God from

of a power to produce

ideas;

sense not as subsisting in God but as effects of His power- His inferas related to Him, in short, just as with Locke ideas of sense ence to are related to the primary qualities of matter. "There must necessity be an active power to produce our ideas, which is not to be found in ideas themselves, for we are conscious that they are inert, nor in matter, since that is but a name for a bundle of ideas; which must therefore be in spirit, since of that we are conscious as active; yet not in the spirit of which we are conscious, since then there would be no difference between real and imaginary ideas; therefore in a Divine Spirit, to whom, however, may forthwith be ascribed the attributes of the spirit of which we are conscious.' Such is the sum of Berkeley's natural theology.

which

Hume does

not see.

194. From a follower of Hume it of course invites the reply a necessity that he does not see the necessity of an active power at all, to which, since, according to Berkeley's own showing, it is no possible 'idea' or object of an idea, all his own polemic against the absolute idea of matter is equally applicable; that the efficient power, of which we profess to be conscious in ourselves, is itself only a name for a particular feeling or impression. which precedes certain other of our impressions; that, even if it were more than this, the transition from the spiritual efficiency of which we are conscious to another, of which it is the special differentia that we are not conscious of it, would be quite illegitimate, and that thus in saying that certain feelings are real because, being lively and involuntary, they must be the work of this unknown spirit, we in effect say nothing more than that they are real because lively and involuntary. Against a retort of this kind Berkeley's theistic armour is even less proof than Locke's. His 'proof of the being of God' is in fact Locke's with the sole nervus probandi left out. The value of Locke's proof, as an argument from their being something now to their having been something from eternity, lay, we saw, in its convertibility into an argument from the world as a system of relations to a present and eternal subject of those relations. For its being so convertible there was this to be said, that Locke, with whatever inconsistency, at least recognised the constitution of reality by permanent relations, though he treated the mere relation of external efficiency-that in virtue of which we say of nature that it consists of bodies outward to and acting on each other-as if it alone constituted the reality of the world.

turn

should

have been given to his idealism, if it was to serve his purpose.

A different Berkeley's reduction of the 'primary qualities of matter' to a succession of feelings logically effaces this relation, and puts nothing intelligible, nothing but a name, in its place. The effacement of the distinction between the real and unreal, which would properly ensue, is only prevented by bringing back relation to something under the name of God, either wholly unknown and indeterminate, or else, under a thin disguise, determined by that very relation of external efficiency which, when ascribed to something only nominally different, had been pronounced a gratuitous fiction. If Berkeley had dealt with the opposition of reality to thought by showing the primary qualities to be conceived relations, and the distinction between the real and unreal to be one between the fully and the defectively conceived, the case would have been different. The real and God would alike have been logically saved. The peculiar embarrassment of Locke's doctrine we have found to be that it involves the unreality of every object, into the constitution of which there enters any idea of reflection, or any idea retained in the mind, as distinct from the present effect of a body acting upon us-i.e. of every object of which anything can be said. With the definite substitution of full intelligibility of relations for present sensibility, as the true account of the real, this embarrassment would have been got rid of. At the same time there would have been implied an intelligent subject of these relations; the ascription to whom, indeed, of moral attributes would have remained a further problem, but who, far from being a 'Great Unknown,' would be at least determined by relation to that order of nature which is as necessary to Him as He to it. But in fact, as we have seen, the notion of the reality of relations, not felt but understood, only appears in Berkeley's developed philosophy as an after-thought, and the notion of an order of nature, other than our feelings, which enables us to infer what feelings that have never been felt would be, is an unexplained intrusion in it. The same is true of the doctrine, which struggles to the surface in the Third Dialogue, that the sensible world' is to God not felt at all, but known; that to Him it is precisely not that which according to Berkeley's refutation of materialism it really is— a series or collection of sensations. These after-thoughts,' when thoroughly thought out, imply a complete departure from Berkeley's original interpretation of phenomena' as

simple feelings; but with him, so far from being thought out, they merely suggested themselves incidentally as the conceptions of God and reality were found to require them. In other words, that interpretation of phenomena, which is necessary to any valid 'collection' from them of the existence of God, only appears in him as a consequence of that collec- Hume's tion' having been made. To pursue the original interpretation, so that all might know what it left of reality, was the best way of deciding the question of its compatibility with a rational belief in God-a question of too momentous an interest to be fairly considered in itself. Thus to pursue it was the mission of Hume.

mission.

195. Hume begins with an account of the perceptions of His acthe human mind,' which corresponds to Locke's account of count of impresideas with two main qualifications, both tending to complete sions and that dependence of thought on something other than itself ideas. which Locke had asserted, but not consistently maintained. He distinguishes' perceptions' (equivalent to Locke's ideas) into 'impressions' and 'ideas' accordingly as they are originally produced in feeling or reproduced by memory and imagination, and he does not al.ow ideas of reflection' any place in the original furniture of the mind.' 'An impression first strikes upon the senses, and makes us perceive heat or cold, thirst or hunger, pleasure or pain, of some kind or other. Of this impression there is a copy taken by the mind, which remains after the impression ceases; and this we call an idea. This idea of pleasure or pain, when it returns upon the soul, produces the new impressions of desire and aversion, hope and fear, which may properly be called impressions of reflection, because derived from it. These, again, are copied by the memory and imagination, and become ideas; which, perhaps, in their turn give rise to other impressions and ideas; so that the impressions are only antecedent to their correspondent ideas, but posterior to those of sensation and derived from them' (Part I. §2). He is at the same time careful to explain that the causes from which the impressions of sensation arise are unknown (ibid.), and that by the term 'impression he is not to be understood to express the manner in which our lively perceptions are produced in the soul, but merely the perceptions themselves' (p. 312, note). The distinction between impression and idea he treats as equivalent to that between feeling and thinking, which, again,

Ideas are fainter impressions.

'Ideas'

be so re

mere

words.

lies merely in the different degrees of 'force and liveliness' with which the perceptions, thus designated, severally strike upon the mind." Thus the rule which he emphasises (p. 310) 'that all our simple ideas in their first appearance are derived from simple impressions which are correspondent to them and which they exactly represent,' strictly taken, means no more than that a feeling must be more lively before it becomes less so. As the reproduced perception, or 'idea,' differs in this respect from the original one, so, according to the greater or less degree of secondary liveliness which it possesses, is it called 'idea of memory,' or 'idea of imagination.' The only other distinction noticed is that, as might be expected, the comparative faintness of the ideas of imagination is accompanied by a possibility of their being reproduced in a different order from that in which the corresponding ideas were originally presented. Memory, on the contrary, 'is in a manner tied down in this respect, without any power of variation' (p. 318); which must be understood to mean that, when the ideas are faint enough to allow of variation in the order of reproduction, they are not called 'ideas of memory.'

196. All, then, that Hume could find in his mind, when that cannot after Locke's example he looked into it,' were, according to presented his own statement, feelings with their copies, dividing themmust be ex- selves into two main orders-those of sensation and those of plained as reflection, of which the latter, though results of the former, are not their copies. The question, then, that he had to deal with was, to what impressions he could reduce those conceptions of relation-of cause and effect, substance and attribute, and identity-which all knowledge involves. Failing the impressions of sensation he must try those of reflection, and failing both he must pronounce such conceptions to be no 'ideas' at all, but words misunderstood, and leave knowledge to take its chance. The vital nerve of his philosophy lies in his treatment of the association of ideas' as a sort of process of spontaneous generation, by which impressions of sensation issue in such impressions of reflection, in the shape of habitual propensities, as will account, not indeed for there beingsince there really are not-but for there seeming to be, those formal conceptions which Locke, to the embarrassment of

his philosophy, had treated as at once real and creations of the mind.

taken

distinction

sions of

197. Such a method meets at the outset with the difficulty Hume, that the impressions of sensation and those of reflection, if strictly, Locke's determination of the former by reference to an im- leaves no pressive matter is excluded, are each determined only by between reference to the other. What is an impression of reflection? impresIt is one that can only come after an impression of sensation. reflection What is an impression of sensation? It is one that comes and of senbefore any impression of reflection. An apparent determina- sation. tion, indeed, is gained by speaking of the original impressions as conveyed to us by our senses;' but this really means determination by reference to the organs of our body as affected by outward bodies-in short, by a physical theory. But of the two essential terms of this theory, our own body,' and ' outward body,' neither, according to Hume, expresses anything present to the original consciousness. Properly speaking, it is not our body we perceive when we regard our limbs and members, but certain impressions which enter by the senses.' Nor do any of our impressions inform us of distance and outness (so to speak) immediately, and without a certain reasoning and experience' (p. 481). In such admissions Hume is as much a Berkeleian as Berkeley himself, and they effectually exclude any reference to body from those original impressions, by reference to which all other modes of consciousness are to be explained.

6

sensation

198. He thus logically cuts off his psychology from the Locke's support which, according to popular conceptions, its primary theory of truths derive from physiology. We have already noticed disappears. how with Locke metaphysic begs defence of physic; how, having undertaken to answer by the impossible method of self-observation the question as to what consciousness is to itself at its beginning, he in fact tells us what it is to the natural philosopher, who accounts for the production of sensation by the impact of matter on the outward parts, continued to the brain.' To those, of course, who hold that the only possible theory of knowledge and of the human spirit is physical, it must seem that this was his greatest merit; that, an unmeaning question having been asked, it was the best thing to give an answer which indeed is no answer to

See above, paragraph 17.