Berkeley and Idealism

Brownson's Quarterly Review, January, 1844

Art. II. - Encyclopedie Nouvelle, ou Dictionnaire Philosophique, Scientifique, Litteraire, et Industrielle, offrant le Tableau des Connaissances humanines au XIX.  Siecle, par une Societe des Savans et Litterateurs.  Publie sous la Direction de MM. P. Leroux et J. Reynaud.  Paris: Charles Gosselin.  1836.  Tomes 1 et 2. 8vo. pp. 828 et 824.

More than three-fourths of this new Encyclopedia, intended to be comprised within eight huge octavo volumes of close print and double columns, have already, we believe, been issued; though we have been able, as yet, to procure only the first and second volumes, and these quite recently.  We shall, therefore, reserve all attempt to estimate its general, or particular, value, till the rest of the work is received.  We can only say now, that it ably represents the doctrines and aspirations of the new French School, at the head of which stands M. Leroux, and which continues , with essential modifications and improvements, the Saint-Simonian.  Of the extent, power, or prospects of this school, in France, we have at present no very extact information; and we are unable to judge what is likely to be its ultimate influence on the French mind, and on French literature; but it has all the appearance of being a powerful and growing school, representing one of the most important philosophical and religious movements of modern times.  We shall seize an early opportunity to speak of its general characteristics, excellences, and defects, and at considerable length.  We limit ourselves, now, to the translation, from one of the volumes before us, of an article, for our own pages, by M. Leroux, on Berkeley and Idealism.  The article is ably written, and, besides giving a tolerable synopsis of the philosophical views of the writer and his school, is decidedly one of the best criticisms on Berkeley's system, especially his "New Theory of Vision," that we recollect to have seen; and we are sure, that our readers will thank us for giving it to them without abridgment.
 "George Berkeley, a celebrated English metaphysician, author of a psychological doctrine, commonly denominated Berkeley's Idealism.
 "We have several times, in this Dictionary, used the word Idealism, and shall have frequent occasion to use it again.  We have gone so far as to say, Christian Idealism, and to speak of the idealist doctrine, which, according to us, has been the foundation of Christianity; we have reproached Protestantism, in general, with its want of idealism; we have characterized the decline of metaphysics in the eighteenth century, as an anti-idealist epoch; in fine, we have advanced the opinion, that Idealism is about to be reborn, that all the labors of our epoch tend to its rebirth, and that on this rebirth depend the future destinies and well-being of society.  In thus expressing ourselves, we assuredly have not had in view, the several theories commonly termed Idealism; we have by no means intended to speak either of the doctrine of Berkeley, or that of Malebranche, either of the system of Kant, or that of Fichte, or even that of Schelling.  A word of explanation, before proceeding to consider Berkeley's theory, is, therefore, necessary; for we should only darken and confuse the minds of our readers, were we to use the same word to express doctrines so radically different.
 "For us Idealism comes from ideal, not from idea, (idee,) and is the doctrine of the Ideal; while, in its ordinary acceptation, it is a mere theory of ideas.  But what do we understand by the doctrine of the Ideal?  An aesthetic doctrine?  Have we in view some of those vague notions, of which such a display is sometimes made, when treating of the fine arts and their principles?  No.  It is not of this detail we would speak; but of a philosophy, which, if true, absorbs by good right all philosophy.  We mean rather by idealism, what is orkinarily termed spiritualism; though this word, spiritualism, seems to us a little inexact, and not sufficiently expressive.  Words are like those guide-posts, which point out the paths in a forest.  The inscription is useful, only in case it is turned towards one of the forest paths.  If the post lies on the ground, the traveller may, indeed, read the inscription, but his uncertainty remains.  Such is the word Spiritualism.  It throws no clear light; it indicates no direction.
 "But it is the word in use, we shall be told.  True, and it is precisely because it is the word exclusively used, and because it is made not more expressive, that philosophy advances so little.  What, in fact, does this word tell us?  Simply, that they, who use it, distinguish two substances, spirit and matter.  What light does this give us, if we stop here?  This distinction is not the most fundamental of all; so far from it, certain of the Fathers of the Church, and among the most eminent too, have not made it, and yet they have been none the less idealists and Christians.  Spiritualism is a recent word, coined in these last centuries, and has been in good use for only about a hundred years.  According to us, it is a word which marks a decline, and was invented only after the sense of the deep things of philosophy had already been lost, and forgotten.  When Christianity reigned, they, who believed in the christian ontology, were not called Spiritualists, but Christians.  In the beauritul times of Greek philosophy, there are Platonists, Pythagoreans, &c., but do we find that they ever dream of calling themselves Spiritualists?  Nor do the Egyptians and Indians appear to have ever thought of obtaining from this distinction of spirit and matter, a name for their beliefs.  What, then, is the bond, which, for those at all instructed, connects the school of Plato, that of Pythagoras, and certain beliefs of ancient Egypt and India, with Christianity?
 "Christians, certainly, have no better claim to be spiritualists than had the Pagans.  Tertullian, who asserts positively, that there is no soul, or spirit, without bodily appearance, is he more of a spiritualist, than cicero, who decided nothing concerning the nature of the soul?  Not here, then, is the differential shade, that separates Christianity from Paganism; nor there the similitude, which compels us to regard the several schools just names, as mutually related, and as having, within given limits, one and the same philosophy.
 "Is there, then, in the history of philosophy, a philosophy of the Ideal?  People will one day be astonished, that this question could ever have been asked; but we must propose the question, for this doctrine has no longer a name, at least, a name that expresses it truly; and because every day professors and philosophical writers use the term idealism to express quite a different thing, and appear to know no other idealism, than that of Berkeley, or that of Kant.  It appears to us so important to recognize a doctrine of the Ideal, to have a philosophy of the Ideal, that we would willingly say, that Idealism, in this sense, is the very name of philosophy, or religion, itself.  Philosophy, or religion, is the science of life; and we know no other explanation of life, that is to say, of ontology, than the Doctrine of the Spirit incarnating itself, of the Word becoming flesh; or, in other words, the Ideal actualizing itself.
 "When we come to treat of this subject, in its place, in this Dictionary, we shall easily prove, we think, that all reflections lead to this ontological theory; and that we may ths dome directly, without needing to pass through history, or to be referred as learners to what our fathers have believed, to this ancient solution, which was that of the East, of Pythagoras, of Plato, and of Christianity.  The simplest attention, I repeat, will of itself enable us to find again the profound mysteries of the ancient religions.  but, if we are able to seize the essence of the doctrine of the ideal by an apriori, how much more deeply shall we be strick with its importance, when we contemplate it in the light of history!
 "The doctrine of the Ideal is the unbroken chain of Tradition.  There are epochs in which it has been so vividly comprehended, so unanimously accepted, that it has taken the authority of religion, has, in fact, become religion.  Transported from the East and Egypt into Greece, it has formed the philosophy of Pythagoras, and the philosophy of Plato.  What, in fact, is the culminating point of the Platonic philosophy, but those archetypal ideas, which every artist, which the Great Artist, God, has objectively before him, yet subjectively in him, and by means of which he performs his work?  More lately, invading the world from many sources at once, sovereign in Egupt, sovereign in Greek philosophy, this doctrine has appeared to the wise to unite all traditions; and with their consent it has formed Christianity.  it is this doctrine which is concealed in all tis mysteries; or rather, in our view, all the mysteries of Christianity are revelations of it.  Concentrated in the fundamental doctrine of the Trinity, it is explained, and applied, in Baptism and the Eucharist.  It is the very centre, the focus, the soul, of Christianity.
 "It is this doctrine, again, which the greatest geniuses of the Middle Ages sought, with a steady eye, in the midst of the darkness of their epoch.  All the great theologians, in these so despised centuries, preserve, in various degrees, the sense of this doctrine, which had inspired the Fathers of the Church, who had collected its elements, some from Plato, some from the schools of Egypt, others from Judaism, to unite and fuse them into a new formula under the name of Christianity.  After the Middle Ages theology declined.  The Church preferred to impose upon the mind the mere shell, so to speak, of her mysteries, rather than to instil the substance into the understanding.  Then faith was commanded instead of being produced; and reason, proscribed, turned away from religion, from ontology.
 "Here we have philosophy separated from theology; the priests on one side, the philosophers on the other; the one teaching to believe without comprehending, the others abandoning the peculiar province of faith, and pursuing their researches elsewhere.  The doctrine of Idealism is obscured and effaced.  Philosophers confine themselves to the investigation of phenomena, without concerning themselves with the generation, the succession, the genesis of these phenomena, and end in contemplating, not life, but death.

 "When Locke came, when Berkeley came, the philosophi­cal problem was proposed in this form, namely; What is the origin of our knowledge, and what is its certainty?  Locke, whatever may have been his actual intention, or whatever the conclusions which have been drawn from him, answered this problem, by sensation, by body, by Matter; Berkeley answered, by Mind, by idea, and maintained that we have no other direct and certain notion of reality exterior to the Me, than idea; but which idea is all the knowledge we need. How shall this an­swer of Berkeley's be called?  It was called Idealism. There was already, it is true, the word Spiritualism, opposed to Materialism, which might have been taken, but it was a general term, which presupposed both spirit and matter, two substan­ces, and, therefore, not the proper term to express a doctrine, which excluded all notion of matter. So they created the term Idealism. This word, since applied to the theories of Kant, Fichte, &c., is not properly formed. To bave been reg­ular, it should have been, not Idealism, but Ideism. The ques­tion, however, then turning only on the origin and certainty of our knowledge, nobody was shocked at expressing a purely psychological theory, relating solely to the source and validity of our ideas, by a term which seems derived, not from Idea, but from Ideal, or Ideality.
 "I repeat, that we should say Ideism, as we say Deism, Pantheism, &c. In saying Idealism, the root of which is, evidently, Ideal, we lead those, who are not well versed in the history of philosophy, into error; give them a confused no­tion, derived at once from what they know of the doctrines of Berkeley, Kant, and certain other psychologues, and from the induction, which they cannot avoid making, by virtue of the very laws of language, from the resemblance of this name to that which would be logically formed from Ideal, or Ideality.
 "But the evil would not be great, if it stopped here. But, unhappily, we have a much graver reproach to make to this word, employed in this sense. It usurps a place that does not belong to it; so that, if we continue to employ it in this sense, we have no word to express the most important of onto­logical theories, or, to speak more accurately, the great and only ontological theory. Does it comport with the progress of philosophy, to have no term by which to express the sublimest of all philosophies, that which, transmitted from age to age, from the Oriental world even to us, has appeared to be phi­losophy itself, the greatest and almost the only philosophy, to the finest geniuses of the world, to Pythagoras, to Plato, and to the Fathers of the Church?
 "All who have studied the history of the progress, and the aberration, of the human mind, know the importance which words have sometimes had; and we do not hesitate to say, that the vicious use of this term, Idealism, constitutes one of the most serious obstacles to the progress of philosophy; for this false acceptation tends to divert attention from the doctrine of the Ideal, and to confound it with a theory which has no rela­tion with it; and prevents, therefore, the student from perceiv­ing the luminous summit to which philosophy aspires, in order to rejoin religion, and unite all traditions in one alone."
 
 We pass over here, without remark, M. Leroux's theory of the origin of Christianity, for to treat that subject properly ,would carry us quite too far for our present purpose; we can only say now, that we have introduced this criticism on the use of the word Ideal­ism, because we believe it to be just, and much needed. We had ourselves made, briefly, a similar criticism, in the Democratic Review before meeting with this. Idealism, unquestionably, comes from Ideal; but what is the Ideal?  That which relates to, or merely partici­pates in the nature of, ideas? So one might at first sight be led to conclude. But this is not the fact. The Ideal is, philosophically considered, the generic, the origin and ground of ideas. The Greek word idea answers to the Latin species, or forma, and the Ideal, taken strictly, is the formative principle, that which forms the species, or specific idea.  The doctrine of the Ideal, then, must be more ultimate, and altogether profounder, than the doctrine of Ideas; as the doctrine of the creator must be more ultimate, and profounder, than the doctrine of the creature. The doctrine of the Ideal carries us back, and up, to the Original and Ground of all things or particular existences; the doc­trine of Ideas, or Idealism, carries us back, and up, only to particular existences, to individual beings themselves. Here is seen the great distance which philosophy has fallen from its original sublimity, and how low and superficial it has finally become. Its highest doctrines relate now only to particular beings, individual existences, leaving entirely out of view the Highest Being, Being of beings, Essence of essences, the object of the researches and contemplation of the older phi­losophers, But what is the philosophy which leaves out of view the infinite God, the primitive Essence, Unity, and Creator of all particular beings, or creatures, and which stops short with the creatures themselves? It is, disguise the matter as we will, atheism, and nothing but atheism. Is it wonderful, then, that our youth, who are taught this philosophy in our schools, and in nearly all modern literature, should find it so exceedingly difficult to obtain a firm and living faith in the Gospel?

But we are too favorable to modern philosoply. It has not only fallen from the Ideal, but it has fallen from even particular existences, and has come to amuse itself with the mere notions which the mind has of them. This is seen in the modern use of the word Idea. In the older philosophical language, the term Idea designated the thing itself, or rather the essence, the essential peculiarity of the particular being in question, It was the presence of the formative prin­ciple, or, as we prefer to say, creative principle, the Ideal in the Real. "The reality of the body," say Democritus and Leucippus, "is not in its external surface." The essence of any particular being, we may add, is not in its outward appearance, but in its vital or formative principle, in what some of our transcendental friends term the Spirit, though without the necessary exactness of language. This essential, formative, or creative, principle, which must be in every particular existence, whether of the sensible world, or the intelligible, and which is that which makes it be, and be what it is, is what the older and profounder philosophy meant by the word idea. Idea was therefore, a term which belonged to a philosophy that dealt ,vith ontology, - to speak after the Latins, with essential forms, the essences of things; and which sought, from the essences of things, to rise to the Primitive Essence, thc Essence of essences, - to rise to God, as Plato poeti­cally expresses it, borne on the wings of ideas. Here the term had a profound significance, which led those, who used it, to deal immediately with things, with re­alities. But the moment we come down to modern phi­losophy, especially to the Essay on the Human Under­standing, all this profound significance disappears, and, instead of Ideas, regarded as the essences of things, we have Ideas which are merely our mental affections, taken as the object of the mind's own action; and, therefore, instead of a philosophy studying the essences of things, we have a fruitless psychology studying merely the soul's own phenomena. Even Ideism becomes now a term, etymologically interpreted, too expressive, for it obviously bears the same relation to Idealism that Idea does to Ideal. Strictly speaking, our philosophy has fallen as much below Ideism, as Ideism is below Ideal­ism. Idealism rises to the Primitive Essence. for the
Ideal is the Creative Logos, or Word, one with God; Ideism rises to the essences of individual things, or creatures; but modern philosophy, which is nothing but the veriest psychology, aspires only to the mere phenomena of the creature. Is it possible to fall lower, or to approach nearer to the infinite - Inane? But we return to Leroux, and Berkeley.
 
"We feel how very obscure what we have just advanced must appear to our readers. Unhappily, we can only vaguely indicate here our thoughts on a subject, which it will be the object of all our metaphysical articles to demonstrate, and make clear. Yet it was necessary to trace a line of demarca­tion between the two senses of the word Idealism. We have done it. We come now to Berkeley, and his system, which we must be permitted to call ideaism or immaterialism, so as to escape the confusion of which we have complained.

"Towards the year 1680, William Molineux, author of a treatise on Dioptrics, and founder of the Society of Dublin, proposed an interesting psychological problem: 'Suppose a man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the same metal, and nighly of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and the other, which is the cube, which the sphere; suppose then the cube and sphere placed on a table, and the blind man made to see; query, whether by his sight before he touched them, he could now distinguish. and tell, which is the globe, which the cube. Molinenux answers, 'Not. For though he has obtained experience of how a globe, how a cube, affects his touch, yet he has not yet attained the experience, that that which affects his touch so und so, must affect his sight so and so; or that the protuberant angle in the cube, that pressed his hand unequally, shall appear to his eye as it does in the cube.'

"Locke published this problem of Molineux in his Essay on the Human Undterstlanding, (B. II. c. ix.), and gave it the same answer. 'I agree,' he says, 'with this thinking gentleman, whom I am proud to call my friend, in his answer to this problem; and am of opinion, that the blind man, at first sight, would not be able with certainty to say, which was the globe, which the cube, whilst he only saw them.' This answer, adopted by Locke, moreover, conformed, perfectly, to his gen­eral principle of sensation and experience. The soul, in the beginning, as he held, being a mere tabula rasa, void of all character and without any ideas whatever, to suppose it possessed of a natural power to refer to the spherical figure the tactile sensations of the sphere, and to the cubic figure those of the cube, would have been to return to those innate ideas, to those marvellous instincts, or those essential faculties of the soul, which he had combated throughout his book, by
striving to substitute for them the mere combination of sensations.  

"Berkeley, born in 1684, was instructed in Locke's Essay, which had a very great influence on him; and afterwards, on bringing out his own views, so far was he from rejecting its principles, which he regarded as sound, he honestly believed, that he was merely following, correcting, and devel­oping them. But, endowed with a very religious disposition, he deduced from them consequences very different from the sensualist metaphysics which others deduced from them about the same time, both in England and in France. The problem of Molineux above all engaged his attention, and became the source of all his ulterior intellectual labor. He adopted the solution of Molineux and Locke; but he returned to it so often, and studied it so profoundly, that it suggested to him, still in his youth, a system for explaining, in a new manner, the phenomena of vision. As we shall soon see, this explica­tion reduces all the cognitions, which sight gives us of the external world, to a certain number of colored sensations, hav­ing only a conventional value. Sure of having Locke to back him, he abandoned himself with confidence to this view; gen­eralized it for the other senses, and made it the foundation of the whole edifice which Locke had constructed, and presented as the model of the human understanding; and he came, thus, very rapidly, and with full confidence, to the theory which bears his name, and whose peculiarity, as every body knows, is the denial of the reality of matter and of the external world. The origin of the system is evident; it is the doctrine of Locke pushed to its last consequences. Locke had reduced intelligence to sensation. But how can sensations, added, com­bined, multiplied, produce understanding, - give, I say, not man merely, but animal? What are sensations, collected, as in a reservoir, in a being deprived of every kind of intellectual power, and having, therefore, no other faculty than that of re­ceiving them, and, to a certain degree, of retaining them? We must go farther than Locke; we must explain how something results from these sensations which pass over the sensitive be­ing, as the breath of air over the surface of the waters. If the mystery of this being, which we call man, or animal, is not at all in himself, if there is in him only the single faculty of feeling, we must look elsewhere for this mystery. It is, then, in God. The veritable being, then, is God, and only God. What we take to be beings are only mirrors, which reflect at each instant, and all passively, the Divine emanations. By annihilating the being in man, or animal, we are forced to refer all causes to God; and man, or animal, being in no sense
a canse, God is the only cause. Man, or animal, being only a purely sensitive being, what, I demand, are all the sensations perceived by this being? I see in him, indeed, different senses, - sight, touch, taste, smelling, hearing; but how pass from one order of sensations to another? What relation, for example, between a tactile sensation, and a sensation of sight? How pass from the world, which touch reveals, to the world which sight discovers 7 Is there in man and animal a mysteri­ous harmony, which joins together these two worlds, and creates, naturally, a relation and connexion between the sensa­tions of the one, and the sensations of the other?  No, says Locke; there are only sensations. Then, says Berkeley, all
these orders of sensations are only conventional signs, and the words of a language which God at each moment speaks to us.
 
"Berkeley had had Locke for his master; he had Hume for his disciple. Struck with the solidity of his argumentation, Hume received in some sort, from his hand and that of Locke, the seminal principle of that radical and universal skepticism which he professed in his writings; so that since then, the psychologues have had a hard time of it, carried away as they have been, on the one side, by Berkeley into a sort of mysticism very similar to the doctrine of Maya among the Hindoos, according to which, the external world not existing, our life is only a long sleep, and all our thoughts are dreams which depend immediately on the Divine action; or, on the other side, by Hume into the abyss of general and absolute doubt, which embraces at once the Divinity, our own intelligence, moral truth, the physical world, - all, in one word, save our actual sensations and momentary ideas, To tell how our psychologues have sought to escape from the con­sequences which Berkeley and Hume obtained from Locke's doctrine, - how, for instance, the Scottish school, with Reid at its head, has made its efforts to stop the leaks in Locke's vessel submerged by his own disciples, and how the German school, with Kant for leader, has only responded to the provo­cation of Berkeley and Hume, by attempting to save some­thing, were it only some notions of time and space, from the universal shipwreck of human knowledge, - would be to make the history of what is called modern philosophy, although, in our judgment, the modest name of psychology would be the much more appropriate name for its researches. We undertake not to trace this history in the present article; it will find, naturally, its place elsewhere in our Dictionary; we restrict ourselves here to the exposition, in their sequence, of the views of Berkeley,"

Some of our readers will, doubtless, demur to the view here presented of Locke's philosophy. We have, as we have often confessed elsewhere, a very great rev­erence for the author of the Essay on the Human Understanding. Of all modern psychologists, he is the one we most respect, and follow with the greatest con­fidence. As a man, he is worthy of all esteem; as a friend to freedom, religious and political, and as a suf­ferer in its cause, he deserves our gratitude. As a psychologist, he stands infinitely above the recent brood, who, at home or abroad, talk of consciousness as a faculty of the soul, as an interior light by which the soul may look into its own eyes, and see and observe itself in itself, as M. Jouffroy very innocently maintains. He knew no other way of studying the Me, than in its phenomena; and these phenomena he has studied, collected, and classed, as well as, if not better than, any of his snccessors. So far, we commend him, and fo11ow him. But Locke has never concerned himself with the great problems of philosophy; has scarcely suspected them; and, if he has, now and then, incidentally made a distant allusion to some of them, it is to lower and obscure them, not to enlighten and solve them. He found philosophy rapidly sinking to mere psychology, and he hastened and completed its fall. So far as he did this, or contributed to the decline already commenced, his influence has been disastrous; and the authority he has acquired, which determines the di­rection of nearly all our philosophical studies, is, so far as submitted to, an unmitigated evil, fatal to all developlnent and growth of genuine philosophy.

Morally considered, Locke is at the head of the school of enlightened self-interest, a school that seeks, in the political order, to secure well-being by what it calls freedoom, but which is nothing but free competition, (which we have described in a subsequent article on Demagoguism,) and in private life, by prudent consid­erations, and a wise estimate of probable results. It is calm, tolerant; the sworn enemy of all eccentricity, of all enthusiasm, all deep and powerful sentiments. It makes wise, shrewd, practical men of the world. It educates few Sisters of Charity; founds few hospitals of pity, or mercy; suffers itself to have little sympa­thy with distress, sorrow, or affliction; but it restrains the populace, builds workhouses, and improves its dungeons and penitentiaries, &c., as the cheapest and most prudent way of disposing of its suffering, or its dan­gerous, population. In religion, it is rationalistic, pro­fesses to be reasonable, and to be governed by good
sense. It eschews all that is profound, or mysterious, all that demands long meditations, or excites deep and ardent feelings. It goes decorously to church, pays a moderate sum to the well dressed, well bred, pleasant spoken clergyman, who, it is understood, is to be only moderately in earnest, and to. discourse, in well turned periods, and in a calm and regularly modulated voice, Dn the moral virtues and the duties of private life, an the importance of public decorum and a respectful ob­servance of the outward forms of piety and devotipn. As to that deep and living faith which overcomes the world, as to that profound love, that overwhelming sense of duty, that awful power of sacrifice, which will take captive, and make one brave all dangers, en­dure all evils, and submit to all tortures in the service of God or of men, - why, it is prudent to leave such deep, strong, and uncontrollable matters in the depths of the saul, unquickened, for they might carry us too far, disturb. the settled order and decorum of society. What is impassioned may become tumultuous. Then is not the world already overcome? Has not modern science mastered it, annihilated time and space? Have we not political economies, free competition, a well regulated police, churches, schools, workhouses, and penitentiaries? What need, then, of a stir? What need of strong and ardent passions? God is the authar of order, not of confusion, and would be served in a quiet, peaceable, decorous manner, and not with a heated, tu­multuous, or fanatical worship, a worship that would lead us to look upon those who practise it as mad, or as filled with new wine.
 
But it was not precisely of this we intended to speak; but of the charge which makes Locke answer the question of the origin of human knowledge, by SENSATION alone. This charge is denied by the modern adherents of Locke; but, as it seems to us, rashly, and without sufficient grounds. Locke may have meant to assign an additianal source of knowledge, in what he calls REFLECTION; he may even, in the course of his work, advance many notions not reconcilable with the origin of all our knowledge in sensation alone; but his clear, systematic, so to speak, official, doctrine, fully sustains the charge brought against him. Here is his own account of the matter.

"Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, and without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, experience; in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation, employed either about external sensiblc objects, or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected upon by ourselves, is that which supplies our understanding with all the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring."

Let us analyze this passage. First, is recognized observation, and, implicitly, an observer; secondly, two classes of objects of observation; 1. external sensible objects; 2. the operations of our minds. Here all ob­jects of knowledge are excluded, but these two,-- ­external sensible objects, and our own mental phenomena. This is clear. But what is this which observes, which experiences? This is, unquestionably, the me. Well, what are the powers and capacities of this me? What is it prior to actual experience, before having made any observation? It is a blank sheet, void of all characters, and without any ideas, It has, then, tho simple capacity of receiving chararters, for this is the sole capacity of the blank sheet; that is to say, it has the simple and sole capacity of receiving sensations. Did Locke mean all this? We know not; but he says all this.

But no, say his disciples; Locke admits another faculty in the me, namely, the faculty of Reflection. Very good; this is somewhat; but let us see what it is, and to how much it amounts. Admit that it is a source of ideas; still, of what ideas?  Merely of the operations of our own minds. It is, according to Locke's own definition of it, nothing more or less than the mind's own apprehension of its own operations, and, therefore, simply CONSCIOUSNESS. "Though it be not sense," says he, "as having nothing to do with ex­ternal objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense." Here, then, the me is reduced to the simple capacity of receiving sensations of external objects, and to the capacity of recognizing the fact that it receives them. The most rigid analysis, as well as the most liberal construction, can make no more out of Locke's doctrine; and all else that he recognizes in the me, and in tho understanding, is of subsequent growth, ano derived from experience.
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Now, so far as regards the power of the me, and its properties, the distinction here set up, between sen­sation and reflection resolved into consciousness, is untenable. We quote here, with approbation, an able and zealous defense of Locke, among ourselves. M. Cousin had accused Locke of confounding reflection with consciousness. The defender of Locke admits the accusation, but denies that it is one, and contends that consciousness and reflection are identical. In this, of course, we do not agree with him; but to what he proceeds to say, we heartily respond. "We deny that there is any such thing as immediate and active con­sciousness distinct from the mental act. A cognition and the consciousness of that cognition are one and the same thing. A single perception is simple and indivisi­ble; it cannot be analyzed into a fact and the consciousness of that fact; for the event itself being an act of knowing, it does not exist, if it be not known to exist. In one act of perception there is but one object, - the thing perceived; while the hypothesis of a dis­tinct and independent consciousness requires two,--­the thing perceived, and the object of consciousness, which is the perception itself." * (footnote--Bowen's Essays: Boston, 1842; p. 131.  The essay we quote was originally published in the North American Review, of which respectable and influential periodical, the author is, we believe, at present the editor.  Having alluded to these Essays, we may add, in passing, that they are written with considerable ability, and are quite creditable to the author.  Considering the little that is written amongst us on philosophical subjects, they deserve a favorable reception by the public; though, were it not for the general dearth of philosophical writings, we are  bound to say, that they would hardly take a very high rank.--end footnote)
 
Admitting this, and for which we may quote the high authority of Leibnitz, who makes apperception only an intenser degree of perception, we shall hardly be able to maintain a valid distinction between sensa­tion and the consciousness thereof. The sensation is a simple perception, and is a simple fact, distinguishable not at all from an apperception, or fact of consciousness unless it be in degree. The fact of con­scionsness contains no element not in the feeblest sensation which comes and goes without being noted. Admit, then, as we have shown from Locke himself to be the fact, and as his defender contends, that Locke recognizes in the me, prior to experience, only the capacity to receive sensations of external objects, and to be conscious of them, it will follow, as the percep­tion and the consciousness of it are one and the same thing, that Locke does, as alleged, answer the question of the origin of our knowledge solely by sensation, and recognizes in the me itself, unacquired, no power or faculty, but the simple capacity of receiving sen­sations.
But, taking Reflection in a more liberal sense, in which Locke also takes it, as the power of retaining and reasoning upon a sensation, it will not help the matter; for this can give us only secondary ideas, wrought out of the original sensations. Reflection can only sum up, divide, and compare these original sensations, without adding any thing to them of its own, which, in the last analysis, reduces us to the simple sensations, where we were before. We contend, there­fore, that the charge against Locke is well founded. The only relief from the charge, possible to Locke, had been to recognize a knowing faculty in the me, capable of detecting, in the sensation, a non-sensible ele­ment; that is to say, as component part of the sensa­tion, the perception, not merely of the mind's own operations on that sensation, but of an object, not sen­sible, actually perceived. We ourselves contend, as earnestly as Locke, that there is no cognition but through the medium of a sensation of an external ob­ject; but in every cognition the me takes cognizance of that which transcends the outward, sensible object. There is no sensation which is not integrally cognition, owing to the fact, that the me is essentially cognitive, as well as sensitive. This is the fact Locke and his school have overlooked, and which has vitiated all their labors even as mere psychologists. But we are linger­ing too long on speculations of our own; we hasten back to the exposition of Berkeley's New Theory of Vision.
"The Essay towards a New theory of Vision, Berkeley's first [second] published work, appeared in 1708 [1709?], twenty-eight [twenty-four?] years after the work of Locke.  The author was only twenty-four [twenty-five?] years of age.  What is the value of this Theory of Vision?  Is it solid; or is it only an absurd romance?  The question is yet to be decided.  Aristotle had said in relation to sight and hearing, (Ethique a Nicomaque, liv. l1, c. 1.) 'It is not by virtue of seeing or of hearing, that we acquire these senses; instead of acquiring them by use, we use them because we have them.'  The opinion of Berkeley is exactly the reverse of this.  According to the disciple of Locke, not merely all the ideas we acquire by sight are the result of a real education and of a series of experiments, but we owe them all directly to another sense,--to the sense of touch.  We perceive distances, magnitudes, and situations, only because we have hands to touch, and feet by which we move, and not because nature has given us eyes.  If we had not the sense of touch, we should be incapable of seeing.  Resuming the example proposed by Molineux, Berkeley stoutly maintains, that if a man born blind should come to receive his sight, he would not be able by that to form any notion of distances, but objects the most remote would appear to him as if placed on his eye.  Figures would escape him not less than distances.  Place before him a cube and a sphere, which he has learned to know by touch, far from being able to distinguish immediately which is the cube, which the sphere, he could not comprehend what relation his new sensations would have with those previously experienced.  Moreover, these objects would not appear to him distinct one from the other; for, according to Berkeley, the sight is, by itself, utterly incapable of suggesting to us any idea of extension.  The man born blind, suddenly made able to see, having thus by sight no notion of extension, would not isolate, by his mind, the cube from the sphere; for the same reason he would not even distinguish them from the table, or from the room in which he should be placed.  All would be limited for him to a sensation of colors, a general sensation, and without distinction of parts, which would come to cover his soul, so to speak, as a garment immediately applied to the sensitive surface.  It would be, in this regard, another touch, but or a nature wholly different from ordinary touch, and so essentially different, that, between the objects of the sense of touch and those of sight, no secret harmony could advertise the patient, that there is any connexion or relation.
"How, then, is a relation established between the sensations furnished by sight, and those furnished by touch?  In other words, how does sight enable us to know and distinguish objects?  Berkeley, in his Treatise, refers all notions of extension, and consequently of figure, distance, and, in general, distinction of objects, to the sense of touch.  It is in touching with our hands,and in moving, either our whole body, or its different parts, that we form to ourselves ideas of extension; afterwards, we refer to these ideas the sensations of color which we receive from sight.  But this relation is purely arbitrary, inasmuch as no necessary connexion exists, for us, between these colors and those ideas of extension.  Sight, once again, suggesting to us by itself no notion of figure, magnitude, or distance, all the colored appearances we receive are only concomitant signs with the ideas which touch gives us.  Touch, then, according to Berkeley, is not merely, as has since been said, the educator of sight, and in general the monitor of the other senses, but the only source of all our perceptions of external things.  Touch ha sa special privilege, which neither sight nor hearing shares, in any manner, with it.  sight and hearing have a different purpose; these two senses send us only a species of signs incapable of furnishing us, by themselves, with any toher idea than the sensations of color and of sound; but, these sensations being different according to the nature and position of objects, we refer them by habit, that is, by experience, to our sensations, and to our ideas of touch.

"This manner of conceiving the uses of sight and hearing, evidently, makes of the results of these two senses only a sort of conventional language; since between the figures which these senses give us, and the nature of the perceptions which we can have, of the form, the magnitude, and the situation of things of the external world, there is no relation, no real and necessary connexion, at least, none which we feel to be necessary.  Here is the conclusion of Berkeley, his favorite idea, that which continually recurs under his pen, in thes Treatise of his youth, as in all his other works, that which we find has inspired his whole system on the non-reality of the exterior world.
" It is impossible to carry farther, or develope more rigidly, the idea of the fragmentation of being, which Locke had introduced.  Here, indeed, is the severest and most logical analy­sis which can be made, in starting from Locke's inspiration and following his principles. If, in fact, the being we call animal is nothing but a subject of different sensations, if there are in this being no secret chords which establish, between the diferent orders of his sensations, mysterious, but hitherto unfathomod, and perhaps unfathomable, relations, then the sensations of sight, of hearing, of touch, of taste, of smell, must be examined apart, and as things as entirely distinct as if they pertained to different beings. An axiom of this sort, borrowed from the method of Locke, is Berkeley's point of de­parture, Now, in considering sight thus apart, it was natural to make much of a discovery, which had made a great noise in the seventeenth century, namely, the representation of external objects at the bottom, or retina, of the eye, It was imagined, and still is, that we see by a plane surface, precisely as we per­ceive the sensations of touch on the rigid parts of our bodies. This granted, how can it be imagined, that a colored and plane sensation can give us ideas of extension?  Such a sensation must always want, at least, depth; and, moreover, wanting also mobility to run over and measure the plane picture repre­sented on the retina, it follows, necessarily, that sight must appear to be unable to suggest to us any idea of extension.  The being, thus affected in a manner purely passive by a rep­resentation painted on his retina, would resemble a picture, incapable of measuring itself as to its surface, and, for a still stronger reason, of divining, that, under its surface, there are horizons of many leagues in depth. In assuming Locke's method and the pretended vision on the retina, as our point of departure, we must necessarily arrive where Berkeley has arrived, and deny sight, in order, so to speak, the better to explain seeing.

 
"But Berkeley, in his explanation, remained, at least, faithful to his own analytic method; he showed himself a good logician, and pushed his reasoning to its last consequences, This rea­soning leads him to believe, that we have by sight no idea of the magnitude, distance, or situation of objects, but merely a sort of colored apparition, as a painted canvass, without there being suggested to the mind any idea of the distinction between the parts of this canvass, or rather between its different colors. He concludes, and very justly, that, if, as is unquestionaLly the fact, we form ideas on the occasion of sight, it is because that to the most intimate notions we have formed of body by touch, we adapt the concomitant colors which we receive by sight, precisely as we give to objects names which have no necessary or exact relation with them. All this is logical and reasonable. But what say the metaphysicians who have come since, and adopted Berkeley's ideas, while mutilating them in the absurd­est manner? Here, among others, is a curious example of the confusion, which, after him, has been introduced on this sub­ject. Vision on the retina is subject to one mighty difficulty. Objects, as is known, are painted on the bottom of the eye inverted, the upper part of a given object being painted on the lower part of the eye, and the lower part of the object on the upper part of the eye, and so also as to right and left. This being so, whence is it, that we see objects in their natural position? Before Berkeley, they explained this, by conceiving a blind man holding in his hauds two sticks that cross each other, and with them touching the extremities of an object. The lower hand of this man would feel the upper part of the object, and the upper hand the lower part. This explication of the erect appearance of the image, is wholly incompatible with Berkeley's reasonings. He, therefore, carefully refutes it. He shows, evidently, that we have no cognition of the intersection of the radius pencils, nor of the impulse of these pencils in right lines. He cannot conceive, he says, how the soul should judge of the situation of an object by things which it does not perceive, or how it can perceive them without knowing it.  'Add to this,' he continues, 'that the explaining the manner of vision by the example of cross sticks, and hunting for the object along the axes of the radius pencils, doth suppose the proper objects of sight to be per­ceived at a distance from us, contrary to what hath been demonstrated.' The argument is solid and irrefragable. It is absolutely necessary to reject altogether Berkeley's hypothesis, or to renounce the cross sticks.
"There remains, then, if we accept this hypothesis, the difficulty of the erect appearance of objects. This, however, is not a difficulty for him, who, I repeat it, does not admit that sight can of itself give us any idea of extension. Naturally, then, according to him, we see objects neither erect nor inverted; we see merely colors, without their suggesting to us any notion of situation, size, or distance. But what fol­lows?  The school of Locke, the sensualist school in France and England, while admitting Berkeley's analysis, was unable to resolve to admit the obvious induction from the inversion of objects on the retina. It did not comprehend the subtilty of Berkeley's metaphysics; it tended to materialism; it would see sensation everywhere, and could not resolve not to find in sensation all that it sought; it wished to be able to point to all things with the finger, and to stereotype, so to speak, the sub­limest intelligence in a piece of matter. It saw objects inverted on the retina; then it concluded, that we naturally see objects inverted. In this respect it did not comprehend the subtile Berkeley, who ceases never to repeat, that we do not see objects at all, that we have only a general sensation of color. But Berkeley adding, afterwards, that we form all our ideas of ex­tension by touch, the materialist school hastened to adopt this part of his argument. It united, therefore, things fundamen­tally contradictory and irreconcilable. It believed, that, prim­itively, we see objects inverted, and yet that sight is incapable of giving us any idea of extension, - two propositions logically contradictory. Then it proceeded to explain the erect appearance of images by tbe hypothesis of Berkeley. It is thus that is formed, by a monstrous amalgam, the absurdest opinion of which science has ever afforded an example. It was believed, repeated, taught, as a truth proved, and beyond question, that naturally we are incapable of seeing; that, if we see, it is by favor of the sense of touch and of locomotion; that, primitively, we see bodies as if they were placed on our retina; that we see them inverted, the top at the bottom, the bottom at the top, the right at the left. and the left at the right; that we habituate ourselves, afterwards, to give to bodies their erect appearance; and that in this work the touch is our guide and our educator. Then was proclaimed louder than ever, sensation and experience. This was all as it should be. The sensation, which of all our sensations ap­pears the most material, that of touch, had it not just obtained a brilliant triumph?  So was understood, and still is under­stood, Berkeley's New Theory of Vision!
" Here is a strange paradox, which the eighteenth century accepts with so much favor, and which appears to complete so happily the doctrine of Locke, that it becomes its indispen­sable crown. Condillac, at first, repulsed this hypothesis. He maintained, in his Essai sur l'Origi1le des Connaissances humaines, that the eye appreciates, naturally, figures, magni­tudes, situations, and distances. But he retracted afterwards, in his Traite des Sensations, and adopted the hypothesis of the education of the eye by the touch. He so fully adopts it, that he even attempts to appropriate it to himself; for this celebra­ted Treatise on Sensations is, at bottom, only an impudent pla­giarism from the work of Berkeley, whose name, I believe, is not even once cited. As to Voltaire, the curious and eager importer of the discoveries of our neighbours, he was among the first to admit these singular novelties; and in his Philosophie de Newton, he asserts the truth of the English theory, with the same zeal he had displayed for Attraction.  'It is abso­lutely necessary to conclude,' says he in this work (Chapter VII.), 'that distance, magnitude, situations, are not, strictly speaking, visible things; that is, they are not proper and im­mediate objects of sight. The proper and immediate object of sight is nothing but colored light; all else we perceive only in the long run, and by experience.  We learn to see, precise­ly as we learn to read; the difference is merely that the art of seeing is the easier to learn, and that nature is equally in all men the teacher.  The sudden judgments, very nearly uniform, which all minds, at a certain age, form respecting distances, magnitudes, situations, lead us to suppose that we have only to open our eyes, in order to see precisely as we do see. But this is a mistake. The aid of other senses is necessary. If we had only the sense of sight, we should have no means of know­ing extension in length, breadth, or depth; and a pure spirit could never know them, unless God revealed them to him.'
.  " It must be confessed, that this eighteenth century, so admirable
in many respects, has shown on this point, as on several others, a singular simplicity in the midst of its incredulity. Here is a man who adopts an opinion the most opposed to the common and universal sentiment of mankind, with a faith which may, under other relations, well recall to mind epochs the most credulous.
"But what! has not the theory you reject been demonstrated by a celebrated and undeniable experiment?  Do you forget the blind boy of Cheselden?  Has not that experiment, in 1729, established, point by point, all the predictions of Berkeley, twenty years after the publication of his Essay? Is not this one of the best known, most striking, and oftenest cited facts in the history of science and philosophy 7
" We shall speak elsewhere (in the article on VISION) of this celebrated experiment; it will suffice us to say here, that the account given of it has been almost always altered to make it quadrate with the demands of the theory; that the original narration in the Philosophical Transactions is very little conclusive, and full of absurdities and contradictions; and that, when carefully examined, it makes rather against Berkeley, than in his favor. The boy operated on for a cata­ract did by no means see objects inverted.  Moreover, he dis­tinguished them so well, says the account, one from another, that he preferred those of a uniform and regular figure.  All that the account proves is, merely that vision in the dis­eased person was very difficult to be established, as was to be supposed in pathological cases of this kind.  Has it not often been remarked in persons who have a long time been de­prived of the sight of one eye, that the nerve corresponding to that eye is affected with atrophy?  What completes the de­monstration of the little reliance to be placed on the induc­tions from this experiment, is the manner in which it ter­minated.  The blind boy had been operated upon, at first, only in the case of one eye; at the end of a year, the cataract was taken from the other eye. During this year he had educated sight by touch; that is, according to the hypothesis, he had been able to apply the notions of extension, suggested by touch, to the colored sensations which were given him by the eye which had been operated on. He should then have im­mediately seen, in the full sense of the term, with his second eye, as soon as it was uncovered. But, however, it was not so, and he was obliged, they say, to recommence a new education, as in the case of the first: that is, in our view, the pathologi­cal state demanded in the case of this eye, as in that of the first, a certain time for its cure.
"It is on such an experiment, which no other operation for the cataract, among innumerable cases, has confirmed, and which, on the contrary, other accounts of similar opera­tions constantly belie, that is still to-day affirmed, and taught, Berkeley's Theory of Vision, grossly perverted by the other disciples of Locke!  But, instead of the blind boy of Chesel­den, have we not around us all this multitude of beings which come each day to the light, and can we not experiment on them, with some little assurance, whether, in point of fact, sight is a natural faculty, or whether it is merely the result of touch and experience?  The examination of the smallest ani­mal might, one would suppose, suffice to prevent us from being betrayed into this wild aberration, into which science has deviated with so much assurance for more than this hundred years.
"My friend, the late Dr. Bertrand, in a thesis directed against the doctrine still taught in the schools,· has shown how all nature protests, by all that she offers to our view, against this strange assertion, that sight is, as to notions of extension, only a blind sense, and that it is touch which teaches us to see. Do we see young animals rushing at haz­ard against obstacles?  Is it experience, that teaches the chicken to make the movement necessary to pick up with its beak the grain that must feed it, and which its eye sees with­out previous education?  The young quail, just hatched, and still encumbered with the remains of its shell, pursues the in­sect which it must make its prey.  The child sees, at a period when it has as yet touched nothing; it has no need to run its fingers over all the parts of the face of its nurse to recognize her and smile. Birds are of all animals those which appear to enjoy the most perfect vision; and yet they are precisely those least fitted to learn to see, for they cannot be said, properly speaking, to have an organ of touch. Is it locomotion, that gives them the ideas of figure, distance, and situation?  But do we not see that young birds, when for the first time they come out of their nests, go and alight, without hesitation, on the branches of the neighbouring trees, which they do not take for colors?  If their flight is infirm, it is not because their sight is at fault, but because their wings are weak. Their eyes serve very well to direct their first motions; but how could they have learned to see, while remaining, without moving, in the narrow space of their nests?"

We have very little to say, ourselves, on this Theory of Vision, or on this slight, but sufficient, refutation of it by M. Leroux. The singular absurdity into which our scientific professors fall, in admitting, with Berkeley, that naturally we do not see objects at all, and yet con­tending that we see objects naturally inverted, and learn subsequently, by experience, to give them this erect appearance, - an absurdity repeated, we believe, in all our schools, - we commend to the very careful attention of those who boast of sensation and experi­ment, and talk of the exact sciences. The present editor of the North American Review, formerly a teacher of philosophy and metaphysics in Cambridge University, in the volume of Essays already referred to, says: "If metaphysicians were challenged to pro­duce one broad, definite, and fruitful fact in their science, which had been discovered since the time of Bacon, and so established as to admit of neither cavil nor doubt, we know of no better way whereby they could silence the questioner, than by a reference to Berkeley's New Theory of Vision." * He proceeds to develope the theory, and to accept it, in a manner as unqualified as could be asked by its most ardent friends.  We believe that it is universally accepted among us.  But those who read these remarks by M. Leroux, as well as they who study the theory itself, must see that we cannot accept this theory, without accepting Berke­ley's whole doctrine on the non-reality of the external world.  Either we must give up the reality of all ex­istence exterior to the me, and recognize only the me and its affections, or we must give up this Theory of Vision. This Theory knocks the philosophy of sensa­tion in the head, and destroys all certainty, save in the case of momentary consciousness. We demand that this be attended to. If they will teach our youth this theory, we insist that they shall teach it in all its bearings, and in all its legitimate consequences. We protest against the feebleness, not to say dishonesty, of teaching premises, from the consequences of which we shrink. Our youth should be dealt by honestly and fairly, and allowed to be logical and consistent. The moral chastity of their natures should not be destroyed by their being compelled to submit to contradictions, and to swallow absurdities. The immorality occa­sioned by teaching premises, the legitimate conclusions of which must be denied, in order not to revolt com­mon sense, it is not easy to estimate. If your premises lead you to conclusions contrary to the universal sense of mankind, do not deny your conclusions, but reexamine and correct your premises. All the world has be­lieved that we see because we have eyes, and because we have the power or faculty of vision; and not that we have the power to see, because we have the sense of touch, and see only because we have learned to see. But to return.
" We have lingered long on this question of sight, because it is in itself a subject of the greatest importance, and because it is sad to see a false theory taught in scientific treatises, and in our schools; and furthermore, because nothing can better make us perceive the genesis of Berkeley's meta­physical system, or of what is called his Idealism. This idealism which he opposes, as a preservative, to the materialism pro­ceeding from the school of Locke, and which he presents as a shield to religion against atheists, skeptics, and wits, is itself merely a deduction from Locke's doctrine on sensation.  What, in point of fact, according to Locke, is intelligence?  A col­lection or assemblage of sensations; nothing else. Now what can we concede to sensation in regard to the reality of the externnl world?
" We know the external world only by sensation. Sensa­tion is merely a mode of the mind's own existence, a modifica­tion of ourselves, a passion of our soul. It does not exist by itself; it exists only in us; or rather, it is we alone who exist and who are affected. Philosophers have never doubted the non-reality of what they call the secondary qualities of bodies.  They admit without difficulty, that heat or cold, hardness or softness, sweetness or bitterness, red or blue, &c., exist only in the mind; but they generally regard, as really existing, exten­sion, figure, solidity, weight, motion, rest, what they call the primary qualities of bodies.  The ideas of Berkeley on sight, formed after Locke, must needs carry him much farther. In fact, if you comprehend the exposition which we have just made of the Theory of Vision, you will see that sight reveals to us only colors, that is, merely sensible qualities, which exist only in us. Moreover, properly speaking, we see not the same objects that we feel by touch. There is no relation between our sensations of touch and our sensations of sight, any more than there is between objects and the conventional names we give them.
" If Berkeley thought this of sight, for a still stronger reason, he must have thought it of hearing, taste, and smell.  Touch itself, charged with sustaining the whole edifice of the notions abstracted from the other senses, must in time undergo the same fate that they have undergone, and Berkeley could not escape from despoiling it, by the very artifice which he had used in disinheriting the others, of all certainty.  A given body, then, appears to him nothing but an assemblage or con­geries of sensible impressions, or ideas collected by our differ­ent senses; ideas which our mind unites in one and the same body, that is to say, to which it gives a name, for it has ob­served that they accompany one another. But a body did not appear to him to be a being distinct from these sensations,
"After having broken the subject into fragments, the doc­trine of Locke must needs end in doing the same to the object. After haviug destroyed the unity of being in the me, it must needs destroy the external world.  This is what Berkeley has done, with a profound sagacity, and a resoluteness truly won­derful. His terrible analysis of sight finishes the work of taking away all certainty in relation to the primary qualities of body, which philosophers had distinguished from mere sen­sation, Evidently then, primary qualities must go with the secondary qualities.  All, in passing under the level of sensa­tion, must share the condition of sensation, that is to say, be reduced to a modification of the mind, to a mere appearance.
"What a strange spectacle in the history of philosophy!  Descartes taking spiritualism for his point of departure tries with all his might to demonstrate the existence of the material world; and Berkeley, a disciple of Locke, and assuredly the ablest of the metaphysicians of sensation, does all in his power to save the spiritual world, and to annihilate the idea of mat­ter! It is thus that Berkeley meets Malebranche in the system of Vision in God, that we see all things in God. The one starts from Descartes, with cogito, ergo sum, the other from Locke with sensation; both end in an analogous doctrine,
" But we must say that this doctrine is much more studied, much profounder in Malebranche, than in Berkeley. Male­branche is the great interpreter of the text of St. Paul, un­derstood in this sense: In Deo vivimus, et movemur, et sumus. As to Berkeley, what is properly his, what establishes his place and his rank in the history of modern philosophy, is, above all, his having conducted the doctrine of sensation to this terrible abyss.  The system itself of immaterialism, or of pure spiritualism, negation made up of all substances destitute of thought, is very little developed in his works.  He is rather occupied in overthrowing matter and materialism, than in building up spiritualism.
"But having come after Locke, and so evidently from his school that it could not have been developed without him, Berkeley has had a twofold influence, very remarkable. On the one hand, his sagacity has furnished materialism with its most boasted discoveries. It is from him, in his analysis of vis­ion, that Condillac, a spirit void of invention, has drawn his books; it is he who has inspired the famous axiom of Helvetius, that without our hands we should yet be browsing in the forest; and it is from him, in fine, that Hume professes to have borrowed all the arguments of his skepticism. But more lately, it is he, also, who has made the partisans of Locke beat a retreat. The offspring of Berkeley and Hume, what is called the Scottish school, is startled at the obscure labyrinth into which these two powerful reasoners had carried it away; it loses somewhat of its faith in sensation; it asks if Locke has not been too hasty, if he has not forgotten something; it seeks with nicest eye through what broken stitches has entered the deluge of doubt which invades every thing. Then comes Reid, and, in his train, that little flock of reasoners, who compose the school, from him down to Dugald Stewart, - minds for the most part so feeble, and with so little penetration, that one is really embarrassed to call them philosophers. They attempt by a thousand little means, by all sorts of shifts and artifices, to escape skepticism; they live by contradictions; they are of the school of Locke, and are not of it; they hold his doctrine to be the masterpiece of philosophy; he is for them the father of veritable logic and metaphysics, and yet they make against him a reaction, which they strive to render fundamen­tal. But, while they toil and struggle without much effect, Kant, solitary and alone, resumes the problem of philosophy where Berkeley and Hume had left it. Philosophy changes its soil, and returns to visit the country of Leibnitz. By the side of the original effort of Kant, the attempts of the Scottish school appear but the quaking of pigmies. It is, then, to Berkeley, that we must refer, in a great measure, the efforts the psychologues have been obliged to make, even down to our own times, to ascertain what is necessary to be held in regard to the origin and certainty of human knowledge."