-645-
shy of large programmes all cut out of one block, and preferred to consider each question on its merits. In politics as in philosophy, they were tentative and experimental. Their opponents, on the other hand, who thought they could “grasp this sorry scheme of things entire,” were much more willing to “shatter it to bits and then remould it nearer to the heart’s desire.” They might do this as revolutionaries, or as men who wished to increase the authority of the powers that be; in either case, they did not shrink from violence in pursuit of vast objectives, and they condemned love of peace as ignoble.
The great political defect of Locke and his disciples, from a modern point of view, was their worship of property. But those who criticized them on this account often did so in the interest of classes that were more harmful than the capitalists, such as monarchs, aristocrats, and militarists. The aristocratic landowner, whose income comes to him without effort and in accordance with immemorial custom, does not think of himself as a money-grubber, and is not so thought of by men who do not look below the picturesque surface. The business man, on the contrary, is engaged in the conscious pursuit of wealth, and while his activities were more or less novel they roused a resentment not felt towards the gentlemanly exactions of the landowner. That is to say, this was the case with middle-class writers and those who read them; it was not the case with the peasants, as appeared in the French and Russian Revolutions. But peasants are inarticulate.
Most of the opponents of Locke’s school had an admiration for war, as being heroic and involving a contempt for comfort and ease. Those who adopted a utilitarian ethic, on the contrary, tended to regard most wars as folly. This, again, at least in the nineteenth century, brought them into alliance with the capitalists, who disliked wars because they interfered with trade. The capitalists’ motive was, of course, pure self-interest, but it led to views more consonant with the general interest than those of militarists and their literary supporters. The attitude of capitalists to war, it is true, has fluctuated. England’s wars of the eighteenth century, except the American war, were on the whole profitable, and were supported by business men; but throughout the nineteenth century, until its last years, they favoured peace. In modern times, big business, everywhere, has come into such intimate relations with the national State that the
-646-
situation is greatly changed. But even now, both in England and in America, big business on the whole dislikes war.
Enlightened self-interest is, of course, not the loftiest of motives, but those who decry it often substitute, by accident or design, motives which are much worse, such as hatred, envy, and love of power. On the whole, the school which owed its origin to Locke, and which preached enlightened self-interest, did more to increase human happiness, and less to increase human misery, than was done by the schools which despised it in the name of heroism and self-sacrifice. I do not forget the horrors of early industrialism, but these, after all, were mitigated within the system. And I set against them Russian serfdom, the evils of war and its aftermath of fear and hatred, and the inevitable obscurantism of those who attempt to preserve ancient systems when they have lost their vitality.
CHAPTER XVI Berkeley
GORGE BERKELEY ( 1685-1753) is important in philosophy through his denial of the existence of matter–a denial which he supported by a number of ingenious arguments. He maintained that material objects only exist through being perceived. To the objection that, in that case, a tree, for instance, would cease to exist if no one was looking at it, he replied that God always perceives everything; if there were no God, what we take to be material objects would have a jerky life, suddenly leaping into being when we look at them; but as it is, owing to God’s perceptions, trees and rocks and stones have an existence as continuous as common sense supposes. This is, in his opinion, a weighty argument for the existence of God. A limerick by Ronald Knox, with a reply, sets forth Berkeley’s theory of material objects:
-647-
There was a young man who said, “God Must think it exceedingly odd If he finds that this tree Continues to be When there’s no one about in the Quad.”
REPLY
Dear Sir:
Your astonishment’s odd: I am always about in the Quad.
And that’s why the tree Will continue to be, Since observed by Yours faithfully,
GOD.
Berkeley was an Irishman, and became a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, at the age of twenty-two. He was presented at court by Swift, and Swift’s Vanessa left him half her property. He formed a scheme for a college in the Bermudas, with a view to which he went to America; but after spending three years ( 1728-31) in Rhode Island, he came home and relinquished the project. He was the author of the well-known line:
Westward the course of empire takes its way, on account of which the town of Berkeley in California was called after him. In 1734 he became Bishop of Cloyne. In later life he abandoned philosophy for tar-water, to which he attributed marvellous medicinal properties. It was tar-water that he described as providing the cups that cheer, but do not inebriate–a sentiment more familiar as subsequently applied by Cowper to tea.
All his best work was done while he was still quite young: A New Theory of Vision in 1709, The Principles of Human Knowledge in. 1710, The Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous in 1713. His.writings after the age of twenty-eight were of less importance. He is a very attractive writer, with a charming style.
His argument against matter is most persuasively set forth in The Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous. Of these dialogues I propose to consider only the first and the very beginning of the second, since everything that is said after that seems to me of minor importance. In the portion of the work that I shall consider, Berkeley advances valid
-648-
arguments in favour of a certain important conclusion, though not quite in favour of the conclusion that he thinks he is proving. He thinks he is proving that all reality is mental; what he is proving is that we perceive qualities, not things, and that qualities are relative to the percipient.
I shall begin with an uncritical account of what seems to me important in the Dialogues; I shall then embark upon criticism; and finally I shall state the problems concerned as they appear to me.
The characters in the Dialogues are two: Hylas, who stands for scientifically educated common sense; and Philonous, who is Berkeley.
After a few amiable remarks, Hylas says that he has heard strange reports of the opinions of Philonous, to the effect that he does not believe in material substance. “Can anything,” he exclaims, “be more fantastical, more repugnant to Common Sense, or a more manifest piece of Scepticism, than to believe there is no such thing as matter?” Philonous replies that he does not deny the reality of sensible things, i.e., of what is perceived immediately by the senses, but that we do not see the causes of colours or hear the causes of sounds. Both agree that the senses make no inferences. Philonous points out that by sight we perceive only light, colour, and figure; by hearing, only sounds; and so on. Consequently, apart from sensible qualities there is nothing sensible, and sensible things are nothing but sensible qualities or combinations of sensible qualities.
Philonous now sets to work to prove that “the reality of sensible things consists in being perceived,” as against the opinion of Hylas, that “to exist is one thing, and to be perceived is another.” That sensedata are mental is a thesis which Philonous supports by a detailed examination of the various senses. He begins with heat and cold. Great heat, he says, is a pain, and pain must be in a mind. Therefore heat is mental; and a similar argument applies to cold. This is reinforced by the famous argument about the lukewarm water. When one of your hands is hot and the other cold, you put both into lukewarm water, which feels cold to one hand and hot to the other; but the water cannot be at once hot and cold. This finishes Hylas, who acknowledges that “heat and cold are only sensations existing in our minds.” But he points out hopefully that other sensible qualities remain.
Philonous next takes up tastes. He points out that a sweet taste is
-649-
a pleasure and a bitter taste is a pain, and that pleasure and pain are mental. The same argument applies to odours, since they are pleasant or unpleasant.
Hylas makes a vigorous effort to rescue sound, which, he says, is motion in air, as may be seen from the fact that there are no sounds in a vacuum. We must, he says, “distinguish between sound as it is perceived by us, and as it is in itself; or between the sound which we immediately perceive and that which exists without us.” Philonous points out that what Hylas calls “real” sound, being a movement, might possibly be seen or
