The Two-Hundredth Birthday of Bishop George Berkeley, a Discourse (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885. Excerpt: ... The sole service that Berkeley is supposed to have rendered was to demonstrate the weakness of Locke's " Analysis " by a consistent application of some of his definitions, and a somewhat narrow and over-rigorous interpretation of his theory of the origin and nature of knowledge. Hence Locke, Berkeley, and Hume are more commonly grouped together as the consistent disciples of the same school, --with which the Scottish philosophers are supposed to have a very close connection, and against which the German school was aroused to an effective protest. The single peculiarity by which Berkeley is distinguished in the view of such critics is by his persistent idealism, i. e., his denial of the reality of matter, which is regarded as somewhat less consistent and rigorous than Hume's denial of spirit; while both are held to be desperate Nihilists in respect to everything besides, that philosophy cares or contends for. A close scrutiny of his system will reveal the truth, that Berkeley confined his negative or skeptical position to the denial of matter as an obscure, unknown something over and beyond the ideas occasioned or produced in the human mind; while in respect to every other important position he was far in advance of his time, and anticipated many of the questions with which modern speculation has been forced to concern itself, and most of the conclusions which the soundest philosophy accepts. As an idealist, he denied the metaphysical necessity of matter; but by the same necessity he affirmed the reality of spirit, not only as the agent or subject of the act of knowledge, but as the object of the same in the form of ideas. Spiritual being he held to be directly known as the conscious ego which is the agent of knowledge; as the free and responsible ego which...