any other intelligence, for that were a contradiction" (IV. 446). He seeks to save himself from palpably absurd consequences by drawing, in the second edition of his "Principles of Human Knowledge," the distinction between Idea and Notion, (taking the phrase, I believe, from Bishop Browne). "It must be admitted, at the same time, that we have some notion of soul or spirit, and the operations of the mind, such as willing, loving, hating, inasmuch as we know or understand the meaning of these words" (I. 170). But he never accurately defined what he meant by Notion; and his whole philosophy is left, in consequence, in an unsatisfactory condition.

In digging away the ground on which error has rested, I do not believe that Berkeley has left to himself a foundation on which to build a solid philosophy. "I approve" he says, "of this axiom of the schoolmen, Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuit in sensu. I wish they had stuck to it. It had never taught them the doctrine of abstract ideas" (IV. 457). His editor is evidently staggered with "this remarkable statement," and does not know very well what to make of it. His doctrine on this subject is a great deal lower than that of Locke, who made reflection as well as sensation an inlet of ideas, such as those of time, and power, and spirit, by which he so far counteracted the sensational tendency of his philosophy. Berkeley is often appealing to intuition and reason in upholding his own favorite maxims, such as that there cannot be matter without mind, but has left no explanation of the nature and laws of these ultimate principles, or defense of their legitimacy. His negative appeal is to some "repugnancy," he does not tell us to what. These defects in the foundation are not to be repaired by abutments in the superstructure. There is a like defect in his ethical principles. "Sensual pleasure is the summum bonum. This is the great principle of morality. This once rightly understood, all the doctrines, even the severest of the gospels, may clearly be demonstrated. Sensual pleasure, quâ pleasure, is good and desirable by a wise man. But if it be contemptible 'tis not quâ pleasure but quâ pain; or (which is the same thing) of loss of greater pleasure" (IV. 457). This is a vastly more degraded view than that taken by Shaftesbury, of whom he speaks so disparagingly. We see how much need there was in that age of a Butler to give a deeper founda

tion to morality than Locke or Berkeley had done. There is greater need of a Butler than of a Berkeley in our time.

His view of space and time is thus rendered by his editor: "Finite Space is, with him, experience in unresisted organic movement which is capable of being symbolized in the visual consciousness of coexisting colors. Finite Time is the apprehension of changes in our ideas, length of time being measured by the number of changes. Infinite Space and Infinite Time, because inapprehensible by intelligence, are dismissed from philosophy as terms void of meaning, or which involve contradictions" (I. 117). If our natural judgments were not meant to deceive us there must be vastly more than this in Time, Space and Infinity, say, the Infinity of God.

There is a very general impression that the philosophy of Berkeley is favorable to religion. That he meant to be so is certain; that many have felt it to be so should not be denied. Taken apart from his speculations about tar-water and the nonexistence of matter, the general influence of his writings is inspiring and ennobling, carrying us above the damp earth into the empyrean, where we breathe a pure and delicious atmosphere. His Minute Philosopher is distinguished by great acuteness, a lofty tone and an alluring charm of manner and of style. The speakers appointed to oppose religion do not argue so searchingly as the objecting interlocutors do in Plato's dialogues; but they bring forward the current objections of the age, and the answer to them is complete. But our present inquiry is, what is the tendency of his system. And, whatever may be the immediate impression produced by it, the influence of a philosophy is determined by its logical consequences, which will come to be wrought out by some one. Hume declares that most of Berkeley's writings, "form the best lessons of skepticism which are to be found either among the ancient or modern philosophers Bayle not excepted," and he gives the reason, "they admit of no answer and produce no conviction." Hume certainly labored with all his might (and he was a mighty man) to make Berkeley teach lessons of skepticism, and I could have wished that Mr. Fraser had added to his other services by enquiring whether Berkeley's philosophy leads logically to the skepticism of Hume, of Mill, or of Spencer. Berkeley imagined that his theory gave him a special argument for the Divine exis

"The wild imaginations of Vanini, Hobbes and Spinoza, in a word, the whole system of atheism, is it not entirely overthrown by this single reflection on the repugnancy included in supposing the whole or any part, even the most rude and shapeless of the visible world, to exist without a mind?" (I. 305). Those who do not admit his ideal theory will not feel the force of his argument. Berkeley delights to use the argument from order and design, and he is ever speaking of "a constant uniform working which so evidently displays the goodness and wisdom of that governing spirit whose will constitutes the laws of nature" (I. 171). But the argument is not strengthened by representing external objects as having merely an ideal existence. One of his speakers is made to say, "that his arguments have not an effect on me as to produce that entire conviction, that hearty acquiescence which attends demonstration" (I. 317). If bodies have an existence merely as perceived, people will argue that it may be the same with spirits; and Berkeley virtually allows the consequence. If matter has no substantial existence, why may it not be the same with mind? And, if so, what remains but Hume's sensations and ideas? Berkeley imagined he was getting new and special proof of the Divine existence by his doctrine of signs; but Hume came after him and showed that the signs suggested things beyond them merely by the association of ideas; merely by a phenomenon of sight suggesting a phenomenon of touch; in fact merely by the two having been together. In particular, he showed that two sensations, with an interval between, gendered the illusive feeling of the continued existence of the sentient agent.

Certain it is that the leading positivists of the day are eagerly laying hold of Berkley's favorite doctrines and applying them as Hume did for skeptical purposes; and shrewd men, like Grote, Mill and Bain, are as likely to be able to estimate the stability of the pleasant summer house which Berkeley built, as those disciples of Kant and Hamilton who have temporarily fled to it as a refuge from the nihilism coming upon them as unrelentingly as a winter storm. I should rejoice to find students of philosophy betaking themselves to the works of Berkeley; but they will be miserably disappointed if they expect to find there a foundation on which to build a solid fabric. Let them follow him into the labyrinth into which he conducts them, but let them

take a thread to guide them back into the light of day. I am satisfied if in this article I am able to put a clue into the hands of exploring youths.

Speculative thinkers speaking the English tongue have within the last age been giving a hearing to every sort of philosophy, sensational and rational, a posteriori and a priori, to Kant and Hegel, to Coleridge and Cousin, to Hamilton and Mill. Now they are listening to materialism on the one hand and to Berkeley on the other. What is to come next it might be difficult to tell; what should come next it is not difficult to say. It should be a return to the careful observation of facts by consciousness and, in connection with it, to enter upon a judicious and cautious. physiological investigation of the parts of the body most intimately connected with mental action. This will lay an arrest on those ambitious systems which interest without satisfying, and while it will not disclose all truth, it will reveal much truth with no admixture of error.

ART. II. -"THE DISPENSATION OF THE FULNESS OF TIMES."-EPH. i. 10.

By Prof. JOSEPH MILLIKIN, Hamilton, Ohio.

IF SOMETIMES God's plans seem to realize themselves in ways and seasons untimely and irregular, and hence are as impossible of forecast as the blowing of the winds, or the shining of the lightning from the one part of heaven to the other, still, like the winds and the lightning, the various parts and accessories of their fulfilment have their laws and method; there is a history of revelation (revelation in the broadest sense) as there is of nature and of man. God's ordering in the domain of spirit is analogous with that in nature in this respect, as well as others, that there is at once unity and progression about it, with nothing untimely or unrelated, or anomalous.

Of plant and brute life there is such a development and history; of the collective life of the race in its material, temporal aspects and relations there is such a history; of the unfoldings of God's purposes toward the race, as to all that concerns our mental and spiritual part, there is likewise a history; an all embracing, articulate, progressive evolution of a plan.

And this is the law of it: first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear; the hiding of the little leaven, then its progressive permeation, then the lump all leavened; "the little stone hewn from the mountain," then its timely loosening therefrom, then its rolling ever faster and growing as it rolls, then its filling and shaking the whole earth; first conception and hidden and dependent growth, then birth and visible individualized growth until the ordinary type and limit are attained. The new merges by ordered stages into the old, and the elements of the old, in fresh combinations that are themselves conformed to law, become in time the new.

Thus is God's government carried on. Each sphere of life has that about it which constitutes it a history--a history that in its cycles may seem to proceed as before, but that never "repeats itself” in fact—its circlings being always on a different plan. Thus perfect is the order and progressiveness in God's conduct of his myriad worlds and works. And though our want of due perspective, and the limited range of our vision at best, may make some parts thereof seem irregular and abrupt, he sees and promises a time when we too shall see them to be all the due and timely elements and orderings of a plan evolved slowly indeed, as men count slowness, but wisely and with infinite certainty and beauty in its progress.

The Bible itself, alike in its contents and literary forms and parts, is not, as many seem to think it, a conglomerate of disconnected bits, but is a unit and an organism, with the growths and progressive adaptations proper to it as an organism.

And the Bible but a part, often gives only a hint of a yet grander whole, embracing God's entire manifestation of himself to, and dealings with, our race in and by his Son our Lord. And this divine scheme and the parts of its realization are not a chaotic jumble of unrelated, arbitrary, untimed truths and events, but constitute a system and an evolution in which part is fitted to part, truth to truth, fact to fact, antecedent to consequent; each in such mode and place and time, and all proceding by such road and rate as seemeth good to the God of order, who is God of all.

Without these pre-suppositions there is no understanding of God's revelation of himself, whether in the Bible, in nature, or in the soul of man. It is this view of all history, sacred and