COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



implicitly and practically denied it. It is to Mr. 

 Mill, who has on different occasions given in 

 his assent to nearly all the doctrines which are 

 distinctively characteristic of the Positive Phi- 

 losophy, that we must look for an explicit de- 

 claration of the precise relation of Positivism to 

 Idealism. Happily Mr. Mill has given us, in 

 his work on the Hamiltonian philosophy, an 

 elucidation of his views which leaves no room 

 for misconception ; and in his recent essay on 

 Berkeley he has presented, in a single sentence, 

 the clue to the Positivist position. Among the 

 unimpeachable discoveries which philosophy 

 owes to Berkeley, says Mr. Mill, was that of 

 " the true nature and meaning of the externality 

 which we attribute to the objects of our senses : 

 that it does not consist in a substratum support- 

 ing a set of sensible qualities, or an unknown 

 somewhat, which, not being itself a sensation, 

 gives us our sensations, but consists in the fact 

 that our sensations occur in groups, held to- 

 gether by a permanent law, and which come and 

 go independently of our volitions or mental pro- 

 cesses." Note that Mr. Mill does not endorse 

 the Berkeleian denial of the objective reality. 

 True to the fundamental canon of Positivism 

 he states merely the contents of the observed 

 facts, which, as we also admit, were correctly 

 stated by Berkeley; but concerning the exist- 

 ence of the Unknowable Reality, which we 

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