28 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



It cannot be said, indeed, that Berkeley succeeds altogether in 

 banishing intuitions from psychology. The 'notions' which he 

 admits, and especially the notion of himself as a 'spiritual sub- 

 stance,' are convincing evidence to the contrary. The word 'idea' 

 had been used by Locke to denote any content of consciousness. 

 Berkeley restricts its application to sensations and sensation- 

 complexes, original or revived that is to say, to those conscious 

 processes which, according to his view, have no reference to any 

 reality beyond themselves. But notions have just such a refer- 

 ence. A spirit, whether human or divine, and the notion of this 

 spirit, are by no means the same. The notion, therefore, aims 

 at a universal and objective validity, which is wholly foreign 

 to the nature of the idea. Now the notions of other spirits are 

 arrived at inferentially, "by reason"; the notion of the self is 

 given directly, "by inward feeling or reflexion." But "inward 

 feeling or reflexion," in the then usual sense of the terms, could 

 impart only a species of ideas. As the source of a notion, which 

 refers to a reality beyond itself, it is a thinly disguised faculty of 

 intuition. 



Much the same comment is to be passed upon that mysterious 

 faculty of comparison, which Hume's theory inherits from 

 Locke's, and to which ideas of relations are conceived to be due, 

 particularly in connection with those classes of relations which 

 are completely determined by the ideas between which they ob- 

 tain; namely, resemblance, contrariety, degrees in any quality, 

 and proportion in quantity or number. Let us ask how this 

 complete determination of the relation is known. How^ do we 

 know, for example, that the double of a number must always 

 be its double? This is not the same as asking how we know that 

 the one number is double the other, for that may be know^n in 

 various ways, direct and indirect, and with all degrees of proba- 

 bility or certainty. At the same time, the answer to the former 

 question must be included in the answer to the latter; for the 

 relation in question is knowable as a necessary relation. Other- 

 wise Hume's explanation would be obvious; namely, that the 



