following sentences in his _Remarks on Human Liberty_, published seven
years after this correspondence: “The case as to the proof of our free
agency is exactly the same as in that notable question, whether the
[material] world exists or no? There is no demonstration of it from
experience. There always remains a bare possibility that the Supreme Being
may have so framed my mind, that I shall always be necessarily deceived in
every one of my perceptions as in a dream—though possibly there be no
material world, nor any other creature existing besides myself. And yet no
man in his senses argues from thence, that experience is no proof to us of
the existence of things. The bare physical possibility too of our being so
framed by the Author of Nature as to be unavoidably deceived in this
matter by every experience of every action we perform, is no more any
ground to doubt the truth of our liberty, than the bare natural
possibility of our being all our lifetime in a dream, deceived in our
[natural] belief of the existence of the material world, is any just
ground to doubt the reality of its existence.” Berkeley would hardly have
accepted this analogy. Does the conception of a material world being
dependent on percipient mind for its reality imply _deception_ on the part
of the “Supreme Being”? “Dreams,” in ordinary language, may signify
illusory fancies during sleep, and so understood the term is misapplied to
a universally mind-dependent universe with its steady natural order.
Berkeley disclaims emphatically any doubt of the reality of the sensible
world, and professes only to shew in what its reality consists, or its
dependence upon percipient life as the indispensable realising factor. To
suppose that we can be “necessarily deceived in every one of our
perceptions” is to interpret the universe atheistically, and virtually
obliges us in final nescience to acknowledge that it is wholly
uninterpretable; so that experience is impossible, because throughout
unintelligible. The moral trustworthiness or perfect goodness of the
Universal Power is I suppose the fundamental postulate of science and
human life. If all our temporal experience can be called a dream it must
at any rate be a dream of the sort supposed by Leibniz. “Nullo argumento
absolute demonstrari potest, dari corpora; nec quidquam prohibet _somnia
quædam bene ordinata_ menti nostræ, objecta esse, quæ a nobis vera
judicentur, et ob consensum inter se quoad usum veris equivalent(779).”
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The three _Dialogues_ discuss what Berkeley regarded as the most plausible
Objections, popular and philosophical, to his account of living Mind or
Spirit, as the indispensable factor and final cause of the reality of the
material world.
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The principal aim of the _First Dialogue_ is to illustrate the
contradictory or unmeaning character and sceptical tendency of the common
philosophical opinion—that we perceive in sense a material world which is
_real_ only in as far as it can exist in absolute independence of
perceiving mind. The impossibility of any of the qualities in which Matter
is manifested to man—the primary qualities not less than the
secondary—having real existence in a mindless or unspiritual universe is
argued and illustrated in detail. Abstract Matter, unrealised in terms of
percipient life, is meaningless, and the material world becomes real only
in and through living perception. And Matter, as an abstract substance
without qualities, cannot, without a contradiction, it is also argued, be
presented or represented, in sense. What is called _matter_ is thus melted
in a spiritual solution, from which it issues the flexible and
intelligible medium of intercourse for spiritual beings such as men are;
whose faculties moreover are educated in interpreting the cosmical order
of the phenomena presented to their senses.
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The _Second Dialogue_ is in the first place directed against modifications
of the scholastic account of Matter, which attributes our knowledge of it
to inference, founded on sense-ideas assumed to be representative, or not
presentative of the reality. The advocates of Matter independent and
supreme, are here assailed in their various conjectures—that this Matter
may be the active Cause, or the Instrument, or the Occasion of our
sense-experience; or that it is an Unknowable Something somehow connected
with that experience. It is argued in this and in the preceding Dialogue,
by _Philonous_ (who personates Berkeley), that unrealised Matter—intending
by that term either a qualified substance, or a Something of which we
cannot affirm anything—is not merely unproved, but a proved impossibility:
it must mean nothing, or it must mean a contradiction, which comes to the
same thing. It is not _perceived_; nor can it be _suggested_ by what we
perceive; nor _demonstrated_ by reasoning; nor _believed in_ as an article
in the fundamental faith of intuitive reason. The only consistent theory
of the universe accordingly implies that concrete realities must all be
either (a) phenomena presented to the senses, or else (b) active spirits
percipient of presented phenomena. And neither of these two sorts of
concrete realities is strictly speaking independent of the other; although
the latter, identical amid the variations of the sensuous phenomena, are
deeper and more real than the mere data of the senses. The _Second
Dialogue_ ends by substituting, as concrete and intelligible Realism, the
universal and constant dependence of the material world upon active living
Spirit, in place of the abstract hypothetical and unintelligible Realism,
which defends Matter unrealised in percipient life, as the type of
reality.
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In the _Third Dialogue_ plausible objections to this conception of what
the reality of the material world means are discussed.
Is it said that the new conception is sceptical, and Berkeley another
Protagoras, on account of it? His answer is, that the _reality_ of
sensible things, as far as man can in any way be concerned with them, does
not consist in what cannot be perceived, suggested, demonstrated, or even
conceived, but in phenomena actually seen and touched, and in the working
faith that future sense-experience may be anticipated by the analogies of
present sense-experience.
But is not this negation of the Matter that is assumed to be real and
independent of Spirit, an unproved conjecture? It is answered, that the
affirmation of this abstract matter is itself a mere conjecture, and one
self-convicted by its implied contradictions, while its negation is only a
simple falling back on the facts of experience, without any attempt to
explain them.
Again, is it objected that the _reality_ of sensible things involves their
continued reality during intervals of our perception of them? It is
answered, that sensible things are indeed permanently dependent on Mind,
but not on this, that, or the other finite embodied spirit.
Is it further alleged that the reality of Spirit or Mind is open to all
the objections against independent Matter; and that, if we deny _this_
Matter, we must in consistency allow that Spirit can be only a succession
of isolated feelings? The answer is, that there is no parity between
self-conscious Spirit, and Matter out of all relation to any Spirit. We
find, in memory, our own personality and identity; that _we_ are not our
ideas, “but somewhat else”—a thinking, active principle, that perceives,
knows, wills, and operates about ideas, and that is revealed as
continuously real. Each person is conscious of himself; and may reasonably
infer the existence of other self-conscious persons, more or less like
what he is conscious of in himself. A universe of self-conscious persons,
with their common sensuous experiences all under cosmical order, is not
open to the contradictions involved in a pretended universe of Matter,
independent of percipient realising Spirit.
Is it still said that sane people cannot help distinguishing between the
_real existence_ of a thing and its _being perceived_? It is answered,
that all they are entitled to mean is, to distinguish between being
perceived exclusively by me, and being independent of the perception of
all sentient or conscious beings.
Does an objector complain that this ideal realism dissolves the
distinction between facts and fancies? He is reminded of the meaning of
the word _idea_. That term is not limited by Berkeley to chimeras of
fancy: it is applied also to the objective phenomena of our
sense-experience.
Is the supposition that Spirit is the only real Cause of all changes in
nature declaimed against as baseless? It is answered, that the supposition
of unthinking Power at the heart of the cosmos of sensible phenomena is
absurd.
Is the negation of Abstract Matter repugnant to the common belief of
mankind? It is argued in reply, that this unrealised Matter is foreign to
common belief, which is incapable of even entertaining the conception; and
which only requires to reflect upon what it does entertain to be satisfied
with a relative or ideal reality for sensible things.
But, if sensible things are the real things, the real moon, for instance,
it is alleged, can be only a foot in diameter. It is maintained, in
opposition to this, that the term _real moon_ is applied only to what is
an inference from the moon, one foot in diameter, which we immediately
perceive; and that the former is a part of our previsive or mediate
inference, due to what is perceived.
The dispute, after all, is merely verbal, it is next objected; and, since
all parties refer the data of the senses and the _things_ which they
compose to _a_ Power external to each finite percipient, why not call that
Power, whatever it may be, Matter, and not Spirit? The reply is, that this
would be an absurd misapplication of language.
But may we not, it is next suggested, assume the possibility of a third
nature—neither idea nor Spirit? Not, replies Philonous, if we are to keep
to the rule of having meaning in the words we use. We know what is meant
by a spirit, for each of us has immediate experience of one; and we know
what is meant by sense-ideas and sensible things, for we have immediate
and mediate experience of them. But we have no immediate, and therefore
can have no mediate, experience of what is neither perceived by our
senses, nor realised in inward consciousness: moreover, “entia non sunt
multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.”
Again, this conception of the realities implies, it is said, imperfection,
because sentient experience, in God. This objection, it is answered,
implies a confusion between being actually sentient and merely conceiving
sensations, and employing them, as God does, as signs for expressing His
conceptions to our minds.
Further, the negation of independent powerful Matter seems to annihilate
the explanations of physical phenomena given by natural philosophers. But,
to be assured that it does not, we have only to recollect what physical
explanation means—that it is the reference of an apparently irregular
phenomenon to some acknowledged general rule of co-existence or succession
among sense-ideas. It is interpretation of sense-signs.
Is the proposed ideal Realism summarily condemned as a novelty? It can be
answered, that all discoveries are novelties at first; and moreover that
this one is not so much a novelty as a deeper interpretation of the common
faith.
Yet it seems, at any rate, it is said, to change real things into mere
ideas. Here consider on the contrary what we mean when we speak of
sensible things as real. The changing appearances of which we are
percipient in sense, united objectively in their cosmical order, are what
is truly meant by the realities of sense.
But this reality is inconsistent with the _continued identity_ of material
things, it is complained, and also with the fact that different persons
can be percipient of the _same_ thing. Not so, Berkeley explains, when we
attend to the true meaning of the word _same_, and dismiss from our
thoughts a supposed abstract idea of identity which is nonsensical.
But some may exclaim against the supposition that the material world
exists in mind, regarding this as an implied assertion that mind is
extended, and therefore material. This proceeds, it is replied, on
forgetfulness of what “existence in mind” means. It is intended to express
the fact that matter is real in being an objective appearance of which a
living mind is sensible.
Lastly, is not the Mosaic account of the creation of Matter inconsistent
with the perpetual dependence of Matter for its reality upon percipient
Spirit? It is answered that the conception of creation being dependent on
the existence of finite minds is in perfect harmony with the Mosaic
account: it is what is seen and felt, not what is unseen and unfelt, that
is created.
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The _Third Dialogue_ closes with a representation of the new principle
regarding Matter being the harmony of two apparently discordant
propositions—the one-sided proposition of ordinary common sense; and the
one-sided proposition of the philosophers. It agrees with the mass of
mankind in holding that the material world is actually presented to our
senses, and with the philosophers in holding that this same material world
is realised only in and through the percipient experience of living
Spirit.
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Most of the objections to Berkeley’s conception of Matter which have been
urged in the last century and a half, by its British, French, and German
critics, are discussed by anticipation in these _Dialogues_. The history
of objections is very much a history of misconceptions. Conceived or
misconceived, it has tacitly simplified and purified the methods of
physical science, especially in Britain and France.
The first elaborate criticism of Berkeley by a British author is found in
Andrew Baxter’s _Inquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul_, published in
1735, in the section entitled “Dean Berkeley’s Scheme against the
existence of Matter examined, and shewn to be inconclusive.” Baxter
alleges that the new doctrine tends to encourage scepticism. To deny
Matter, for the reasons given, involves, according to this critic, denial
of mind, and so a universal doubt. Accordingly, a few years later, Hume
sought, in his _Treatise of Human Nature_, to work out Berkeley’s negation
of abstract Matter into sceptical phenomenalism—against which Berkeley
sought to guard by anticipation, in a remarkable passage introduced in his
last edition of these _Dialogues_.
In Scotland the writings of Reid, Beattie, Oswald, Dugald Stewart, Thomas
Brown, and Sir W. Hamilton form a magazine of objections. Reid—who
curiously seeks to refute Berkeley by refuting, not more clearly than
Berkeley had done before him, the hypothesis of a wholly representative
sense-perception—urges the spontaneous belief or common sense of mankind,
which obliges us all to recognise a direct presentation of the external
material world to our senses. He overlooks what with Berkeley is the only
question in debate, namely, the meaning of the term _external_; for, Reid
and Berkeley are agreed in holding to the reality of a world regulated
independently of the will of finite percipients, and is sufficiently
objective to be a medium of social intercourse. With Berkeley, as with
Reid, _this_ is practically self-evident. The same objection, more
scientifically defined—that we have a natural belief in the existence of
Matter, and in our own immediate perception of its qualities—is Sir W.
Hamilton’s assumption against Berkeley; but Hamilton does not explain the
reality thus claimed for it. “Men naturally believe,” he says, “that _they
themselves_ exist—because they are conscious of a Self or Ego; they
believe that _something different from themselves_ exists—because they
believe that they are conscious of this Not-self or Non-ego.”
(_Discussions_, p. 193.) Now, the existence of a Power that is independent
of each finite Ego is at the root of Berkeley’s principles. According to
Berkeley and Hamilton alike, we are immediately percipient of solid and
extended phenomena; but with Berkeley the phenomena are dependent on, at
the same time that they are “entirely distinct” from, the percipient. The
Divine and finite spirits, signified by the phenomena that are presented
to our senses in cosmical order, form Berkeley’s external world.
That Berkeley sows the seeds of Universal Scepticism; that his conception
of Matter involves the Panegoism or Solipsism which leaves me in absolute
solitude; that his is virtually a system of Pantheism, inconsistent with
personal individuality and moral responsibility—these are probably the
three most comprehensive objections that have been alleged against it.
They are in a measure due to Berkeley’s imperfect criticism of first
principles, in his dread of a departure from the concrete data of
experience in quest of empty abstractions.
In England and France, Berkeley’s criticism of Matter, taken however only
on its negative side, received a countenance denied to it in Germany.
Hartley and Priestley shew signs of affinity with Berkeley. Also an
anonymous _Essay on the Nature and Existence of the Material World_,
dedicated to Dr. Priestley and Dr. Price, which appeared in 1781, is an
argument, on empirical grounds, which virtually makes the data of the
senses at last a chaos of isolated sensations. The author of the _Essay_
is said to have been a certain Russell, who died in the West Indies in the
end of the eighteenth century. A tendency towards Berkeley’s negations,
but apart from his synthetic principles, appears in James Mill and J.S.
Mill. So too with Voltaire and the Encyclopedists.
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The _Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous_ were published in London in
1713, “printed by G. James, for Henry Clements, at the Half-Moon, in St.
Paul’s churchyard,” unlike the _Essay on Vision_ and the _Principles_,
which first appeared in Dublin. The second edition, which is simply a
reprint, issued in 1725, “printed for William and John Innys, at the West
End of St. Paul’s.” A third, the last in the author’s lifetime, “printed
by Jacob Tonson,” which contains some important additions, was published
in 1734, conjointly with a new edition of the _Principles_. The
_Dialogues_ were reprinted in 1776, in the same volume with the edition of
the _Principles, with Remarks_.
The _Dialogues_ have been translated into French and German. The French
version appeared at Amsterdam in 1750. The translator’s name is not given,
but it is attributed to the Abbé Jean Paul de Gua de Malves(780), by
Barbier, in his _Dictionnaire des Ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes_, tom.
i. p. 283. It contains a Prefatory Note by the translator, with three
curious vignettes (given in the note below) meant to symbolise the leading
thought in each Dialogue(781). A German translation, by John Christopher
Eschenbach, Professor of Philosophy in Rostock, was published at Rostock
in 1756. It forms the larger part of a volume entitled _Sammlung der
vornehmsten Schriftsteller die die Wirklichkeit ihres eignen Körpers und
der ganzen Körperwelt läugnen_. This professed Collection of the most
eminent authors who are supposed to deny the reality of their own bodies
and of the whole material world, consists of Berkeley’s _Dialogues,_ and
Arthur Collier’s _Clavis Universalis_, or _Demonstration of the
Non-existence or Impossibility of an __ External World_. The volume
contains some annotations, and an Appendix in which a
counter-demonstration of the existence of Matter is attempted.
Eschenbach’s principal argument is indirect, and of the nature of a
_reductio ad absurdum_. He argues (as others have done) that the reasons
produced against the independent reality of Matter are equally conclusive
against the independent reality of Spirit.
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An interesting circumstance connected with the _Dialogues between Hylas
and Philonous_ was the appearance, also in 1713, of the _Clavis
Universalis_, or demonstration of the impossibility of Matter, of Arthur
Collier, in which the merely ideal existence of the sensible world is
maintained. The production, simultaneously, without concert, of
conceptions of the material world which verbally at least have much in
common, is a curious coincidence. It shews that the intellectual
atmosphere of the Lockian epoch in England contained elements favourable
to a reconsideration of the ultimate meaning of Matter. They are both the
genuine produce of the age of Locke and Malebranche. Neither Berkeley nor
Collier were, when they published their books, familiar with ancient Greek
speculations; those of modern Germany had only begun to loom in the
distance. Absolute Idealism, the Panphenomenalism of Auguste Comte, and
the modern evolutionary conception of nature, have changed the conditions
under which the universal problem is studied, and are making intelligible
to this generation a manner of conceiving the Universe which, for nearly a
century and a half, the British and French critics of Berkeley were unable
to entertain.
Berkeley’s _Principles_ appeared three years before the _Clavis
Universalis_. Yet Collier tells us that it was “after a ten years’ pause
and deliberation,” that, “rather than the world should finish its course
without once offering to inquire in what manner it exists,” he had
“resolved to put himself upon the trial of the common reader, without
pretending to any better art of gaining him than dry reason and
metaphysical demonstration.” Mr. Benson, his biographer, says that it was
in 1703, at the age of twenty-three, that Collier came to the conclusion
that “there is no such thing as an external world”; and he attributes the
premises from which Collier drew this conclusion to his neighbour, John
Norris. Among Collier’s MSS., there remains the outline of an essay, in
three chapters, dated January, 1708, on the non-externality of the
_visible_ world.
There are several coincidences between Berkeley and Collier. Berkeley
virtually presented his new theory of Vision as the first instalment of
his explanation of the Reality of Matter. The first of the two Parts into
which Collier’s _Clavis_ is divided consists of proofs that the Visible
World is not, and cannot be, external. Berkeley, in the _Principles_ and
the _Dialogues_, explains the reality of Matter. In like manner the Second
Part of the _Clavis_ consists of reasonings in proof of the impossibility
of an external world independent of Spirit. Finally, in his full-blown
theory, as well as in its visual germ, Berkeley takes for granted, as
intuitively known, the existence of sensible Matter; meaning by this, its
relative existence, or dependence on living Mind. The third proposition of
Collier’s system asserts the real existence of visible matter in
particular, and of sensible matter in general.
The invisibility of distances, as well as of real magnitudes and
situations, and their suggestion by interpretation of visual symbols,
propositions which occupy so large a space in Berkeley’s Theory of Vision,
have no counterpart in Collier. His proof of the non-externality of the
visible world consists of an induction of instances of visible objects
that are allowed by all not to be external, although they seem to be as
much so as any that are called external. His Demonstration consists of
nine proofs, which may be compared with the reasonings and analyses of
Berkeley. Collier’s Demonstration concludes with answers to objections,
and an application of his account of the material world to the refutation
of the Roman doctrine of the substantial existence of Christ’s body in the
Eucharist.
The universal sense-symbolism of Berkeley, and his pervading recognition
of the distinction between physical or symbolical, and efficient or
originative causation, are wanting in the narrow reasonings of Collier.
Berkeley’s more comprehensive philosophy, with its human sympathies and
beauty of style, is now recognised as a striking expression and partial
solution of fundamental problems, while Collier is condemned to the
obscurity of the Schools(782).
Dedication
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORD BERKELEY OF STRATTON(783),
MASTER OF THE ROLLS IN THE KINGDOM OF IRELAND, CHANCELLOR OF THE
DUCHY OF LANCASTER, AND ONE OF THE LORDS OF HER MAJESTY’S MOST
HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNCIL.
MY LORD,