MATTER AND "MIND-STUFF" 339 



Sucli conscious units or ideas aggregate and 

 disintegrate : they are of necessity ideas in some 

 mind or else we should find ourselves landed in 

 mere negation as Hume did. To him the Uni- 

 verse was merely an idea in his own mind, and 

 perhaps also in the minds of all normally con- 

 stituted beings. But that permanency which we 

 attribute to the perception which we call the 

 Universe, as distinct from the perception which 

 we call ourselves, would have no basis. The 

 diflference between Hume and the founder of 

 Modern Idealism then is that whereas Berkeley 

 regarded the Universe as a system of ideas in 

 the Divine, the all-pervading Mind,^ Hume regarded 

 it merely as a series of perceptions in his own 

 mind, and perhaps in the minds of others simi- 

 larly disposed : like so many copies of the same 

 book. But if all these minds ceased to be, the 

 Universe likewise would cease with it. In a sense 

 this is quite true, because the Universe, as they 

 perceived it, would cease to be. But students of 

 physics at the present day would scarcely deny 

 that those ideas which we do not see, or hear, 

 or feel, but think about and reason about, namely, 

 molecules, atoms and electrons, will continue to 

 occupy those relations amongst themselves which 

 we now attribute to them quite independently of 



1 Strictly speaking Berkeley did not regard us and our 

 perceptions as falling within the Divine mind, though he 

 regarded us as created by God and our perceptions as directly 

 caused by His volition. 



Z 2 



