Page:An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge.djvu/25

 is subject to the same criticism as that applied by Berkeley to the castle, the planet, and the cloud. So after all, time does evaporate with space, and in their departure ‘you’ also have accompanied them; and I am left solitary in the character of a void of experience without significance.

3.4 At this point in the argument we may break off, having formed a short catalogue of the sort of considerations which lead from the Berkeleyan dilemma to a complete scepticism which was not in Berkeley’s own thought.

There are two types of answer to this sceptical descent. One is Dr Johnson’s. He stamped his foot on a paving-stone, and went on his way satisfied with its reality. A scrutiny of modern philosophy will, if I am not mistaken, show that more philosophers should own Dr Johnson as their master than would be willing to acknowledge their indebtedness.

The other type of answer was first given by Kant. We must distinguish between the general way he set about constructing his answer to Hume, and the details of his system which in many respects are highly disputable. The essential point of his method is the assumption that ‘significance’ is an essential element in concrete experience. The Berkeleyan dilemma starts with tacitly ignoring this aspect of experience, and thus with putting forward, as expressing experience, conceptions of it which have no relevance to fact. In the light of Kant’s procedure, Johnson’s answer falls into its place; it is the assertion that Berkeley has not correctly expounded what experience in fact is.

Berkeley himself insists that experience is significant, indeed three-quarters of his writings are devoted to