BISHOP BERKELEY AND RATIONALISM.

THERE are few writers of comparatively modern times who have had greater injustice done them than Bishop Berkeley. This profound philosopher and accomplished scholar seems by common consent to have been singled out as the impersonation of all that is whimsical, delusive, and unreal in metaphysical research. His system has been strangely misunderstood, and represented as a visionary scheme, the design of which was to prove the non-reality of external objects; whereas it was framed and propounded for the express purpose of confuting that philosophy, which having matter, in the philosophical sense of the word, for its foundation, did in fact convert all the objects of our perceptions into absolute nothings-the mere shadows of the unperceived and unperceivable archetypal world of real things, whose very existence was thus rendered incapable of demonstration; a system which obviously opened as wide a field for scepticism as can be well imagined. The causes of our perceptions being, by it, reduced to a gratuitous assumption, a very slight exercise of ingenuity would suffice to deal as summarily with their effects; a consequence that did not escape the acuteness of Berkeley, though it had eluded that of his less far-seeing contemporaries and opponents.

This singular misapprehension of the bishop's design seems to rest on the point just noticed; that he wrote of philosophical matter, and he was understood as treating of something essentially different; popu lar matter, or body in general; that is, considered apart from its particular existences. That such a misconception should have arisen, and till recently it has rarely been questioned, seems almost unaccountable, seeing that he says expressly (Principles of Human Knowledge, xxxvii.) "If the word substance be taken in its vulgar sense, for a combination of sensible qualities, such as extension, solidity, weight, and the like, this we cannot be accused of taking away. But if it be taken in a philosophical sense, for the support of accidents or qualities without the mind, then indeed I acknowledge that we take it away." And, singularly enough, this erroneous view of his system has been entertained both by the learned and unlearned. Not only has it been enunciated by every-day people, innocent of metaphysics, who never having read a line of his writings, in all the confidence of ignorance scruple not to receive and transmit the current phrase, "the sceptical philosophy of Berkeley;" but also by those who have either undertaken formally to refute his doctrines, or have run a tilt at them by way of digression from the straightforward course of their own speculations. Both classes agreeing to exhibit him as a legitimate, one would not perhaps say, laughing-stock, but more mildly, occasion for lips philosophical and otherwise being wreathed into smiles of mild contempt and self-complacent superiority.

Reid has, as we think, grossly misrepresreted Berkeley. Dugald Stewart has his fling at him, in a quiet, taking-it-for-granted sort of a way. While Beattie, as everybody knows, was at the pains of writing what must, in all justice, be called a blundering book against him. A work which, though it sufficiently manifests the writer's incompetency

for his self-imposed task, yet leaves upon the mind of the reader a feeling of unqualified surprise at its being so badly done. The critic might at least have been presumed capable of understanding his author -the minimum of qualification for a disputant--though he might be utterly unable to controvert his positions. But even this was palpably not the case; and in writing against Berkeley, Beattie has only shown how entirely he had mistaken his own powers and vocation. His book we consider an unfortunate one for his reputation, notwithstanding the high degree of favour it has enjoyed; a favour that may be accounted for by the pleasing and popular style in which the Scotch professor gave utterance to the general misconception of, and consequent feeling against, the system of the Irish bishop. The "Essay on Truth should now, however, be estimated at its just value. The elegant, but it must be said, shallow doctor, like a beautiful, swift-sailing yacht that skims the waters and wheels in graceful circles like a sea-bird, is no match for the stately man-of-war, alongside which he has chosen to lay himself, in the somewhat presumptuous hope of sinking it by a broadside from his pop-guns! which truly make a most alarming report, and might in all probability blow a cockle-shell out of the water, though they have not the smallest chance of damaging the towering structure against which their harmless rage is directed. Ne sutor-the doctor should have stuck to his poetry and belles lettres, instead of meddling with such stern stuff. It is always painful to see a man of unquestionable abilities so completely mistaking their proper direction, getting so helplessly out of his depth, as does poor Beattie on this occasion. That Frederic Schlegel should have followed in the wake of those who thus misconceived the learned Irishman, certainly fills us with unbounded astonishment.

Of late years, a disposition has manifested itself towards a juster appreciation of the great and good Berkeley. Each adjective is emphatically his due. A writer in "Blackwood's Magazine," 1842—Mr. Samuel Bailey, if we mistake not-seemed to be the first who announced an interpretation of his peculiar doctrines approaching that which we had ourselves been wont to put upon them. Mr. G. H. Lewes followed, and subsequently, Mr. Robert Blakey.

For ourselves we must own, that we were early inspired with a cordial admiration of the bishop; the more so, perchance, that till we became acquainted with his writings, we had duly credited what was told us-that he was a dreamer who had philosophized away that which mankind had ever, on the testimony of their senses, most devoutly believed that they saw the sun, and skies, and blue mountains; handled bonâ fide chairs and tables, and received real blows from real sticks and stones; the whole being wound up with the well-known "no-matterBerkeley" story! But what a world did they open to our young, and impressionable mind. We thought ourselves in Paradise, entranced like our first parent, when his luckily cold repast was left so long untouched, while he hung on the sweet music of angelic speech. It is a digression, but it occurs to us that, had it been a hot supper, Eve would have take care not to let her cookery spoil for anybody's talking. How did they enchain us by their varied fulness, beauty, and practical wisdom! There was the perspicuous elegance of his dialogues; the profound and far-seeing wisdom of his querist; a fund upon which writers of political and educational contributions to our modern

periodical literature have not inaptly drawn; and above all, there was the magnificent Platonism (we should rather say Plotinism) of his Siris, which beginning with tar-water, the good bishop's hobby, gradually rises, in a strain of fascinating speculation, from that humble source, to what perhaps, to our soberer views, looks not unlike a sort of Pantheism, though one of the most noble and elevating character. Undoubtedly one of the charms of Siris, to a mind whose youthfulness may preclude those habits of rigid and correct thought, which will at once detect the subtlest boundary line between truth and error, is that slight tendency to the emanative system which it exhibits. A system that may be spoken of as a splendid error; one that lays hold of the speculative mind, in spite of the cold judgment pronouncing against its claims; and that leaves the youthful student, as he struggles against its witchery, half wishing that it were true. Berkeley's anima mundi, however, is a very different one from that of the Pantheists; it might be better expressed as animus mundi.

It must be borne in mind that we are not about to enter on a detailed examination of the whole of his system, nor to prove its perfect consistency throughout. Our sole design is to exhibit what his views really were; and that for the purpose of showing the injustice of that charge of scepticism, as to the real existence of the objects of our perceptions, which has been so commonly brought against him, with few and incomplete exceptions, from his own time to the present.

His leading position is, that ideas have no existence out of mind, in which they inhere as their proper substance. If we were to write the word in its original form, sub-stans, it would make the matter clearer. And this has generally been assumed to mean, out of the percipient human mind: an erroneous rendering, which we would mark as affording some explanation of the severe and unmerited censure that has been heaped upon his system; admitting, at the same time, that some of his expressions, taken alone, may appear to countenance it. But his meaning, as he explicitly says, is, that things have no existence out of the Eternal Mind; or, in other words, independent of God. And it must not be forgotten, that to construe an equivocal expression, as contradictory to an explicit one, would be a direct violation of the rules of legitimate criticism.

"The question," he says, "between me and the materialists is, not whether things have a real existence out of the mind of this or that person, but whether they have an absolute existence distinct from being perceived by God, and exterior to all minds." And again, "the only thing whose existence we deny, is that which philosophers call matter, or corporeal substance" (sub-stans). Sentences that must surely have been overlooked by many of his critics. Passages similar to these might be multiplied. Now, as is well known, according to the scheme to which he was opposed, matter, or corporeal substance, was in fact almost, if not quite, equal to God-a sort of rival god. Qualities proper to Deity were attributed to it - eternity, independent existence; and it was deemed the necessary cause and support of phenomena: the independently existing rough material, of which the mighty Lord of All had but the fashioning, of the external world. And we find this objection, that such a system supposes two gods, urged against it by those Christian authors who wrote in opposition to the old heathen materialists. Ter

tullian (Adversus Hermogenes) says-" You ascribe eternity to matter, and thereby invest it with the attributes of God;" and "that doctrine (the eternity of matter)" places matter on an equality with God." While the magnificent addition in the Nicene creed -"maker of heaven, and earth, and of all things visible and invisible"-may perhaps not unreasonably be supposed to have had a designed reference to this controversy, as it then presented itself.

But not only was such a scheme profane, it was, intolerably absurd, as involving a host of contradictions; for the definition of philosophical matter, amounts to a definition of-nothing! as is well shown in the "Dialogues," which contain the fullest exposition of Berkeley's doctrines. It is stripped of all sensible qualities, and, of course, can have no intelligible ones; this same "nothing" that which can neither be apprehended by sense nor intellect, is, to all intents and purposes, nothing-being assigned as the ground of all the affections of our senses, as the efficient cause of those divers impressions which make known to us the existence of an external and sensible world. Truly matter was in evil case in the Bishop's hands. Further, thus reduced to a nonentity, how was its existence to be demonstrated? We did wrong in saying such a system led to scepticism; for they who deliberately and understandingly embraced it, must have been endowed with an amount of credulity far transcending anything of which we could conceive, even in our most imaginative moments. To make a gratuitous assumption, the prop of this wondrous world!

It was against this-literally non-sense-that Berkeley wrote. Not against the existence of matter, if matter be taken as the generic name of sensible things. Popularly it is so taken; and hence the popular misapprehension that he-denying the existence of matter-denied that of sensible things. But how came the philosophers who dealt with his works, to take this leaf out of the book of the vulgar?

The definition of a writer's terms is one essential towards his being understood. Berkeley took care to define his. He tells us that in his vocabulary the word idea, stands for thing: so that the proposition "there is nothing in the world but spirits, and ideas," amounts to thisthere are only things perceiving and things perceived; or, that every unthinking being is necessarily, and from the nature of its existence, perceived by some mind, if not by a finite, created one, by the infinite mind of God. An affirmation which we think few will deny, seeing it is simply equivalent to this-that created things have no independent existence. The following extracts, in which the italics are our own, will be found a correct, though brief compendium of the Bishop's views and argument.

"That there is no substance wherein ideas can exist besides spirit, is to me evident. And that the objects immediately perceived are ideas, is on all hands agreed. And that sensible qualities are objects immediately perceived no one can deny. It is therefore evident there can be no substratum of those qualities, but spirit; in which they exist, not by way of mode, but as a thing perceived, in that which perceives it. I deny, therefore, that there is any unthinking substratum of the objects of sense, and, in that acceptation, that there is any material substance. But if by material substance be meant only sensible body, that which is seen and felt, then I am more certain of matter's existence than you. If there be anything that makes the generality of mankind averse

from the notions I espouse, it is a misapprehension that I deny the reality of sensible things." Surely a sentence like this last should have prevented the current perversion of his doctrines! "I do therefore, he continues, "assert that I am as certain as of my own being that there are bodies, or corporal substances. Meaning, the things I perceive by my senses."

Further:-"I assert that since we are affected from without, we must allow powers to be without in a being distinct from ourselves. Thus I prove it to be spirit. From the effects I see produced, I conclude there are actions, and because actions, volitions; and because there are volitions, there must be a will. Again, the things I perceive must have an existence, they or their archetypes, out of my mind: but, being ideas, neither they, nor their archetypes can exist otherwise than in an understanding. But will and understanding constitute in the strictest sense a mind or spirit. The powerful cause of my ideas, therefore, is in strict propriety of speech a spirit."

We need not multiply extracts to show that whatever Berkeley's system was, or was not, neither in itself, nor in its tendencies, was it justly chargeable with scepticism.

It is beside our present purpose, but we cannot refrain from remarking that the Romish dogma of transubstantiation rests alone upon this old doctrine of material substance, which Berkeley so zealously controverted. It being asserted by the Romish Church that in the Lord's Supper, the substance of the bread and wine is alone transubstantiated, leaving the accidents, that is, all the sensible qualities by which we know them to be bread and wine, unchanged. But seeing that nobody now believes this old philosophical figment of material substance, what becomes of the dogma whose existence depends upon it?

It may be observed that Berkeley's philosophy was designed to be an eminently religious one, and that it really was so. Based, indeed, upon the apostolic declaration concerning the Creator of the universe, and the relation in which the creature stands to Him: "in Him we live and

move, and have our being; a passage of Scripture which the Bishop quotes in stating his views. To this great truth of the necessary presence of Deity in and with His creation, let there be but added (as has been unconsciously by some, and intentionally by others) this error concerning the mode of that presence,-by extension, and we have the Pantheistic scheme. Another instance of how near to error truth lies. Gross as this conception of the Supreme Being, and of His relation to the work of His own hands, may at first appear, we are persuaded it is one into which a speculative mind, reasoning out its own conclusions on this deeply interesting and sublime subject, may easily slide.

There are two writers essentially differing in their philosophy from Berkeley, of whom the reader will nevertheless be reminded by some parts of his writings, Malebranche and Spinosa, to whom we have just alluded. In allusion to the "seeing all things in God" of the former, -a phrase that looks like Berkeley's "spirit, the only substance,"-the Bishop himself says, "I shall not, therefore, be surprised if some men imagine that I run into the enthusiasm of Malebranche, though in truth, I am very remote from it." Then, adding his own entire belief of that Scripture just quoted, he goes on to say:-" But that we see things in His essence, after the manner above set forth" (by a union of the soul with the substance of God) "I am far from believing."