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Idealism proper is that method of thought which regards all knowledge as conversant only with affections of the percipient mind.

Its element of truth is the fact that these affections of the percipient mind are the conditions of our knowledge. Its error is in denying that through these and in these we know that which exists independently of our consciousness.

The idealism of the present day is mainly a materialistic idealism. It defines matter and mind alike in terms of sensation, and regards both as opposite sides or successive manifestations of one underlying and unknowable force.

Modern subjective idealism is the development of a principle found as far back as Locke. Locke derived all our knowledge from sensation; the mind only combines ideas which sensation furnishes, but gives no material of its own. Berkeley held that externally we can be sure only of sensations—cannot be sure that any external world exists apart from mind. Berkeley's idealism, however, was objective; for he maintained that while things do not exist independently of consciousness, they do exist independently of our consciousness, namely, in the mind of God, who in a correct philosophy takes the place of a mindless external world as the cause of our ideas. Kant, in like manner, held to existences outside of our own minds, although he regarded these existences as unknown and unknowable. Over against these forms of objective idealism we must put the subjective idealism of Hume, who held that internally also we cannot be sure of anything but mental phenomena; we know thoughts, feelings and volitions, but we do not know mental substance within, any more than we know material substance without; our ideas are a string of beads, without any string; we need no cause for these ideas, in an external world, a soul, or God. Mill, Spencer, Bain and Tyndall are Humists, and it is their subjective idealism which we oppose.

All these regard the material atom as a mere centre of force, or a hypothetical cause of sensations. Matter is therefore a manifestation of force, as to the old materialism force was a property of matter. But if matter, mind and God are nothing but sensations, then the body itself is nothing but sensations. There is no body to have the sensations, and no spirit, either human or divine, to produce them. John Stuart Mill, in his Examination of Sir William Hamilton, 1:234–253, makes sensations the only original sources of knowledge. He defines matter as “a permanent possibility of sensation,”and mind as “a series of feelings aware of itself.” So Huxley calls matter “only a name for the unknown cause of the states of consciousness”; although he also declares: “If I am compelled to choose between the materialism of a man like Büchner and the idealism of Berkeley, I would have to agree with Berkeley.” He would hold to the priority of matter, and yet regard matter as wholly ideal. Since John Stuart Mill, of all the materialistic idealists, gives the most precise definitions of matter and of mind, we attempt to show the inadequacy of his treatment.

The most complete refutation of subjective idealism is that of Sir William Hamilton, in his Metaphysics, 348–372, and Theories of Sense-perception—the reply to Brown. See condensed statement of Hamilton's view, with estimate and criticism, in Porter, Human Intellect, 236–240, and on Idealism, 129, 132. Porter holds that original perception gives us simply affections of our own sensorium; as cause of these, we gain knowledge of extended externality. So Sir William Hamilton: “Sensation proper has no object but a subject-object.” But both Porter and Hamilton hold that through these sensations we know that which exists independently of our sensations. Hamilton's natural realism, however, was an exaggeration of the truth. Bowne, Introd. to Psych. Theory, 257, 258—“In Sir William Hamilton's desire to have no go-betweens in perception, he was forced to maintain that every sensation is felt where it seems to be, and hence that the mind fills out the entire body. Likewise he had to affirm that the object in vision is not the thing, but the rays of light, and even the object itself had, at last, to be brought into consciousness. Thus he reached the absurdity that the true object in perception is something of which we are totally unconscious.” Surely we cannot be immediately conscious of what is outside of consciousness. James, Psychology, 1:11—“The terminal organs are telephones, and brain-cells are the receivers at which the mind listens.” Berkeley's view is to be found in his Principles of Human Knowledge, § 18 sq. See also Presb. Rev., Apl. 1885:301–315; Journ. Spec. Philos., 1884:246–260, 383–399; Tulloch, Mod. Theories, 360, 361; Encyc. Britannica, art.: Berkeley.

There is, however, an idealism which is not open to Hamilton's objections, and to which most recent philosophers give their adhesion. It is the objective idealism of Lotze. It argues that we know nothing of the extended world except through the forces which impress our nervous organism. These forces take the form of vibrations of air or ether, and we interpret them as sound, light, or motion, according as they affect our nerves of hearing, sight, or touch. But the only force which we immediately know is that of our own wills, and we can either not understand matter at all or we must understand it as the product of a will comparable to our own. Things are simply “concreted laws of action,” or divine ideas to which permanent reality has been given by divine will. What we perceive in the normal exercise of our faculties has existence not only for us but for all intelligent beings and for God himself: in other words, our idealism is not subjective, but objective. We have seen in the previous section that atoms cannot explain the universe—they presuppose both ideas and force. We now see that this force presupposes will, and these ideas presuppose mind. But, as it still may be claimed that this mind is not self-conscious mind and that this will is not personal will, we pass in the next section to consider Idealistic Pantheism, of which these claims are characteristic. Materialistic Idealism, in truth, is but a half-way house between Materialism and Pantheism, in which no permanent lodging is to be found by the logical intelligence.

Lotze, Outlines of Metaphysics, 152—“The objectivity of our cognition consists therefore in this, that it is not a meaningless play of mere seeming; but it brings before us a world whose coherency is ordered in pursuance of the injunction of the sole Reality in the world, to wit, the Good. Our cognition thus possesses more of truth than if it copied exactly a world that has no value in itself. Although it does not comprehend in what manner all that is phenomenon is presented to the view, still it understands what is the meaning of it all; and is like to a spectator who comprehends the æsthetic significance of that which takes place on the stage of a theatre, and would gain nothing essential if he were to see besides the machinery by means of which the changes are effected on the stage.” Professor C. A. Strong: “Perception is a shadow thrown upon the mind by a thing-in-itself. The shadow is the symbol of the thing; and, as shadows are soulless and dead, physical objects may seem soulless and dead, while the reality symbolized is never so soulful and alive. Consciousness is reality. The only existence of which we can conceive is mental in its nature. All existence for consciousness is existence of consciousness. The horse's shadow accompanies him, but it does not help him to draw the cart. The brain-event is simply the mental state itself regarded from the point of view of the perception.”

Aristotle: “Substance is in its nature prior to relation” = there can be no relation without things to be related. Fichte: “Knowledge, just because it is knowledge, is not reality—it comes not first, but second.” Veitch, Knowing and Being, 216, 217, 292, 293—“Thought can do nothing, except as it is a synonym for Thinker. … Neither the finite nor the infinite consciousness, alone or together, can constitute an object external, or explain its existence. The existence of a thing logically precedes the perception of it. Perception is not creation. It is not the thinking that makes the ego, but the ego that makes the thinking.” Seth, Hegelianism and Personality: “Divine thoughts presuppose a divine Being. God's thoughts do not constitute the real world. The real force does not lie in them—it lies in the divine Being, as living, active Will.” Here was the fundamental error of Hegel, that he regarded the Universe as mere Idea, and gave little thought to the Love and the Will that constitute it. See John Fiske, Cosmic Philosophy, 1:75; 2:80; Contemp. Rev., Oct. 1872: art. on Huxley; Lowndes, Philos. Primary Beliefs, 115–143; Atwater (on Ferrier), in Princeton Rev., 1857:258, 280; Cousin, Hist. Philosophy, 2:239–343; Veitch's Hamilton, (Blackwood's Philos. Classics,) 176, 191; A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 58–74.

To this view we make the following objections:

1. Its definition of matter as a “permanent possibility of sensation” contradicts our intuitive judgment that, in knowing the phenomena of matter, we have direct knowledge of substance as underlying phenomena, as distinct from our sensations, and as external to the mind which experiences these sensations.

Bowne, Metaphysics, 432—“How the possibility of an odor and a flavor can be the cause of the yellow color of an orange is probably unknowable, except to a mind that can see that two and two may make five.” See Iverach's Philosophy of Spencer Examined, in Present Day Tracts, 5: no. 29. Martineau, Study, 1:102–112—“If external impressions are telegraphed to the brain, intelligence must receive the message at the beginning as well as deliver it at the end. … It is the external object which gives the possibility, not the possibility which gives the external object. The mind cannot make both its cognita and its cognitio. It cannot dispense with standing-ground for its own feet, or with atmosphere for its own wings.” Professor Charles A. Strong: “Kant held to things-in-themselves back of physical phenomena, as well as to things-in-themselves back of mental phenomena; he thought things-in-themselves back of physical might be identical with things-in-themselves back of mental phenomena. And since mental phenomena, on this theory, are not specimens of reality, and reality manifests itself indifferently through them and through physical phenomena, he naturally concluded that we have no ground for supposing reality to be like either—that we must conceive of it as ‘weder Materie noch ein denkend Wesen’—‘neither matter nor a thinking being’—a theory of the Unknowable. Would that it had been also the Unthinkable and the Unmentionable!” Ralph Waldo Emerson was a subjective idealist; but, when called to inspect a farmer's load of wood, he said to his company: “Excuse me a moment, my friends; we have to attend to these matters, just as if they were real.” See Mivart, On Truth, 71–141.

2. Its definition of mind as a “series of feelings aware of itself” contradicts our intuitive judgment that, in knowing the phenomena of mind, we have direct knowledge of a spiritual substance of which these phenomena are manifestations, which retains its identity independently of our consciousness, and which, in its knowing, instead of being the passive recipient of impressions from without, always acts from within by a power of its own.

James, Psychology, 1:226—“It seems as if the elementary psychic fact were not thought, or this thought, or that thought, but my thought, every thought being owned. The universal conscious fact is not ‘feelings and thoughts exist,’ but ‘I think,’ and ‘I feel.’ ” Professor James is compelled to say this, even though he begins his Psychology without insisting upon the existence of a soul. Hamilton's Reid, 443—“Shall I think that thought can stand by itself? or that ideas can feel pleasure or pain?” R. T. Smith, Man's Knowledge, 44—“We say ‘my notions and my passions,’ and when we use these phrases we imply that our central self is felt to be something different from the notions or passions which belong to it or characterize it for a time.” Lichtenberg: “We should say, ‘It thinks;’ just as we say, ‘It lightens,’ or ‘It rains.’ In saying ‘Cogito,’ the philosopher goes too far if he translates it, ‘I think.’ ” Are the faculties, then, an army without a general, or an engine without a driver? In that case we should not havesensations—we should only be sensations.

Professor C. A. Strong: “I have knowledge of other minds. This non-empirical knowledge—transcendent knowledge of things-in-themselves, derived neither from experience nor reasoning, and assuming that like consequents (intelligent movements) must have like antecedents (thoughts and feelings), and also assuming instinctively that something exists outside of my own mind—this refutes the post-Kantian phenomenalism. Perception and memory also involve transcendence. In both I transcend the bounds of experience, as truly as in my knowledge of other minds. In memory I recognize a past, as distinguished from the present. In perception I cognize a possibility of other experiences like the present, and this alone gives the sense of permanence and reality. Perception and memory refute phenomenalism. Things-in-themselves must be assumed in order to fill the gaps between individual minds, and to give coherence and intelligibility to the universe, and so to avoid pluralism. If matter can influence and even extinguish our minds, it must have some force of its own, some existence in itself. If consciousness is an evolutionary product, it must have arisen from simpler mental facts. But these simpler mental facts are only another name for things-in-themselves. A deep prerational instinct compels us to recognize them, for they cannot be logically demonstrated. We must assume them in order to give continuity and intelligibility to our conceptions of the universe.” See, on Bain's Cerebral Psychology, Martineau's Essays, 1:265. On the physiological method of mental philosophy, see Talbot, in Bap. Quar., 1871:1; Bowen, in Princeton Rev., March, 1878:423–450; Murray, Psychology, 279–287.

3. In so far as this theory regards mind as the obverse side of matter, or as a later and higher development from matter, the mere reference of both mind and matter to an underlying force does not save the theory from any of the difficulties of pure materialism already mentioned; since in this case, equally with that, force is regarded as purely physical, and the priority of spirit is denied.

Herbert Spencer, Psychology, quoted by Fiske, Cosmic Philosophy, 2:80—“Mind and nervous action are the subjective and objective faces of the same thing. Yet we remain utterly incapable of seeing, or even of imagining, how the two are related. Mind still continues to us a something without kinship to other things.” Owen, Anatomy of Vertebrates, quoted by Talbot, Bap. Quar., Jan. 1871:5—“All that I know of matter and mind in themselves is that the former is an external centre of force, and the latter an internal centre of force.” New Englander, Sept. 1883:636—“If the atom be a mere centre of force and not a real thing in itself, then the atom is a supersensual essence, an immaterial being. To make immaterial matter the source of conscious mind is to make matter as wonderful as an immortal soul or a personal Creator.” See New Englander, July, 1875:532–535; Martineau, Study, 102–130, and Relig. and Mod. Materialism, 25—“If it takes mind to construe the universe, how can the negation of mind constitute it?”

David J. Hill, in his Genetic Philosophy, 200, 201, seems to deny that thought precedes force, or that force precedes thought: “Objects, or things in the external world, may be elements of a thought-process in a cosmic subject, without themselves being conscious. … A true analysis and a rational genesis require the equal recognition of both the objective and the subjective elements of experience, without priority in time, separation in space or disruption of being. So far as our minds can penetrate reality, as disclosed in the activities of thought, we are everywhere confronted with a Dynamic Reason.” In Dr. Hill's account of the genesis of the universe, however, the unconscious comes first, and from it the conscious seems to be derived. Consciousness of the object is only the obverse side of the object of consciousness. This is, as Martineau, Study, 1:341, remarks, “to take the sea on board the boat.” We greatly prefer the view of Lotze, 2:641—“Things are acts of the Infinite wrought within minds alone, or states which the Infinite experiences nowhere but in minds. … Things and events are the sum of those actions which the highest Principle performs in all spirits so uniformly and coherently, that to these spirits there must seem to be a world of substantial and efficient things existing in space outside themselves.” The data from which we draw our inferences as to the nature of the external world being mental and spiritual, it is more rational to attribute to that world a spiritual reality than a kind of reality of which our experience knows nothing. See also Schurman, Belief in God, 208, 225.

4. In so far as this theory holds the underlying force of which matter and mind are manifestations to be in any sense intelligent or voluntary, it renders necessary the assumption that there is an intelligent and voluntary Being who exerts this force. Sensations and ideas, moreover, are explicable only as manifestations of Mind.

Many recent Christian thinkers, as Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 13–15, 29–36, 42–52, would define mind as a function of matter, matter as a function of force, force as a function of will, and therefore as the power of an omnipresent and personal God. All force, except that of man's free will, is the will of God. So Herschel, Lectures, 460; Argyll, Reign of Law, 121–127; Wallace on Nat. Selection, 363–371; Martineau, Essays, 1:63, 121, 145, 265; Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics, 146–162. These writers are led to their conclusion in large part by the considerations that nothing dead can be a proper cause; that will is the only cause of which we have immediate knowledge; that the forces of nature are intelligible only when they are regarded as exertions of will. Matter, therefore, is simply centres of force—the regular and, as it were, automatic expression of God's mind and will. Second causes in nature are only secondary activities of the great First Cause.

This view is held also by Bowne, in his Metaphysics. He regards only personality as real. Matter is phenomenal, although it is an activity of the divine will outside of us. Bowne's phenomenalism is therefore an objective idealism, greatly preferable to that of Berkeley who held to God's energizing indeed, but only within the soul. This idealism of Bowne is not pantheism, for it holds that, while there are no second causes in nature, man is a second cause, with a personality distinct from that of God, and lifted above nature by his powers of free will. Royce, however, in his Religious Aspect of Philosophy, and in his The World and the Individual, makes man's consciousness a part or aspect of a universal consciousness, and so, instead of making God come to consciousness in man, makes man come to consciousness in God. While this scheme seems, in one view, to save God's personality, it may be doubted whether it equally guarantees man's personality or leaves room for man's freedom, responsibility, sin and guilt. Bowne, Philos. Theism, 175—“ ‘Universal reason’ is a class-term which denotes no possible existence, and which has reality only in the specific existences from which it is abstracted.” Bowne claims that the impersonal finite has only such otherness as a thought or act has to its subject. There is no substantial existence except in persons. Seth, Hegelianism and Personality: “Neo-Kantianism erects into a God the mere form of self-consciousness in general, that is, confounds consciousness überhauptwith a universal consciousness.”

Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 318–343, esp. 328—“Is there anything in existence but myself? Yes. To escape solipsism I must admit at least other persons. Does the world of apparent objects exist for me only? No; it exists for others also, so that we live in a common world. Does this common world consist in anything more than a similarity of impressions in finite minds, so that the world apart from these is nothing? This view cannot be disproved, but it accords so ill with the impression of our total experience that it is practically impossible. Is then the world of things a continuous existence of some kind independent of finite thought and consciousness? This claim cannot be demonstrated, but it is the only view that does not involve insuperable difficulties. What is the nature and where is the place of this cosmic existence? That is the question between Realism and Idealism. Realism views things as existing in a real space, and as true ontological realities. Idealism views both them and the space in which they are supposed to be existing as existing only in and for a cosmic Intelligence, and apart from which they are absurd and contradictory. Things are independent of our thought, but not independent of all thought, in a lumpish materiality which is the antithesis and negation of consciousness.” See also Martineau, Study, 1:214–230, 341. For advocacy of the substantive existence of second causes, see Porter, Hum. Intellect, 582–588; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:596; Alden, Philosophy, 48–80; Hodgson, Time and Space, 149–218; A. J. Balfour, in Mind, Oct. 1893: 430.