THE NEW WINE
217
storm arose , scarce dare open our eyes for fear of being
blinded .
A mystic
by nature
and a priest
by profession , we
must , in reviewing
his bequests to knowledge
, always
remember
how much of the one
side to deduct
from
the other , should
we wish to prove him either an Adept
or a Bishop .
But with such
inborn
predilection
, and
such
outward assumption
, it
is
easy
to
understand
why it was
that he threw
the whole
energy of his life
into
an
attempt
to
refute
the
advancing
scepticism
latent
in the works of Hobbes
and Locke .
He saw ,
and seeing fought the many children
which had sprung
from
the
fertile
womb
of the Cartesian
doctrine , of
abstract
general
ideas and secondary
qualities
; which
alone
found
birth in the
powers
of language, and in
the
delusion
of words .
But
behind
the
didactic
Berkeley
stands
the
mystic ,
that
other
Berkeley ,
whose
knowledge
has
alone
been attained
by a very
few ; for he spoke with God face to face .
“ Could men but forbear
to amuse themselves
with
words, we should , I believe , soon
come to an agree
ment in this point
.
that the absolute
existence of
unthinking things are words without a meaning , or
which
include
a contradiction .
Berkeley , as has only too
often
been
repeated and
too frequently
misunderstood , did not deny the mean
ing of substance as taken
in the vulgar sense --
a com
bination
of sensible
qualities , and
though
it may be
possible ,
he stated ,
“ that
solid ,
figured ,
movable
substances
may exist without the mind , corresponding
to the ideas we have of bodies , yet how is it possible
for us to know this ? Either we must know it by sense
1
| The Principles of Human
Knowledge , p. 43.