face, and the idea is like the object. The | ies than the idealists do; and hence some of the strongest dualistic realists, like the Scotch school in general, lay the foundations of an extreme idealism in the very effort to In overthrow the older and weaker one. denying Berkeley they unconsciously assert Fichte. This school has consequently shown a tendency, in some of its latest and noblest representatives, to run out into a sad indeterminism, or to go over to the idealism against which it has fought for a century.† The at testation of consciousness is as real to the substantial existence of our bodies as an integral part of our person, as it is to the substantial existence of our minds. There is no sort of proof proper that man is spirit, apart from proof that he also is body. portrait is like the face in this, that, through the light which it modifies as its medium, it produces certain effects on the consciousness like those which the face itself produces through the same medium. Under the same laws, the idea is like the object, in that it is a faithful mental picture, drawn under divine laws, by the touches of the senses, conformably to the innate conditions of the mind itself. It is the picture of the object, painted by the object itself, through its me- But the seeming strength of idealism here dia, on the canvas, which is conscious of the is really a weakness; for, in common with picture it bears; or, rather, it is a photo- the received dualism, it accepts a false congraph which becomes a picture by the mod-struction of the personality of man. ification produced through the media, and by the internal changes of the sensitive substratum, which coacts responsively to the media. The object is as it seems to the mind, and the idea is like the object, so far that there is a real correspondence, correlation, analogy, conformity, between the object me- 3. Closely connected with the false dualdiating through its means of force and the ism of the popular system in regard to the idea co-mediated by these means, and by the person of man is its construction of the relapowers, connate or educated, of the mind it- tion of matter to mind. This also has always self. That which produces the phenomena been a tower of strength to idealism; and is in the real accord of natural cause and ef- it is one of its unquestionable benefits that fect with the phenomena. Different phe- it has shown the untenableness of the old nomena imply different objects, or different position. If the choice must lie between occonditions of the same object. In idealism casionalism, pre-established harmony, and there is no object beyond the mind and cor- materialistic physical influence, on the one respondent with the phenomena, but the phe-side, or idealism on the other, every sound nomenon itself exhausts the whole concep- thinker will accept idealism, at least provition of object. It is not the phenomenon of sionally, as not so great an evil as the othan object, but is itself object. Hence ideal-ers. The ignorant physicist sometimes says, ism proper holds that in the phenomena we in no sense grasp any thing beyond it, while idealistic realism holds that in an important sense, though mediately, we do grasp the thing beyond-in other words, that the medium establishes a real relation between the object itself and the mind. We know that there is matter. Why need we go further to an unknown something called mind?" But his very assertion is self-destructive. It implies the priority of the something knowing to the something known. He has not been able to assert matYou not ter without postulating mind. only can not prove matter, you can not define it, without implying the existence of mind. 2. Idealism seems to be strong in the fact that it rests upon generally accepted princiIn its assertion that mind is first, ples in regard to the personality of man. The common view, with which idealism concurs, idealism is beyond all successful assault. is that it is not the whole man which is the Berkeley here did a great work in pulling Ego, but that only man's mind is the Ego; down the false, in showing the defects of that man is not a person, but merely has a the existing systems. Des Cartes and Maleperson-in brief, that man is not man. It branche accepted matter, and were at a loss assumes the simplicity of man proper. The what to do with it. It was simply in their Cartesian construction of man and of person way. Locke's was the magnificent chaos of is the received one, and this is the construc- all systems. It only needed selection to detion on which idealism builds. When we termine whether his views should be develare conscious of our self, we are not conscious oped into skepticism, materialism, idealism, of the material nature associated with our- or realism. Were Berkeley but a blind giant, self. The assertion of idealism which strikes it was, at this point at least, not in the temmost persons as the extremest of its absurd-ple of a true God that he reached forth his ities, to wit, that we have not substantial bodies, or do not directly know we have them, is a mere logical necessity from the commonly received principle-a principle very probably held by the very people who ignorantly stand aghast at its inevitable inference. The dualistic realists, on their own principles, no more know that they have bod hands to feel the pillars. It was Philistia's But, while it is a strength of idealism that it confesses the thought in the universe, it is its weakness that it denies the word. The through which thought awakens thought, and by which mind is operative on mind. After all its efforts, idealism totally fails to give an intelligible account of the excitation of thought. Berkeley is totally unsatisfactory in the explanation of the impartation of the divine ideas to us, and simply helpless when he confesses, but leaves unexplained, the fact that the mind of one man communicates excitation to the mind of another, Fichte confesses that the positing of the non-Ego, as the non-Ego inevitably appears in every man's experience, is incapable of explication ("unbegreifliche"), and Schelling, in his Fichtian period, acknowledges that while the limitation of the Ego, in a general way, can be explained, "the definite limitation of it is the incomprehensible and inexplicable demand in philosophy." matter were no more than what they as-lution, asserts that the entire phenomenal, sumed it to be, could do no more than they whether physical or spiritual, finds its last supposed it to do, it was a mere obstruction, root and cause in personal reason. which it was a relief to sweep out of the way. If the battle was not won, the deck was at least cleared for action. Yet at this point it is a weakness of ideal-word is the body of the thought, the medium ism that, in regard to the relation of mind and matter, it attempts to set aside false theories by repudiating well-grounded facts. The evidence that facts are facts is not weakened by the false theories that are broached to account for them, nor by our inability to offer any theory which explains them. Idealism may overthrow occasionalism, or preexistent harmony, or physical influence, or any and every theory as to the mode in which the non-Ego operates on the Ego; but the fact that the non-Ego does operate on the Ego remains untouched. In denying the fact, idealism is forced out of itself into skepticism, its own theory becomes chaotic and preposterous, and it reacts into realism, or even materialism, or runs out into nihilism. We know too little of the ultimate nature and relations of matter and mind to venture beyond the ground of facts in regard to them. In matter are hidden divine forces; it too is worthy of God; it too is an out-thought of God; and we can not meas-"Principles" shows that God is not the obure it, because we can not measure him. We ject of human knowledge-we have no more can not think too highly of spirit, but we than our knowledge of our idea of him. We can think too little of matter. Matter, too, know the idea, not the Being. Berkeley can is in the sphere of faith. We can not walk find no solution of the facts he admits, exall through its domains by sight merely. cept by a tacit desertion of his own princiThere are three spheres of wonder in thought. ples of knowledge. Matter, in many of its The lowest is simple matter, with its myste- aspects, may be considered as the medium ries and beauty and grandeur. The high- of thought, the interpreting word of God's est is pure Spirit, the self-existent cause of mind—the necessary condition of man's conthe universe, and his angels. Midway be-scious relation to man; but of all these, in tween is the being in whom spirit takes to its Gnostic undervaluation of matter, idealitself matter, not that they may mechanical- ism has persistently taken no notice. ly cohere with their wonders separated, but 5. Closely allied with the position it asthat a new world of wonder may arise signs to thought, is the strength which idealmysterious forces, and forces which neither ism derives from the conception of the phesimple matter nor pure spirit in their isola-nomena of the universe, as language in which tion possesses. Matter and mind conjoined do not merely add their powers each to each, but evolve new powers, incapable of existence outside of their union. 4. Idealism in its best forms addresses a powerful appeal to confidence in making so much of the universe as a thing of thought. Its Platonic harmony with the idea as the primal thing, the presupposed model of the existent in nature, is part of its strength. Against the theories of blind fate, of aimless chance, of evolution, without mind to guide it, of unconscious nature fretting itself into form or consciousness, in the happy accidents of millions of ages of failure, against the theories that in any sense make mind the product or function of matter, or put it after matter, or co-ordinate it with matter-the best idealism, in asserting spirit as the glorious original, asserts plan as before all evo Berkeley appeals to the omnipotence of God as capable of making direct impressions on the mind; but the first sentence of the mind speaks to mind, or speaks to itself. "Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge; there is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard." Yet, while Idealism speaks much of language, it is a language without words, without lip, and without ear. It has no words, for words are not ideas, but the representatives of ideas, and the media of expressing them; and idealism has no medium between minds-it has mind speaking without words, articulating without organs, and heard without an ear. Its words are self-uttered, that is, unuttered-self-heard, and therefore unheard. But while objective nature is like language in that it reveals mind to mind, it is even as a revealer greatly unlike language System des transcendental Idealismus,” p. 118. sions, is not only as obscure in its own nature as is physical causation, but is, in fact, the source of difficulty as regards the physical. It is the adjustment in the mental construction which creates the perplexity. Here, as in regard to substance, idealism is compelled to accept experience as a source of difficulties, yet dare not use it as a means of relief from them. 8. It is an element of strength in idealism, in common with all monistic systems, that it appeals to the love of unity natural to the mind. All great tendencies in human nature point in some way to great truths-to some truth possessed or some truth needed. When they swing and tremble, it is still under a prevailing drawing toward the true; and when they at last lie still and point steadily, they point to the pole. One of the most marked desires of human thought is toward unity, to make as nearly as may be the One the All. The great struggle of in many respects. Objective nature is not | effects, of mental precedences and succesonly a means to an intellectual end, but is also in some respects an end to itself. And even when it is a means, it is, in its first and most direct intent, a means to a natural, not to an intellectual end. The bird has faculties for itself alone; and those which it has for me it shares with me. It does not only sing for me, it sings for itself also. The flowers that blush unseen are not lost, and the sweetness shed on the desert air is not wasted. The intermediate purposes of nature do not find their analogy in language, and hence the conception of language fails to cover the whole problem. It does not answer to build a system on the straining of a metaphor. But the secret force of the analogy, even as far as we grant it, is not what it ought to be for the ends of idealism. Objective nature has not the arbitrary character of language. Talking man has innumerable languages-man as the excitant of the perceptions of his fellow has but one language, and to percipient man Nature ad-thinking has been toward a monistic condresses but one. The man of spoken language is "homo" and "anthropos"-and the nation of "homo" does not understand "anthropos;" but Nature's man is man himself, asserting himself to the normal perception of the whole race in the one perception, in its kind identical and unmistakable. If Nature finds in language some of her parallels, she finds in it, in other respects, her contrasts. She is so vast and so manifold that she soon exhausts the figure and leaves it behind her. The spoons of our systems never throw back the tide-line of her ocean. 6. Idealism has been strengthened by the obscurity, confusion, and vacillation of thinkers in regard to the notion of substance, or of the "thing in itself." struction of the facts, and this has given us pantheism, materialism, idealism, and the doctrine of identity. It is a weakness of idealism, in common with materialism and pantheism, that it finds unity not in the harmony of the things that differ, but in the absorption of the one into the other. Two sets of things are before us in the natural construction of experience, as all schools alike admit-- things spiritual, things material. spiritual, things material. Before they begin to philosophize, the materialist and the idealist wholly agree on the phenomenal facts. There seems to be a world external to me, and I seem to be conscious that there is. But when they begin to philosophize, the materialist insists that as such a thing as mind is supposed to be can neither act on matter nor be acted on by matter, there can be no mind. The idealist, holding to the fundamental mode of the materialist construction, simply inverting the terms, says: As such a thing as matter is supposed to be can neither act on mind nor be acted on by mind, there is no such thing as matter. Each is a dogmatist, arbitrarily assuming the element by which he will stand as separate from the other, and each, by the thing he rejects, making void the thing by which he holds. For there is no genuine proof that there is matter which is not a proof that there is mind, no genuine proof that there is mind which is not a proof that there is matter. All proof of the existence of matter links itself with the consciousness which the Yet idealism itself involves all the most serious demands of the notion of substance, falls into its greatest difficulties, and complicates instead of relieving them. The difficulties touching substance are in the sphere of the ideal. But although it raises the difficulties, it never settles them. It has all the empirical difficulties in accounting for what seems, and then the complicating difficulty, which haunts it all through, that this only seems. It is encumbered with the perplexity of treating physical substance as if it were a fact, while it yet conceives of it as a fiction. In a word, it is encumbered with all the embarrassments brought in by the idea of physical substance, yet can avail itself of none of the relief the idea brings. 7. Closely allied with the notion of sub-mind has of certain facts which involve the stance is that of cause and causality, whose obscurities have given a place of shelter to idealistic speculation. existence of matter; all proofs of the existence of mind are linked with the evidences that matter operates on it and is operated But idealism is no less weak than other on by it. Matter isolated from mind is unsystems in its interpretation of causality. known, and mind isolated from matter is unThe causal relation of intellectual forces and knowing. As subject and object are corre late terms, and the real existence of the | tivated, the thing seen, felt, heard, tasted, thing in one term of the relation implies the real existence of the other, so mind and matter are not opposites, but correlates. As philosophy alone knows them, there can be no mind conceived without matter, no matter conceived without mind. Materialism and idealism are alike forms of direct self-contradiction. is the substance; not the thing which sees, feels, hears, tastes. That is to most men the shadow. As shadow. If you can make them doubt of what they have seen, how can they continue to believe in that which they have not seen? 10. Closely associated by misconstruction and one-sided extravagance with materialism is the doctrine of realism, against whose abuses the best idealism is arrayed. The common-sense of the Occidental races is prevailingly realistic, but realistic beyond all the metes and bounds which any system of intelligent thinking can endure. All philosophers are agreed that in a certain aspect the popular interpretation of consciousness is demonstrably false. It is so false that half an hour's talk will satisfy any man of ordinary intellect that he has misconstrued the testimony of his own eyes, ears, and touch. When the refined sense of the race becomes realistic, it tends to materialism. Those who are terrified at idealism would do well to contrast its workings not merely with their own sober realism, but with the workings of materialism; to put side by side materialistic France and idealistic Germany, or in Germany to contrast even the extravagances of idealism with the reactionary extravagances of materialism, remembering that the abuse of realism is the direct stronghold of materialism. 9. It is a source of strength to idealism that, with its principles, various speculative errors, especially materialism, seem to be most effectually overthrown. The hope of accomplishing this was one of Berkeley's practical incentives. That he has not accomplished this in the manner and to the degree he proposed is certain, but his labors were nevertheless not a failure. Berkeley has helped to lay an immovable foundation for a true estimate of the value of the soul and of the majesty of mind. Quite outside of his peculiar speculation, in which many may decline to follow him--and, indeed, the more potently if we drop it-he has helped to fix forever, to thoughtful men, evidence of the personality, the independent existence, the amazing faculties of man's spirit. If he has not demonstrated that there is no substantial body, he has demonstrated that, whatever body may be, it is for the soul; that matter is for mind; that the psychical rules the physical; that the spirit is the educator of the organs; that the universe is expressed thought and embodied plan; it is conceived by mind for mind, is the language in which the Infinite Spirit speaks to the created spirits; that law is but the revelation of will, nature an eternal logic and æsthetic; that man is an indivisible person, and that his essential personality is inherent in his soul; that soul is not the result of organism, but that organism is the result of soul; that the universe we know can not ex-ing, but is speculation only. When it comes ist without mind. The esse of the known is percipi, man is the measure of his own universe, and there is no man's universe outside of man. On the other hand, idealism promotes materialism by reaction, as all extremes, in the same way, produce their counterparts. To make a real thing nothing, is the best preparation for making it every thing. The soil of the most matured idealism is, equally with that of a one-sided realism, the soil of the most extravagant materialism. The land of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel is the land of Feuerbach, Vogt, and Moleschott, as the land of Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke is the land of Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer. Many in the world of thinkers, nearly all in the every-day world of what is called "commonsense," if fairly pinned down to the choice between "no substantial mind," "no substantial matter," would say, "If this be so, there is no substantial mind." To the populace throughout, and to nearly all the cul But if the extravagances and mistakes of realism are favorable to idealism, there is a strength, naturalness, and consistency in a sober realism which makes it a very formidable antagonist in the sphere of speculation, and an invincible one to the practical mind. Not only so-it is invincible to the idealistic mind in its practical moods. Fichte himself says, "Idealism can never be a way of think to action, realism presses upon every man, even upon the most decided idealist. Idealism is the true reverse of life."* Fichte elsewhere says, "If I do not acknowledge practically what I must acknowledge theoretically, I put myself in an attitude of clear self-contradiction." And in saying this he passes judgment on his own system. 11. It is a great source of strength to idealism that, appealing to the reason as its ground, those who are its antagonists have so often failed in meeting it successfully-have so often insisted that the whole question is to be carried out of philosophy and put to the popular vote-or, accepting the challenge to meet idealism in the sphere of speculation, have, in that sphere, failed to overthrow it. But it is no less true that if the antagonists of idealism have strengthened it by * Philosoph. Journal, v.. 322, 323, note. "Brief an Reinhold," p. 5. See Krug, "Idealis mus." their differences, the friends of idealism have | unraveled in one what he wove in the other. weakened it by their vital differences. Its The shroud of Penelope was never comfriends have failed to agree. But though idealism has nobly represented in its best names the philosophical spirit, it has by no means a monopoly of such names or of this spirit. Other systems have worthy names, and some very bright ones are found arrayed against idealism. Many of the most illustrious thinkers of England, Scotland, France, and Germany have resisted its premises, and yet more frequently its infer pleted. Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopen12. It is one of the great attractions of hauer, and hundreds of others, have worked idealism to thinkers that it meets the prob- upon it, but it is unfinished. If the work is lems of thought in a philosophical spirit. If ever stayed, it will not be by its completion, it does not solve them, it tries to solve them. but by the coming of some Ulysses of metaIf it does not answer the question, it does physics who shall bring it to an end by renot give it up. If its heroes are vanquished, moving its motive. Meanwhile it can not be they fall in battle with their harness on. denied that the idealists have been marked There is often a great misconception of by bold, persistent labor, and by great fidelthe whole purpose of philosophical effort. It ity to speculative processes. They have reis not to find a ground of practical convic-fused all compromise with "common-sense," tion sufficient for the routine of every-day have pushed away persistently the friendly life. That ground is common to all the sys- but coarse hand of empiricism. There is an tems. The most absolute idealist and the air of the heroic characteristic of the school, most positive realist are undistinguishable in its unceasing warfare with all, however here. The whole circle of the phenomenal strong or popular, which does dishonor to is the same to both. It is not the ori, but the man as a being of speculative thought. diór which divides them. It is, indeed, one They can not be driven or bribed into comof the marvels of the case, that idealists promising the dignity of science, the majhave so often been distinguished in the esty of mind. largeness and pureness of their practical thinking and of their active lives. One grand object of philosophy is to vindicate the sensations or instincts to the reason, or to correct both by the reason, or reason by both, or to show that they lie out of the range of reason, and must be accepted without hope of harmonizing them. It is the object of philosophy to ascend as high as it is given to man to ascend, to adjust our be-ences. liefs and our cognitions, and to escape the error of simply believing what we ought to know, or of assuming to know what we can only believe. When divine revelation is accepted, we must believe in order to understand. Is this the canon of philosophy too? Under which flag-Credo ut, or Intelligo ut? A great school, the school of Belief, replies, Credo ut; another school would totally deny the Credo.ut. "However harmless," says Kant, "psychological idealism may appear as regards the essential aims of metaphysics (though in fact it is not harmless), yet it would remain a perpetual scandal to philosophy and the common reason of our race, to be compelled to assume, simply on belief, the existence of things external to us-the very things from which we derive the entire materials for the cognitions of our internal sense-and when any one doubts their existence to be at a loss for a sufficient proof of it."* Brave words; but Kant never reached the point at which he could pretend to say, on speculative grounds, Intelligo. His heart went over from the philosophers to the vulgar, and tried to stanch the wounds of the "pure" with the bandages of the "practical;" but the bandages of the "practical" could only be found in the repository of the "pure," and from thence Kant had removed them. His " reason” affirmed idealism. His instinct clung to realism. Kant perpetually Some of its masters sit uneasy on their thrones, put there against their protest by their disciples. All recent idealism is the exaggeration or isolation of principles of Kant; but if idealism is Kantianism, Kant did not understand his own system. If his creed was idealistic, his faith was realistic. Recent idealism is the disavowed, if not the illegitimate, child of the great thinker it claims as its father. 13. Idealism has nurtured many of the noblest spirits of the race, and claims the power of begetting exaltation of mind and character. Berkeley is a sublime embodiment of the true philosophical spirit; of the loftiness of its aims, the singleness of its purpose, the invincible persistence of its fidelity to conviction. Without disloyalty to the practical turn of the English mind, he has been true to purely intellectual interests. He at least has not degraded philosophy to the kitchen. His intellectual life is consistent with his own utterances: "The first spark of philosophy was derived from heaven. . . . . . Theology and philosophy gently unbind the ligaments that chain the soul down to earth, and assist her flight toward the Sovereign Good."* Idealism in its best forms is characteristically the system of noble, intellectual, and pure men. If it does not lift men to the heaven of their aspiration, it at least keeps them out of the slough and the mire. Yet idealism has also in some cases nurt* "Siris," § 301, 302. |