him, that he fully admits the existence of what he sees, hears, and feels, the question is what sort of an existence. he means to allow these things-an existence where? as what? in the mind merely or out of it? as mere modes of the thinking mind or as independent existences? To this question Berkeley makes but one answer. They exist, that is, are perceived by him, exist as ideas exist in the mind, have real existence as all our thoughts and conceptions. have, but only as modes of our own mental being. I fully admit the existence of what I see, hear, feel, etc., says B. But Mr. Berkeley, do you mean to say that these sensible appearances are anything more than phenomena, that they exist anywhere out of the mind that thinks and perceives them? Oh. Not at all. "It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing among men that houses, mountains, rivers, in a word, all sensible objects have an existence natural and real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding.' "The table I write on, I say, exists, i. e., I see and feel it, and if I were out of my study I should say it existed, meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it. As to what is said about the existence of unthinking things, without any relation to their being perceived, that is to me perfectly unintelligible. Their esse is percipi, nor is it possible they should have any existence out of the minds of thinking beings which perceive them." Nothing can be plainer than this doctrine, unless it be the following account of precisely the same doctrine. "In a word all the choir of heaven and furniture of earth, all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind; their esse is to be perceived or known, and consequently so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind, or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all or else subsist in the mind of some eternal spirit."

Berkeley, then, was, out and out, an idealist. He

admits the reality of things, but only as phenomena,-only as ideas in and impressions on the mind,-no other reality or existence have sensible objects. The distinction between primary and secondary qualities he breaks down and shows that both are merely sensations in us. But how are these phenomena, these sensations produced? Not by the existence of what philosophers call matter, but by the direct agency of Deity, acting upon us through laws of nature by Him established, thus giving permanency and constancy to our sensible impressions.

Such is the substance of Berkeley's system. On the ground of the then prevalent philosophy, we fully admit that it was unanswerable. No theory of representative knowledge can stand its onset. Realism alone can cope with it.

CHAPTER XI.

HUME.

WITH the autobiography of this celebrated man, as prefixed to the History of England, it may be presumed that every one tolerably familiar with English literature is already acquainted. No one, I am sure, has ever read that little memoir without admiring its simplicity and beauty, and without feeling an interest in the writer. There is no need, then, in this connection to do more than simply advert to the leading events of his life, before we pass to consider his philosophy.

David Hume was born at Edinburgh, April 26, 1711. His father dying while he was yet in early life, the care of his education devolved wholly on his mother, who seems to have been a woman of more than ordinary ability. He was destined for the law, but so strong was his passion for literature, that he neglected his professional studies, and

finally retired to France, where he spent three years in privacy, wholly devoted to his favorite pursuits. In 1737 he went to London and published his "Treatise on Human Nature," which met with no attention or success whatever. In 1742 he published, at Edinburgh, his "Essays Moral and Political," which attracted more attention. In 1746 he offered himself as candidate for the professorship of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh, but was defeated by the vote of the Presbytery on account of his known scepticism. That year he accompanied General Sinclair, as his secretary in his expedition against the French coast, and the year following on a military embassy to Vienna and Turin. During his absence he recast his treatise on Human Nature and published it under the title of "an Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding," but with no better success. His "Principles of Morals" shared the same fate, but his "Political Discourses were better received. In 1752 he was appointed librarian to the Faculty of Advocates at Edinburgh. Here he conceived the idea of writing history. His first publication in this line, embracing the history of the House of Stuart, was received, he says, with one cry of reproach, disapprobation and even detestation. It was universally decried and neglected. Hume's equanimity and perseverance, however, prevailed at last. He kept on writing, and England kept on reading and abusing, until he fairly won the victory and achieved for himself a place among the standard authors of English Literature. Subsequently, he attended Lord Hertford as ambassador to Paris, where he was received with open arms as a man of letters and philosophy.

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He remained there as Chargé d'Affaires for some time after Lord Hertford's departure, and on returning to England became, in 1767, under secretary of state, under Conway, which post he held till 1769. He then retired to Edinburgh on a fortune of one thousand pounds per annum, and died in 1776, August 25, in his sixty-fifth year.

It has been well said that the influence of Hume as a philosopher has been as much owing to the general alarm excited by his doctrines, as to the ingenuity with which they were maintained. It is to be remembered, however, that Hume is merely a sceptic, not a dogmatist. He takes as his premises, the current philosophy of the time, and simply shows that on the basis of that philosophy such and such things must be true. He places that philosophy thereby in a sad dilemma, it is true, lands it in inevitable. scepticism. But he surely is not to blame for that. What were the premises furnished by the prevalent philosophy of the age? Locke had shown that all our knowledge was dependent on experience, and that we know nothing immediately but our own ideas. Berkeley had shown that we have no experience of an external world independent of perception, that we perceive in reality only our own ideas, and that these ideas give us no information, no experience of that world, nor can do so, in a word, that we have no experience of anything beyond certain sensible qualities, which are in fact only impressions or ideas made upon our senses, that the substratum, which we call matter and in which we suppose those qualities to inhere, is only a figment of the imagination. Hume found philosophy thus far on her way to scepticism; the path before her was a plain and obvious one; there was no mistaking it, no turning aside. She must either retrace her course, and starting anew, pursue quite another route, or keep on over the precipice. Hume thought she might as well keep on, now she had come so far, and, taking the reins where Berkeley dropped them, like a bold and reckless charioteer, dashed on and over into the bottomless abyss of utter scepticism. He did not choose the road; is not responsible for its having been chosen and so far pursued; is not responsible for the final overturn, any further than that he fearlessly and consistently forced the result which he saw to be inevitable.

Believing with Locke that our ideas are the only objects of knowledge, and with Berkeley that our ideas give us no reason to conclude the existence of anything beyond and out of ourselves, he saw that there was but one step more wanting to carry out the system and make it complete, and that step must be taken. If there is no evidence, said he, of any occult substratum called matter, as its basis of the qualities that strike our sense, what hinders me from denying also that occult substratum called mind, in which our thoughts and impressions are commonly supposed to inhere? If all that I know is simply my ideas themselves, then what becomes not only of matter as a basis of sensible qualities, but of mind as basis of mental phenomena ? suppose I deny the latter altogether? Philosophy stands aghast at the dilemma, but perceives no way of escape. There is the precipice and over she must go, and over she goes, all the world of course cursing the charioteer, as being the sole author and cause of the mischief. Dr. Brown himself could have done no better, however,-admits that the reasoning by which this conclusion is reached is unanswerable. And so indeed it is for all who, with Brown and Locke and the earlier philosophers, admit that ideas are the only immediate objects of our knowledge. Drive in at that gate and there is no escaping the precipice. Nor docs it make the least difference, as Sir W. Hamilton has well shown, whether you regard ideas, with Plato and Descartes, as something other than simple modes of the mind itself, or whether, with Brown and others, you regard them as mere modifications of mind, in either case the result is inevitable. All evidence is gone of anything as reality to correspond to these our ideas, and if any man, choosing to be consistent, denies that reality, no answer remains nor is possible. Neither Hume nor Berkeley, it is to be remembered, denied the subjective reality of sensible impressions, but only their objective reality. Their appearance as phenomena both fully admitted, but refused to