injury is not guilty, even in his own eyes, but yet seems bound to make atonement and reparation, is useful in so far as it warns everyone to be prudent, while the corresponding illusion, in virtue of which we are grateful to an involuntary benefactor—­for instance, the bearer of good tidings—­and reward him, is at least not harmful, for any reason appears sufficient for the bestowal of kind intentions and actions.

It is impossible to explain in brief the relation of Smith’s ethical theory to his political economy.  His merit in the former consists in his comprehensive and characteristic combination of the results reached by his predecessors, and in his preparation for Kantian views, so far as this was possible from the empirical standpoint of the English.  His impartial spectator was the forerunner of the categorical imperative.

English ethics after Smith may, almost without exception, be termed eclecticism.  This is true of Ferguson (Institutes of Moral Philosophy, 1769); of Paley (1785); of the Scottish School (Dugald Stewart, 1793).  Bentham’s utilitarianism was the first to bring in a new phase.

%4.  Theory of Knowledge.%

(a) %Berkeley%.—­George Berkeley, a native of Ireland, Bishop of Cloyne (1685-1753; An Essay toward a New Theory of Vision, 1709; A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710; Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, 1713; Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher, 1732, against the freethinkers; Works, 1784.  Fraser’s edition of the Collected Works appeared in 1871, in four volumes),[1] is related to Locke as Spinoza to Descartes.  He notices blemishes and contradictions allowed by his predecessor to remain, and, recognizing that the difficulty is not to be remedied by minor corrections and artificial hypotheses, goes back to the fundamental principles, takes these more earnestly than their author, and, by carrying them out more strictly, arrives at a new view of the world.  The points in Locke’s doctrines which invited a further advance were the following:  Locke proclaims that our knowledge extends no further than our ideas, and that truth consists in the agreement of ideas among themselves, not in the agreement of ideas with things.  But this principle had scarcely been announced before it was violated.  In spite of his limitation of knowledge to ideas, Locke maintains that we know (if not the inner constitution, yet) the qualities and powers of things without us, and have a “sensitive” certainty of their existence.  Against this, it is to be said that there are no primary qualities, that is, qualities which exist without as well as within us.  Extension, motion, solidity, which are cited as such, are just as purely subjective states in us as color, heat, and sweetness.  Impenetrability is nothing more than the feeling of resistance, an idea, therefore, which self-evidently can be nowhere else than in the mind experiencing it.  Extension,