OF THE SOUL. 



253 



to escape from that purely subjective point of view, 

 enclosed in purely introspective limits, which a logical 

 development of Locke's and Kant's ideas seemed to 

 necessitate. This consequence of Locke's sensationalism 

 had been clearly pointed out by Hume, whereas the 

 object of Berkeley's ^ philosophy was to overcome it. 



to the lugher level on which the 

 whole of his speculation moved 

 from the very beginning. " Phil- 

 osophy starts from an observation 

 of knowledge through introspection, 

 and advances to its [supersensual] 

 foundation " (' Werke,' vol. ii. p. 

 541). In consequence of this some 

 of these later writings have distinct 

 psychological value in the narrower 

 sense of the word. Notably is this 

 the case with one of his later courses 

 of lectures dealing with the " Data 

 of Consciousness" (delivered 1810- 

 11, published posthumously, 

 1817). The lucid analj'sis with 

 which this treatise begins drew, 

 even from such a realistic thinker 

 as Helmholtz (whose father was an 

 enthusiastic follower and admirer 

 of Fichte), favourable comment. 

 And quite independently of his 

 metaphysics Fichte had a power- 

 ful indirect influence upon thought 

 in general, and more recent psy- 

 chology in particular, through the 

 fact that the fundamental doc- 

 trine in his speculation was the 

 thesis that mind is primarily 

 and essentially an active principle, 

 and that he considered this to 

 be a truth founded on immediate 

 evidence and not deducible from 

 any still higher principle. Through 

 this statement, to which Fichte 

 always adhered and which he ex- 

 pounded and illustrated from many 

 sides, his influence is still felt at the 

 present day. More definitely can 

 this be traced through the writings 

 of the Jena professor, C. FortJage 

 (' System der Psychologie,' 1885), to 



Prof. Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig. 

 A purely metaphysical interjareta- 

 tion and development by no means 

 identical with the one just named 

 may be traced through Schelling 

 to Schopenhauer, 



^ No philosopher of the first order 

 seems to have been so much mis- 

 interpreted or misunderstood as 

 Berkeley. He is classed by Reid 

 among the "ideal" philosophers, 

 beginning with Descartes and end- 

 ing in Hume, and among German 

 historians of philosophy he is very 

 generally represented as a solipsist. 

 This is to a large extent owing to 

 the fact that only his earlier writ- 

 ings seem to have been taken into 

 consideration by his critics, and 

 that his later constructive phil- 

 osophy remained for a long time 

 unknown. It is only since Prof. 

 Campbell Fraser devoted himself to 

 an independent study and to the 

 editing of Berkeley's Works that a 

 correcter view has gradually gained 

 acceptance, although we still find 

 Ueberweg in Germany and Huxley 

 in England maintaining the more 

 traditional view. From Fraser's 

 painstaking examination it is clear 

 that Berkeley was as little a solipsist, 

 starting from the purely subjective 

 exjDerience of the individual mind, 

 as was Fichte. Berkeley, in speak- 

 ing of the mind, seems always to 

 take for granted the existence of 

 many individual minds, though he 

 never faced the criticism — most 

 clearly put by Hume — that his 

 arguments against the reality of 

 external matter outside of the 



