
 
 take, for instance, the idea of some one particular 
 pain into our thoughts, and account it evil ; 
 whereas if we enlarge our view, so as to compre- 
 hend the various ends, connections, and depend- 
 encies of things ; on what occasions, and in what 
 proportions we are affected with pain or pleasure ; 
 the nature of human freedom; and the design 
 with which we are put into this world, — we shall 
 be forced to acknowledge that those particular 
 things which, considered in themselves, appear 
 to be evil, have the nature of good, when con- 
 sidered linked with the whole system of beings.' ^ 
 This suggests that the sorrows, if not the sins of 
 mankind, are consequences of the steadiness of 
 natural order, and also that evil is an issue of 
 the independent action of human agents, for 
 which they alone are therefore responsible. 
 
 May not a slowly progressive Moral Uni- 
 verse be more Divine than one that is Per- 
 fect from the Beginning ? — May it not be that 
 the moral disorder now found on this planet 
 signifies, not that we are living in an immorally- 
 constituted universe, but rather that the pref^ent 
 life of the moral agents who inhabit it is purga- 
 torial; not perfect, but on the way to perfection; 
 through struggle and suffering, and frequent re- 
 
 ' Principles, sec. 158. 
 
 57
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 lapse — consequences of the moral freedom which 
 implies power of moral agents to make them- 
 selves bad ? May not this purgatorial advance 
 towards the perfect man, instead of perfection 
 from the beginning, consist with theistic optim- 
 ism, while it is in harmony with the slow 
 and gradual evolution of nature ? May it not 
 be that moral and intellectual perfection of men 
 from the beginning is even inconsistent with 
 Omnipotent Goodness ? A world of moral agents, 
 encouraged to struggle through trial and temp- 
 tation towards their own spiritual perfection or 
 salvation, in co-operation with the Omnipotent 
 Spirit, may be a deeper and truer expression of 
 the rationality and morality immanent in the 
 universe than a universe empty of moral agents, 
 even with all the risks of failure which their inde- 
 pendent agency involves. The accomplishment 
 of supreme beneficent purpose for each individual 
 agent, through the independent will entrusted 
 to each — imperfectly realised in this life — may be 
 conceived as the issue, not of present struggles and 
 failures only, but of a succession of probations of 
 which the present is only one. ' Work out your 
 own salvation with fear ; for it is God that work- 
 eth in you.' The Divine Ideal may be a universe, 
 in this slow way of moral trial and struggle, 
 
 58
 
 EMBODIED SPIRITS 
 
 becoming gradually more and more valuable 
 morally. But of this later on, in connection with 
 the moral character of the Universal Mind. 
 
 * This Mortal must put on Immortality ' in a 
 Progressive Moral World. — Whether or not this 
 is the explanation of the sin and sorrow in our 
 present world, their existence seems to show that 
 the earthly life of man is not the whole, that 
 the death of the body does not mean extinction 
 of the spirit. Can present evil on this planet 
 be otherwise reconciled with Omnipotent Good- 
 ness being at the heart of the Whole? There 
 must surely be a larger and purer life than is 
 yet visible. 'This mortal must put on immor- 
 tality.' More than eternally disordered lives is 
 implied in our final faith. 
 
 The Natural and the Spiritual Body.— Does 
 post-mortem life mean embodied life ? And is it 
 too a social life ; or if so, is future social inter- 
 course maintained as in the present material 
 world; or by another kind of sense symbolism 
 having no analogy to the present, its qualities 
 being all different from those which appear in 
 our present organs, and therefore unimaginable 
 by us, like the sense world of Micromegas ? If 
 we are really living and moving, and having our 
 being in a universe charged throughout with 
 59
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 Omnipotent Goodness, must there not be suf- 
 ficient analogy of the future with the present 
 to connect personal identity in the life after 
 death with the present social environment ? The 
 apostolic rebuke of those who ask, ' How the 
 dead are raised up ? and with what body do they 
 come ? ' is satisfied with the vague reply, that the 
 'natural body' sown in death becomes after 
 death ' a spiritual body,' somehow different from 
 the present one. 
 
 Are Present Socialties dissolved for ever by 
 Death ? — But what of human spirits who have 
 been associated in this hfe by special ties of love ? 
 Are those ties for ever dissolved by death ? Are 
 the human associations of family and friendship 
 only transitory expedients to meet mundane 
 wants ? Is their final dissolution consistent either 
 with continued personal identity, or with the per- 
 fect beneficence of the universal order ? 
 
 ' It is an old belief 
 That on some solemn shore, 
 Beyond the sphere of grief, 
 Dear friends shall meet once more. 
 
 ' Beyond the sphere of time, 
 And sin and fate's control, 
 Serene in changeless prime 
 Of body and of soul. 
 
 60
 
 EMBODIED SPIRITS 
 
 * That creed I fain would keep, 
 That hope I '11 not forego ; 
 Eternal be the sleep, 
 Unless Ave waken so.' 
 
 Spiritual Realism and these Questions. — These 
 questions carry us to the borderland of the 
 knowable. Materialistic realism closes the pro- 
 spect. Its universe is throughout 'a riddle, an 
 enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, un- 
 certainty, suspense of judgment,' appear as its 
 only issue. Only in a spiritually constituted 
 universe can we even ask, what the moral char- 
 acter of the Supreme Power is, and what the 
 spiritual relations of the Universal Spirit are to 
 the struggling, striving, and sorrowing spirits of 
 men. In a finally material reality there is no 
 room for this question. Purpose — good, evil, 
 and indifferent — is all excluded. Under spiritual 
 realism we can at least ask whether the universal 
 spiritual purpose is optimist, or pessimist, or in- 
 different. Can man, with his Ihnited intellectual 
 faculty and experience, dispose in any positive 
 way of the final problem of the universe ? This 
 supreme question and Berkeley's relation to it 
 belong to the next chapter. 
 
 6i
 
 CHAPTER IV / 
 
 GOD, OR THE UNIVERSAL MIND, AND THEISTIC 
 OPTIMISM 
 
 Nature virtually Supernatural. — The essentially 
 spiritual reality of the material universe is the 
 distinctive teaching of Spiritual Realisna. The 
 spiritual realist finds all that he sees, his own 
 body included, to be appearances that depend for 
 their actual and active reality upon the percep- 
 tions and the free agency of conscious Spirit. 
 Their dependence upon human spirits is only 
 occasional and interrupted — for men come and 
 go, realising now this and now that, in their 
 perceptions; and the changes due to their indi- 
 vidual volitions are comparatively few and un- 
 certain among the changes in nature. But the 
 reality of the things of sense is not thus occa- 
 sional and interrupted. The material universe 
 is constantly known, and constantly kept in 
 natural order, by the Universal Spirit ; it may be 
 in a natural evolution that is unbeginning and 
 62
 
 GOD, OR THE UNIVERSAL MIND 
 
 endless, its laws being the visible expression of 
 Supreme Active Reason. 
 
 The Physical Cosmos and the Moral Chaos. — 
 The world of human life is a contrast to the 
 material world. Here much that is, ought not to 
 he. The moral order is disturbed; the physical 
 order is steadily maintained. This fact is the 
 supreme riddle of existence. The material world 
 is wholly obedient to its natural order : the 
 spirits of men are found resisting the moral 
 order ; and often reward seems to go to the dis- 
 obedient, while suffering is the lot of the righteous. 
 Is there room, under these conditions, for the 
 faith that we are having our being in a universe 
 charged with Omnipotent Goodness ? Is implicit 
 trust in the rationality and morality of the imi- 
 verse consistent with these ominous conditions ? 
 And what follows if final trust in the spiritually 
 constituted universe, of which we are a part, and 
 on which we continually depend, is therefore not 
 possible ? Are we not involved in Pyrrhonism 
 with its total doubt and despair ? 
 
 The Idea of God. — The moral character of the 
 Omnipotent Spirit, in whom we live and have 
 our being, is thus the supreme consideration 
 under spiritual realism. Materialism (necessarily) 
 turns at last upon blind abstract force, alien
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 to all moral conceptions. The living God, neither 
 dead matter nor abstract idea, is the final unity 
 of spiritual realism. ' God is a mind, not an 
 abstract idea compounded of inconsistencies and 
 prescinded from all real things, as some moderns 
 understand abstraction, but a really existing 
 
 Spirit Whether the Supreme Mind be abstracted 
 
 from the sensible world, and considered by itself 
 as distinct from and presiding over the created 
 system; or whether the whole universe, including 
 mind together with the mundane body, is con- 
 ceived to be God, and the creatures to be partial 
 manifestations of the divine essence — there is no 
 atheism in either case, Avhatever misconceptions 
 there may be, as long as Mind or Intellect is un- 
 derstood to preside over, govern, and conduct the 
 whole frame of things.' ^ The theism of Berkeley 
 is large enough to comprehend all who see the 
 immanence of Active Reason in the material 
 and the human world. It is atheism only if the 
 universe, in its immanent Spirit, is either diabolic 
 or indifferent to moral purpose, when we find our- 
 selves in an untrustworthy universe, a universe 
 unfit to be reasoned about or acted in. A theisti- 
 cally constituted universe is optimist at the root.- 
 
 1 Siris, sec. 323, 328. 
 
 2 Argued in my Philosophy of Theism, part iii. chap. 2, and 
 passim. 
 
 64
 
 GOD, OR THE UNIVERSAL MIND 
 
 The Atheistic Gospel of Death. — That without 
 our own consent we have been born into an 
 immoral universe, and tliat the only escape 
 is through final extinction by death of the un- 
 happy individual who made his appearance 
 at birth, is a gospel that has been offered to 
 suffering mankind in all ages and in different 
 forms, as by Buddha in the East and by Lucretius 
 in Greece. But a gospel of Death is surely a 
 shallow gospel. If the constitution of things is 
 consistent Avith our introduction at birth into a 
 life so disordered as that we crave for death to 
 dissolve self-consciousness for ever, may not 
 death after all be only the introduction to another 
 stage on a still downward journey? If the issue 
 of birth is so disappointing, there is no evidence 
 that the issue of death, in an atheistic universe, 
 is to give relief. The span of a human life spent 
 between a pre-natal and a post-7)io7iem eternity 
 remains a mystery, without ground for comfort 
 in its termination. We did not, by our own 
 responsible will, become individual persons, and 
 we do not know that by death we can get out 
 of suffering personality. 
 
 Polytheism and Manicheism. — Polytheism, 
 with its plurality of finite ' deities,' although 
 ministering to the religious instinct in its earlier 
 
 E 65
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 and cruder stages, is virtually atheistic. Its 
 'gods' are not eternal, and to none of them is 
 omnipotent goodness attributed. At the most 
 they are only magnified men, objects of super- 
 stitious awe, ready to be propitiated by offerings, 
 hypothetical entities, presupposing, like all else 
 that is finite, the existence of Omnipotent Spirit. 
 The polytheist's gods are not God in the distinc- 
 tive and unique meaning of the word. At the 
 utmost, like human spirits, they can only be part 
 of the universe in which the true God must still 
 be omnipresent. If the gods of polytheism really 
 existed, their existence would presuppose what 
 the monotheist means by God, as much as the 
 existence of the world of the senses and of man- 
 kind involves this presupposition. And the same 
 may be said of Manicheism. None of these faiths 
 afford anchorage for final faith. They are in 
 vogue only when religion and intelligence are in 
 a crude undeveloped state, ' without God in the 
 world.' Neither of the two antagonistic 'gods' 
 of Manicheism is supreme and absolute. 
 
 Abstract Deism. — The abstract God admitted 
 by the two 'minute philosophers,' in Berkeley's 
 Dialogue, is not less atheistic. To allow that 
 God exists, while denying that God is practically 
 knowable, is only a pohte retention of the name 
 66
 
 GOD, OR THE UNIVERSAL MIND 
 
 after emptying it of meaning. These minute 
 philosophers grant that the mere being of God 
 is a point of no consequence; an agnostic may 
 concede it as a matter of indifference. ' The 
 great point is in what sense the word God is to 
 be taken in. The very Epicureans allowed the 
 being of gods, but they were indolent gods, un- 
 concerned with human affairs. Hobbes allowed 
 a corporeal God ; and Spinoza held the universe 
 to be god. I could wish indeed the word God 
 were omitted, because in most minds it is coupled 
 with a sort of superstitious awe, the very root of 
 all religion. I shall not, nevertheless, be much 
 disturbed though the name be retained, and the 
 being of God allowed, in any sense but that of a 
 Mind which knows all things, like some judge or 
 magistrate with infinite observation and intelli- 
 gence. The belief of God in this sense fills a 
 mind with scruples, lays him under constraint, 
 and embitters his very being. But in another 
 sense it may be attended with no great ill con- 
 sequence. . . . Diagoras, a man of much reading 
 and inquiry, discovered that, once upon a time, 
 the most profound and speculative divines, 
 finding it impossible to reconcile the attributes 
 of God, taken in the common sense, or in any 
 known sense, with human reason and the appear- 
 67
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 ances of things, taught that the words knowledge, 
 wisdom, goodness, and such like, when spoken of 
 the Deity, must be understood in a quite distinct 
 sense from what they signify in the vulgar accep- 
 tation, and from anything that we can form a 
 notion of or conceive. Hence whatever objections 
 might be made against the attributes of God 
 they easily solved, by denying that those attri- 
 butes belonged to God in this or that or any 
 known particular sense; which was the same thing 
 as to deny they belonged to Him at all. And 
 thus denying the attributes of God, they in effect 
 denied His being, though perhaps they were not 
 aware of it.' ^ In short, God can lie, or can be 
 unjust and cruel, in the human meaning of those 
 words, and yet ' good,' in this transcendental use 
 of the word goodness. 
 
 A Slowly Progressive Moral Universe may 
 be more truly Divine than One Perfect from 
 the Beginning. — On the other hand, in Berkeley's 
 spiritual realism all that is real necessarily 
 culminates in Omnipotent Spirit, percipient and 
 active, presupposed (and this in the human mean- 
 ing of the words 'spirit' and 'omnipotence') in 
 the continuous orderly reality of the material 
 world. Nature is accordingly a system of 
 
 ^ See Alciphron, Dial. iv. sec. 16, 17. 
 
 68
 
 GOD, OR THE UNIVERSAL MIND 
 
 interpretable signs, in and through which God 
 is constantly speaking, and which men are con- 
 stantly interpreting, for the purposes of daily 
 life, or in the formation of science; so show- 
 ing that they are in intercourse with Intelli- 
 gence sufficiently akin to their own for all 
 human purposes, whatever infinite divine omni- 
 science in itself may be. ' Thus the phenomena 
 of nature, which strike on the senses and can 
 be interpreted by man, form not only a magni- 
 ficent spectacle, but a most coherent, enter- 
 taining, and instructive discourse. Natural pro- 
 ductions, it is true, are not all equally perfect. 
 But neither doth it suit Avith the order of things 
 that they should be thus perfect. General rules 
 or laws of nature are necessary to make the world 
 intelligible, and from the constant observance of 
 such rules evils will sometimes unavoidably ensue; 
 things will be produced at slow lengths of time, 
 and arrive at different degrees of perfection.' 
 These words of Berkeley suggest that a moral 
 universe which gradually increases in value may 
 be more divine than a moral universe that is 
 perfect from the beginning. It presents human 
 personalities, educated in a divine school by 
 struggle and suffering, rather than always perfect 
 — co-operating in a slow, progressive, often inter- 
 69
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 rupted evolution, as suggested in the preceding 
 chapter. 
 
 Berkeley's Liberal Interpretation of Theistic 
 Faith. — The immanence or omnipresence of God 
 in the material universe, and in the human spirit, 
 with the final harmony of the Whole, is, as we 
 have seen, a thought apparent in Siris, along with 
 a generous inclination to welcome even faint 
 approaches to theistic faith. If any one should 
 deny that God knows anything external to Him- 
 self, should this, he asks, be justly counted an 
 atheistic opinion ? ' Might we not conceive that 
 God may be said to be All in divers senses; as 
 He is the origin of all beings ; as the vov<i is the 
 voijrd, a doctrine both of Plato and Aristotle; 
 as the vov<i comprehends and orders and sustains 
 the whole mundane system. Aristotle declares 
 that the divine force permeates the entire uni- 
 verse.' ^ The influence of Berkeley's Neoplatonic 
 ■ studies in his old age is here again apparent. 
 
 Berkeley's Last Words in Philosophy. — In the 
 end Berkeley holds back in awe on the border 
 line that limits the intellectual vision of man. 
 His last words in Siris express in a tone of 
 philosophical eloquence his view of the final 
 human answers. ' In this mortal life we must be 
 
 1 See Siris, sees. 328, also 300, 325, 327. 
 70
 
 GOD, OR THE UNIVERSAL MIND 
 
 satisfied to make the best of those glimpses within 
 our reach. It is Plato's remark that while we 
 sit still we are never the wiser, but going into the 
 river and moving up and down is the way to dis- 
 cover its depths and shallows. If we exercise and 
 bestir ourselves, we may even here discover some- 
 thing. The eye by long use comes to see even in 
 the darkest cavern. Truth is the cry of all, but 
 the game of a few. Certainly where it is the chief 
 passion, it doth not give way to vulgar cares and 
 views ; nor is it contented with a little ardour in 
 the early times of life, active perhaps to pursue, 
 but not so fit to weigh and revise. He that would 
 make a real progress in knowledge must devote 
 his age as well as youth, the later growth as well 
 as first fruits, at the altar of truth.' ^ 
 
 Man needs a Morally Trustworthy Universe, 
 as alone fit to be reasoned about.— Omniscient 
 and omnipotent Spirit at the root of all, and 
 animating all, is Berkeley's final conception. This 
 is what he finds in ' esse is percipi' combined with 
 the recognition of power exclusively in Spirit. 
 But perfect goodness of the Universal Spirit is 
 not necessarily the consequence of the final 
 spirituality of the Real. The Spirit may be 
 diabolic or indifferent. So for man in his 
 
 1 Si7-iti, sees. 367, 368. 
 
 71
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 practical relations to the universe, the moral 
 character of God is the urgent question. It 
 makes the differences between final hope and 
 final despair in the life of man during his 
 momentary embodiment on this planet. If the 
 omnipotent Spirit is morally untrustworthy, omni- 
 potence and omniscience only aggravate doubt and 
 despair. The ominous facts that appear in the 
 history and present state of mankind may seem 
 irreconcilable with Goodness in the Supreme 
 Power ; yet unless the Supreme Power is morally 
 'perfect the universe is not fit to live in. Its 
 ultimate intelligibility and morality are postu- 
 lated in our title to trust even in its natural order. 
 Berkeley fails to show how we are assured 
 that the Universe is Ultimately Good. — 
 Answers to the questions thus raised are hardly 
 found in Berkeley. His exposition of Spiritual 
 Realism adds little to our resources for meeting 
 them. It adds emphasis, however, to our right 
 to consider them ; for they are relevant only so 
 far as we are entitled to think of the universe 
 as finally a spiritual reality; fit, therefore, to 
 be tested as to its moral order. Material Realism 
 cannot ask what the moral character of Matter 
 is; and Matter per se is its only deity. AVe 
 have seen how Berkeley meets the difficulty 
 72
 
 GOD, OR THE UNIVERSAL MIND 
 
 which some find in the gradual methods of 
 natural evolution, when they treat tardy pro- 
 gress instead of perfection from the first, 
 as inconsistent with the moral perfection of 
 God. And he offers a similar reply to the 
 objector who points to ' the miseries incident to 
 human life,' as an argument that ' Nature is not 
 actuated by perfect wisdom and goodness.' He 
 explains human evils by the fact that the Supreme 
 Agent follows general rules. This, even more 
 than if all were perfect from the beginning, speaks, 
 he thinks, for the wisdom and goodness of the 
 Omnipotent Spirit. He asks us to enlarge our 
 view of the proportion in which we are affected 
 with pain and pleasure ; the purpose of our pre- 
 sent embodiment; and our freedom in action 
 and consequent personal responsibility for our 
 acts. 
 
 Preponderance of Good in the Moral World 
 is not enough under Omnipotence. — ' Preponder- 
 ance' of good in this corner of the universe is 
 what he thinks he finds, when he tries to measure 
 the proportions of the good and the bad. But 
 this fact, if granted, Avould fail to reconcile perfect 
 goodness with absolute power. Instead of a halt- 
 ing inference from a necessarily limited number 
 of observed facts, must not the rationality and 
 73
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 morality of the universe be (at least uncon- 
 sciously) presupposed, as the condition of our 
 having any trustworthy intercourse with it, even 
 through our senses ? Its supposed sense sym- 
 bolism is not worth trying to interpret, if it may 
 become of a sudden all hollow and deluding. 
 Reason immanent in the physical order of things, 
 on which all the natural sciences proceed, is 
 not guaranteed in a limited past experience of 
 a universe which we enter as strangers to its 
 necessities; unless we can be justified in taking 
 for granted that our surroundings ' cannot lie,' be- 
 cause the omnipotent Spirit cannot deceive, being 
 perfectly good, and good to all. Unless this can 
 be postulated, reason cannot be applied to the 
 facts of life. An immorally constituted universe 
 would be uninterpretable. 
 
 No Security for Cosmic Order in an Immoral 
 or non-Moral Universe. — A universe that is trust- 
 worthy enough to be interpreted and reasoned 
 about scientifically, presupposes that the World- 
 Spirit 'cannot lie,' that He cannot contradict 
 truth, and justice, and beneficence. If He 
 could there would be no security in spiritual 
 realism even for the continuance of cosmic order, 
 not to speak of beneficence in the final destiny of 
 our now embodied lives. Under the atheistic con- 
 74
 
 GOD, OR THE UNIVERSAL MIND 
 
 ception, faith and hope, sustained as the springs 
 of life in an ethically constituted universe, dis- 
 solve in universal doubt and pessimist despair. 
 
 Is Evil in the World necessarily inconsistent 
 with Perfection in God ? — Unless the absurdity 
 of final moral faith can be demonstrated, it is 
 reasonable to rest in faith and hope. But does the 
 appearance of sin and suffering on this planet 
 demonstrate that faith in the perfect ethical con- 
 stitution of the world must be irrational? Is 
 evil in mankind necessarily inconsistent with 
 perfect wisdom and goodness in the Omnipotent ? 
 
 Is the Existence of Finite Agents free to 
 Act Responsibly consistent with Omnipotent 
 Goodness ? — This question recalls Berkeley's un- 
 developed hint about •' enlarging our view,' so as 
 to take in ' human freedom ' and the part which 
 morally responsible agents play in this world.^ 
 Does the existence of persons who are free 
 to make themselves good or bad contradict 
 absolutely goodness of purpose at the root of 
 all? Can God rightly delegate power to act 
 responsibly to persons ? If man's moral respon- 
 
 1 See Principles, sec. 153, also Siris, sec. 257. The ambigu- 
 ity of the term 'freedom' should be noted; for it is some- 
 times applied (as here) to the power of moral agents to make 
 themselves wicked, and in other cases to their moral perfection 
 or liberation from evil. 
 
 75
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 sibility for what he does means that he is the 
 creator of acts for which he can be justly con- 
 demned, does this subtract from the perfection of 
 the Universal Spirit ? 
 
 Is not a Bar to the Existence of Free Agents 
 a Greater Limitation of Divine Power and Good- 
 ness ? — One may ask in return whether inability 
 to admit moral agents into the universe does not 
 involve a greater limitation of omnipotence ? And 
 the fact that men "must be creators of acts for 
 which they are responsible does not mean that 
 they create the agents to whom the acts are finally 
 referable. We all enter life without our own Teave, 
 and therefore we are not responsible for begin- 
 ning to live; but this is no bar to our acts of 
 will afterwards being ours, so that we can be 
 justly condemned when they are evil. Here 
 Spiritual Realism contrasts fundamentally with 
 Spinoza. 
 
 Basis of Theistic Optimism. — Optimism in 
 the final constitution of the universe is implied 
 in its rationality and rectitude; and this in its 
 turn is only another way of expressing its 
 ultimately theistic constitution. Theistic optim- 
 ism is thus at the root of the faith and hope 
 which intercourse with the universe presup- 
 poses. That this intercourse Avould otherwise be 
 76
 
 GOD, OR THE UNIVERSAL MIND 
 
 irrational, and therefore paralysed, is the argu- 
 ment which in the end sustains theistic optim- 
 ism. Reason is paralysed by the supposition 
 that truth and falsehood, beneficence and cruelty, 
 justice and its opposite — according to the highest 
 human conceptions of these virtues^ — are in- 
 different in the universal system, and are im- 
 posed on man only by human limitations; or 
 that our ethical conceptions, in the human 
 meaning of duty and moral responsibility, can 
 be subject to arbitrary will. The character of 
 the Omnipotent Spirit would otherwise be no 
 security for the permanence of even physical 
 order. If transcendent or divine morality can 
 consist with what man must condemn as un- 
 righteous, then the faith that inspires science 
 and human life must die. 
 
 May not this Mortal Life be Purgatorial ? — 
 Berkeley's reference to slow and often interrupted 
 progress in the world of moral agents suggests 
 how the sin and sorroAv found on this planet may 
 consist with optimism at the root of the uni- 
 versal order. For may not gradual amelioration 
 through power to resist good be involved in the 
 
 ^ It must be noted that human conceptions of wliat is 
 reasonable and morally right, crude at first, are in progressive 
 development. 
 
 77
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 optimist ideal ; necessitated ' goodness ' in a finite 
 agent not being moral goodness ? May not moral 
 perfection be finally attainable only with free 
 play of the individual will, and gradual educa- 
 tion through suffering and failures ? May not a 
 prolonged purgatory, begun if not completed in 
 this embodied life on earth, continued it may 
 be through unknown periods after the death of 
 these bodies, — may not this be the optimist way 
 to final perfection of the individual character ? 
 At any rate is one justified in answering these 
 questions with a dogmatic negation ? The end- 
 less life in its earlier stages may be essentially 
 purgatorial ; and the purgatorial discipline may be 
 more or less prolonged in different individuals in 
 proportion to individual resistance. 
 
 The Universe is a Constant Miracle. — If by 
 
 miracles are meant events due to the immediate 
 agency of Omnipotent Goodness, the material world 
 of Spiritual Realism is a constant miracle. All that 
 happens, except what is due to the free agency of 
 finite persons, morally responsible for their own 
 actions, is the immediate issue of miraculous 
 action. ' Nothing can be more evident than the 
 existence of God, who is intimately present to 
 our minds, producing in them all that variety of 
 78
 
 GOD, OR THE UNIVERSAL MIND 
 
 sensations which continually affect us ; on whom 
 we have an absolute and entire dependence, in 
 short, ' in whom we live and move and have our 
 being.' But an objector may say. Hath Natn^re 
 no share in the production of natural things, and 
 must all be ascribed to the immediate and sole 
 operation of God ? I answer, If by Nature is 
 meant only the visible series of effects or sensa- 
 tions imprinted on our minds according to 
 certain fixed and general laws, then it is plain 
 that Nature taken in this sense cannot produce 
 anything at all. But if by Nature is meant 
 some Being distinct from God, as well as from 
 the laws of nature and things perceived by sense, 
 then I must confess the word is to me an empty 
 sound without any intelligible meaning annexed 
 to it; a vain chimera introduced by those heathens 
 who had not just notions of the omnipresence 
 and infinite perfection of God.' ^ Nature, in short, 
 is a divine miracle, not an independent agent. 
 
 Special Miracles. — This constant miracle of the 
 universe is not inconsistent with the occasional 
 occurrence of events that are inexplicable under 
 the rules of the divine order as thus far discovered 
 by man. If the material world exists for the 
 sake of persons, physical events, unaccountable 
 
 ' Principles, sec. 149, 150. 
 
 79
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 by our limited intelligence, yet in harmony with 
 the supreme order, may occur; it may be, as 
 means of calling human attention to deeper and 
 truer spiritual revelations of God than man could 
 otherwise realise. ' Special miracles ' of this sort 
 are recognised by Berkeley as at least ' probable,' 
 while he dismisses a jpriori reasons against 
 their occurrence as unreasonable. ' Probable 
 arguments are for him a sufficient ground 
 of faith ' in ' unaccountable events ' that are 
 associated with revelations of God which might 
 otherwise have remained dormant in the indi- 
 vidual. ' Who ever supposed,' he asks, ' that 
 scientific proofs were necessary to make a Chris- 
 tian ? It will be sufficient if such analogy 
 appears between the dispensations of grace and 
 nature, as may make it probable (although 
 much should be unaccountable in both) to 
 r suppose them derived from the same author.' ^ 
 I The last sentence curiously anticipates Butler's 
 ]'? argument in his Analogy, published four years 
 ' after those words appeared in the Minute Philo- 
 sopher of Berkeley. But it was left unelaborated 
 and unapplied by the author of the Minute 
 Philosopher. 
 Revelation of the Universal Spirit in the 
 
 1 Alciphron, or The Minute Philosojjher, Dial. vi. sec. 31. 
 80
 
 GOD, OR THE UNIVERSAL MIND 
 
 Cosmos and in Christ. — The more articulate 
 revelation of the Universal Spirit in and through 
 Christ ultimately appeals to the same inevitable 
 presuppositions out of which optimist theistic 
 faith in the moral rightness and perfect goodness 
 of the Supreme Power emerges. Hence the 
 response of the Spirit in man to the assurance 
 that ' God is love/ having no pleasure in the death 
 of the wicked, but rather that he should turn 
 from his wickedness and live. So that the 
 ultimate realisation of goodness in all embodied 
 spirits — not for their merits, but for its own 
 sake — may be taken as the end towards which 
 progressing humanity is under God slowly advanc- 
 ing. We have found this faith and hope latent 
 even in the universal trust in the credibility 
 of experience, and in the scientific assumption of 
 constant order in nature — reinforced under the 
 claim of a more articulate revelation, by its 
 experienced adaptation to the moral needs of 
 man, and to the limitations of human intelli- 
 gence. For is not a perfect man the highest 
 moral conception of God that man can rise to ? 
 Does not this give to God in Christ a unique 
 place in the history of mankind ? He has called 
 forth, in an unexampled degree, the latent faith 
 in the moral perfection of the Universal Spirit 
 F 8i
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 that is involved in the trustworthiness of external 
 nature — especially when the evolution of the 
 material world is recognised, as by Berkeley, 
 under his doctrine of the total impotence of 
 matter, to be due to the immediate agency of 
 God. 
 
 Further development of Spiritual Realism. — 
 Want of space forbids me to pursue suggestions of 
 other ways in which Spiritual Realism admits of 
 development and application. It remains, in con- 
 clusion, to cast an eye back upon our past journey. 
 
 Retrospect 
 
 Berkeley's Distinctive Principle. — We have 
 
 found the distinctive principle of Berkeley's 
 Realism in the truth, to himself evident, that the 
 material world has its being and agency in Spirit. 
 In itself it is wholly impotent, and finally depen- 
 dent for its seeming agency upon the Universal 
 Mind. Its constant transformations, on which 
 our embodied lives depend, are accordingl}'^ be- 
 lieved to be cosmical and interpretable, not chaotic 
 and uninterpretable ; the cosmos being due to the 
 constant activity of the all-pervading omnipotent 
 Spirit. This at least is the deepest and truest 
 ultimate conception of Infinite Power that is 
 83
 
 KETROSPECT 
 
 available for man, inadequate as it must be to the 
 divine or infinite Reality. So far Berkeley. 
 
 The Moral Character of the Universal Spirit. 
 — But what of the moral character of the Univer- 
 sal Spirit ? Spiritual Existence and Omnipotence 
 do not carry us far, unless the spiritual Reality 
 is morally perfect. Berkeley does not help us 
 much at this critical stage. We find ourselves in 
 a universe in which the physical cosmos, moved 
 by the Universal Spirit, often takes the appearance 
 of moral indifference, in the seeming cruelties 
 perpetrated under its evolution; and the embodied 
 spirits on this planet are morally far short of 
 the ideal man. What must be the moral character 
 of the Omnipotent Spirit who is revealed through 
 a universe like this ? Is moral perfection pre- 
 sent in this revelation, or does it mean moral 
 indifference, or even moral imperfection and 
 limited power ? 
 
 Our Absolute Security. — Unless we are to 
 subside into universal pessimist doubt, we must 
 presuppose, in the face of these ominous facts, 
 that we are in a universe that is fit to be reasoned 
 about — a succession of calculable changes, so that 
 we can have experience and science, and can 
 forecast our way with more or less reasonable 
 confidence in proportion to our intellectual pro- 
 
 83
 
 BERKELEY AND SPIRITUAL REALISM 
 
 gress. Is not our only absolute security for this, 
 the faith that the directing Spirit is morally 
 perfect, and omnipotent — omnipotent, that is to 
 say, within the limit of non-contradiction, for even 
 Omnipotence ' cannot lie,' and cannot make things 
 that are equal to the same thing unequal to one 
 another ? 
 
 The Final Alternative — Unless then it can be 
 shown that the ominous signs presented by the 
 universe demonstrably contradict perfect good- 
 ness in the Universal Power, are we not obliged, 
 by the reductio ad absurdum alternative of 
 universal pessimist doubt, to accept in faith and 
 hope the moral perfection of the Supreme ? Have 
 we not, in the moral discipline and educative 
 influence of physical nature, at least a possible 
 explanation of its supposed cruelty and injustice; 
 while the risks involved in the existence and 
 independent activity of moral agents, thus respon- 
 sible for their acts, may sufficiently account for 
 present manifestations of evil under Theistic 
 Optimism ? If Nature is practically trustworthy, 
 and fit to be scientifically reasoned about, the 
 Omnipotent Spirit immanent in it must be per- 
 fectly good and design the goodness of all. This 
 is final faith. 
 
 84
 
 A SHORT LIST OF BOOKS BEARING 
 ON THE SUBJECT 
 
 1. The Collected Works of Berkeley, edited with Annotations 
 
 and Dissertations, by Professor Campbell Fraser. 3 vols. 
 Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1871. 
 
 2. Second Edition of the above, amended by Professor 
 
 Campbell Fraser. 4 vols. Oxford, 1901. 
 
 3. Life and Letters of Berkeley, by Professor Campbell Fraser. 
 
 1 vol. Oxford, 1871. 
 
 4. Annotated Selections from Berkeley, by the same Author. 
 
 Fifth Edition. Oxford, 1899. 
 
 6. Berkeley, by the same Author. Second Edition. Edin- 
 burgh, 1903. 
 
 6. Berkeley and Btiman Knowledge, by Professor Krantt. 
 
 University of Pennsylvania, 1874. 
 
 7. Jhnde stir la Vie et les CEuvres Philosophiques de Berkeley. 
 
 A. Penjon. 1878. 
 
 8. Berlceley and Positivism, by St. George Stock. 1879. 
 
 9. Essays and Addresses : Berkeley, by the Right Honourable 
 
 A. J. Balfour. 1893. 
 
 85
 
 DATES IN THE LIFE OF BERKELEY 
 
 First Period 
 
 Birth in Co. Kilkenny, 
 
 In Trinity College, Dublin, .... 
 Publication of New Theory of Vision, . 
 
 „ Principles of Human Knowledge, 
 
 „ Three Dialogues, 
 
 1685 
 
 1700-13 
 
 1709 
 
 1710 
 
 1713 
 
 Second Period 
 
 In London, France, and Italy, .... 1713-20 
 
 Publication of De Motn, 1720 
 
 In Trinity College, Dublin, 1721-24 
 
 Made Dean of Derry, 1724 
 
 The Bermuda Project and Negotiations in London, 1724-28 
 
 Departure for America, ...... 1728 
 
 In Rhode Island, 1728-31 
 
 Publication of Alciphron, or the Minute Philoso])her, 1732 
 
 „ Vindication of the Theory of Vision, 1733 0^1 
 
 Third Period 
 
 Made Bishop of Cloyne, 
 
 Distress in Ireland and The Querist, 
 
 Publication of Siris, 
 
 Departure for Oxford, . 
 
 Death at Oxford, .... 
 
 U^ 
 
 1734 
 
 1735-38 
 1744 
 1752 
 1753 J 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
 at the Edinburgli University Press
 
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