IDEALISM

(Yunanca köken — orijinale bakınız.) A term applied to several metaphysical systems, varying in its signification according to the meaning attached in each particular scheme to the word idea; from which it is derived. In England the best known system of idealism is that of Berkeley. In reference to this philosopher's doctrines, the word is used in its empirical sense for the object of consciousne in sensation. (See Perception.) In its Platonic or transcendental sense, the term idealism has been applied to the doctrines of Kant and Schelling; neither of whom is an idealist in the way in which Berkeley may be so called. The system of Berkeley may be thus expre ed: The qualities of supposed objects cannot be perceived distinct from the mind that perceives them; and these Qualities, it will be allowed, are all that we can know of such objects. If, therefore, there were external bodies, it is impo ible we should ever know it; and if there were not, we should have exactly the same reason for believing there were as we have "now. All, therefore, which really exists is spirit, or the thinking principle—ourselves, our fellow men, and God. What we call ideas are presented to us by God in a certain order of succe ion, which order of succe ive presentation is what we mean by the laws of nature. IDENTITY, PERSONAL, denotes the samene of the conscious subject, /, throughout all the various states of which it is the subject. The question, Wherein consists our identity, and what is its evidence'! has been a source of manifold controversy to modern metaphysicians. By philosophers of the materialist school the doctrine has been ejected, as incompatible with daily and obvious experience. But independently of any hypothesis respecting the nature of the soul in itself, it has been argued, and with some plausibility, that as all our knowledge of a sub"tance is derived from the qualities or phenomena which it presents to our senses, so that all we can mean by a substance heing the same with itself is, that it po e es the same qualities which it previously did (for if not, the substance is changed);so all we can know of the substance mind in particular is derived from observation of the changes which it unde-goes. But we find that what we conceive to be the eame individual does, at different periods, a ume under the same circumstances widely varying appearances. A man shall laugh at what when he was a child would have excited his anger or jealousy. This reasoning contains an evident fallacy. It does, in fact, like all other reasoning of the same kind, imply that very doctrine which it means to refute. Consciousne , it is a erted, is the joint effect of two substances5S6acting one on the other. How, then, can we af- [s. 602]