h exists is particular_." Now the truth of
mathematical reckoning is not particular, but is valid wherever the
conditions to which it refers are fulfilled. Mathematical reckoning, if
it is to be particular, must be regarded as a particular act or state of
some thinker. Its truth must then be construed as relative to the
interests of the thinker, as a symbolism which has an instrumental
rather than a purely cognitive value. This conclusion cannot be disputed
short of a radical stand against the general epistemological principle
to which Berkeley is so far true, the principle that the reality which
is known in any state of thinking or perceiving is the state itself.

[Sidenote: The Transition to Spiritualism.]

Sect. 132. This concludes the purely phenomenalistic strain of
Berkeley's thought. He has taken the immediate apprehension of sensible
objects in a state of mind centring about the pleasure and pain of an
individual, to be the norm of knowledge. He has further maintained that
knowledge cannot escape the particularity of its own states. The result
is that the universe is composed of private perceptions and ideas.
Strictly on the basis of what has preceded, Hylas is justified in
regarding this conclusion as no less sceptical than that to which his
own position had been reduced; for while he had been compelled to admit
that the real is unknowable, Philonous has apparently defined the
knowable as relative to the individual. But the supplementary
metaphysics which had hitherto been kept in the background is now
revealed. It is maintained that though perceptions know no external
world, they do nevertheless reveal a spiritual substance of which they
are the states. Although it has hitherto been argued that the _esse_ of
things is in their _percipi_, this is now replaced by the more
fundamental principle that the _esse_ of things is in their _percipere_
or _velle_. The real world consists not in perceptions, but in
perceivers.

[Sidenote: Further Attempts to Maintain Phenomenalism.]

Sect. 133. Now it is at once evident that the epistemological theory
which has been Berkeley's dialectical weapon in the foregoing argument
is no longer available. And those who have cared more for this theory
than for metaphysical speculation have attempted to stop at this point,
and so to construe phenomenalism as to make it self-sufficient on its
own grounds. Such attempts are so instructive as to make it worth our
while to review them