dour, and the depth of reflection, are all alike striking. As compared with Hume in especial, it is here that Berkeley is superior, and that not only with reference to the learning, but with reference to the spirit of faith and gravity, as opposed to the spirit of doubt and levity. The most valuable ingredient in Berkeley is, after all, that he is a Christian.'' § 18: FRASER.-'The great glory of Irish philosophy is Berkeley. ... To the present day the memory of the mild metaphysician is as dear to his countrymen as that of their most turbulent orators and statesmen. Nor is the instinct of the nation wrong. He was one of the first eminent Anglo-Hibernians that were not ashamed of the name of Irishman. He was one of the first Irish Protestants who would honestly tolerate a "Papist." He was, perhaps, the first Irishman who had the courage to tell his countrymen their faults. He was the first to denounce the race of patriots. The character of this great and good man, indeed, is not the exclusive property of his country; it is the common glory of the human race. His life was one of ideal purity. The metaphysician of idealism was an ideal man. He was as nearly a realization of the conception of the Stoic sage as the imperfection of humanity permits. 'The range of his intellectual accomplishments was almost as wonderful as his virtue was unique. In his "Analyst" he was the first to point out that logical inconsistency in the modern calculus which Carnot attempted to explain by a compensation of errors, which Lagrange endeavoured to obviate by his calculus of functions, and which Euler and D'Alembert could only evade by pointing out the constant conformity of the conception with ascertained results. The "Querist," to use the language of Sir James Mackintosh, “contains more hints, then original, still unapplied in legislation and political economy, than are to be found in any equal space." In his "Minute Philosopher," modelled on the Dialogues of Plato, he catches the manner of his master; and, while tracking the free thought of the day through its various evolutions, exhibits an exquisite elegance of diction that is unsurpassed in the literature of philosophy. It is in abstract philosophy, however, that we are to seek his glory. His Annotations on Schwegler, 1868, 420-422. "Theory of Vision," his "Principles of Human Knowledge," his "Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous," and his "Siris," entitle him as a metaphysician to be ranked with Locke and Hume; and their publication vindicated the claim of Ireland to an equality with England and with Scotland in the glories of metaphysical research. ་ 'Berkeley's idealism, in fact, is an epoch in the history of modern speculation.'' VII. Idealism defined. SI: IDEALISM, the general system of which Berkeley is an exponent, is, on the whole, with reference to the part it has played in the history of human thought, the greatest of systems. In its most generic sense, it has been and is now the system of the great mass of thinkers. Berkeley therefore, were there no other reason, is worthy of study as one of the great masters in one part of a great school of philosophical thinking. He represents with distinguished majesty and grace one grand division of IDEALISM. For idealism is not a narrow province of philosophy, but at least in its mainland a hemisphere of it, and with islands of coincidence stretching over philosophy's whole globe. Like England, its drum-beat follows the sunrise till it circles the world. Those who imagine that idealism, in the broad sense of the word, is a feeble thing, or the mere refuge of a few paradoxical minds, either do not know its nature and meaning or are ignorant of its history. In its principle of cognition it is so strong as to have carried nearly the entire body of thinkers with it. On this they have agreed; it is on the inferences from it they have divided. Generic idealism is the predominant system of the world, and specific idealism has an immense body of able supporters. To see clearly the nature of this distinction, it may be useful to recall some of the various definitions of idealism and idealists. § 2: WOLFF (1679-1754).-'Idealists is the name given to those who grant no more than an ideal existence of bodies, an exist North British Review, vol. xxxiv. (1861) 454, 455. ence in our minds, and therefore deny a real existence of the world and of bodies.'1 $3: PLATNER (1744-1818).-'Idealism shows, I, from the inconceivableness of material substances, 2, from the origin of what are called the primary qualities of matter, that nothing non-spiritual or material, external to the mind in which these conceptions are, and embracing the matter for them, has any existence; consequently these conceptions are either the result of our imaginative faculty or are aroused by the operation of an infinite spirit.' 2 § 4: FREDERICK SCHLEGEL (1772-1829). The essence of idealism consists in holding the spiritual alone as actual and truly real, in entirely denying to bodies and matter existence and reality, in explaining them as mere appearance and illusion, or at least transmuting and resolving them into spirit. The question at once meets us here, What, then, in antithesis to matter is the proper essence of spirit? To which the reply is, Freedom, activity, living mobility; as substantial permanence, unchangeableness, and dead repose are the essence of corporeal materialism. This is the distinctive point in which idealism directly contradicts both materialism and realism. The view taken of the notion of substance properly determines whether a system be idealistic or not, for in true idealism this notion is completely set aside and annihilated.' 3 $5: WILLICH (1798).- Idealism is... that system of philosophy in which the external reality of certain intuitive representations is disputed or doubted, and space as well as external objects are asserted to be mere fancies.'4 §6: LOSSIUS (1743-1813).— Idealism is the assertion that matter is only an ideal seeming, and that spiritual essences are the only real things in the world.'5 §7: KRUG (1770-1842).- Idealism is that system of philosophy which considers the real (the existent or actual) as a mere ideal. In this system it is held that there is no actual object corresponding to our conceptions of the external world, but that Psychologia Rationalis, 1734, 1779, 236. 2 Aphorismen, 1793, i. 756. 3 Philosoph. Vorlesungen, i. 4 Willich: Glossary, in Elements of the Critical Philosophy, London, 1798. we ourselves objectify-regard as something objective-those conceptions, and consequently first transmute the ideal into a real, as we are of necessity self-conscious of those conceptions.'' §8: TENNEMANN (1761-1819).- Rationalism, in the broader sense, proceeds sometimes from knowledge, sometimes (as in Jacobi's system) from faith, and either explains our conception and cognition by the existence of objects or explains the existence of objects from our conception and cognition. The former system is Realism, which makes the existence of objects the original;' the latter is Idealism, which makes the conception the original.' $9: DUVAL JOuve (1847). —‘Idealism is the name given to the philosophical doctrines which consider the idea either as the principle of cognition or as the principle alike of cognition and of being.'3 § 10: PIERER (1859).—‘Idealism, the philosophical system, which, positing the ideal as original, the real as derivative, either regards things as mere conceptions of the reflecting, actual subject, or looks upon the existence of the world of sense as at least problematical and incapable of demonstration.'4 § II: BROCKHAUS (1866).—‘Idealism, in antithesis to realism, is that philosophical view which maintains not only that the spiritual or ideal being is the original, but that it is the sole actuality, so that we can concede to the objects of the senses no more than the character of a phenomenal world educed by ideal activities.'5 12: OTHER DEFINITIONS.-Idealism has been further defined as the philosophical view which regards what is thought as alone the actually existent, in opposition to realism;' 'schemes of philosophy which teach that we are concerned only with ideas and are ignorant of everything else;' 'the doctrine that in external perceptions the objects immediately known are ideas.'' Idealism, in antithesis to realism, is the philosophic view which regards the objects of sense only as products of the conception, and considers the thinking subject, or the thing Krug: Encycl. Phil. Lex., ii. 496, 2d ed., Leipz., 1833. 2 Tennemann: Grundriss d. Ges. d. Philos., 5th Aufl. von A. Wendt, ? 58. 3 Duval Jouve, in Dictionnaire d. Sciences Philosoph., Par., 1847, iii. 180. 4 Pierer's Universal Lexicon, 1859, viii. 774. 5 Brockhaus: Real-Encyklopaedie, 11th ed., 1866, viii. 204. 6 General und Universal Lexicon, 1869, ii. 604. thought, as the truly existent;' 'the designation of many and different systems of philosophy, which only agree in the common principle from which they originate. The principle is the opposition of the ideal and the real,-that is, of ideas and things, the contrariety of mind and body, or of spirit and matter;' 'that scheme... which, carried to its legitimate results, . . . regards all external phenomena as having no existence apart from a thinking subject.'' § 13 HAMILTON (1788-1856).—If the testimony of consciousness be referred to the co-originality and reciprocal independence of the subject and object, two schemes are determined, according as the one or other of the terms is placed as the original and genetic. Is the object educed from the subject, Idealism; is the subject educed from the object, Materialism is the result.' 'There is one scheme which, . . . with the complete idealist, regarding the object of consciousness in perception as only a modification of the percipient subject, or at least a phenomenon numerically distinct from the object it represents, endeavours to stop short of the negation of an external world, the reality of which, and the knowledge of whose reality, it seeks by various hypotheses to establish and explain. This scheme, which we would term Cosmothetic Idealism, Hypothetical Realism, or Hypothetical Dualism, although the most inconsequent of all systems, has been embraced under various forms by the immense majority of philosophers.'" § 14: SCHOPENHAUER (1788-1860).—We close with Schopenhauer's definition: The fundamental view of idealism is this: that everything which has an existence for cognition, and consequently all that is perceived, the entire universe, extending itself in space and time, and linked by the principle of the sufficient reason, is merely object in relation to the subject, the perception of the percipient (the intuition of the intuitant); it is conception, consequently its existence is not absolute and unconditional, but only relative and conditional; in brief, is not a thing in itself, but is mere phenomenon.' 3 § 15: THE DIVERSITY in these definitions arises very much from Meyer's Hand-Lexikon, 1872. Cyclopædia of Society for Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, 1838, vol. xii. Encyclopædia Britannica, xii. 356.. 2 Sir William Hamilton (1830): Discussions. New York, Harper & Bros., 1868, 61. 3 Schopenhauer, Lexicon, w. Frauenstädt, 1871, i. 342. |