MILL S THEORY OF OBJECTIVITY 



nothing more than the fact of their perception by the mind. The 

 ascription of existence to an object not at the moment perceived 

 is explained by Berkeley, somewhat uncertainly, as meaning 

 either its presence in the form of a memory-image of past sensa 

 tions, or its presence to other minds, or, lastly, its conditional 

 presence under other conceivable circumstances. Mill, while ex 

 pressly avowing himself to be a Berkeleyan, and accepting the 

 fundamental Berkeleyan presuppositions, nevertheless recognized 

 the serious defect of this theory of objectivity. He recognized 

 that even from the psychological standpoint it is essential to 

 give some explanation for the universally accepted distinction 

 between the object and the mere perception or idea of the object, 

 even if the distinction is not to be justified as an ontological 

 difference between two orders of existence. In addition to the 

 fact of the universal acceptance of this distinction by com men 

 sense, the particular consideration that led Mill to take this 

 position was as follows. The unifority of nature is not, as 

 Berkeley had expressly asserted it to be, a uniformity in the 

 order of sensations. No law of nature can be stated in terms of 

 sensations as such, or of perceptions as such. It cannot be said, 

 for example, that if we see a vivid flash of light we shall hear 

 a heavy rumbling noise. In the great majority of such cases, 

 there are an indefinite number of alternative possibilities of 

 experience. Whether we hear the thunder or not, depends upon 

 the fulfilling of further, objective conditions, not definable directly 

 in terms of perception. The uniformities of nature, in other 

 words, are conditional uniformities of a higher order, and must 

 be stated in terms of more or less highly abstract conditions of 

 experience that is, in terms of things. Thus it is these condi 

 tions of perception, and not the perceptions themselves, that are 

 the objects of science, and to which scientific laws apply. 



The following sharply contrasting passages will suffice to show 

 Mill s divergence from Berkeley in thi matter. Berkeley writes : 

 &quot;The ideas of Sense . . . have likewise a steadiness, order, and 

 coherence, and are not excited at random, as those which are 



