The Project Gutenberg eBook, An Introduction to Philosophy, by George

directly.  We may divide realists into two broad classes, those who hold to this view, and those 
who maintain that we know it only indirectly and through our ideas. 
 
The plain man belongs, of course, to the first class, if it is just to speak of a man who says 
inconsistent things as being wholly in any one class.  Certainly he is willing to assert that the 
ground upon which he stands and the staff in his hand are perceived by him directly. 
 
But we are compelled to recognize that there are subdivisions in this first class of realists.  Reid 
tried to place himself beside the plain man and failed to do so.  Hamilton (section 50) tried also, 
and he is not to be classed precisely either with the plain man or with Reid.  He informs us that 
the object as it appears to us is a composite something to the building up of which the knowing 
mind contributes its share, the medium through which the object is perceived its share, and the 
object in itself its share.  He suggests, by way of illustration, that the external object may 
contribute one third.  This seems to make, at least, something external directly known.  But, on 
the other hand, he maintains that the mind knows immediately only what is in immediate contact 
with the bodily organ – with the eyes, with the hands, etc.; and he believes it knows this 
immediately because it is actually present in all parts of the body.  And, further, in distinguishing 
 
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as he does between existence “as it is in itself” and existence “as it is revealed to us,” and in 
shutting us up to the latter, he seems to rob us even of the modicum of externality that he has 
granted us. 
 
I have already mentioned Herbert Spencer (section 50) as a man not without sympathy for the 
attempt to rehabilitate the external world. He is very severe with the “insanities” of idealism.  He 
is not willing even to take the first step toward it. 
 
He writes:[1] “The postulate with which metaphysical reasoning sets out is that we are primarily 
conscious only of our sensations – that we certainly know we have these, and that if there be 
anything beyond these serving as cause for them, it can be known only by inference from them. 
 
“I shall give much surprise to the metaphysical reader if I call in question this postulate; and the 
surprise will rise into astonishment if I distinctly deny it.  Yet I must do this.  Limiting the 
proposition to those epiperipheral feelings produced in us by external objects (for these are alone 
in question), I see no alternative but to affirm that the thing primarily known is not that a 
sensation has been experienced, but that there exists an outer object.” 
 
According to this, the outer object is not known through an inference; it is known directly.  But 
do not be in haste to class Spencer with the plain man, or with Reid.  Listen to a citation once 
before made (section 22), but worth repeating in this connection: “When we are taught that a 
piece of matter, regarded by us as existing externally, cannot be really known, but that we can 
know only certain impressions produced on us, we are yet, by the relativity of thought, 
compelled to think of these in relation to a cause – the notion of a real existence which generated 
these impressions becomes nascent.  If it be proved that every notion of a real existence which 
we can frame is inconsistent with itself, – that matter, however conceived by us, cannot be matter 
as it actually is, – our conception, though transfigured, is not destroyed: there remains the sense 
of reality, dissociated as far as possible from those special forms under which it was before 
represented in thought.” 
 
It is interesting to place the two extracts side by side.  In the one, we are told that we do not 
know external objects by an inference from our sensations; in the other we are taught that the 
piece of matter which we regard as existing externally cannot be really known; that we can know 
only certain impressions produced on us, and must refer them to a cause; that this cause cannot 
be what we think it.  It is difficult for the man who reads such statements not to forget that 
Spencer regarded himself as a realist who held to a direct knowledge of something external. 
 
There are, as it is evident, many sorts of realists that may be gathered into the first class 
mentioned above – men who, however inconsistent they may be, try, at least, to maintain that our 
knowledge of the external world is a direct one.  And it is equally true that there are various sorts 
of realists that may be put into the second class. 
 
These men have been called Hypothetical Realists.  In the last chapter it was pointed out that 
Descartes and Locke belong to this class.  Both of these men believed in an external world, but 
believed that its existence is a thing to be inferred. 
 
 
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Now, when a man has persuaded himself that the mind can know directly only its own ideas, and 
must infer the world which they are supposed to represent, he may conceive of that external 
world in three different ways. 
 
(1) He may believe that what corresponds to his idea of a material object, for example, an apple, 
is in very many respects like the idea in his mind.  Thus, he may believe that the odor, taste, 
color, hardness, etc., that he perceives directly, or as ideas, have corresponding to them real 
external odor, taste, color, hardness, etc. It is not easy for a man to hold to this position, for a 
very little reflection seems to make it untenable; but it is theoretically possible for one to take it, 
and probably many persons have inclined to the view when they have first been tempted to 
believe that the mind perceives directly only its ideas. 
 
(2) He may believe that such things as colors, tastes, and odors cannot be qualities of external 
bodies at all, but are only effects, produced upon our minds by something very different in kind.  
We seem to perceive bodies, he may argue, to be colored, to have taste, and to be odorous; but 
what we thus perceive is not the external thing; the external thing that produces these 
appearances cannot be regarded as having anything more than “solidity, extension, figure, 
motion or rest, and number.”  Thus did Locke reason.  To him the external world as it really 
exists, is, so to speak, a paler copy of the external world as we seem to perceive it.  It is a world 
with fewer qualities, but, still, a world with qualities of some kind. 
 
(3) But one may go farther than this.  One may say: How can I know that even the extension, 
number, and motion of the things which I directly perceive have corresponding to them 
extension, number, and motion, in an outer world?  If what is not colored can cause me to 
perceive color, why may not that which is not extended cause me to perceive extension? And, 
moved by such reflections, one may maintain that there exists outside of us that which we can 
only characterize as an Unknown Cause, a Reality which we cannot more nearly define. 
 
This last position resembles very closely one side of Spencer’s doctrine – that represented in the 
last of the two citations, as the reader can easily see.  It is the position of the follower of 
Immanuel Kant who has not yet repudiated the noumenon or thing-in-itself discussed in the last 
chapter (section 51). 
 
I am not concerned to defend any one of the varieties of Direct or of Hypothetical Realism 
portrayed above.  But I wish to point out that they all have some sort of claim to the title 
Realism, and to remind the reader that, when we call a man a realist, we do not do very much in 
the way of defining his position.  I may add that the account of the external world contained in 
Chapter IV is a sort of realism also. 
 
If this last variety, which I advocate, must be classified, let it be placed in the first broad class, 
for it teaches that we know the external world directly.  But I sincerely hope that it will not be 
judged wholly by the company it keeps, and that no one will assign to it either virtues or defects 
to which it can lay no just claim. 
 
Before leaving the subject of realism it is right that I should utter a note of warning touching one 
very common source of error.  It is fatally easy for men to be misled by the names which are 
 
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applied to things.  Sir William Hamilton invented for a certain type of metaphysical doctrine the 
offensive epithet “nihilism.”  It is a type which appeals to many inoffensive and pious men at the 
present day, some of whom prefer to call themselves idealists.  Many have been induced to 
become “free-willists” because the name has suggested to them a proper regard for that freedom 
which is justly dear to all men. We can scarcely approach with an open mind an account of ideas 
and sensations which we hear described as “sensationalism,” or worse yet, as “sensualism.”  
When a given type of philosophy is set down as “dogmatism,” we involuntarily feel a prejudice 
against it. 
 
He who reads as reflectively as he should will soon find out that philosophers “call names” much 
as other men do, and that one should always be on one’s guard.  “Every form of 
phenomenalism,” asseverated a learned and energetic old gentleman, who for many years 
occupied a chair in one of our leading institutions of learning, “necessarily leads to atheism.”  He 
inspired a considerable number of students with such a horror for “phenomenalism” that they 
never took pains to find out what it was. 
 
I mention these things in this connection, because I suspect that not a few in our own day are 
unduly influenced by the associations which cling to the words “realism” and “idealism.”  
Realism in literature, as many persons understand it, means the degradation of literature to the 
portrayal of what is coarse and degrading, in a coarse and offensive way.  Realism in painting 
often means the laborious representation upon canvas of things from which we would gladly 
avert our eyes if we met them in real life.  With the word “idealism,” on the other hand, we are 
apt to connect the possession of ideals, a regard for what is best and noblest in life and literature. 
 
The reader must have seen that realism in the philosophic sense of the word has nothing 
whatever to do with realism in the senses just mentioned.  The word is given a special meaning, 
and it is a weakness to allow associations drawn from other senses of the word to color our 
judgment when we use it. 
 
And it should be carefully held in view that the word “idealism” is given a special sense when it 
is used to indicate a type of doctrine contrasted with the doctrine of the realist.  Some forms of 
philosophical idealism have undoubtedly been inspiring; but some have been, and are, far from 
inspiring.  They should not be allowed to posture as saints merely because they are cloaked with 
an ambiguous name. 
 
53. IDEALISM. – Idealism we may broadly define as the doctrine that all existence is mental 
existence.  So far from regarding the external world as beyond and independent of mind, it 
maintains that it can have its being only in consciousness. 
 
We have seen (section 49) how men were led to take the step to idealism.  It is not a step which 
the plain man is impelled to take without preparation.  To say that the real world of things in 
which we perceive ourselves to live and move is a something that exists only in the mind strikes 
him as little better than insane.  He who becomes an idealist usually does so, I think, after 
weighing the arguments presented by the hypothetical realist, and finding that they seem to carry 
one farther than the latter appears to recognize. 
 
 
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The type of idealism represented by Berkeley has been called Subjective Idealism.  Ordinarily 
our use of the words “subjective” and “objective” is to call attention to the distinction between 
what belongs to the mind and what belongs to the external order of things. My sensations are 
subjective, they are referred to my mind, and it is assumed that they can have no existence except 
in my mind; the qualities of things are regarded as objective, that is, it is commonly believed that 
they exist independently of my perception of them. 
 
Of course, when a man becomes an idealist, he cannot keep just this distinction.  The question 
may, then, fairly be raised: How can he be a subjective idealist?  Has not the word “subjective” 
lost its significance? 
 
To this one has to answer: It has, and it has not.  The man who, with strict consistency, makes the 
desk at which he sits as much his “idea” as is the pain in his finger or his memory of yesterday, 
cannot keep hold of the distinction of subjective and objective.  But men are not always as 
consistent as this.  Remember the illustration of the “telephone exchange” (section 14).  The 
mind is represented as situated at the brain terminals of the sensory nerves; and then brain, 
nerves, and all else are turned into ideas in this mind, which are merely “projected outwards.” 
 
Now, in placing the mind at a definite location in the world, and contrasting it with the world, we 
retain the distinction between subjective and objective – what is in the mind can be distinguished 
from what is beyond it.  On the other hand, in making the whole system of external things a 
complex of ideas in the mind, we become idealists, and repudiate realism.  The position is an 
inconsistent one, of course, but it is possible for men to take it, for men have taken it often 
enough. 
 
The idealism of Professor Pearson (section 14) is more palpably subjective than that of Berkeley, 
for the latter never puts the mind in a “telephone exchange.”  Nevertheless, he names the objects 
of sense, which other men call material things, “ideas,” and he evidently assimilates them to 
what we commonly call ideas and contrast with things.  Moreover, he holds them in some of the 
contempt which men reserve for “mere ideas,” for he believes that idolaters might be induced to 
give over worshiping the heavenly bodies could they be persuaded that these are nothing more 
than their own ideas. 
 
With the various forms of subjective idealism it is usual to contrast the doctrine of Objective