Puslapio vaizdai
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That spirit is possessed of causal efficacy, Berkeley has in an earlier passage proved by a direct appeal to the individual's sense of power.

"I find I can excite ideas in my mind at pleasure, and vary and shift the scene as oft as I think fit. It is no more than willing, and straightway this or that idea arises in my fancy; and by the same power it is obliterated and makes way for another. This making and unmaking of ideas doth very properly denominate the mind active. Thus much is certain and grounded on experience: but when we talk of unthinking agents, or of exciting ideas exclusive of volition, we only amuse ourselves with words." 20

Although Berkeley is here in general agreement with a very considerable variety of philosophical views, it will be readily observed that this doctrine tends to lapse into mysticism whenever it is retained in its purity. Berkeley himself admitted that there was no "idea" of such power. And philosophers will as a rule either obtain an idea corresponding to a term or amend the term— always excepting the mystical appeal to an inarticulate and indefinable experience. Hence pure power revealed in an ineffable immediate experience tends to give place to kinds of power to which some definite meaning may be attached. The energy of physics, defined by measurable quan

* Op. cit., Vol. III, p. 278.

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titative equivalence, is a case in point. The idealistic trend is in another direction, power coming to signify ethical or logical connection. Similarly, in the later philosophy of Berkeley himself, God is known by the nature of his activity rather than by the fact of his activity; and we are said to account for a thing, when we show that it is so best." God's power, in short, becomes indistinguishable from his universality attended with the attributes of goodness and orderliness. this means that the analogy of the human spirit, conscious of its own activity, is no longer the basis of the argument. By the divine will is now meant ethical principles, rather than the “here am I willing" of the empirical consciousness. Similarly the divine mind is defined in terms of logical principles, such as coherence and order, rather than in terms of the "here am I thinking" of the finite knower himself. But enough has been said to make it plain that this is no longer the standpoint of empirio-idealism. Indeed, in his last philosophical writing, the "Siris," Berkeley is so far removed from the principles of knowledge which made him at once the disciple and the critic of Locke, as to pronounce himself the devotee of Platonism and the prophet of transcendentalism.

The former strain appears in his conclusion that "the principles of science are neither objects of sense nor imagination; and that intellect and reason are alone the sure guides to truth." 21 His transcendentalism appears in his belief that such principles, participating in the vital unity of the Individual Purpose, constitute the meaning and so the substantial essence of the universe.

Tendency of

to Transcend

§ 141. Such then are the various paths which lead from subjectivism to other types of philosThe General ophy, demonstrating the peculiar aptiSubjectivism tude of the former for departing from Itself. its first principle. Beginning with the relativity of all knowable reality to the individual knower, it undertakes to conceive reality in one or the other of the terms of this relation, as particular state of knowledge or as individual subject of knowledge. But these terms develop an intrinsic nature of their own, and become respectively empirical datum, and logical or ethical principle. In either case the subjectivistic principle of knowledge has been abandoned. Those whose speculative interest in a definable objective world has been less strong than their attachment to this principle, have either accepted the imputation of scepticism, 21 Op. cit., Vol. III, p. 249.

or had recourse to the radical epistemological doctrine of mysticism.

Theories.

$142. Since the essence of subjectivism is epistemological rather than metaphysical, its pracEthical tical and religious implications are Relativism. various. The ethical theories which are corollary to the tendencies expounded above, range from extreme egoism to a mystical universalism. The close connection between the former and relativism is evident, and the form of egoism most consistent with epistemological relativism is to be found among those same Sophists who first maintained this latter doctrine. If we may believe Plato, the Sophists sought to create for their individual pupils an appearance of good. In the "Theaetetus," Socrates is represented as speaking thus on behalf of Protagoras:

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And I am far from saying that wisdom and the wise man have no existence; but I say that the wise man is he who makes the evils which are and appear to a man, into goods which are and appear to him. I say that they (the wise men) are the physicians of the human body, and the husbandmen of plants-for the husbandmen also take away the evil and disordered sensations of plants, and infuse into them good and healthy sensations as well as true ones; and the wise and good rhetoricians make the good instead of the evil seem just to states; for whatever appears to be just and fair to a state, while

sanctioned by a state, is just and fair to it; but the teacher of wisdom causes the good to take the place of the evil, both in appearance and in reality." 22

As truth is indistinguishable from the appearance of truth to the individual, so good is indistinguishable from a particular seeming good. The supreme moral value according to this plan of life is the agreeable feeling tone of that dream world to which the individual is forever consigned. The possible perfection of an experience which is "reduced to a swarm of impressions," and "ringed round" for each one of us by a "thick wall of personality" has been brilliantly depicted in the passage already quoted from Walter Pater, in whom the naturalistic and subjectivistic motives unite.23 If all my experience is strictly my own, then my good must likewise be my own. And if all of my experience is valid only in its instants of immediacy, then my best good must likewise consist in some "exquisite passion," or stirring of the

senses.

§ 143. But for Schopenhauer the internal world opens out into the boundless and unfathomable sea of the universal will. If I reSelf-denial. tire from the world upon my own pri

Pessimism and

22 Plato: Theaetetus, 167. Translation by Jowett.
23 See § 121.

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