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

Idealism.  This does not maintain that the world which I perceive is my “idea”; it maintains that 
the world is “idea.” 
 
It is rather a nice question, and one which no man should decide without a careful examination of 
the whole matter, whether we have any right to retain the word “idea” when we have rubbed out 
the distinction which is usually drawn between ideas and external things.  If we maintain that all 
men are always necessarily selfish, we stretch the meaning of the word quite beyond what is 
customary, and selfishness becomes a thing we have no reason to disapprove, since it 
characterizes saint and sinner alike.  Similarly, if we decide to name “idea,” not only what the 
plain man and the realist admit to have a right to that name, but also the great system which these 
men call an external material world, it seems right to ask; Why use the word “idea” at all? What 
 
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does it serve to indicate?  Not a distinction, surely, for the word seems to be applicable to all 
things without distinction. 
 
Such considerations as these lead me to object to the expression “objective idealism”: if the 
doctrine is really objective, i.e. if it recognizes a system of things different and distinct from what 
men commonly call ideas, it scarcely seems to have a right to the title idealism; and if it is really 
idealism, and does not rob the word idea of all significance, it can scarcely be objective in any 
proper sense of the word. 
 
Manifestly, there is need of a very careful analysis of the meaning of the word “idea,” and of the 
proper significance of the terms “subjective” and “objective,” if error is to be avoided and 
language used soberly and accurately.  Those who are not in sympathy with the doctrine of the 
objective idealists think that in such careful analysis and accurate statement they are rather 
conspicuously lacking. 
 
We think of Hegel (1770-1831) as the typical objective idealist.  It is not easy to give an accurate 
account of his doctrine, for he is far from a clear writer, and he has made it possible for his many 
admirers to understand him in many ways.  But he seems to have accepted the system of things 
that most men call the real external world, and to have regarded it as the Divine Reason in its 
self-development.  And most of those whom we would to-day be inclined to gather together 
under the title of objective idealists appear to have been much influenced, directly or indirectly, 
by his philosophy.  There are, however, great differences of opinion among them, and no man 
should be made responsible for the opinions of the class as a class. 
 
I have said a few pages back that some forms of idealism are inspiring, and that some are not. 
 
Bishop Berkeley called the objects of sense ideas.  He regarded all ideas as inactive, and thought 
that all changes in ideas – and this includes all the changes that take place in nature – must be 
referred to the activity of minds.  Some of those changes he could refer to finite minds, his own 
and others.  Most of them he could not, and he felt impelled to refer them to a Divine Mind.  
Hence, the world became to him a constant revelation of God; and he uses the word “God” in no 
equivocal sense.  It does not signify to him the system of things as a whole, or an Unknowable, 
or anything of the sort.  It signifies a spirit akin to his own, but without its limitations.  He 
writes:[2] –  
 
“A human spirit or person is not perceived by sense, as not being an idea; when, therefore, we 
see the color, size, figure, and motions of a man, we perceive only certain sensations or ideas 
excited in our own minds; and these being exhibited to our view in sundry distinct collections 
serve to mark out unto us the existence of finite and created spirits like ourselves.  Hence, it is 
plain we do not see a man, – if by man is meant that which lives, moves, perceives, and thinks as 
we do, – but only such a certain collection of ideas as directs us to think there is a distinct 
principle of thought and motion, like to ourselves, accompanying and represented by it.  And 
after the same manner we see God; all the difference is that, whereas some one finite and narrow 
assemblage of ideas denotes a particular human mind, whithersoever we direct our view, we do 
at all times and in all places perceive manifest tokens of the Divinity – everything we see, hear, 
 
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feel, or any wise perceive by sense, being a sign or effect of the power of God; as is our 
perception of those very motions which are produced by men.” 
 
With Berkeley’s view of the world as a constant revelation of God, many men will sympathize 
who have little liking for his idealism as idealism.  They may criticise in detail his arguments to 
prove the nonexistence of a genuinely external world, but they will be ready to admit that his 
doctrine is an inspiring one in the view that it takes of the world and of man. 
 
With this I wish to contrast the doctrine of another idealist, Mr. Bradley, whose work, 
“Appearance and Reality,” has been much discussed in the last few years, in order that the reader 
may see how widely different forms of idealism may differ from each other, and how absurd it is 
to praise or blame a man’s philosophy merely on the ground that it is idealistic. 
 
Mr. Bradley holds that those aspects of our experience which we are accustomed to regard as 
real – qualities of things, the relations between things, the things themselves, space, time, 
motion, causation, activity, the self – turn out when carefully examined to be self-contradictory 
and absurd.  They are not real; they are unrealities, mere appearances. 
 
But these appearances exist, and, hence, must belong to reality.  This reality must be sentient, for 
“there is no being or fact outside of that which is commonly called psychical existence.” 
 
Now, what is this reality with which appearances – the whole world of things which seem to be 
given in our experience – are contrasted?  Mr. Bradley calls it the Absolute, and indicates that it 
is what other men recognize as the Deity.  How shall we conceive it? 
 
We are told that we are to conceive it as consisting of the contents of finite minds, or “centers of 
experience,” subjected to “an all-pervasive transfusion with a reblending of all material.”  In the 
Absolute, finite things are “transmuted” and lose “their individual natures.” 
 
What does this mean in plain language?  It means that there are many finite minds of a higher 
and of a lower order, “centers of experience,” and that the contents of these are unreal 
appearances.  There is not a God or Absolute outside of and distinct from these, but rather one 
that in some sense is their reality.  This mass of unrealities transfused and transmuted so that no 
one of them retains its individual nature is the Absolute.  That is to say, time must become 
indistinguishable from space, space from motion, motion from the self, the self from the qualities 
of things, etc., before they are fit to become constituents of the Absolute and to be regarded as 
real. 
 
As the reader has seen, this Absolute has nothing in common with the God in which Berkeley 
believed, and in which the plain man usually believes.  It is the night in which all cats are gray, 
and there appears to be no reason why any one should harbor toward it the least sentiment of awe 
or veneration. 
 
Whether such reasonings as Mr. Bradley’s should be accepted as valid or should not, must be 
decided after a careful examination into the foundations upon which they rest and the 
consistency with which inferences are drawn from premises.  I do not wish to prejudge the 
 
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matter.  But it is worth while to set forth the conclusions at which he arrives, that it may be 
clearly realized that the associations which often hang about the word “idealism” should be 
carefully stripped away when we are forming our estimate of this or that philosophical doctrine. 
 
 [1] “Principles of Psychology,” Part VII, Chapter VI, section 404. 
 
[2] “Principles,” section 148. 
 
 
 
 
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 Chap. XIV – Monism and Dualism 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
MONISM AND DUALISM 
 
54. THE MEANING OF THE WORDS. – In common life men distinguish between minds and 
material things, thus dividing the things, which taken together make up the world as we know it, 
into two broad classes.  They think of minds as being very different from material objects, and of 
the latter as being very different from minds.  It does not occur to them to find in the one class 
room for the other, nor does it occur to them to think of both classes as “manifestations” or 
“aspects” of some one “underlying reality.”  In other words, the plain man to-day is a Dualist. 
 
In the last chapter (section 52) I have called him a Naive Realist; and here I shall call him a