Volume 4 / Part 1 — Footnotes

1.

Philosophy of Theism: The Gifford Lectures delivered before the University of Edinburgh in 1894-96. (Second Edition, 1899.)

2.

Essay on Vision, sect. 147, 148.

3.

Principles, sect. 6.

4.

Preface to the Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous.

5.

By Anthony Collins.

6.

See vol. III, Appendix B.

7.

Murdoch Martin, a native of Skye, author of a Voyage to St. Kilda (1698), and a Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (1703).

8.

See Stewart's Works (ed. Hamilton), vol. I. p. 161. There is a version of this story by DeQuincey, in his quaint essay on Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts.

9.

Sir John became Lord Percival in that year.

10.

A place more than once visited by Berkeley.

11.

Bakewell's Memoirs of the Court of Augustus, vol. II. p. 177.

12.

A letter in Berkeley's Life and Letters, p. 93, which led me to a different opinion, I have now reason to believe was not written by him, nor was it written in 1721. The research of Dr. Lorenz, confirmed by internal evidence, shews that it was written in October, 1684, before Berkeley the philosopher was born, and when the Duke of Ormond was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The writer was probably the Hon. and Rev. George Berkeley, a Prebendary of Westminster in 1687, who died in 1694. The wife of the “pious Robert Nelson” was a daughter of Earl Berkeley, and this “George” was her younger brother.

13.

Percival MSS.

14.

For the letter, see Editor's Preface to the Proposal for a College in Bermuda, vol. IV. pp. 343-44.

15.

Afterwards Sir John James.

16.

Smibert the artist, who made a picture of Berkeley in 1725, and afterwards in America of the family party then at Gravesend.

17.

Historical Register, vol. XIII, p. 289 (1728).

18.

New England Weekly Courier, Feb. 3, 1729.

19.

For valuable information about Rhode Island, reproduced in Berkeley's Life and Correspondence and here, I am indebted to Colonel Higginson, to whom I desire to make this tardy but grateful acknowledgement.

20.

James, Dalton, and Smibert.

21.

Whitehall, having fallen into decay, has been lately restored by the pious efforts of Mrs. Livingston Mason, in concert with the Rev. Dr. E. E. Hale, and others. This good work was completed in the summer of 1900; and the house is now as nearly as possible in the state in which Berkeley left it.

22.

See vol. III, Appendix C.

23.

Three Men of Letters, by Moses Coit Tyler (New York, 1895). He records some of the American academical and other institutions that are directly or indirectly, due to Berkeley.

24.

The thought implied in this paragraph is pursued in my Philosophy of Theism, in which the ethical perfection of the Universal Mind is taken as the fundamental postulate in all human experience. If the Universal Mind is not ethically perfect, the universe (including our spiritual constitution) is radically untrustworthy.

25.

Life and Letters of Berkeley, p. 222.

26.

The third Earl of Shaftesbury, the pupil of Locke, and author of the Characteristics. In addition to the well-known biography by Dr. Fowler, the present eminent Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, Shaftesbury has been interpreted in two other lately published works—a Life by Benjamin Rand, Ph.D. (1900), and an edition of the Characteristics, with an Introduction and Notes, by John M. Robertson (1900).

27.

The title of this book is—Things Divine and Supernatural conceived by Analogy with Things Natural and Human, by the Author of The Procedure, Extent and Limits of the Human Understanding. The Divine Analogy appeared in 1733, and the Procedure in 1728.

28.

Spinoza argues that what is called “understanding” and “will” in God, has no more in common with human understanding and will than the dog-star in the heavens has with the animal we call a dog. See Spinoza's Ethica, I. 17, Scholium.

29.

The question of the knowableness of God, or Omnipotent Moral Perfection in the concrete, enters into recent philosophical and theological discussion in Britain. Calderwood, in his Philosophy of the Infinite (1854), was one of the earliest, and not the least acute, of Hamilton's critics in this matter. The subject is lucidly treated by Professor Andrew Seth (Pringle-Pattison) in his Lectures on Theism (1897) and in a supplement to Calderwood's Life (1900). So also Huxley's David Hume and Professor Iverach's Is God Knowable?

30.

Stewart's Works. vol. I. pp. 350-1.

31.

Berkeley MSS. possessed by Archdeacon Rose.

32.

Pope's poetic tribute to Berkeley belongs to this period— “Even in a bishop I can spy desert; Secker is decent; Rundle has a heart: Manners with candour are to Benson given, To Berkeley—every virtue under heaven.” Epilogue to the Satires. Also his satirical tribute to the critics of Berkeley— “Truth's sacred fort th' exploded laugh shall win; And Coxcombs vanquish Berkeley with a grin.” Essay on Satire, Part II.

33.

Berkeley's Life and Letters, p. 210.

34.

Bacon's Novuin Organum. Distributio Operis.

35.

Section 141.

36.

See “Editor's Preface to Alciphron.”

37.

Compare Essay II in the Guardian with this.

38.

Taylor, in later life, conformed to the Anglican Church.

39.

See Berkeley's Life and Letters, chap. viii.

40.

The Primacy.

41.

This seems to have been his eldest son, Henry.

42.

His son George was already settled at Christ Church. Henry, the eldest son, born in Rhode Island, was then “abroad in the south of France for his health,” as one of his brother George's letters tells us, found among the Johnson MSS.

43.

See Appendix D. Reid, like Berkeley, held that “matter cannot be the cause of anything,” but this not as a consequence of the new conception of the world presented to the senses, through which alone Berkeley opens his way to its powerlessness; although Reid supposes that in his youth he followed Berkeley in this too. See Thomas Reid (1898), in “Famous Scots Series,” where I have enlarged on this.

44.

Johnson MSS.

45.

That Berkeley was buried in Oxford is mentioned in his son's letter to Johnson, in which he says : “His remains are interred in the Cathedral of Christ Church, and next week a monument to his memory will be erected with an inscription by Dr. Markham, a Student of this College.” As the son was present at, and superintended the arrangements for his father's funeral, it can be no stretch of credulity to believe that he knew where his father was buried. It may be added that Berkeley himself had provided in his Will “that my body be buried in the churchyard of the parish in which I die.” The Will, dated July 31, 1752, is given in extenso in my Life and Letters of Berkeley, p. 345. We have also the record of burial in the Register of Christ Church Cathedral, which shews that “on January ye 20th 1753, ye Right Reverend John (sic) Berkley, Ld Bishop of Cloyne, was buryed” there. This disposes of the statement on p. 17 of Diprose's Account of the Parish of Saint Clement Danes (1868), that Berkeley was buried in that church. I may add that a beautiful memorial of Berkeley has lately been placed in the Cathedral of Cloyne, by subscriptions in this country and largely in America.

46.

“General ideas,” i.e. abstract general ideas, distinguished, in Berkeley's nominalism, from concrete general ideas, or from general names, which are signs of any one of an indefinite number of individual objects. Cf. Principles, Introduction, sect. 16.

47.

Introduction to the Principles of Human Knowledge.

48.

“co-existing ideas,” i.e. phenomena presented in uniform order to the senses.

49.

Newton postulates a world of matter and motion, governed mechanically by laws within itself: Berkeley finds himself charged with New Principles, demanded by reason, with which Newton's postulate is inconsistent.

50.

He attempts this in many parts of the Principles and Dialogues. He recognises the difficulty of reconciling his New Principles with the identity and permanence of sensible things.

51.

He contemplated thus early applications of his New Principles to Mathematics, afterwards made in his book of Principles, sect. 118-32.

52.

What Berkeley calls ideas are either perceptible by the senses or imagined: either way they are concrete: abstract ideas are empty words.

53.

i.e. the existence of bodies and qualities independently of—in abstraction from—all percipient mind. While the spiritual theism of Descartes is acceptable, he rejects his mechanical conception of the material world.

54.

But a “house” or a “church” includes more than visible ideas, so that we cannot, strictly speaking, be said to see it. We see immediately only visible signs of its invisible qualities.

55.

This is added in the margin.

56.

The total impotence of Matter, and the omnipotence of Mind or Spirit in Nature, is thus early becoming the dominant thought with Berkeley.

57.

This refers to an objection to the New Principles that is apparently reinforced by recent discoveries in geology. But if these contradict the Principles, so does the existence of a table while I am only seeing it.

58.

Existence, in short, can be realised only in the form of living percipient mind.

59.

Berkeley hardly distinguishes uncontingent mathematical relations, to which the sensible ideas or phenomena in which the relations are concretely manifested must conform.

60.

M. T. = matter tangible; M. V. = matter visible; M. . = matter sensible. The distinctions n question were made prominent in the Essay on Vision. See sect. 1, 121-45.

61.

Which the common supposition regarding primary qualities seems to contradict.

62.

[That need not have been blotted out—'tis good sense, if we do but determine wt we mean by thing and idea.]—Author, on blank page of the MS.

63.

See Locke's Essay, Bk. III. ch. 4, § 8, where he criticises attempts to define motion, as involving a petitio.

64.

George Cheyne, the physician (known afterwards as author of the English Malady), published in 1705 a work on Fluxions, which procured him admission to the Royal Society. He was born in 1670.

65.

This reminds us of Hume, and inclines towards the empirical notion of Causation, as merely constancy in sequence—not even continuous metamorphosis.

66.

This is Berkeley's objection to abstract, i.e. unperceived, quantities and infinitesimals—important in the sequel.

67.

The “lines and figures” of pure mathematics, that is to say; which he rejects as meaningless, in his horror unrealisable abstractions.

68.

Things really exist, that is to say, in degrees, e.g. in a lesser degree, when they are imagined than when they are actually perceived by our senses; but, in this wide meaning of existence, they may in both cases be said to exist.

69.

Added on blank page of the MS.

70.

In Berkeley's limitation of the term idea to what is presented objectively in sense, or represented concretely in imagination. Accordingly “an infinite idea” would be an idea which transcends ideation—an express contradiction.

71.

Does the human spirit depend on sensible ideas as much as they depend on spirit? Other orders of spiritual beings may be percipient of other sorts of phenomena than those presented in those few senses to which man is confined, although self-conscious activity abstracted from all sorts of presented phenomena seems impossible. But a self-conscious spirit is not necessarily dependent on our material world or our sense experience.

72.

[This I do not altogether approve of.]—Author, on margin.

73.

He afterwards guarded the difference, by contrasting notion and idea, confining the latter to phenomena presented objectively to our senses, or represented in sensuous imagination, and applying the former to intellectual apprehension of “operations of the mind,” and of “relations” among ideas.

74.

See Principles, sect. 89.

75.

Is thought, then, independent of language? Can we realise thought worthy of the name without use of words? This is Berkeley's excessive juvenile reaction against verbal abstractions.

76.

Every general notion is ideally realisable in one or other of its possible concrete or individual applications.

77.

This is the germ of Berkeley's notion of the objectivity of the material world to individual percipients and so of the rise of individual self-consciousness.

78.

Added by Berkeley on blank page of the MS.

79.

Cf. p. 420, note 2. Bishop Sprat's History of the Royal Society appeared in 1667.

80.

Much need; for what he means by idea has not been attended to by his critics.

81.

What “Second Book” is this? Does he refer to the “Second Part” of the Principles, which never appeared? God is the culmination of his philosophy, in Siris.

82.

This is Berkeley's material substance. Individual material substances are for him, steady aggregates of sense-given phenomena, having the efficient and final cause of their aggregation in eternally active Mind—active mind, human and Divine, being essential to their realisation for man.

83.

Cf. Introduction to the Principles, especially sect. 18-25.

84.

Stillingfleet charges Locke with “discarding substance out of the reasonable part of the world.”

85.

The philosophers supposed the real things to exist behind our ideas, in concealment: Berkeley was now beginning to think that the objective ideas or phenomena presented to the senses, the existence of which needs no proof, were themselves the significant and interpretable realities of physical science.

86.

If the material world can be real only in and through a percipient intelligence, as the realising factor.

87.

Cf. Principles, sect. 13, 119-122, which deny the possibility of an idea or mental picture corresponding to abstract number.

88.

“Præcedaneous,” i.e. precedent.

89.

Who refunds human as well as natural causation into Divine agency.

90.

In which Locke treats “Of the Reality of Knowledge,” including questions apt to lead Berkeley to inquire, Whether we could in reason suppose reality in the absence of all realising mind.

91.

Locke's “abstract idea” is misconceived and caricatured by Berkeley in his impetuosity.

92.

This and other passages refer to the scepticism, that is founded on the impossibility of our comparing our ideas of things with unperceived real things; so that we can never escape from the circle of subjectivity. Berkeley intended to refute this scepticism.

93.

Probably Samuel Madden, who afterwards edited the Querist.

94.

This “First Book” seems to be “Part I” of the projected Principles—the only Part ever published. Here he inclines to “perception or thought in general,” in the language of Descartes; but in the end he approximates to Locke's “sensation and reflection.” See Principles, sect. 1, and notes.

95.

Does he mean, like Hume afterwards, that ideas or phenomena constitute the ego, so that I am only the transitory conscious state of each moment?

96.

“Consciousness”—a term rarely used by Berkeley or his contemporaries.

97.

This too, if strictly interpreted, looks like an anticipation of Hume's reduction of the ego into successive “impressions”—“nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed one another with inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.” See Hume's Treatise, Part IV. sect. 6.

98.

What “Third Book” is here projected? Was a “Third Part” of the Principles then in embryo?

99.

This is scarcely done in the “Introduction” to the Principles.

100.

Berkeley, as we find in the Commonplace Book, is fond of conjecturing how a man all alone in the world, freed from the abstractions of language, would apprehend the realities of existence, which he must then face directly, without the use or abuse of verbal symbols.

101.

This “N. B.” is expanded in the Introduction to the Principles.

102.

Cf. Essay on Vision, sect. 4.

103.

What is immediately realised in our percipient experience must be presumed or trusted in as real, if we have any hold of reality, or the moral right to postulate that our universe is fundamentally trustworthy.

104.

But he distinguishes, in the Principles and elsewhere, between an idea of sense and a percipient ego.

105.

They reappear in Siris.

106.

In one of Berkeley's letters to Johnson, a quarter of a century after the Commonplace Book, when he was in America, he observes that “the mechanical philosophers pretend to demonstrate that matter is proportional to gravity. But their argument concludes nothing, and is a mere circle”—as he proceeds to show.

107.

In the Principles, sect. 1-33, he seeks to fulfil the expository part of this intention; in sect. 33-84, also in the Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, he is “particular in answering objections.”

108.

If Matter is arbitrarily credited with omnipotence.

109.

On freedom as implied in a moral and responsible agent, cf. Siris, sect. 257 and note.

110.

Is not this one way of expressing the Universal Providence and constant uniting agency of God in the material world?

111.

Here idea seems to be used in its wider signification, including notion.

112.

“infinitely greater”—Does infinity admit of imaginable degrees?

113.

'embrangled'—perplexed—involved in disputes.

114.

See Principles, Introduction, sect. 24.

115.

“homonymy,” i.e. equivocation.

116.

Voluntary or responsible activity is not an idea or datum of sense, nor can it be realised in sensuous imagination. He uses “thing” in the wide meaning which comprehends persons.

117.

Voluntary or responsible activity is not an idea or datum of sense, nor can it be realised in sensuous imagination. He uses “thing” in the wide meaning which comprehends persons.

118.

Is this consistent with other entries?

119.

Essay, Bk. II. ch. i. sect. 9-19.

120.

This is one way of meeting the difficulty of supposed interruptions of conscious or percipient activity.

121.

This seems to imply that voluntary action is mysteriously self-originated.

122.

“perception.” He does not include the percipient.

123.

“without,” i.e. unrealised by any percipient.

124.

This would make idea the term only for what is imagined, as distinguished from what is perceived in sense.

125.

In a strict use of words, only persons exercise will—not things.

126.

As we must do in imagination, which (unlike sense) is representative; for the mental images represent original data of sense-perception.

127.

Does he not allow that we have meaning, if not ideas, when we use the terms virtue and vice and moral action?

128.

As Locke says we are.

129.

“Existence and unity are ideas that are suggested to the understanding by every object without and every idea within. When ideas are in our minds, we consider that they exist.” Locke's Essay, Bk. II. ch. 7. sect. 7.

130.

i.e. of Existence in the abstract—unperceived and unperceiving—realised neither in percipient life nor in moral action.

131.

This suggests that God knows sensible things without being sentient of any.

132.

Cf. Principles, Introd., sect. 1-5.

133.

Cf. Preface to Principles; also to Dialogues.

134.

i.e. that ethics was a science of phenomena or ideas.

135.

i.e. of the independent existence of Matter.

136.

'bodies'—i.e. sensible things—not unrealised Matter.

137.

Cf. Principles, Introduction, sect. 13.

138.

Locke died in October, 1704.

139.

“without the mind,” i.e. abstracted from all active percipient life.

140.

e.g. secondary qualities of sensible things, in which pleasure and pain are prominent.

141.

e.g. primary qualities, in which pleasure and pain are latent.

142.

See Locke's Essay, Bk. II. ch. 13. § 21, ch. 17. § 4; also Bk. IV. ch. 3. § 6; also his controversy with Bishop Stillingfleet regarding the possibility of Matter thinking. With Berkeley real space is a finite creature, dependent for realisation on living percipient Spirit.

143.

But what of the origination of the volition itself?

144.

Essay, Bk. I. ch. iv. § 18. See also Locke's Letters to Stillingfleet.

145.

It is, according to Berkeley, the steady union or co-existence of a group of sense-phenomena.

146.

Essay, Bk. II. ch. i. § 10—where he argues for interruptions of consciousness. “Men think not always.”

147.

In other words, the material world is wholly impotent: all activity in the universe is spiritual.

148.

On the order of its four books and the structure of Locke's Essay, see the Prolegomena in my edition of the Essay, pp. liv-lviii.

149.

i.e. independent imperceptible Matter.

150.

What of the earliest geological periods, asks Ueberweg? But is there greater difficulty in such instances than in explaining the existence of a table or a house, while one is merely seeing, without touching?

151.

Locke explains “substance” as “an uncertain supposition of we know not what.” Essay, Bk. I. ch. 4. § 18.

152.

Locke makes certainty consist in the agreement of “our ideas with the reality of things.” See Essay, Bk. IV. ch. 4. § 18. Here the sceptical difficulty arises, which Berkeley meets under his Principle. If we have no perception of reality, we cannot compare our ideas with it, and so cannot have any criterion of reality.

153.

[This seems wrong. Certainty, real certainty, is of sensible ideas. I may be certain without affirmation or negation.—Author.] This needs further explanation.

154.

This entry and the preceding tends to resolve all judgments which are not what Kant calls analytical into contingent.

155.

See Locke's Essay, Bk. IV. ch. 1, §§ 3-7, and ch. 3. §§ 7-21. The stress Berkeley lays on “co-existence” is significant.

156.

i.e. we must not doubt the reality of the immediate data of sense but accept it, as “the mob” do.

157.

But is imagination different from actual perception only in degree of reality?

158.

Cf. Principles, sect. 13, 120; also Locke's Essay, Bk. II. ch. 7. sect. 7.

159.

Cf. Principles, Introduction, sect. 1.

160.

Berkeley's aim evidently is to deliver men from empty abstractions, by a return to more reasonably interpreted common-sense.

161.

The sort of external world that is intelligible to us is that of which another person is percipient, and which is objective to me, in a percipient experience foreign to mine.

162.

Cf. Berkeley's Arithmetica and Miscellanea Mathematica, published while he was making his entries in this Commonplace Book.

163.

Minima sensibilia?

164.

Pleasures, quâ pleasures, are natural causes of correlative desires, as pains or uneasinesses are of correlative aversions. This is implied in the very nature of pleasure and pain.

165.

Here we have his explanation of idea.

166.

Absent things.

167.

Here, as elsewhere, he resolves geometry, as strictly demonstrable, into a reasoned system of analytical or verbal propositions.

168.

Compare this with note 3, p. 34; also with the contrast between Sense and Reason, in Siris. Is the statement consistent with implied assumptions even in the Principles, apart from which they could not cohere?

169.

To have an idea of God—as Berkeley uses idea—would imply that God is an immediately perceptible, or at least an imaginable object.

170.

Cf. Principles, sect. 89.

171.

Ch. 11. § 5.

172.

Why add—“or perception”?

173.

Here we have Berkeley's favourite thought of the divine arbitrariness of the constitution of Nature, and of its laws of change.

174.

This suggests the puzzle, that the cause of every volition must be a preceding volition, and so on ad infinitum.

175.

Recherche, I. 19.

176.

i.e. of his own individual mind.

177.

i.e. to a percipient mind, but not necessarily to mine; for natural laws are independent of individual will, although the individual participates in perception of the ordered changes.

178.

Cf. the Arithmetica.

179.

i.e. which are not phenomena. This recognition of originative Will even then distinguished Berkeley.

180.

Is this Part II of the Principles, which was lost in Italy?

181.

The thought of articulate relations to which real existence must conform, was not then at least in Berkeley's mind. Hence the empiricism and sensationalism into which he occasionally seems to rush in the Commonplace Book, in his repulsion from empty abstractions.

182.

This is the essence of Berkeley's philosophy—“a blind agent is a contradiction.”

183.

This is the basis of Berkeley's reasoning for the necessarily unrepresentative character of the ideas or phenomena that are presented to our senses. They are the originals.

184.

Berkeley's horror of abstract or unperceived space and atoms is partly explained by dogmas in natural philosophy that are now antiquated.

185.

Ralph [?] Raphson, author of Demonstratio de Deo (1710), and also of De Spatio Reali, seu ente Infinito: conamen mathematico-metaphysicum (1697), to which Berkeley refers in one of his letters to Johnson. See also Green's Principles of Natural Philosophy (1712). The immanence of omnipotent goodness in the material world was unconsciously Berkeley's presupposition. In God we have our being.

186.

Note here Berkeley's version of the causal principle, which is really the central presupposition of his whole philosophy—viz. every event in the material world must be the issue of acting Will.

187.

So Locke on an ideally perfect memory. Essay, Bk. II. ch. x. § 9.

188.

John Sergeant was the author of Solid Philosophy asserted against the Fancies of the Ideists (London, 1697); also of the Method to Science (1696). He was a deserter from the Church of England to the Church of Rome, and wrote several pieces in defence of Roman theology—some of them in controversy with Tillotson.

189.

Spirit and Matter are mutually dependent; but Spirit is the realising factor and real agent in the universe.

190.

See Descartes, Meditations, III; Spinoza, Epist. II, ad Oldenburgium.

191.

Cf. Principles, sect. 2.

192.

Is “inclusion” here virtually a synonym for verbal definition?

193.

See Principles, sect. 2. The universe of Berkeley consists of Active Spirits that perceive and produce motion in impotent ideas or phenomena, realised in the percipient experience of persons. All supposed powers in Matter are refunded into Spirit.

194.

When self-conscious agents are included among “things.” We can have no sensuous image, i.e. idea, of spirit, although he maintains we can use the word intelligently.

195.

Berkeley insists that we should individualise our thinking—“ipsis consuescere rebus,” as Bacon says,—to escape the dangers of artificial signs. This is the drift of his assault on abstract ideas, and his repulsion from what is not concrete. He would even dispense with words in his meditations in case of being sophisticated by abstractions.

196.

Nature or the phenomenal world in short is the revelation of perfectly reasonable Will.

197.

Gerard De Vries, the Cartesian.

198.

Are the things of sense only modes in which percipient persons exist?

199.

See Locke's Essay, Bk. II. ch. 9. § 8.

200.

Time being relative to the capacity of the percipient.

201.

See Locke's Essay, Bk. II. ch. 9. § 8.

202.

To perceive what is not an idea (as Berkeley uses idea) is to perceive what is not realised, and therefore not real.

203.

So things have a potential objective existence in the Divine Will.

204.

With Berkeley, change is time, and time, abstracted from all changes, is meaningless.

205.

Could he know, by seeing only, even that he had a body?

206.

“the ideas attending these impressions,” i.e. the ideas that are correlatives of the (by us unperceived) organic impressions.

207.

The Italian physical and metaphysical philosopher Fardella (1650-1718) maintained, by reasonings akin to those of Malebranche, that the existence of the material world could not be scientifically proved, and could only be maintained by faith in authoritative revelation. See his Universæ Philosophiæ Systema (1690), and especially his Logica (1696).

208.

Locke's Essay, Bk. IV. ch. 11.

209.

What does he mean by “unknown substratum”?

210.

He gets rid of the infinite in quantity, because it is incapable of concrete manifestation to the senses. When a phenomenon given in sense reaches the minimum sensibile, it reaches what is for us the margin of realisable existence: it cannot be infinitely little and still a phenomenon: insensible phenomena of sense involve a contradiction. And so too of the infinitely large.

211.

In short he would idealise the visible world but not the tangible world. In the Principles, Berkeley idealises both.

212.

Cf. Essay on Vision, sect. 149-59, where he concludes that “neither abstract nor visible extension makes the object of geometry.”

213.

By the adult, who has learned to interpret its visual signs.

214.

Inasmuch as no physical consequences follow the volition; which however is still self-originated.

215.

“A succession of ideas I take to constitute time, and not to be only the sensible measure thereof, as Mr. Locke and others think.” (Berkeley's letter to Johnson.)

216.

Cf. Essay, Bk. II. ch. 16, sect. 8.

217.

Cf. Essay on Vision, sect. 67-77.

218.

Cf. Essay on Vision, sect. 88-120.

219.

This is of the essence of Berkeley's philosophy.

220.

But in moral freedom originates in the agent, instead of being “consecutive” to his voluntary acts or found only in their consequences.

221.

“Strigose” (strigosus)—meagre.

222.

As he afterwards expresses it, we have intelligible notions, but not ideas—sensuous pictures—of the states or acts of our minds.

223.

[“Omnes reales rerum proprietates continentur in Deo.” What means Le Clerc &c. by this? Log. I. ch. 8.]—Author, on margin.

224.

“Si non rogas intelligo.”

225.

This way of winning others to his own opinions is very characteristic of Berkeley. See p. 92 and note.

226.

See Third Dialogue, on sameness in things and sameness in persons, which it puzzles him to reconcile with his New Principles.

227.

Cf. Essay on Vision, sect. 52-61.

228.

Cf. Principles, sect. 101-134.

229.

“distance”—on opposite page in the MS. Cf. Essay on Vision, sect. 140.

230.

Direct perception of phenomena is adequate to the perceived phenomena; indirect or scientific perception is inadequate, leaving room for faith and trust.

231.

Cf. Essay on Vision, sect. 107-8.

232.

The Divine Ideas of Malebranche and the sensuous ideas of Berkeley differ.

233.

Cf. Essay on Vision, sect. 71.

234.

Cf. Malebranche, Recherche, Bk. I. c. 6. That and the following chapters seem to have been in Berkeley's mind.

235.

He here assumes that extension (visible) is implied in the visible idea we call colour.

236.

This strikingly illustrates Berkeley's use of “idea,” and what he intends when he argues against “abstract” ideas.

237.

An interesting autobiographical fact. From childhood he was indisposed to take things on trust.

238.

Essay on Vision, sect. 88-119.

239.

“thoughts,” i.e. ideas of sense?

240.

This, in a crude way, is the distinction of δύναμις and ἐνέργεια. It helps to explain Berkeley's meaning, when he occasionally speaks of the ideas or phenomena that appear in the sense experience of different persons as if they were absolutely independent entities.

241.

To be “in an unperceiving thing,” i.e. to be real, yet unperceived. Whatever is perceived is, because realised only through a percipient act, an idea—in Berkeley's use of the word.

242.

This as to the “Platonic strain” is not in the tone of Siris.

243.

John Keill (1671-1721), an eminent mathematician, educated at the University of Edinburgh; in 1710 Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, and the first to teach the Newtonian philosophy in that University. In 1708 he was engaged in a controversy in support of Newton's claims to the discovery of the method of fluxions.

244.

This suggests a negative argument for Kant's antinomies, and for Hamilton's law of the conditioned.

245.

Newton became Sir Isaac on April 16, 1705. Was this written before that date?

246.

These may be considered separately, but not pictured as such.

247.

In as far as they have not been sensibly realised in finite percipient mind.

248.

[Or rather that invisible length does exist.]—Author, on margin.

249.

Bonaventura Cavalieri (1598-1647), the Italian mathematician. His Geometry of Indivisibles (1635) prepared the way for the Calculus.

250.

[By “the excuse” is meant the finiteness of our mind—making it possible for contradictions to appear true to us.]—Author, on margin.

251.

He allows elsewhere that words with meanings not realisable in imagination, i.e. in the form of idea, may discharge a useful office. See Principles, Introduction, sect. 20.

252.

We do not perceive unperceived matter, but only matter realised in living perception—the percipient act being the factor of its reality.

253.

The secondary qualities of things.

254.

Because, while dependent on percipient sense, they are independent of my personal will, being determined to appear under natural law, by Divine agency.

255.

Keill's Introductio ad veram Physicam (Oxon. 1702)—Lectio 5—a curious work, dedicated to the Earl of Pembroke.

256.

[Extension without breadth—i. e. insensible, intangible length—is not conceivable. 'Tis a mistake we are led into by the doctrine of abstraction.]—Author, on margin of MS.

257.

Here “Sir Isaac.” Hence written after April, 1705.

258.

Essay, Bk. IV. ch. iv. sect. 18; ch. v. sect. 3, &c.

259.

He applies thing to self-conscious persons as well as to passive objects of sense.

260.

Scaligerana Secunda, p. 270.

261.

[These arguments must be proposed shorter and more separate in the Treatise.]—Author, on margin.

262.

“Idea” here used in its wider meaning—for “operations of mind,” as well as for sense presented phenomena that are independent of individual will. Cf. Principles, sect. 1.

263.

“sensations,” i.e. objective phenomena presented in sense.

264.

See Principles, sect. 1.

265.

See Principles, sect. 2.

266.

An “unperceiving thing” cannot be the factor of material reality.

267.

[To the utmost accuracy, wanting nothing of perfection. Their solutions of problems, themselves must own to fall infinitely short of perfection.]—Author, on margin.

268.

Jean de Billy and René de Billy, French mathematicians—the former author of Nova Geometriæ Clavis and other mathematical works.

269.

According to Baronius, in the fifth volume of his “Annals,” Ficinus appeared after death to Michael Mercatus—agreeably to a promise he made when he was alive—to assure him of the life of the human spirit after the death of the body.

270.

So far as we are factors of their reality, in sense and in science, or can be any practical way concerned with them.

271.

Cf. Principles, sect. 101-34.

272.

“something,” i.e. abstract something.

273.

Lord Pembroke (?)—to whom the Principles were dedicated, and to whom Locke dedicated his Essay.

274.

This is an interesting example of a feature that is conspicuous in Berkeley—the art of “humoring an opponent in his own way of thinking,” which it seems was an early habit. It is thus that he insinuates his New Principles in the Essay on Vision, and so prepares to unfold and defend them in the book of Principles and the three Dialogues—straining language to reconcile them with ordinary modes of speech.

275.

In Diderot's Lettre sur les aveugles, à l'usage de ceux qui voient, where Berkeley, Molyneux, Condillac, and others are mentioned. Cf. also Appendix, pp. 111, 112; and Theory of Vision Vindicated, sect. 71, with the note, in which some recorded experiments are alluded to.

276.

De Anima, II. 6, III. 1, &c. Aristotle assigns a pre-eminent intellectual value to the sense of sight. See, for instance, his Metaphysics, I. 1.

277.

Sir A. Grant, (Ethics of Aristotle, vol. II. p. 172) remarks, as to the doctrine that the Common Sensibles are apprehended concomitantly by the senses, that: “this is surely the true view; we see in the apprehension of number, figure, and the like, not an operation of sense, but the mind putting its own forms and categories, i.e. itself, on the external object. It would follow then that the senses cannot really be separated from the mind; the senses and the mind each contribute an element to every knowledge. Aristotle's doctrine of κοινὴ αἴσθησις would go far, if carried out, to modify his doctrine of the simple and innate character of the senses, e.g. sight (cf. Eth. II. 1, 4), and would prevent its collision with Berkeley's Theory of Vision.”—See also Sir W. Hamilton, Reid's Works, pp. 828-830. Dugald Stewart (Collected Works, vol. I. p. 341, note) quotes Aristotle's Ethics, II. 1, as evidence that Berkeley's doctrine, “with respect to the acquired perceptions of sight, was quite unknown to the best metaphysicians of antiquity.”

278.

A work resembling Berkeley's in its title, but in little else, appeared more than twenty years before the Essay—the Nova Visionis Theoria of Dr. Briggs, published in 1685.

279.

See Treatise on the Eye, vol. II. pp. 299, &c.

280.

See Reid's Inquiry, ch. v. §§ 3, 5, 6, 7; ch. vi. § 24, and Essays on the Intellectual Powers, II. ch. 10 and 19.

281.

While Sir W. Hamilton (Lectures on Metaphysics, lxxviii) acknowledges the scientific validity of Berkeley's conclusions, as to the way we judge of distances, he complains, in the same lecture, that “the whole question is thrown into doubt by the analogy of the lower animals,” i.e. by their probable visual instinct of distances; and elsewhere (Reid's Works, p. 137, note) he seems to hesitate about Locke's Solution of Molyneux's Problem, at least in its application to Cheselden's case. Cf. Leibniz, Nouveaux Essais, Liv. II. ch. 9, in connexion with this last.

282.

An almost solitary exception in Britain to this unusual uniformity on a subtle question in psychology is found in Samuel Bailey's Review of Berkeley's Theory of Vision, designed to show the unsoundness of that celebrated Speculation, which appeared in 1842. It was the subject of two interesting rejoinders—a well-weighed criticism, in the Westminster Review, by J.S. Mill, since republished in his Discussions; and an ingenious Essay by Professor Ferrier, in Blackwood's Magazine, republished in his Philosophical Remains. The controversy ended on that occasion with Bailey's Letter to a Philosopher in reply to some recent attempts to vindicate Berkeley's Theory of Vision, and in further elucidation of its unsoundness, and a reply to it by each of his critics. It was revived in 1864 by Mr. Abbott of Trinity College, Dublin, whose essay on Sight and Touch is “an attempt to disprove the received (or Berkeleian) Theory of Vision.”

283.

Afterwards (in 1733) Earl of Egmont. Born about 1683, he succeeded to the baronetcy in 1691, and, after sitting for a few years in the Irish House of Commons, was in 1715 created Baron Percival, in the Irish peerage. In 1732 he obtained a charter to colonise the province of Georgia in North America. His name appears in the list of subscribers to Berkeley's Bermuda Scheme in 1726. He died in 1748. He corresponded frequently with Berkeley from 1709 onwards.

284.

Similar terms are applied to the sense of seeing by writers with whom Berkeley was familiar. Thus Locke (Essay, II. ix. 9) refers to sight as “the most comprehensive of all our senses.” Descartes opens his Dioptrique by designating it as “le plus universal et le plus noble de nos sens;” and he alludes to it elsewhere (Princip. IV. 195) as “le plus subtil de tous les sens.” Malebranche begins his analysis of sight (Recherche, I. 6) by describing it as “le premier, le plus noble, et le plus étendu de tous les sens.” The high place assigned to this sense by Aristotle has been already alluded to. Its office, as the chief organ through which a conception of the material universe as placed in ambient space is given to us, is recognised by a multitude of psychologists and metaphysicians.

285.

On Berkeley's originality in his Theory of Vision see the Editor's Preface.

286.

In the first edition alone this sentence followed:—“In treating of all which, it seems to me, the writers of Optics have proceeded on wrong principles.”

287.

Sect. 2-51 explain the way in which we learn in seeing to judge of Distance or Outness, and of objects as existing remote from our organism, viz. by their association with what we see, and with certain muscular and other sensations in the eye which accompany vision. Sect. 2 assumes, as granted, the invisibility of distance in the line of sight. Cf. sect. 11 and 88—First Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous—Alciphron, IV. 8—Theory of Vision Vindicated and Explained, sect. 62-69.

288.

i.e. outness, or distance outward from the point of vision—distance in the line of sight—the third dimension of space. Visible distance is visible space or interval between two points (see sect. 112). We can be sensibly percipient of it only when both points are seen.

289.

This section is adduced by some of Berkeley's critics as if it were the evidence discovered by him for his Theory, instead of being, as it is, a passing reference to the scientific ground of the already acknowledged invisibility of outness, or distance in the line of sight. See, for example, Bailey's Review of Berkeley's Theory of Vision, pp. 38-43, also his Theory of Reasoning, p. 179 and pp. 200-7—Mill's Discussions, vol. II. p. 95—Abbott's Sight and Touch, p. 10, where this sentence is presented as “the sole positive argument advanced by Berkeley.” The invisibility of outness is not Berkeley's discovery, but the way we learn to interpret its visual signs, and what these are.

290.

i.e. aerial and linear perspective are acknowledged signs of remote distances. But the question, in this and the thirty-six following sections, concerns the visibility of near distances only—a few yards in front of us. It was “agreed by all” that beyond this limit distances are suggested by our experience of their signs.

291.

Cf. this and the four following sections with the quotations in the Editor's Preface, from Molyneux's Treatise of Dioptrics.

292.

In the author's last edition we have this annotation: “See what Des Cartes and others have written upon the subject.”

293.

In the first edition this section opens thus: “I have here set down the common current accounts that are given of our perceiving near distances by sight, which, though they are unquestionably received for true by mathematicians, and accordingly made use of by them in determining the apparent places of objects, do nevertheless,” &c.

294.

Omitted in the author's last edition.

295.

i.e. although immediately invisible, it is mediately seen. Mark, here and elsewhere, the ambiguity of the term perception, which now signifies the act of being conscious of sensuous phenomena, and again the act of inferring phenomena of which we are at the time insentient; while it is also applied to the object perceived instead of to the percipient act; and sometimes to imagination, and the higher acts of intelligence.

296.

“Some men”—“mathematicians,” in first edition.

297.

i.e. the mediate perception.

298.

“any man”—“all the mathematicians in the world,” in first edition.

299.

Omitted in the author's last edition.

300.

Omitted in the author's last edition.

301.

Sect. 3, 9.

302.

Observe the first introduction by Berkeley of the term suggestion, used by him to express a leading factor in his account of the visible world, and again in his more comprehensive account of our knowledge of the material universe in the Principles. It had been employed occasionally, among others, by Hobbes and Locke. There are three ways in which the objects we have an immediate perception of in sight may be supposed to conduct us to what we do not immediately perceive: (1) Instinct, or what Reid calls “original suggestion” (Inquiry, ch. VI. sect. 20-24); (2) Custom; (3) Reasoning from accepted premisses. Berkeley's “suggestion” corresponds to the second. (Cf. Theory of Vision Vindicated, sect. 42.)

303.

In the Theory of Vision Vindicated, sect. 66, it is added that this “sensation” belongs properly to the sense of touch. Cf. also sect. 145 of this Essay.

304.

Here “natural”=“necessary”: elsewhere=divinely arbitrary connexion.

305.

That our mediate vision of outness and of objects as thus external, is due to media which have a contingent or arbitrary, instead of a necessary, connexion with the distances which they enable us to see, or of which they are the signs, is a cardinal part of his argument.

306.

Sect. 2.

307.

Here, as generally in the Essay, the appeal is to our inward experience, not to phenomena observed by our senses in the organism.

308.

See sect. 35 for the difference between confused and faint vision. Cf. sect. 32-38 with this section. Also Theory of Vision Vindicated, sect. 68.

309.

See sect. 6.

310.

These sections presuppose previous contiguity as an associative law of mental phenomena.

311.

See Reid's Inquiry, ch. vi. sect. 22.

312.

Sect. 16-27.—For the signs of remote distances, see sect. 3.

313.

These are muscular sensations felt in the organ, and degrees of confusion in a visible idea. Berkeley's “arbitrary” signs of distance, near and remote, are either (a) invisible states of the visual organ, or (b) visible appearances.

314.

In Molyneux's Treatise of Dioptrics, Pt. I. prop. 31, sect. 9, Barrow's difficulty is stated. Cf. sect. 40 below.

315.

Christopher Scheiner, a German astronomer, and opponent of the Copernican system, born 1575, died 1650.

316.

Andrea Tacquet, a mathematician, born at Antwerp in 1611, and referred to by Molyneux as “the ingenious Jesuit.” He published a number of scientific treatises, most of which appeared after his death, in a collected form, at Antwerp in 1669.

317.

In what follows Berkeley tries to explain by his visual theory seeming contradictions which puzzled the mathematicians.

318.

This is offered as a verification of the theory that near distances are suggested, according to the order of nature, by non-resembling visual signs, contingently connected with real distance.

319.

Cf. sect. 78; also New Theory of Vision Vindicated, sect. 31.

320.

Berkeley here passes from his proof of visual “suggestion” of all outward distances—i.e. intervals between extremes in the line of sight—by means of arbitrary signs, and considers the nature of visible externality. See note in Hamilton's Reid, p. 177, on the distinction between perception of the external world and perception of distance through the eye.

321.

See Descartes, Dioptrique, VI—Malebranche, Recherche, Liv. I. ch. 9, 3—Reid's Inquiry, VI. 11.

322.

Berkeley here begins to found, on the experienced connexion between extension and colour, and between visible and tangible extension, a proof that outness is invisible. From Aristotle onwards it has been assumed that colour is the only phenomenon of which we are immediately percipient in seeing. Visible extension, visible figure, and visible motion are accordingly taken to be dependent on the sensation of colour.

323.

In connexion with this and the next illustration, Berkeley seems to argue that we are not only unable to see distance in the line of sight, but also that we do not see a distant object in its real visible magnitude. But elsewhere he affirms that only tangible magnitude is entitled to be called real. Cf. sect. 55, 59, 61.

324.

The sceptical objections to the trustworthiness of the senses, proposed by the Eleatics and others, referred to by Descartes in his Meditations, and by Malebranche in the First Book of his Recherche, may have suggested the illustrations in this section. Cf. also Hume's Essay On the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy. The sceptical difficulty is founded on the assumption that the object seen at different distances is the same visible object: it is really different, and so the difficulty vanishes.

325.

Here Berkeley expressly introduces “touch”—a term which with him includes, not merely organic sense of contact, but also muscular and locomotive sense-experience. After this he begins to unfold the antithesis of visual and tactual phenomena, whose subsequent synthesis it is the aim of the New Theory to explain. Cf. Principles of Human Knowledge, sect. 43—Theory of Vision Vindicated, sect. 22 and 25. Note here Berkeley's reticence of his idealization of Matter—tangible as well as visible. Cf. Principles, sect. 44.

326.

This connexion of our knowledge of distance with our locomotive experience points to a theory which ultimately resolves space into experience of unimpeded locomotion.

327.

Locke (Essay, Introduction, § 8) takes idea vaguely as “the term which serves best to stand whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks.” Oversight of what Berkeley intends the term idea has made his whole conception of nature and the material universe a riddle to many, of which afterwards.

328.

The expressive term “outness,” favoured by Berkeley, is here first used.

329.

“We get the idea of Space,” says Locke, “both by our sight and touch” (Essay, II. 13. § 2). Locke did not contemplate Berkeley's antithesis of visible and tangible extension, and the consequent ambiguity of the term extension; which sometimes signifies coloured, and at others resistant experience in sense.

330.

For an explanation of this difficulty, see sect. 144.

331.

“object”—“thing,” in the earlier editions.

332.

This is the issue of the analytical portion of the Essay.

333.

Cf. sect. 139-40.

334.

Here the question of externality, signifying independence of all percipient life, is again mixed up with that of the invisibility of distance outwards in the line of sight.

335.

Omitted in author's last edition.

336.

i.e. including muscular and locomotive experience as well as sense of contact. But what are the tangibilia themselves? Are they also significant, like visibilia, of a still ulterior reality? This is the problem of the Principles of Human Knowledge.

337.

In this section the conception of a natural Visual Language, makes its appearance, with its implication that Nature is (for us) virtually Spirit. Cf. sect. 140, 147—Principles, sect. 44—Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous—Alciphron, IV. 8, 11—and Theory of Vision Vindicated, passim.

338.

Sect. 52-87 treat of the invisibility of real, i.e. tactual, Magnitude. Cf. Theory of Vision Vindicated, sect. 54-61.

339.

Sect. 8-15.

340.

Sect. 41, &c.

341.

See Molyneux's Treatise on Dioptrics, B. I. prop. 28.

342.

See sect. 122-126.

343.

In short there is a point at which, with our limited sense, we cease to be percipient of colour, in seeing; and of resistance, in locomotion. Though Berkeley regards all visible extensions as sensible, and therefore dependent for their reality on being realised by sentient mind, he does not mean that mind or consciousness is extended. With him, extension, though it exists only in mind,—i.e. as an idea seen, in the case of visible extension, and as an idea touched, in the case of tangible extension,—is yet no property of mind. Mind can exist without being percipient of extension, although extension cannot be realised without mind.

344.

But this is true, though less obviously, of tangible as well as of visible objects.

345.

Sect. 49.

346.

Cf. sect. 139, 140, &c.

347.

“situation”—not in the earlier editions.

348.

Sect. 55.

349.

Omitted in the author's last edition.

350.

Ordinary sight is virtually foresight. Cf. sect. 85.—See also Malebranche on the external senses, as given primarily for the urgent needs of embodied life, not to immediately convey scientific knowledge, Recherche, Liv. I. ch. 5, 6, 9, &c.

351.

Sect. 44.—See also sect. 55, and note.

352.

This supposes “settled” tangibilia, but not “settled” visibilia. Yet the sensible extension given in touch and locomotive experience is also relative—an object being felt as larger or smaller according to the state of the organism, and the other conditions of our embodied perception.

353.

What follows, to end of sect. 63, added in the author's last edition.

354.

“outward objects,” i.e. objects of which we are percipient in tactual experience, taken in this Essay provisionally as the real external objects. See Principles, sect. 44.

355.

Cf. sect. 144. Note, in this and the three preceding sections, the stress laid on the arbitrariness of the connexion between the signs which suggest magnitudes, or other modes of extension, and their significates. This is the foundation of the New Theory; which thus resolves physical causality into a relation of signs to what they signify and predict—analogous to the relation between words and their accepted meanings.

356.

In sect. 67-78, Berkeley attempts to verify the foregoing account of the natural signs of Size, by applying it to solve a phenomenon, the cause of which had been long debated among men of science—the visible magnitude of heavenly bodies when seen in the horizon.

357.

Cf. sect. 10.

358.

Omitted in the author's last edition. Cf sect. 76, 77.—The explanation in question is attributed to Alhazen, and by Bacon to Ptolemy, while it is sanctioned by eminent scientific names before and since Berkeley.

359.

“Fourthly” in the second edition. Cf. what follows with sect. 74. Why “lesser”?

360.

When Berkeley, some years afterwards, visited Italy, he remarked that distant objects appeared to him much nearer than they really were—a phenomenon which he attributed to the comparative purity of the southern air.

361.

i.e. the original perception, apart from any synthetic operation of suggestion and inferential thought, founded on visual signs.

362.

In Riccioli's Almagest, II. lib. X. sect. 6. quest. 14, we have an account of many hypotheses then current, in explanation of the apparent magnitude of the horizontal moon.

363.

Gassendi's “Epistolæ quatuor de apparente magnitudine solis humilis et sublimis.”—Opera, tom. III pp. 420-477. Cf. Appendix to this Essay, p. 110.

364.

See Dioptrique, VI.

365.

Opera Latina, vol. I, p. 376, vol. II, pp. 26-62; English Works, vol. I. p. 462. (Molesworth's Edition.)

366.

The paper in the Transactions is by Molyneux.

367.

See Smith's Optics, pp. 64-67, and Remarks, pp. 48, &c. At p. 55 Berkeley's New Theory is referred to, and pronounced to be at variance with experience. Smith concludes by saying, that in “the second edition of Berkeley's Essay, and also in a Vindication and Explanation of it (called the Visual Language), very lately published, the author has made some additions to his solution of the said phenomenon; but seeing it still involves and depends on the principle of faintness, I may leave the rest of it to the reader's consideration.” This, which appeared in 1738, is one of the very few early references to Berkeley's New Theory of Vision Vindicated.

368.

Sect. 2-51.

369.

This sentence is omitted in the author's last edition.

370.

What follows to the end of this section is not contained in the first edition.

371.

i.e. tangible.

372.

Cf. sect. 38; and Theory of Vision Vindicated, sect. 31.

373.

“Never”—“hardly,” in first edition.

374.

Cf. Appendix, p. 208.—See Smith's Optics, B. I. ch. v, and Remarks, p. 56, in which he “leaves it to be considered, whether the said phenomenon is not as clear an instance of the insufficiency of faintness” as of mathematical computation.

375.

A favourite doctrine with Berkeley, according to whose theory of visibles there can be no absolute visible magnitude, the minimum being the least that is perceivable by each seeing subject, and thus relative to his visual capacity. This section is thus criticised, in January, 1752, in a letter signed “Anti-Berkeley,” in the Gent. Mag. (vol. XXII, p. 12): “Upon what his lordship asserts with respect to the minimum visibile, I would observe that it is certain that there are infinite numbers of animals which are imperceptible to the naked eye, and cannot be perceived but by the help of a microscope; consequently there are animals whose whole bodies are far less than the minimum visibile of a man. Doubtless these animals have eyes, and, if their minimum visibile were equal to that of a man, it would follow that they cannot perceive anything but what is much larger than their whole body; and therefore their own bodies must be invisible to them, because we know they are so to men, whose minimum visibile is asserted by his lordship to be equal to theirs.” There is some misconception in this. Cf. Appendix to Essay, p. 209.

376.

Those two defects belong to human consciousness. See Locke's Essay, II. 10, on the defects of human memory. It is this imperfection which makes reasoning needful—to assist finite intuition. Reasoning is the sign at once of our dignity and our weakness.

377.

Sect. 59.

378.

Sect. 80-82.

379.

Sect. 88-119 relate to the nature, invisibility, and arbitrary visual signs of Situation, or of the localities of tangible things. Cf. Theory of Vision Vindicated, sect. 44-53.

380.

Cf. sect. 2, 114, 116, 118.

381.

This illustration is taken from Descartes. See Appendix.

382.

Sect. 10 and 19.

383.

Sect. 2-51.

384.

Omitted in author's last edition.

385.

This is Berkeley's universal solvent of the psychological difficulties involved in visual-perception.

386.

Cf. sect. 103, 106, 110, 128, &c. Berkeley treats this case hypothetically in the Essay, in defect of actual experiments upon the born-blind, since accumulated from Cheselden downwards. See however the Appendix, and Theory of Vision Vindicated, sect. 71.

387.

i.e. tangible things. Cf. Principles, sect. 44.

388.

The “prejudice,” to wit, which Berkeley would dissolve by his introspective analysis of vision. Cf. Theory of Vision Vindicated, sect. 35.

389.

Thus forming individual concrete things out of what is perceived separately through different senses.

390.

This briefly is Berkeley's solution of “the knot about inverted images,” which long puzzled men of science.

391.

i.e. perceive mediately—visible objects, per se, having no tactual situation. Pure vision, he would say, has nothing to do with “high” and “low,” “great” and “inverted,” in the real or tactual meaning of those terms.

392.

i.e. tangible.

393.

e.g. “extension,” which, according to Berkeley, is an equivocal term, common (in its different meanings) to visibilia and tangibilia. Cf. sect. 139, 140.

394.

Cf. sect. 93, 106, 110, 128.

395.

i.e. real or tangible head.

396.

Cf. sect. 140, 143. In the Gent. Mag. (vol. XXII. p. 12), “Anti-Berkeley” thus argues the case of one born blind. “This man,” he adds, “would, by being accustomed to feel one hand with the other, have perceived that the extremity of the hand was divided into fingers—that the extremities of these fingers were distinguished by certain hard, smooth surfaces, of a different texture from the rest of the fingers—and that each finger had certain joints or flexures. Now, if this man was restored to sight, and immediately viewed his hand before he touched it again, it is manifest that the divisions of the extremity of the hand into fingers would be visibly perceived. He would note too the small spaces at the extremity of each finger, which affected his sight differently from the rest of the fingers; upon moving his fingers he would see the joints. Though therefore, by means of this lately acquired sense of seeing, the object affected his mind in a new and different manner from what it did before, yet, as by touch he had acquired the knowledge of these several divisions, marks, and distinctions of the hand, and, as the new object of sight appeared to be divided, marked, and distinguished in a similar manner, I think he would certainly conclude, before he touched his hand, that the thing which he now saw was the same which he had felt before and called his hand.”

397.

Locke, Essay, II. 8, 16. Aristotle regards number as a Common Sensible.—De Anima, II. 6, III. 1.

398.

“If the visible appearance of two shillings had been found connected from the beginning with the tangible idea of one shilling, that appearance would as naturally and readily have signified the unity of the (tangible) object as it now signifies its duplicity.” Reid, Inquiry, VI. 11.

399.

Here again note Berkeley's inconvenient reticence of his full theory of matter, as dependent on percipient life for its reality. Tangible things are meantime granted to be real “without mind.” Cf. Principles, sect. 43, 44. “Without the mind”—in contrast to sensuous phenomenon only.

400.

Cf. sect. 131.

401.

Sect. 2, 88, 116, 118.

402.

In short, we see only quantities of colour—the real or tactual distance, size, shape, locality, up and down, right and left, &c., being gradually associated with the various visible modifications of colour.

403.

i.e. tangible.

404.

Sect. 41-44.

405.

i.e. tangible things.

406.

i.e. visible.

407.

Cf. sect. 41-44. The “eyes”—visible and tangible—are themselves objects of sense.

408.

Cf. Principles, Introduction, sect. 21-25.

409.

“Visible ideas”—including sensations muscular and locomotive, felt in the organ of vision. Sect. 16, 27, 57.

410.

i.e. objects which, in this tentative Essay, are granted, for argument's sake, to be external, or independent of percipient mind.

411.

i.e. to inquire whether there are, in this instance, Common Sensibles; and, in particular, whether an extension of the same kind at least, if not numerically the same, is presented in each. The Kantian theory of an a priori intuition of space, the common condition of tactual and visual experience, because implied in sense-experience as such, is not conceived by Berkeley. Cf. Theory of Vision Vindicated, sect. 15.

412.

In the following reasoning against abstract, as distinguished from concrete or sense presented (visible or tangible) extension, Berkeley urges some of his favourite objections to “abstract ideas,” fully unfolded in his Principles, Introduction, sect. 6-20.—See also Alciphron, VII. 5-8.—Defence of Free Thinking in Mathematics, sect. 45-48.

413.

Berkeley's ideas are concrete or particular—immediate data of sense or imagination.

414.

i.e. it cannot be individualized, either as a perceived or an imagined object.

415.

Sect. 105.

416.

“Endeavours” in first edition.

417.

i.e. a mental image of an abstraction, an impossible image, in which the extension and comprehension of the notion must be adequately pictured.

418.

“deservedly admired author,” in the first edition.

419.

“this celebrated author,”—“that great man” in second edition. In assailing Locke's “abstract idea,” he discharges the meaning which Locke intended by the term, and then demolishes his own figment.

420.

Omitted in the author's last edition.

421.

Omitted in last edition.

422.

Omitted in last edition.

423.

Omitted in last edition.

424.

See Principles, passim.

425.

Omitted in author's last edition.

426.

He probably has Locke in his eye.

427.

On Berkeley's theory, space without relation to bodies (i.e. insensible or abstract space) would not be extended, as not having parts; inasmuch as parts can be assigned to it only with relation to bodies. Berkeley does not distinguish space from sensible extension. Cf. Reid's Works, p. 126, note—in which Sir W. Hamilton suggests that one may have an a priori conception of pure space, and also an a posteriori perception of finite, concrete space.

428.

Sect. 121. Cf. New Theory of Vision Vindicated, sect. 15.

429.

i.e. there are no Common Sensibles: from which it follows that we can reason from the one sense to the other only by founding on the constant connexion of their respective phenomena, under a natural yet (for us) contingent law. Cf. New Theory of Vision Vindicated, sect. 27, 28.

430.

Omitted in last edition.

431.

Cf. sect. 93, 103, 106, 110.

432.

Omitted in last edition.

433.

Cf. sect. 43, 103, &c. A plurality of co-existent minima of coloured points constitutes Berkeley's visible extension; while a plurality of successively experienced minima of resistant points constitutes his tactual extension. Whether we can perceive visible extension without experience of muscular movement at least in the eye, he does not here say.

434.

Omitted in last edition.

435.

Real distance belongs originally, according to the Essay, to our tactual experience only—in the wide meaning of touch, which includes muscular and locomotive perceptions, as well as the simple perception of contact.

436.

Added in second edition.

437.

Omitted in last edition.

438.

See also Locke's “Correspondence” with Molyneux, in Locke's Works, vol. IX. p. 34.—Leibniz, Nouveaux Essais, Liv. II. ch. 9, who, so far granting the fact, disputes the heterogeneity.—Smith's Optics.—Remarks, §§ 161-170.—Hamilton's Reid, p. 137, note, and Lect. Metaph. II. p. 176.

439.

Omitted in last edition.

440.

Cf. Theory of Vision Vindicated, sect. 70.

441.

Cf. sect. 49, 146, &c. Here “same” includes “similar.”

442.

i.e. visible and tangible motions being absolutely heterogeneous, and the former, at man's point of view, only contingent signs of the latter, we should not, at first sight, be able to interpret the visual signs of tactual phenomena.

443.

Cf. sect. 122-125.

444.

Cf. Principles, sect. 111-116; also Analyst, query 12. On Berkeley's system space in its three dimensions is unrealisable without experience of motion.

445.

Here the term “language of nature” makes its appearance, as applicable to the ideas or visual signs of tactual realities.

446.

Cf. sect. 16, 27, 97.

447.

Is “tangible” here used in its narrow meaning—excluding muscular and locomotive experience?

448.

i.e. as natural signs, divinely associated with their thus implied meanings.

449.

Cf. New Theory of Vision Vindicated, sect. 35.

450.

Berkeley, in this section, enunciates the principal conclusion in the Essay, which conclusion indeed forms his new theory of Vision.

451.

A suggestion thus due to natural laws of association. The explanation of the fact that we apprehend, by those ideas or phenomena which are objects of sight, certain other ideas, which neither resemble them, nor efficiently cause them, nor are so caused by them, nor have any necessary connexion with them, comprehends, according to Berkeley, the whole Theory of Vision. “The imagination of every thinking person,” remarks Adam Smith, “will supply him with instances to prove that the ideas received by any one of the senses do readily excite such other ideas, either of the same sense or of any other, as have habitually been associated with them. So that if, on this account, we are to suppose, with a late ingenious writer, that the ideas of sight constitute a Visual Language, because they readily suggest the corresponding ideas of touch—as the terms of a language excite the ideas answering to them—I see not but we may, for the same reason, allow of a tangible, audible, gustatory, and olefactory language; though doubtless the Visual Language will be abundantly more copious than the rest.” Smith's Optics.—Remarks, p. 29.—And into this conception of a universal sense symbolism, Berkeley's theory of Vision ultimately rises.

452.

Cf. Alciphron, Dialogue IV. sect. 11-15.

453.

Sect. 122-125.

454.

Sect. 127-138.

455.

Some modern metaphysicians would say, that neither tangible nor visible extension is the object geometry, but abstract extension; and others that space is a necessary implicate of sense-experience, rather than, per se, an object of any single sense. Cf. Kant's explanation of the origin of our mathematical knowledge, Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Elementarlehre, I.

456.

Cf. sect. 51-66, 144.

457.

This is a conjecture, not as to the probable ideas of one born blind, but as to the ideas of an “unbodied” intelligence, whose only sense was that of seeing. See Reid's speculation (Inquiry, VI. 9) on the “Geometry of Visibles,” and the mental experience of Idomenians, or imaginary beings supposed to have no ideas of the material world except those got by seeing.

458.

Cf. sect. 130, and New Theory of Vision Vindicated, sect. 57. Does Berkeley, in this and the two preceding sections, mean to hint that the only proper object of sight is unextended colour; and that, apart from muscular movement in the eye or other locomotion, visibilia resolve into unextended mathematical points? This question has not escaped more recent British psychologists, including Stewart, Brown, Mill, and Bain, who seem to hold that unextended colour is perceivable and imaginable.

459.

The bracketed sentence is not retained in the author's last edition, in which the first sentence of sect. 160 is the concluding one of sect. 159, and of the Essay.

460.

This passage is contained in the Dioptrices of Descartes, VI. 13; see also VI. 11.

461.

The arbitrariness or contingency—as far as our knowledge carries us—of the connexion between the visual phenomena, as signs, on the one hand, and actual distance, as perceived through this means, on the other.

462.

Cf. sect. 80-83.

463.

The reference here seems to be to the case described in the Tatler (No. 55) of August 16, 1709, in which William Jones, born blind, had received sight after a surgical operation, at the age of twenty, on the 29th of June preceding. A medical narrative of this case appeared, entitled A full and true account of a miraculous cure of a Young Man in Newington, who was born blind, and was in five minutes brought to perfect sight, by Mr. Roger Grant, oculist. London, 1709.

464.

Cf. New Theory of Vision Vindicated, sect. 71, with the relative note.

465.

Omitted on the title-page in the second edition, but retained in the body of the work.

466.

Beardsley's Life and Correspondence of Samuel Johnson, D.D., First President of King's College, New York, p. 72 (1874).

467.

Beardsley's Life of Johnson, pp. 71, 72.

468.

Chandler's Life of Johnson, Appendix, p. 161.

469.

Commonplace Book.

470.

Moreover, even if the outness or distance of things were visible, it would not follow that either they or their distances could be real if unperceived. On the contrary, Berkeley implies that they are perceived visually.

471.

It is also to be remembered that sensible things exist “in mind,” without being exclusively mine, as creatures of my will. In one sense, that only is mine in which my will exerts itself. But, in another view, my involuntary states of feeling and imagination are mine, because their existence depends on my consciousness of them; and even sensible things are so far mine, because, though present in many minds in common, they are, for me, dependent on my percipient mind.

472.

Thomas Herbert, eighth Earl of Pembroke and fifth Earl of Montgomery, was the correspondent and friend of Locke—who dedicated his famous Essay to him, as a work “having some little correspondence with some parts of that nobler and vast system of the sciences your lordship has made so new, exact, and instructive a draft of.” He represents a family renowned in English political and literary history. He was born in 1656; was a nobleman of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1672; succeeded to his titles in 1683; was sworn of the Privy Council in 1689; and made a Knight of the Garter in 1700. He filled some of the highest offices in the state, in the reigns of William and Mary, and of Anne. He was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1707, having previously been one of the Commissioners by whom the union between England and Scotland was negotiated. He died in January 1733.

473.

Trinity College, Dublin.

474.

In his Commonplace Book Berkeley seems to refer his speculations to his boyhood. The conception of the material world propounded in the following Treatise was in his view before the publication of the New Theory of Vision, which was intended to prepare the way for it.

475.

Cf. Locke, in the “Epistle Dedicatory” of his Essay. Notwithstanding the “novelty” of the New Principles, viz. negation of abstract or unperceived Matter, Space, Time, Substance, and Power; and affirmation of Mind, as the Synthesis, Substance, and Cause of all—much in best preceding philosophy, ancient and modern, was a dim anticipation of it.

476.

Cf. sect. 6, 22, 24, &c., in illustration of the demonstrative claim of Berkeley's initial doctrine.

477.

Berkeley entreats his reader, here and throughout, to take pains to understand his meaning, and especially to avoid confounding the ordered ideas or phenomena, objectively presented to our senses, with capricious chimeras of imagination.

478.

“Philosophy is nothing but the true knowledge of things.” Locke.

479.

The purpose of those early essays of Berkeley was to reconcile philosophy with common sense, by employing reflection to make latent common sense, or common reason, reveal itself in its genuine integrity. Cf. the closing sentences in the Third Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous.

480.

Cf. Locke's Essay, Introduction, sect. 4-7; Bk. II. ch. 23, § 12, &c. Locke (who is probably here in Berkeley's eye) attributes the perplexities of philosophy to our narrow faculties, which are meant to regulate our lives, not to remove all mysteries. See also Descartes, Principia, I. 26, 27, &c.; Malebranche, Recherche, III. 2.

481.

His most significant forerunners were Descartes in his Principia, and Locke in his Essay.

482.

Here “idea” and “notion” seem to be used convertibly. See sect. 142. Cf. with the argument against abstract ideas, unfolded in the remainder of the Introduction, Principles, sect. 97-100, 118-132, 143; New Theory of Vision, sect. 122-125; Alciphron, Dial. vii. 5-7; Defence of Free Thinking in Mathematics, sect. 45-48. Also Siris, sect. 323, 335, &c., where he distinguishes Idea in a higher meaning from his sensuous ideas. As mentioned in my Preface, the third edition of Alciphron, published in 1752, the year before Berkeley died, omits the three sections of the Seventh Dialogue which repeat the following argument against abstract ideas.

483.

As in Derodon's Logica, Pt. II. c. 6, 7; Philosophia Contracta, I. i. §§ 7-11; and Gassendi, Leg. Instit., I. 8; also Cudworth, Eternal and Immutable Morality, Bk. IV.

484.

Omitted in second edition.

485.

We must remember that what Berkeley intends by an idea is either a percept of sense, or a sensuous imagination; and his argument is that none of these can be an abstraction. We can neither perceive nor imagine what is not concrete and part of a succession.

486.

“abstract notions”—here used convertibly with “abstract ideas.” Cf. Principles, sect. 89 and 142, on the special meaning of notion.

487.

Supposed by Berkeley to mean, that we can imagine, in abstraction from all phenomena presented in concrete experience, e.g. imagine existence, in abstraction from all phenomena in which it manifests itself to us; or matter, stripped of all the phenomena in which it is realised in sense.

488.

Omitted in second edition.

489.

Locke.

490.

Descartes, who regarded brutes as (sentient?) machines.

491.

“To this I cannot assent, being of opinion that a word,” &c.—in first edition.

492.

“an idea,” i.e. a concrete mental picture.

493.

So that “generality” in an idea is our “consideration” of a particular idea (e.g. a “particular motion” or a “particular extension”) not per se, but under general relations, which that particular idea exemplifies, and which, as he shews, may be signified by a corresponding word. All ideas (in Berkeley's confined meaning of “idea”) are particular. We rise above particular ideas by an intellectual apprehension of their relations; not by forming abstract pictures, which are contradictory absurdities.

494.

Locke is surely misconceived. He does not say, as Berkeley seems to suppose, that in forming “abstract ideas,” we are forming abstract mental images—pictures in the mind that are not individual pictures.

495.

Does Locke intend more than this, although he expresses his meaning in ambiguous words?

496.

It is a particular idea, but considered relatively—a significant particular idea, in other words. We realise our notions in examples, and these must be concrete.

497.

i.e. “ideas” in Locke's meaning of idea, under which he comprehends, not only the particular ideas of sense and imagination—Berkeley's “ideas”—but these considered relatively, and so seen intellectually, when Locke calls them abstract, general, or universal. Omniscience in its all-comprehensive intuition may not require, or even admit, such general ideas.

498.

Here and in what follows, “abstract notion,” “universal notion,” instead of abstract idea. Notion seems to be here a synonym for idea, and not taken in the special meaning which he afterwards attached to the term, when he contrasted it with idea.

499.

“notions,” again synonymous with ideas, which are all particular or concrete, in his meaning of idea, when he uses it strictly.

500.

idea, i.e. individual mental picture.

501.

In all this he takes no account of the intellectual relations necessarily embodied in concrete knowledge, and without which experience could not cohere.

502.

“have in view,” i.e. actually realise in imagination.

503.

What follows, to the end of this section, was added in the second or 1734 edition.

504.

So Bacon in many passages of his De Augmentis Scientiarium and Novum Organum.

505.

“wide influence,”—“wide and extended sway”—in first edition.

506.

“idea,” i.e. individual datum of sense or of imagination.

507.

See Leibniz on Symbolical Knowledge (Opera Philosophica, pp. 79, 80, Erdmann), and Stewart in his Elements, vol. I. ch. 4, § 1, on our habit of using language without realising, in individual examples or ideas, the meanings of the common terms used.

508.

“doth”—“does,” here and elsewhere in first edition.

509.

“ideas,” i.e. representations in imagination of any of the individual objects to which the names are applicable. The sound or sight of a verbal sign may do duty for the concrete idea in which the notion signified by the word might be exemplified.

510.

This sentence is omitted in the second edition.

511.

Elsewhere he mentions Aristotle as “certainly a great admirer and promoter of the doctrine of abstraction,” and quotes his statement that there is hardly anything so incomprehensible to men as notions of the utmost universality; for they are the most remote from sense. Metaph., Bk. I. ch. 2.

512.

Added in second edition.

513.

Omitted in second edition.

514.

Omitted in second edition.

515.

Omitted in second edition.

516.

“my own ideas,” i.e. the concrete phenomena which I can realise as perceptions of sense, or in imagination.

517.

He probably refers to Locke.

518.

According to Locke, “that which has most contributed to hinder the due tracing of our ideas, and finding out their relations, and agreements or disagreements one with another, has been, I suppose, the ill use of words. It is impossible that men should ever truly seek, or certainly discover, the agreement or disagreement of ideas themselves, whilst their thoughts flutter about, or stick only in sounds of doubtful and uncertain significations. Mathematicians, abstracting their thoughts from names, and accustoming themselves to set before their minds the ideas themselves that they would consider, and not sounds instead of them, have avoided thereby a great part of that perplexity, puddering, and confusion which has so much hindered men's progress in other parts of knowledge.” Essay, Bk. IV. ch. 3, § 30. See also Bk. III. ch. 10, 11.

519.

General names involve in their signification intellectual relations among ideas or phenomena; but the relations, per se, are unimaginable.

520.

The rough draft of the Introduction, prepared two years before the publication of the Principles (see Appendix, vol. III), should be compared with the published version. He there tells that “there was a time when, being bantered and abused by words,” he “did not in the least doubt” that he was “able to abstract his ideas”; adding that “after a strict survey of my abilities, I not only discovered my own deficiency on this point, but also cannot conceive it possible that such a power should be even in the most perfect and exalted understanding.” What he thus pronounces “impossible,” is a sensuous perception or imagination of an intellectual relation, as to which most thinkers would agree with him. But in so arguing, he seems apt to discard the intellectual relations themselves that are necessarily embodied in experience. David Hume refers thus to Berkeley's doctrine about “abstract ideas”:—“A great philosopher has asserted that all general ideas are nothing but particular ones annexed to a certain term, which gives them a more extensive signification. I look upon this to be one of the greatest and most valuable discoveries that has been made of late years in the republic of letters.” (Treatise of H. N. Pt. I, sect. 7.)

521.

This resembles Locke's account of the ideas with which human knowledge is concerned. They are all originally presented to the senses, or got by reflexion upon the passions and acts of the mind; and the materials contributed in this external and internal experience are, with the help of memory and imagination, elaborated by the human understanding in ways innumerable, true and false. See Locke's Essay, Bk. II, ch. 1, §§ 1-5; ch. 10, 11, 12.

522.

The ideas or phenomena of which we are percipient in our five senses make their appearance, not isolated, but in individual masses, constituting the things, that occupy their respective places in perceived ambient space. It is as qualities of things that the ideas or phenomena of sense arise in human experience.

523.

This is an advance upon the language of the Commonplace Book, in which “mind” is spoken of as only a “congeries of perceptions.” Here it is something “entirely distinct” from ideas or perceptions, in which they exist and are perceived, and on which they ultimately depend. Spirit, intelligent and active, presupposed with its implicates in ideas, thus becomes the basis of Berkeley's philosophy. Is this subjective idealism only? Locke appears in sect. 1, Descartes, if not Kant by anticipation, in sect. 2.

524.

This sentence expresses Berkeley's New Principle, which filled his thoughts in the Commonplace Book. Note “in a mind,” not necessarily in my mind.

525.

That is to say, one has only to put concrete meaning into the terms existence and reality, in order to have “an intuitive knowledge” that matter depends for its real existence on percipient spirit.

526.

In other words, the things of sense become real, only in the concrete experience of living mind, which gives them the only reality we can conceive or have any sort of concern with. Extinguish Spirit and the material world necessarily ceases to be real.

527.

That esse is percipi is Berkeley's initial Principle, called “intuitive” or self-evident.

528.

Mark that it is the “natural or real existence” of the material world, in the absence of all realising Spirit, that Berkeley insists is impossible—meaningless.

529.

“our own”—yet not exclusively mine. They depend for their reality upon a percipient, not on my perception.

530.

“this tenet,” i.e. that the concrete material world could still be a reality after the annihilation of all realising spiritual life in the universe—divine or other.

531.

“existing unperceived,” i.e. existing without being realised in any living percipient experience—existing in a totally abstract existence, whatever that can mean.

532.

“notions”—a term elsewhere (see sect. 27, 89, 142) restricted, is here applied to the immediate data of the senses—the ideas of sense.

533.

This sentence is omitted in the second edition.

534.

In the first edition, instead of this sentence, we have the following: “To make this appear with all the light and evidence of an Axiom, it seems sufficient if I can but awaken the reflexion of the reader, that he may take an impartial view of his own meaning, and turn his thoughts upon the subject itself; free and disengaged from all embarras of words and prepossession in favour of received mistakes.”

535.

In other words, active percipient Spirit is at the root of all intelligible trustworthy experience.

536.

'proof'—“demonstration” in first edition; yet he calls it “intuitive.”

537.

“the ideas themselves,” i.e. the phenomena immediately presented in sense, and that are thus realised in and through the percipient experience of living mind, as their factor.

538.

As those say who assume that perception is ultimately only representative of the material reality, the very things themselves not making their appearance to us at all.

539.

He refers especially to Locke, whose account of Matter is accordingly charged with being incoherent.

540.

“inert.” See the De Motu.

541.

“ideas existing in the mind,” i.e. phenomena of which some mind is percipient; which are realised in the sentient experience of a living spirit, human or other.

542.

What follows to the end of the section is omitted in the second edition.

543.

“the existence of Matter,” i.e. the existence of the material world, regarded as a something that does not need to be perceived in order to be real.

544.

Sometimes called objective qualities, because they are supposed to be realised in an abstract objectivity, which Berkeley insists is meaningless.

545.

See Locke's Essay, Bk. II, ch. 8, §§ 13, 18; ch. 23, § 11; Bk. IV, ch. 3, § 24-26. Locke suggests this relation between the secondary and the primary qualities of matter only hypothetically.

546.

“in the mind, and nowhere else,” i.e. perceived or conceived, but in no other manner can they be real or concrete.

547.

“without the mind,” i.e. independently of all percipient experience.

548.

Extension is thus the distinguishing characteristic of the material world. Geometrical and physical solidity, as well as motion, imply extension.

549.

“number is the creature of the mind,” i.e. is dependent on being realised in percipient experience. This dependence is here illustrated by the relation of concrete number to the point of view of each mind; as the dependence of the other primary qualities was illustrated by their dependence on the organisation of the percipient. In this, the preceding, and the following sections, Berkeley argues the inconsistency of the abstract reality attributed to the primary qualities with their acknowledged dependence on the necessary conditions of sense perception.

550.

Cf. New Theory of Vision, sect. 109.

551.

e.g. Locke, Essay, Bk. II, ch. 7, § 7; ch. 16, § 1.

552.

“without any alteration in any external object”—“without any external alteration”—in first edition.

553.

These arguments, founded on the mind-dependent nature of all the qualities of matter, are expanded in the First Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous.

554.

“an outward object,” i.e. an object wholly abstract from living Mind.

555.

This sentence is omitted in the second edition.

556.

“reason,” i.e. reasoning. It is argued, in this and the next section, that a reality unrealised in percipient experience cannot be proved, either by our senses or by reasoning.

557.

Omitted in the second edition, and the sentence converted into a question.

558.

But the ideas of which we are cognizant in waking dreams, and dreams of sleep, differ in important characteristics from the external ideas of which we are percipient in sense. Cf. sect. 29-33.

559.

“external bodies,” i.e. bodies supposed to be real independently of all percipients in the universe.

560.

i.e. they cannot shew how their unintelligible hypothesis of Matter accounts for the experience we have, or expect to have; or which we believe other persons have, or to be about to have.

561.

“the production,” &c., i.e. the fact that we and others have percipient experience.

562.

Mind-dependent Matter he not only allows to exist, but maintains its reality to be intuitively evident.

563.

i.e. bodies existing in abstraction from living percipient spirit.

564.

“Matter,” i.e. abstract Matter, unrealised in sentient intelligence.

565.

The appeal here and elsewhere is to consciousness—directly in each person's experience, and indirectly in that of others.

566.

i.e. otherwise than in the form of an idea or actual appearance presented to our senses.

567.

This implies that the material world may be realised in imagination as well as in sensuous perception, but in a less degree of reality; for reality, he assumes, admits of degrees.

568.

“to conceive the existence of external bodies,” i.e. to conceive bodies that are not conceived—that are not ideas at all, but which exist in abstraction. To suppose what we conceive to be unconceived, is to suppose a contradiction.

569.

This sentence is omitted in the second edition.

570.

“The existence of things without mind,” or in the absence of all spiritual life and perception, is what Berkeley argues against, as meaningless, if not contradictory; not the existence of a material world, when this means the realised order of nature, regulated independently of individual will, and to which our actions must conform if we are to avoid physical pain.

571.

Here again notion is undistinguished from idea.

572.

This and the three following sections argue for the essential impotence of matter, and that, as far as we are concerned, so-called “natural causes” are only signs which foretell the appearance of their so-called effects. The material world is presented to our senses as a procession of orderly, and therefore interpretable, yet in themselves powerless, ideas or phenomena: motion is always an effect, never an originating active cause.

573.

As Locke suggests.

574.

This tacitly presupposes the necessity in reason of the Principle of Causality, or the ultimate need for an efficient cause of every change. To determine the sort of Causation that constitutes and pervades the universe is the aim of his philosophy.

575.

In other words, the material world is not only real in and through percipient spirit, but the changing forms which its phenomena assume, in the natural evolution, are the issue of the perpetual activity of in-dwelling Spirit. The argument in this section requires a deeper criticism of its premisses.

576.

In other words, an agent cannot, as such, be perceived or imagined, though its effects can. The spiritual term agent is not meaningless; yet we have no sensuous idea of its meaning.

577.

Omitted in second edition.

578.

This sentence is not contained in the first edition. It is remarkable for first introducing the term notion, to signify idealess meaning, as in the words soul, active power, &c. Here he says that “the operations of the mind” belong to notions, while, in sect. 1, he speaks of “ideas perceived by attending to the ‘operations’ of the mind.”

579.

“ideas,” i.e. fancies of imagination; as distinguished from the more real ideas or phenomena that present themselves objectively to our senses.

580.

With Berkeley the world of external ideas is distinguished from Spirit by its essential passivity. Active power is with him the essence of Mind, distinguishing me from the changing ideas of which I am percipient. We must not attribute free agency to phenomena presented to our senses.

581.

In this and the four following sections, Berkeley mentions marks by which the ideas or phenomena that present themselves to the senses may be distinguished from all other ideas, in consequence of which they may be termed “external,” while those of feeling and imagination are wholly subjective or individual.

582.

This mark—the superior strength and liveliness of the ideas or phenomena that are presented to the senses—was afterwards noted by Hume. See Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, sect. II.

583.

Berkeley here and always insists on the arbitrary character of “settled laws” of change in the world, as contrasted with “necessary connexions” discovered in mathematics. The material world is thus virtually an interpretable natural language, constituted in what, at our point of view, is arbitrariness or contingency.

584.

Under this conception of the universe, “second causes” are divinely established signs of impending changes, and are only metaphorically called “causes.”

585.

So Schiller, in Don Carlos, Act III, where he represents sceptics as failing to see the God who veils Himself in everlasting laws. But in truth God is eternal law or order vitalised and moralised.

586.

“sensations,” with Berkeley, are not mere feelings, but in a sense external appearances.

587.

“more reality.” This implies that reality admits of degrees, and that the difference between the phenomena presented to the senses and those which are only imagined is a difference in degree of reality.

588.

In the preceding sections, two relations should be carefully distinguished—that of the material world to percipient mind, in which it becomes real; and that between changes in the world and spiritual agency. These are Berkeley's two leading Principles. The first conducts to and vindicates the second—inadequately, however, apart from explication of their root in moral reason. The former gives a relation sui generis. The latter gives our only example of active causality—the natural order of phenomena being the outcome of the causal energy of intending Will.

589.

Sect. 34-84 contain Berkeley's answers to supposed objections to the foregoing Principles concerning Matter and Spirit in their mutual relations.

590.

To be an “idea” is, with Berkeley, to be the imaginable object of a percipient spirit. But he does not define precisely the relation of ideas to mind. “Existence in mind” is existence in this relation. His question (which he determines in the negative) is, the possibility of concrete phenomena, naturally presented to sense, yet out of all relation to living mind.

591.

Omitted in second edition.

592.

i.e. of imagination. Cf. sect. 28-30.

593.

Cf. sect. 29.

594.

“more reality.” This again implies that reality admits of degrees. What is perceived in sense is more real than what is imagined, and eternal realities are more deeply real than the transitory things of sense.

595.

Cf. sect. 33. “Not fictions,” i.e. they are presentative, and therefore cannot misrepresent.

596.

With Berkeley substance is either (a) active reason, i.e. spirit—substance proper, or (b) an aggregate of sense-phenomena, called a “sensible thing”—substance conventionally and superficially.

597.

And which, because realised in living perception, are called ideas—to remind us that reality is attained in and through percipient mind.

598.

“combined together,” i.e. in the form of “sensible things,” according to natural laws. Cf. sect. 33.

599.

“thinking things”—more appropriately called persons.

600.

Berkeley uses the word idea to mark the fact, that sensible things are real only as they manifest themselves in the form of passive objects, presented to sense-percipient mind; but he does not, as popularly supposed, regard “sensible things” as created and regulated by the activity of his own individual mind. They are perceived, but are neither created nor regulated, by the individual percipient, and are thus practically external to each person.

601.

Cf. sect. 87-91, against the scepticism which originates in alleged fallacy of sense.

602.

Omitted in second edition.

603.

It is always to be remembered that with Berkeley ideas or phenomena presented to sense are themselves the real things, whilst ideas of imagination are representative (or misrepresentative).

604.

Here feelings of pleasure or pain are spoken of, without qualification, as in like relation to living mind as sensible things or ideas are.

605.

That the ideas of sense should be seen “at a distance of several miles” seems not inconsistent with their being dependent on a percipient, if ambient space is itself (as Berkeley asserts) dependent on percipient experience. Cf. sect. 67.

606.

In the preceding year.

607.

Essay, sect. 2.

608.

Ibid. sect. 11-15.

609.

Ibid. sect. 16-28.

610.

Ibid. sect. 51.

611.

Ibid. sect. 47-49, 121-141.

612.

Ibid. sect. 43.

613.

i.e. what we are immediately percipient of in seeing.

614.

Touch is here and elsewhere taken in its wide meaning, and includes our muscular and locomotive experience, all which Berkeley included in the “tactual” meaning of distance.

615.

To explain the condition of sensible things during the intervals of our perception of them, consistently with the belief of all sane persons regarding the material world, is a challenge which has been often addressed to the advocates of ideal Realism. According to Berkeley, there are no intervals in the existence of sensible things. They are permanently perceivable, under the laws of nature, though not always perceived by this, that or the other individual percipient. Moreover they always exist really in the Divine Idea, and potentially, in relation to finite minds, in the Divine Will.

616.

Berkeley allows to bodies unperceived by me potential, but (for me) not real existence. When I say a body exists thus conditionally, I mean that if, in the light, I open my eyes, I shall see it, and that if I move my hand, I must feel it.

617.

i.e. unperceived material substance.

618.

Berkeley remarks, in a letter to the American Samuel Johnson, that “those who have contended for a material world have yet acknowledged that natura naturans (to use the language of the Schoolmen) is God; and that the Divine conservation of things is equipollent to, and in fact the same thing with, a continued repeated creation;—in a word, that conservation and creation differ only as the terminus a quo. These are the common opinions of Schoolmen; and Durandus, who held the world to be a machine, like a clock made up and put in motion by God, but afterwards continued to go of itself, was therein particular, and had few followers. The very poets teach a doctrine not unlike the Schools—mens agitat molem (Virgil, Æneid, VI). The Stoics and Platonists are everywhere full of the same notion. I am not therefore singular in this point itself, so much as in my way of proving it.” Cf. Alciphron, Dial. IV. sect. 14; Vindication of New Theory of Vision, sect. 8, 17, &c.; Siris, passim, but especially in the latter part. See also Correspondence between Clarke and Leibniz (1717). Is it not possible that the universe of things and persons is in continuous natural creation, unbeginning and unending?

619.

Cf. sect. 123-132.

620.

He distinguishes “idea” from “mode or attribute.” With Berkeley, the “substance” of matter (if the term is still to be applied to sensible things) is the naturally constituted aggregate of phenomena of which each particular thing consists. Now extension, and the other qualities of sensible things, are not, Berkeley argues, “in mind” either (a) according to the abstract relation of substance and attribute of which philosophers speak; nor (b) as one idea or phenomenon is related to another idea or phenomenon, in the natural aggregation of sense-phenomena which constitute, with him, the substance of a material thing. Mind and its “ideas” are, on the contrary, related as percipient to perceived—in whatever “otherness” that altogether sui generis relation implies.

621.

“Matter,” i.e. abstract material Substance, as distinguished from the concrete things that are realised in living perceptions.

622.

“take away natural causes,” i.e. empty the material world of all originative power, and refer the supposed powers of bodies to the constant and omnipresent agency of God.