468 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



PHILOSOPHY. 



THOUGHTS ON THE IDEALISM OF BERKELEY. 



BY E. R. KNOWLES. 



We can sympathize with what must have been the feehngs of Bishop Berke- 

 ley when a contemporary of his, overtaking him one day, stole up behind him and 

 gave him a blow across the shoulders with a cane, and Berkeley, turning around, 

 asked, "What's the matter?" "There is no matter, Berkeley, you know," was 

 the reply. We can reahze how the philosopher must have chafed under the con- 

 sciousness that this man ridiculed his theory because he could not clearly under- 

 stand it and appreciate its magnificence, and that in many cases his theory would 

 always be unjustly critizised because of the impossibility of its being made per- 

 fectly clear to some minds. 



For the convenience of my readers, let me briefly state here just what was 

 Berkeley's theory of sense-perception. Berkeley carried Locke's ideas to their 

 legitimate consequences. If the mind cannot perceive matter in any form ; if the 

 knowledge at which we can ultimately arrive is only a knowledge of a sensation 

 or idea of the mind, what proof then, have we of the existence of matter ? What 

 proof that anything in the external world corresponds to these images of the 

 mind ? In fact, we must be quite indifferent as to whether matter really does 

 exist or does not; for if it does, we cannot perceive it; if it does not, we are just 

 as well off as if it did. As a legitimate conclusion from these premises, Berkeley 

 says that it is impossible that the mind should know that the material world exists 

 at all except that real objects, as we call them, are only combinations of ideas, 

 existing only so far as they are perceived. "The only difference between them 

 and the so-called imaginary ideas consists entirely in this : that the first are not de- 

 pendent on our will to produce them, but are always present to our minds, 

 whether we will or no. Imaginary ideas, on the other hand, come and go ac- 

 cording as we will. Real ideas are also more lively and distinct, while those of 

 the imagination are faint and confused. The knowledge of spirit is strikingly 

 contrasted with that which we have of matter. We know ourselves and our own 

 states or modifications directly. That the universe is permanent in its objects, 

 viz.: ideas, and also in its laws, is to be explained by the fact that the eternal 

 spirit constantly sustains and presents these ideas for the contemplation of created 

 spirits. By means of these, the attributes and government of God are made 

 known. All the things that we perceive are the ideas of God." 



Berkeley was one of the clearest headed philosophers that has ever lived, 

 and the majority of those who have opposed his philosophy have not been able 



