Ml V ART'S GROUNDWORK OF SCIENCE. 453 



lie is consistent with himself, and the attempt to learn whether 

 Mivart's book is consistent may not greatly tax our minds. 



He tells us that many men of science are "idealists"; and he 

 says that idealism, being mere self -stultifying skepticism, must be re- 

 futed and demolished before we can begin our search for the ground- 

 work of science or be sure that we know anything. It would have 

 surprised Berkeley not a little to be told that his notions are the 

 very essence of skepticism, for the good bishop tells us again and 

 again that his only motive in writing is to make an end of idle skep- 

 ticism, once for all, that they who are no philosophers, but simple, 

 honest folks, may come by their own and live at ease. 



There is little ease, and less justice, even at this late day, for the 

 man of science who insists that he is neither an idealist nor a material- 

 ist nor a monist, but a naturalist; and that it will be time enough 

 to have an opinion as to the relation between mind and matter when 

 we find out; but many will, no doubt, be pleased to hear that the 

 crime of which they are now suspected is no longer " materialism," 

 but " idealism," for the public attaches no odium to the idealist, 

 whatever may be Professor Mivart's verdict. Still all must feel an 

 interest in the exposure of the weakness of idealism, since we have 

 been told, by many shrewd thinkers, that Berkeley's statement of 

 the case, while inconclusive, is unanswerable; although they hold 

 that it is lack of experimental evidence which stands in the way of 

 either its acceptance or its refutation. 



Mivart begins his treatment of idealism by a simple and satis- 

 factory summary, pages 36-38, of Berkeley's Principles, but he for- 

 gets it on the next page, for it is no exaggeration to assert that the 

 " idealism " which he refutes is a mere parody on that which he has 

 just given his readers, and something that no sane man would dream 

 of holding. 



For example, he admits, on page 38, that nothing " can be more 

 absurd than the criticism of those persons who say that idealists, to 

 Ife consistent, ought to run up against lamp-posts, fall into ditches, 

 and commit other like absurdities." On page 47 he undertakes to 

 show, " by the natural spontaneous judgment of mankind," that ex- 

 ternal material bodies exist " of themselves, and have a substantial 

 reality in addition to that of the qualities we perceive; because the 

 spontaneous judgment of mankind accords with what even animals 

 learn through their senses. A wide river is an objective ob- 

 stacle to the progress of a man's dog, as well as to that of the dog's 

 owner." 



One who compares the extract from page 38 with this from page 

 47 can, so far as I can see, reconcile them only by one of these hy- 

 potheses: 1, that Mivart holds a wide river to afford proof of reality 



