Page:Four and Twenty Minds.djvu/67

Rh tried to simplify philosophy by canceling the material world and the whole repertory of scholasticism. Finally, he tried to reduce and to prune Christian apologetics by removing those elements which were too speculative or merely oratorical. His program in philosophy, in short, was this: to reach results useful for humanity in the least possible time and with the least possible exertion.

Another proof of Berkeley's positivist spirit appears in his keen and constant criticism of words. Words, he said, were in reality responsible for the confusions and the follies of earlier philosophers.

Berkeley believed also in the experimental method, and was one of the first, perhaps, to attempt personal experiments in psychology. One of these experiments nearly cost him his life. In his youth he went to witness a hanging at Kilkenny, and on his way home he began to wonder what the condemned man's sensations must have been in the last moments of his life. After reaching Dublin, he decided that the only way to obtain any exact information on this point was to make a trial himself. He therefore arranged with a friend of his, a Venetian named Contarini, to attempt an experiment in hanging. It was