college, that nothing properly does exist but conscious persons. All other things are not so much existences as signs of the existences of persons. One is absolutely certain of what one means by " I.”

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3. Spiritual substances are sufficient and adequate to explain all ideas. There is no difficulty in explaining the images of our own minds, for our minds control them. But what explains the existence of our per-cepts over which we have no control? What substantial support have they if we remove the "material hypothesis"? Suppose I grant that I exist and have control of my imaginative ideas, and that other minds exist and have control of their imaginative ideas, how then, I ask Berkeley, am I to explain the great world of perceptions over which neither I nor other men have control?

✓Berkeley's general psychological position must be summarized here in order to answer this important question. It is as follows: (1) All things are nothing more than perceptions. (2) All ideas, both perceptions and images, are passive, and must be caused by something in itself active. (3) Souls are active and the cause of ideas. The question then is, What soul is the cause of our perceptions? Perceptions are ideas, are passive, but they are the ideas of whom? Repudiate the material substance, and what is the cause of perceptions?

Perceptions are not originated by me; they cannot be self-originated, because they are passive and not active; they cannot be originated by a material substance, because it does not exist. Their origin must be sought in the infinite spirit, or God. If you will examine the ideas which constitute what we call nature objects, you will observe these significant characteristics about them, to which attention has already been called. They have, as

we have said, a strength, liveliness, distinctness, and orderliness that distinguish them from imaginations. They are God speaking to us in His orderly way. Nature objects are the language of God. The regularity and dependability of the world of nature reveal the character of the Being whose language the world of nature is. They reveal a Being who is intelligent, infinite, omnipotent, and benevolent. The regularity of the changing seasons, the constancy of the heavenly bodies to their orbits, the provision of the earth for man — all the laws of nature are the language of an orderly Being.

Now we see the importance of Berkeley's deviation from Locke in his (Berkeley's) conception of all ideas as passive. All ideas being passive, there must be a cause of them. The only active causes are spirits. I am the cause or perceiver of my own imaginations. I perceive another's movements and know that another person or spirit must be the cause. When nature speaks in its invariable and purposive harmony, I know that an infinite spirit is the cause. We are indeed living in a society of spirits, who speak to one another in their own language.

The doctrine of Berkeley strikes beginners and people who temperamentally cannot understand it, as absurd. The reduction of the trees, sky, etc., to ideas is a theory that has brought down all kinds of ridicule upon it. When Dr. Johnson heard of it, he is said to have stamped his foot upon the ground, and thereby refuted it. Byron is quoted as saying, "If there is no matter, and Berkeley has proved it, it is no matter what he said." Others have asked if we eat and drink ideas and are clothed with ideas. But Berkeley never doubted the existence of material objects, and, the point of his theory is missed

if we think that he did. What he denied is the existence of an unknown substance, matter, behind external objects. "The table I write on exists, that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of my study I should say it existed, meaning thereby that if I were in my study I might perceive it or that some other person does perceive it."

Another question has been asked of Berkeley which goes deeper. If to be is to be perceived, what existence has a tree in the forest that no one has ever perceived. What existence have past events that are forgotten? Berkeley has considered this objection and has answered it. When he says that existence depends upon perception, he does not mean merely my own perception. Berkeley is not what in philosophy is called a solipsist (solus and ipse), i.e., one who believes that nothing exists but himself and his modifications. A thing may have existence in the mind of some one else. If the thing has never been perceived by any human being, it is perceived, if the thing exists, by the mind of God. The modern scientist assumes the existence of matter in the whole universe. Berkeley assumes the existence of a perceiving God. One is the materialistic and the other the religious explanation of the universe.

The Life and Writings of David Hume (1711-1776). Hume's life bears some marks of external resemblance to Berkeley's. After periods of training that differed very greatly in point of discipline, but were almost the same in point of time, both produced, at about the age of twenty-five, their most important philosophical works. Both turned from philosophy to other pursuits Berkeley to missionary work at the age of thirty-six,

and Hume to politics at the age of forty-one. There the resemblance between the two men ceases; for they were antipodal by nature, and animated by different purposes.

The enthusiastic nature of Berkeley is in marked contrast with the unimpassioned nature of the Scot. Hume was unimaginative to the last. He was unimpressed by the legends of the border where he lived; he had no love for nature and no appreciation of art. "While Hume's intellect was imperial, his sympathies were provincial." Berkeley's sympathies were imperial and his intellect was in their service. Hume was a man of kindly disposition and of moderate temper, yet he was vain, and interested above everything else in his own reputation. No object seemed worth while to him, unless it made for the improvement of his talents in literature. The failure of the Treatise was a blow from which he never recovered. Always afterward he had an eye to popularity, and this is important in making up our judgment about him. All his works after the Treatise were written to please his readers and for personal success. Locke the Englishman, Berkeley the Irishman, and Hume the Scotchman came from the same middle class of society, had university training, were engaged in public service, and are to be classed in the same empirical school of philosophy. But they were personally very different kinds of men, and were types, although perhaps not representatives, of their nationalities.

1. Period of Training (1711–1734). Hume was born in Edinburgh and lived there and at Ninewells on the border. He was a student at Edinburgh University (1723-1726) and studied law the next year. He was

in business in Bristol in 1734. In all the occupations of this period he was unhappy.

2. Period of Philosopher (1734-1752). From 1734 to 1737 Hume was in retirement in France, especially at La Flêche, where he wrote his Treatise on Human Nature. He returned to Edinburgh in 1737 and published his Treatise (1739-1740). It was read by nobody and was an absolute failure. So he rewrote Book I in 1748 and called it the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. Hume's full statement of his theory of knowledge is contained in the Treatise and not in the Enquiry. He rewrote Book III in 1751 and called it the Enquiry concerning Principles of Morals, "of all my writings, incomparably the best," and in 1757 he published Book II as an Essay on the Passions in Four Dissertations. He became acquainted with Adam Smith in 1740; he published Essays, Moral and Political, in 1741-1742, and was a tutor in 1745, because he needed money. In 17461748 he became secretary in the English military embassy to Vienna. In 1751, the same year that he was recasting the third book of the Treatise, he wrote his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, which was not published until 1779. His autobiography was also published posthumously.

3. Period of Politician (1752-1776). In 1752 Hume published his Political Discourses, "the only work of mine that was successful on its first publication." In 1754-1761, while librarian at Edinburgh, he wrote and published his History of England. This work was the first serious attempt since the Revolution to give an impartial account of the earlier struggles against the Stuarts. Through it he at last got