singular proposition stated a sensible event or the occurrence of a feeling, such substitution would be inexplicable: for if that were the true account of the singular proposition, a general one could but express such expectation of the recurrence of the event as repeated experience of it can alone give. But a relation is not contingent with the contingency of feeling. It is permanent with the permanence of the combining and comparing thought which alone constitutes it; and for that reason, whether it be recognised as the result of a mathematical construction or of a crucial experiment in physics, the proposition which states it must already be virtually universal.

progress in

185. Of such a doctrine Berkeley is rather the unconscious Traces of forerunner than the intelligent prophet. It is precisely upon his idealthe question whether, or how far, he recognised the constitu- ism. tion of things by intelligible relations, that the interpretation of his early (which is his only developed) idealism rests. Is it such idealism as Hume's, or such idealism as that adumbrated in some passages of his own 'Siris'? Is the idea, which is real, according to him a feeling or a conception? Has it a nature of its own, consisting simply in its being felt, and which we afterwards for purposes of our own consider in various relations; or does the nature consist only in relations, which again imply the action of a mind that is eternal— present to that which is in succession, but not in succession itself? The truth seems to be that this question in its full significance never presented itself to Berkeley, at least during the period represented by his philosophical treatises. His early idealism, as we learn from the commonplace-book brought to light by Professor Fraser, was merely a cruder form of Hume's. By the time of the publication of the 'Principles of Human Knowledge' he had learnt that, unless this doctrine was to efface 'spirit' as well as matter,' he must modify it by the admission of a 'thing' that was not an 'idea,' and of which the 'esse' was 'percipere' not ' percipi.' This admission carried with it the distinction between the object felt and the object known, between 'idea' and 'notion'—a distinction which was more clearly marked in the Dialogues.' Of 'spirit' we could have a 'notion,' though not an 'idea.' But it was only in the second edition of the Principles' that 'relation' was put along with 'spirit,' as that which could be known but which was no 'idea;' and

J's way of dealing with

physical truths.

manent

relations,

his theory properly excludes them.

then without any recognition of the fact that the whole reduction of primary qualities to mere ideas was thereby invalidated. The objects, with which the mathematician deals, are throughout treated as in their own nature 'particular ideas,' into the constitution of which relation does not enter at all; in other words, as successive feelings.

186. If the truths of mathematics seemed to Berkeley explicable on this supposition, those of the physical sciences were not likely to seem less so. As long as the relations with which these sciences deal are relations between 'sensible objects,' he does not notice that they are relations, and therefore not feelings or felt, at all. He treats felt things as if the same as feelings, and ignores the relations altogether. Thus a so-called 'sensible' motion causes him no difficulty. He would be content to say that it was a succession of ideas, not perceiving that motion implies a relation between spaces or moments as successively occupied by something that remains one with itself-a relation which a mere sequence of feelings could neither constitute nor of itself suggest. It is only about a motion which does not profess to be seen,' such as the motion of the earth, that any question is raised-a question easily disposed of by the consideration that in a different position we should see it. The question whether the earth moves or not amounts in reality to no more than this, to wit, whether we have reason to conclude from what hath been observed by astronomers, that if we were placed in such and such circumstances, and such or such a position and distance both from the earth and sun, we should perceive the former to move among the choir of the planets, and appearing in all respects like one of them: and this by the established rules of nature, which we have no reason to mistrust, is reasonably collected from the phenomena' ('Principles of Human Knowledge,' sec. 58).'

6

If they 187. Now this passage clearly does not mean-as it ought imply per- to mean if the 'esse' of the motion were the 'percipi' by us— that the motion of the earth would begin as soon as we wero there to see it. It means that it is now going on as an established law of nature,' which may be collected from the phenomena.' In other words, it means that our successive feelings are so related to each other as determined by one present and permanent system, on which not they only but 1 Cf. 'Dialogues,' page 147, in Prof. Fraser's edition.

divine

shall

all possible feelings depend, that by a certain set of them we He st.pare led-not to expect a recurrence of them in like order poses a according to the laws of association, but, what is the exact decree that reverse of this-to infer that certain other feelings, of which one feeling we have no experience, would now occur to us if certain con- follow ditions of situation on our part were fulfilled, because the another. ordo ad universum,' of which these feelings would be the ordo ad nos,' does now obtain. But though Berkeley's words mean this for us, they did not mean it for him. That such relation-merely intelligible, or according to his phraseology not an idea or object of an idea at all, as he must have admitted it to be-gives to our successive feelings the only 'nature' that they possess, he never recognised. By the relation of idea to idea, as he repeatedly tells us, he meant not a necessary connexion,' i.c. not a relation without which neither idea would be what it is, but such de facto sequence of one upon the other as renders the occurrence of one the unfailing but arbitrary sign that the other is coming. It is thus according to him (and here Hume merely followed suit) that feelings are symbolical-symbolical not of an order other than the feelings and which accounts for them, but simply of feelings to follow. To Berkeley, indeed, unlike Hume, the sequence of feelings symbolical of each other is also symbolical of something farther, viz. the mind of God: but when we examine what this 'mind' means, we find that it is not an intelligible order by which our feelings may be interpreted, or the spiritual subject of such an order, but simply the arbitrary will of a creator that this feeling shall follow that.

188. Such a doctrine could not help being at once confused in its account of reality, and insecure in its doctrine alike of the human spirit and of God. On the recognition of relations as constituting the nature of ideas rests the possibility of any tenable theory of their reality. An isolated idea could be neither real nor unreal. Apart from a definite order of relation we may suppose (if we like) that it would be, but it would certainly not be real; and as little could it be unreal, since unreality can only result from the confusion in our consciousness of one order of relation with another. It is diversity of relations that distinguishes, for instance, these letters as they now appear on paper from the same as I imagine them with my eyes shut, giving each sort its own reality: just as upon

Locke had explained reality by relation of

ideas to

body.

d

Liveliness confusion with the other each alike becomes unreal. Thus, evidence of though with Locke simple ideas are necessarily real, we soon

in the idea

this rela

tion.

Berkeley

find that even according to him they are not truly so in their simplicity, but only as related to an external thing producing them. He is right enough, however inconsistent with himself, in making relation constitute reality; wrong in limiting this prerogative to the one relation of externality. When he afterwards, in virtual contradiction to this limitation, finds the reality of moral and mathematical ideas just in that sole relation to the mind, as its products, which he had previously made the source of all unreality, he forces upon us the explanation which he does not himself give, that unreality does not lie in either relation as opposed to the other, but in the confusion of any relation with another. It is for lack of this explanation that Locke himself, as we have seen, finds in the liveliness and involuntariness of ideas the sole and sufficient tests (not constituents) of their reality; though they are obviously tests which put the dreams of a man in a fever upon the same footing with the 'impressions' of a man awake, and would often prove that unreal after dinner which had been proved real before. There is a well-known story of a man who in a certain state of health commonly saw a particular gory apparition, but who, knowing its origin, used to have himself bled till it disappeared. The reality of the apparition lay, he knew, in some relation between the circulation of his blood and his organs of sight, in distinction from the reality existing in the normal relations of his visual organs to the light and in his idea, accordingly, there was nothing unreal, because he did not confuse the one relation with the other. Locke's doctrine, however, would allow of no distinction between the apparition as it was for such a man and as it would be for one who interpreted it as an actual 'ghost.' However interpreted, the liveliness and the involuntariness of the idea remain the same, as does its relation to an efficient cause. If in order to its reality the cause must be an outward body,' then it is no more real when rightly, than when wrongly, interpreted; while on the ground of liveliness and involuntariness it is as real when taken for a ghost as when referred to an excess of blood in the head.

189. As has been pointed out above, it is in respect not retains this of the ratio cognoscendi' but of the 'ratio essendi' that only sub- Berkeley's doctrine of reality differs from Locke's. With him

notion,

'God' for

'body.'

it is not as an effect of an outward body, but as an immediate stituting effect of God, that an idea of sense' is real. Just as with Locke real ideas and matter serve each to explain the other, so with Berkeley do real ideas and God. If he is asked, What is God? the answer is, He is the efficient cause of real ideas; if he is asked, What are real ideas? the answer is, Those which God produces, as opposed to those which we make for ourselves. To the inevitable objection, that this is a logical see-saw, no effective answer can be extracted from Berkeley but this—that we have subjective tests of the reality of ideas apart from a knowledge of their cause. In his account of these Berkeley only differs from Locke in adding to the qualifications of liveliness and involuntariness those of 'steadiness, order, and coherence' in the ideas. This addition may mean either a great deal or very little. To us it may mean that the distinction of real and unreal is one that applies not to feelings but to the conceived relations of feelings; not to events as such, but to the intellectual interpretation of them. The occurrence of a feeling taken by itself (it may be truly said) is neither coherent nor incoherent; nor can the sequence of feelings one upon another with any significance be called coherence, since in that case an incoherence would be as impossible as any failure in the sequence. As little can we mean by such coherence an usual, by incoherence an unusual, sequence of feelings. If we did, every sequence not before experienced-such, for instance, as is exhibited by a new scientific experiment-being unusual, would have to be pronounced incoherent, and therefore unreal. Coherence, in short, we may conclude, is only predicable of a system of relations, not felt but conceived; while incoherence arises from the attempt of an imperfect intelligence to think an object under relations which cannot ultimately be held together in thought. The qualification then of ideas' as coherent has in truth no meaning unless 'idea' be taken to mean not feeling but conception: and thus understood, the doctrine that coherent ideas are (Berkeley happily excludes the notion that they merely represent) the real, amounts to a clear identification of the real with the world of conception.

190. If such idealism were Berkeley's, his inference from Not rethe ideality' of the real to spirit and God would be more valid than it is. To have got rid of the notion that the

garding the

world as a system or