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INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC.
PROP. IX.————
with a true and absolute existence. But if matter per se can exist exclusively, Berkeley's ontology breaks down—for his conclusion is that the subject and the object together, the synthesis of mind and the universe, is what alone truly and absolutely exists, or can exist.
Reid: His misunderstanding of Berkeley.16. Reid mistook entirely the scope of the Berkeleian speculations. He actually supposed Berkeley to have been a representationist, and that the only difference between him and the ordinary disciples of this school, was, that while they admitted the existence of matter, he denied it, and was what is vulgarly termed an idealist. Berkeley is supposed by Reid to have agreed with the representationists in holding that mere ideas or perceptions were the immediate objects of the mind; but to have differed from them in throwing overboard the occult material realities which these ideas were supposed to represent. This interpretation of Berkeleianism is altogether erroneous. Instead of exploding the material reality, Berkeley, as has been said, brought it face to face with the mind, by showing that it was a part, although never the whole, of the object of our cognition; and this, it is submitted, is the only tenable or intelligible ground on which the doctrine of intuitive perception can be placed. This position, however, was totally misconceived by Dr Reid; and hence he
