454 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



which is not afforded by a ditch; or, 2, that the dog which does not 

 run against lamp-posts affords evidence of the reality of Nature which 

 is not afforded by a man in the same circumstances; or, 3, that " noth- 

 ing can be more absurd than the criticism of these persons " who 

 reason like Professor Mivart. 



While sometimes right and sometimes wrong, like the rest of us, 

 the apostle of tar water was no fool, although the groundwork of 

 Mivart's science, in the book before us, is the assertion that idealists 

 idiotically deny everything which they have not perceived, and hold 

 that the external world has no existence. 



It is hard to see how words could be clearer than those in which 

 Berkeley repudiates all nonsense of this sort. " I do not argue," says 

 he, " against the existence of any one thing that we apprehend, 

 either by sense or by reflection. That the things I see with my eves 

 and touch with my hands do exist, really exist, I make not the least 

 question. I am of a vulgar cast, simple enough to believe my own 

 senses, and to take things as I find them. To be plain, it is my 

 opinion that the real things are the very things that I see and feel, 

 and perceive by my senses. I can not for my life help thinking that 

 snow is white and fire hot. And as I am no skeptic with regard to 

 the nature of things, so neither am I as to their existence. That a 

 thing should be really perceived by my senses, and at the same time 

 not really exist, is to me a plain contradiction. Wood, stone, fire, 

 water, flesh, iron, and the like things, which I name and discourse 

 of, are things I know. Away, then, with all that skepticism, all 

 those ridiculous philosophical doubts! I might as well doubt of 

 my own being as of the being of those things I actually see and 

 feel." 



Mivart lays great stress upon the opinion of men in general as a 

 refutation of idealism; and as Berkeley also says he is content to 

 appeal to the common sense of the world, it may be well to ask what 

 the verdict of " plain, untutored men " is, even if we doubt whether 

 such a jury is the highest tribunal. • 



" Ask the gardener," says Berkeley, "why he thinks yonder 

 cherry tree exists in the garden, and he shall tell you, because he 

 sees it and feels it." 



Mivart holds it one thing to see, and quite another matter to 

 know that we see, for he says that while we see and feel the " quali- 

 ties " of things by those "lower faculties " which we share with the 

 "brutes," we perceive the "substance " in which these qualities in- 

 here, by certain "higher faculties," winch, whether represented in 

 the brutes by latent potencies or not, have been kk given " to man in 

 their completeness, and not slowly and gradually built up from low 

 and simple beginnings in the brutes. 



