Berkeley's polemic against matter was based on this confusion introduced by the transmission theory of light. He advocated, rightly as I think, the abandon ment of the doctrine of matter in its present form. He had however nothing to put in its place except a theory of the relation of finite minds to the divine mind.
But we are endeavouring in these lectures to limit ourselves to nature itself and not to travel beyond entities which are disclosed in sense-awareness.
Percipience in itself is taken for granted. We consider indeed conditions for percipience, but only so far as those conditions are among the disclosures of percep tion. We leave to metaphysics the synthesis of the knower and the known. Some further explanation and defence of this position is necessary, if the line of argu ment of these lectures is to be comprehensible.
The immediate thesis for discussion is that any meta physical interpretation is an illegitimate importation into the philosophy of natural science. By a metaphysical interpretation I mean any discussion of the how (beyond nature) and of the why (beyond nature) of thought and sense-awareness. In the philosophy of science we seek the general notions which apply to nature, namely, to what we are aware of in perception. It is the philosophy of the thing perceived, and it should not be confused with the metaphysics of reality of which the scope embraces both perceiver and perceived. No perplexity concerning the object of knowledge can be solved by saying that there is a mind knowing it[1].
In other words, the ground taken is this: sense-awareness is an awareness of something. What then is the general character of that something of which we
- ↑ Cf. Enquiry, preface.
