328 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY 



make it plain to me that God speaks to me by outward sensible 

 .signs, of such sort and in such manner as I have defined, you do 

 nothing." 



Euphranor now asks Alciphron to consider natural knowledge. 

 He points out, in effect, that what we call the laws of nature are 

 no more than generalizations, based on experience, and that we 

 fail to find in nature any a priori demonstration of any one of 

 them, any evidence that they are necessary, any reason why they 

 must hold good. He shows that all natural knowledge is know- 

 ledge of appearances or phenomena, or ideas, as he prefers to call 

 them ; and that, while the events that make up the order of nature 

 are vulgarly considered under the relation of cause and effect, 

 they are, in strict and philosophic truth, only known to be related 

 as the sign and the thing signified. He shows, in a word, that, 

 so far at least as we are concerned with them or know anything 

 about them, ^^ natural phenomena are only natural appearances'' 



Men of science have themselves learned to reflect upon natural 

 knowledge since Berkeley's day; and as they are now practically 

 of his way of thinking on this matter, it is no longer necessary to 

 review, in detail, his demonstration that, behind phenomena, we 

 discover in nature nothing except the farther truth that all natural 

 knowledge is useful and instructive and pleasant to learn — a truth 

 which the modern man of science should be the last to question. 



Berkeley points out that, these things being admitted, it follows 

 according to Alciphron's definition, that nature is a language; al- 

 though we learn the language of nature so easily and gradually 

 that we are unconscious of the act. 



"If we have all been practising this language, ever since our 

 first entrance into the world, it doth not seem to me at all strange 

 that men should not be aware they had learned a language begun 

 so early and practised so constantly. And if we also consider 

 that it is the same throughout the world, and not, like other lan- 

 guages, differing in different places, it will not seem unaccoun- 

 table that men should mistake the connection between the proper 

 objects of sight and the things signified by them to be founded 

 in necessary relation or likeness." 



If Berkeley had been a modern zoologist, he would, no doubt, 

 have made this assertion still stronger; by pointing out that the 



