en. iv.] PHENOMENON AND NOUMENON. 79 



action resemble, qualitatively or quantitatively? Clearly, 

 it cannot be assimilated to one more than another of them ; 

 und hence must in itself be something alien from, or unrepre - 

 sentable by, any feeling." * 



This disposes of Eeid, who was indeed but an indifferent 

 psychologist, and rested his refutation of Berkeley chiefly 

 upon misplaced ridicule and equally misplaced appeals to 

 common sense. He tauntingly asked why the great idealist 

 did not illustrate his doctrine by walking over a precipice or 

 thrusting his head against a lamp-post, as if Berkeley had 

 ever denied that such a congeries of phenomenal actions 

 would be followed by disastrous phenomenal effects. No 

 wonder that a philosophy founded upon such flimsy psycho- 

 logical analysis should never have obtained wide acceptance 

 among trained thinkers ; and no wonder that Idealism should 

 still by many persons be considered as unrefuted. 



It is by making the unphilosophic inference that because 

 we cannot know the objective reality therefore there exists 

 none, that Idealism destroys itself. As long as we admit 

 that the possibilities of things are limited by the possibilities 

 of thought, we cannot overturn Idealism : we must go on 

 and grant that because we can form no conception of matter 

 apart from the conditions imposed upon it by our intel- 

 ligence, therefore no thing can exist apart from such con- 

 ditions. As Prof. Ferrier forcibly states the case, " I defy 

 you to conceive anything existing unperceived. Attempt to 

 imagine the existence of matter when mind is absent. You 

 cannot, for in the very act of imagining it, you include an 

 ideal percipient. The trees and mountains you imagine to 

 exist away from any perceiving mind, what are they but the 

 very ideas of your mind, which you transport to some place 

 where you are not ? In fact, to separate existence from per- 

 ception is radically impossible. It is God's synthesis, and 

 man cannot undo it." All this is equivalent to saying that 

 1 Spencer, Principles of Psychology, voL L p. 206. 



