220 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON S PHILOSOPHY. 



room for doubt, that he is mistaken in supposing the doctrine selectetl 

 to be distinctive of his system even amone; those of which he intended 

 his own to be a critique, or that, except in one aspect, it is distinguish- 

 able from the doctrine of Berkeley, against which he believed it to 

 contain a successful polemic. 



To explain, it must be observed that the doctrine referred to may 

 be regarded both as a theory of knowledge and as a theory of exis- 

 tence. As a theory of knowledge, it maintains that the immediate 

 objects of perception are not mere " ideas or images in the mind" of 

 objects that exist really or out of the mind, but these really existent 

 objects themselves. The Three Bialogues of Berkeley, however, 

 maintain exactly the same theory in the different language enforced 

 by their different point of view. For the idealist denominates the 

 immediate objects of perception by the term current among philoso- 

 phers ; the realist, by the term current among ordinary men, or in 

 the language of common sense. But the idealist himself acknow- 

 ledges the revolt of natural feeling against his theory, arising from 

 the awkwardness enforced by the technical language of philosophers, 

 which obliged him to speak of the inimediate objects of perception as 

 ideas, and not as things ; * and the statement, that the immediate ob- 

 jects of perception are not the mere images of an unknown existence, 

 but exist really themselves, would undoubtedly have been accepted 

 by both philosophers, as expressing their theory of knowledge in 

 contradistinction from the theories which they opposed. 



Though the doctrine of Berkeley and that of Reid, considered as 

 theories of knowledge, may thus be regarded as coincident, as theories 

 of existence they appear, at first thought, to diverge in widely oppo- 

 site directions ; but it is impossible, on second thought, to say how 

 far this apparent divergence would have been found to be real, if th» 

 true meaning of Berkeley had been explained to Reid. For I can 

 find no evidence that Reid had ever clearly proposed to himself the 

 question, in answering which his doctrine seems to diverge from that 

 of Berkeley. His polemic against Berkeley consists mainly in an ap- 

 peal to the natural and necessary belief of mankind, that the objects 

 which we perceive exist really — that they exist beyond the mind 

 which perceives them ; but we have already seen that the credibility 

 of that belief is asserted quite as unmistakably by Berkeley — that he 

 only refuses to accept it without a scientific explanation of its mean- 



• Berkeley's Worka, Vol. I., p. 206. 



