come it; but singularly wrong in supposing that the presumption. was a refutation.

Berkeley's main position is, that the objects of knowledge are ideas, and nothing but ideas. The position is incontrovertible. The conclusion therefore, all human knowledge can only be the knowledge of ideas, and of nothing but ideas, is equally incontestable. Not less so the second conclusion: objects being identified with ideas, and we having no idea of an object but as it is perceived, the ESSE of objects to us is PERCIPI.

In admitting all this, what do we admit? Simply that human knowledge is not the "measure of all things." Objects to us can never be more than ideas; but are we the final measure of all existence? It was the dogma of the Sophist that Man is the measure of all things. It should not be the dogma of the sober thinker. Because we can only know objects as ideas, is it a proper conclusion that objects only exist as ideas? For this conclusion to be rigorous, we must have some proof of our knowledge being the absolute standard of truth, instead of the standard of the relation things bear to our intellect.

The Idealist will say, "If you cannot know any thing beyond your ideas, why do you infer that there is any thing?—A question not easily answered. He will moreover say, "I defy you to conceive any thing existing unperceived. Attempt to imagine the existence of matter when mind is absent. You cannot, for in the very act of imagining it, you include an ideal percipient. The trees and mountains you imagine to exist away from any perceiving mind, what are they but the very ideas of your mind, which you transport to some place where you are not? In fact, to separate existence from perception is radically impossible. It is God's synthesis, and man cannot undo it."*

To this we answer, it is very true that, inasmuch as our knowledge of objects is identical with our ideas, we can never, by any

See this argued in a masterly manner by the critic in Blackwood before quoted.

freak of thought, imagine an object apart from the conditions under which we know it. We are forced by the laws of our nature to invest objects with the forms in which we perceive them.* We cannot therefore conceive any thing which has not been subject to the laws of our nature, because in the very act of conception those laws come into play. But is it not a very different proposition to say, "I cannot conceive things otherwise than according to the laws of my nature," and to say, "I cannot conceive things otherwise, consequently they cannot exist otherwise?" The Idealist here assumes that knowledge is absolute, not relative-that man is the measure of all things.

Perception is the identity (in the metaphysical sense of the word) of the ego and the non-ego-the tertium quid of two united forces; as water is the identity of oxygen and hydrogen. The ego can never have any knowledge of the non-ego, in which it (the ego) is not indissolubly bound up; as oxygen never can unite with hydrogen to form water, without merging itself and the hydrogen in a tertium quid. Let us suppose the oxygen endowed with a consciousness of its changes. It would attribute the change not to hydrogen, which is necessarily hidden from it, but to water, the only form under which hydrogen is known to it. In its consciousness it would find the state named water (perception), which would be very unlike its own state (the ego); and it would suppose that this state, so unlike its own, was a representation of that which caused it. We say then, that although the hydrogen can only exist for the oxygen (in the above case) in the identity of both as water, this is no proof that hydrogen

"When in perception," says Schelling, "I represent an object, object and representation are one and the same. And simply in this our inability to discriminate the object from the representation during the act, lies the conviction which the common sense of mankind has of the reality of external things, although these become known to it only through the representations." (Ideen zu einer Philos, der Natur, Einleitung, p. xix., quoted by Sir W. Hamilton.) This is indisputable, but it is only saying that our knowledge of things is subject to the conditions of knowledge. Because we cannot discriminate between the object and the representation, it is no proof that there is no distinction between them.

does not exist under some other relations to other forces. In like manner, although the non-ego cannot exist in relation to mind otherwise than in the identity of the two (perception); this is no sort of proof that it does not exist in relation to other beings under quite different conditions.

In conclusion, we admit, with the Idealists, that all our knowledge of objects consists in our ideas. But we cannot admit that all existence is limited by our knowledge, merely on the ground that when we would conceive any thing existing, we are forced to conceive it in accordance with the laws of our conceptive faculties. We admit, with the Idealists, that all our knowledge is subjective. But we do not admit that what is true subjectively, is true objectively. We believe in the existence of an external world quite independent of any percipient; not because such is the obvious and universal belief, but because the arguments by which Idealism would controvert it are vitiated by the assumption of knowledge being a criterion of all existences. Idealism agrees with Realism in placing reliance on the evidence of sense; argues however that inasmuch as our knowledge is confined to ideas, we have no right to assume any thing beyond ideas. Yet it also is forced to assume something as the cause of ideas: this cause it calls the Will of the Creator; and this is an assumption. The real dispute therefore should be concentrated on this point: Which assumption is more consonant with our irresistible belief, -the assumption of an external matter unlike our sensations, yet the cause of them; or the assumption of a providential scheme, in which our sensations are the effects of the operation of Divine laws, and in which matter plays no part? The answer cannot be dubious. The former assumption, as more consonant with universal belief, must be accepted.

it

Berkeley, we believe, failed as a metaphysical Copernicus, because the assumption which he opposed to the universal belief was less consonant with that belief than the assumption it was meant to replace. Had Copernicus not started an hypothesis which, however contradictory to the senses, nevertheless afforded

a much better explanation of celestial phenomena than was possible on the old hypothesis, he would not have been listened to. Berkeley's assumption, if conceded, carries him no deeper than the old assumption. Idealism explains nothing. To accept it would be to renounce a universal belief for a mere hypothesis. But that Berkeley was a deep and remarkable thinker must be readily conceded; and he failed, as the greatest Philosophers of all times have failed, not because he was weak, but because Philosophy was impossible.

Those who have followed the course of this History with attention to its moral (so to speak) will not fail to observe how Berkeley's Idealism is at bottom but the much decried system of Spinoza, who taught that there was but one essence in the universe, and that one was Substance. Berkeley also taught that there was but one, and that one was Thought. Now call this One what you will, the result is the same: speculatively or prac tically. You may have certain degrading associations attached to the idea of substance; or certain exalted associations attached to that of spirit. But what difference can your associations make with respect to the real nature of things?

One great result of Berkeley's labors was the lesson he taught of the vanity of ontological speculations. He paved the way to that skepticism which, gulf-like, yawns as the terminal road of all consistent Metaphysics.

FIFTH EPOCH.

THE ARGUMENTS OF IDEALISM CARRIED OUT INTO

SKEPTICISM.

CHAPTER I.

HUME.

§ I. LIFE OF HUME.

MR. BURTON'S ample and excellent biography* would furnish us with materials for a pleasant memoir, could we here afford the requisite space; but we must content ourselves with referring the reader to that work, and with merely recording the principal dates and events of an uneventful life.

David Hume was born at Edinburgh, 26th April, 1711; the youngest child of a poor laird of good blood. He was an orphan before his education was completed. His guardians first thought of the profession of law, but, owing to his repugnance, he was absolved from that career, and was placed in a Bristol countinghouse, where he did not remain long. On coming of age he found himself in possession of a small property, too small for honorable subsistence in England, but large enough for France, and to Rheims he went; from thence to La Flèche, where the Jesuits' college and library were great attractions to the studious youth; and there he passed several years in solitary study.

* The Life and Correspondence of David Hume, from the Papers bequeathed to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. By John Hill Burton. 2 vols.