The subject of the present paper is the central conception of a philosophy that has been particularly dominant and influential, and the following remarks are prompted because of difficulties experienced in the attempt to understand that philosophy. The aim of the paper is to point out what seems to be a serious defect in that type of philosophy; but it is even more its aim to emphasize the danger into which philosophy in all its forms may easily fall, and against which it must exercise precautions.

Berkeley is commonly regarded as an idealist whose system is saved from subjectivism only by the advent of a God more violently ex machina than the God of any other philosopher. I hope to show that this accusation rests on a misunderstanding of his central theory, a misunderstanding which gives God a place both inconsistent with his main premisses and useless in his system. I hope also to display by quotation the real Berkeley, whose theory of God's place and nature is directly supported by argument and consistent with his premisses, and makes (with his account of self) a system which, if it is less than a completely coherent philosophy, is more than an episcopal assumption.

Those who still interest themselves in problems connected with God, Freedom, and Immortality are not accustomed to look to natural science for any light on these dark places. It is usually admitted that the scientific method operates with basic assumptions which are far from binding on philosophers, and which indeed have no very satisfactory metaphysical authority. In spite of a few protests by philosophers, scientific thinkers have on the whole felt entitled to neglect the philosophical consequences of their theories, and have gone ahead in the investigation of nature by accepting only such hypotheses as explained the maximum number of known facts, irrespective of their possible results on other fields of work. When a strictly scientific theory is invested with philosophical importance, some form of materialism, however well disguised, usually results.

It is very unfortunate that the philosopher who, as would be generally agreed, has had the greatest influence on modern thought is a writer whose style presents a particularly formidable barrier to the layman, or indeed to any reader tackling him for the first time; and this makes it all the more necessary that an effort should be made by those who have read and studied his works to communicate what they take to be the essential parts of his message. The present article is an attempt to fulfil a part of this function, i.e. to convey a few of the leading ideas of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, while leaving aside altogether his other writings. I hope Kantian scholars will forgive me if in the attempt to make some of Kant's ideas clear in a very small space to readers who have not specialized in the subject but are interested in philosophy I seem not to do justice to the complexity of his finer distinctions. Also I had better add that this article is simply an attempt to state Kant's doctrine; it is not intended as an expression of my own views, and refrains from criticism.

On page 157 of Bradley's Ethical Studies (the second edition) the following passage occurs: “There are few laws a breach of which (in obedience to a higher law) morality does not allow, and I believe there is none which is not to be broken in conceivable (imaginable) circumstances, though the necessity of deciding the question does not practically occur.” And Bradley added the extremely significant footnote: “Except, of course, the universal law to do the best we can in the circumstances.”

“All men desire the good.” This doctrine, which lay at the root of the ethics and also of a great part of the metaphysics of Greek and mediæval thinkers, is either a truism or a paradox, according to the interpretation we place upon it. Its meaning is far from obvious; it veils a multitude of implications and has given rise to a swarm of misconceptions. It has been assumed that all desire is sub ratione boni; nay more, the good has been defined as the object of universal desire, as “that at which all things aim.” The view that desire is conditioned by prior apprehension of the good has provoked the rejoinder that desires precede consciousness of their end, that cognition is the result of, or at least concomitant with, the conative process which reveals it. Again, it may be asked whether the gooddesired is necessarily my own good, so that its attainment may beconstrued as self-realization; and, if so, whether it is private tomyself or a common good which can be shared with others. Is heereone absolute Good, knowable by man, to which all other goodsare relative? Is it possible to pass beyond what we opine and believeto be good, so as to know and desire what is “really” good?