An Introduction to Philosophy by George Stuart Fullerton (best free novels .txt) 📕

id="id00771">George Berkeley (1684-1753), Bishop of Cloyne, followed out more rigorously the consequences to be deduced from the assumption that all our direct knowledge is of ideas; and in a youthful work of the highest genius entitled "The Principles of Human Knowledge," he maintained that there is no material world at all.

When we examine with care the objects of sense, the "things" which present themselves to us, he argues, we find that they resolve themselves into sensations, or "ideas of sense." What can we mean by the word "apple," if we do not mean the group of experiences in which alone an apple is presented to us? The word is nothing else than a name for this group as a group. Take away the color, the hardness, the odor, the taste; what have we left? And color, hardness, odor, taste, and anything else that may be referred to any object as a quality, can exist, he claims, only in a perceiving mind; for such things are nothing else than sensations, and how can there be an unperceived sensation?

The things which we perceive, then, he calls complexes of ideas. Have we any reason to believe that these ideas, which exist in the mind, are to be accepted as representatives of things of a different kind, which are not mental at all? Not a shadow of a reason, says Berkeley; there is simply no basis for inference at all, and we cannot even make clear what it is that we are setting out to infer under the name of matter. We need not, therefore, grieve over the loss of the material world, for we have suffered no loss; one cannot lose what one has never had.

Thus, the objects of human knowledge, the only things of which it means
anything to speak, are: (1) Ideas of Sense; (2) Ideas of Memory and
Imagination; (3) The Passions and Operations of the Mind; and (4) The
Self that perceives all These.

From Locke's position to that of Berkeley was a bold step, and it was much criticised, as well it might be. It was felt then, as it has been felt by many down to our own time, that, when we discard an external world distinct from our ideas, and admit only the world revealed in our ideas, we really do lose.

It is legitimate to criticise Berkeley, but it is not legitimate to misunderstand him; and yet the history of his doctrine may almost be called a chronicle of misconceptions. It has been assumed that he drew no distinction between real things and imaginary things, that he made the world no better than a dream, etc. Arbuthnot, Swift, and a host of the greater and lesser lights in literature, from his time to ours, have made merry over the supposed unrealities in the midst of which the Berkeleian must live.

But it should be remembered that Berkeley tried hard to do full justice to the world of things in which we actually find ourselves; not a hypothetical, inferred, unperceived world, but the world of the things we actually perceive. He distinguished carefully between what is real and what is merely imaginary, though he called both "ideas"; and he recognized something like a system of nature. And, by the argument from analogy which we have already examined (section 41), he inferred the existence of other finite minds and of a Divine Mind.

But just as John Locke had not completely thought out the consequences which might be deduced from his own doctrines, so Berkeley left, in his turn, an opening for a successor. It was possible for that acutest of analysts, David Hume (1711-1776), to treat him somewhat as he had treated Locke.

Among the objects of human knowledge Berkeley had included the self that perceives things. He never succeeded in making at all clear what he meant by this object; but he regarded it as a substance, and believed it to be a cause of changes in ideas, and quite different in its nature from all the ideas attributed to it. But Hume maintained that when he tried to get a good look at this self, to catch it, so to speak, and to hold it up to inspection, he could not find anything whatever save perceptions, memories, and other things of that kind. The self is, he said, "but a bundle or collection of different perceptions which succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement."

As for the objects of sense, our own bodies, the chairs upon which we sit, the tables at which we write, and all the rest—these, argues Hume, we are impelled by nature to think of as existing continuously, but we have no evidence whatever to prove that they do thus exist. Are not the objects of sense, after all, only sensations or impressions? Do we not experience these sensations or impressions interruptedly? Who sees or feels a table continuously day after day? If the table is but a name for the experiences in question, if we have no right to infer material things behind and distinct from such experiences, are we not forced to conclude that the existence of the things that we see and feel is an interrupted one?

Hume certainly succeeded in raising more questions than he succeeded in answering. We are compelled to admire the wonderful clearness and simplicity of his style, and the acuteness of his intellect, in every chapter. But we cannot help feeling that he does injustice to the world in which we live, even when we cannot quite see what is wrong. Does it not seem certain to science and to common sense that there is an order of nature in some sense independent of our perceptions, so that objects may be assumed to exist whether we do or do not perceive them?

When we read Hume we have a sense that we are robbed of our real external world; and his account of the mind makes us feel as a badly tied sheaf of wheat may be conceived to feel—in danger of falling apart at any moment. Berkeley we unhesitatingly call an Idealist, but whether we shall apply the name to Hume depends upon the extension we are willing to give to it. His world is a world of what we may broadly call ideas; but the tendencies of his philosophy have led some to call it a Skepticism.

50. THE REVOLT OF "COMMON SENSE."—Hume's reasonings were too important to be ignored, and his conclusions too unpalatable to satisfy those who came after him. It seemed necessary to seek a way of escape out of this world of mere ideas, which appeared to be so unsatisfactory a world. One of the most famous of such attempts was that made by the Scotchman Thomas Reid (1710-1796).

At one time Reid regarded himself as the disciple of Berkeley, but the consequences which Hume deduced from the principles laid down by the former led Reid to feel that he must build upon some wholly different foundation. He came to the conclusion that the line of philosophers from Descartes to Hume had made one capital error in assuming "that nothing is perceived but what is in the mind that perceives it."

Once admit, says Reid, that the mind perceives nothing save ideas, and we must also admit that it is impossible to prove the existence either of an external world or of a mind different from "a bundle of perceptions." Hence, Reid maintains that we perceive—not infer, but perceive—things external to the mind. He writes:[2]—

"Let a man press his hand against the table—he feels it hard. But what is the meaning of this? The meaning undoubtedly is, that he hath a certain feeling of touch, from which he concludes, without any reasoning, or comparing ideas, that there is something external really existing, whose parts stick so firmly together that they cannot be displaced without considerable force.

"There is here a feeling, and a conclusion drawn from it, or some way suggested by it. In order to compare these, we must view them separately, and then consider by what tie they are connected, and wherein they resemble one another. The hardness of the table is the conclusion, the feeling is the medium by which we are led to that conclusion. Let a man attend distinctly to this medium, and to the conclusion, and he will perceive them to be as unlike as any two things in nature. The one is a sensation of the mind, which can have no existence but in a sentient being; nor can it exist one moment longer than it is felt; the other is in the table, and we conclude, without any difficulty, that it was in the table before it was felt, and continues after the feeling is over. The one implies no kind of extension, nor parts, nor cohesion; the other implies all these. Both, indeed, admit of degrees, and the feeling, beyond a certain degree, is a species of pain; but adamantine hardness does not imply the least pain.

"And as the feeling hath no similitude to hardness, so neither can our reason perceive the least tie or connection between them; nor will the logician ever be able to show a reason why we should conclude hardness from this feeling, rather than softness, or any other quality whatsoever. But, in reality, all mankind are led by their constitution to conclude hardness from this feeling."

It is well worth while to read this extract several times, and to ask oneself what Reid meant to say, and what he actually said. He is objecting, be it remembered, to the doctrine that the mind perceives immediately only its own ideas or sensations and must infer all else. His contention is that we perceive external things.

Does he say this? He says that we have feelings of touch from which we conclude that there is something external; that there is a feeling, "and a conclusion drawn from it, or some way suggested by it;" that "the hardness of the table is the conclusion, and the feeling is the medium by which we are led to the conclusion."

Could Descartes or Locke have more plainly supported the doctrine of representative perception? How could Reid imagine he was combatting that doctrine when he wrote thus? The point in which he differs from them is this: he maintains that we draw the conclusion in question without any reasoning, and, indeed, in the absence of any conceivable reason why we should draw it. We do it instinctively; we are led by the constitution of our nature.

In effect Reid says to us: When you lay your hand on the table, you have a sensation, it is true, but you also know the table is hard. How do you know it? I cannot tell you; you simply know it, and cannot help knowing it; and that is the end of the matter.

Reid's doctrine was not without its effect upon other philosophers. Among them we must place Sir William Hamilton (1788-1856), whose writings had no little influence upon British philosophy in the last half of the last century.

Hamilton complained that Reid did not succeed in being a very good Natural Realist, and that he slipped unconsciously into the position he was concerned to condemn. Sir William tried to eliminate this error, but the careful reader of his works will find to his amusement that this learned author gets his feet upon the same slippery descent. And much the same thing may be said of the doctrine of Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), who claims that, when we have a sensation, we know directly that there is an external thing, and then manages to sublimate that external thing into an Unknowable, which we not only do not know directly, but even do not know at all.

All of these men were anxious to avoid what they regarded as the perils of Idealism, and yet they seem quite unable to retain a foothold upon the position which they consider the safer one.

Reid called his doctrine the philosophy of "Common Sense," and he thought he was coming back from the subtleties of the metaphysicians to the standpoint of the plain man. That he should fall into difficulties and inconsistencies is by no means surprising. As we have seen (section 12), the thought of the plain man is far from clear. He certainly believes that we perceive an external world of things, and the inconsistent way in which Descartes and Locke appeal from ideas to the things themselves does not strike him as unnatural.