ctive. Thus much is certain and
grounded on experience: but when we talk of unthinking agents,
or of exciting ideas exclusive of volition, we only amuse
ourselves with words."[295:20]

Although Berkeley is here in general agreement with a very considerable
variety of philosophical views, it will be readily observed that this
doctrine tends to lapse into mysticism whenever it is retained in its
purity. Berkeley himself admitted that there was no "idea" of such
power. And philosophers will as a rule either obtain an idea
corresponding to a term or amend the term--always excepting the mystical
appeal to an inarticulate and indefinable experience. Hence pure power
revealed in an ineffable immediate experience tends to give place to
kinds of power to which some definite meaning may be attached. The
energy of physics, defined by measurable quantitative equivalence, is a
case in point. The idealistic trend is in another direction, power
coming to signify ethical or logical connection. Similarly, in the later
philosophy of Berkeley himself, God is known by the nature of his
activity rather than by the fact of his activity; and we are said "to
account for a thing, when we show that it is so best." God's power, in
short, becomes indistinguishable from his universality attended with the
attributes of goodness and orderliness. But this means that the analogy
of the human spirit, conscious of its own activity, is no longer the
basis of the argument. By the divine will is now meant ethical
principles, rather than the "here am I willing" of the empirical
consciousness. Similarly the divine mind is defined in terms of logical
principles, such as coherence and order, rather than in terms of the
"here am I thinking" of the finite knower himself. But enough has been
said to make it plain that this is no longer the stand-point of
empirio-idealism. Indeed, in his last philosophical writing, the
"Siris," Berkeley is so far removed from the principles of knowledge
which made him at once the disciple and the critic of Locke, as to
pronounce himself the devotee of Platonism and the prophet of
transcendentalism. The former strain appears in his conclusion that
"the _principles_ of science are neither objects of sense nor
imagination; and that intellect and reason are alone the sure guides to
truth."[297:21] His transcendentalism appears in his belief that such
principles, participating in the vital unity of the Individual Purpose,