is, fulfils the meaning of the empirically present idea that refers to the Being in question, and except as fulfilling such a meaning, Being can be neither conceived, nor asserted, nor verified. In recognizing this fact of experience, lies the strength of the Third Conception.
In consequence of this reflective considerateness so characteristic of our Third Conception, it frequently appears, in its history, as the immediate outcome of a polemic against Realism. Thus, the negative arguments of Berkeley derive their force from a well-known series of comments upon the nature of the experiences by which we become acquainted with Being. The primary and secondary qualities attributed by many realists to matter, Berkeley analyzes into mere complexes of immediate data and of ideal construction. He then asks the realist the question: — “What do you mean, then, by your independently existing world?” And Berkeley thereupon shows how, primarily, all that Realism consistently means by matter has to be expressed in the form of an assertion that certain empirical ideas of ours are valid, and that their validity is a matter of possible experience. The distant church-tower, for instance, is a hint to the sense of vision of a long series of possible experiences. The assertion that these experiences, of approach to the church, of touch, of entrance to the church, are conditionally possible for any human being, this assertion is valid. And herein lies, for Berkeley, the primary reality of the material world. In order to explain still more exhaustively the validity in question, Berkeley is indeed led to his well-known hypotheses as to the souls, and as to the direct influence of the Divine
