ituted for those that disclose the economy of
nature; how the moral difficulties incident to an absolute
providentialism are to be met, or how the existence and influence of
fellow-minds is to be defended. So that to a piety inspired by
conventional theology and a psychology that refused to pass, except
grudgingly and unintelligently, beyond the sensuous stratum, Berkeley
had nothing to add by way of philosophy. An insignificant repetition of
the truism that ideas are all "in the mind" constituted his total
wisdom. To be was to be perceived. That was the great maxim by virtue of
which we were asked, if not to refrain from conceiving nature at all,
which was perhaps impossible at so late a stage in human development, at
least to refrain from regarding our necessary thoughts on nature as true
or rational. Intelligence was but a false method of imagination by which
God trained us in action and thought; for it was apparently impossible
to endow us with a true method that would serve that end. And what shall
we think of the critical acumen or practical wisdom of a philosopher who
dreamed of some other criterion of truth than necessary implication in
thought and action?

[Sidenote: Truism and sophism.]

In the melodramatic fashion so common in what is called philosophy we
may delight ourselves with such flashes of lightning as this: _esse est
percipi_. The truth of this paradox lies in the fact that through
perception alone can we get at being--a modest and familiar notion which
makes, as Plato's "Theaetetus" shows, not a bad point of departure for a
serious theory of knowledge. The sophistical intent of it, however, is
to deny our right to make a distinction which in fact we do make and
which the speaker himself is making as he utters the phrase; for he
would not be so proud of himself if he thought he was thundering a
tautology. If a thing were never perceived, or inferred from perception,
we should indeed never know that it existed; but once perceived or
inferred it may be more conducive to comprehension and practical
competence to regard it as existing independently of our perception; and
our ability to make this supposition is registered in the difference
between the two words _to be_ and _to be perceived_--words which are by
no means synonymous but designate two very different relations of things
in thought. Such idealism at one fell swoop, through a collapse of
assertive intellect and a withdrawal of reason into self-