THE PRINCIPLE OF SYNTHETIC UNITY IN BERKELEY AND KANT. BY SAMUEL M. DICK, A.M., PH.D. LOWELL, MASS.: MORNING MAIL COMPANY PRINT. 1898. PEEFAOE. This little volume was prepared as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Michigan. By the advice of Dr. John Dewey I have undertaken to interpret the Metaphysical Notes of Berkeley's Commonplace Book, and as far as possible discover the Principle of Unity which occasionally manifests itself in Berkeley's works and which formed a basis for a "Treatise on the Will" which Berkeley contemplated but never produced. I wish to express my indebtedness to Dr. Dewey for his assistance in the selection of collateral reading and for his suggestions in the development of the thesis. No literature could be secured bearing upon the interpretation of the Notes, hence the Notes have been classified and such as bear upon the theme under discussion have been used. Often the phraseology has been preserved but where that could not be done the thought has been expressed in phraseology as nearly Berkeleian as the author could select so as to preserve the unity that runs through the Notes. This principle of unity found in Berkely has been compared and contrasted with the Unity of Kant. s. M. D. 260900 CONTENTS. Page Introduction I I. THE WILL AS SEEN IN BERKELEY'S COMMONPLACE BOOK. 1. The Commonplace Book. 3 a. Source of authority 3 b. Basis for a broader philosophy 4 c. The period in which Berkeley lived 5 i*. The new question 6 d. Berkeley's hope in establishing the principle. ... 6 i'. Berkeley not satisfied with his philosophy. . . 7 2. The Will Defined. a. The abstract of the Will 7 b. The concrete of the Will 8 c. The Will a pure activity 9 i'. Berkeley's approach to the modern idea. . . 9 d. The difficulties in treating the Will 10 3. The Will and the Understanding n 4. What Wills and how? n 5. Connection with the Divine Will 12 II. WILL, A SYNTHETIC ELEMENT OR ACTIVITY. i. The Process of Knowledge. a. What Berkeley attempts 14 b. The source of knowledge 16 i'. Sensations. 16 2'. Thoughts 17 c. Objects of conscious experience 18 i'. First element 18 2 Second element. 18 VI Page 3'. Elements discussed 21 a\ Perception. 21 i". Kant's schematism foreshadowed. . . 21 2". Imagination not a synthetic element. . 22 3". Substantiality in the Material World. . 23 ^ 4". Permanence necessary to perception. . 25 _, b\ Conception 25 i". Berkeley's dualism 27 The Will's function in knowledge. 28 a. Berkeley influenced by Descartes 30 b m Will The source of the modes of knowledge. ... 30 c. How Will becomes a synthetic activity 31 . d. Will in a disjunctive judgment. . . .... 32 e. Will the underlying unity 33 f. Berkeley compared with Bowne 35 Bodies exist without the mind 35 a. No experience without existing bodies 35 b. Existence of bodies not a fancy. 37 c. Three theories for the existence of the Universe. . . 38 i'. Abstractly objective 38 2'. Abstractly subjective. 38 3'. Dynamic inter-relation 39 4'. To which does Berkeley belong? .... 39 d. Berkeley's later philosophy. 40 Knowledge and Reason. a. Transition to Reason 42 b. Reason "Nature immersed in matter." .... 45 c. Morris on Berkeley 45 d. Berkeley's Reason like that of Kant 46 III. KANT'S TRANSCENDENTAL EGO. The Transcendental Ego defined 47 a. Not a concept 47 b. Terms applied to it 47 c. The starting place of metaphysics 48 VII Page d, Descartes' cogito ergo sum. .' 49 e. Kant's criticism 5 1 /. The Transcendental and the Empirical Ego. ... 52 g. The relation of the Transcendental Ego to the Noumenon. 53 2. The function of the Transcendental Self in knowledge. . . 56 a. Robert Adamson's comment 56 b. Concreteness implied in Kant's analytic thought . . 57 c. The Ego not a power of theoretical cognition. ... 58 d. Necessity founded on transcendental conditions. . . 59 e. Thought and the manifold united 60 3. Summary. a. Sources of confusion 62 b. Categories as tools '-''. 63 c. Something given to thought 64 d. Kant's treatment of thought and the manifold. . . 65 IV. POINTS OF RESEMBLANCE AND DIFFERENCE COMPARED AND CONTRASTED. j. Defects Considered. a. ' Berkeley entitled to more credit than received. . . 67 -7 b. Chief point of failure 67 -r c. Berkeley failed to use the dialectic. . . . . .68 ^ d. Kant's advance on Berkeley 69 e. Defects in Kant's system .70 2. Similarities pointed out 71 a. Specific likenesses. ! 72 b. Synthetic activity in experience 74 c. Difference that of induction and deduction. . . -75 3. Differences pointed out. 77 a. Their dualism 78 b. Summary. .......... 79 4. Conclusion. '. . . -79 Bibliography 81 THE PRINCIPLE OF SYNTHETIC UNITY IN BERKELEY AND KANT. Every student of modern philosophy gives to Kant the credit of formulating and developing a synthetic principle in knowledge, which prior to Kant had re- ceived little or no attention. There is no doubt the credit is properly placed ; the very nature of philosophy is to have a system ; philosophy is a system ; but before there is a development there must be a movement of thought through various stages. These stages, accor- ding to advanced modern logic, are three in number and are represented by three forms of judgment, viz., the categorical, the hypothetical and the disjunctive. The first of these judgments is the statement of a fact ; the second, the statement of a fact under certain limi- tations and conditions ; the third, the statement of a fact with all the conditions overcome and realized. It may be said that through the movement of thought in modern philosophy, Berkeley's forecast of the Will is the categorical judgment concerning the synthetic principle or activity in knowledge, that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is the hypothetical judgment, and Hegel's Philosophy is the disjunctive judgment. The work of this paper is to discover, if possible, whether such a relation exists, i. e., to compare, as synthetic activities in knowledge, the active principle of Will as seen in Berkeley's Commonplace Book with the Transcendental Ego of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. The author will, therefore, in the develop- ment of Berkeley's principle of Will, reserve the right to use Kantian phraseology where it seems best and where it precisely expresses the Berkelean thought. The subject will be treated under the following heads : I. The Will as seen in Berkeley's Commonplace Book. II. The Will a Synthetic Activity in Knowledge. III. Kant's use of the Transcendental Unity of Apper- ception. IV. Points of Resemblance and Difference Compared and Contrasted. I. THE WILL AS SEEN IN BERKELEY'S COMMONPLACE BOOK. In developing the philosophy of the Commonplace Book, a brief reference to the sources of material will be necessary to show the character of the philosophical study of Berkeley in preparing for the production of the works he has left to us. The Commonplace Book was published for the first time in 1871, edited by Alexander Campbell Fraser, of the University of Edinburgh. It consists of an unclassified collection of metaphysical thoughts expressed almost entirely in single sentences, which represent the suggestions of the author's mind as he read many philosophical works and pondered over the subjects he contemplated developing. Some of these subjects he did develop, while others lie hidden in the thoughts of the Commonplace Book. It is the ob- ject of this investigation to trace out some of those hidden lines of thought, and, if possible, to discover Berkeley's theory of the human will and the part it plays, as a unifying activity, in a system of knowledge. The references named in the Commonplace Book are so numerous and comprehensive that it relieves the stu- dent of much laborious effort to find the sources of study which enabled Berkeley to form his conceptions. He makes frequent reference to the leading mathematicians of the day, and his frequent and specific references to Locke show him to have been thoroughly master of Locke's philosophical position on every phase of the Human Understanding. He also makes many and familiar references to Descartes, Malebranche, Hobbes, Spinoza, Newton, and others. He was also familiar with Aristotle and Plato. A basis is laid in the Commonplace Book for a broader foundation of philosophical research and devel- opment than is found in the Principles. The mere matter of solving the problem which arose from the misconception of the material universe was not all that Berkeley meant to do. He anticipated the period of critical philosophy which was to follow and proposed to lay a metaphysical basis for the purpose of robbing his critics of all opportunity of taking a deep hold on him. He meant to leave no weak place of attack from which his critics might succeed in dethroning him or in driving him from the position which he so manfully maintained. In order to accomplish this, he deemed "A Treatise on the Human Will" necessary and proceeded to lay the foundation for the same. This treatise of the will would have proved too narrow for his ontological inves- tigation ; so he proposed to look into the mind and its faculties in a broader sense, and has laid the fundamen- tal principles for this broader metaphysical development in the Commonplace Book. It is my purpose in this discussion to show what was Berkeley's conception of the Will as proposed in the contemplated treatise and to show, as far as possible, how he meant to apply the will in his ultimate theory of knowledge. To reach the conclusion desired in the premises laid down, a sum- ming up of the philosophical tendencies of Berkeley's time will be necessary to the introduction of this dis- cussion. Berkeley lived in a period when philosophers were analyzing Matter from every possible point of view, and with varied success were attempting to explain its existence. The " Abstractly Objective Theory" was prevalent. A * 'thing" must exist into which, as it were, the qualities, primary and secondary, were stuck ; but when these qualities were pulled out of the * 'thing" nothing was left, at least nothing that was knowable. This gave rise to material scepticism, and Berkeley realized that this scepticism of matter was leading to scepticism of reality of every sort. The failure of Locke, Malebranche, Descartes, and others to explain and define matter gave rise to the idea that matter might be even a cause 1 of consciousness ; and one philoso- pher 3 went so far as to explain the existence of the mind by the body, or to show that the body was a suffi- cient cause for the explanation of the existence of the mind. Other philosophers 3 advocated theories not less objectionable to Berkeley. These theories must be re- futed and something more rational and more satisfactory substituted for them. The mere overthrowing of a 1 Locke. * Hobbes. ' Spinoza and Leibnitz. theory without substituting something more rational for it, does not lessen the tendencies to scepticism ; it only makes them greater. Foreseeing this, Berkeley aimed to introduce a new theory and then to defend his theory against all assaults from either contemporaries or suc- cessors. The first thing was to get the new question of the reality of matter before the minds of philosophers ; to this end he struggled long and hard, and we may say during his life, almost in vain. It was with this lever that Berkeley moved modern thought. He changed the whole channel of inquiry about matter, as well as the current of thought concerning it. How was this change made and by what argument was the theory sustained? The theory was that matter was a result of mental operations ; that matter only existed in the mind, or rather that matter could not exist without the mind. Could Berkeley but establish this important doctrine and at the same time prove the existence of spiritual substance, and thus with an unassumed premise explain cause and effect, the mists of scepticism would vanish. There would no longer be left any room for doubt ; there would no longer be any philosophical problem for the materialists and idealists to quibble over. The conclusion would be final. To this end Berkeley pro- duced his "Principles of Human Knowledge." Nearly all the fundamental thoughts of the Principles are found in the Commonplace Book, but no argument. By tracing the argument through the Principles and com- paring it with the philosophical reasonings of the Siris, we notice a marked change in the psychology. 1 There are indications also that Berkeley was not thoroughly satisfied with the metaphysical aspect of his Principles. This may be the key to the explanation why he never developed the metaphysical principles laid down in his Commonplace Book. Indeed, I think we shall discover before we have finished that there were certain points concerning the will and other faculties of the mind that he could not define to his own satisfaction and at the same time defend the doctrines set forth in his philosophy as handed down to us. Could Berkeley have carried his point there would have been nothing left for him to do but to establish the doctrines of the divinity as he understood them and thus have utterly demolished the "minute philosophers." Having said so much by way of explanation, let us ex- amine Berkeley's position with respect to the human will. Berkeley's new idea of matter made it necessary for him to put a new interpretation upon the functions of the will. The soul, properly speaking, is the will, and as such is distinct from idea ; that is, it cannot be classed with phenomena, and hence remains a mere abstrac- tion, and as an abstraction is absolutely unknowable; not unknowable in the sense that it is an unthinkable "thing" or essence, but unknowable in the sense that there can be no idea formed of it, it would at once become an idea itself which from the very nature of 1 Siris Sec. 303. 8 spirit or of spirit-substance is absurd and a contradiction of terms. We are imposed upon by the words will, determine, agent, free, can, etc. To Berkeley words meant something, and the meaningless use to which many philosophers have put the above words has led us into many errors ; will is not an idea and indeed can- not be, and when it is made synonymous with words which do represent ideas, it leads us into conflicting judgments and inflicts upon us impositions which are in no way excusable. Let us, therefore, emphasize the fact that this un- known substratum, this abstract something, which un- derlies all volition and all ideas, is something whereof we know not, neither indeed is there any other being which has or can have an idea of it, for just as soon as it becomes reducible to the mere possibility of being known in the sense of an idea it ceases to be a will at all and we contradict ourselves by calling it so. Berke- ley, therefore, emphasizes the fact that "The Spirit the active thing that which is Soul and God is the Will alone. The ideas are effects impotent things." The concrete of the will and the understanding taken together may be called the mind, not the person. The definition of person is entirely omitted, but the idea implied that should we make the concrete of the will and understanding equal to person we introduce a second volitionating being or power into the world ; but this is contradictory to the acknowledged conception of but one volitionating being, viz. God. The will, says Berkeley, is "purus actus, or rather pure spirit, not imaginable, not sensible, not intelligi- ble, in nowise the object of the understanding, and in nowise perceivable ;" its properties are immortality and incorruptibility, and its substance is to act, to cause, to will, to operate. Its substance is not knowable. It is seen from what precedes that it is soul, is God, and yet dependent upon God, i. e., that God is the only being in whom is vested the power of originat- ing volitions, but that there is a synthetic unity of the human and divine wills which renders them ab- solutely inseparable. The moment the human will becomes a unity in itself and entirely disconnected from the divine will, it becomes a thing of which an idea can be formed and therefore an idea, and thus ceases to be a will at all ; yet as it is, it is a will, in as much as it has the power of placing if not of abso- lutely originating volitions. Berkeley was not satisfied with the scholastique term, "pure act'' for the will, but substituted pure spirit, or active being from which I interpret him as approaching nearer to the Leibnitzian idea that will is not mere activity in general but that it is activity toward some definite end. 1 He again approaches the idea of modern philosophy in his attempt to give the concrete of the will. In his reasoning he approaches that point where his conclusions would lead him to say that the will psychologically speaking is the per- 1 Leibnitz's Essay on Human Understanding. By John Dewey. 10 son ; this was Berkeley's thought yet he did not say it, for the simple reason that he was not absolutely sure of his premises, and he was careful to guard his statements lest a Hume should come after him. More recent philosophers have said it. "The will is the man, psychologically speaking." 1 It is interest- ing, however, to see how nearly Berkeley approached this idea and then shrank from expressing himself lest he could not defend his doctrine. The difficulties in treating the will are not a few says Berkeley, and the great causes of perplexity and darkness arise from the fact that we imagine the will to be an object of thought ; we think we may perceive it, contemplate it, turn it this way and that, view it, and examine it as we would any object or any of our ideas, whereas in truth it is no idea, neither is there nor can there be any idea of it. If you say the will, or rather the volition, is a "thing," there is an ambiguity arises in the use of the word "thing" as applied to will and to idea. We may conclude therefore that the will is an active force, spiritual, forming in some way a union with the divine will, so that the volitionating of the divine will is so imparted to the human will that we may be said ourselves to volitionate. That the will is not -purus actus in the abstract sense, but that it is spirit acting with some end in view, the realization of which would have been an absolute self-consciousness,. 1 Psychology, By John Dewey, P. 417. II or such a consciousness of the ego within us, that from that consciousness we should be able to estab- lish beyond all doubt the existence of spirit substance. The Understanding and the Will : The understand- ing taken as a faculty says Berkeley, is not really distinct from the will ; however, the will and the understanding may very well be thought to be two distinct activities. There is but little doubt that the separation of will and understanding was a matter of which Berkeley was not sure, neither indeed was he able to form a unity of the two which made no dis- tinction between them. Every student of Berkeley is thoroughly acquainted with his conception of the word idea ; the difference between idea and volition is appar- ent; the difference between will and understanding is relatively the difference between volition and idea, i. e., what the will is to volition, the understanding is to idea, or on the other hand, as volition is the realization of will so idea is the realization of understanding ; it follows, therefore, that will and understanding are in- separable, both abstract ideas, the existence of one necessitating the existence of the other, and that will is the cause of idea, and idea the realization of under- standing. What Wills and How? If you ask what thing it is that wills I must inquire what you mean by "thing," if you mean idea or any- thing like an idea, then I answer it is no "thing" at all that wills ; however extravagant this may seem never- 12 theless it is true, and it is that fundamental truth on which the foregoing argument is based. Willing is co- existent with self-consciousness and we can no more keep from willing than we can keep from existing ; while we exist we must therefore will ; the acquiescing in the present state is a process of willing. That which wills is an active power, spirit, and there is no other active power that can possibly be conceived of but the will. Here the conclusion to which Berkeley is tend- ing is already manifesting itself; he says there is no active power but the will, therefore if matter exists at all it does not affect us ; whether or not Berkeley is able, metaphysically, to prove the doctrine of his Principles, he proposes to show that it forms no basis whatever for the prevalent scepticism with respect to those reali- ties which are of prime importance in attaining the highest end of man's existence. (i) The connection of the human with the divine will. To show this connection is to answer the question how the will wills, and it is this connection which de- termines the difference between cause and occasion. Occasion arises from a power that is without us, and is acting independent of us ; and of those things which happen from without, we are not the cause, but there is another cause for them i. e., there is a being which wills these perceptions in us. Therefore, there is a duality existing, a human and a divine will, and the human is not reducible to a mere machine to serve the purpose of the divine. '3 The properties of all things are in God, i. e., there is in the Deity understanding as well as will. He is no blind agent; in truth a blind agent is a contradiction. In this lies the substance of Berkeley's philosophy, whatever may be ascribed to the faculties of man be- long to the faculties of God or to the attributes of God ; on the other hand, and set over against this is man as a volitionating being ; separate man from the Deity and he becomes a blind agent ; make him a machine through which the Deity operates and he ceases to be an agent at all. The conclusion is then that the human will is an activity within itself capable of volitionating and yet dependent upon and inseparable from the Divine will. They are two things uniting and adher- ing, as it were, in one substratum, viz., spirit substance, (pure reality) which is thinkable but not reducible to an idea. II. WILL, A SYNTHETIC ELEMENT OR ACTIVITY. Our investigation thus far has been to detect, if possible, Berkeley's conception of the Will, but he goes further than the mere attempt to gain a notion of what the will is, he plans to bring the will into his philosophy in the ultimate answer to his questions what are ex- istence, reality, externality, causality and reason. As Kant's philosophy is an attempt to answer the ques- tions, how are mathematics, physics and metaphysics possible? and in his answers to establish a system of metaphysics, so Berkeley's proposed philosophy was an attempt not only to define the meaning of the words existence, reality, externality, causality and reason but to show that these things were possible and what was the essence of them. Could Berkeley succeed in this then he could or would have solved the whole philoso- phic problem ; there would no longer be any excuse for scepticism or dogmatism. To this end he produced his philosophical works which form the nucleus out of which has grown the most of our modern philosophic thought. The unity, however, which is necessary to a complete knowledge of the physical and spiritual worlds he never realized ; the science of metaphysics he never formulated. Of this fact Berkeley was fully conscious, '5 but was no more satisfied to leave the problem there than modern philosophers have been to accept his doc- trines as conclusive. It was for the completion of a science of metaphysics, to reach a unity in knowledge, that Berkeley proposed to produce a treatise on the will, and the second part of this paper is to show that Berkeley meant to make the will fundamental in know- ledge and metaphysics. A complete answer to the above questions was to Berkeley a complete unity in knowledge of all things both physical and metaphysical. To reach Berkeley's contemplated conclusion it will be necessary to examine the part played by experience in this perfect knowledge, or to find out if possible what experience really is. All our knowledge, says Berkeley, is about ideas ; he here uses the word ideas 1 as closely allied to, if not a synonym for experience. He says "our simple ideas are so many simple thoughts or perceptions." 2 All ideas are either from without or from within. If from without, they are sense ideas or sensations ; if from within, they are operations of the mind, products of thought. Kant would call them categories. Know- ledge is about ideas but knowledge is not ideas ; know- ledge is experience and has in it two factors, perception and thought. So called ideas are not ideas unless they can be reduced to things perceivable, and not mere 1 Berkeley's Works Vol. i, P. 121. 3 The Commonplace Book (found in the Life and Letters of George Berkeley with Writings Hitherto Unpublished) P. 489. i6 activities ; neither can there be ideas without perception actual or presupposed; 1 neither can a perception be perceived without a thing (an activity) to perceive it. 2 It follows that knowledge about ideas when taken from these two sources within and without, reduces practically to experience ; at least knowledge cannot be without the two factors perception and thought. There is no knowledge except from these sources, i. e., except it be made up of the two elements perception and thought. This is clear for Berkeley says, if it were not for the senses, that the mind could have no know- ledge ; no thought at all. 3 And the whole tenor of his philosophy is to show that sensations alone are not knowledge, but only things about which we have knowledge. The two factors which enter into our knowledge make it possible for us to have an experience without which we could not have knowledge at all. Neither sensations nor thought alone can give us ex- perience, 4 for if we attempt to set off the operations of the mind to themselves and set them over against the conditions of perception and, excluding the latter, attempt to draw experience out of the former, we can succeed only by reducing the fundamental activities or modes of the understanding to ideas, but the moment they become ideas, they cease to be activities ; they are mere "things" and we are found in a hopeless contra- 1 The Commonplace Book. PP. 423 and 433. 2 " " 498 " 438. " " " P. 434- 4 Introduction to Selections, P. XXVII. diction of terms. If we keep within the operations of the mind's activity, in our search for the possibility of experience, we can have no ideas of this activity and hence experience is impossible. On the other hand, if we attempt to draw experience out of sensations alone we rob ourselves of the power of self-identity. 1 The essence of mind, the ego which is substantial would at once be excluded. Sense-ideas or phenomena are at once dependent upon the mind and symbolical of the intuitions of the mind. 2 To draw experience from sen- sations alone excludes this mind essence and leaves experience to the work of a blind agent which is no less contradictory than our former proposition of draw- ing experience out of our mental operations. There are then in all knowledge two elements and these are the same as Kant calls a priori and a posteriori. Men are confused in their attempts to solve the problem of knowledge, because they look to other sources than the understanding for knowledge, and there is no knowledge without the understanding. 3 Still another source of confusion arises out of the fact that words which signify the operations of the mind are taken from sensible ideas. The remedy for this is in studying the understanding 4 and in finding out its rela- tions to the problem of knowledge. We must pause for a moment to inquire, what are ob- 1 Berkeley's Works, Vol. i, PP. 328-329. 2 " " " i, P. 230 and The Principles, Sec. 142. 3 Commonplace Book, P. 432. " P. 435- i8 jects of knowledge and how do they exist? The objects of conscious experience are alleged, in section one of the "Principles of Human Knowledge," to be "(a') sense-given or external phenomena, (b') internal phe- nomena, (c) phenomena which may be representative or misrepresentative of both these." 1 These sense-given or external phenomena which are necessary to a con- scious experience are objects existing just as really as any object exists to the most radical advocate of the school of realism ; for without their actual existence neither experience nor knowledge could be possible. "Sensible things, trees, houses, mountains, the whole choir of heaven and the furniture of earth to the indi- vidual percipient consist at once of actually presented and of merely represented sensations." 2 The first ele- ment leaves the individual without choice and the object presented without universality. The individual opens his eyes and beholds an object which he calls a tree ; the object is presented to him with sufficient coherence to produce a sensation out of which he forms a percep- tion, and a judgment, an idea, but the tree is particular- ized so far as the individual is concerned. However it exists and has its coherence in the divine mind and the mere experience arising from its observance or its presentation is not a matter of choice with the observer. The second element involves contingency or arbitra- tion on the part of the divine mind, and so far univer- 1 Cf. Principles Sec. i, and Berkeley's Works Vol. i. PP. 131-22. a Life and Letters, P. 378. sality or objectivity. If there is a particular tree there must be also the possibility of the representative univer- sal tree. It is this universal that changes the object from a mere ideal idealism to a real idealism, or from a mere subjective phantasy to an objective reality. Sen- sations are independent of the recipient and the cause of sensations external to the recipient ; if this were not so, sensations could not be fleeting and the Ego per- manent, but sensations are fleeting as the experience of humanity universally testifies ; but the Ego is perman- ent, 1 otherwise there could be no experience to offer such testimony, and whether there had ever been an experience or ever would be an experience other than the "now" would be impossible for us to know. On the other hand, sensations are dependent upon the recipi- ent, for to conceive of them existing as I now have them is impossible unless there is an I to be sentient of them. 2 Sensations are therefore at the same time de- pendent and independent of the sentient being. All changes of sensation are independent of the will of the recipient, but the realization of the objective cause of the sensation is dependent upon the will of the percipi- ent. We see that there is here set forth an apparent contradiction in Berkeley's philosophy of the process of knowledge, and unless the problem is looked at strictly from the metaphysical standpoint there is a real con- tradiction. Prof. Bowne says, that "metaphysically 1 Berkeley's Works. Vol. i, n. P. 230. Pr. Sec. 142. 2 Commonplace Book, P. 481. 20 Berkeley's theory of the externality of matter cannot be disproved, for without the will of God nothing can exist." 1 It is only necessary then to understand that the objective cause of a sensation is not absolute, but is dependent upon the activity, yea even upon the con- stant activity of the will of God ; in this existence there is a sufficient coherency permanently to contain all the elements necessary to the production of a sensation. The time of a sensation depends upon attendant circum- stances not necessary to be explained here. This co- herency of matter which makes it capable of perman- ently producing sensations, and by which sensations are thrust upon us whether we will or not, explains to us the sense in which a sensation is independent of the Me, of the sentient creature. This material object which causes the sensation is not a something created by a fiat of the Divine Will or power and cast out into space as an absolute and independent existence, as a thing-in-itself, but it is the manifestation of the Divine Will in a state of constant activity. This manifestation produces sensations in the percipient ; these sensations are caught up by the activity of the mind and made over into conceptions, the whole process resulting in knowledge. These two elements are the same two elements which Kant calls perception and conception. The chief difference is in the form of the dualism arising from these two elements and the manner or process of their synthesis. Let us pause here for a 1 Bowne's Metaphysics, P. 461. 21 moment and examine Berkeley's conception of those two elements in their separate relations to our know- ledge or experience. This apparent digression is necessary that we may understand the importance of Berkeley's attempt to do away with the schools of rationalism and empiricism and yet preserve their principles as fundamental elements in knowledge. First, let us inquire into Berkeley's notion of percep- tion. Perception is used now generally, in a somewhat different way than it was in the philosophy of Locke and Berkeley. The latter however develops perception through his term "suggestion" 1 into an acquired per- ception of things, objects in space. Berkeley in his later philosophy made perception as necessary to ex- perience as experience was necessary to knowledge, and varied his psychological view until he may be in- terpreted as using the term perception much more in the Kantian sense than any of his predecessors had done. He foreshadows sometimes Kant's schematism in the succession of events and in the filling of a moment of time ; 2 he says "extension, motion, time, each include the idea of succession." Number which consists of distinct perception, consists also of succession, for things which are at once perceived are jumbled together and mixed in the mind. Time and motion cannot be conceived without succession. 3 It is clearly implied that here in 1 Selections from Berkeley, P. 158. 2 Commonplace Book, n. P. 471. " P. 425. 22 the notion of perception, there can be no empty time and from what follows, that there can be no moment of time, at least of which we can have any knowledge, that is empty of sense perception, or external percep- tion. He continues by saying if it were not for sense (perception) the mind could have no knowledge, no thought at all. 1 This statement of Berkeley is emphatic, and when interpreted simply means that thought cannot be merely analytic. Had Berkeley developed this prin- ciple he would have shown that the manifold, or things jumbled in the mind as he says, were not given to the mind as things ready made for the mind to act upon, but that they are the external manifestation of the Divine Will and are given to the mind as a whole, a mere im- pression, and that the activity of the mind made them as we know them i. e., there can be no absolute thing- in-itself given to the mind for it to work upon, but none the less a real and permanent manifestation of divine intelligence and activity which must be acted upon by our intelligence or understanding in order to become objectified. Without such a given manifold, thought either analytic or synthetic would be impossible ; all knowledge must then have two elements in it and must be synthetic, the process of this synthesis was to be de- veloped in the activity of the will and to be set forth in the contemplated treatise on the will. Berkeley makes no use of the imagination as a syn- thetic element of any kind, but very clearly distin- 1 Commonplace Book, P. 434. 2 3 guishes between sense perception and the imagination. The perceptions have a steadiness, order, and coherence which are not found in the imagination, and to reduce Berkeley to a philosophy which gives no more perma- nence to the objective world of his idealism, than to the imaginary world is simply to advertise an ignorance of his whole system. I can do no better here to establish the permanence of Berkeley's phenomenal world than to quote two or three paragraphs from Prof. Fraser, taken from the "Life and Letters of Berkeley." "One actual sensation or group of sensations is the universal work of other sensations or groups of sensa- tions that are not at the time actual. This relation of sensible sign and its correlative, Berkeley would say, is only imaginable, meaning of substantiality or caus- ality, when they are attributed to essentially dependent and passive phenomena like those of sense. "Further still these practically all important relations of coexistence and succession among perceived sensa- tions are, a priori, at this point of view, arbitrary. That is to say, there is no uncreated or Divine necessity for their being what we find it to be, any sensation or group of sensations may be the constant or universal sign of any other. A priori, anything might be the physical co-constituent, and physical cause of any- thing ; for physical substance and causality are only the arbitrarily constituted signification of actual sen- sations. "Thus the only conceivable and practical, and for 2 4 us the only possible, substantiality in the material world is permanence of coexistence or aggregation among sensations ; and the only conceivable and prac- tical, and for us the only possible, causality among phenomena is permanence or invariableness among their successions. "These two are almost (but not quite) one. The actual or conscious coexistence of all the sensations which constitute a particular tree, or a particular moun- tain, cannot be simultaneously realized, a few coexistent visible signs, for instance, lead us to expect that the many other sensations of which the tree is the virtual co-constituent would gradually be perceived by us, if the conditions for our having actual sensations of all the other qualities were fulfilled. The substantiality and causality of matter thus resolve into a Universal Sense-Symbolism, the interpretation of which is the office of physical science. The physical world is a system of interpretable signs, dependent for its actual existence in sense upon the sentient mind of the inter- preter ; but significant of guaranteed pains and pleas- ures, and the guaranteed means of avoiding and at- taining pains and pleasures ; significant too of other minds, and their thoughts, feelings and volitions ; and significant above all of Supreme mind through whose Activity, the signs are sustained, and whose Archetypal Ideas are the source of those universal or invariable relations of theirs which make them both practically and scientifically significant or objective. The per- manence and efficiency attributed to matter is in God in the constitutive Universals of Supreme Mind ; sen- sations or sense-given phenomena themselves and sen- sible things, so far as they consist of sensations, can be neither permanent nor efficient ; they are in constant flux." This constant flux is not the miraculous creat- ing and destroying of things, but the constant phe- nomenal change of the permanent in nature and fore-r shadows the Kantian doctrine of the change in the permanent. "The material world its substance or permanence, its powers, and its space resolve them- selves into a flux of beautifully significant sensations, sense-ideas or sense-phenomena, which are perpetually sustained in existence by a Divine Reason and Will. It is so that the Berkelean Conception reconciles Plato with Protagoras." 1 Permanence is therefore a necessary factor in -the conditions of perception, but actual perception is not itself necessary to the external existence of bodies. The existence of bodies unperceived may be said to be only a potential existence, but it is an existence depend- ing upon the active powers of an intelligent being. This necessary activity is no less important in the phi- losophy of later thought than with Berkeley, the chief difference being the way the different schools of philoso- phy account for the principle of activity. Conception is a no less important factor in knowledge than perception, according to Berkeley. Concepts as 1 Life and Letters of Berkeley, PP. 374-376. 26 such are not given to us intuitively ; a concept is not something given from the external world, it is thought. All things conceived by us, according to Berkeley, "are (a') thoughts, (b') powers to receive thoughts, and (c) powers to cause thoughts." 1 External things are perceived but by perception alone cannot be known ; the active power of thought must form an element in the knowledge of any thing. This activity is necessary to the formation of a judgment, and the judgment must involve both a percept and a concept; 2 the former is given through the senses, the latter is made out of the mind's activity ; it is a process of thought activity. The problem which has been so vexing to philosophers of all ages, viz., the distinction between perception and conception, did not greatly disturb Berkeley in his problem of knowledge ; Berkeley had but one thing- in-itself, if you look at this one thing-in-itself from the standpoint of its outward manifestation you have per- ception, if you look at it from the side of its inward activity you have conception. Hence Berkeley did not have to contend with that kind of dualism which has been so annoying to many philosophers both before and since his time. He had a dualism 3 of a different nature, but the very principle of his synthesis removed from him the annoying problems of separating percep- tion and conception, and the unifying of two things-in- themselves. 1 Commonplace Book, P. 484. " P. 454. And Selections, n. P. 71. 3 Life and Letters, P. 29. And Commonplace Book, 422. 27 The dualism of Berkeley was the dualism arising from setting the self over against the outer world, but in a very different way from that of Descartes, for the Cartesian idea or conception of the world was to Berke- ley a mere abstraction. Berkeley's dualism was not so much a dualism between percept and concept, as it was a dualism between concepts, between his own con- ception of the impossibility of anything existing in the universe unperceived or unwilled, and the common idea of the independent existence of matter. 1 The synthesis of these concepts however would destroy the Cartesian dualism between mind and matter. Matter would no longer stand over against self, but it would be a manifestion of a self-conscious intelligence and would therefore be in self-consciousness. A synthetic activity by which such a dualism could be made into a unity was just as necessary in Berkeley's system as it was in Descartes' or in Kant's. Upon the synthetic activity which made this dualism into a unity depended the coherence and permanence of the external world which made experience a possibility. That unifying element is the Will. There is not one big Will, viz., the Divine Will which creates all these things of the objective world, and then a lot of little wills, one for each person, by which there is a realization of this creation ; there is but one Will and the manifestation of that Will objectively is the objective world, and the human will is the subjective manifestation of the Divine 1 Life and Letters. P. 29. And Commonplace Book, P. 433. 28 Will, or is a differentiation of the one universal Will working through us, the development and realization of which tends toward a perfect intelligence which if ever attained to would mean a full realization of the Divine Will. This would be a complete knowledge of the objective world which would be the ultimate phil- osophical unity. Kant sought this unity by setting forth two things-in-themselves, one objective and one subjective, and then sought a process of knowledge by which he might synthesize the dualism thus made. Berkeley sought, by maintaining that there was but one thing-in-itself, viz., the subjective, to establish a philosophy which would explain the external world and self-consciousness by showing that there was no external world outside of self-consciousness. The question now presents itself to us : What was the synthetic activity by means of which Berkeley meant to reach his ultimate unity? The question can be answered in a single word, it was the Will. What has already been said is to show that the process of knowledge does include the elements attributed to knowledge both by the empiricists and by the rational- ists, and by the idealists and the realists. The process by which the elements were to be synthesized and knowledge brought to an ideal unity was to be a pro- cess of the Will contemplated but not developed. Berkeley was not able to free himself from the notion of the Will as given to him from his study of Descartes. In the psychology of Descartes there are two funda- 29 mental modes of thought, viz., perception and volition ; in receiving ideas the mind is passive, its ideas are put into it partly by the objects which effect the senses, partly by the impressions in the brain and partly by the disposition or habits of the mind itself previously form- ed, and by the movements of the Will. The mind is active only in volitions. The Will therefore being more originative has more to do with true or false judgments than the understanding. In the perfection of man as well as in the nature of God, Will and in- tellect must be united. For thought, will is as neces- sary as understanding. 1 A judgment is the work of the understanding : the affirming or denying of it is the work of the will. The will goes further than the understanding and may turn the understanding from the path of knowledge. There is rothing which the will cannot affirm or deny, accept or reject, or toward which it cannot occupy an attitude of indifference ; the will extends to the unknown as well as to the known, and can affirm or deny the one as well as the other ; the will is therefore greater than the understanding. The understanding is limited to a definite sphere, the will is unlimited. Descartes says, "The will or the freedom of the will is of all my facul- ties the only one which, according to my experience, is ^o great that I cannot conceive a greater. It is this faculty pre-eminently by reason of which I believe I am created in the image of God." 3 1 Encyclopedia Britannica, Art. Descartes. 2 History of Modern Philosophy. By Kuno Fischer, PP. 361-62. 30 Berkeley was a close student of Descartes and was influenced by his doctrine to regard the will as the unifying element in knowledge. Kant made self-consciousness the source of all the categories but could not know self-consciousness be- cause the categories could not be applied to it, yet he was absolutely certain that such an activity as self- consciousness existed. Berkeley made use of the will in the same relation, it was the activity of will that made self-consciousness possible, it contained all the categories, or rather it was the source of all the pro- cesses of knowledge, yet it could not be known because no idea could be formed of it, Kant would say no cate- gory could be applied to it. Berkeley had but one thing-in-itself viz., spirit, a living and conscious indi- vidual spirit, and his self identity arose by God working through this individuality of spirit, and experience was made by placing this spirit as a unifier of experiences. This spirit was the active principle of mind, an activity which transcended Hume's idea of knowledge, which gave us as many states of consciousness as we had ex- periences. Berkeley's self-identity could not arise out of mere self-consciousness taken on the side of thought, for we cannot be conscious of self except as we set the self over against the outer external world ; self identity cannot be the result of mere consciousness, for if so then I could not possibly be the same person to-day I was twelve months ago. 1 The transcendental unity of 1 Commonplace Book. P. 481. 3 1 apperception was not seen by Berkeley, but some identifying principle is necessary to self-consciousness, Berkeley therefore makes the active principle of will run through these states of consciousness and bind them into one unified identity. 1 The objective essence of matter or the sense given non-ego was with Berkeley purely phenomenal or ideal, the essence of mind, the ego is substantial and causal. 2 According to Berkeley's doctrine the identity of finite substance must consist in something more than mere continued existence, or relation to determined time and place of beginning to exist; the existence, of our thoughts (which being com- bined make all substances) being frequently interrupt- ed they have divers beginnings and endings. 3 The active principle of will is not only necessary to person- al identity, but is necessary to insure identity of any object. The will as a synthetic activity grows out of the fact that there is but one Intelligence, in which the will constitutes the fundamental active principle ; in other words, will is a homogeneous activity, if we can think of activity being homogeneous as we think of space being made up of homogeneous parts ; this being true our wills are to God's Will as a small portion of space is to the whole of space ; the difference being, that will as an activity may comprehend, or approach compre- hension of the parent will, while space in itself being 1 Commonplace Book, P. 481. 3 Berkeley's Works, Vol. i, P. 230. Principles Sec. 142. Commonplace Book, P. 481. 32 nothing but a mere abstraction remains to all space just as we place it. This being true whatever exists in God's Will must exist in our wills so far as our wills are made to comprehend God's Will, or in other words the complete comprehension or realization of God's Will would be the ultimate unity of the universe in our self- consciousness, which is the end of all philosophy and the banishment of all scepticism. To illustrate, a man begins with the colonization of America to manufacture woolen goods, the whole in- dustry of woolen goods is under his control ; if he has a disjunctive judgment, i. e., if he has an unconditioned and unlimited knowledge of the wants and demands of the people so far as the market for woolen goods is concerned and that knowledge develops with the trade and remains perfect and complete all the time he will have just enough factories, just enough machinery, just enough working men, and will make just enough goods to the yard of just the right kind to supply the demand. If the manufacturer could live through the whole devel- opment or evolution of trade and his judgment remain disjunctive all the time his knowledge would be a per- fect knowledge, a perfect unity of the totality or logical individual of the whole ; but if the manufacturer ceases to exercise his will in the running of his machinery no web will be produced, no factory will exist. The will constitutes the fundamental element in the disjunctive judgment of the manufacturer, and his subjects have a perfect knowledge of the whole trade in proportion to 33 the extent in which they comprehend the will of the manufacturer. Such is God's relation to the universe. He has a disjunctive judgment of the universe, the activity of will underlying it all ; there can therefore be no dualism whatever, there can be no two things-in-themselves ; there can be but one thing-in-itself, self-conscious spirit, and that spirit is active and its activity is the Will. The external world is not outside and foreign to that self- consciousness, but is a part of it and a method of its manifestation. There is not a separate will for each person, and a separate intelligence for each person, there is but one Will and that will working through us makes our wills, and produces in us a self activity by which we are capable of development. This process of development is bringing the external world into our self-consciousness and thus comprehending more or less of the Divine Will. We approach the unity of knowl- edge, the disjunctive judgment of the universe, in pro- portion to the complete comprehension of the parent will. O Kant makes two things of perception and conception, j but is not able to separate one from the other and define j each separately ; so Berkeley gives a special volition- ating power and freedom to the human will, but does not separate it from the Divine Will. There is no necessary element of synthesis between the human and the divine wills, because from the very nature of the activity of will there is, to start with, no duality. 34 There must be a unity which underlies man's separa- tion from nature and it is by virtue of this unity that man can have a higher ideal of nature and may be able to realize the ideal thus formed. This brings us back to the origin of man and nature, both of which must be expressions of an intelligence ; and if there were no connecting link man would be entirely isolated from nature and could form no conception of it whatever, there could be no common principle. The unifying link is Will, in which is found two elements, first the power of forming conceptions of ends not already exist- ing, and second, the power of transforming the existing state of things so that these conceived ends become actual. This power of the will to frame ideals is due to the presence in it of a perfect intelligence ; the end man always has before him is the realization of this perfect intelligence, and the various particular ends are simply so many aspects of the realization of this perfect intelligence. Nature is only a partial manifestation and must be refashioned and worked over until it becomes a more adequate expression of the perfect intelligence, and that is the realization of the ideal in the develop- ment of will. Nature becomes a tool, an instrument of the will; when we talk of subjugating the forces of nature we simply mean the bringing of them under the full control of the will ; this can only be explained by the unity of a higher intelligence. 1 This modern conception of the will is precisely the 1 Dewey's Lectures, Introduction to Philosophy. 35 outgrowth of the principles postulated by Berkeley and shows that Berkeley saw behind the veil what philoso- phers now see more clearly. Two hundred years of philosophic thought has removed partially the veil through which Berkeley saw but which he was not able to remove. This synthetic activity of the Will unites the dualism of concepts already referred to, gives coherence to the objective world, and changes our former conception of Berkeley's objective Idealism into an objective Realism differing not widely from the Empirical Realism of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. 1 Dr. Bowne of our own time does not widely differ from this conception of Berkeley. He says, "Matter and material things have no ontological existence, but only a phenomenal existence. Their necessary de- pendence and lack of all subjectivity makes it impossi- ble to view them as capable of other than phenomenal existence. This world- view then contains the following factors ; (i) The Infinite energizes under the forms of space and time; (2) the system of energizing according to certain laws and principles, which system appears in thought as the external universe; and (3) finite spirits, who are in relation to this system, and in whose intuition the system takes on the forms of perception. This view is not well described as idealism, because it makes the world more than an idea." 2 That experience may be possible bodies must and do exist without the mind, as the word mind is commonly 1 Kant's Doctrine of the Thing-in-itself, P. 67. Bowne's Metaphysics, P. 466. 36 used, and Berkeley sets forth very clearly how it is possible to have a body exist without the mind, or the difference between a body existing within the mind and one existing without the mind. His explanation would be about on this wise; every idea has a cause i. e., is produced by a will. Every phenomenon is sustained by a free intelligent agent. Without the activity of the mind, without the exercise of the Will of the Deity nothing could exist, and no longer can anything exist than the Divine Will continues to act ; the moment the activity of the Divine Will ceases, that moment the object of reality must become a nonentity. The Divine Will is an activity and things do actually exist, and since our wills are part of the Divine Will we are re- quired only to fulfill the necessary conditions and we have perception ; the conditions of the perception of a thing remain unchanged whether willed directly by the Divine Will, as a mountain, a tree, etc., or worked out indirectly through human agency, as a library. So far as our self-consciousness is concerned they exist or non-exist according to the potential or actual fulfillment or non-fulfillment of the conditions of perception. The perception once having been formed the existence is made real and legitimate by means of the imagination without the re-fulfillment of the conditions of per- ception. What is the difference between the reality of the library which I have perceived and left and now recall by the faculty of imagination, and the fanciful library which I may call up and 37 arrange in the adjoining room, which in reality is nothing but fancy? In the former the Divine Will and intelligence has worked it out through human agency and hence it has sufficient coherence to fulfill all the conditions of sense perception. In the second case the Divine Will has not acted upon the fanciful library, and the conditions of perception have not been provided. Hence in the latter the library is merely ideal, while in the former it is really ideal, or if you please, objectively ideal as well as subjectively ideal. This existence when not perceived however is but a potential existence in the Divine Will and Thought. Bodies do exist when not perceived they being powers in the active being. 1 The existence of bodies with Berkeley is not a mere fancy of the mind, neither is it a continual miracle wrought by divine power, yet both these positions have been charged upon him in spite of his persistent denial of any such belief, or of any such doctrine with respect to- the existence of reality in the objective world. The existence of the phenomenal world is just as necessary to experience in the philosophy of Berkeley as it is in the philosophy of Kant ; further, the mere existence is not sufficient to produce an experience, there must be a synthesis, a necessary connection in this phenomenal world, otherwise neither world nor experience would be possible. 2 It is true that Berkeley did not system- atize his theory of synthesis and necessary connection 1 Commonplace Book, P. 471. 3 Berkeley-Blackwood's Classics, P. 194 as did later philosophers. He took more for granted, but his place in the philosophic world should not be underestimated on that account ; since philosophers have been trying for two hundred years to complete a system of synthesis and have not succeeded to the satisfaction of all, it would hardly be expected that the man who originated the idea would culminate the doc- trine. It was as creditable for him to postulate such a philosophy even in isolated thoughts as it was for his followers to take those thoughts and make a system of them. There have been three leading theories for the ex- istence of the material universe maintained and develop- ed, viz., the Abstractly Objective theory in which there is a static something that contains the idea of unity when it is separated from the qualities or from the multiplicity of the external world ; it is simply the idea of the identity separated and abstracted from the differ- ences. Instead of getting a unity of the differences and qualities, we get a unity separated from the quali- ties and underlying not one thing alone but all things. The second of these theories is the Abstractly Sub- jective theory, in which the idea of a real unity is a fiction of the mind. It denies the existence of sub- stance and somehow places a lot of attributes in the mind in such a way as to make the phenomenal world appear as it does. It takes the side of multiplicity or difference and holds it apart from unity. The third of these theories is the more modern and 39 concerns itself with the fact that matter is the unity of and in things. It holds that a thing is a dynamic inter- relation of qualities, the unity being ideal. There is then no unity of substance apart from the qualities, the unity is simply the fact that the qualities after all have one end or function to which they are all subordinate. To understand this theory is to understand philoso- fhy. To which of these theories does Berkeley adhere? Certainly not to the first, for such a conception of the external world was to him a contradiction, and lacked ail the elements of true philosophy. Neither can he be classed with the second, for unity would then be a mere fiction of the mind made up for the purpose of explain- ing permanence in the external world ; it would rob him of his unity and by so doing destroy the possibility of experience or of an external world at all. He could not be classed with the third for his source of unity was postulated, and consisted of an unrealized system, rather than a formulated and realized or philosophic system of synthesis by which a unity is made rather than given. He is a cross between the second, the Abstractly Subjective theory, and the third which we may call the theory of Dynamic Inter-relation, with the constant tendency of his philosophy, as set forth in his Commonplace Book toward the latter. The more he studied the great problem of philosophy the more he gave up the Abstractly Subjective theory and swung round toward the theory of Dynamic inter-relation, and 4 even approached it so far as to express in an isolated way nearly all its underlying principles. The question between the materialist and me, says Berkeley, "is not whether things have a real existence out of the mind of this or that person, but, whether they have an absolute existence distinct from being per- ceived by God, and external to all mind." There is no difference between this doctrine of existence and that of the third theory above referred to except the mere fact that Berkeley uses the word God instead of Intelligence or Self-consciousness, which the school of the dynamic theory would have used, in order that they might not be charged with dogmatism. The metaphysical princi- ple is just the same, and the ultimate end sought by Berkeley and the advocates of the dynamic theory was the same. They differed only in their methods of attaining the end. When the latter attempt to explain the origin of self-consciousness-in-itself, or the origin of the thing-in-itself, or if they deny the existence ot these factors in themselves and attempt to explain the origin of the unity of which these factors are component parts they are driven back to Berkeley's God or landed in hopeless chaotic agnosticism. "Sense and Experience acquaint us with the course and analogy of appearances or natural effects. Thought, Reason, Intellect introduce us into the knowledge of their causes. Sensible appearances, though of a flowing, unstable, and uncertain nature, yet having first occupied the mind, they do by an early 4 1 prevention render the aftertask of thought more diffi- cult ; and, as they amuse the eyes and ears, and are more suited to vulgar uses and the mechanic arts of life, they early obtain a preference, in the opinion of most men, to those superior principles, which are the later growth of the human mind, arrived to maturity and perfection, but, not affecting the corporeal sense, are thought to be so far deficient in point of solidity and reality sensible and real, to common apprehensions, being the same thing. Although it be certain that the principles of science are neither objects of Sense nor Imagination ; and that Intellect and Reason are alone the sure guides to truth." 1 In this expression of Berkeley's later philosophy he shows the importance of the faculty of Reason, in our knowledge. The universal laws which make mathe- matics and physics reducible to a science are not ob- jects of sense, nor of imagination. However he does not drop out the element of sense, for if he did he would destroy experience, without which there could be no such thing as knowledge. Prof. Fraser in com- menting on the section here referred to, observes that Berkeley speaks lightly of the reality of sensible things. Prof. Fraser for the most part shows a very comprehen- sive and accurate knowledge of Berkeley's philosophy but certainly has not grasped the meaning of the sec- tion under discussion. Berkeley has shown, prior to the production of this later work, by his New Theory 1 Siris. Sec. 264. 4 2 of Vision, and by his Theory of Visual Language, that the organs of sense are not always accurate interpreters of things presented to us under the laws and conditions of perception, and that furthermore the same organ of sense under different circumstances and under varied conditions will interpret a thing one way at one time and in a different way at another time, the apparent in- stability and uncertainty of such reality is therefore the result of the way you modify the conditions of percep- tion and not, as Prof. Fraser observes, a depreciation of the reality of the thing itself; the view is then in per- fect harmony with his former view of reality and needs no reconciliation. If Berkeley had changed his view of reality as Prof. Fraser suggests, he must have changed his view of the unchangeableness of God, for such a change could only come about by the oscillation of the Will of God ; such a charge would be an insult to the memory of the Philosopher, and Prof. Fraser did not mean to make such a charge, he simple missed the meaning that Berkeley meant to convey in the passage under consideration. In the process of knowledge thus developed and the Unity arrived at by making Will a synthetic activity, Berkeley has not attempted to separate the Will from the Reason, but has given Reason its legitimate place in knowledge which when taken in connection with what precedes shows Berkeley to have been much less dogmatical than his critics would have us believe him to have been. Let us then examine Reason and see 43 whether we can find in it that gradation of faculties or activities by which the Deity is postulated as the high- est category in knowledge, or in which the Deity must ultimately become the highest category in knowledge. It is necessary to pass through reason, to reach the highest category, but it must be remembered that the Will from its very nature as a synthetic activity, and from its connection with the Divine Will underlies Reason and renders it efficient in knowledge just the same as it underlies other activities of the mind. What follows therefore in respect to Reason must not be taken as isolated from Will but only as one movement in the activity of Will. Sense perceptions 1 introduce us to the fact that we have an external world around us, and that out of that external existence or rather by observation of it, we dis- cover certain unalterable laws, but this is not a satis- factory knowledge of things, we are not sure that the laws are unalterable, our observation may not be suffi- cient to justify us in saying that what we have observ- ed will always under all conditions be the same or even under the same conditions will never change. We are not sure we can universalize with certainty what we have postulated. 2 There must be another element viz., Reason. Reason is the judge on the bench in Berke- ley's intellectual world. 3 Reason introduces us to the possibility of the universal laws which we think we 1 Sins, Sec. 264, Selections H., P. 330. 2 Introduction to Selections, P. XXIII. 3 Siris, Sec. 303. 44 have discovered from mere observation; 1 through the faculty of reason we are able to look into the causes of all empirical knowledge. Reason forms the perman- ent in knowledge, while sensations or perceptions are in themselves fluctuating and unstable. Reason also sits in judgment on the imaginations, and enables us to determine what is a mere imaginary fancy and to separate it from what is permanent in the objective world. The former is nothing more than a dream and has not sufficient coherence to fulfill the conditions of perception even when it appears in the imagination for the first time ; and under no conditions can a fanciful image be reproduced in the mind as it was first given. The latter constitutes the objective world in its reality and has sufficient coherence to fulfill the conditions of perception. It is ideally real and permanent. The acts of Reason by which knowledge is made permanent become new objects to the understanding ; in them we find the graduation of the faculties leading us from a lower to a higher plane of knowledge until we reach the highest which is the Deity. 2 This process which is implied and partly developed in the Siris and practi- cally outlined in the Commonplace Book is a process of knowledge not widely different in its application to the understanding from the categories of Kant, and even going far beyond Kant in reaching the highest category. Kant stops with the category of reciprocity and leaves himself in a contradiction with respect to the 1 Siris, Sec. 264. 3 Siris, Sec. 303. Selections, n., P. 345. 45 knowledge of self-consciousness ; later philosophers have carried Kant's principles much further and have made purpose, self-consciousness, etc., categories and continuing in the same process must find the highest category in the Deity. Berkeley did this long before but did not formulate it. With Berkeley, nature is "reason immersed in mat- ter." Philosophy is the endeavor fully to disengage the immanent reason. 1 Philosophy does not attempt to disengage reason, and set it over against matter thus making two abstractions and forming a dualism with such a chasm between the two elements as to render the possibility of unity hopeless, but to disengage the immanent reason for the purpose of giving it a greater leverage and to enable it to transform matter and mind into one comprehensive ideal unity which may contain two elements one involved in the other with such a complete synthesis that absolutely no dualism will appear. Prof. Morris said of Berkeley, "He saw perfectly well that it makes a world-wide difference whether, as a so-called idealist, you find the absolute radical and essence of universal being in living, knowable spirit, or in an unliving and intrinsically unknowable something, conventionally termed Matter. In the former is given a vital principle, possessed of a faculty, to wit, Reason, capable of accounting for the visible order and invari- able law of concrete phenomena, and of a power, 1 Berkeley-Blackwood's Classics, P. 206. 4 6 namely, Will competent to be the source of the incess- ant motive of phenomena, or of their miscalled forces." 1 Berkeley's Reason like that of Kant leads us to the highest possible unity in knowledge, viz., the Deity. He says, "there may be demonstrations used even in Divinity. I mean revealed Theology, as contradisting- uished from natural ; for though the principles may be founded in faith yet this hinders not but that legitimate demonstrations might be built thereon. Provided still that we define the words we use, and never go beyond our ideas. . . . But to pretend to reason or demon- strate any thing about the Trinity is absurd. Here an implicit faith becomes us." 2 Having thus briefly pointed out the process by which Berkeley would lead us through the various stages in the process of knowledge, let us turn for a few moments to the active principle of knowledge as found in the Critique of Pure Reason by Kant. 1 British Thoughts and Thinkers, P. 216. 2 Commonplace Book, PP. 438-439. III. KANT'S TRANSCENDENTAL EGO. In attempting to examine the Transcendental Ego of Kant as a factor in knowledge it is necessary for us to free our minds if possible of the concept of the Ego as an object. Indeed we must free our minds of any con- cept at all, for a concept is just the thing it is not. It is a thinking activity. "Through this I or He or It (the thing) which thinks," Kant says, "nothing is set before our consciousness except a transcendental subject^x." 1 In order to define to some extent this thingless thing or activity let us examine some of the phrases or terms which represent it. It has been called the "I," the "I Think," the "Absolute Unity of Thinking Subject," the "Unity of Pure Self-consciousness," the "Self Originative and Self Illuminative Act or Activity," the "Original Synthetic Unity of Apperception," the "Transcendental Unity of Apperception," the "Orig- inal Primary Apperception," "Pure Apperception," "Transcendental Self," etc. The various shades of meaning which these predicates present to our minds show us something of the difficulty arising out of an attempt to define a thing which is no-thing. The transcendental self is the functional unity back 1 Critical Philosophy of Kant. By Caird. Vol. II, M-<4- 48 of all knowledge and works through the individual. It is a synthetic activity which makes experience by mak- ing a complete unity. The fact that we speak of a synthetic unity implies, at least, something to unite ; this something when de- fined will be found to be the I and the external world. This gives us the starting point of Metaphysics. We cannot say I am I until we reach this stage, neither can we have metaphysics until we can say I am I ; for until we are able to separate the I from the world we are completely overwhelmed by the world. We can neither criticize the world nor judge of it until we are able to get outside of it, i. e., until we are able to separate our- selves from the world and set ourselves over against the world. But having made such a separation we have not reached the ultimatum in knowledge. We have only begun the freedom of thought ; if we were to stop here we should be in slavery so far as intelli- gence is concerned. That is if thought found here a resting place where it could stand still, it would be in abject slavery, there would be no further movement possible for thought; but such is not the case, it isl necessary for us to get outside the world in order that ' we may be able to lift the world up to our own standard. / It does not follow from this that there is a dualism and that the I set over against the external world is entirely foreign to the external world. It does not of necessity imply a dualism fundamentally, but it does imply that we can have no metaphysical starting place until the 49 movement of thought has reached that stage in which by process of analysis of the original reality it is able to make such division and set the one over against the other. When the analysis of the original reality has been made and we have set thought over against matter, ^ have we entirely separated thought from the material world and made it capable of acting within, itself? This gives rise to the question, is thought analytic? Descar- tes said cogito ergo sum and in the statement made thought purely analytic ; he did more than that, he rendered the Self knowable in the sense that the Kantian categories could be applied to it, for "without- some empirical representation, which presents to the mind material for thought, the judgment 4 I think' could not be formed." 1 Descartes' proposition reduces to the form "I am thinking" or that "I exist thinking," he "was wrong in inferring the I exist from the I think, x for his major premise must be every thinking being exists, which would not be true, as it would assert that the property thought constitutes all beings possessing it necessary beings." 2 The criticism Kant offers on Des- cartes' proposition is not a criticism against the fact that thought was and is analytic, but against the proposition as being one which objectifies the transcendental self; this could not be true in the system of Kant as he pro- * ceeds to prove. That Descartes' proposition made the frvva^^fr self determinable by the categories follows from the fact JL/-C H#\ 1 Kant's Critical Philosophy. By Mahaffy. P. 272. * " " " " P. 273. 50 that to say 'I exist thinking' expresses "more than the spontaneity of pure thought;" it expresses, "in fact, a determination of the subject as present to itself in per- ception." 1 "If on the other hand, I concentrate my attention upon the mere logical function of thought "the pure spontaneity of the combination of the mani- fold of a merely possible perception, either as I am or as I appear to myself, but I am thinking of myself only as I might think of any object from the manner of the perception of which I abstract. If, then, I represent myself in this point of view as a subject of thought, or even as a ground of thinking, this does not mean that I i apply to myself the categories of substance and causal- v ity ; for these categories are not the bare conceptions of subject and ground, but these functions of thought as already applied to our sensuous perception. Now, such application of the categories would, indeed, be necessary if I wished to know myself as an object through them. But, exhypothesi^ I wish to be con- scious of myself only as a thinking subject, I, therefore, set aside the consideration of how I am given to myself in perception (which may, indeed, present me to my- self, though only as phenomenon.) And thus, in the consciousness of myself in mere thought, I come back upon the being which for me underlies all being (bin ich das Wesen selbst), but which is not thereby given in such a way that thought can determine it." 2 The 1 Critical Philosophy of Kant. By Caird. Vol. II, P^^OX" f 3 " " " " " " Vol. II, PP. 29-30. 5 1 self Descartes set forth was the empirical self and was an object among so many other objects and not the self that knows. The self that knows is transcendental and is itself unknowable but is thinkable. Kant's criticism as has been said was not made on Descartes because the latter held that thought was analytic and therefore independent of the material world, but because Descartes made the self one object among other objects, and made it possible to apply the categories to it. That the criticism was on this basis is clear for Kant himself held, erroneously as we- shall see, that thought was analytic, and that it was set over against the manifold and that the manifold was an entirely foreign element which must in some way be brought in contract with the self or with thought, and that thought and the manifold were to be exploded and in the explosion they would be united into a new and third thing viz., knowledge or experience, just as Oxygen and Hydrogen exploded together make a new and third substance water. But in order that oxygen and hydrogen be exploded and we get a third sub- stance, water, there must be applied the active energy, heat. So with the former in order that thought and the manifold may be exploded into knowledge there must be present the energy or activity which Kant calls the Transcendental Self or Unity of Apperception. We shall understand more fully the nature of this activity if we compare it with the noumenorT^nd dis- tinguish it from the EcrfpiricalseJJP The empirical self 5 2 is the self we know and not the self that knows, it is simply one object among so many other objects with this scientific inferiority that it is an object of inner sense only and we cannot therefore apply to it those mathematical appliances which can be applied to exter- nal objects. The fact that there is not a sufficient uni- versal or thread of unity in the empirical self to make it a sure basis for a pure science, renders a pure science of Empirical Psychology impossible. The empirical self is a unity, but it is only a unity in any one experi- ence and not a unity which makes experiences into an experience. It is a ready made unity at any given time, it is the self Hume had constantly in mind in the devel- opment of his philosophy. But the transcendental self ^ is the unity of thought involved in knowledge, it is a subject of thought but not an object of knowledge ; it is not an object at all, if it were it would be subject to the forms of time and space. Every object is subject to the forms of time and space and must have a sensuous content and be determinable by the categories. This is just what the transcendental ego is not ; it is not subject to the forms of time and space, it does not have a sen- suous content, it is not determinable by the categories, but it is on the other hand the source of the categories, it is logically the basis of the possibility of experience and cannot be thought of as an object among other objects. It was just this fact, this reducing the transcendental! self to an object and then calling that object a soul that led to the fallacies of Rational Psychology which Kant ;' 53 sets forth in his Paralogisms. Again the transcendental self cannot be thought an object among other objects for of itself and in itself it is a mere abstraction, it is empty of all content, and so long as we stay in this mere empty abstraction we cannot get a conception of an object at all ; neither can we merge from this mere abstraction without the manifold of sense being given for thought to work upon, to move out upon. It is this element or activity presupposed that renders a judgment possible, even the simplest judgment I am I would not be possible if there were not this presupposed content given for thought to act upon. The self, then, is another way of saying that * 'thinking thinks some- thing." It now remains for us to examine the relation of the Transcendental Ego to the (Noumenon. The chapter in the Critique of Pure Reason which leads us from the phenomena to the noumena is the chapter that leads from the categories of the understanding to the Ideas of reason. This passing from the phenomena to the noumena is of the same nature but of a higher order than the passing from the Mathematical categories to the Dynamical categories. In the latter Kant does not give us any thing new, he simply gives us a deeper and truer view of the object under consideration. The mathematical categories constitute individual phenom- ena, the dynamical categories regulate this same indi- vidual phenomena and the two taken together constitute experience. Now when we pass from the categories 54 of the understanding to the Ideas of Reason, we find the Ideas of Reason do not constitute experience but they do regulate experience, hence they bear the same relation to the categories of the understanding that the - dynamical categories bear to the mathematical cate- IS gories. The Ideas are necessary postulates, they are, if you please, the categories of Reason. Now, Reason ^ as a unifying power must of necessity have on the sub- jective side the unifying element of self-consciousness, and on the objective side the unifying element or sub- stratum of phenomena. The former Kant calls the Transcendental Ego, the latter the Noumenon. The former we have to some extent already defined, the latter will now be briefly considered. "The Noume- non, "says Kant, "is a bounding concept (CrenzbegrifF), repressing the pretensions of sensibility, not invented at random, but necessarily and unavoidably connected with the limitation of sensibility." 1 The noumenon is a purely negative boundary, a kind of warning that there is something existing behind mere phenomenon ; it is not one thing bounding another thing, it is simply a bounding concept. We cannot know the noumenon any more than we can know the transcendental self. It is not a somewhat to which categories can be applied. The noumenon is the mental attitude, the mental stand- point from which we look at an object ; in this it differs from the Absolute of Spencer. The existence of the Absolute of Spencer is a matter of knowledge. He 1 Kant's Critical Philosophy. By Mahaffy. P. 227. 55 shows, or attempts to show, that all we know is relative ; this relativity itself necessitates -the' showing that the Absolute exists but is unknowable, he could not admit that the Absolute could not be a conception in the mind. Kant goes further than Spencer, he has a bounding concept, which is outside of the phenomenon ; it is the standpoint from which we look at the phenomenon. In, Kant's treatment of the thing-in-itself and the noumenon J they are not necessarily the same, but if we carry the / system to its logical conclusion, i. e., if we go on \ beyond Kant to what would be the logical outcome of his system if fully developed, they become identical. The thing-in-itself holds the same relation to the cate- gories of the understanding that the noumenon does to the Ideas of Reason. The transcendental self is the \ unity of apperception, the source of all synthesis, the source of the categories. In nearly the same sense the noumenon is the source of the Ideas of Reason, or to speak more accurately, perhaps, the noumena are the Ideas of Reason, the ideals which can never be realized but which must be postulated. In other words, the noumenon bears the same relation to the Ideas of Reason that self-consciousness does to the categories of the understanding. The transcendental self as has been said, is the functional unity back of all knowledge and works through the individual ; so far as it carries out its unifying activity and realizes itself we have the noumenon. Noumenon is not therefore an idea of faith, as Kant makes it, but it is an actual existence, it must 56 exist in phenomenon. The Ideas are not therefore mere fancies, they are higher categories and in ap- proaching them we find no break in the logical thought. We have observed in thus briefly defining the Trans- cendental Ego and comparing it with the Empirical Ego and the Noumenon, that Kant gives us an imper- fect and somewhat defective knowledge of it, and in order to get a knowledge of it which is at all satisfactory we must go beyond Kant. The same thing is true when we turn from the discussion of what it is to the discussion of its function in knowledge which is the next step in this investigation. Its function in knowledge, as has been indicated in its definition is that of a synthesizing activity. Robert Adamson says, "No connection or representation of ideas is possible, unless all of them can be accompanied by the pure logical form of self-consciousness, I think. Consciousness of the unity and identity of Self is nec- essary for all representations, as otherwise they could not be for me, could not form parts of my experience. But just as unity is not apart from difference, so con- sciousness of unity itself is only possible if difference, plurality or manifold be given." 1 This is simply another way of saying that if we remove from knowl- edge the synthesizing activity of the Self we destroy the possibility of experience. The self is that synthetic activity which makes it possible for us to have a repre- sentation ; remove the activity of self and the / would 1 On the Philosophy of Kant. By Robert Adamson. 57 become rigidly empirical and would be set over against the external world, but we should never be conscious of it. It would become impossible for me to say I am I for I could have no such consciousness, but Kant held otherwise ; he thought it possible to make the simple judgment I am I but thought it impossible to ever move out of the narrow circle thus formed in that primary simple judgment. "Kant speaks of the self as if it had a sort of independent reality of its own, apart from all relations to the other elements of knowledge. 1=1 is, he says, a purely analytic proposition. "f This is one of the causes of confusion in Kant's critique, but we must not be led astray by it. It arises with the idea that thought is analytic, but if we take Kant in his true meaning we shall not take such statements as the above to mean that the Transcendental Ego can be objectified, neither can we think of it as having a content indepen- dent of the manifold which is given as., it were for thought to work upon. If thought were purely analytic and we could make the simple judgment I am I, without the aid of the manifold, metaphysics would be rendered impossible. It is just at this point that many students of Kant be- came confused, and declare him contradictory and unintelligible : if, indeed, we were to accept Kant's bare statement of the proposition I am I as an evidence that thought is purely analytic, and take the statement as isolated from the body of the Critique he would be 1 Kant and his English Critics. By John Watson. P. 140. 58 contradictory and his whole system on that basis would go to show that metaphysics is impossible. But to understand the meaning of Kant we must modify the statement that thought is purely analytic by the teach- ing of the Critique as a whole which clearly implies that synthesis is implicit at least in the analytic propo- sition, if not clearly presupposed in it. In the most critical and literal interpretation of Kant's analytic proposition 1 am I, it must still contain implicit synthe- sis just as certainly and just as effectually as the abstract Being of Hegel contains implicit concreteness, yet no careful student of Hegel will deny that his abstract Being does contain an implicit concreteness. The transcendental unity of apperception was implicit to Kant even in the analytic proposition, and it was because of this implicitness that Kant thought the I could set itself over against the world as being indepen- dent of the world and at the same time be conscious of the judgment, of the fact that it had set itself off and had not objectified itself, or made it possible to apply the categories to it. - "The Ego is not merely a power of theoretical cog- nition, which power alone is treated of in the Critique of Pure Reason, it is also a power of practical acting or willing, and finally a power of relating its cognitions to its willing, or a power of judgment." 1 But before we have a relating power we must have something to relate, something to unite, i. e., we must have a condi- 1 Journal, Speculative Philosophy, Vol. Ill, P. 134. 59 tion ; we can not have a condition without a conditioned, and the ultimate end of our science must be to find out J what would be the outgrowth of the union of the condition and conditioned. The origin of the sen- sations in -the Ego was not the problem of the Critique of Pure Reason so far as Kant was concerned with that problem ; that we had a manifold which gave us sensa- tions was granted by all, just what that manifold was did not yet concern Kant. The problem is, how is it possible for us to get an experience out of this manifold or how is it possible to get thought and the manifold into a unity? This unity can only be accomplished by the synthetic unity of apperception, it is the synthetic unity of apper- ception, and without the consciousness of such a synthesis we could have nothing more than the frag- mentary unity which is the empirical consciousness or self. "Necessity is always founded on transcendental con- ditions. There must, therefore, be a transcendental ground of the unity of our consciousness in the syn- thesis of the manifold of all our intuitions, therefore of all concepts of objects in general .... for the object is no more than that something of which the concept predicates such a necessity of synthesis. "That original and transcendental condition is noth- ing else but what I call transcendental a-pfercej>tion. The consciousness of oneself, according to the deter- minations of our state, is, with all our internal percep- 6o tion, empirical only, and always transient. There can be no fixed or permanent self in that stream of internal phenomena. It is generally called the internal sense, or empirical apperception. ... No knowledge can take place in us, no conjunction or unity of one kind of knowledge with another, without that unity of con- . sciousness which precedes all data of intuition and without reference to which no representation of objects is possible. This pure, original, and unchangeable consciousness I shall call Transcendental Appercep- tion ." l The complete unity of thought and the manifold in and of itself is not sufficient to give us knowledge or experience but we must of necessity be conscious of the unity. The origin of the manifold must be left out of sight in order to fully understand Kant. If Kant were driven to give an account of the origin of the manifold in so far he would be crowded back to the so-called Berkeleyan dogmatism ; but Kant is not concerned with that problem. Kant's problem is : Given a universe how shall we know it? Where he goes beyond those who preceded him is in the use and application of the principle of apperception. The synthetic activity or active principle of unity which is so prominent in Kant's philosophy, requires something to be united, on one hand the manifold of sense and on the other various functions of unity, the categories, it is only because of these functions of unity acting upon the manifold as a background that the most 1 Critique of Pure Reason. Tr. by Mttller. PP. 94-95. 6i simple judgment 1=1 is possible. Now in so far as these functions of unity by acting upon the manifold of sense make it into one complete whole we have self- consciousness, and in so far as we thus reach self-con- sciousness experience becomes thought manifested. Kant's categories are nowhere given to us as organic unities, but through their functional activity upon the manifold of sense we get a unity which is organic. The seeming conflict here is removed when we realize that we actually start with an organic unity and arrive at an organic unity. If Kant had not taught better than he . knew this would have been a serious difficulty. Kant presupposes a synthesis, an organic unity to start with, but not intentionally on his part, nevertheless true for if he had not so done he could not have deduced the categories ; the categories would have been impossible from Kant's standpoint, neither could we be conscious of the simplest judgment, but with Kant's conception of the process of knowledge he makes a long and some- what circuitous effort to unite what he regards as two foreign (to each other) elements in knowledge. Kant's error arises out of the thought of two things-in-them- selves, an objective and a subjective ; the former gives us perception, the latter conception. Perception and conception therefore, are absolutely separated one from the other and must be united. The synthesis of imagi- nation must be brought into play before the unity of apperception can complete the ultimate unity desired. By this process Kant succeeded in doing away with the 62 dualism of perception and conception as such but not with the dualism of the perceptive and conceptive elements in knowledge. This process unifies the external world and brings it into self-consciousness, and thus enables us to know it, but no more. The categories are here brought to a stand-still, they can go as high as the category of reciprocity and no higher ; the moment we go beyond that, that moment we leave the domain of the knowable for the domain of the unknowable. We know that there is a self-consciousness, without which there can be no knowledge, but we cannot know the self-con- sciousness. We must think self-consciousness, freedom, immortality, and God, but we can know nothing of them. The chief sources of confusion in the study of the Critique of Pure Reason are (a) Kant held that thought was purely analytic, (b) that the manifold was foreign to thought and (c) he treated the subject as if thought were synthetic and the manifold a part of thought. The difficulties immediately become apparent when we take these conflicting premises under consideration. Kant proceeds from the first of these premises to deduce categories out of that from which no category can be had. To hold that thought is purely analytic, and from that purely analytic element to deduce categories which are themselves functional activities of synthesis is itself a contradiction. The question naturally arises why is it impossible for us to deduce the categories of the un- derstanding if thought be analytic. It is impossible 63 because the source of the categories is the transcen- dental ego or self-consciousness, and self-consciousness itself is impossible on the basis of purely analytic thought. The categories are simply the tools with which the self-consciousness works in overcoming the external world, but if there were no consciousness there could be, of course, no methods of its manifestation. How- ever this does not still free us from the difficulty ; the question, why is self-consciousness impossible if thought be purely analytic, is not answered, and is just as per- plexing as to say the categories are impossible if thought be analytic. Let us therefore see why self- consciousness would be impossible if thought were purely analytic. We cannot be conscious unless we are conscious of something. We have a thought, it may be true or false that is of no consequence, the question is, how is the thought determined? does it determine itself by working in itself or must it have a foreign element to work upon or to work through in order to determine itself ? Kant would evidently say the latter, for if it did not need the foreign element there could be a judgment formed from the movement of thought per se ; and out of that judgment must come knowledge and experience, and by the movement of thought in its own determination we have arrived at knowledge without a perception or even the form of a perception, which is contradictory to Kanfs whole philosophic doctrine. Such could not be the movement of thought within 6 4 itself without objectifying the transcendental ego and making it subject to the limitations of the categories ; this would reduce us again to the Cartesian cogito ergo sum, which leaves us precisely where we were when Kant took us and began to lead us through this laby- rinthian process of knowledge. Kant was never able to free himself from the common conception that the actual was somehow given and thought worked itself into this real somewhat. Thought by working on the sensibility gave us both perception and conception, the one coming from the objective side and the other coming from the subjective side ; these two elements must be brought into a unity and we must be conscious of the unity or we cannot possibly have an experience at all. The transcendental self was and is the activity which produces this unity, but this transcendental ego is as it were a mere focal point between the Ego and the world, or it is rather the point of Egoity outside the world looking at the world, /u/a narere thought activity. We are conscious of the Ego as separated from the world and yet the world is due to 4y* the synthetic unity of the self. There is no world except through the activity of the Ego and no con- sciousness of the Ego except through the synthetic relations which the world holds to the Ego. Kant was never able to get the Transcendental Ego out of itself and get the world into it. It was because of this fact that Kant's doctrine of the Transcendental Ego was not satisfactoiy to philosophers who followed him. 65 The fact that Kant treated thought as a necessary element in knowledge and yet made it purely analytic confuses us from the fact that we cannot conceive of it as being purely analytic without the impossibility of being able to make the simple judgment I am I, yet Kant says that judgment is purely analytic. But to Kant this judgment could not be made without in some way the manifold, the world of sense, becoming a sort of background from which the I was distinguished but which of itself did not enter into the judgment. On the other hand, Kant treated the external world as a thing-in-itself which as such was entirely foreign to the I yet must be thought, but until brought into a unity with the I could not be known. This was the dualism which Kant never overcame;: the external world must be thought as something external to the I, and the I must be thought as something independent of the world ; yet we could not know that either existed without the other, neither could we have an experience without the union of the two and at the same time have a con- sciousness of the union. By the function assigned to the Transcendental Ego Kant succeeded in doing away with the dualism of the elements of perception and con- ception arising respectively from the manifold and from thought, but he never succeeded in doing away with the dualism of the elements of perception and concep- tion in knowledge. While Kant's philosophy was a great advance on anything that had preceded him, in the solution of the problems of knowledge, he did not 66 reach the ultimate principle. He left a great question unsolved the relation of the Transcendental Ego to the Empirical Ego. The Transcendental Ego was to Kant the ultimate principle and he attempted to show its relation to experience ; it existed only as it connected elements of experience, and where it connected them it was a mere thought point, or activity, a kind of focus and can be nothing more so far as our knowledge of it is concerned. It can never reflect the self to us ; it can never give the self back to us in any knowable way. From its very nature it hampers itself, reduces itself to a mere point which is necessary and thinkable, yet which cannot be reflected or given back to us and which must forever remain unknowable. It is because of this view that Kant's highest category must be that of reciprocity. IV. POINTS OF RESEMBLANCE AND DIFFERENCE COMPARED AND CONTRASTED. Berkeley has not received the credit due him for his philosophic thought, simply because of his dogmatical statements. He did not systematize the great principles he postulated. Mere analytic knowledge was impossible with Berkeley but he did not stop to prove that such was the case. His acceptation of the Will practically makes such a proof unnecessary. He regards the proof of the existence of God as set forth in his Divine Visual Language, as conclusive, and this supplemented by the Scriptural revelation seemed to Berkeley to be sufficient even to convince a sceptic that God existed and in Him were all the attributes or factors of a perfect intelli- gence. Even accepting that God .is all that Berkeley claims Him to be, Berkeley still fails from a philosophic standpoint in so far as he does not systematize the process of knowledge even as given to us through the postulated principles. He would have approached a system of knowledge had he succeeded in developing the Will as he anticipated doing, but even then he was assuming certain Divine principles which were dog- matic rather than philosophic. The chief point of failure in Berkeley's system was 68 that he started with one thing-in-itself, subjective spirit, and made the activity of God's Will the efficient cause of the same, and not only the mere cause but the active principle through which this subjective thing-in-itself had activity and through which it was possible to obtain a knowledge of the universe. He made the same active principle of Divine Will the efficient cause of the real objective world but at the same time denied that there was an objective thing-in-itself. Now how the same efficient cause or Divine activity produced a subjective thing-in-itself, and gave it activity, and produced an objective reality which was not a thing-in-itself, and had no activity was what Berkeley did not express or attempt to explain. He took it for granted, with his conception of the Will, that such an explanation was not necessary. The acceptation of God's existence was all that was necessary to him and for this very reason he has been classed, and justly too, with the dogmatists. Berkeley meant to show that the Will was the essence of spirit substance and also of material substance ; but because he never reached a clear vision of the process by which he could make Will play this specific part in the unity of the universe, and the unity of the perfect intelligence of the same, he never gave to the world his deepest and most critical philosophic work, viz., A Treatise on the Human Will. The reason of Berkeley's failure may be given in a single sentence. He failed to grasp the idea and to apply the Dialectic in philosophical reasoning. His 6 9 Philosophy was hidden behind his Theology, and he feared to cut himself loose from his Theology and to enter into a process of purely philosophical reasoning lest the result would be in discord with the revealed idea of God ; he chose therefore to hold tenaciously to the notion he had of God from the Biblical revelation and by process of formal rather than real Logic to make men accept his premises. He therefore postulated his premises rather than logically made them, and by so doing laid himself liable to the charge of dogmatism. Kant's advance on Berkeley was in bringing Philoso- phy out from behind the veil of Theology, and in applying the Dialectic to it. Kant sought the truth for its own sake whether or not it came in harmony with preconceived theological notions. If one was true and the other was not the process of real Logic and the Dialectic must drive the false one to the wall. Whether Kant's philosophy is true or not, it is -philosophy. He made his premises and put the dialectic into his system. Philosophy is a system and that is what Kant had that Berkeley did not have, and just so far as that system went Kant as a philosopher was in advance of Berkeley. Kant's failure to grasp the full movement of thought lay in the fact that he took thought to be purely analytic, and yet deals with it as though he had all the while presupposed a synthesis. This brings him before his critics as teaching a contradictory philosophy which he could not harmonize. It led him into an artificial de- duction ot the categories which made them rigid and tied them up in their application to only one-half the truth, beyond which Kant could only think and not know. Kant's movement through the dialectic has practically freed him from the charge of dogmatism. Yet ultimately, on the basis of thought being purely analytic, he must have fallen into precisely the same dogmatism that constantly hampered Berkeley. Kant was making his way between two philosophical poles, Dogmatism on the one hand and Scepticism on the other, and freed himself from stranding on either by his process of synthesizing perception and conception. He could never have been wholly free from the former had he not taught better than he knew by presupposing a synthesis while he treated thought as analytic. Another fundamental error lies in the fact that Kant made his method regressive and not progressive. This logical error can be best expressed by quoting from Caird. "Now, I have attempted to show that in all this there is only one logical error, to wit, the confusion of the regressive process of thought, by which the unity of self is found to underlie the categories and the forms of sense, with a process of mere abstraction. This error necessarily carries with it the conception of the unity of self-consciousness as purely analytic, and as, therefore, standing in irreconcilable opposition to the unity of the consciousness of objects as purely synthetic, i. e., as externally synthetic of the matter given under the forms of sense. From this, again, follows the impossibility of reaching a knowledge which is adequate to the Ideas of reason, and the equal impossibility of conceiving the moral law as realized in the phenomenal world. Hence, also, the moral law itself shrinks into the conception of law in general, and this into the tautology of self-con- sistency, i. e., of consistency with that which has in itself no determination. And if a partial escape is found from this emptiness of abstraction by "typifying" the moral law as a law of nature ; yet the conception of the law of freedom as if it were a law of necessity seems to be too hopelessly self-contradictory to bring with it any real solution of the dificulty^' l Our investigation so far has been to find the active principle in knowledge as held by each of the philoso- phers under consideration and to some extent to define its application in the philosophical works which they have left to posterity. We have also briefly pointed out some of the fundamental defects in each system. It now remains for us to call attention to some of the points of similarity and dissimilarity. Let us first then take up the points of likeness. Both inquired into the Principles of Human Knowl- edge, and both inquiries included the same factors of knowledge, viz., Self, the World and God. Self and the World constituted the two elements or factors of special inquiry in both cases. As neither of the phil- osophers regarded Self and the World as one and the same thing, a dualism arose in each system. The nature of the dualism constituting one of the differences 1 Critical Philosophy of Kant. By Caird. Vol. II. P. 640. 72 may be omitted for the present. This dualism consti- tuted a fundamental defect in the process of knowledge, hence, both attempted to free themselves from this dualism and to develop a process of knowledge which would ultimately give us a complete unity. The nature of the elements of synthesis constitutes the foregoing portion of this discussion. That element is in Berkeley's system the Will, and in Kant's the Transcendental Ego or Synthetic Unity of Apperception, To arrive at this unity both began with experience and both made a synthetic activity necessary to experience. That both began with experience is clear for Berkeley says, "If it were not for sense the mind could have no knowledge,' no thought at all. All of introversion, meditation, con- templation, and spiritual acts as if these could be exerted before we had ideas from without by the senses are manifestly absurd." 1 Kant's whole philosophy is based on the fact that knowledge begins with experi- ence, and that the manifold of sense is an indispensable factor. Berkeley holds that all knowledge is about ideas but ideas are impossible without experience. Kant holds that all knowledge begins with experience. Berkeley says, "all ideas are from without or from within." Kant holds that we have external sense and internal sense, and these express themselves in the form of space and time. Berkeley holds that if these ideas are from without, they are sensations, Kant, that they 1 Commonplace Book, P. 434. 73 are perceptions, the manifold. Berkeley says, if they are from within they are operations of the mind, thoughts Kant that they are conceptions, thoughts. Berkeley, all our ideas (experiences) are either sen- sations or thoughts. Kant, all our experiences are sensations and thoughts. 1 Berkeley, the bare pas- sive recognition or having of ideas is called perception. Kant, the vague whole given by the manifold unana- lyzed is perception, Berkeley, whatever has in it an idea (experience) though it be never so passive, though it exert no manner of act about it, yet it must perceive (think). Kant, whatever has experience must have perception (sensations) and thought com- bined. Berkeley, two things cannot be said to be alike or unlike till they have been compared. Comparing is the viewing two ideas together and marking in what they agree and what they disagree. The mind can compare nothing but its own ideas. Kant, the world of experi- ence can only be known by classification and by placing each object under the category in which it belongs. 2 In the above classification the language of Berkeley has been closely followed and it shows a decided paral- lelism in the fundamental principles with which both systems began. 1 This comparison must be taken with some license both on the part of Berkeley and of Kant. If we take Berkeley's phraseology "sensations or thoughts" as isolated from his principle of synthe$is it indicates sourcts of knowledge and is in perfect harmony with Locke's doctrine of knowledge. To get the full force of the state- ment it must be looked at in the light of the prese'nt discussion. On the other hand, Kant must be regarded as using "sensations and thoughts" as factors in experience. 3 For above statements of Berkeley see Commonplace Book, PP. 498-499. 74 It is equally true that both made a synthetic activity necessary to experience. With Berkeley, experience is impossible without in some way the whole phenome- non is connected ; without a connection there would be neither world nor experience. The true source is within the veil. It is in the super-sensible or trans- cendent, not among phenomena or in the world of phenomenal experience. Can we follow it within the veil? That depends upon the possibility of our having either a sort of knowledge that is unphenomenal, or else a faith that transcends both the data of the senses and faith in merely physical law. 1 This synthetic activity which makes the necessary connection and which lies behind the veil is the Will. It cannot be known, but, on account of a faith which transcends the data of sense, must be thought. The Will cannot be known, and yet it leads us on in our process of knowledge until we are as sure of it as we are of our own existence, we have to think it ; if we say we know, the knowledge must be of a kind unphe- nomenal, it is rather a transcendent faith. With Kant, experience is impossible without the synthesis of per- ception and conception and the consciousness of the synthetic act ; this involves the law of necessary con- nection. This synthetic activity is the Transcendental Unity of Apperception. By attempting to know this synthetic activity we are led from the phenomenal to the noumenal world, in which we are unable to apply 1 Berkeley, Blackwood's Classics, PP. 194-195. 75 theoretical reason, 'because theoretical reason is bound down to the world of sense ; but we can approach it by practical reason which is not limited by sense. We cannot know it, however, but for practical reason it is enough that we think it, and determine ourselves according to the Ideas of it. In so far as we are forced to think it and it is forced upon us by a law which is one with the consciousness of ourselves, we may say we are as sure of its truth as of our own existence.' 1 It is in this point with Kant as it is with Berkeley, we walk by faith and not by sight ; this is one of the most important and interesting similarities existing in the two systems. The name by which the activity is desig- nated is of but little importance in this discussion, the real truth of the matter is what we are seeking. The difference between Berkeley and Kant in the use of this active principle is just the difference between induction and deduction and nothing more, i. e., there is no strict line of demarkation. Induction is the process of thought when we have in mind the getting of a hypoth- esis, and this was Berkeley's position. "What he attempted was done, he modestly says, with a view to giving hints to thinking men who have leisure and curiosity to go to the bottom of things, and pursue them in their own minds." 2 That is, Berkeley concerned himself with the production of hypotheses rather than the defining of them. Deduction is defining or devel- 1 Critical Philosophy of Kant. By Caird. Vol. II, P. 634. introduction to Selections, P. XXXIII. 7 6 oping a hypothesis, and represents Kant's position in the movement of thought; he explained hypotheses, defined them and in his definitions transformed them. The true difference in induction and deduction is then simply different cross-sections in the same movement of thought, or they are the same thing in different stages of development. Berkeley and Kant are related in the same way, Berkeley representing the inductive cross- section and Kant the deductive cross-section of the movement of thought. In summing up the p6ints of similarity we may say, the inquiries of both involve the relation of Self and the World ; both began with experience ; both had a dual- ism ; both sought a unity ; both saw the necessity of a synthetic activity ; both made this activity necessary to experience ; both made the active principle thinkable but unknowable ; both led us through Reason by means of a transcendent faith, into an undoubted assurance of Immortality, Freedom and God. We are not to assume from what has been said, that there are no differences between Berkeley and Kant as to their philosophical systems. The differences in many respects are more fundamental than their like- nesses, as will readily be suggested to the mind of the student of Berkeley and Kant. I believe it necessary only to call attention to these differences, when they become sufficiently apparent. The first difference, which is a fundamental one, is found in the bases upon which these two systems of philosophy are founded. 77 Berkeley makes metaphysics the key-stone in the arch of his system and makes all things in the phenomenal world conform to that theory. Kant makes science the basis of his system and reasons from the possibility of science to the possibility of metaphysics. In other words Berkeley practically says, metaphysics given, how is the world of science possible? Kant, the world of science given, how is metaphysics possible? Berke- ley was more sure of the existence of God than he was of the external world. Kant more sure of the existence of the external world than he was of the existence of God. Another difference is in Kant's use of the dialectic of thought. This is of great importance in a system of philosophy. The dialectic falls back on the pure unity of thought itself pre-supposed in conceptual synthesis. It suggests noumena and not objects of experience, and gives rise to questions which experience cannot settle. It is the process by which we are enabled to go beyond the sphere of the understanding and the phenomenal world into the sphere of reason and the noumenal world. The movement of thought by which such a transition can be made is almost indispensable in the formation and carrying out of a system of philosophy. This movement Berkeley never succeeded in embodying in his philosophy, but Kant did. This marks one of the wide differences. Berkeley never succeeded in getting outside of his subject, but from within he looked at it from this way and from that, and each time got 7 8 some practically new view of the question at issue ; hence, his system is largely defective in method. Kant got outside of his subject and looked at it as a whole, and each variation in the movement shows us the same theme looked at from a new standpoint, hence, Kant's system is methodic. : They differed in the dualism that arose out of their treatment of the Self and the external World. Kant's dualism was a dualism of perception and conception, a dualism between self-consciousness and the manifold. Berkeley's dualism, as has already been explained, was practically a dualism of concepts. Kant's dualism arose from getting outside of his subject and recogniz- ing two elements separate and distinct, without the -union of which there could be no knowledge. Berke- ley's dualism arose by staying inside of his subject and recognizing two diametrically opposite conditions, spir- itual and so-called material, which, in order to have knowledge, must be harmonized. Kant's unity is the Transcendental Ego. Berkeley's unity is the Will. Finally, they differed in what constituted identity. Berkeley's identity is in reality only a superficial iden- tity, there is no essential reality in the relation of things; relations are ideal, and that which constitutes identity is without the thing and independent of it. The identity of Berkeley is like a thread running through things which holds them together yet leaves them inde- pendent. So far as the relation of these things, one to another, is concerned it is ideal. Kant's identity is very different, it is an underlying identity, an identity 79 of differences in which the relation is real instead of ideal. A quotation from Caird will serve better than my own language to show Kant's position with respect to identity. "Since, however, the relations of the substances are represented by Kant as real and not merely ideal, and since the substances can manifest their nature only in those relations, the opposition of their individuality to their relativity is on the point of disappearing, and with it of course must disappear the externality of the principle that unites them. For, if the difference of the substances be merely a relative difference, i. e., a difference of elements which are nothing apart from their relations to each other, the binding principle cannot be regarded as an external link of connection, but must be taken simply as the unity which underlies the differences of the substances, and which manifests itself in their action and reaction upon each other." 1 To sum up their chief differences lie in the bases on which the systems are founded, in the standpoints from which they looked at the subject under considera- tion, in their dualism, and in what constitutes identity. In conclusion, let us rise above the mere method and look at the truth as each of those great philosophers sought to find it. We see Berkeley approach it from the side of metaphysics and write Empirically Ideal and Transcendentally Real. From the side of science Kant approaches and writes Empirically Real and Transcen- dentally Ideal. 1 Critical Philosophy of Kant. 3y Caird. Vol. I, p. . : ,. BIBLIOGRAPHY. The Works of George Berkeley. By Alexander Campbell Eraser. Ox- ford, 1871. Life and Letters of George Berkeley with Writings Hitherto Unpublished. By A. C. Fraser. Oxford, 1871. Berkeley. By A. C. Fraser. Edinburgh, 1871. Works of John Locke in ten vols. London, 1823. Philosophical Works of David Hume in four vols. Boston and Edin- burgh, 1854. Selections from Berkeley with An Introduction and Notes. By A. C. Fraser. Oxford," 1884. A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume. By L. A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford, 1888. The Methods, Meditations, and Selections from Descartes. By John Veitch. 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