§ 139. The way of Schopenhauer is the way of one who adheres to the belief that what the thinker knows must always be a part of himself, his state or his activity. From this point of view the important element of being, its very essence or substance, is not any definable nature but an immediate relation to the knower. The consequence is that the universe in the last analysis can only be defined as a supreme state or activity into which the individual's consciousness may develop. Spiritualism has, however, other interests, interests which may be quite independent of epistemology. It is speculatively interested in a kind of being which it defines as spiritual, and in terms of which it proposes to define the universe. Such procedure is radically different from the epistemological criticism which led Berkeley to maintain that the _esse_ of objects is in their _percipi_, or Schopenhauer to maintain that "the world is my idea," or that led both of these philosophers to find a deeper reality in immediately intuited self-activity. For now it is proposed to _understand_ spirit, discover its properties, and to acknowledge it only where these properties appear. I may now know spirit as an object; which in its properties, to be sure, is quite different from matter, but which like matter is capable of subsisting quite independently of my knowledge. This is a metaphysical spiritualism quite distinct from epistemological spiritualism, and by no means easily made consistent therewith. Indeed, it exhibits an almost irrepressible tendency to overstep the bounds both of empiricism and subjectivism, an historical connection with which alone justifies its introduction in the present chapter. [Sidenote: Berkeley's Conception of God as Cause, Goodness and Order.] § 140. To return again to the instructive example of Bishop Berkeley, we find him proving God from the evidence of him in experience, or the need of him to support the claims of experience. "But, whatever power I may have over my own thoughts, I find the ideas actually perceived by Sense have not a like dependence on _my_ will. When in broad daylight I open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose whether I shall see or no, or to determine what particular objects shall present themselves to my view: and so likewise as to the hearing and other senses; the ideas imprinted on them are not creatures of _my_ will. There is therefore some other Will or Spirit that produces them.