intelligently, by undertaking a careful analysis of experience, and by pointing out the real difference between sensations and things. That he was justified in making a protest, and the particular nature of the misconceptions into which he was betrayed, seem to be revealed with some clearness in the light of the doctrine which has been advocated in the preceding chapters. We see that we cannot wholly condemn Reid, and we also see that we cannot frankly justify him.

On the other hand, we must admit a relative justification also to those whose position he so vigorously opposed. We have seen how Reid tended to slip unconsciously into the form of doctrine which was the object of his attack. This is condemned by his editor, Sir William Hamilton, as a weakness unworthy of him, and it is insisted that we must hold to a Natural Realism of a purer type. Yet the careful reader of Sir William's works discovers that the doctrine actually held by the latter is, after all, a doctrine of representative perception. Existence "as it is in itself" is carefully distinguished from existence "as it is revealed to us"; man is a creature that inspects, not things, but the pictures of things— rerumque ignarus, imagine gaudet.1 It is wonderfully easy to adopt this doctrine, as innumerable psychologists and psychologies bear witness. To condemn it as mere error is unwise, for, as we have seen, it is at bottom a recognition of the undoubted truth that every element of experience may take its place in the subjective order.

I need not here dwell upon the position of the psychologist, for that has been done sufficiently already. It is a dual position, and while it insists upon giving to the subjective order its rights, it saves itself by tacitly recognizing, as Reid tried explicitly to recognize, the fact that we have an experience of things. It is only the philosopher, who emphasizes one of the aspects of truth recognized by the plain man at the expense of another, who is driven to strange devices to secure a dubious right to believe in a shadowy external world.

And it is interesting to note that even the philosopher cannot wholly put off humanity, and must involuntarily take his place from time to time beside Reid. "I have often remarked, in many instances," writes Descartes, "that there is a great difference between an object and its idea."2 Strange that he should have

1 "Lectures on Metaphysics," VIII.

2 Méditation Troisième.

remarked this, when he has all his life perceived nothing but ideas! "Thus I see, whilst I write this," says Locke, “I can change the appearance of the paper, and by designing the letters tell beforehand what new idea it shall exhibit the very next moment, by barely drawing my pen over it, which will neither appear (let me fancy as much as I will), if my hands stand still, or though I move my pen, if my eyes be shut; nor, when those characters are once made on the paper, can I choose afterward but see them as they are: that is, have the ideas of such letters as I have made. Whence it is manifest, that they are not barely the sport and play of my own imagination, when I find that the characters that were made at the pleasure of my own thought do not obey them; nor yet cease to be, whenever I shall fancy it; but continue to affect the senses constantly and regularly, according to the figures I made them."1

These sentences might have been penned by Reid. They are an unconscious tribute to the doctrine, implicit in common thought, that our knowledge of an external world is as direct and immediate as our knowledge of an internal. So I feel myself justified in claiming both Descartes and Locke, as well as Reid, to be witnesses to the truth of the theory which I advocate. I can do this with the better conscience, as I have no objection to their holding still to their doctrine of representative perception-in a modified form, i.e. in such a form as not to make it incredible that any one should ever arrive at the notion of an external world at all.

As for the Idealist, it is clear that he is in the same toils as the Hypothetical Realist. He marks the fact that every experience can take its place in the subjective order, and he dubs every experience "idea." But he is sufficiently clear-minded to see that, if we shut the mind up absolutely to its ideas, it cannot possibly know its ideas to be representative of things. If we allow Berkeley to describe the "objects of human knowledge" as he does in the first section of his "Principles "if we recognize under that head nothing else than ideas of sense, ideas of memory and imagination, the passions and operations of the mind, and the self that perceives them we must admit that his battle is won at the outset, for it is useless to attempt to know what cannot by any possibility become an object of human knowledge. No thing is given directly, and no thing can be logically inferred from what is

1 "Essay," Book IV, Chapter XI, § 7.

given directly. We must grant to Berkeley the credit of seeing more clearly than did Descartes and Locke the truth that no process of adding and subtracting ideas can result in a something that is not a complex of ideas. By manipulating numbers we can get numbers, but we cannot get something of a wholly different nature. It is useless to endeavor to manufacture an objective order out of phenomena which belong admittedly to the subjective order. This is what Berkeley does when he turns ideas of a certain vivid and orderly nature into "real things." His "real things," in so far as they are ideas, are percepts, and remain subjective. It is quite proper to distinguish in the subjective order between sensation and imagination, between percept and sensory image; every psychologist recognizes such distinctions. But it is not proper, having made the distinction, to call certain of the phenomena of the subjective order "real things" and force them to play the rôle of an external world.

Hence, if we must credit Berkeley with a clearer insight than Descartes and Locke, we must also admit that he was more lacking in common sense. That is to say, that vague recognition of the fact that there is an external world, that it is not a something groped for as a result of an inference from ideas, and that it is as directly known as are ideas themselves that vague recognition of a truth, which the plain man can champion but cannot defend, was present to the minds of Descartes and Locke, and led them to wheel around with shameless inconsistency when it became evident that their path led to a desert. Berkeley continued his journey in spite of the protest of common sense. He hardly seems to have heard its still small voice, which is, it must be admitted, a muffled voice, and scarcely articulate. And yet may we not assume that he heard it faintly after all, since he was moved to plant his desert with percepts and to call them trees?

Upon the impossibility of getting along without an external world-a real external world, and not a sham "projection"—I have dwelt in another chapter. But he who finds it inconceivable that a man should attempt to do it, either was not born to be a metaphysician, or is new to the trade. Idealism is the weakness of acute minds, not of dull ones. It means that a certain truth has been grasped, and firmly grasped, but that another has been overlooked.

1 Chapter XXII.

The truth which the Idealist fails to recognize is much emphasized by the Materialist. A realm of minds without a physical basis seems to him a floating wreath of mist, a chaos of impalpable unrealities. I hope it has been made clear in the preceding chapters how much truth lies hid in his contention. Without the objective order, without the real world in space and time, there would be no world at all, in any proper sense of the word, no universe of things and minds, no system, no experience. When we quarrel with the Materialist, we must not utterly repudiate all he says, for he speaks truth sometimes, and not error.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE WORLD AS UNPERCEIVED, AND THE "UNKNOWABLE'

IN Chapter XXIII I have touched upon the topic upon which I propose to speak in this chapter, and it is possible that I have there said enough to bring my thought clearly before the acute reader who is accustomed to such analyses as I have attempted to make. It is, however, scarcely possible to be too explicit, when one is dealing with ideas so elusive, and ideas which different men appear to see in very different lights. I shall, accordingly, come back again to the distinction between the mind and the world, and shall try to render it more unmistakable by answering a question, which arises in many minds, and to which many men seem to find it difficult to give a satisfactory answer.

We have seen that we must accept the fact that we perceive a real external world. It will not do to regard this world as a complex of sensations, an idea, or a "projection." The external world. must really be external, that is to say, it must carefully be distinguished from the contents of any mind. Certainly it is thus that science, as science, treats it. The geologist, for example, has no hesitation in placing before us a picture of the earth as it was before it was in a condition to be the seat of life, and in describing the successive stages by which it has come to be what it is. He is ready to admit that his account may be more or less inaccurate; that the limitations of his knowledge cause him to walk upon rather uncertain ground. But, such as it is, he believes his account to be a description of the world as it was in ages past. He does not suppose for a moment that he is busying himself with the sensations or ideas of any creature past or present. He recognizes, of course, that at certain earlier periods of the world's history there existed brutes to whom we must attribute a psychic life of some sort, and that there now exist men who may have a highly complex mental life. But it seems to him absurd to maintain that the series of physical changes which have taken place upon this planet is to be