Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/333

 THE NEW EEALISM AND THE OLD IDEALISM. 319 ceptual and the conceptual modes of apprehension and, with that, to the old controversy between Nominalism and Conceptualism. But, in reality, the view that I am now urging carries us a good deal farther than that. It is not merely in the fully developed concept that we have to recognise the presence of meaning, but rather throughout the whole field of our experience. If we were limited to that which is contained within our immediate experience, our world would be practically a blank. It would be simply Hume's stream of perceptions that succeed one another with inconceivable rapidity. It would have no connexion, no identity, no continuity. But now a fundamental difficulty may be raised. It is all very well, it may be said, to speak of a world of meaning as carrying us beyond the world of psychical fact. But may not such a world be compared to a paper currency, or a general system of credit? Must it not be based, in the end, upon some sort of gold reserve ? And what, it may be asked, can we possibly have in reserve but the immediate facts of our experience ? This is essentially Hume's point ; and it is this point that the modern realist and the modern idealist both have to meet. Both are opposed to the doctrine that esse is percipi ' ; and this, it must be remembered, is essenti- ally the doctrine of Hume, and is not really the doctrine of Berkeley at all. It is the doctrine of the sceptic, not that of the idealist. Berkeley no doubt seems to begin with it ; md so perhaps do some more recent idealists. But even with Berkeley the doctrine that esse is percipi is almost im- mediately modified by the recognition that, in the case of conscious beings, esse is rather percipere ; and in the end he comes at least very near to the affirmation that : for the Universe as a whole, esse is intelligi. His ultimate criterion of the truth of anything is that we can understand what it means ; and this is really the criterion which every idealist, from Parmenides 1 downwards, seeks to adopt. It is the sceptic, not the idealist, who rests upon the rigid doctrine that esse is percipi ; and realists and idealists are absolutely at one in waging war against this. Well, then, what we have to ask is, How is that doctrine to be finally refuted ? Is it not true, according to my illustration, that we have to come back to it as a sort of gold reserve ? Even Mr. Bradley, the protagonist of modern idealism in one of its senses and, indeed, in a sense that apparently aims at being objective 1 In spite of Prof. Burnet's very instructive exposition, which I greatly appreciate, I still regard Parmenides as the founder of idealism.