The Works of George Berkeley. Vol. 1 of 4: Philosophical Works, 1705-21
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Title: The Works of George Berkeley. Vol. 1 of 4: Philosophical Works, 1705-21
Author: George Berkeley
Editor: Alexander Campbell Fraser
Release date: May 20, 2012 [eBook #39746]
Most recently updated: June 17, 2020
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORKS OF GEORGE BERKELEY. VOL. 1 OF 4: PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS, 1705-21 ***
The Works of George Berkeley D.D.
Formerly Bishop of Cloyne
Including his Posthumous Works
With Prefaces, Annotations, Appendices, and An Account of his Life, by
Alexander Campbell Fraser
Hon. D.C.L., Oxford
Hon. LL.D. Glasgow and Edinburgh; Emeritus Professor of Logic and
Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh
In Four Volumes
Vol. 1: Philosophical Works, 1705-21
Oxford
At the Clarendon Press
1901
CONTENTS
Preface
George Berkeley, By The Editor
Errata
Commonplace Book. Mathematical, Ethical, Physical, And Metaphysical
Editor’s Preface To The Commonplace Book
Commonplace Book
An Essay Towards A New Theory Of Vision
Editor’s Preface To The Essay Towards A New Theory Of Vision
Dedication
An Essay Towards A New Theory Of Vision
An Appendix To The Essay On Vision
A Treatise Concerning The Principles Of Human Knowledge
Editor’s Preface To The Treatise Concerning The Principles Of Human
Knowledge
Dedication
The Preface
Introduction
Part First
Three Dialogues Between Hylas And Philonous The Design Of Which Is Plainly
To Demonstrate The Reality And Perfection Of Human Knowledge, The
Incorporeal Nature Of The Soul, And The Immediate Providence Of A Deity,
In Opposition To Sceptics And Atheists, Also To Open A Method For
Rendering The Sciences More Easy, Useful, And Compendious
Editor’s Preface
Dedication
The Preface
The First Dialogue
The Second Dialogue
The Third Dialogue
De Motu: Sive; De Motus Principio Et Natura, Et De Causa Communicationis
Motuum
Editor’s Preface To De Motu
De Motu
Footnotes
PREFACE
[Frontispiece]
More than thirty years ago I was honoured by a request to prepare a
complete edition of the Works of Bishop Berkeley, with Notes, for the
Clarendon Press, Oxford. That edition, which contains many of his writings
previously unpublished, appeared in 1871. It was followed in 1874 by a
volume of annotated Selections from his philosophical works; and in 1881 I
prepared a small volume on “Berkeley” for Blackwood’s “Philosophical
Classics.”
The 1871 edition of the Works originated, I believe, in an essay on “The
Real World of Berkeley,” which I gave to _Macmillan’s Magazine_ in 1862,
followed by another in 1864, in the _North British Review_. These essays
suggested advantages to contemporary thought which might be gained by a
consideration of final questions about man and the universe, in the form
in which they are presented by a philosopher who has suffered more from
misunderstanding than almost any other modern thinker. During a part of
his lifetime, he was the foremost metaphysician in Europe in an
unmetaphysical generation. And in this country, after a revival of
philosophy in the later part of the eighteenth century, _idea_, _matter_,
_substance_, _cause_, and other terms which play an important part in his
writings, had lost the meaning that he intended; while in Germany the
sceptical speculations of David Hume gave rise to a reconstructive
criticism, on the part of Kant and his successors, which seemed at the
time to have little concern with the _a posteriori_ methods and the
principles of Berkeley.
The success of the attempt to recall attention to Berkeley has far
exceeded expectation. Nearly twenty thousand copies of the three
publications mentioned above have found their way into the hands of
readers in Europe and America; and the critical estimates of Berkeley, by
eminent writers, which have appeared since 1871, in Britain, France,
Germany, Denmark, Holland, Italy, America, and India, confirm the opinion
that his Works contain a word in season, even for the twentieth century.
Among others who have delivered appreciative criticisms of Berkeley within
the last thirty years are J.S. Mill, Mansel, Huxley, T.H. Green, Maguire,
Collyns Simon, the Right Hon. A.J. Balfour, Mr. Leslie Stephen, Dr.
Hutchison Stirling, Professor T.K. Abbott, Professor Van der Wyck, M.
Penjon, Ueberweg, Frederichs, Ulrici, Janitsch, Eugen Meyer, Spicker,
Loewy, Professor Höffding of Copenhagen, Dr. Lorenz, Noah Porter, and
Krauth, besides essays in the chief British, Continental, and American
reviews. The text of those Works of Berkeley which were published during
his lifetime, enriched with a biographical Introduction by Mr. A.J.
Balfour, carefully edited by Mr. George Sampson, appeared in 1897. In 1900
Dr. R. Richter, of the University of Leipsic, produced a new translation
into German of the _Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous_, with an
excellent Introduction and notes. These estimates form a remarkable
contrast to the denunciations, founded on misconception, by Warburton and
Beattie in the eighteenth century.
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In 1899 I was unexpectedly again asked by the Delegates of the Oxford
University Press to prepare a New Edition of Berkeley’s Works, with some
account of his life, as the edition of 1871 was out of print; a
circumstance which I had not expected to occur in my lifetime. It seemed
presumptuous to undertake what might have been entrusted to some one
probably more in touch with living thought; and in one’s eighty-second
year, time and strength are wanting for remote research. But the
recollection that I was attracted to philosophy largely by Berkeley, in
the morning of life more than sixty years ago, combined with the pleasure
derived from association in this way with the great University in which he
found an academic home in his old age, moved me in the late evening of
life to make the attempt. And now, at the beginning of the twentieth
century, I offer these volumes, which still imperfectly realise my ideal
of a final Oxford edition of the philosopher who spent his last days in
Oxford, and whose mortal remains rest in its Cathedral.
Since 1871 materials of biographical and philosophical interest have been
discovered, in addition to the invaluable collection of MSS. which
Archdeacon Rose then placed at my disposal, and which were included in the
supplementary volume of _Life and Letters_. Through the kindness of the
late Earl of Egmont I had access, some years ago, to a large number of
letters which passed between his ancestor, Sir John (afterwards Lord)
Percival, and Berkeley, between 1709 and 1730. I have availed myself
freely of this correspondence.
Some interesting letters from and concerning Berkeley, addressed to his
friend Dr. Samuel Johnson of Stratford in Connecticut, afterwards
President of King’s College in New York, appeared in 1874, in Dr.
Beardsley’s _Life of Johnson_, illustrating Berkeley’s history from 1729
till his death. For these and for further information I am indebted to Dr.
Beardsley.
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In the present edition of Berkeley’s Works, the Introductions and the
annotations have been mostly re-written. A short account of his romantic
life is prefixed, intended to trace its progress in the gradual
development and application of his initial Principle; and also the
external incidents of his life in their continuity, with the help of the
new material in the Percival MSS. and the correspondence with Johnson. It
forms a key to the whole. This biography is not intended to supersede the
_Life and Letters_ of Berkeley that accompanied the 1871 edition, which
remains as a magazine of facts for reference.
The rearrangement of the Works is a feature in the present edition. Much
of the new material that was included in the 1871 edition reached me when
the book was far advanced in the press, and thus the chronological
arrangement, strictly followed in the present edition, was not possible. A
chronological arrangement is suggested by Berkeley himself. “I could wish
that all the things I have published on these philosophical subjects were
read in the order wherein I published them,” are his words in one of his
letters to Johnson; “and a second time with a critical eye, adding your
own thought and observation upon every part as you went along.”
The first three volumes in this edition contain the Philosophical Works
exclusively; arranged in chronological order, under the three periods of
Berkeley’s life. The First Volume includes those of his early life; the
Second those produced in middle life; and the Third those of his later
years. The Miscellaneous Works are presented in like manner in the Fourth
Volume.
The four little treatises in which Berkeley in early life unfolded his new
thought about the universe, along with his college _Commonplace Book_
published in 1871, which prepared the way for them, form, along with the
Life, the contents of the First Volume. It is of them that the author
writes thus, in another of his letters to Johnson:—“I do not indeed wonder
that on first reading what I have written men are not thoroughly
convinced. On the contrary, I should very much wonder if prejudices which
have been many years taking root should be extirpated in a few hours’
reading. I had no inclination to trouble the world with large volumes.
What I have done was rather with a view of giving hints to thinking men,
who have leisure and curiosity to go to the bottom of things, and pursue
them in their own minds. Two or three times reading these small tracts,
and making what is read the occasion of thinking, would, I believe, render
the whole familiar and easy to the mind, and take off that shocking
appearance which hath often been observed to attend speculative truths.”
Except Johnson, none of Berkeley’s eighteenth-century critics seem to have
observed this rule.
_Alciphron, or The Minute Philosopher_, with its supplement in the _Theory
of Visual Language Vindicated_, being the philosophical works of his
middle life, associated with its American enterprise, form the Second
Volume. In them the conception of the universe that was unfolded in the
early writings is applied, in vindication of religious morality and
Christianity, against the Atheism attributed to those who called
themselves Free-thinkers; who were treated by Berkeley as, at least by
implication, atheistic.
The Third Volume contains the _Analyst_ and _Siris_, which belong to his
later life, _Siris_ being especially characteristic of its serene quiet.
In both there is a deepened sense of the mystery of the universe, and in
_Siris_ especially a more comprehensive conception of the final problem
suggested by human life. But the metaphysics of the one is lost in
mathematical controversy; that of the other in medical controversy, and in
undigested ancient and mediæval learning. The metaphysical importance of
_Siris_ was long unrecognised, although in it Berkeley’s thought
culminates, not in a paradox about Matter, but in the conception of God as
the concatenating principle of the universe; yet this reached through the
conception of Matter as real only in and through living Mind.
The Miscellaneous Works, after the two juvenile Latin tracts in
mathematics, deal with observations of nature and man gathered in his
travels, questions of social economy, and lessons in religious life.
Several are posthumous, and were first published in the 1871 edition. Of
these, perhaps the most interesting is the _Journal in Italy_. The
_Discourse on Passive Obedience_ is the nearest approach to ethical theory
which Berkeley has given to us, and as such it might have taken its place
in the First Volume; but on the whole it seemed more appropriately placed
in the Fourth, where it is easily accessible for those who prefer to read
it immediately after the book of _Principles_.
I have introduced, in an Appendix to the Third Volume, some matter of
philosophical interest for which there was no place in the editorial
Prefaces or in the annotations. The historical significance of Samuel
Johnson and Jonathan Edwards, as pioneers of American philosophy, and also
advocates of the new conception of the material world that is associated
with Berkeley, is recognised in Appendix C. Illustrations of the
misinterpretation of Berkeley by his early critics are presented in
Appendix D. A lately discovered tractate by Berkeley forms Appendix E. In
the Fourth Volume, numerous queries contained in the first edition of the
_Querist_, and omitted in the later editions, are given in an Appendix,
which enables the reader to reconstruct that interesting tract in the form
in which it originally appeared.
The present edition is thus really a new work, which possesses, I hope, a
certain philosophical unity, as well as pervading biographical interest.
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As Berkeley is the immediate successor of Locke, and as he was educated by
collision with the _Essay __ on Human Understanding_, perhaps Locke ought
to have had more prominence in the editorial portion of this book.
Limitation of space partly accounts for the omission; and I venture
instead to refer the reader to the Prolegomena and notes in my edition of
Locke’s _Essay_, which was published by the Clarendon Press in 1894. I may
add that an expansion of thoughts which run through the Life and many of
the annotations, in this edition of Berkeley, may be found in my
_Philosophy of Theism_(1).
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
The reader need not come to Berkeley in the expectation of finding in his
Works an all-comprehensive speculative system like Spinoza’s, or a
reasoned articulation of the universe of reality such as Hegel is supposed
to offer. But no one in the succession of great English philosophers has,
I think, proposed in a way more apt to invite reflexion, the final
alternative between Unreason, on the one hand, and Moral Reason expressed
in Universal Divine Providence, on the other hand, as the root of the
unbeginning and endless evolution in which we find ourselves involved; as
well as the further question, Whether this tremendous practical
alternative _can_ be settled by any means that are within the reach of
man? His Philosophical Works, taken collectively, may encourage those who
see in a reasonable _via media_ between Omniscience and Nescience the true
path of progress, under man’s inevitable venture of reasonable Faith.
One is therefore not without hope that a fresh impulse may be given to
philosophy and religious thought by this reappearance of George Berkeley,
under the auspices of the University of Oxford, at the beginning of the
twentieth century. His readers will at any rate find themselves in the
company of one of the most attractive personalities of English philosophy,
who is also among the foremost of those thinkers who are masters in
English literature—Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes, George Berkeley and
David Hume.
A. Campbell Fraser.
GORTON, HAWTHORNDEN, MIDLOTHIAN,
_March, 1901_.
GEORGE BERKELEY, BY THE EDITOR
I. Early Life (1685-1721).
Towards the end of the reign of Charles the Second a certain William
Berkeley, according to credible tradition, occupied a cottage attached to
the ancient Castle of Dysert, in that part of the county of Kilkenny which
is watered by the Nore. Little is known about this William Berkeley except
that he was Irish by birth and English by descent. It is said that his
father went over to Ireland soon after the Restoration, in the suite of
his reputed kinsman, Lord Berkeley of Stratton, when he was Lord
Lieutenant. William Berkeley’s wife seems to have been of Irish blood, and
in some remote way related to the family of Wolfe, the hero of Quebec. It
was in the modest abode in the valley of the Nore that George, the eldest
of their six sons, was born, on March 12, 1685.
There is nothing in the recorded family history of these Dysert Berkeleys
that helps to explain the singular personality and career of the eldest
son. The parents have left no mark, and make no appearance in any extant
records of the family. They probably made their way to the valley of the
Nore among families of English connexion who, in the quarter of a century
preceding the birth of George Berkeley, were finding settlements in
Ireland. The family, as it appears, was not wealthy, but was recognised as
of gentle blood. Robert, the fifth son, became rector of Middleton and
vicar-general of Cloyne; and another son, William, held a commission in
the army. According to the Register of Trinity College, one of the sons
was born “near Thurles,” in 1699, and Thomas, the youngest, was born in
Tipperary, in 1703, so that the family may have removed from Dysert after
the birth of George. In what can be gleaned of the younger sons, one finds
little appearance of sympathy with the religious and philosophical genius
of the eldest.
Regarding this famous eldest son in those early days, we have this
significant autobiographical fragment in his _Commonplace Book_: “I was
distrustful at eight years old, and consequently by nature disposed for
the new doctrines.” In his twelfth year we find the boy in Kilkenny
School. The register records his entrance there in the summer of 1696,
when he was placed at once in the second class, which seems to imply
precocity, for it is almost a solitary instance. He spent the four
following years in Kilkenny. The School was in high repute for learned
masters and famous pupils; among former pupils were the poet Congreve and
Swift, nearly twenty years earlier than George Berkeley; among his
school-fellows was Thomas Prior, his life-long friend and correspondent.
In the days of Berkeley and Prior the head master was Dr. Hinton, and the
School was still suffering from the consequences of “the warre in Ireland”
which followed the Revolution.
Berkeley in Kilkenny School is hardly visible, and we have no means of
estimating his mental state when he left it. Tradition says that in his
school-days he was wont to feed his imagination with airy visions and
romance, a tradition which perhaps originated long after in popular
misconceptions of his idealism. Dimly discernible at Kilkenny, only a few
years later he was a conspicuous figure in an island that was then
beginning to share in the intellectual movement of the modern world,
taking his place as a classic in English literature, and as the most
subtle and ardent of contemporary English-speaking thinkers.
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In March, 1700, at the age of fifteen, George Berkeley entered Trinity
College, Dublin. This was his home for more than twenty years. He was at
first a mystery to the ordinary undergraduate. Some, we are told,
pronounced him the greatest dunce, others the greatest genius in the
College. To hasty judges he seemed an idle dreamer; the thoughtful admired
his subtle intelligence and the beauty of his character. In his
undergraduate years, a mild and ingenuous youth, inexperienced in the ways
of men, vivacious, humorous, satirical, in unexpected ways inquisitive,
often paradoxical, through misunderstandings he persisted in his own way,
full of simplicity and enthusiasm. In 1704 (the year in which Locke died)
he passed Bachelor of Arts, and became Master in 1707, when he was
admitted to a Fellowship, “the only reward of learning which that kingdom
had to bestow.”
In Trinity College the youth found himself on the tide of modern thought,
for the “new philosophy” of Newton and Locke was then invading the
University. Locke’s _Essay_, published in 1690, was already in vogue. This
early recognition of Locke in Dublin was chiefly due to William Molyneux,
Locke’s devoted friend, a lawyer and member of the Irish Parliament, much
given to the experimental methods. Descartes, too, with his sceptical
criticism of human beliefs, yet disposed to spiritualise powers commonly
attributed to matter, was another accepted authority in Trinity College;
and Malebranche was not unknown. Hobbes was the familiar representative of
a finally materialistic conception of existence, reproducing in modern
forms the atomism of Democritus and the ethics of Epicurus. Above all,
Newton was acknowledged master in physics, whose _Principia_, issued three
years sooner than Locke’s _Essay_, was transforming the conceptions of
educated men regarding their surroundings, like the still more
comprehensive law of physical evolution in the nineteenth century.
John Toland, an Irishman, one of the earliest and ablest of the new sect
of Free-thinkers, made his appearance at Dublin in 1696, as the author of
_Christianity not Mysterious_. The book was condemned by College
dignitaries and dignified clergy with even more than Irish fervour. It was
the opening of a controversy that lasted over half of the eighteenth
century in England, in which Berkeley soon became prominent; and it was
resumed later on, with greater intellectual force and in finer literary
form, by David Hume and Voltaire. The collision with Toland about the time
of Berkeley’s matriculation may have awakened his interest. Toland was
supposed to teach that matter is eternal, and that motion is its essential
property, into which all changes presented in the outer and inner
experience of man may at last be resolved. Berkeley’s life was a continual
protest against these dogmas. The Provost of Trinity College in 1700 was
Dr. Peter Browne, who had already entered the lists against Toland; long
after, when Bishop of Cork, he was in controversy with Berkeley about the
nature of man’s knowledge of God. The Archbishop of Dublin in the early
years of the eighteenth century was William King, still remembered as a
philosophical theologian, whose book on the _Origin of Evil_, published in
1702, was criticised by Boyle and Leibniz.
Dublin in those years was thus a place in which a studious youth, who had
been “distrustful at eight years old,” might be disposed to entertain
grave questions about the ultimate meaning of his visible environment, and
of the self-conscious life to which he was becoming awake. Is the universe
of existence confined to the visible world, and is matter the really
active power in existence? Is God the root and centre of all that is real,
and if so, what is meant by God? Can God be good if the world is a mixture
of good and evil? Questions like these were ready to meet the inquisitive
Kilkenny youth in his first years at Dublin.
One of his earliest interests at College was mathematical. His first
appearance in print was as the anonymous author of two Latin tracts,
_Arithmetica_ and _Miscellanea Mathematica_, published in 1707. They are
interesting as an index of his intellectual inclination when he was hardly
twenty; for he says they were prepared three years before they were given
to the world. His disposition to curious questions in geometry and algebra
is further shewn in his College _Commonplace Book_.
This lately discovered _Commonplace Book_ throws a flood of light upon
Berkeley’s state of mind between his twentieth and twenty-fourth year. It
is a wonderful revelation; a record under his own hand of his thoughts and
feelings when he first came under the inspiration of a new conception of
the nature and office of the material world. It was then struggling to
find adequate expression, and in it the sanguine youth seemed to find a
spiritual panacea for the errors and confusions of philosophy. It was able
to make short work, he believed, with atheistic materialism, and could
dispense with arguments against sceptics in vindication of the reality of
experience. The mind-dependent existence of the material world, and its
true function in the universe of concrete reality, were to be disclosed
under the light of a new transforming self-evident Principle. “I wonder
not at my sagacity in discovering the obvious and amazing truth. I rather
wonder at my stupid inadvertency in not finding it out before—’tis no
witchcraft to see.” The pages of the _Commonplace Book_ give vent to
rapidly forming thoughts about the things of sense and the “ambient space”
of a youth entering into reflective life, in company with Descartes and
Malebranche, Bacon and Hobbes, above all, Locke and Newton; who was trying
to translate into reasonableness his faith in the reality of the material
world and God. Under the influence of this new conception, he sees the
world like one awakening from a confused dream. The revolution which he
wanted to inaugurate he foresaw would be resisted. Men like to think and
speak about things as they have been accustomed to do: they are offended
when they are asked to exchange this for what appears to them absurdity,
or at least when the change seems useless. But in spite of the ridicule
and dislike of a world long accustomed to put empty words in place of
living thoughts, he resolves to deliver himself of his burden, with the
politic conciliation of a skilful advocate however; for he
characteristically reminds himself that one who “desires to bring another
over to his own opinions must seem to harmonize with him at first, and
humour him in his own way of talking.”
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In 1709, when he was twenty-four years old, Berkeley presented himself to
the world of empty verbal reasoners as the author of what he calls
modestly _An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision_. It was dedicated to
Sir John Percival, his correspondent afterwards for more than twenty
years; but I have not discovered the origin of their friendship. The
_Essay_ was a pioneer, meant to open the way for the disclosure of the
Secret with which he was burdened, lest the world might be shocked by an
abrupt disclosure. In this prelude he tries to make the reader recognise
that in ordinary seeing we are always interpreting visual signs; so that
we have daily presented to our eyes what is virtually an intelligible
natural language; so that in all our intercourse with the visible world we
are in intercourse with all-pervading active Intelligence. We are reading
absent data of touch and of the other senses in the language of their
visual signs. And the visual signs themselves, which are the immediate
objects of sight, are necessarily dependent on sentient and percipient
mind; whatever may be the case with the tangible realities which the
visual data signify, a fact evident by our experience when we make use of
a looking-glass. The material world, so far at least as it presents itself
visibly, is _real_ only in being _realised_ by living and seeing beings.
The mind-dependent _visual_ signs of which we are conscious are
continually speaking to us of an invisible and distant world of _tangible_
realities; and through the natural connexion of the visual signs with
their tactual meanings, we are able in seeing practically to perceive, not
only what is distant in space, but also to anticipate the future. The Book
of Vision is in literal truth a Book of Prophecy. The chief lesson of the
tentative _Essay on Vision_ is thus summed up:—
“Upon the whole, I think we may fairly conclude that the proper objects of
Vision constitute the Universal Language of Nature; whereby we are
instructed how to regulate our actions in order to attain those things
that are necessary to the preservation and well-being of our bodies, as
also to avoid whatever may be hurtful and destructive of them. And the
manner wherein they signify and mark out unto us the objects which are at
a distance is the same with that of languages and signs of human
appointment; which do not suggest the things signified by any likeness or
identity of nature, but only by an habitual connexion that experience has
made us to observe between them. Suppose one who had always continued
blind be told by his guide that after he has advanced so many steps he
shall come to the brink of a precipice, or be stopped by a wall; must not
this to him seem very admirable and surprising? He cannot conceive how it
is possible for mortals to frame such predictions as these, which to him
would seem as strange and unaccountable as prophecy does to others. Even
they who are blessed with the visive faculty may (though familiarity make
it less observed) find therein sufficient cause of admiration. The
wonderful art and contrivance wherewith it is adjusted to those ends and
purposes for which it was apparently designed; the vast extent, number,
and variety of objects that are at once, with so much ease and quickness
and pleasure, suggested by it—all these afford subject for much and
pleasing speculation, and may, if anything, give us some glimmering
analogous prænotion of things that are placed beyond the certain discovery
and comprehension of our present state(2).”
Berkeley took orders in the year in which his _Essay on Vision_ was
published. On February 1, 1709, he was ordained as deacon, in the chapel
of Trinity College, by Dr. George Ashe, Bishop of Clogher. Origen and
Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas, Malebranche, Fenelon, and Pascal, Cudworth,
Butler, Jonathan Edwards, and Schleiermacher, along with Berkeley, are
among those who are illustrious at once in the history of philosophy and
of the Christian Church. The Church, it has been said, has been for nearly
two thousand years the great Ethical Society of the world, and if under
its restrictions it has been less conspicuous on the field of
philosophical criticism and free inquiry, these names remind us of the
immense service it has rendered to meditative thought.
The light of the Percival correspondence first falls on Berkeley’s life in
1709. The earliest extant letters from Berkeley to Sir John Percival are
in September, October, and December of that year, dated at Trinity
College. In one of them he pronounces Socrates “the best and most
admirable man that the heathen world has produced.” Another letter, in
March, 1710, accompanies a copy of the second edition of the _Essay on
Vision_. “I have made some alterations and additions in the body of the
treatise,” he says, “and in the appendix have endeavoured to meet the
objections of the Archbishop of Dublin;” whose sermon he proceeds to
deprecate, for “denying that goodness and understanding are more to be
affirmed of God than feet or hands,” although all these may, in a
metaphorical sense. How far, or whether at all, God is knowable by man,
was, as we shall see, matter of discussion and controversy with Berkeley
in later life; but this shews that the subject was already in his
thoughts. Returning to the _Essay on Vision_, he tells Sir John that
“there remains one objection, that with regard to the uselessness of that
book of mine; but in a little time I hope to make what is there laid down
appear subservient to the ends of morality and religion, in a _Treatise_ I
have in the press, the design of which is to demonstrate the existence and
attributes of God, the immortality of the soul, the reconciliation of
God’s foreknowledge and the freedom of man; and by shewing the emptiness
and falsehood of several parts of the speculative sciences, to induce men
to the study of religion and things useful. How far my endeavours will
prove successful, and whether I have been all this time in a dream or no,
time will shew. I do not see how it is possible to demonstrate the being
of a God on the principles of the Archbishop—that strictly goodness and
understanding can no more be assumed of God than that He has feet or
hands; there being no argument that I know for God’s existence which does
not prove Him at the same time to be an understanding and benevolent
being, in the strict, literal, and proper meaning of these words.” He
adds, “I have written to Mr. Clarke to give me his thoughts on the subject
of God’s existence, but have got no answer.”
The work foreshadowed in this letter appeared in the summer of 1710, as
the “First part” of a _Treatise concerning the Principles of Human
Knowledge, wherein the chief causes of error and difficulty in the
Sciences, with the grounds of Scepticism, Atheism, and Irreligion, are
inquired into_. In this fragment of a larger work, never finished,
Berkeley’s spiritual conception of matter and cosmos is unfolded,
defended, and applied. According to the _Essay on Vision_, the world, as
far as it is visible, is dependent on living mind. According to this book
of _Principles_ the whole material world, as far as it can have any
practical concern with the knowings and doings of men, is real only by
being realised in like manner in the percipient experience of some living
mind. The concrete world, with which alone we have to do, could not exist
in its concrete reality if there were no living percipient being in
existence to actualise it. To suppose that it could would be to submit to
the illusion of a metaphysical abstraction. Matter unrealised in its
necessary subordination to some one’s percipient experience is the chief
among the illusions which philosophers have been too ready to encourage,
and which the mass of mankind, who accept words without reflecting on
their legitimate meanings, are ready to accept blindly. But we have only
to reflect in order to see the absurdity of a material world such as we
have experience of existing without ever being realised or made concrete
in any sentient life. Try to conceive an eternally dead universe, empty
for ever of God and all finite spirits, and you find you cannot. Reality
can be real only in a living form. Percipient life underlies or
constitutes all that is real. The _esse_ of the concrete material world is
_percipi_. This was the “New Principle” with which the young Dublin Fellow
was burdened—the Secret of the universe which he had been longing to
discharge upon mankind for their benefit, yet without sign of desire to
gain fame for himself as the discoverer. It is thus that he unfolds it:—
“Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need
only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, viz.
that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word, all
those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any
subsistence without a Mind; that their _being_ is to be perceived or
known; that consequently so long as they are not actually perceived by me,
or do not exist in my mind, or that of any other created spirit, they must
either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some
Eternal Spirit: it being perfectly unintelligible, and involving all the
absurdity of abstraction, to attribute to any single part of them an
existence independent of a Spirit(3).”
This does not mean denial of the existence of the world that is daily
presented to our senses and which includes our own bodies. On the
contrary, it affirms, as intuitively true, the existence of the only real
matter which our senses present to us. The only material world of which we
have any experience consists of the appearances (misleadingly called
_ideas_ of sense by Berkeley) which are continually rising as real objects
in a passive procession of interpretable signs, through means of which
each finite person realises his own individual personality; also the
existence of other finite persons; and the sense-symbolism that is more or
less interpreted in the natural sciences; all significant of God. So the
material world of concrete experience is presented to us as mind-dependent
and in itself powerless: the deepest and truest reality must always be
spiritual. Yet this mind-dependent material world is the occasion of
innumerable pleasures and pains to human percipients, in so far as they
conform to or contradict its customary laws, commonly called the laws of
nature. So the sense-symbolism in which we live is found to play an
important part in the experience of percipient beings. But it makes us
sceptics and atheists when, in its name, we put a supposed dead abstract
matter in room of the Divine Active Reason of which all natural order is
the continuous providential expression.
Accordingly, God must exist, because the material world, in order to be a
real world, needs to be continually realised and regulated by living
Providence; and we have all the certainty of sense and sanity that there
_is_ a (mind-dependent) material world, a boundless and endlessly evolving
sense-symbolism.
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In the two years after the disclosure of his New Principle we see Berkeley
chiefly through his correspondence with Percival. He was eager to hear the
voice of criticism; but the critics were slow to speak, and when they did
speak they misconceived the question, and of course his answer to it. “If
when you receive my book,” he writes from Dublin, in July, 1710, to Sir
John, who was then in London, “you can procure me the opinion of some of
your acquaintances who are thinking men, addicted to the study of natural
philosophy and mathematics, I shall be extremely obliged to you.” He also
asks Percival to present the book of _Principles_ to Lord Pembroke, to
whom he had ventured to dedicate it, as Locke had done his _Essay_. The
reply was discouraging.
“I did but name the subject-matter of your book of _Principles_ to some
ingenuous friends of mine,” Percival says, “and they immediately treated
it with ridicule, at the same time refusing to read it; which I have not
yet got one to do. A physician of my acquaintance undertook to describe
your person, and argued you must needs be mad, and that you ought to take
remedies. A bishop pitied you, that a desire and vanity of starting
something new should put you upon such an undertaking; and when I
justified you in that part of your character, and added other deserving
qualities you have, he could not tell what to think of you. Another told
me an ingenious man ought not to be discouraged from exerting his wit, and
said Erasmus was not worse thought of for writing in praise of folly; but
that you are not gone as far as a gentleman in town, who asserts not only
that there is no such thing as Matter, but that we ourselves have no being
at all.”
It is not surprising that a book which was supposed to deny the existence
of all that we see and touch should be ridiculed, and its author called a
madman. What vexed the author was, “that men who had never considered my
book should confound me with the sceptics, who doubt the existence of
sensible things, and are not positive of any one thing, not even of their
own being. But whoever reads my book with attention will see that I
question not the existence of anything we perceive by our senses. Fine
spun metaphysics are what on all occasions I declaim against, and if any
one shall shew anything of that sort in my _Treatise_ I will willingly
correct it.” A material world that was real enough to yield physical
science, to make known to us the existence of other persons and of God,
and which signified in very practical ways happiness or misery to sentient
beings, seemed to him sufficiently real for human science and all other
purposes. Nevertheless, in the ardour of youth Berkeley had hardly
fathomed the depths into which his New Principle led, and which he hoped
to escape by avoiding the abstractions of “fine-spun metaphysics.”
In December Percival writes from London that he has “given the book to
Lord Pembroke,” who “thought the author an ingenious man, and to be
encouraged”; but for himself he “cannot believe in the non-existence of
Matter”; and he had tried in vain to induce Samuel Clarke, the great
English metaphysician, either to refute or to accept the New Principle. In
February Berkeley sends an explanatory letter for Lord Pembroke to
Percival’s care. In a letter in June he turns to social questions, and
suggests that if “some Irish gentlemen of good fortune and generous
inclinations would constantly reside in England, there to watch for the
interests of Ireland, they might bring far greater advantage than they
could by spending their incomes at home.” And so 1711 passes, with
responses of ignorant critics; vain endeavours to draw worthy criticism
from Samuel Clarke; the author all the while doing work as a Tutor in
Trinity College on a modest income; now and then on holidays in Meath or
elsewhere in Ireland. Three discourses on _Passive Obedience_ in the
College Chapel in 1712, misinterpreted, brought on him the reproach of
Jacobitism. Yet they were designed to shew that society rests on a deeper
foundation than force and calculations of utility, and is at last rooted
in principles of an immutable morality. Locke’s favourite opinion, that
morality is a demonstrable, seems to weigh with him in these _Discourses_.
But Berkeley was not yet done with the exposition and vindication of his
new thought, for it seemed to him charged with supreme practical issues
for mankind. In the two years which followed the publication of the
_Principles_ he was preparing to reproduce his spiritual conception of the
universe, in the dramatic form of dialogue, convenient for dealing
popularly with plausible objections. The issue was the _Three Dialogues
between Hylas and Philonous_, in which Philonous argues for the absurdity
of an abstract matter that is unrealised in the experience of living
beings, as against Hylas, who is put forward to justify belief in this
abstract reality. The design of the _Dialogues_ is to present in a
familiar form “such principles as, by an easy solution of the perplexities
of philosophers, together with their own native evidence, may at once
recommend themselves as genuine to the mind, and rescue philosophy from
the endless pursuits it is engaged in; which, with a plain demonstration
of the Immediate Providence of an all-seeing God, should seem the readiest
preparation, as well as the strongest motive to the study and practice of
virtue(4).”
When the _Dialogues_ were completed, at the end of 1712, Berkeley resolved
to visit London, as he told Percival, “in order to print my new book of
Dialogues, and to make acquaintance with men of merit.” He got leave of
absence from his College “for the recovery of his health,” which had
suffered from study, and perhaps too he remembered that Bacon commends
travel as “to the younger sort a part of education.”
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Berkeley made his appearance in London in January, 1713. On the 26th of
that month he writes to Percival that he “had crossed the Channel from
Dublin a few days before,” describes adventures on the road, and enlarges
on the beauty of rural England, which he liked more than anything he had
seen in London. “Mr. Clarke” had already introduced him to Lord Pembroke.
He had also called on his countryman Richard Steele, “who desired to be
acquainted with him. Somebody had given him my _Treatise on the Principles
of Human Knowledge_, and that was the ground of his inclination to my
acquaintance.” He anticipates “much satisfaction in the conversation of
Steele and his friends,” adding that “there is lately published a bold and
pernicious book, a _Discourse on Free-thinking_(5).” In February he “dines
often with Steele in his house in Bloomsbury Square,” and tells in March
“that you will soon hear of Mr. Steele under the character of the
_Guardian_; he designs his paper shall come out every day as the
_Spectator_.” The night before “a very ingenious new poem upon ‘Windsor
Forest’ had been given to him by the author, Mr. Pope. The gentleman is a
Papist, but a man of excellent wit and learning, one of those Mr. Steele
mentions in his last paper as having writ some of the _Spectator_.” A few
days later he has met “Mr. Addison, who has the same talents as Steele in
a high degree, and is likewise a great philosopher, having applied himself
to the speculative studies more than any of the wits I know. I breakfasted
with him at Dr. Swift’s lodgings. His coming in while I was there, and the
good temper he showed, was construed by me as a sign of the approaching
coalition of parties. A play of Mr. Steele’s, which was expected, he has
now put off till next winter. But _Cato_, a most noble play of Mr.
Addison, is to be acted in Easter week.” Accordingly, on April 18, he
writes that “on Tuesday last _Cato_ was acted for the first time. I was
present with Mr. Addison and two or three more friends in a side box,
where we had a talk and two or three flasks of Burgundy and Champagne,
which the author (who is a very sober man) thought necessary to support
his spirits, and indeed it was a pleasant refreshment to us all between
the Acts. Some parts of the prologue, written by Mr. Pope, a Tory and even
a Papist, were hissed, being thought to savour of Whiggism; but the clap
got much the better of the hiss. Lord Harley, who sat in the next box to
us, was observed to clap as loud as any in the house all the time of the
play.” Swift and Pope have described this famous first night of _Cato_;
now for the first time we have Berkeley’s report. He adds, “This day I
dined at Dr. Arbuthnot’s lodging in the Queen’s Palace.”
His countryman, Swift, was among the first to welcome him to London, where
Swift had himself been for four years, “lodging in Bury Street,” and
sending the daily journal to Stella, which records so many incidents of
that memorable London life. Mrs. Vanhomrigh and her daughter, the unhappy
Vanessa, were living in rooms in the same street as Swift, and there he
“loitered, hot and lazy, after his morning’s work,” and “often dined out
of mere listlessness.” Berkeley was a frequent visitor at Swift’s house,
and this Vanhomrigh connexion with Swift had an influence on Berkeley’s
fortune long afterwards. On a Sunday in April we find him at Kensington,
at the Court of Queen Anne, in the company of Swift. “I went to Court
to-day,” Swift’s journal records, “on purpose to present Mr. Berkeley, one
of the Fellows of Trinity. College, to Lord Berkeley of Stratton. That Mr.
Berkeley is a very ingenious man, and a great philosopher, and I have
mentioned him to all the ministers, and have given them some of his
writings, and I will favour him as much as I can.” In this, Swift was as
good as his word. “Dr. Swift,” he adds, “is admired both by Steele and
Addison, and I think Addison one of the best natured and most agreeable
men in the world.”
One day about this time, at the instance of Addison, it seems that a
meeting was arranged between Berkeley and Samuel Clarke, the metaphysical
rector of St. James’s in Piccadilly, whose opinion he had in vain tried to
draw forth two years before through Sir John Percival. Berkeley’s personal
charm was felt wherever he went, and even “the fastidious and turbulent
Atterbury,” after intercourse with him, is reported to have said: “So much
understanding, so much knowledge, so much innocence, and such humility, I
did not think had been the portion of any but angels till I saw this
gentleman.” Much was expected from the meeting with Clarke, but Berkeley
had again to complain that although Clarke had neither refuted his
arguments nor disproved his premisses, he had not the candour to accept
his conclusion.
It was thus that Berkeley became known to “men of merit” in that brilliant
society. He was also brought among persons on whom he would hardly have
conferred this title. He tells Percival that he had attended several
free-thinking clubs, in the pretended character of a learner, and that he
there heard Anthony Collins, author of “the bold and pernicious book on
free-thinking,” boast “that he was able to demonstrate that the existence
of God is an impossible supposition.” The promised “demonstration” seems
to have been Collins’ _Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty_, which appeared
two years later, according to which all that happens in mind and matter is
the issue of natural necessity. Steele invited Berkeley to contribute to
the _Guardian_ during its short-lived existence between March and
September, 1713. He took the _Discourse_ of Collins for the subject of his
first essay. Three other essays are concerned with man’s hope of a future
life, and are among the few passages in his writings in which his
philosophy is a meditation upon Death.
In May, Percival writes to him from Dublin that he hears the “new book of
Dialogues is printed, though not yet published, and that your opinion has
gained ground among the learned; that Mr. Addison has come over to your
view; and that what at first seemed shocking is become so familiar that
others envy you the discovery, and make it their own.” In his reply in
June, Berkeley mentions that “a clergyman in Wiltshire has lately
published a treatise wherein he advances something published three years
ago in my _Principles of Human Knowledge_.” The clergyman was Arthur
Collier, author of the _Clavis Universalis_, or demonstration of the
impossibility of an external world(6).
Berkeley’s _Three Dialogues_ were published in June. In the middle of that
same month he was in Oxford, “a most delightful place,” where he spent two
months, “witnessed the Act and grand performances at the theatre, and a
great concourse from London and the country, amongst whom were several
foreigners.” The Drury Lane Company had gone down to Oxford, and _Cato_
was on the stage for several nights. The Percival correspondence now first
discloses this prolonged visit to Oxford in the summer of 1713, that ideal
home from whence, forty years after, he departed on a more mysterious
journey than any on this planet. In a letter from thence to Percival, he
had claimed Arbuthnot as one of the converts to the “new Principle.”
Percival replied that Swift demurred to this, on which Berkeley rejoins:
“As to what you say of Dr. Arbuthnot not being of my opinion, it is true
there has been some difference between us concerning some notions relating
to the necessity of the laws of nature; but this does not touch the main
points of the non-existence of what philosophers call material substance;
against which he acknowledges he can assert nothing.” One would gladly
have got more than this from Berkeley, about what touched his favourite
conception of the “arbitrariness” of law in nature, as distinguished from
the “necessity” which some modern physicists are ready vaguely to take for
granted.
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The scene now changes. On October 15 Berkeley suddenly writes from London:
“I am on the eve of going to Sicily, as chaplain to Lord Peterborough, who
is Ambassador Extraordinary on the coronation of the new king.” He had
been recommended by Swift to the Ambassador, one of the most extraordinary
characters then in Europe, who a few years before had astonished the world
in the war of the Succession in Spain, and afterwards by his genius as a
diplomatist: in Holland, nearly a quarter of a century before, he had
formed an intimate friendship with John Locke. Ten months in France and
Italy in the suite of Lord Peterborough brought the young Irish
metaphysician, who had lately been introduced to the wits of London and
the dons of Oxford, into a new world. It was to him the beginning of a
career of wandering and social activity, which lasted, with little
interruption, for nearly twenty years, during which metaphysics and
authorship were in the background. On November 25 we find him in Paris,
writing letters to Percival and Prior. “From London to Calais”, he tells
Prior, “I came in company of a Flamand, a Spaniard, a Frenchman, and three
English servants of my Lord. The three gentlemen, being of three different
nations, obliged me to speak the French language (which is now familiar),
and gave me the opportunity of seeing much of the world in little
compass.... On November 1 (O.S.) I embarked in the stage-coach, with a
company that were all perfect strangers to me. There were two Scotch, and
one English gentleman. One of the former happened to be the author of the
_Voyage to St. Kilda_ and the _Account of the Western Isles_(7). We were
good company on the road; and that day se’ennight came to Paris. I have
since been taken up in viewing churches, convents, palaces, colleges, &c.,
which are very numerous and magnificent in this town. The splendour and
riches of these things surpasses belief; but it were endless to descend to
particulars. I was present at a disputation in the Sorbonne, which indeed
had much of the French fire in it. I saw the Irish and the English
Colleges. In the latter I saw, enclosed in a coffin, the body of the late
King James.... To-morrow I intend to visit Father Malebranche, and
discourse him on certain points.”
The Abbé D’Aubigné, as he informs Percival, was to introduce him to
Malebranche, then the chief philosopher of France, whose Vision of the
world in God had some affinity with Berkeley’s own thought. Unfortunately
we have no record of the intended interview with the French idealist, who
fourteen years before had been visited by Addison, also on his way to
Italy, when Malebranche expressed great regard for the English nation, and
admiration for Newton; but he shook his head when Hobbes was mentioned,
whom he ventured to disparage as a “poor silly creature.” Malebranche died
nearly two years after Berkeley’s proposed interview; and according to a
story countenanced by Dugald Stewart, Berkeley was the “occasional cause”
of his death. He found the venerable Father, we are told, in a cell,
cooking, in a pipkin, a medicine for a disorder with which he was
troubled. The conversation naturally turned on Berkeley’s system, of which
Malebranche had received some knowledge from a translation. The issue of
the debate proved tragical to poor Malebranche. In the heat of disputation
he raised his voice so high, and gave way so freely to the natural
impetuosity of a man of genius and a Frenchman, that he brought on a
violent increase of his disorder, which carried him off a few days
after(8). This romantic tale is, I suspect, mythical. The Percival
correspondence shews that Berkeley was living in London in October, 1715,
the month in which Malebranche died, and I find no trace of a short sudden
visit to Paris at that time.
After a month spent in Paris, another fortnight carried Berkeley and two
travelling companions to Italy through Savoy. They crossed Mont Cenis on
New Year’s Day in 1714—“one of the most difficult and formidable parts of
the Alps which is ever passed over by mortal man,” as he tells Prior in a
letter from Turin. “We were carried in open chairs by men used to scale
these rocks and precipices, which at this season are more slippery and
dangerous than at other times, and at the best are high, craggy, and steep
enough to cause the heart of the most valiant man to melt within him.” At
the end of other six weeks we find him at Leghorn, where he spent three
months, “while my lord was in Sicily.” He “prefers England or Ireland to
Italy: the only advantage is in point of air.” From Leghorn he writes in
May a complimentary letter to Pope, on the occasion of the _Rape of the
Lock_: “Style, painting, judgment, spirit, I had already admired in your
other writings; but in this I am charmed with the magic of your invention,
with all those images, allusions, and inexplicable beauties which you
raise so surprisingly, and at the same time so naturally, out of a
trifle.... I remember to have heard you mention some half-formed design of
coming to Italy. What might we not expect from a muse that sings so well
in the bleak climate of England, if she felt the same warm sun and
breathed the same air with Virgil and Horace.” In July we find Berkeley in
Paris on his way back to England. He had “parted from Lord Peterborough at
Genoa, where my lord took post for Turin, and thence designed passing over
the Alps, and so through Savoy, on his way to England.” In August they are
in London, where the aspect of English politics was changed by the death
of the Queen in that month. He seems to have had a fever soon after his
return. In October, Arbuthnot, in one of his chatty letters to Swift,
writes thus: “Poor philosopher Berkeley has now the _idea_ of health,
which was very hard to produce in him, for he had an _idea_ of a strange
fever upon him, so strange that it was very hard to destroy it by
introducing a contrary one.”
Our record of the two following years is a long blank, first broken by a
letter to Percival in July, 1715, dated at London. Whether he spent any
time at Fulham with Lord Peterborough after their return from Italy does
not appear, nor whether he visited Ireland in those years, which is not
likely. We have no glimpses of brilliant London society as in the
preceding year. Steele was now in Parliament. Swift had returned to
Dublin, and Addison was the Irish chief secretary. But Pope was still at
Binfield, among the glades of Windsor, and Berkeley congratulated him
after receiving the first volume of his _Homer_. Of his own literary
pursuits we hear nothing. Perhaps the Second Part of the _Principles_,
which was lost afterwards in his travels, engaged him. In the end of July
he wrote to Lord Percival(9) from Flaxley(10) on the Severn; and in
August, September, October, and November he wrote from London, chiefly
interested in reports about “the rebels in Scotland,” and “the forces
under Lord Mar, which no doubt will languish and disperse in a little
time. The Bishop of Bristol assured me the other day that the Court expect
that the Duke of Orleans would, in case of need, supply them with forces
against the Pretender.” Our next glimpse of him is in May, 1716, when he
writes to Lord Percival that he is “like soon to go to Ireland, the Prince
of Wales having recommended him to the Lords Justices for the living of
St. Paul’s in Dublin.” This opening was soon closed, and the visit to
Ireland was abandoned. A groundless suspicion of Jacobitism was not
overcome by the interest of Caroline, Princess of Wales. In June, 1716,
Charles Dering wrote from Dublin, that “the Lords Justices have made a
strong representation against him.” He had to look elsewhere for the
immediate future.
We find him at Turin in November, 1716, with a fresh leave of absence for
two years from his College. It seems that Ashe, Bishop of Clogher, had
engaged him as travelling tutor to his son, a means not then uncommon for
enabling young authors of moderate fortune to see new countries and mix
with society. Addison had visited Italy in this way sixteen years before,
and Adam Smith long afterwards travelled with the young Duke of Buccleuch.
With young Ashe, Berkeley crossed Mont Cenis a second time. They reached
Rome at the beginning of 1717. His _Journal in Italy_ in that year, and
occasional letters to Percival, Pope, and Arbuthnot, shew ardent interest
in nature and art. With the widest views, “this very great though singular
sort of man descended into a minute detail, and begrudged neither pains
nor expense for the means of information. He travelled through a great
part of Sicily on foot; clambered over the mountains and crept into the
caverns, to investigate its natural history and discover the causes of its
volcanoes; and I have known him sit for hours in forges and foundries to
inspect their successive operations(11).” If the _Journal_ had been
transformed by his own hand into a book, his letter to Pope from Inarime
shews that the book might have rivalled Addison’s _Remarks on Parts of
Italy_ in grace of style and large human interest.
In the summer of 1720 we find the travellers at Florence, afterwards for
some time at Lyons, and in London at the beginning of the next year. On
the way home his metaphysical inspiration was revived. The “Cause of
Motion” had been proposed by the French Academy as the subject of a prize
dissertation. The subject gave an opportunity for further unfolding his
early thought. In the _Principles_ and the _Dialogues_ he had argued for
the necessary dependence of matter, for its concrete substantial reality,
upon living percipient mind. He would now shew its powerlessness as it is
presented to us in sense. The material world, chiefly under the category
of substance, inspired the _Principles_. The material world, under the
category of cause or power, inspired the _De Motu_. This Latin Essay sums
up the distinctive thought of Berkeley, as it appears in the authorship of
his early life. _Moles evolvit et agitat mentes_ might be taken as the
formula of the materialism which he sought to dissolve. _Mens percipit et
agitat molem significantem, cujus esse est percipi_ expresses what
Berkeley would substitute for the materialistic formula.
The end of the summer of 1721 found Berkeley still in London. England was
in the social agitation and misery consequent upon the failure of the
South Sea Company, a gigantic commercial speculation connected with
British trade in America. A new inspiration took possession of him. He
thought he saw in this catastrophe signs of a decline in public morals
worse than that which followed the Restoration. “Political corruption”,
“decay of religion,” “growth of atheism,” were descriptive words used by
the thoughtful. Berkeley’s eager imagination was apt to exaggerate the
evil. He became inspired by social idealism, and found vent for his
fervour in _An Essay towards preventing the Ruin of Great Britain_, which,
as well as the _De Motu_, made its appearance in 1721. This _Essay_ is a
significant factor in his career. It was the Cassandra wail of a sorrowful
and indignant prophet, prepared to shake the dust from his feet, and to
transfer his eye of hope to other regions, in which a nearer approach to
Utopia might be realised. The true personality of the individual is
unrealisable in selfish isolation. His favourite _non sibi, sed toti
mundo_ was henceforward more than ever the ruling maxim of his life.
II. Middle Life (1722-34).
In October, 1721, Berkeley was in Dublin. The register of the College
shews that “on November 14, 1721, Mr. Berkeley had the grace of the House
for the Degree of Bachelor and Doctor of Divinity.” There is no ground for
the report that he returned to Ireland at this time as Chaplain to the
Duke of Grafton, the Lord Lieutenant(12). But preferment in the Church
seemed within his reach. “I had no sooner set foot on shore,” he wrote to
Percival in that October, “than I heard that the Deanery of Dromore was
vacant.” Percival used his influence with the Lord Lieutenant, and in
February, 1722, Berkeley’s patent was “passing the Seals for the Deanery
of Dromore.” But the Bishop of Dromore claimed the patronage, and this led
to a protracted and ineffectual lawsuit, which took Berkeley to London in
the following winter, “to see friends and inform himself of points of
law,” and he tells that “on the way he was nearly drowned in crossing to
Holyhead(13).”
Berkeley’s interest in church preferment was not personal. He saw in it
only means to an end. In March, 1723, he surprised Lord Percival by
announcing, in a letter from London, a project which it seems for some
time had occupied his thoughts. “It is now about ten months,” he says,
“since I have determined to spend the residue of my days in Bermuda, where
I trust in Providence I may be the mean instrument of doing great good to
mankind. Whatever happens, go I am resolved, if I live. Half a dozen of
the most ingenious and agreeable men in our College are with me in this
project, and since I came hither I have got together about a dozen
Englishmen of quality, who intend to retire to those islands.” He then
explains the project, opening a vision of Christian civilisation radiating
from those fair islands of the West, whose idyllic bliss poets had sung,
diffused over the New World, with its magnificent possibilities in the
future history of mankind.
I find no further record of the origin of this bright vision. As it had
become a practical determination “ten months” before March, 1723, one is
carried back to the first months after his return to Dublin and to the
_Essay_ that was called forth by the South Sea catastrophe. One may
conjecture that despair of England and the Old World—“such as Europe
breeds in her decay”—led him to look westward for the hopeful future of
mankind, moved, perhaps, by the connexion of the catastrophe with America.
His active imagination pictured a better Republic than Plato’s, and a
grander Utopia than More’s, emanating from a College in the isles of which
Waller had sung.
In the meantime a curious fortune unexpectedly favoured him. Swift’s
unhappy Vanessa, associated with Bury Street in 1713, had settled on her
property at Marley Abbey near Dublin; and Swift had privately married
Stella, as she confessed to Vanessa, who thereafter revoked the bequest of
her fortune to Swift, and left it to be divided between Berkeley and
Marshal, afterwards an Irish judge. Vanessa died in May, 1723. A few days
after Berkeley wrote thus to Lord Percival: “Here is something that will
surprise your lordship as it doth me. Mrs. Hester Vanhomrigh, a lady to
whom I was a perfect stranger, having never in the whole course of my life
exchanged a word with her, died on Sunday. Yesterday her Will was opened,
by which it appears that I am constituted executor, the advantage whereof
is computed by those who understand her affairs to be worth £3000.... My
Bermuda scheme is now stronger in my mind than ever; this providential
event having made many things easy which were otherwise before.” Lord
Percival in reply concludes that he would “persist more than ever in that
noble scheme, which may in some time exalt your name beyond that of St.
Xavier and the most famous missionaries abroad.” But he warns him that,
“without the protection of Government,” he would encounter insurmountable
difficulties. The Vanessa legacy, and the obstructions in the way of the
Deanery of Dromore, were the subjects of a tedious correspondence with his
friend and business factotum, “Tom Prior,” in 1724 and the three following
years. In the end, the debts of Vanessa absorbed most of the legacy. And
as to the Deanery of Dromore, he tells Percival, on September 19, 1723: “I
despair of seeing it end to my advantage. The truth is, my fixed purpose
of going to Bermuda sets me above soliciting anything with earnestness in
this part of the world. It can be of no use to me, but as it may enable me
the better to prosecute that design; and it must be owned that the present
possession of something in the Church would make my application for an
establishment in those islands more considered.”
Nevertheless, he got a Deanery at last. In May, 1724, he informs Lord
Percival from Trinity College: “Yesterday I received my patent for the
best Deanery in the kingdom, that of Derry. It is said to be worth £1500
per annum. But as I do not consider it with an eye to enriching myself, so
I shall be perfectly contented if it facilitates and recommends my scheme
of Bermuda, which I am in hopes will meet with a better reception if it
comes from one possessed of so great a Deanery.” In September he is on his
way, not to Derry, but to London, “to raise funds and obtain a Charter for
the Bermuda College from George the First,” fortified by a remarkable
letter from Swift to Lord Carteret, the new Lord Lieutenant, who was then
in Bath(14). As Swift predicted in this letter, Berkeley’s conquests
spread far and fast in England, where he organised his resources during
the four following years. Nothing shews more signally the magic of his
personality than the story of his life in London in those years of
negotiation and endeavour. The proposal met with a response wonderful in a
generation represented by Walpole. The subscriptions soon reached five
thousand pounds, and Walpole was among the subscribers. The Scriblerus
Club, meeting at Lord Bathurst’s, agreed to rally Berkeley, who was among
them, on his Bermuda scheme. He asked to be heard in defence, and
presented the case with such force of enthusiasm that the company “were
struck dumb, and after a pause simultaneously rose and asked leave to
accompany him.” Bermuda for a time inspired London.
Berkeley was not satisfied with this. He remembered what Lord Percival had
said about failure without help from Government. Accordingly he obtained a
Charter from George the First early in 1726, and after canvassing the
House of Commons, secured a grant of £20,000, with only two dissentient
votes, in May of that year. This was the beginning of his difficulties.
Payment was indefinitely delayed, and he was kept negotiating; besides,
with the help of Prior, he was unravelling legal perplexities in which the
Vanessa legacy was involved. It was in these years that he was seen at the
receptions of Caroline at Leicester Fields, when she was Princess of
Wales, and afterwards at St. James’s or at Kensington, when she became
Queen in 1727; not, he says, because he loved Courts, but because he loved
America. Clarke was still rector of St. James’s, and Butler had not yet
migrated to his parsonage at Stanhope; so their society was open to him.
The Queen liked to listen to a philosophical discussion. Ten years before,
as Princess of Wales, she had been a royal go-between in the famous
correspondence between Clarke and Leibniz. And now, Berkeley being in
London, he too was asked to her weekly reunions, when she loved to hear
Clarke arguing with Berkeley, or Berkeley arguing with Hoadley. Also in
1726 Voltaire made his lengthened visit to England, a familiar figure in
the circle of Pope’s friends, attracted to the philosophy of Locke and
Newton; and Voltaire mentions that he met “the discoverer of the true
theory of vision” during his stay in London.
From the summer of 1727 until the spring of 1728 there is no extant
correspondence either with Percival or “Tom Prior” to throw light on his
movements. In February, 1728, he was still in London, but he “hoped to set
out for Dublin in March, and to America in May.” There is a mystery about
this visit to Dublin. “I propose to set out for Dublin about a month
hence,” he writes to “dear Tom,” “but of this you must not give the least
intimation to anybody. It is of all things my earnest desire (and for very
good reasons) not to have it known that I am in Dublin. Speak not,
therefore, one syllable of it to any mortal whatsoever. When I formerly
desired you to take a place for me near the town, you gave out that you
were looking for a retired lodging for a friend of yours; upon which
everybody surmised me to be the person. I must beg you not to act in the
like manner now, but to take for me an entire house in your own name, and
as for yourself; for, all things considered, I am determined upon a whole
house, with no mortal in it but a maid of your own putting, who is to look
on herself as your servant. Let there be two bed-chambers: one for you,
another for me; and, as you like, you may ever and anon lie there. I would
have the house, with necessary furniture, taken by the month (or
otherwise, as you can), for I propose staying not beyond that time; and
yet perhaps I may. Take it as soon as possible.... Let me entreat you to
say nothing of this to anybody, but to do the thing directly.... I would
of all things ... have a proper place in a retired situation, where I may
have access to fields and sweet air provided against the moment I arrive.
I am inclined to think one may be better concealed in the outermost skirt
of the suburbs, than in the country or within the town.... A house quite
detached in the country I should have no objection to, provided you judge
that I shall not be liable to discovery in it. The place called Bermuda I
am utterly against. Dear Tom, do this matter cleanly and cleverly, without
waiting for further advice.... To the person from whom you hire it (whom
alone I would have you speak of it to) it will not seem strange you should
at this time of the year be desirous, for your own convenience or health,
to have a place in a free and open air.” This mysterious letter was
written in April. From April till September Berkeley again disappears.
There is in all this a curious secretiveness of which one has repeated
examples in his life. Whether he went to Dublin in that spring, or why he
wanted to go, does not appear.
But in September he emerges unexpectedly at Gravesend, newly married, and
ready to sail for Rhode Island, “in a ship of 250 tons which he had
hired.” The marriage, according to Stock, took place on August 1, whether
in Ireland or in England I cannot tell. The lady was Anne, daughter of
John Forster, late Chief Justice, and then Speaker of the Irish House of
Commons. She shared his fortune when he was about to engage in the most
romantic, and ideally the grandest, Christian mission of the eighteenth
century. According to tradition she was a devoutly religious mystic:
Fénelon and Madame Guyon were among her favourites. “I chose her,” he
tells Lord Percival, “for her qualities of mind and her unaffected
inclination to books. She goes with great thankfulness, to live a plain
farmer’s life, and wear stuff of her own spinning. I have presented her
with a spinning-wheel.” A letter to Prior, dated “Gravesend September 5,
1728,” thus describes the little party on the eve of their
departure:—“To-morrow, with God’s blessing, I set sail for Rhode Island,
with my wife and a friend of hers, my Lady Handcock’s daughter, who bears
us company. I am married since I saw you to Miss Forster, whose humour and
turn of mind pleases me beyond anything that I know in her whole sex. Mr.
James(15), Mr. Dalton, and Mr. Smibert(16) go with us on this voyage. We
are now all together at Gravesend, and are engaged in one view.” We are
further told(17) that they carried stores and goods to a great value, and
that the Dean “embarked 20,000 books, besides what the two gentlemen
carried. They sailed in September for Rhode Island, where the Dean intends
to winter, and to purchase an estate, in order to settle a correspondence
and trade between that island and Bermudas.” Berkeley was in his
forty-fourth year, when, full of glowing visions of Christian Empire in
the West, “Time’s noblest offspring,” he left England, on his way to
Bermuda, with the promise of Sir Robert Walpole that he should receive the
promised grant after he had made an investment. He bought land in America,
but he never reached Bermuda.
Towards the end of January, in 1729, the little party, in the “hired ship
of 250 tons,” made their appearance in Narragansett Bay, on the western
side of Rhode Island. “Blundering about the ocean,” they had touched at
Virginia on the way, whence a correspondent, sceptical of the enterprise,
informs Lord Percival that the Dean “had dined with the Governor, and
visited our College,” but thinks that “when the Dean comes to put his
visionary scheme into practice, he will find it no better than a religious
frenzy,” and that “he is as much a Don Quixote in zeal as that renowned
knight was in chivalry. I wish the good Dean may not find out at last that
Waller really kidnapt him over to Bermuda, and that the project he has
been drawn into may not prove in every point of it poetical.”
We have a picture of the landing at Newport, on a winter day early in
1729. “Yesterday arrived here Dean Berkeley of Londonderry, in a pretty
large ship. He is a gentleman of middle stature, of an agreeable,
pleasant, and erect aspect. He was ushered into the town with a great
number of gentlemen, to whom he behaved himself after a very complaisant
manner. ’Tis said he proposes to tarry here with his family about three
months(18).” Newport was then a flourishing town, nearly a century old, an
emporium of American commerce, in those days the rival of Boston and New
York. He was “never more agreeably surprised,” he says, than “at the size
of the town and harbour.” Around him was some of the softest rural and
grandest ocean scenery in the world, which had fresh charms even for one
whose boyhood was spent in the valley of the Nore, who had lingered in the
Bay of Naples, and wandered in Inarime and among the mountains of Sicily.
He was seventy miles from Boston, and about as far from Newhaven and Yale
College. A range of hills crosses the centre of the island, whence meadows
slope to the rocky shore. The Gulf Stream tempers the surrounding sea.
“The people,” he tells Percival, “are industrious; and though less
orthodox have not less virtue, and I am sure they have more regularity,
than those I left in Europe. They are indeed a strange medley of different
persuasions.” The gentry retained the customs of the squires in England:
tradition tells of a cheerful society: the fox chase, with hounds and
horses, was a favourite recreation. The society, for so remote a region,
was well informed. The family libraries and pictures which remain argue
culture and refinement. Smibert, the artist of the missionary party, who
had moved to Boston, soon found employment in America, and his pictures
still adorn houses in Rhode Island(19).
The Dean and his young wife lived in Newport for some months after their
arrival. Mr. Honeyman, a missionary of the English Society, had been
placed there, in Trinity Church, in 1704. The church is still a
conspicuous object from the harbour. Berkeley preached in it three days
after his arrival, and occasionally afterwards. Notes of his sermons are
included in this edition among his Miscellaneous Works.
In the summer of 1729 he moved from Newport to a quiet valley in the
interior of the island, where he bought a farm, and built a house. In this
island-home, named Whitehall, he lived for more than two years—years of
domestic happiness, and of resumed study, much interrupted since he left
Dublin in 1713. The house may still be seen, a little aside from the road
that runs eastward from Newport, about three miles from the town. It is
built of wood. The south-west room was probably the library. The ocean is
seen in the distance, while orchards and groves offer the shade and
silence which soothed the thinker in his recluse life. No invitations of
the three companions of his voyage(20), who had migrated to Boston, could
allure him from this retreat, where he diverted his anxieties about
Bermuda by the thoughts which found expression in the dialogues of
_Alciphron_, redolent of Rhode Island and the invigorating breezes of its
ocean shore. Tradition tells that much of _Alciphron_ was the issue of
meditation in the open air, at a favourite retreat, beneath the Hanging
Rocks, which commands an extensive view of the beach and the ocean; and
the chair in which he sat in this alcove is still preserved with
veneration.
While Berkeley loved domestic quiet at Whitehall(21) and the “still air of
delightful studies,” he mixed occasionally in the society of Newport. He
found it not uncongenial, and soon after he was settled at Whitehall he
led the way in forming a club, which held occasional meetings, the germ of
the Redwood Library, still a useful Newport institution. His own house was
a place of meeting for the New England missionaries.
[Illustration]
Whitehall, Berkeley’s Residence in Rhode Island
Soon after his arrival in Rhode Island, Berkeley was visited by the
Reverend Samuel Johnson, missionary at Stratford, an acute and independent
thinker, one of the two contemporary representatives of philosophy in
America. The other was Jonathan Edwards, at that time Congregational
minister at Northampton on the Connecticut river. They had both adopted a
conception of the meaning and office of the material world in the economy
of existence that was in many respects similar to Berkeley’s(22). It seems
that Berkeley’s book of _Principles_ had before this fallen into Johnson’s
hands. He hastened to visit the author when he heard of his arrival. A
succession of visits and a life-long correspondence followed. The
“non-existence of Matter,” interpreted as a whimsical and even insane
paradox, was found by Johnson to mean the absence of unrealisable
Substance behind the real material world that is presented to our senses,
and of unrealisable Power in the successive sense-presented appearances of
which alone we are percipient. He came to see the real existence of the
things of sense in the constant order of the data of sense, through which
we gain our knowledge of the existence of our fellow men, and of the
omnipresent constant Providence of God; whose Ideas are the true
archetypes of the visible world. He adopted and applied this conception
with a lucidity and force which give him a high place among American
thinkers.
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All the while a cloud darkened the recluse life at Whitehall. In June,
1729, Berkeley explains to Percival the circumstances and secrecy of his
departure from England:—
“Before I left England I was reduced to a difficult situation. Had I
continued there, the report would have obtained (which I had found
beginning to spread) that I had dropped the design, after it had cost me
and my friends so much trouble and expense. On the other hand, if I had
taken leave of my friends, even those who assisted and approved my
undertaking would have condemned my coming abroad before the King’s bounty
was received. This obliged me to come away in the private manner that I
did, and to run the risque of a tedious winter voyage. Nothing less would
have convinced the world that I was in earnest, after the report I knew
was growing to the contrary.”
Months passed, and Walpole’s promise was still unfulfilled. “I wait here,”
he tells Lord Percival in March, 1730, “with all the anxiety that attends
suspense, until I know what I can depend upon, or what course I am to
take. On the one hand I have no notion that the Court would put what men
call a _bite_ upon a poor clergyman, who depended upon charters, grants,
votes, and the like engagements. On the other hand, I see nothing done
towards payment of the money.” Later on he writes—“As for the raillery of
European wits, I should not mind it, if I saw my College go on and
prosper; but I must own the disappointments I have met with in this
particular have nearly touched me, not without affecting my health and
spirits. If the founding a College for the spread of religion and learning
in America had been a foolish project, it cannot be supposed the Court,
the Ministers, and the Parliament would have given such public
encouragement to it; and if, after all that encouragement, they who
engaged to endow and protect it let it drop, the disappointment indeed may
be to me, but the censure, I think, will light elsewhere.”
The suspense was at last ended. Gibson, the Bishop of London, pressed
Walpole for a final answer. “If,” he replied, “you put this question to me
as a Minister, I must, and can, assure you that the money shall most
undoubtedly be paid, as soon as suits with public convenience; but if you
ask me as a friend, whether Dean Berkeley should continue in America
expecting the payment of twenty thousand pounds, I advise him by all means
to return home to Europe, and to give up his present expectations.” It was
thus that in 1731 the Prime Minister of England crushed the project
conceived ten years before, and to which the intervening period had, under
his encouragement, been devoted by the projector with a singular
enthusiasm.
[Illustration]
Berkeley’s Alcove, Rhode Island
A few months after this heavy blow, Berkeley, with his wife, and Henry
their infant child, bade farewell to the island home. They sailed from
Boston in the late autumn of 1731, and in the following February we find
them in London. Thus ended the romantic episode of Rhode Island, with its
ideal of Christian civilisation, which so moves the heart and touches the
imagination in our retrospect of the eighteenth century. Of all who have
ever landed on the American shore, none was ever moved by a purer and more
self-sacrificing spirit. America still acknowledges that by Berkeley’s
visit on this mission it has been invested with the halo of an illustrious
name, and associated with religious devotion to a magnificent ideal, even
if it was sought to be realised by impracticable means. To reform the New
World, and mankind at last, by a College on an island in the Atlantic, six
hundred miles from America, the Indians whom it was intended to civilise
being mostly in the interior of the continent, and none in Bermuda, was
not unnaturally considered Quixotic; and that it was at first supported by
the British Court and Parliament is a wonderful tribute to the persuasive
genius of the projector. Perhaps he was too much influenced by Lord
Percival’s idea, that it could not be realised by private benevolence,
without the intervention of the Crown. But the indirect influence of
Berkeley’s American inspiration is apparent in many ways in the
intellectual and spiritual life of that great continent, during the last
century and a half, especially by the impulse given to academical
education. It is the testimony of an American author that, “by methods
different from those intended by Berkeley, and in ways more manifold than
even he could have dreamed, he has since accomplished, and through all
coming time, by a thousand ineffaceable influences, he will continue to
accomplish, some portion at least of the results which he had aimed at in
the founding of his university. It is the old story over again; the
tragedy of a Providence wiser than man’s foresight; God giving the victory
to His faithful servant even through the bitterness of overruling him and
defeating him(23).” American Empire, as we now see it with its boundless
beneficent influence, is at least an imperfect realisation of Berkeley’s
dream.
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Berkeley’s head quarters were in London, in Green Street, for more than
two years after the return to England in the beginning of 1732. Extant
correspondence with Lord Percival ends in Rhode Island, and our picture of
the two years in London is faintly formed by letters to Prior and Johnson.
These speak of ill-health, and breathe a less sanguine spirit. The
brilliant social life of former visits was less attractive now, even if
old friends had remained. But Swift had quitted England for ever, and
Steele had followed Addison to the grave. Gay, the common friend of
Berkeley and Pope, died soon after the return from Rhode Island, and
Arbuthnot was approaching his end at Hampstead. Samuel Clarke had passed
away when Berkeley was at Whitehall; but Seeker now held the rectory of
St. James’s, and Butler was in studious retirement on the Wear; while Pope
was at Twickenham, publishing his _Essay on Man_, receiving visits from
Bolingbroke, or visiting Lord Bathurst at Cirencester Park. Queen
Caroline, too, was holding her receptions at Kensington; but “those who
imagine (as you write),” he tells Prior in January, 1734, “that I have
been making my court here all this time, would never believe (what is most
true) that I have not been at the Court or at the Minister’s but once
these seven years. The care of my health and the love of retirement have
prevailed over whatsoever ambition might have come to my share.” There is
a hint of a visit to Oxford, at Commemoration in 1733, when his friend
Seeker received the honorary degree.
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Soon after he had settled in London, the fruit of his studies in Rhode
Island was given to the world in the Seven Dialogues of _Alciphron, or The
Minute Philosopher_. Here the philosophical inspiration of his early years
is directed to sustain faith in Divine Moral Order, and in the Christian
Revelation. _Alciphron_ is the longest, and in literary form perhaps the
most finished of his works, unsurpassed in lively strokes of irony and
satire. Yet if it is to be regarded as a philosophical justification of
religion, as against modern agnosticism, one may incline to the judgment
of Mr. Leslie Stephen, that it is “the least admirable of all its author’s
admirable works.” As we have seen, the sect of free-thinkers was early the
object of Berkeley’s ridicule and sarcasm. They claimed for themselves
wide intellectual vision, yet they were blind to the deep realities of the
universe; they took exclusive credit for freedom of thought, although
their thinking was confined within the narrow compass of our data in
sense. The book of _Principles_, the _Dialogues_, and the _De Motu_ of his
early years, were designed to bring into clear light the absolute
dependence of the world that is presented to our senses on Omnipresent
Spirit; and the necessary subjection of all changes in our surroundings to
the immediate agency or providence of God. Boasted “free-thinking” was
really a narrow atheism, so he believed, in which meaningless Matter
usurped the place that belonged in reason to God, and he employed reason
to disclose Omnipotent Intelligence in and behind the phenomena that are
presented to the senses in impotent natural sequence.
The causes of the widespread moral corruption of the Old World, which had
moved Berkeley so profoundly, seem to have been pondered anew during his
recluse life in Rhode Island. The decline of morals was explained by the
deification of Matter: consequent life of sensuous pleasure accounted for
decay of religion. That vice is hurtful was argued by free-thinkers like
Mandeville to be a vulgar error, and a fallacious demonstration was
offered of its utility. That virtue is intrinsically beautiful was taught
by Shaftesbury; but Berkeley judged the abstract beauty, with which
“minute philosophers” were contented, unfit to move ordinary human beings
to self-sacrificing action; for this involves devotion to a Perfect Person
by whom goodness is finally distributed. Religion alone inspires the
larger and higher life, in presenting distributive justice personified on
the throne of the universe, instead of abstract virtue.
The turning-point in _Alciphron_ is in man’s vision of God. This is
pressed in the Fourth Dialogue. The free-thinker asserts that “the notion
of a Deity, or some invisible power, is of all prejudices the most
unconquerable; the most signal example of belief without reason for
believing.” He demands proof—“such proof as every man of sense requires of
a matter of fact.... Should a man ask, why I believe there is a king of
Great Britain? I might answer, Because I had seen him. Or a king of Spain?
Because I had seen those who saw him. But as for this King of kings, I
neither saw Him myself, nor any one else that ever did see Him.” To which
Euphranor replies, “What if it should appear that God really speaks to
man; would this content you? What if it shall appear plainly that God
speaks to men by the intervention and use of arbitrary, outward, sensible
signs, having no resemblance or necessary connexion with the things they
stand for and suggest; if it shall appear that, by innumerable
combinations of these signs, an endless variety of things is discovered
and made known to us; and that we are thereby instructed or informed in
their different natures; that we are taught and admonished what to shun
and what to pursue; and are directed how to regulate our motions, and how
to act with respect to things distant from us, as well in time as place:
will this content you?” Euphranor accordingly proceeds to shew that
Visible Nature is a Language, in which the Universal Power that is
continually at work is speaking to us all, in a way similar to that in
which our fellow men speak to us; so that we have as much (even more)
reason to believe in the existence of the Universal Person who is the
Speaker, as we have to believe in the existence of persons around us; who
become known to us, when they too employ sense-symbols, in the words and
actions by which we discover that we are not alone in the universe. For
men are really living spirits: their _bodies_ are only the sign of their
spiritual personality. And it is so with God, who is also revealed in the
visible world as a Spirit. “In a strict sense,” says Euphranor, “I do not
see Alciphron, but only such visible signs and tokens as suggest and infer
the being of that invisible thinking principle or soul. Even so, in the
self-same manner, it seems to me that, though I cannot with eyes of flesh
behold the invisible God, yet I do, in the strictest sense, behold and
perceive, by all my senses, such signs and tokens ... as suggest,
indicate, and demonstrate an invisible God as certainly, and with the same
evidence, at least, as any other signs, perceived by sense, do suggest to
me the existence of _your_ soul, spirit, or thinking principle; which I am
convinced of only by a few signs or effects, and the motions of one small
organised body; whereas I do, at all times, and in all places, perceive
sensible signs which evince the being of God.” In short, God is the living
Soul of the Universe; as you and I are the living souls that keep our
bodies and their organs in significant motion. We can interpret the
character of God in the history of the universe, even as we can interpret
the character of our neighbour by observing his words and outward actions.
This overwhelmed Alciphron. “You stare to find that God is not far from
any one of us, and that in Him we live and move and have our being,”
rejoins Euphranor. “You who, in the beginning of this conference, thought
it strange that God should leave Himself without a witness, do now think
it strange the witness should be so full and clear.” “I must own I do,”
was the reply. “I never imagined it could be pretended that we saw God
with our fleshly eyes, as plain as we see any human person whatsoever, and
that He daily speaks to our senses in a manifest and clear dialect.”
Although this reasoning satisfied Alciphron, others may think it
inconclusive. How one is able to discover the existence of other persons,
and even the meaning of finite personality, are themselves questions full
of speculative difficulty. But, waiving this, the analogy between the
relation of a human spirit to its body, and that of the Omnipresent and
Omnipotent Spirit to the Universe of things and persons, fails in several
respects. God is supposed to be continually creating the world by constant
and continuous Providence, and His Omniscience is supposed to comprehend
all its concrete relations: a man’s body is not absolutely dependent on
the man’s own power and providence; and even his scientific knowledge of
it, in itself and in its relations, is scanty and imperfect, as his power
over it is limited and conditioned. Then the little that a man gradually
learns of what is going on in the surrounding universe is dependent on his
senses: Omniscience comprehends Immensity and Eternity (so we suppose) in
a single intuition. Our bodies, moreover, are visible things: the
universe, this organism of God, is crowded with _persons_, to whom there
is nothing corresponding within the organism which reveals one man to
another.
But this is not all. After Euphranor has found that the Universal Power is
Universal Spirit, this is still an inadequate God; for what we want to
know is what _sort_ of Spirit God is. Is God omnipotent or of limited
power, regarded ethically, fair or unfair in His treatment of persons;
good or evil, according to the highest yet attained conception of
goodness; a God of love, or a devil omnipotent? I infer the _character_ of
my neighbour from his words and actions, patent to sense in the gradual
outward evolution of his life. I am asked to infer the _character_ of the
Omnipresent Spirit from _His_ words and actions, manifested in the
universe of things and persons. But we must not attribute to the Cause
more than it reveals of itself in its effects. God and men alike are known
by the effects they produce. The Universal Power is, on this condition,
righteous, fair, and loving to the degree in which those conceptions are
implied in His visible embodiment: to affirm more or other than this, on
the basis of analogy _alone_, is either to indulge in baseless conjecture,
or to submit blindly to dogma and authority.
Now the universe, as far as it comes within the range of human experience
on this planet, is full of suffering and moral disorder. The “religious
hypothesis” of a perfectly righteous and benevolent God is here offered to
account for the appearances which the universe presents to us. But do
these signify exact distributive justice? Is not visible nature apparently
cruel and unrelenting? If we infer cruelty in the character of a man,
because his bodily actions cause undeserved suffering, must we not, by
this analogy, infer in like manner regarding the character of the Supreme
Spirit, manifested in the progressive evolution of the universal organism?
We find it impossible to determine with absolute certainty the character
even of our fellow men, from their imperfectly interpreted words and
actions, so that each man is more or less a mystery to his fellows. The
mystery deepens when we try to read the character of animals,—to interpret
the motives which determine the overt acts of dogs or horses. And if we
were able to communicate by visible signs with the inhabitants of other
planets, with how much greater difficulty should we draw conclusions from
their visible acts regarding _their_ character? But if this is so when we
use the data of sense for reading the character of finite persons, how
infinite must be the difficulty of reading the character of the Eternal
Spirit, in and through the gradual evolution of the universe of things and
persons, which in this reasoning is supposed to be His body; and the
history of that universe the facts of His biography, in and by which He is
eternally revealing Himself! For we know nothing about the unbeginning and
unending. The universe of persons is assumed to have no _end_; and I know
not why its evolution must be supposed to have had a _beginning_, or that
there ever was a time in which God was unmanifested, to finite persons.
Shall we in these circumstances turn with Euphranor, in the Fifth and
Sixth Dialogues, to professed revelation of the character of the Universal
Mind presented in miraculous revelation, by inspired prophets and
apostles, who are brought forward as authorities able to speak infallibly
to the _character_ of God? If the whole course of nature, or endless
evolution of events, is the Divine Spirit revealed in omnipresent
activity, what room is there for any other less regular revelation? The
universe of common experience, it is implied by Berkeley, is essentially
miraculous, and therefore absolutely perfect. Is it consistent with
fairness, and benevolence, and love of goodness in all moral agents for
its own sake, that the Christian revelation should have been so long
delayed, and be still so incompletely made known? Is not the existence of
wicked persons on this or any other planet, wicked men or devils, a dark
spot in the visible life of God? Does not perfect goodness in God mean
restoration of goodness in men, for its own sake, apart from their merit;
and must not Omnipotent Goodness, infinitely opposite to all evil, either
convert to goodness all beings in the universe who have made themselves
bad, or else relieve the universe of their perpetual presence in
ever-increasing wickedness?
Sceptical criticism of this sort has found expression in the searching
minute philosophy of a later day than Berkeley’s and Alciphron’s; as in
David Hume and Voltaire, and in the agnosticism of the nineteenth century.
Was not Euphranor too ready to yield to the demand for a visible God,
whose character had accordingly to be determined by what appears in nature
and man, under the conditions of our limited and contingent experience? Do
we not need to look below data of sensuous experience, and among the
presuppositions which must consciously or unconsciously be taken for
granted in all man’s dealings with the environment in which he finds
himself, for the root of _trustworthy_ experience? On merely physical
reasoning, like that of Euphranor, the righteous love of God is an
unwarranted inference, and it even seems to be contradicted by visible
facts presented in the history of the world. But if Omnipotent Goodness
must _a priori_ be attributed to the Universal Mind, as an indispensable
condition for man’s having reliable intercourse of any sort with nature;
if this is the primary postulate necessary to the existence of truth of
any kind—then the “religious hypothesis” that God is Good, according to
the highest conception of goodness, is no groundless fancy, but the
fundamental faith-venture in which man has to live. It _must_ stand in
reason; unless it can be _demonstrated_ that the mixture of good and evil
which the universe presents, necessarily contradicts this fundamental
presupposition: and if so, man is lost in pessimistic Pyrrhonism, and can
assert nothing about anything(24).
The religious altruism, however inadequate, which Berkeley offered in
_Alciphron_ made some noise at the time of its appearance, although its
theistic argument was too subtle to be popular. The conception of the
visible world as Divine Visual Language was “received with ridicule by
those who make ridicule the test of truth,” although it has made way
since. “I have not seen Dean Berkeley,” Gay the poet writes to Swift in
the May following the Dean’s return, and very soon after the appearance of
_Alciphron_, “but I have been reading his book, and like many parts of it;
but in general think with you that it is too speculative.” Warburton, with
admiration for Berkeley, cannot comprehend his philosophy, and Hoadley
shewed a less friendly spirit. _A Letter from a Country Clergyman_,
attributed to Lord Hervey, the “Sporus” of Pope, was one of several
ephemeral attacks which the _Minute Philosopher_ encountered in the year
after its appearance. Three other critics, more worthy of consideration,
are mentioned in one of Berkeley’s letters from London to his American
friend Johnson at Stratford: “As to the Bishop of Cork’s book, and the
other book you allude to, the author of which is one Baxter, they are both
very little considered here; for which reason I have taken no public
notice of them. To answer objections already answered, and repeat the same
things, is a needless as well as disagreeable task. Nor should I have
taken notice of that Letter about Vision, had it not been printed in a
newspaper, which gave it course, and spread it through the kingdom.
Besides, the theory of Vision I found was somewhat obscure to most people;
for which reason I was not displeased at an opportunity to explain
it(25).” The explanation was given in _The Theory of Visual Language
Vindicated_, in January, 1733, as a supplement to _Alciphron_. Its blot is
a tone of polemical bitterness directed against Shaftesbury(26).
Although Berkeley “took no public notice” of “the Bishop of Cork’s
book(27)” it touched a great question, which periodically has awakened
controversy, and been the occasion of mutual misunderstanding among the
controversialists in past ages. “Is God knowable by man; or must religion
be devotion to an object that is unknowable?” In one of his first letters
to Lord Percival, as we saw, Berkeley animadverted on a sermon by the
Archbishop of Dublin, which seemed to deny that there was goodness, or
understanding God, any more than feet or hands. An opinion somewhat
similar had been attributed to Bishop Browne, in his answer to Toland, and
afterwards in 1728, in his _Procedure and Limits of Human Understanding_.
This touched to the quick Berkeley’s ultimate conception of the universe,
as realisable only in, and therefore necessarily dependent on, living
mind. We are reminded of the famous analogy of Spinoza(28). If the
omnipresent and omnipotent Mind, on which Euphranor rested, can be called
“mind” only metaphorically, and can be called “good” only when the term is
used without human meaning, it may seem to be a matter of indifference
whether we have unknowable Matter or unknowable Mind at the root of things
and persons. Both are empty words. The Power universally at work is
equally unintelligible, equally unfit to be the object of worship in the
final venture of faith, whether we use the term Matter or the term Mind.
The universe is neither explained nor sustained by a “mind” that is mind
only metaphorically. To call this “God” is to console us with an empty
abstraction. The minutest philosopher is ready to grant with Alciphron
that “there is a God in this indefinite sense”; since nothing can be
inferred from such an account of God about conduct or religion.
The Bishop of Cork replied to the strictures of Euphranor in the _Minute
Philosopher_. He qualified and explained his former utterances in some two
hundred dull pages of his _Divine Analogy_, which hardly touch the root of
the matter. The question at issue is the one which underlies modern
agnosticism. It was raised again in Britain in the nineteenth century,
with deeper insight, by Sir William Hamilton; followed by Dean Mansel, in
controversy with F. D. Maurice, at the point of view of Archbishop King
and Bishop Browne, in philosophical vindication of the mysteries of
Christian faith; by Mr. Herbert Spencer and by Huxley in a minute
philosophy that has been deepened by Hume’s criticism of the rationale of
theism in Berkeley(29).
Andrew Baxter’s _Inquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul_, referred to
in Berkeley’s letter to Johnson, appeared in 1733. It has a chapter on
“Dean Berkeley’s Scheme against the existence of Matter and a Material
World,” which is worthy of mention because it is the earliest elaborate
criticism of the New Principle, although it had then been before the world
for more than twenty years. The title of the chapter shews Baxter’s
imperfect comprehension of the proposition which he attempts to refute. It
suggests that Berkeley argued for the non-existence of the things we see
and touch, instead of for their necessary dependence on, or subordination
to, realising percipient Mind, so far as they are concrete realities.
Baxter, moreover, was a Scot; and his criticism is interesting as a
foretaste of the protracted discussion of the “ideal theory” by Reid and
his friends, and later on by Hamilton. But Baxter’s book was not the first
sign of Berkeley’s influence in Scotland. We are told by Dugald Stewart,
that “the novelty of Berkeley’s paradox attracted very powerfully the
attention of a set of young men who were then prosecuting their studies at
Edinburgh, who formed themselves into a Society for the express purpose of
soliciting from him an explanation of some parts of his theory which
seemed to them obscurely or equivocally expressed. To this correspondence
the amiable and excellent prelate seems to have given every encouragement;
and I have been told on the best authority that he was accustomed to say
that his reasoning had been nowhere better understood than by this club of
young Scotsmen(30).” Thus, and afterwards through Hume and Reid, Berkeley
is at the root of philosophy in Scotland.
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The two years of indifferent health and authorship in London sum up what
may be called the American period of Berkeley’s life. Early in 1734
letters to Prior open a new vista in his history. He was nominated to the
bishopric of Cloyne in the south of Ireland, and we have now to follow him
to the remote region which was his home for eighteen years. The interest
of the philosophic Queen, and perhaps some compensation for the Bermuda
disappointment, may explain the appearance of the metaphysical and social
idealist in the place where he shone as a star of the first magnitude in
the Irish Church of the eighteenth century.
III. Later Years (1734-53).
In May, 1734, Berkeley was consecrated as Bishop of Cloyne, in St. Paul’s
Church, Dublin. Except occasional visits, he had been absent from Ireland
for more than twenty years. He returned to spend eighteen years of almost
unbroken seclusion in his remote diocese. It suited a growing inclination
to a recluse, meditative life, which had been encouraged by circumstances
in Rhode Island. The eastern and northern part in the county of Cork
formed his diocese, bounded on the west by Cork harbour, and on the east
by the beautiful Blackwater and the mountains of Waterford; the sea, which
was its southern boundary, approached within two miles of the episcopal
residence in the village of Cloyne.
As soon as he was settled, he resumed study “with unabated attention,” but
still with indifferent health. Travelling had become irksome to him, and
at Cloyne he was almost as much removed as he had been in Rhode Island
from the thinking world. Cork took the place of Newport; but Cork was
twenty miles from Cloyne, while Newport was only three miles from
Whitehall. His episcopal neighbour at Cork was Bishop Browne, the critic
of _Alciphron_. Isaac Gervais, afterwards Dean of Tuam, often enlivened
the “manse-house” at Cloyne by his wit and intercourse with the great
world. Secker, the Bishop of Bristol, and Benson, the Bishop of
Gloucester, now and then exchanged letters with him, and correspondence
was kept up as of old with Prior at Dublin and Johnson at Stratford. But
there is no trace of intercourse with Swift, who was wearing out an
unhappy old age, or with Pope, almost the only survivor of the brilliant
society of other years. We are told, indeed, that the beauty of Cloyne was
so described to the bard of Twickenham, by the pen which in former days
had described Ischia, that Pope was almost moved to visit it. And a letter
from Secker in February, 1735(31), contains this scrap: “Your friend Mr.
Pope is publishing small poems every now and then, full of much wit and
not a little keenness(32).” “Our common friend, Dr. Butler,” he adds,
“hath almost completed a set of speculations upon the credibility of
religion from its analogy to the constitution and course of nature, which
I believe in due time you will read with pleasure.” Butler’s _Analogy_
appeared in the following year. But I have found no remains of
correspondence between Berkeley and their “common friend”; the two most
illustrious religious thinkers of the Anglican communion.
When he left London in 1734 Berkeley was on the eve of what sounded like a
mathematical controversy, although it was in his intention metaphysical,
and was suggested by the Seventh Dialogue in _Alciphron_. In one of his
letters to Prior, early in that year, he told him that though he “could
not read, owing to ill health,” yet his thought was as distinct as ever,
and that for amusement “he passed his early hours in thinking of certain
mathematical matters which may possibly produce something(33).” This
turned, it seems, upon a form of scepticism among contemporary
mathematicians, occasioned by the presence of mysteries of religion. The
_Analyst_ was the issue. It was followed by a controversy in which some of
the most eminent mathematicians took part. _Mathematica exeunt in
mysteria_ might have been the motto of the _Analyst_. The assumptions in
mathematics, it is argued, are as mysterious as those of theologians and
metaphysicians. Mathematicians cannot translate into perfectly
intelligible thought their own doctrines in fluxions. If man’s knowledge
of God is rooted in mystery, so too is mathematical analysis. Pure science
at last loses itself in propositions which usefully regulate action, but
which cannot be comprehended. This is the drift of the argument in the
_Analyst_; but perhaps Berkeley’s inclination to extreme conclusions, and
to what is verbally paradoxical, led him into doubtful positions in the
controversy to which the _Analyst_ gave rise. Instead of ultimate
imperfect comprehensibility, he seems to attribute absolute contradiction
to the Newtonian fluxions. Baxter, in his _Inquiry_, had asserted that
things in Berkeley’s book of _Principles_ forced the author “to suspect
that even mathematics may not be very sound knowledge at the bottom.” The
metaphysical argument of the _Analyst_ was obscured in a cloud of
mathematics.
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The social condition of Ireland attracted Berkeley almost as soon as he
was settled in Cloyne. He was surrounded by a large native Irish
population and a small group of English colonists. The natives, long
governed in the interest of the stranger, had never learned to exert and
govern themselves. The self-reliance which Berkeley preached fifteen years
before, as a mean for “preventing the ruin of Great Britain,” was more
wanting in Ireland, where the simplest maxims of social economy were
neglected. It was a state of things fitted to move one who was too
independent to permit his aspirations to be confined to the ordinary
routine of the Irish episcopate, and who could not forget the favourite
moral maxim of his life.
The social chaos of Ireland was the occasion of what to some may be the
most interesting of Berkeley’s writings. His thoughts found vent
characteristically in a series of penetrating practical queries. The First
Part of the _Querist_ appeared in 1735, anonymously, edited by Dr. Madden
of Dublin, who along with Prior had lately founded a Society for promoting
industrial arts in Ireland. The Second and Third Parts were published in
the two following years. _A Discourse to Magistrates occasioned by the
Enormous Licence and Irreligion of the Times_, which appeared in 1736, was
another endeavour, with like philanthropic intention. And the only
important break in his secluded life at Cloyne, in eighteen years of
residence, was when he went for some months to Dublin in 1737, to render
social service to Ireland in the Irish House of Lords.
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His metaphysic, at first encountered by ridicule, was now beginning to
receive more serious treatment. A Scotsman had already recognised it. In
1739 another and more famous Scotsman, David Hume, refers thus to Berkeley
in one of the opening sections of his _Treatise of Human Nature_: “A very
material question has been started concerning abstract or general
ideas—whether they be general or particular in the mind’s conception of
them. A great philosopher, Dr. Berkeley, has disputed the received opinion
in this particular, and has asserted that all general ideas are nothing
but particular ones, annexed to a certain term which gives them a more
extensive signification, and makes them recall upon occasion other
individuals which are similar to them. 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.” It does not appear that Berkeley heard of Hume.
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A curious interest began to engage him about this time. The years
following 1739 were years of suffering in the Irish diocese. It was a time
of famine followed by widespread disease. His correspondence is full of
allusions to this. It had consequences of lasting importance. Surrounded
by disease, he pondered remedies. Experience in Rhode Island and among
American Indians suggested the healing properties of tar. Further
experiments in tar, combined with meditation and much curious reading,
deepened and expanded his metaphysical philosophy. Tar seemed to grow
under his experiments, and in his thoughts, into a Panacea for giving
health to the organism on which living mind in man is meanwhile dependent.
This natural dependence of health upon tar introduced thoughts of the
interdependence of all things, and then of the _immediate_ dependence of
all in nature upon Omnipresent and Omnipotent Mind. The living Mind that
underlies the phenomena of the universe began to be conceived under a new
light. Since his return to the life of thought in Rhode Island, he had
been immersed in Platonic and Neoplatonic literature, and in books of
mystical Divinity, encouraged perhaps by the mystical disposition
attributed to his wife. An eccentric ingenuity connected the scientific
experiments and prescriptions with the Idealism of Plato and Plotinus. The
natural law according to which tar-water was universally restorative set
his mind to work about the immanence of living Mind. He mused about a
medicine thus universally beneficial, and the thought occurred that it
must be naturally charged with ’pure invisible fire, the most subtle and
elastic of bodies, and the vital element in the universe’; and water might
be the natural cause which enables this elementary fire to be drawn out of
tar and transferred to vegetable and animal organisms. But the vital fire
could be only a natural cause; which in truth is no efficient cause at
all, but only a sign of divine efficiency transmitted through the world of
sense: the true cause of this and all other natural effects must be the
immanent Mind or Reason in which we all participate; for in God we live
and move and have our being.
It is thus that Berkeley’s thought culminates in _Siris_, that _Chain of
Philosophical Reflexions and Inquiries concerning the Virtues of
Tar-water, and divers other subjects connected together and arising one
from another_, which appeared in 1744. This little book made more noise at
the time of its appearance than any of his books; but not because of its
philosophy, which was lost in its medicinal promise to mankind of immunity
from disease. Yet it was Berkeley’s last attempt to express his ultimate
conception of the universe in its human and divine relations. When _Siris_
is compared with the book of _Principles_, the immense difference in tone
and manner of thought shews the change wrought in the intervening years.
The sanguine argumentative gladiatorship of the _Principles_ is exchanged
for pensive speculation, which acknowledges the weakness of human
understanding, when it is face to face with the Immensities and
Eternities. Compare the opening sections of the Introduction to the
_Principles_ with the closing sections of _Siris_. The contingent data of
our experience are now felt to be insufficient, and there is a more or
less conscious grounding of the Whole in the eternal and immutable Ideas
of Reason. “Strictly, the sense knows nothing. We perceive, indeed, sounds
by hearing and characters by sight. But we are not therefore said to
understand them.... Sense and experience acquaint us with the course and
analogy of appearances and natural effects: thought, reason, intellect,
introduce us into the knowledge of their causes.... The principles of
science are neither objects of sense nor imagination: intellect and reason
are alone the sure guides to truth.” So the shifting basis of the earlier
thought is found to need support in the intellectual and moral faith that
must be involved in all reasonable human intercourse with the phenomena
presented in the universe.
The inadequate thought of God, as only a Spirit or Person supreme among
the spirits or persons, in and through whom the material world is
realised, a thought which pervades _Alciphron_, makes way in _Siris_ for
the thought of God as the infinite omnipresent Ground, or final sustaining
Power, immanent in Nature and Man, to which Berkeley had become accustomed
in Neoplatonic and Alexandrian metaphysics. “Comprehending God and the
creatures in One general notion, we may _say_ that all things together
(God and the universe of Space and Time) make One Universe, or τὸ Πᾶν. But
if we should say that all things make One God, this would be an erroneous
notion of God; but would not amount to atheism, as long as Mind or
Intellect was admitted to be τὸ ἡγεμονικόν, or the governing part.... It
will not seem just to fix the imputation of atheism upon those
philosophers who hold the doctrine of τὸ Ἕν.” It is thus that he now
regards God. Metaphysics and theology are accordingly one.
No attempt is made in _Siris_ to articulate the universe in the light of
unifying Mind or Reason. And we are still apt to ask what the truth and
goodness at the heart of all really mean; seeing that, as conceived in
human minds, they vary in the gradual evolution of intellect and
conscience in men. _Omnia exeunt in mysteria_ is the tone of _Siris_ at
the end. The universe of reality is too much for our articulate
intellectual digestion: it must be left for omniscience; it transcends
finite intelligence and the _via media_ of human understanding. Man must
be satisfied to pass life, in the infinitesimal interval between birth and
death, as a faith-venture, which he may convert into a growing insight, as
the generations roll on, but which can never be converted into complete
knowledge. “In this state we must be satisfied to make the best of those
glimpses within our reach. It is Plato’s remark in his _Theætetus_, that
while we sit still we are never the wiser; but going into the river, and
moving up and down, is the way to discover its depths and shallows. If we
exercise and bestir ourselves, we may even here discover something. The
eye by long use comes to see even in the darkest cavern; and there is no
subject so obscure but we may discern some glimpse of truth by long poring
on it. Truth is the cry of all, but the game of a few. Certainly where it
is the chief passion it doth not give way to vulgar cares and views; nor
is it contented with a little ardour in the early time of life: a time
perhaps to pursue, but not so fit to weigh and revise. He that would make
a real progress in knowledge must dedicate his age as well as his youth,
the later growth as well as the first-fruits, at the altar of Truth.” Such
was Berkeley, and such were his last words in philosophy. They may suggest
the attitude of Bacon when, at a different view-point, he disclaims
exhaustive system: “I have made a beginning of the work: the fortune of
the human race will give the issue. For the matter in hand is no mere
felicity of speculation, but the real business and fortunes of the human
race(34).”
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While Berkeley’s central thought throughout his life is concerned with God
as the one omnipresent and omnipotent Providential Agent in the universe,
he says little about the other final question, of more exclusively human
interest, which concerns the destiny of men. That men are born into a
universe which, as the visible expression of Moral Providence, must be
scientifically and ethically trustworthy; certain not to put man to
confusion intellectually or morally, seeing that it could not otherwise be
trusted for such in our ultimate venture of faith—this is one thing. That
all persons born into it are certain to continue living self-consciously
for ever, is another thing. This is not obviously implied in the former
presupposition, whether or not it can be deduced from it, or else
discovered by other means. Although man’s environment is essentially
Divine, and wholly in its smallest details Providential, may not his body,
in its living organisation from physical birth until physical death, be
the measure of the continuance of his self-conscious personality? Is each
man’s immortal existence, like God’s, indispensable?
Doubt about the destiny of men after they die is, at the end of the
nineteenth century, probably more prevalent than doubt about the
underlying Providence of God, and His constant creative activity; more
perhaps than it was in the days of Toland, and Collins, and Tindal. Future
life had been made so familiar to the imagination by the early and
mediaeval Church, and afterwards by the Puritans, as in Milton, Bunyan,
and Jonathan Edwards, that it then seemed to the religious mind more real
than anything that is seen and touched. The habit wholly formed by natural
science is apt to dissipate this and to make a human life lived under
conditions wholly strange to its “minute philosophy” appear illusory.
A section in the book of _Principles_(35) in which the common argument for
the “natural immortality” of the human soul is reproduced, strengthened by
his new conception of what the reality of body means, is Berkeley’s
metaphysical contribution for determining between the awful alternatives
of annihilation or continued self-conscious life after physical death. The
subject is touched, in a less recondite way, in two of his papers in the
_Guardian_, and in the _Discourse_ delivered in Trinity College Chapel in
1708, in which a revelation of the immortality of men is presented as the
special gospel of Jesus Christ. To argue, as Berkeley does in the
_Principles_, that men cannot be annihilated at death, because they are
spiritual substances having powers independent of the sequences of nature,
implies assumptions regarding finite persons which are open to criticism.
The justification in reason for our venture of faith that Omnipotent
Goodness is at the heart of the universe is—that without this
presupposition we can have no reasonable intercourse, scientific or
otherwise, with the world of things and persons in which we find
ourselves; for reason and will are then alike paralysed by universal
distrust. But it can hardly be maintained _a priori_ that men, or other
spiritual beings in the universe, are equally with God indispensable to
its natural order; so that when they have once entered on conscious
existence they must _always_ continue to exist consciously. Is not the
philosophical justification of man’s hope of endless life ethical rather
than metaphysical; founded on that faith in the justice and goodness of
the Universal Mind which has to be taken for granted in every attempt to
interpret experience, with its mixture of good and evil, in this
evanescent embodied life? Can a life such as this is be _all_ for men, in
a universe that, because it is essentially Divine, must operate towards
the extinction of the wickedness which now makes it a mystery of
Omnipotent Goodness?
A cheerful optimism appears in Berkeley’s habit of thought about death, as
we have it in his essays in the _Guardian_: a sanguine apprehension of a
present preponderance of good, and consequent anticipation of greater good
after death; unlike those whose pessimistic temperament induces a lurid
picture of eternal moral disorder. But his otherwise active imagination
seldom makes philosophy a meditation upon death. He does not seem to have
exercised himself in the way those do who find in the prospect of being in
the twenty-first century as they were in the first, what makes them
appalled that they have ever come at all into transitory percipient life;
or as those others who recoil from an unbodied life after physical death,
as infinitely more appalling than the thought of being transported _in
this body_ into another planet, or even to a material world outside our
solar system. In one of his letters to Johnson(36) he does approach the
unbodied life, and in a characteristic way:—
“I see no difficulty in conceiving a change of state, such as is vulgarly
called _death_, as well without as with material substance. It is
sufficient for that purpose that we allow sensible bodies, i.e. such as
are immediately perceived by sight and touch; the existence of which I am
so far from questioning, as philosophers are used to do, that I establish
it, I think, upon evident principles. Now it seems very easy to conceive
the _soul_ to exist in a separate state (i.e. divested from those limits
and laws of motion and perception with which she is embarrassed here) and
to exercise herself on new ideas, without the intervention of these
tangible things we call _bodies_. It is even very possible to apprehend
how the soul may have ideas of colour without an eye, or of sounds without
an ear(37).”
But while we may thus be supposed to have all our present sensuous
experience in an unbodied state, this does not enable one to conceive how
unbodied persons can communicate with one another in the absence of _all_
sense signs; whether of the sort derived from our present senses, or from
other senses of whose data we can in this life have no imagination.
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Berkeley’s tar-water enthusiasm lasted throughout the rest of his life,
and found vent in letters and pamphlets in support of his Panacea, from
1744 till 1752. Notwithstanding this, he was not forgetful of other
interests—ecclesiastical, and the social ones which he included in his
large meaning of “ecclesiastical.” The Rising under Charles Edward in 1745
was the occasion of a _Letter to the Roman Catholics of Cloyne_,
characteristically humane and liberal. It was followed in 1749 by an
_Exhortation to the Roman Catholic Clergy of Ireland_ in a similar spirit;
and this unwonted courtesy of an Irish Protestant bishop was received by
those to whom it was addressed in a corresponding temper.
It is difficult to determine Berkeley’s relation to rival schools or
parties in Church and State. His disposition was too singular and
independent for a partisan. Some of his early writings, as we have seen,
were suspected of high Tory and Jacobite leanings; but his arguments in
the suspected _Discourse_ were such as ordinary Tories and Jacobites
failed to understand, and the tenor of his words and actions was in the
best sense liberal. In religious thought _Siris_ might place him among
latitudinarians; perhaps in affinity with the Cambridge Platonists. His
true place is foremost among the religious philosophers of the Anglican
Church; the first to prepare the religious problem for the light in which
we are invited to look at the universe by modern agnostics, and under the
modern conception of natural evolution. He is the most picturesque figure
in that Anglican succession which, in the seventeenth century, includes
Hooker and Cudworth; in the eighteenth, Clarke and Butler; and in the
nineteenth, may we say Coleridge, in lack of a representative in orders;
although Mansel, Maurice, Mozley, and Jowett are not to be forgotten, nor
Isaac Taylor among laymen(38): Newman and Arnold, illustrious otherwise,
are hardly representatives of metaphysical philosophy.
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A more pensive tone runs through the closing years at Cloyne. Attempts
were made in vain to withdraw him from the “remote corner” to which he had
been so long confined. His friends urged his claims for the Irish Primacy.
“I am no man’s rival or competitor in this matter,” were his words to
Prior. “I am not in love with feasts, and crowds, and visits, and late
hours, and strange faces, and a hurry of affairs often insignificant. For
my own private satisfaction, I had rather be master of my time than wear a
diadem.” Letters to his American friends, Johnson and Clap, shew him still
moved by the inspiration which carried him over the Atlantic, and record
his influence in the development of American colleges(39). The home
education of his three sons was another interest. We are told by his widow
that “he would not trust his sons to mercenary hands. Though old and
sickly, he performed the constant tedious task himself.” Of the fruit of
this home education there is little to tell. The death of William, his
favourite boy, in 1751, “was thought to have struck too close to his
father’s heart.” “I am a man,” so he writes, “retired from the amusements,
politics, visits, and what the world calls pleasure. I had a little
friend, educated always under mine own eye, whose painting delighted me,
whose music ravished me, and whose lively gay spirit was a continual
feast. It has pleased God to take him hence.” The eldest son, Henry, born
in Rhode Island, did not long survive his father. George, the third son,
was destined for Oxford, and this destiny was connected with a new
project. The “life academico-philosophical,” which he sought in vain to
realise in Bermuda, he now hoped to find for himself in the city of
colleges on the Isis. “The truth is,” he wrote to Prior as early as
September 1746, “I have a scheme of my own for this long time past, in
which I propose more satisfaction and enjoyment to myself than I could in
that high station(40), which I neither solicited, nor so much as wished
for. A greater income would not tempt me to remove from Cloyne, and set
aside my Oxford scheme; which, though delayed by the illness of my
son(41), yet I am as intent upon it and as much resolved as ever.”
The last of Berkeley’s letters which we have is to Dean Gervais. It
expresses the feeling with which in April, 1752, he was contemplating
life, on the eve of his departure from Cloyne.
“I submit to years and infirmities. My views in this world are mean and
narrow; it is a thing in which I have small share, and which ought to give
me small concern. I abhor business, and especially to have to do with
great persons and great affairs. The evening of life I choose to pass in a
quiet retreat. Ambitious projects, intrigues and quarrels of statesmen,
are things I have formerly been amused with, but they now seem to be a
vain, fugitive dream.”
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Four months after this, Berkeley saw Cloyne for the last time. In August
he quitted it for Oxford, which he had long pictured in imagination as the
ideal home of his old age. When he left Cork in the vessel which carried
his wife, his daughter, and himself to Bristol, he was prostrated by
weakness, and had to be taken from Bristol to Oxford on a horse-litter. It
was late in August when they arrived there(42).
Our picture of Berkeley at Oxford is dim. According to tradition he
occupied a house in Holywell Street, near the gardens of New College and
not far from the cloisters of Magdalen. It was a changed world to him.
While he was exchanging Ireland for England, death was removing old
English friends. Before he left Cloyne he must have heard of the death of
Butler in June, at Bath, where Benson, at the request of Secker,
affectionately watched the last hours of the author of the _Analogy_.
Benson followed Butler in August.
We hear of study resumed in improved health in the home in Holy well
Street. In October a _Miscellany, containing several Tracts on various
Subjects_, “by the Bishop of Cloyne,” appeared simultaneously in London
and Dublin. The Tracts were reprints, with the exception of _Further
Thoughts on Tar-water_, which may have been written before he left
Ireland. The third edition of _Alciphron_ also appeared in this autumn.
But _Siris_ is the latest record of his philosophical thought. A
comparison of the _Commonplace Book_ and the _Principles_ with the
_Analyst_ and _Siris_ gives the measure of his advancement. After the
sanguine beginning perhaps the comparison leaves a sense of
disappointment, when we find metaphysics mixed up with mathematics in the
_Analyst_, and metaphysics obscurely mixed up with medicine in _Siris_.
It is curious that, although in 1752 David Hume’s _Treatise of Human
Nature_ had been before the world for thirteen years and his _Inquiry
concerning Human Understanding_ for four years, there is no allusion to
Hume by Berkeley. He was Berkeley’s immediate successor in the
eighteenth-century evolution of European thought. The sceptical criticism
of Hume was applied to the dogmatic religious philosophy of Berkeley, to
be followed in its turn by the abstractly rational and the moral
reconstructive criticism of Kant. _Alciphron_ is, however, expressly
referred to by Hume; indirectly, too, throughout the religious agnosticism
of his _Inquiry_, also afterwards in the _Dialogues on Natural Religion_,
in a vindication of minute philosophy by profounder reasonings than those
which satisfied Lysicles and Alciphron. Berkeley, Hume, and Kant are the
three significant philosophical figures of their century, each holding the
supreme place successively in its beginning, middle, and later years.
Perhaps Reid in Scotland did more than any other in his generation to make
Berkeley known; not, however, for his true work in constructive religious
thought, but for his supposed denial of the reality of the things we see
and touch.(43)
The ideal life in Oxford did not last long. On the evening of Sunday,
January 14, 1753, Berkeley was suddenly confronted by the mystery of
death. “As he was sitting with my mother, my sister, and myself,” so his
son wrote to Johnson at Stratford, in October, “suddenly, and without the
least previous notice or pain, he was removed to the enjoyment of eternal
rewards; and although all possible means were instantly used, no symptom
of life ever appeared after; nor could the physicians assign any cause for
his death. He arrived at Oxford on August 25, and had received great
benefit from the change of air, and by God’s blessing on tar-water,
insomuch that for some years he had not been in better health than he was
the instant before he left us(44).”
Six days later he was buried in Oxford, in the Cathedral of Christ
Church(45), where his tomb bears an appropriate inscription by Dr.
Markham, afterwards Archbishop of York.
ERRATA
Vol. I
Page 99, line 3 _for_ 149-80 _read_ 149-60.
Page 99, line 22 _for_—and to be “suggested,” not signified _read_—instead
of being only suggested.
Page 100, line 10 _for_ hearing _read_ seeing.
Page 103, note, lines 5, 6 _for_ pp. 111, 112 _read_ p. 210.
Page 200, note, line 14 _for_ Adam _read_ Robert.
Page 364, line 8 from foot _for_ and _read_ which.
Page 512, note 6, line 3 _for_ imminent _read_ immanent.
Vol. II
Page 194, note, line 3 _for_ Tyndal _read_ Tindal.
Page 207, line 1, insert 13. before _Alc._.
Page 377, line 6 _for_ antethesis _read_ antithesis.
Vol. IV
Page 285, lines 4, 5 _for_ Thisus Alus Cujus, &c. _read_ Ursus. Alus.
Cuius. &c. The inscription, strictly speaking, appears on the Palace of
the Counts Orsini, and is dated MD.
COMMONPLACE BOOK. MATHEMATICAL, ETHICAL, PHYSICAL, AND METAPHYSICAL
Written At Trinity College, Dublin, In 1705-8
_First published in 1871_
Editor’s Preface To The Commonplace Book
Berkeley’s juvenile _Commonplace Book_ is a small quarto volume, in his
handwriting, found among the Berkeley manuscripts in possession of the
late Archdeacon Rose. It was first published in 1871, in my edition of
Berkeley’s Works. It consists of occasional thoughts, mathematical,
physical, ethical, and metaphysical, set down in miscellaneous fashion,
for private use, as they arose in the course of his studies at Trinity
College, Dublin. They are full of the fervid enthusiasm that was natural
to him, and of sanguine expectations of the issue of the prospective
authorship for which they record preparations. On the title-page is
written, “G. B. Trin. Dub. alum.,” with the date 1705, when he was twenty
years of age. The entries are the gradual accumulation of the next three
years, in one of which the _Arithmetica_ and the _Miscellanea Mathematica_
made their appearance. The _New Theory of Vision_, given to the world in
1709, was evidently much in his mind, as well as the sublime conception of
the material world in its necessary subordination to the spiritual world,
of which he delivered himself in his book of _Principles_, in 1710.
This disclosure of Berkeley’s thoughts about things, in the years
preceding the publication of his first essays, is indeed a precious record
of the initial struggles of ardent philosophical genius. It places the
reader in intimate companionship with him when he was beginning to awake
into intellectual and spiritual life. We hear him soliloquising. We see
him trying to translate into reasonableness our crude inherited beliefs
about the material world and the natural order of the universe,
self-conscious personality, and the Universal Power or Providence—all
under the sway of a new determining Principle which was taking profound
possession of his soul. He finds that he has only to look at the concrete
things of sense in the light of this great discovery to see the
artificially induced perplexities of the old philosophers disappear, along
with their imposing abstractions, which turn out empty words. The thinking
is throughout fresh and sincere; sometimes impetuous and one-sided; the
outcome of a mind indisposed to take things upon trust, resolved to
inquire freely, a rebel against the tyranny of language, morally burdened
with the consciousness of a new world-transforming conception, which duty
to mankind obliged him to reveal, although his message was sure to offend.
Men like to regard things as they have been wont. This new conception of
the surrounding world—the impotence of Matter, and its subordinate office
in the Supreme Economy must, he foresees, disturb those accustomed to
treat outward things as the only realities, and who do not care to ask
what constitutes reality. Notwithstanding the ridicule and ill-will that
his transformed material world was sure to meet with, amongst the many who
accept empty words instead of genuine insight, he was resolved to deliver
himself of his thoughts through the press, but with the politic
conciliation of a persuasive Irish pleader.
The _Commonplace Book_ steadily recognises the adverse influence of one
insidious foe. Its world-transforming-Principle has been obscured by “the
mist and veil of words.” The abstractions of metaphysicians, which poison
human language, had to be driven out of the author’s mind before he could
see the light, and must be driven out of the minds of others before they
could be got to see it along with him: the concrete world as realisable
only in percipient mind is with difficulty introduced into the vacant
place. “The chief thing I pretend to is only to remove the mist and veil
of words.” He exults in the transformed mental scene that then
spontaneously rises before him. “My speculations have had the same effect
upon me as visiting foreign countries,—in the end I return where I was
before, get my heart at ease, and enjoy myself with more satisfaction. The
philosophers lose their abstract matter; the materialists lose their
abstract extension; the profane lose their extended deity. Pray what do
the rest of mankind lose?” This beneficent revolution seemed to be the
issue of a simple recognition of the fact, that the true way of regarding
the world we see and touch is to regard it as consisting of ideas or
phenomena that are presented to human senses, somehow regularly ordered,
and the occasions of pleasure or pain to us as we conform to or rebel
against their natural order. This is the surrounding universe—at least in
its relations to us, and that is all in it that we have to do with. “I
know not,” he says, “what is meant by things considered in themselves,
i.e. in abstraction. This is nonsense. Thing and idea are words of much
about the same extent and meaning. Existence is not conceivable without
perception and volition. I only declare the meaning of the word
_existence_, as far as I can comprehend it.”
In the _Commonplace Book_ we see the youth at Trinity College forging the
weapons which he was soon to direct against the materialism and scepticism
of the generation into which he was born. Here are rough drafts, crude
hints of intended arguments, probing of unphilosophical
mathematicians—even Newton and Descartes, memoranda of facts, more or less
relevant, on their way into the _Essay on Vision_ and the treatise on
_Principles_—seeds of the philosophy that was to be gradually unfolded in
his life and in his books. We watch the intrepid thinker, notwithstanding
the inexperience of youth, more disposed to give battle to mathematicians
and metaphysicians than to submit even provisionally to any human
authority. It does not seem that his scholarship or philosophical learning
was extensive. Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke were his intimates;
Hobbes and Spinoza were not unknown to him; Newton and some lesser lights
among the mathematicians are often confronted. He is more rarely in
company with the ancients or the mediaevalists. No deep study of Aristotle
appears, and there is even a disposition to disparage Plato. He seeks for
his home in the “new philosophy” of experience; without anticipations of
Kant, as the critic of what is presupposed in the scientific reliability
of any experience, against whom his almost blind zeal against abstractions
would have set him at this early stage. “Pure intellect I understand not
at all,” is one of his entries. He asks himself, “What becomes of the
_aeternae veritates_?” and his reply is, “They vanish.” When he tells
himself that “we must with the mob place certainty in the senses,” the
words are apt to suggest that the senses are our only source of knowledge,
but I suppose his meaning is that the senses must be trustworthy, as ’the
mob’ assume. Yet occasionally he uses language which looks like an
anticipation of David Hume, as when he calls mind “a congeries of
perceptions. Take away perceptions,” he adds, “and you take away mind. Put
the perceptions and you put the mind. The understanding seemeth not to
differ from its perceptions and ideas.” He seems unconscious of the total
scepticism which such expressions, when strictly interpreted, are found to
involve. But after all, the reader must not apply rigorous rules of
interpretation to random entries or provisional memoranda, meant only for
private use, by an enthusiastic student who was preparing to produce
books.
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I have followed the manuscript of the _Commonplace Book_, omitting a few
repetitions of thought in the same words. Here and there Berkeley’s
writing is almost obliterated and difficult to decipher, apparently
through accident by water in the course of his travels, when, as he
mentions long after in one of his letters, several of his manuscripts were
lost and others were injured.
The letters of the alphabet which are interpreted on the first page, and
prefixed on the margin to some of the entries, may so far help to bring
the apparent chaos of entries under a few articulate heads.
I have added some annotations here and there as they happened to occur,
and these might have been multiplied indefinitely had space permitted.
Commonplace Book
I. = Introduction.
M. = Matter.
P. = Primary and Secondary qualities.
E. = Existence.
T. = Time.
S. = Soul—Spirit.
G. = God.
Mo. = Moral Philosophy.
N. = Natural Philosophy.
Qu. If there be not two kinds of visible extension—one perceiv’d by a
confus’d view, the other by a distinct successive direction of the optique
axis to each point?
(M1) No general ideas(46). The contrary a cause of mistake or confusion in
mathematiques, &c. This to be intimated in ye Introduction(47).
The Principle may be apply’d to the difficulties of conservation,
co-operation, &c.
(M2) Trifling for the [natural] philosophers to enquire the cause of
magnetical attractions, &c. They onely search after co-existing ideas(48).
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(M3) Quæcunque in Scriptura militant adversus Copernicum, militant pro me.
(M4) All things in the Scripture wch side with the vulgar against the
learned, side with me also. I side in all things with the mob.
(M5) I know there is a mighty sect of men will oppose me, but yet I may
expect to be supported by those whose minds are not so far overgrown wth
madness. These are far the greatest part of mankind—especially Moralists,
Divines, Politicians; in a word, all but Mathematicians and Natural
Philosophers. I mean only the hypothetical gentlemen. Experimental
philosophers have nothing whereat to be offended in me.
Newton begs his Principles; I demonstrate mine(49).
(M6) I must be very particular in explaining wt is meant by things
existing—in houses, chambers, fields, caves, &c.—wn not perceiv’d as well
as wn perceived; and shew how the vulgar notion agrees with mine, when we
narrowly inspect into the meaning and definition of the word _existence_,
wh is no simple idea, distinct from perceiving and being perceived(50).
The Schoolmen have noble subjects, but handle them ill. The mathematicians
have trifling subjects, but reason admirably about them. Certainly their
method and arguing are excellent.
God knows how far our knowledge of intellectual beings may be enlarg’d
from the Principles.
(M7) The reverse of the Principle I take to have been the chief source of
all that scepticism and folly, all those contradictions and inextricable
puzzling absurdities, that have in all ages been a reproach to human
reason, as well as of that idolatry, whether of images or of gold, that
blinds the greatest part of the world, and that shamefull immorality that
turns us into beasts.
(M8) היה Vixit & fuit.
οὐσία, the name for substance, used by Aristotle, the Fathers, &c.
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If at the same time we shall make the Mathematiques much more easie and
much more accurate, wt can be objected to us(51)?
We need not force our imagination to conceive such very small lines for
infinitesimals. They may every whit as well be imagin’d big as little,
since that the integer must be infinite.
Evident that wch has an infinite number of parts must be infinite.
We cannot imagine a line or space infinitely great—therefore absurd to
talk or make propositions about it.
We cannot imagine a line, space, &c., quovis lato majus. Since yt what we
imagine must be datum aliquod; a thing can’t be greater than itself.
If you call infinite that wch is greater than any assignable by another,
then I say, in that sense there may be an infinite square, sphere, or any
other figure, wch is absurd.
Qu. if extension be resoluble into points it does not consist of?
No reasoning about things whereof we have no ideas(52); therefore no
reasoning about infinitesimals.
No word to be used without an idea.
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(M9) If uneasiness be necessary to set the Will at work, Qu. how shall we
will in heaven?
Bayle’s, Malbranch’s, &c. arguments do not seem to prove against Space,
but onely against Bodies.
(M10) I agree in nothing wth the Cartesians as to ye existence of Bodies &
Qualities(53).
Aristotle as good a man as Euclid, but he was allowed to have been
mistaken.
Lines not proper for demonstration.
(M11) We see the house itself, the church itself; it being an idea and
nothing more. The house itself, the church itself, is an idea, i.e. an
object—immediate object—of thought(54).
Instead of injuring, our doctrine much benefits geometry.
(M12) Existence is percipi, or percipere, [or velle, i.e. agere(55)]. The
horse is in the stable, the books are in the study as before.
(M13) In physiques I have a vast view of things soluble hereby, but have
not leisure.
(M14) Hyps and such like unaccountable things confirm my doctrine.
Angle not well defined. See Pardies’ Geometry, by Harris, &c. This one
ground of trifling.
(M15) One idea not the cause of another—one power not the cause of
another. The cause of all natural things is onely God. Hence trifling to
enquire after second causes. This doctrine gives a most suitable idea of
the Divinity(56).
(M16) Absurd to study astronomy and other the like doctrines as
speculative sciences.
(M17) The absurd account of memory by the brain, &c. makes for me.
How was light created before man? Even so were Bodies created before
man(57).
(M18) Impossible anything besides that wch thinks and is thought on should
exist(58).
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That wch is visible cannot be made up of invisible things.
M.S. is that wherein there are not contain’d distinguishable sensible
parts. Now how can that wch hath not sensible parts be divided into
sensible parts? If you say it may be divided into insensible parts, I say
these are nothings.
Extension abstract from sensible qualities is no sensation, I grant; but
then there is no such idea, as any one may try(59). There is onely a
considering the number of points without the sort of them, & this makes
more for me, since it must be in a considering thing.
Mem. Before I have shewn the distinction between visible & tangible
extension, I must not mention them as distinct. I must not mention M. T. &
M. V., but in general M. S., &c.(60)
Qu. whether a M. V. be of any colour? a M. T. of any tangible quality?
If visible extension be the object of geometry, ’tis that which is
survey’d by the optique axis.
(M19) I may say the pain is _in_ my finger, &c., according to my
doctrine(61).
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Mem. Nicely to discuss wt is meant when we say a line consists of a
certain number of inches or points, &c.; a circle of a certain number of
square inches, points, &c. Certainly we may think of a circle, or have its
idea in our mind, without thinking of points or square inches, &c.;
whereas it should seem the idea of a circle is not made up of the ideas of
points, square inches, &c.
Qu. Is any more than this meant by the foregoing expressions, viz. that
squares or points may be perceived in or made out of a circle, &c., or
that squares, points, &c. are actually in it, i.e. are perceivable in it?
A line in abstract, or Distance, is the number of points between two
points. There is also distance between a slave & an emperor, between a
peasant & philosopher, between a drachm & a pound, a farthing & a crown,
&c.; in all which Distance signifies the number of intermediate ideas.
Halley’s doctrine about the proportion between infinitely great quantities
vanishes. When men speak of infinite quantities, either they mean finite
quantities, or else talk of [that whereof they have(62)] no idea; both
which are absurd.
If the disputations of the Schoolmen are blam’d for intricacy,
triflingness, & confusion, yet it must be acknowledg’d that in the main
they treated of great & important subjects. If we admire the method &
acuteness of the Math[ematicians]—the length, the subtilty, the exactness
of their demonstrations—we must nevertheless be forced to grant that they
are for the most part about trifling subjects, and perhaps mean nothing at
all.
Motion on 2d thoughts seems to be a simple idea.
(M20) Motion distinct from ye thing moved is not conceivable.
(M21) Mem. To take notice of Newton for defining it [motion]; also of
Locke’s wisdom in leaving it undefin’d(63).
Ut ordo partium temporis est immutabilis, sin etiam ordo partium spatii.
Moveantur hæ de locis suis, et movebuntur (ut ita dicam) de seipsis. Truly
number is immensurable. That we will allow with Newton.
(M22) Ask a Cartesian whether he is wont to imagine his globules without
colour. Pellucidness is a colour. The colour of ordinary light of the sun
is white. Newton in the right in assigning colours to the rays of light.
A man born blind would not imagine Space as we do. We give it always some
dilute, or duskish, or dark colour—in short, we imagine it as visible, or
intromitted by the eye, wch he would not do.
(M23) Proinde vim inferunt sacris literis qui voces hasce (v. tempus,
spatium, motus) de quantitatibus mensuratis ibi interpretantur. Newton, p.
10.
(M24) I differ from Newton, in that I think the recession ab axe motus is
not the effect, or index, or measure of motion, but of the vis impressa.
It sheweth not wt is truly moved, but wt has the force impressed on it, or
rather that wch hath an impressed force.
_D_ and _P_ are not proportional in all circles. _d d_ is to 1/4_d p_ as
_d_ to _p_/4; but _d_ and _p_/4 are not in the same proportion in all
circles. Hence ’tis nonsense to seek the terms of one general proportion
whereby to rectify all peripheries, or of another whereby to square all
circles.
N. B. If the circle be squar’d arithmetically, ’tis squar’d geometrically,
arithmetic or numbers being nothing but lines & proportions of lines when
apply’d to geometry.
Mem. To remark Cheyne(64) & his doctrine of infinites.
Extension, motion, time, do each of them include the idea of succession, &
so far forth they seem to be of mathematical consideration. Number
consisting in succession & distinct perception, wch also consists in
succession; for things at once perceiv’d are jumbled and mixt together in
the mind. Time and motion cannot be conceiv’d without succession; and
extension, qua mathemat., cannot be conceiv’d but as consisting of parts
wch may be distinctly & successively perceiv’d. Extension perceived at
once & _in confuso_ does not belong to math.
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The simple idea call’d Power seems obscure, or rather none at all, but
onely the relation ’twixt Cause and Effect. When I ask whether A can move
B, if A be an intelligent thing, I mean no more than whether the volition
of A that B move be attended with the motion of B? If A be senseless,
whether the impulse of A against B be followed by ye motion of B(65)?
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Barrow’s arguing against indivisibles, lect. i. p. 16, is a petitio
principii, for the Demonstration of Archimedes supposeth the circumference
to consist of more than 24 points. Moreover it may perhaps be necessary to
suppose the divisibility _ad infinitum_, in order to demonstrate that the
radius is equal to the side of the hexagon.
Shew me an argument against indivisibles that does not go on some false
supposition.
A great number of insensibles—or thus, two invisibles, say you, put
together become visible; therefore that M. V. contains or is made up of
invisibles. I answer, the M. V. does not comprise, is not composed of,
invisibles. All the matter amounts to this, viz. whereas I had no idea
awhile agoe, I have an idea now. It remains for you to prove that I came
by the present idea because there were two invisibles added together. I
say the invisibles are nothings, cannot exist, include a
contradiction(66).
I am young, I am an upstart, I am a pretender, I am vain. Very well. I
shall endeavour patiently to bear up under the most lessening, vilifying
appellations the pride & rage of man can devise. But one thing I know I am
not guilty of. I do not pin my faith on the sleeve of any great man. I act
not out of prejudice or prepossession. I do not adhere to any opinion
because it is an old one, a reviv’d one, a fashionable one, or one that I
have spent much time in the study and cultivation of.
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Sense rather than reason or demonstration ought to be employed about lines
and figures, these being things sensible; for as for those you call
insensible, we have proved them to be nonsense, nothing(67).
(M25) If in some things I differ from a philosopher I profess to admire,
’tis for that very thing on account whereof I admire him, namely, the love
of truth. This &c.
(M26) Whenever my reader finds me talk very positively, I desire he’d not
take it ill. I see no reason why certainty should be confined to the
mathematicians.
I say there are no incommensurables, no surds. I say the side of any
square may be assign’d in numbers. Say you assign unto me the side of the
square 10. I ask wt 10—10 feet, inches, &c., or 10 points? If the later, I
deny there is any such square, ’tis impossible 10 points should compose a
square. If the former, resolve yr 10 square inches, feet, &c. into points,
& the number of points must necessarily be a square number whose side is
easily assignable.
A mean proportional cannot be found betwixt any two given lines. It can
onely be found betwixt those the numbers of whose points multiply’d
together produce a square number. Thus betwixt a line of 2 inches & a line
of 5 inches a mean geometrical cannot be found, except the number of
points contained in 2 inches multiply’d by ye number of points contained
in 5 inches make a square number.
If the wit and industry of the Nihilarians were employ’d about the usefull
& practical mathematiques, what advantage had it brought to mankind!
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(M27) You ask me whether the books are in the study now, when no one is
there to see them? I answer, Yes. You ask me, Are we not in the wrong for
imagining things to exist when they are not actually perceiv’d by the
senses? I answer, No. The existence of our ideas consists in being
perceiv’d, imagin’d, thought on. Whenever they are imagin’d or thought on
they do exist. Whenever they are mentioned or discours’d of they are
imagin’d & thought on. Therefore you can at no time ask me whether they
exist or no, but by reason of yt very question they must necessarily
exist.
(M28) But, say you, then a chimæra does exist? I answer, it doth in one
sense, i.e. it is imagin’d. But it must be well noted that existence is
vulgarly restrain’d to actuall perception, and that I use the word
existence in a larger sense than ordinary.(68)
N. B.—According to my doctrine all things are _entia rationis_, i.e. solum
habent esse in intellectum.
(M29) [(69)According to my doctrine all are not _entia rationis_. The
distinction between _ens rationis_ and _ens reale_ is kept up by it as
well as any other doctrine.]
You ask me whether there can be an infinite idea? I answer, in one sense
there may. Thus the visual sphere, tho’ ever so small, is infinite, i.e.
has no end. But if by infinite you mean an extension consisting of
innumerable points, then I ask yr pardon. Points, tho’ never so many, may
be numbered. The multitude of points, or feet, inches, &c., hinders not
their numbrableness (i.e. hinders not their being numerable) in the least.
Many or most are numerable, as well as few or least. Also, if by infinite
idea you mean an _idea_ too great to be comprehended or perceiv’d all at
once, you must excuse me. I think such an infinite is no less than a
contradiction(70).
(M30) The sillyness of the current doctrine makes much for me. They
commonly suppose a material world—figures, motions, bulks of various
sizes, &c.—according to their own confession to no purpose. All our
sensations may be, and sometimes actually are, without them; nor can men
so much as conceive it possible they should concur in any wise to the
production of them.
(M31) Ask a man, I mean a philosopher, why he supposes this vast
structure, this compages of bodies? he shall be at a stand; he’ll not have
one word to say. Wch sufficiently shews the folly of the hypothesis.
(M32) Or rather why he supposes all ys Matter? For bodies and their
qualities I do allow to exist independently of _our_ mind.
(M33) Qu. How is the soul distinguish’d from its ideas? Certainly if there
were no sensible ideas there could be no soul, no perception, remembrance,
love, fear, &c.; no faculty could be exerted(71).
(M34) The soul is the Will, properly speaking, and as it is distinct from
ideas.
(M35) The grand puzzling question, whether I sleep or wake, easily solv’d.
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Qu. Whether minima or meer minima may not be compar’d by their sooner or
later evanescence, as well as by more or less points, so that one sensible
may be greater than another, though it exceeds it not by one point?
Circles on several radius’s are not similar figures, they having neither
all nor any an infinite number of sides. Hence in vain to enquire after 2
terms of one and ye same proportion that should constantly express the
reason of the _d_ to the _p_ in all circles.
Mem. To remark Wallis’s harangue, that the aforesaid proportion can
neither be expressed by rational numbers nor surds.
We can no more have an idea of length without breadth or visibility, than
of a general figure.
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One idea may be like another idea, tho’ they contain no common simple
idea(72). Thus the simple idea red is in some sense like the simple idea
blue; ’tis liker it than sweet or shrill. But then those ideas wch are so
said to be alike, agree both in their connexion with another simple idea,
viz. extension, & in their being receiv’d by one & the same sense. But,
after all, nothing can be like an idea but an idea.
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No sharing betwixt God & Nature or second causes in my doctrine.
(M36) Materialists must allow the earth to be actually mov’d by the
attractive power of every stone that falls from the air, with many other
the like absurditys.
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Enquire concerning the pendulum clock, &c.; whether those inventions of
Huygens, &c. be attained to by my doctrine.
The ... & ... & ... &c. of time are to be cast away and neglected, as so
many noughts or nothings.
Mem. To make experiments concerning minimums and their colours, whether
they have any or no, & whether they can be of that green wch seems to be
compounded of yellow and blue.
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(M37) Qu. Whether it were not better _not_ to call the operations of the
mind ideas—confining this term to things sensible(73)?
(M38) Mem. diligently to set forth how that many of the ancient
philosophers run into so great absurditys as even to deny the existence of
motion, and of those other things they perceiv’d actually by their senses.
This sprung from their not knowing wt Existence was, and wherein it
consisted. This the source of all their folly. ’Tis on the discovering of
the nature and meaning and import of Existence that I chiefly insist. This
puts a wide difference betwixt the sceptics &c. & me. This I think wholly
new. I am sure this is new to me(74).
We have learn’d from Mr. Locke that there may be, and that there are,
several glib, coherent, methodical discourses, which nevertheless amount
to just nothing. This by him intended with relation to the Scholemen. We
may apply it to the Mathematicians.
Qu. How can all words be said to stand for ideas? The word blue stands for
a colour without any extension, or abstract from extension. But we have
not an idea of colour without extension. We cannot imagine colour without
extension.
Locke seems wrongly to assign a double use of words: one for communicating
& the other for recording our thoughts. ’Tis absurd to use words for
recording our thoughts to ourselves, or in our private meditations(75).
No one abstract simple idea like another. Two simple ideas may be
connected with one & the same 3d simple idea, or be intromitted by one &
the same sense. But consider’d in themselves they can have nothing common,
and consequently no likeness.
Qu. How can there be any abstract ideas of colours? It seems not so easily
as of tastes or sounds. But then all ideas whatsoever are particular. I
can by no means conceive an abstract general idea. ’Tis one thing to
abstract one concrete idea from another of a different kind, & another
thing to abstract an idea from all particulars of the same kind(76).
(M39) Mem. Much to recommend and approve of experimental philosophy.
(M40) What means Cause as distinguish’d from Occasion? Nothing but a being
wch wills, when the effect follows the volition. Those things that happen
from without we are not the cause of. Therefore there is some other Cause
of them, i.e. there is a Being that wills these perceptions in us(77).
(M41) [(78)It should be said, nothing but a Will—a Being which wills being
unintelligible.]
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One square cannot be double of another. Hence the Pythagoric theorem is
false.
Some writers of catoptrics absurd enough to place the apparent place of
the object in the Barrovian case behind the eye.
Blew and yellow chequers still diminishing terminate in green. This may
help to prove the composition of green.
There is in green 2 foundations of 2 relations of likeness to blew &
yellow. Therefore green is compounded.
A mixt cause will produce a mixt effect. Therefore colours are all
compounded that we see.
Mem. To consider Newton’s two sorts of green.
N. B. My abstract & general doctrines ought not to be condemn’d by the
Royall Society. ’Tis wt their meeting did ultimately intend. V. Sprat’s
History S. R.(79)
Mem. To premise a definition of idea(80).
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(M42) The 2 great principles of Morality—the being of a God & the freedom
of man. Those to be handled in the beginning of the Second Book(81).
Subvertitur geometria ut non practica sed speculativa.
Archimedes’s proposition about squaring the circle has nothing to do with
circumferences containing less than 96 points; & if the circumference
contain 96 points it may be apply’d, but nothing will follow against
indivisibles. V. Barrow.
Those curve lines that you can rectify geometrically. Compare them with
their equal right lines & by a microscope you shall discover an
inequality. Hence my squaring of the circle as good and exact as the best.
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(M43) Qu. whether the substance of body or anything else be any more than
the collection of concrete ideas included in that thing? Thus the
substance of any particular body is extension, solidity, figure(82). Of
general abstract body we can have no idea.
(M44) Mem. Most carefully to inculcate and set forth that the endeavouring
to express abstract philosophic thoughts by words unavoidably runs a man
into difficulties. This to be done in the Introduction(83).
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Mem. To endeavour most accurately to understand what is meant by this
axiom: Quæ sibi mutuo congruunt æqualia sunt.
Qu. what the geometers mean by equality of lines, & whether, according to
their definition of equality, a curve line can possibly be equal to a
right line?
If wth me you call those lines equal wch contain an equal number of
points, then there will be no difficulty. That curve is equal to a right
line wch contains the same points as the right one doth.
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(M45) I take not away substances. I ought not to be accused of discarding
substance out of the reasonable world(84). I onely reject the philosophic
sense (wch in effect is no sense) of the word substance. Ask a man not
tainted with their jargon wt he means by corporeal substance, or the
substance of body. He shall answer, bulk, solidity, and such like sensible
qualitys. These I retain. The philosophic nec quid, nec quantum, nec
quale, whereof I have no idea, I discard; if a man may be said to discard
that which never had any being, was never so much as imagin’d or
conceiv’d.
(M46) In short, be not angry. You lose nothing, whether real or
chimerical. Wtever you can in any wise conceive or imagine, be it never so
wild, so extravagant, & absurd, much good may it do you. You may enjoy it
for me. I’ll never deprive you of it.
N. B. I am more for reality than any other philosophers(85). They make a
thousand doubts, & know not certainly but we may be deceiv’d. I assert the
direct contrary.
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A line in the sense of mathematicians is not meer distance. This evident
in that there are curve lines.
Curves perfectly incomprehensible, inexplicable, absurd, except we allow
points.
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(M47) If men look for a thing where it’s not to be found, be they never so
sagacious, it is lost labour. If a simple clumsy man knows where the game
lies, he though a fool shall catch it sooner than the most fleet &
dexterous that seek it elsewhere. Men choose to hunt for truth and
knowledge anywhere rather than in their own understanding, where ’tis to
be found.
(M48) All knowledge onely about ideas. Locke, B. 4. c. 1.
(M49) It seems improper, & liable to difficulties, to make the word person
stand for an idea, or to make ourselves ideas, or thinking things ideas.
(M50) Abstract ideas cause of much trifling and mistake.
Mathematicians seem not to speak clearly and coherently of equality. They
nowhere define wt they mean by that word when apply’d to lines.
Locke says the modes of simple ideas, besides extension and number, are
counted by degrees. I deny there are any modes or degrees of simple ideas.
What he terms such are complex ideas, as I have proved.
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Wt do the mathematicians mean by considering curves as polygons? Either
they are polygons or they are not. If they are, why do they give them the
name of curves? Why do not they constantly call them polygons, & treat
them as such? If they are not polygons, I think it absurd to use polygons
in their stead. Wt is this but to pervert language? to adapt an idea to a
name that belongs not to it but to a different idea?
The mathematicians should look to their axiom, Quæ congruunt sunt æqualia.
I know not what they mean by bidding me put one triangle on another. The
under triangle is no triangle—nothing at all, it not being perceiv’d. I
ask, must sight be judge of this congruentia or not? If it must, then all
lines seen under the same angle are equal, wch they will not acknowledge.
Must the touch be judge? But we cannot touch or feel lines and surfaces,
such as triangles, &c., according to the mathematicians themselves. Much
less can we touch a line or triangle that’s cover’d by another line or
triangle.
Do you mean by saying one triangle is equall to another, that they both
take up equal spaces? But then the question recurs, what mean you by equal
spaces? If you mean _spatia congruentia_, answer the above difficulty
truly.
I can mean (for my part) nothing else by equal triangles than triangles
containing equal numbers of points.
I can mean nothing by equal lines but lines wch ’tis indifferent whether
of them I take, lines in wch I observe by my senses no difference, & wch
therefore have the same name.
Must the imagination be judge in the aforementioned cases? but then
imagination cannot go beyond the touch and sight. Say you, pure intellect
must be judge. I reply that lines and triangles are not operations of the
mind.
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If I speak positively and with the air of a mathematician in things of
which I am certain, ’tis to avoid disputes, to make men careful to think
before they answer, to discuss my arguments before they go to refute them.
I would by no means injure truth and certainty by an affected modesty &
submission to better judgments. Wt I lay before you are undoubted
theorems; not plausible conjectures of my own, nor learned opinions of
other men. I pretend not to prove them by figures, analogy, or authority.
Let them stand or fall by their own evidence.
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(M51) When you speak of the corpuscularian essences of bodys, to reflect
on sect. 11. & 12. b. 4. c. 3. Locke. Motion supposes not solidity. A meer
colour’d extension may give us the idea of motion.
(M52) Any subject can have of each sort of primary qualities but one
particular at once. Lib. 4. c. 3. s. 15. Locke.
(M53) Well, say you, according to this new doctrine, all is but meer
idea—there is nothing wch is not an _ens rationis_. I answer, things are
as real, and exist _in rerum natura_, as much as ever. The difference
between _entia realia_ & _entia rationis_ may be made as properly now as
ever. Do but think before you speak. Endeavour rightly to comprehend my
meaning, and you’ll agree with me in this.
(M54) Fruitless the distinction ’twixt real and nominal essences.
We are not acquainted with the meaning of our words. Real, extension,
existence, power, matter, lines, infinite, point, and many more are
frequently in our mouths, when little, clear, and determin’d answers them
in our understandings. This must be well inculcated.
(M55) Vain is the distinction ’twixt intellectual and material world(86).
V. Locke, lib. 4. c. 3. s. 27, where he says that is far more beautiful
than this.
(M56) Foolish in men to despise the senses. If it were not for
(M57) them the mind could have no knowledge, no thought at all. All ... of
introversion, meditation, contemplation, and spiritual acts, as if these
could be exerted before we had ideas from without by the senses, are
manifestly absurd. This may be of great use in that it makes the happyness
of the life to come more conceivable and agreeable to our present nature.
The schoolemen & refiners in philosophy gave the greatest part of mankind
no more tempting idea of heaven or the joys of the blest.
The vast, wide-spread, universal cause of our mistakes is, that we do not
consider our own notions. I mean consider them in themselves—fix, settle,
and determine them,—we regarding them with relation to each other only. In
short, we are much out in study[ing] the relations of things before we
study them absolutely and in themselves. Thus we study to find out the
relations of figures to one another, the relations also of number, without
endeavouring rightly to understand the nature of extension and number in
themselves. This we think is of no concern, of no difficulty; but if I
mistake not ’tis of the last importance,
(M58) I allow not of the distinction there is made ’twixt profit and
pleasure.
(M59) I’d never blame a man for acting upon interest. He’s a fool that
acts on any other principles. The not considering these things has been of
ill consequence in morality.
My positive assertions are no less modest than those that are introduced
with “It seems to me,” “I suppose,” &c.; since I declare, once for all,
that all I write or think is entirely about things as they appear to me.
It concerns no man else any further than his thoughts agree with mine.
This in the Preface.
(M60) Two things are apt to confound men in their reasonings one with
another. 1st. Words signifying the operations of the mind are taken from
sensible ideas. 2ndly. Words as used by the vulgar are taken in some
latitude, their signification is confused. Hence if a man use words in a
determined, settled signification, he is at a hazard either of not being
understood, or of speaking improperly. All this remedyed by studying the
understanding.
Unity no simple idea. I have no idea meerly answering the word one. All
number consists in relations(87).
Entia realia et entia rationis, a foolish distinction of the Schoolemen.
(M61) We have an intuitive knowledge of the existence of other things
besides ourselves & order, præcedaneous(88). To the knowledge of our own
existence—in that we must have ideas or else we cannot think.
(M62) We move our legs ourselves. ’Tis we that will their movement. Herein
I differ from Malbranch(89).
(M63) Mem. Nicely to discuss Lib. 4. c. 4. Locke(90).
(M64) Mem. Again and again to mention & illustrate the doctrine of the
reality of things, rerum natura, &c.
(M65) Wt I say is demonstration—perfect demonstration. Wherever men have
fix’d & determin’d ideas annexed to their words they can hardly be
mistaken. Stick but to my definition of likeness, and ’tis a demonstration
yt colours are not simple ideas, all reds being like, &c. So also in other
things. This to be heartily insisted on.
(M66) The abstract idea of Being or Existence is never thought of by the
vulgar. They never use those words standing for abstract ideas.
(M67) I must not say the words thing, substance, &c. have been the cause
of mistakes, but the not reflecting on their meaning. I will be still for
retaining the words. I only desire that men would think before they speak,
and settle the meaning of their words.
(M68) I approve not of that which Locke says, viz. truth consists in the
joining and separating of signs.
(M69) Locke cannot explain general truth or knowledge without treating of
words and propositions. This makes for me against abstract general ideas.
Vide Locke, lib. 4. ch. 6.
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(M70) Men have been very industrious in travelling forward. They have gone
a great way. But none have gone backward beyond the Principles. On that
side there lies much terra incognita to be travel’d over and discovered by
me. A vast field for invention.
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Twelve inches not the same idea with a foot. Because a man may perfectly
conceive a foot who never thought of an inch.
A foot is equal to or the same with twelve inches in this respect, viz.
they contain both the same number of points.
[Forasmuch as] to be used.
Mem. To mention somewhat wch may encourage the study of politiques, and
testify of me yt I am well dispos’d toward them.
(M71) If men did not use words for ideas they would never have thought of
abstract ideas. Certainly genera and species are not abstract general
ideas. Abstract ideas include a contradiction in their nature. Vide
Locke(91), lib. 4. c. 7. s. 9.
A various or mixt cause must necessarily produce a various or mixt effect.
This demonstrable from the definition of a cause; which way of
demonstrating must be frequently made use of in my Treatise, & to that end
definitions often præmis’d. Hence ’tis evident that, according to Newton’s
doctrine, colours cannot be simple ideas.
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(M72) I am the farthest from scepticism of any man. I know with an
intuitive knowledge the existence of other things as well as my own soul.
This is wt Locke nor scarce any other thinking philosopher will pretend
to(92).
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(M73) Doctrine of abstraction of very evil consequence in all the
sciences. Mem. Barrow’s remark. Entirely owing to language.
Locke greatly out in reckoning the recording our ideas by words amongst
the uses and not the abuses of language.
(M74) Of great use & ye last importance to contemplate a man put into the
world alone, with admirable abilitys, and see how after long experience he
would know wthout words. Such a one would never think of genera and
species or abstract general ideas.
(M75) Wonderful in Locke that he could, wn advanced in years, see at all
thro’ a mist; it had been so long a gathering, & was consequently thick.
This more to be admir’d than yt he did not see farther.
Identity of ideas may be taken in a double sense, either as including or
excluding identity of circumstances, such as time, place, &c.
(M76) I am glad the people I converse with are not all richer, wiser, &c.
than I. This is agreeable to reason; is no sin. ’Tis certain that if the
happyness of my acquaintance encreases, & mine not proportionably, mine
must decrease. The not understanding this & the doctrine about relative
good, discuss’d with French, Madden(93), &c., to be noticed as 2 causes of
mistake in judging of moral matters.
Mem. To observe (wn you talk of the division of ideas into simple and
complex) that there may be another cause of the undefinableness of certain
ideas besides that which Locke gives; viz. the want of names.
(M77) Mem. To begin the First Book(94) not with mention of sensation and
reflection, but instead of sensation to use perception or thought in
general.
(M78) I defy any man to imagine or conceive perception without an idea, or
an idea without perception.
(M79) Locke’s very supposition that matter & motion should exist before
thought is absurd—includes a manifest contradiction.
Locke’s harangue about coherent, methodical discourses amounting to
nothing, apply’d to the mathematicians.
They talk of determining all the points of a curve by an equation. Wt mean
they by this? Wt would they signify by the word points? Do they stick to
the definition of Euclid?
(M80) We think we know not the Soul, because we have no imaginable or
sensible idea annex’d to that sound. This the effect of prejudice.
(M81) Certainly we do not know it. This will be plain if we examine what
we mean by the word knowledge. Neither doth this argue any defect in our
knowledge, no more than our not knowing a contradiction.
The very existence of ideas constitutes the Soul(95).
(M82) Consciousness(96), perception, existence of ideas, seem to be all
one.
Consult, ransack yr understanding. Wt find you there besides several
perceptions or thoughts? Wt mean you by the word mind? You must mean
something that you perceive, or yt you do not perceive. A thing not
perceived is a contradiction. To mean (also) a thing you do not perceive
is a contradiction. We are in all this matter strangely abused by words.
Mind is a congeries of perceptions(97). Take away perceptions and you take
away the mind. Put the perceptions and you put the mind.
Say you, the mind is not the perception, not that thing which perceives. I
answer, you are abused by the words “that a thing.” These are vague and
empty words with us.
(M83) The having ideas is not the same thing with perception. A man may
have ideas when he only imagines. But then this imagination presupposeth
perception.
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(M84) That wch extreamly strengthens us in prejudice is yt we think we see
an empty space, which I shall demonstrate to be false in the Third
Book(98).
There may be demonstrations used even in Divinity. I mean in revealed
Theology, as contradistinguish’d from natural; for tho’ the principles may
be founded in faith, yet this hinders not but that legitimate
demonstrations might be built thereon; provided still that we define the
words we use, and never go beyond our ideas. Hence ’twere no very hard
matter for those who hold episcopacy or monarchy to be established _jure
Divino_ to demonstrate their doctrines if they are true. But to pretend to
demonstrate or reason anything about the Trinity is absurd. Here an
implicit faith becomes us.
(M85) Qu. if there be any real difference betwixt certain ideas of
reflection & others of sensation, e.g. betwixt perception and white,
black, sweet, &c.? Wherein, I pray you, does the perception of white
differ from white men....
I shall demonstrate all my doctrines. The nature of demonstration to be
set forth and insisted on in the Introduction(99). In that I must needs
differ from Locke, forasmuch as he makes all demonstration to be about
abstract ideas, wch I say we have not nor can have.
(M86) The understanding seemeth not to differ from its perceptions or
ideas. Qu. What must one think of the will and passions?
(M87) A good proof that Existence is nothing without or distinct from
perception, may be drawn from considering a man put into the world without
company(100).
(M88) There was a smell, i.e. there was a smell perceiv’d. Thus we see
that common speech confirms my doctrine.
(M89) No broken intervals of death or annihilation. Those intervals are
nothing; each person’s time being measured to him by his own ideas.
(M90) We are frequently puzzl’d and at a loss in obtaining clear and
determin’d meanings of words commonly in use, & that because we imagine
words stand for abstract general ideas which are altogether inconceivable.
(M91) “A stone is a stone.” This a nonsensical proposition, and such as
the solitary man would never think on. Nor do I believe he would ever
think on this: “The whole is equal to its parts,” &c.
(M92) Let it not be said that I take away existence. I only declare the
meaning of the word, so far as I can comprehend it.
(M93) If you take away abstraction, how do men differ from beasts? I
answer, by shape, by language. Rather by degrees of more and less.
Wt means Locke by inferences in words, consequences of words, as something
different from consequences of ideas? I conceive no such thing.
(M94) N. B. Much complaint about the imperfection of language(101).
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(M95) But perhaps some man may say, an inert thoughtless Substance may
exist, though not extended, moved, &c., but with other properties whereof
we have no idea. But even this I shall demonstrate to be impossible, wn I
come to treat more particularly of Existence.
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Will not rightly distinguish’d from Desire by Locke—it seeming to superadd
nothing to the idea of an action, but the uneasiness for its absence or
non-existence.
(M96) Mem. To enquire diligently into that strange mistery, viz. How it is
that I can cast about, think of this or that man, place, action, wn
nothing appears to introduce them into my thoughts, wn they have no
perceivable connexion with the ideas suggested by my senses at the
present?
(M97) ’Tis not to be imagin’d wt a marvellous emptiness & scarcity of
ideas that man shall descry who will lay aside all use of words in his
meditations.
(M98) Incongruous in Locke to fancy we want a sense proper to see
substances with.
(M99) Locke owns that abstract ideas were made in order to naming.
(M100) The common errour of the opticians, that we judge of distance by
angles(102), strengthens men in their prejudice that they see things
without and distant from their mind.
(M101) I am persuaded, would men but examine wt they mean by the word
existence, they wou’d agree with me.
c. 20. s. 8. b. 4. of Locke makes for me against the mathematicians.
(M102) The supposition that things are distinct from ideas takes away all
real truth, & consequently brings in a universal scepticism; since all our
knowledge and contemplation is confin’d barely to our own ideas(103).
(M103) Qu. whether the solitary man would not find it necessary to make
use of words to record his ideas, if not in memory or meditation, yet at
least in writing—without which he could scarce retain his knowledge.
We read in history there was a time when fears and jealousies, privileges
of parliament, malignant party, and such like expressions of too unlimited
and doubtful a meaning, were words of much sway. Also the words Church,
Whig, Tory, &c., contribute very much to faction and dispute.
(M104) The distinguishing betwixt an idea and perception of the idea has
been one great cause of imagining material substances(104).
(M105) That God and blessed spirits have Will is a manifest argument
against Locke’s proofs that the Will cannot be conceiv’d, put into action,
without a previous uneasiness.
(M106) The act of the Will, or volition, is not uneasiness, for that
uneasiness may be without volition.
(M107) Volition is distinct from the object or idea for the same reason.
(M108) Also from uneasiness and idea together.
The understanding not distinct from particular perceptions or ideas.
The Will not distinct from particular volitions.
(M109) It is not so very evident that an idea, or at least uneasiness, may
be without all volition or act.
The understanding taken for a faculty is not really distinct from ye will.
This allow’d hereafter.
(M110) To ask whether a man can will either side is an absurd question,
for the word _can_ presupposes volition.
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(M111) Anima mundi, substantial form, omniscient radical heat, plastic
vertue, Hylaschic principle—all these vanish(105).
(M112) Newton proves that gravity is proportional to gravity. I think
that’s all(106).
Qu. whether it be the vis inertiæ that makes it difficult to move a stone,
or the vis attractivæ, or both, or neither?
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Mem. To express the doctrines as fully and copiously and clearly as may
be. Also to be full and particular in answering objections(107).
(M113) To say ye Will is a power; [therefore] volition is an act. This is
idem per idem.
Wt makes men despise extension, motion, &c., & separate them from the
essence of the soul, is that they imagine them to be distinct from
thought, and to exist in unthinking substance.
An extended may have passive modes of thinking good actions.
There might be idea, there might be uneasiness, there might be the
greatest uneasiness wthout any volition, therefore the....
(M114) Matter once allow’d, I defy any man to prove that God is not
Matter(108).
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(M115) Man is free. There is no difficulty in this proposition, if we but
settle the signification of the word _free_—if we had an idea annext to
the word free, and would but contemplate that idea.
(M116) We are imposed on by the words will, determine, agent, free, can,
&c.
(M117) Uneasiness precedes not every volition. This evident by experience.
(M118) Trace an infant in the womb. Mark the train & succession of its
ideas. Observe how volition comes into the mind. This may perhaps acquaint
you with its nature.
(M119) Complacency seems rather to determine, or precede, or coincide wth
& constitute the essence of volition, than uneasiness.
(M120) You tell me, according to my doctrine a man is not free. I answer,
tell me wt you mean by the word free, and I shall resolve you(109).
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(M121) Qu. Wt do men mean when they talk of one body’s touching another? I
say you never saw one body touch, or (rather) I say, I never saw one body
that I could say touch’d this or that other; for that if my optiques were
improv’d, I should see intervalls and other bodies behind those whch now
seem to touch.
Mem. Upon all occasions to use the utmost modesty—to confute the
mathematicians wth the utmost civility & respect, not to style them
Nihilarians, &c.
N. B. To rein in ye satyrical nature.
Blame me not if I use my words sometimes in some latitude. ’Tis wt cannot
be helpt. ’Tis the fault of language that you cannot always apprehend the
clear and determinate meaning of my words.
Say you, there might be a thinking Substance—something unknown—wch
perceives, and supports, and ties together the ideas(110). Say I, make it
appear there is any need of it and you shall have it for me. I care not to
take away anything I can see the least reason to think should exist.
I affirm ’tis manifestly absurd—no excuse in the world can be given why a
man should use a word without an idea(111). Certainly we shall find that
wt ever word we make use of in matter of pure reasoning has, or ought to
have, a compleat idea, annext to it, i.e. its meaning, or the sense we
take it in, must be compleatly known.
’Tis demonstrable a man can never be brought to imagine anything should
exist whereof he has no idea. Whoever says he does, banters himself with
words.
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(M122) We imagine a great difference & distance in respect of knowledge,
power, &c., betwixt a man & a worm. The like difference betwixt man and
God may be imagin’d; or infinitely greater(112) difference.
(M123) We find in our own minds a great number of different ideas. We may
imagine in God a greater number, i.e. that ours in number, or the number
of ours, is inconsiderable in respect thereof. The words difference and
number, old and known, we apply to that wch is unknown. But I am
embrangled(113) in words—’tis scarce possible it should be otherwise.
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The chief thing I do or pretend to do is onely to remove the mist or veil
of words(114). This has occasion’d ignorance & confusion. This has ruined
the schoolmen and mathematicians, lawyers and divines.
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(M124) The grand cause of perplexity & darkness in treating of the Will,
is that we imagine it to be an object of thought: (to speak with the
vulgar), we think we may perceive, contemplate, and view it like any of
our ideas; whereas in truth ’tis no idea, nor is there any idea of it.
’Tis _toto cælo_ different from the understanding, i.e. from all our
ideas. If you say the Will, or rather volition, is something, I answer,
there is an homonymy(115) in the word _thing_, wn apply’d to ideas and
volition and understanding and will. All ideas are passive(116).
(M125) Thing & idea are much what words of the same extent and meaning.
Why, therefore, do I not use the word thing? Ans. Because thing is of
greater latitude than idea. Thing comprehends also volitions or actions.
Now these are no ideas(117).
(M126) There can be perception wthout volition. Qu. whether there can be
volition without perception?
(M127) Existence not conceivable without perception or volition—not
distinguish’d therefrom.
(M128) N. B. Several distinct ideas can be perceived by sight and touch at
once. Not so by the other senses. ’Tis this diversity of sensations in
other senses chiefly, but sometimes in touch and sight (as also diversity
of volitions, whereof there cannot be more than one at once, or rather, it
seems there cannot, for of that I doubt), gives us the idea of time—or
_is_ time itself.
Wt would the solitary man think of number?
(M129) There are innate ideas, i.e. ideas created with us(118).
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(M130) Locke seems to be mistaken wn he says thought is not essential to
the mind(119).
(M131) Certainly the mind always and constantly thinks: and we know this
too. In sleep and trances the mind _exists not_—there is no time, no
succession of ideas(120).
(M132) To say the mind exists without thinking is a contradiction,
nonsense, nothing.
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(M133) Folly to inquire wt determines the Will. Uneasiness, &c. are ideas,
therefore unactive, therefore can do nothing, therefore cannot determine
the Will(121).
(M134) Again, wt mean you by determine?
(M135) (M136) For want of rightly understanding time, motion, existence,
&c., men are forc’d into such absurd contradictions as this, viz. light
moves 16 diameters of earth in a second of time.
(M137) ’Twas the opinion that ideas could exist unperceiv’d, or before
perception, that made men think perception(122) was somewhat different
from the idea perceived, i.e. yt it was an idea of reflection; whereas the
thing perceiv’d was an idea of sensation. I say, ’twas this made ’em think
the understanding took it in, receiv’d it from without; wch could never be
did not they think it existed without(123).
(M138) Properly speaking, idea is the picture of the imagination’s making.
This is ye likeness of, and refer’d to the real idea, or (if you will)
thing(124).
(M139) To ask, have we an idea of Will or volition, is nonsense. An idea
can resemble nothing but an idea.
(M140) If you ask wt thing it is that wills, I answer, if you mean idea by
the word thing, or anything like any idea, then I say, ’tis no thing at
all that wills(125). This how extravagant soever it may seem, yet is a
certain truth. We are cheated by these general terms, thing, is, &c.
(M141) Again, if by is you mean is perceived, or does perceive, I say
nothing wch is perceived or does perceive wills.
(M142) The referring ideas to things wch are not ideas, the using the term
“idea of(126),” is one great cause of mistake, as in other matters, so
also in this.
(M143) Some words there are wch do not stand for ideas, viz. particles,
will, &c. Particles stand for volitions and their concomitant ideas.
(M144) There seem to be but two colours wch are simple ideas, viz. those
exhibited by the most and least refrangible rays; [the others], being the
intermediate ones, may be formed by composition.
(M145) I have no idea
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