An Introduction to PhilosophyFullerton, George Stuart
Philosophy
An Introduction to Philosophy
Fullerton, George Stuart
Philosophy
Bishop Berkeley called the objects of sense ideas. He regarded all
ideas as inactive, and thought that all changes in ideas--and this
includes all the changes that take place in nature--must be referred to
the activity of minds. Some of those changes he could refer to finite
minds, his own and others. Most of them he could not, and he felt
impelled to refer them to a Divine Mind. Hence, the world became to
him a constant revelation of God; and he uses the word "God" in no
equivocal sense. It does not signify to him the system of things as a
whole, or an Unknowable, or anything of the sort. It signifies a
spirit akin to his own, but without its limitations. He writes:[2]--
"A human spirit or person is not perceived by sense, as not being an
idea; when, therefore, we see the color, size, figure, and motions of a
man, we perceive only certain sensations or ideas excited in our own
minds; and these being exhibited to our view in sundry distinct
collections serve to mark out unto us the existence of finite and
created spirits like ourselves. Hence, it is plain we do not see a
man,--if by _man_ is meant that which lives, moves, perceives, and
thinks as we do,--but only such a certain collection of ideas as
directs us to think there is a distinct principle of thought and
motion, like to ourselves, accompanying and represented by it. And
after the same manner we see God; all the difference is that, whereas
some one finite and narrow assemblage of ideas denotes a particular
human mind, whithersoever we direct our view, we do at all times and in
all places perceive manifest tokens of the Divinity--everything we see,
hear, feel, or any wise perceive by sense, being a sign or effect of
the power of God; as is our perception of those very motions which are
produced by men."
With Berkeley's view of the world as a constant revelation of God, many
men will sympathize who have little liking for his idealism as
idealism. They may criticise in detail his arguments to prove the
nonexistence of a genuinely external world, but they will be ready to
admit that his doctrine is an inspiring one in the view that it takes
of the world and of man.
With this I wish to contrast the doctrine of another idealist, Mr.
Bradley, whose work, "Appearance and Reality," has been much discussed
in the last few years, in order that the reader may see how widely
different forms of idealism may differ from each other, and how absurd
it is to praise or blame a man's philosophy merely on the ground that
it is idealistic.
Mr. Bradley holds that those aspects of our experience which we are
accustomed to regard as real--qualities of things, the relations
between things, the things themselves, space, time, motion, causation,
activity, the self--turn out when carefully examined to be
self-contradictory and absurd. They are not real; they are
unrealities, mere appearances.
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