their confounding in various ways the essential principle of Idealism and the processes by which it is reached, or with the inferences which are deduced from it. Conflicting modes of arguing it may exist, and conflicting inferences be drawn from it; but the essential and common feature of idealism 'is that it holds that the final cognitions, the only cognitions, in the absolute or philosophical sense, are those which the mind has of its own states. If it admit that we may in any sense apply the term cognitions more widely than this, it holds that such cognitions are relative merely, and that they are to be vindicated even as relative cognitions only by showing that they are of necessity involved in the absolute cognition, the cognition given in self-consciousness. However reached or however developed, any system is so far idealistic which holds 'that the mind is conscious or immediately cognizant of nothing beyond its subjective states.' '

I

VIII. Sceptical Idealism in the development of Idealism from Berkeley to the present: Hume.

§1: SCEPTICAL IDEALISM, or IDEALISTIC SCEPTICISM, is the system of Hume (1711-1776).

The great aim of Berkeley had been a religious one. It was his design to check scepticism; but the actual result of his system, as it was developed in a special direction by Hume, was the promotion of scepticism in the subtlest and ablest form in which it has ever been presented. The clearness of Hume's thinking, and the luminous beauty of his style, gave a popularity to his speculations which has rarely been enjoyed by great thinkers. As trophies of intellectual power his philosophical writings are incomparably beyond his history. The chief of these are his Enquiry concerning Human Understanding,' 'Enquiry concerning the Principle of Morals,' and the Natural History of Religion.'

DAVID HUME proceeded from the empiricism of Locke as a general basis; but associating with it the speculations of Berkeley, whom he greatly admired, he denies to human knowledge all objective certainty, on the ground that it is impossible to go beyond ideas so as to reach the essence of things.

1 Hamilton's statement of Dr. Brown's view: Discussion 62.

His system may be stated in the following propositions : Ist. Our perceptions are either impressions or ideas,—either impressions or sensations of that which we hear, see, touch, or are cogitations,-i.e. ideas strictly so called. These ideas, inasmuch as they are combined solely from our sensations or impressions, are themselves no more than feebler sensations or impressions, and, therefore, are even less certain than the sensations. But the sensations themselves are necessarily uncertain, because reason (arguing from the ground of empiricism) supplies no means of knowing that these sensations or impressions are conformed to objects, or indeed have any object at all.

2d. Hence every cognition is destitute of objective truth.

3d. For our ideas or judgments are referred either, Ist, to a physical order, and ideas or judgments of this class rest upon the notion of cause; or, 2d, they are referred to a moral order, and ideas or judgments of this class rest upon the notion of liberty and virtue; or, 3d, they have regard to a moral and physical order, so as to explain the origin and unity of it; and the ideas and judgments of this third class involve the notion of a universal principle of all Being or Entities, that is, a God.

But all these fundamental notions objectively regarded are mere hypotheses or artificial ideas. Hume takes up the three classes and endeavours to show that this is true of them all. First, of the notions which are referred to a physical order, he argues that here experience merely teaches us the relations of simultaneousness and of succession. Thus experience shows that B co-exists with A or succeeds A; but from the fact that B co-exists with A to draw the conclusion that the one depends upon the other is impossible, or from the fact that B succeeds A to draw the conclusion that A is the cause of B is impossible. Hence (from the empirical method), we can have no notion objectively real of a cause. But without the notion of cause there are no notions which can be referred to a physical order, inasmuch as without this notion we explain no phenomena, nor can we be certain of the existence of bodies, for we judge that they exist because we think them to be the causes of our sensations. Second, as to the notions referred to the moral order, Hume argues that from experience no man can have any other

motive for his acts than egoism, selfishness or self-love. But the notion of virtue is distinct from egoism. Hence the notion of virtue (on the ground of empiricism) is pure hypothesis. 2d. We indeed perceive that we will, but how we will we do not perceive. Hence the notion of moral liberty is merely artificial, and in fact self-contradictory, for free choice cannot exist without motive; but motive cannot produce ultimate decision unless it be connected with stronger impressions which necessitate the willing.

Third, the notion of a universal principle or God is clearly impossible to man, for we can only reach such a notion by ascending from sensation through the notion of cause, from the whole, as an effect, to God as the cause of the whole,-but the notion of cause is without foundation. This doctrine Hume applies to ethics, to the question of retribution in another life, to the immortality of the soul, to religion in general, and to morality. All these, as resting on mere hypotheses, he treats in the same way, and thus out of an empiricism which proposed to lay a sure foundation for human belief he developed a universal scepticism.1

IX. Critical Idealism: Kant.

CRITICAL OF TRANSCENDENTAL (hypothetical) IDEALISM, the system of Kant (1724-1804). We know things only as they appear to us, not as they are in themselves. Things as we know them are mental representations in us, and time and space are forms of our intuiting. There are two sources whence we derive cognition. 1. The unfathomable thing in itself, which furnishes the matter for our mental representations; 2. the subjective forms of our thinking, or the categories. Both must be united to make experience possible. 'Of the two elements whose relation and harmony compose science,-on one side the human mind, the subject, and on the other things, beings, the object,— Kant proposes to suppress the second, and to reduce science to the first. To eliminate the objective forever, as absolutely inaccessible, and to resolve all into the subjective, this is his end and here are the great lines of his enterprise.' 'Kant's system

2

Rothenflue, Institutiones Philosophiæ Theoreticæ, 1846, iii. 273-275.

2 Saisset, Essay on Religious Philosophy, 1863, vol. i. 275.

is to be designated as Idealism in a completely general sense and in all its parts, for alike the ground of phenomena and the law of conduct it sought in the mind of man and in its laws, innate, independent of experience.'1

When we look at the end of the epoch terminating with Hume, it is very clear that a reformation was pressingly necessary. The scepticism of Hume, rising in the empiricism of Locke, threatened not only all that was thought to be known in regard to morals and religion, but subverted the very principles of reason, the foundation of all cognitions, and thus made all science, all real knowledge, impossible. It had become obvious that, whatever might be the speculative force of this tendency, it involved such enormous practical evils that there must be somewhere in it a latent fallacy,-either the premises were incorrect or the reasonings upon them unwarranted. It was clearly necessary to subject the intellect of man and its operations to a new examination, that knowledge might be built upon a more solid foundation. The great master in this work was Kant. He performed this work in such a way that, as his transcendental idealism was developed and supported by his general system, a number of later writers endeavored to find the ultimate principle, i.e. the absolute, some in the Ego or subjective understanding, others in the non-Ego or in nature, some in the identity of the Ego and non-Ego. The first of these developed into the system of subjective idealism, the second into that of objective idealism. Germany was the chief arena of these speculations. It will be seen that in this epoch the evolution of philosophy presents the three results: 1st. Transcendental Idealism; 2d. Subjective Idealism; 3d. Objective Idealism, one form of which is the doctrine of absolute Identity.

Emmanuel Kant has been considered, by some not incompetent judges, the most profound thinker with whom the history of the human mind has acquainted us. Intelligent men who are not his disciples yet acknowledge him to be one of the greatest and most influential metaphysicians. Of Scotch descent on his father's side, and German on his mother's, he largely combined and harmonized the best traits of the great metaphysicians of

Zeller, Geschichte d. deutsch. Philosophie, 1873, 512.

both nationalities. He was thoroughly educated, and early displayed remarkable, powers. He began at the age of thirty to teach philosophy and mathematics in the university of his native place. Originally his philosophical teachings were in accordance, in the main, with those of his immediate predecessors, who were disciples of Wolff, the systematizer of Leibnitz. It was the writings of Hume which first awakened him to the defects of the shallow dogmatism into which the system of Wolff had run. Hume's denial of all universal and necessary cognition, because none such is furnished by experience, and none, therefore, can have objective reality, aroused Kant to the refutation of Hume, and led him to subject the entire faculty of cognition to a critical examination. He proposed to himself three questions:

Ist. What am I able to know?

2d. What ought I to do?

3d. What may I hope for?

The first of these raises the metaphysical question; the second, the ethical; the third, the religious.

He maintains that these questions cannot be answered except by showing, by critical process, that reason, taken universally, is the faculty of cognition a priori. To perform this work he proposed to treat of three great departments:

Ist. To present a critique of pure theoretic reason or of transcendental reason,—that is, of a reason which transcends and goes above mere empirical experience.1

2d. The critique of practical reason.2

3d. The critique of judgment.3

Under the critique of pure reasoning Kant discusses—

A. The nature of our cognition.

B. The divisions of the cognitive faculty.

C. The inferences from the critique of pure reasoning.

A. (a.) Of the nature of our cognition. All our cognition is either

pure, i.e. a priori, or is empirical, i.e. a posteriori. The pure or

Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1781. 2d edit., 1787.

2 Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 1788.

3 Kritik der Urtheilskraft, 1793.

Werke: 1. Rosenkranz u. Schubart, Leipzig, 1838-1842.

12 vols.

2. Hartenstein, 1838, 1839. 10 vols. New edit., 8 vols., 1867-1869. 3. Von Kirchmann (Philosoph. Bibliothek), 1868, seq.