Philosophy and Religion | Page 8

Hastings Rashdall
without a bottom, or a
right-hand side without a left. This space-occupying quality which is
the most fundamental element in our ordinary conception of matter is
wholly made up of the relation of one part of it to another. Now can a
relation exist except for a mind? As it seems to me, the suggestion is
meaningless. Relatedness only has a meaning when thought of in
connection with a mind which is capable of grasping or holding
together both terms of the relation. The relation between point A and
point B is not in point A or in point B taken by themselves. It is all in
the 'between': 'betweenness' from its very nature cannot exist in any one
point of space or in several isolated points of space or things in space; it
must exist only in some one existent which holds together and connects
those points. And nothing, as far as we can understand, can do that
except a mind. Apart from mind there can be no relatedness: apart from
relatedness no space: apart from space no matter. It follows that apart
from mind there can be no matter.
It will probably be known to all of you that the {12} first person to
make this momentous inference was Bishop Berkeley. There was,
indeed, an obscure medieval schoolman, hardly recognized by the
historians of Philosophy, one Nicholas of Autrecourt, Dean of Metz,[3]
who anticipated him in the fourteenth century, and other better-known
schoolmen who approximated to the position; and there are, of course,
elements in the teaching of Plato and even of Aristotle, or possible
interpretations of Plato and Aristotle, which point in the same direction.
But full-blown Idealism, in the sense which involves a denial of the
independent existence of matter, is always associated with the name of
Bishop Berkeley.
I can best make my meaning plain to you by quoting a passage or two
from his Principles of Human Knowledge, in which he extends to the
primary qualities of matter the analysis which Locke had already
applied to the secondary.
'But, though it were possible that solid, figured, moveable substances
may exist without the mind, corresponding to the ideas we have of

bodies, yet how is it possible for us to know this? Either we must know
it by Sense or by Reason.--As for our senses, by them we have the
knowledge only of our sensations, ideas, or those things that are
immediately perceived by sense, call them what you will; but they do
not inform us that things exist {13} without the mind, or unperceived,
like to those which are perceived. This the Materialists themselves
acknowledge.--It remains therefore that if we have any knowledge at all
of external things, it must be by Reason inferring their existence from
what is immediately perceived by sense. But what reason can induce us
to believe the existence of bodies without the mind, from what we
perceive, since the very patrons of Matter themselves do not pretend
there is any necessary connexion betwixt them and our ideas? I say it is
granted on all hands--and what happens in dreams, frenzies, and the
like, puts it beyond dispute--that it is possible we might be affected
with all the ideas we have now, though there were no bodies existing
without resembling them. Hence, it is evident the supposition of
external bodies is not necessary for the producing our ideas; since it is
granted they are produced sometimes, and might possibly be produced
always in the same order we see them in at present, without their
concurrence.
* * * * * *
'In short, if there were external bodies, it is impossible we should ever
come to know it; and if there were not, we might have the very same
reasons to think there were that we have now. Suppose--what no one
can deny possible--an intelligence without the help of external bodies,
to be affected with the same train of sensations or ideas that you are,
imprinted in the same order and with like vividness in his mind. I ask
whether that intelligence hath not all the reason to believe the existence
of corporeal substances, represented by his ideas, and exciting them in
his mind, that you can possibly have for believing the same thing? Of
this there can be no {14} question--which one consideration were
enough to make any reasonable person suspect the strength of whatever
arguments he may think himself to have, for the existence of bodies
without the mind.'[4]

Do you say that in that case the tables and chairs must be supposed to
disappear the moment we all leave the room? It is true that we do
commonly think of the tables and chairs as remaining, even when there
is no one there to see or touch them. But
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