That spirit is possessed of causal efficacy, Berkey has in an earlier passage proved by a direct peal to the individual's sense of power. I find I can excite ideas in my mind at pleasure, d vary and shift the scene as oft as I think fit. It is › more than willing, and straightway this or that idea ises in my fancy; and by the same power it is oberated and makes way for another. This making ad unmaking of ideas doth very properly denominate e mind active. Thus much is certain and grounded nexperience: but when we talk of unthinking agents, r of exciting ideas exclusive of volition, we only amuse urselves 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 termalways 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. titative equivalence, is a case in point. The i istic trend is in another direction, power COL to signify ethical or logical connection. St larly, in the later philosophy of Berkeley hims God is known by the nature of his activity ra than by the fact of his activity; and we are to account for a thing, when we show that is so best." God's power, in short, becomes inc tinguishable from his universality attended w the attributes of goodness and orderliness. E this means that the analogy of the human spir conscious of its own activity, is no longer the ba of the argument. By the divine will is now mean ethical principles, rather than the "here am willing" of the empirical consciousness. Sir larly the divine mind is defined in terms of logic 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 s 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. e former strain appears in his conclusion that he principles of science are neither objects of ase nor imagination; and that intellect and rea are alone the sure guides to truth." 21 His anscendentalism appears in his belief that such -inciples, participating in the vital unity of the dividual Purpose, constitute the meaning and so e substantial essence of the universe. endency of Transcend self. 141. Such then are the various paths which ead from subjectivism to other types of philosne General ophy, demonstrating the peculiar aptibjectivism tude of the former for departing from its first principle. Beginning with the elativity 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, "1 Op. cit., Vol. III, p. 249. or had recourse to the radical epistemological trine of mysticism. Theories. $142. Since the essence of subjectivis epistemological rather than metaphysical, its p Ethical tical and religious implications a Relativism. various. The ethical theories wh are corollary to the tendencies expounded ab range from extreme egoism to a mystical unive salism. The close connection between the form and relativism is evident, and the form of egoi most consistent with epistemological relativism to be found among those same Sophists who fir maintained this latter doctrine. If we me believe Plato, the Sophists sought to create fo their individual pupils an appearance of goo In the "Theaetetus," Socrates is represented £ speaking thus on behalf of Protagoras: "And I am far from saying that wisdom and the wis man have no existence; but I say that the wise man 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 huma 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 sensa tions as well as true ones; and the wise and good rhetori cians make the good instead of the evil seem just to states: for whatever appears to be just and fair to a state, while ctioned by a state, is just and fair to it; but the teacher wisdom causes the good to take the place of the evil, ch in appearance and in reality." 22 = truth is indistinguishable from the appearance I truth to the individual, so good is indistinguishole from a particular seeming good. The sureme moral value according to this plan of life s the agreeable feeling tone of that dream world o 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. |