'Coxcombs vanquish Berkeley with a grin.'
And Hood depicts the terror of the alderman at a system which would
'For mock-turtle make me sup sensations.'
The grave criticisms and arguments of many of Berkeley's opponents rest on the same basis. On the other hand, Hegel looks down loftily upon the whole affair, and pronounces the philosophy and its criticism a mere play upon words. Berkeley says without is within. Be it so. He has done nothing to settle the problem of philosophy, which remains as before. It may help to bring out more clearly what we believe to be a juster estimate of the nature and value of the speculations of Bishop Berkeley, if we shortly summarize these two different modes of criticizing his system as they appear in their latest form.
Thus it is said, on the one hand, when we look at any object we feel compelled to assert that we see it to be of a certain colour; but this assertion, we afterwards find, must be compatible with two facts—that the same object has different colours as seen by the same person from different points of view, and also as seen by different persons at the same time. Yet we stand by our conviction, that we do see the same thing, because it is our conviction that we do see it. If we were not to stand by it under these circumstances, we could never stand by such natural convictions at any time. The whole evidence for the system is that visible objects look of different sizes and colours at different distances, and in different lights; while the arguments against the theory are the primary convictions of men.[221]
On the other hand, a recent German critic says that the reason why Berkeley's theory has been so little approved of, not only by the great public of those who are capable of reflection, but also by those who are philosophers by profession, is that it is not at all in advance of common opinion; for Berkeley was not the first to declare that the apple which is seen and felt, is only seen and felt, or is phenomenal. This assertion is as old as philosophy. Most philosophers, however, in opposition to Berkeley, have thought, and still think, that the fundamental cause of the phenomena which brings it about is not merely phenomenal, but something quite different. This hypothesis is not without its difficulties. We cannot explain how a motion in the nerves becomes a sensation which we are conscious of. But Berkeley's theory does not better the position. He cannot show how it happens that the divine objective 'ideas' become one human subjective perception or intuition; he does not tell us how God enables us to share or represent His thoughts, since He neither speaks to us nor writes to us. Berkeley cannot, from his point of view, show with any certainty where the truth lies in the different opinions of men upon the orderly coherence of the phenomenal world, the relation of phenomenal things to each other, upon the ground and purpose of human existence, &c. In short, he is as little able to found a scientific knowledge and a theory of knowledge upon his hypothesis as the common opinion of man can on its presupposition. His whole system is only a change of position without result. It explains nothing, helps us in nothing—it is no philosophy.[222]
We have chosen these two representations, not because they are the best, but simply because they are the latest.
All such criticisms proceed upon the supposition that the whole of the philosophy of Berkeley is summed up in the 'Principles of Human Knowledge,' and do not even take the trouble to investigate the history of the opinions advanced in that unfinished and imperfect treatise. They do not know the philosophical importance of the Theory of Vision, the correspondence between Johnson and Berkeley, nor the Platonism or Neo-Platonism of 'Siris.' The publication of a complete edition of Berkeley's writings ought itself to render such criticism impossible, and the elucidations supplied by Professor Fraser should make them less excusable. A philosophical critic can scarcely now proceed on the presupposition that the 'Principles of Human Knowledge' and the Dialogues are the full and finished results of Berkeley's speculations, and take it upon him to neglect all else in his critique.[223] He must now recognise that it is not so easy to sum up Berkeley's principles; that we are in the same position for judging him as we would be with regard to Leibnitz if the 'Monadologie' and the 'Nouveaux Essais' had never been written; that we have a series of treatises, each more unfinished than the other, from which the latent developing thoughts have to be gathered as much by reference to history and life as by actual reference to their pages. He must recognise that there is a discernible unity in his life and speculations—a unity which may be traced throughout all Berkeley's writings, and which reconciles the Theory of Vision with 'Siris,' the Preface to the 'Principles,' &c., with the cancelling of the pages on Nominalism in the last edition of the 'Alciphron.'
Berkeley's whole philosophy is a combination of two currents of speculation—that of Locke on the one hand, and that of the English mystics on the other. In his earlier writings the influence of Locke is predominant, but gradually loses power until at last it almost succumbs to the influence of the Platonists; but, from first to last, we have the attempt to combine what is real and deep and true in the old spiritual philosophy with the clearness, consistency, and relation to physical science which Nominalism and the Baconian method can bring.