“neither abstract nor visible extension makes the object of
geometry.”
213 By the adult, who has learned to interpret its visual signs.
214 Inasmuch as no physical consequences _follow_ the volition; which
however is still self-originated.
M362 G.
215 “A succession of ideas I take to _constitute_ time, and not to be
only the sensible measure thereof, as Mr. Locke and others think.”
(Berkeley’s letter to Johnson.)
M363 P.
M364 M.
M365 T.
M366 S.
216 Cf. _Essay_, Bk. II. ch. 16, sect. 8.
217 Cf. _Essay on Vision_, sect. 67-77.
218 Cf. _Essay on Vision_, sect. 88-120.
M367 T.
M368 M.
M369 M.
219 This is of the essence of Berkeley’s philosophy.
M370 M.
M371 M.
M372 Mo. S.
M373 S.
M374 S.
M375 S.
220 But in moral freedom originates in the agent, instead of being
“consecutive” to his voluntary acts or found only in their
consequences.
M376 M.
221 “Strigose” (strigosus)—meagre.
M377 S. Mo.
M378 N.
M379 I. S.
M380 S.
222 As he afterwards expresses it, we have intelligible _notions_, but
not _ideas_—sensuous pictures—of the states or acts of our minds.
223 [“Omnes reales rerum proprietates continentur in Deo.” What means Le
Clerc &c. by this? Log. I. ch. 8.]—AUTHOR, on margin.
M381 G.
224 “Si non rogas intelligo.”
M382 M.
M383 P.N.
M384 M. P.
225 This way of winning others to his own opinions is very
characteristic of Berkeley. See p. 92 and note.
M385 M. P.
226 See _Third Dialogue_, on _sameness_ in things and _sameness_ in
persons, which it puzzles him to reconcile with his New Principles.
M386 N.
M387 S.
227 Cf. _Essay on Vision_, sect. 52-61.
228 Cf. _Principles_, sect. 101-134.
229 “distance”—on opposite page in the MS. Cf. _Essay on Vision_, sect.
140.
230 Direct perception of phenomena is adequate to the perceived
phenomena; indirect or scientific perception is inadequate, leaving
room for faith and trust.
M388 M. P.
231 Cf. _Essay on Vision_, sect. 107-8.
M389 M.
M390 S.
232 The Divine Ideas of Malebranche and the sensuous ideas of Berkeley
differ.
M391 N.
233 Cf. _Essay on Vision_, sect. 71.
234 Cf. Malebranche, _Recherche_, Bk. I. c. 6. That and the following
chapters seem to have been in Berkeley’s mind.
235 He here assumes that extension (visible) is implied in the visible
idea we call colour.
236 This strikingly illustrates Berkeley’s use of “idea,” and what he
intends when he argues against “abstract” ideas.
M392 M. P.
237 An interesting autobiographical fact. From childhood he was
indisposed to take things on trust.
M393 M. P.
M394 M.
M395 M.
_ 238 Essay on Vision_, sect. 88-119.
M396 M.
M397 M.
M398 M.
M399 M.
M400 P.
M401 M. P.
M402 M.
M403 M.
M404 I.
M405 M.
239 “thoughts,” i.e. ideas of sense?
240 This, in a crude way, is the distinction of δύναμις and ἐνέργεια. It
helps to explain Berkeley’s meaning, when he occasionally speaks of
the ideas or phenomena that appear in the sense experience of
different persons as if they were absolutely independent entities.
M406 M.
M407 M.
241 To be “in an unperceiving thing,” i.e. to be real, yet unperceived.
Whatever is perceived is, because realised only through a percipient
act, an _idea_—in Berkeley’s use of the word.
M408 I.
242 This as to the “Platonic strain” is not in the tone of _Siris_.
M409 M.
M410 M.
M411 M.
243 John Keill (1671-1721), an eminent mathematician, educated at the
University of Edinburgh; in 1710 Savilian Professor of Astronomy at
Oxford, and the first to teach the Newtonian philosophy in that
University. In 1708 he was engaged in a controversy in support of
Newton’s claims to the discovery of the method of fluxions.
M412 M. P.
M413 M.
244 This suggests a negative argument for Kant’s antinomies, and for
Hamilton’s law of the conditioned.
M414 M.
M415 N.
245 Newton became Sir Isaac on April 16, 1705. Was this written before
that date?
246 These may be _considered_ separately, but not _pictured_ as such.
M416 P.
M417 M.
247 In as far as they have not been sensibly realised in finite
percipient mind.
248 [Or rather that invisible length does exist.]—AUTHOR, on margin.
249 Bonaventura Cavalieri (1598-1647), the Italian mathematician. His
_Geometry of Indivisibles_ (1635) prepared the way for the Calculus.
M418 M.
M419 P. G.
250 [By “the excuse” is meant the finiteness of our mind—making it
possible for contradictions to appear true to us.]—AUTHOR, on
margin.
251 He allows elsewhere that words with meanings not realisable in
imagination, i.e. in the form of idea, may discharge a useful
office. See _Principles_, Introduction, sect. 20.
M420 M. P.
252 We do not perceive unperceived matter, but only matter realised in
living perception—the percipient act being the factor of its
reality.
M421 M.
M422 P.
253 The secondary qualities of things.
M423 M. P.
254 Because, while dependent on percipient sense, they are independent
of _my_ personal will, being determined to appear under natural law,
by Divine agency.
M424 P.
M425 M.
255 Keill’s _Introductio ad veram Physicam_ (Oxon. 1702)—Lectio 5—a
curious work, dedicated to the Earl of Pembroke.
256 [Extension without breadth—i. e. insensible, intangible length—is
not conceivable. ’Tis a mistake we are led into by the doctrine of
abstraction.]—AUTHOR, on margin of MS.
257 Here “Sir Isaac.” Hence written after April, 1705.
M426 M.
_ 258 Essay_, Bk. IV. ch. iv. sect. 18; ch. v. sect. 3, &c.
259 He applies _thing_ to self-conscious persons as well as to passive
objects of sense.
_ 260 Scaligerana Secunda_, p. 270.
261 [These arguments must be proposed shorter and more separate in the
Treatise.]—AUTHOR, on margin.
262 “Idea” here used in its wider meaning—for “operations of mind,” as
well as for sense presented phenomena that are independent of
individual will. Cf. _Principles_, sect. 1.
263 “sensations,” i.e. objective phenomena presented in sense.
264 See _Principles_, sect. 1.
265 See _Principles_, sect. 2.
266 An “unperceiving thing” cannot be the factor of material reality.
267 [To the utmost accuracy, wanting nothing of perfection. _Their_
solutions of problems, themselves must own to fall infinitely short
of perfection.]—AUTHOR, on margin.
M427 P.
268 Jean de Billy and René de Billy, French mathematicians—the former
author of _Nova Geometriæ Clavis_ and other mathematical works.
M428 T.
269 According to Baronius, in the fifth volume of his “Annals,” Ficinus
appeared after death to Michael Mercatus—agreeably to a promise he
made when he was alive—to assure him of the life of the human spirit
after the death of the body.
M429 M.
270 So far as we are factors of their reality, in sense and in science,
or can be any practical way concerned with them.
271 Cf. _Principles_, sect. 101-34.
M430 P.
272 “something,” i.e. _abstract_ something.
273 Lord Pembroke (?)—to whom the _Principles_ were dedicated, and to
whom Locke dedicated his _Essay_.
274 This is an interesting example of a feature that is conspicuous in
Berkeley—the art of “humoring an opponent in his own way of
thinking,” which it seems was an early habit. It is thus that he
insinuates his New Principles in the _Essay on Vision_, and so
prepares to unfold and defend them in the book of _Principles_ and
the three _Dialogues_—straining language to reconcile them with
ordinary modes of speech.
275 In Diderot’s _Lettre sur les aveugles, à l’usage de ceux qui
voient_, where Berkeley, Molyneux, Condillac, and others are
mentioned. Cf. also Appendix, pp. 111, 112; and _Theory of Vision
Vindicated_, sect. 71, with the note, in which some recorded
experiments are alluded to.
_ 276 De Anima_, II. 6, III. 1, &c. Aristotle assigns a pre-eminent
intellectual value to the sense of sight. See, for instance, his
_Metaphysics_, I. 1.
277 Sir A. Grant, (_Ethics of Aristotle_, vol. II. p. 172) remarks, as
to the doctrine that the Common Sensibles are apprehended
concomitantly by the senses, that: “this is surely the true view; we
see in the apprehension of number, figure, and the like, not an
operation of sense, but the mind putting its own forms and
categories, i.e. itself, on the external object. It would follow
then that the senses cannot really be separated from the mind; the
senses and the mind each contribute an element to every knowledge.
Aristotle’s doctrine of κοινὴ αἴσθησις would go far, if carried out,
to modify his doctrine of the simple and innate character of the
senses, e.g. sight (cf. _Eth._ II. 1, 4), and would prevent its
collision with Berkeley’s _Theory of Vision_.”—See also Sir W.
Hamilton, _Reid’s Works_, pp. 828-830.
Dugald Stewart (_Collected Works_, vol. I. p. 341, note) quotes
Aristotle’s _Ethics_, II. 1, as evidence that Berkeley’s doctrine,
“with respect to the acquired perceptions of sight, was quite
unknown to the best metaphysicians of antiquity.”
278 A work resembling Berkeley’s in its title, but in little else,
appeared more than twenty years before the _Essay_—the _Nova
Visionis Theoria_ of Dr. Briggs, published in 1685.
279 See _Treatise on the Eye_, vol. II. pp. 299, &c.
280 See Reid’s _Inquiry_, ch. v. §§ 3, 5, 6, 7; ch. vi. § 24, and
_Essays on the Intellectual Powers_, II. ch. 10 and 19.
281 While Sir W. Hamilton (_Lectures on Metaphysics_, lxxviii)
acknowledges the scientific validity of Berkeley’s conclusions, as
to the way we judge of distances, he complains, in the same lecture,
that “the whole question is thrown into doubt by the analogy of the
lower animals,” i.e. by their probable _visual instinct_ of
distances; and elsewhere (Reid’s _Works_, p. 137, note) he seems to
hesitate about Locke’s Solution of Molyneux’s Problem, at least in
its application to Cheselden’s case. Cf. Leibniz, _Nouveaux Essais_,
Liv. II. ch. 9, in connexion with this last.
282 An almost solitary exception in Britain to this unusual uniformity
on a subtle question in psychology is found in Samuel Bailey’s
_Review of Berkeley’s Theory of Vision, designed to show the
unsoundness of that celebrated Speculation_, which appeared in 1842.
It was the subject of two interesting rejoinders—a well-weighed
criticism, in the _Westminster Review_, by J.S. Mill, since
republished in his _Discussions_; and an ingenious Essay by
Professor Ferrier, in _Blackwood’s Magazine_, republished in his
_Philosophical Remains_. The controversy ended on that occasion with
Bailey’s _Letter to a Philosopher in reply to some recent attempts
to vindicate Berkeley’s Theory of Vision, and in further elucidation
of its unsoundness_, and a reply to it by each of his critics. It
was revived in 1864 by Mr. Abbott of Trinity College, Dublin, whose
essay on _Sight and Touch_ is “an attempt to disprove the received
(or Berkeleian) Theory of Vision.”
283 Afterwards (in 1733) Earl of Egmont. Born about 1683, he succeeded
to the baronetcy in 1691, and, after sitting for a few years in the
Irish House of Commons, was in 1715 created Baron Percival, in the
Irish peerage. In 1732 he obtained a charter to colonise the
province of Georgia in North America. His name appears in the list
of subscribers to Berkeley’s Bermuda Scheme in 1726. He died in
1748. He corresponded frequently with Berkeley from 1709 onwards.
284 Similar terms are applied to the sense of seeing by writers with
whom Berkeley was familiar. Thus Locke (_Essay_, II. ix. 9) refers
to sight as “the most comprehensive of all our senses.” Descartes
opens his _Dioptrique_ by designating it as “le plus universal et le
plus noble de nos sens;” and he alludes to it elsewhere (_Princip._
IV. 195) as “le plus subtil de tous les sens.” Malebranche begins
his analysis of sight (_Recherche_, I. 6) by describing it as “le
premier, le plus noble, et le plus étendu de tous les sens.” The
high place assigned to this sense by Aristotle has been already
alluded to. Its office, as the chief organ through which a
conception of the material universe as placed in ambient space is
given to us, is recognised by a multitude of psychologists and
metaphysicians.
285 On Berkeley’s originality in his Theory of Vision see the Editor’s
Preface.
286 In the first edition alone this sentence followed:—“In treating of
all which, it seems to me, the writers of Optics have proceeded on
wrong principles.”
287 Sect. 2-51 explain the way in which we learn in seeing to judge of
Distance or Outness, and of objects as existing remote from our
organism, viz. by their association with what we see, and with
certain muscular and other sensations in the eye which accompany
vision. Sect. 2 assumes, as granted, the invisibility of distance in
the line of sight. Cf. sect. 11 and 88—_First Dialogue between Hylas
and Philonous—Alciphron_, IV. 8—_Theory of Vision Vindicated and
Explained_, sect. 62-69.
288 i.e. outness, or distance outward from the point of vision—distance
in the line of sight—the third dimension of space. Visible distance
is visible space or interval between two points (see sect. 112). We
can be sensibly percipient of it only when _both_ points are seen.
289 This section is adduced by some of Berkeley’s critics as if it were
the evidence discovered by him for his _Theory_, instead of being,
as it is, a passing reference to the scientific ground of the
already acknowledged invisibility of outness, or distance in the
line of sight. See, for example, Bailey’s _Review of Berkeley’s
Theory of Vision_, pp. 38-43, also his _Theory of Reasoning_, p. 179
and pp. 200-7—Mill’s _Discussions_, vol. II. p. 95—Abbott’s _Sight
and Touch_, p. 10, where this sentence is presented as “the sole
positive argument advanced by Berkeley.” The invisibility of outness
is not Berkeley’s discovery, but the way we learn to interpret its
visual signs, and what these are.
290 i.e. aerial and linear perspective are acknowledged signs of remote
distances. But the question, in this and the thirty-six following
sections, concerns the visibility of _near_ distances only—a few
yards in front of us. It was “agreed by all” that beyond this limit
distances are suggested by our experience of their signs.
291 Cf. this and the four following sections with the quotations in the
Editor’s Preface, from Molyneux’s _Treatise of Dioptrics_.
292 In the author’s last edition we have this annotation: “See what Des
Cartes and others have written upon the subject.”
293 In the first edition this section opens thus: “I have here set down
the common current accounts that are given of our perceiving near
distances by sight, which, though they are unquestionably received
for true by mathematicians, and accordingly made use of by them in
determining the apparent places of objects, do nevertheless,” &c.
294 Omitted in the author’s last edition.
295 i.e. although immediately invisible, it is mediately seen. Mark,
here and elsewhere, the ambiguity of the term _perception_, which
now signifies the act of being conscious of sensuous phenomena, and
again the act of inferring phenomena of which we are at the time
insentient; while it is also applied to the object perceived instead
of to the percipient act; and sometimes to imagination, and the
higher acts of intelligence.
296 “Some men”—“mathematicians,” in first edition.
297 i.e. the _mediate_ perception.
298 “any man”—“all the mathematicians in the world,” in first edition.
299 Omitted in the author’s last edition.
300 Omitted in the author’s last edition.
301 Sect. 3, 9.
302 Observe the first introduction by Berkeley of the term _suggestion_,
used by him to express a leading factor in his account of the
visible world, and again in his more comprehensive account of our
knowledge of the material universe in the _Principles_. It had been
employed occasionally, among others, by Hobbes and Locke. There are
three ways in which the objects we have an immediate perception of
in sight may be supposed to conduct us to what we do not immediately
perceive: (1) Instinct, or what Reid calls “_original suggestion_”
(_Inquiry_, ch. VI. sect. 20-24); (2) Custom; (3) Reasoning from
accepted premisses. Berkeley’s “suggestion” corresponds to the
second. (Cf. _Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 42.)
303 In the _Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 66, it is added that
this “sensation” belongs properly to the sense of touch. Cf. also
sect. 145 of this _Essay_.
304 Here “natural”=“necessary”: elsewhere=divinely arbitrary connexion.
305 That our _mediate_ vision of outness and of objects as thus
external, is due to media which have a contingent or arbitrary,
instead of a necessary, connexion with the distances which they
enable us to see, or of which they are the signs, is a cardinal part
of his argument.
306 Sect. 2.
307 Here, as generally in the _Essay_, the appeal is to our inward
experience, not to phenomena observed by our senses in the organism.
308 See sect. 35 for the difference between confused and faint vision.
Cf. sect. 32-38 with this section. Also _Theory of Vision
Vindicated_, sect. 68.
309 See sect. 6.
310 These sections presuppose previous contiguity as an associative law
of mental phenomena.
311 See Reid’s _Inquiry_, ch. vi. sect. 22.
312 Sect. 16-27.—For the signs of remote distances, see sect. 3.
313 These are muscular sensations felt in the organ, and degrees of
confusion in a visible idea. Berkeley’s “arbitrary” signs of
distance, near and remote, are either (_a_) invisible states of the
visual organ, or (_b_) visible appearances.
314 In Molyneux’s _Treatise of Dioptrics_, Pt. I. prop. 31, sect. 9,
Barrow’s difficulty is stated. Cf. sect. 40 below.
315 Christopher Scheiner, a German astronomer, and opponent of the
Copernican system, born 1575, died 1650.
316 Andrea Tacquet, a mathematician, born at Antwerp in 1611, and
referred to by Molyneux as “the ingenious Jesuit.” He published a
number of scientific treatises, most of which appeared after his
death, in a collected form, at Antwerp in 1669.
317 In what follows Berkeley tries to explain by his visual theory
seeming contradictions which puzzled the mathematicians.
318 This is offered as a verification of the theory that near distances
are suggested, according to the order of nature, by non-resembling
visual signs, contingently connected with real distance.
319 Cf. sect. 78; also _New Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 31.
320 Berkeley here passes from his proof of visual “suggestion” of all
outward distances—i.e. intervals between extremes in the line of
sight—by means of arbitrary signs, and considers the nature of
visible externality. See note in Hamilton’s _Reid_, p. 177, on the
distinction between perception of the external world and perception
of distance through the eye.
321 See Descartes, _Dioptrique_, VI—Malebranche, _Recherche_, Liv. I.
ch. 9, 3—Reid’s _Inquiry_, VI. 11.
322 Berkeley here begins to found, on the experienced connexion between
extension and colour, and between visible and tangible extension, a
proof that _outness_ is invisible. From Aristotle onwards it has
been assumed that colour is the only phenomenon of which we are
immediately percipient in seeing. Visible extension, visible figure,
and visible motion are accordingly taken to be dependent on the
sensation of colour.
323 In connexion with this and the next illustration, Berkeley seems to
argue that we are not only unable to see distance in the line of
sight, but also that we do not see a distant object in its _real
visible_ magnitude. But elsewhere he affirms that only _tangible_
magnitude is entitled to be called _real_. Cf. sect. 55, 59, 61.
324 The sceptical objections to the trustworthiness of the senses,
proposed by the Eleatics and others, referred to by Descartes in his
_Meditations_, and by Malebranche in the First Book of his
_Recherche_, may have suggested the illustrations in this section.
Cf. also Hume’s Essay _On the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy_.
The sceptical difficulty is founded on the assumption that the
object seen at different distances is the _same visible object_: it
is really different, and so the difficulty vanishes.
325 Here Berkeley expressly introduces “touch”—a term which with him
includes, not merely organic sense of contact, but also muscular and
locomotive sense-experience. After this he begins to unfold the
antithesis of visual and tactual phenomena, whose subsequent
synthesis it is the aim of the _New Theory_ to explain. Cf.
_Principles of Human Knowledge_, sect. 43—_Theory of Vision
Vindicated_, sect. 22 and 25. Note here Berkeley’s reticence of his
idealization of Matter—tangible as well as visible. Cf.
_Principles_, sect. 44.
326 This connexion of our knowledge of distance with our locomotive
experience points to a theory which ultimately resolves space into
experience of unimpeded locomotion.
327 Locke (_Essay_, Introduction, § 8) takes _idea_ vaguely as “the term
which serves best to stand whatsoever is the object of the
understanding when a man thinks.” Oversight of what Berkeley intends
the term idea has made his whole conception of nature and the
material universe a riddle to many, of which afterwards.
328 The expressive term “outness,” favoured by Berkeley, is here first
used.
329 “We get the idea of Space,” says Locke, “both by our sight and
touch” (_Essay_, II. 13. § 2). Locke did not contemplate Berkeley’s
antithesis of visible and tangible extension, and the consequent
ambiguity of the term extension; which sometimes signifies
_coloured_, and at others _resistant_ experience in sense.
330 For an explanation of this difficulty, see sect. 144.
331 “object”—“thing,” in the earlier editions.
332 This is the issue of the analytical portion of the _Essay_.
333 Cf. sect. 139-40.
334 Here the question of externality, signifying independence of all
percipient life, is again mixed up with that of the invisibility of
distance outwards in the line of sight.
335 Omitted in author’s last edition.
336 i.e. including muscular and locomotive experience as well as sense
of contact. But what are the _tangibilia_ themselves? Are they also
significant, like _visibilia_, of a still ulterior reality? This is
the problem of the _Principles of Human Knowledge_.
337 In this section the conception of a natural Visual Language, makes
its appearance, with its implication that Nature is (for us)
virtually Spirit. Cf. sect. 140, 147—_Principles_, sect.
44—_Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous_—_Alciphron_, IV. 8, 11—and
_Theory of Vision Vindicated_, passim.
338 Sect. 52-87 treat of the invisibility of real, i.e. tactual,
Magnitude. Cf. _Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 54-61.
339 Sect. 8-15.
340 Sect. 41, &c.
341 See Molyneux’s _Treatise on Dioptrics_, B. I. prop. 28.
342 See sect. 122-126.
343 In short there is a point at which, with our limited sense, we cease
to be percipient of colour, in seeing; and of resistance, in
locomotion. Though Berkeley regards all visible extensions as
sensible, and therefore dependent for their reality on being
realised by sentient mind, he does not mean that mind or
consciousness is extended. With him, extension, though it exists
only in mind,—i.e. as an idea seen, in the case of visible
extension, and as an idea touched, in the case of tangible
extension,—is yet no _property_ of mind. Mind can exist without
being percipient of extension, although extension cannot be realised
without mind.
344 But this is true, though less obviously, of tangible as well as of
visible objects.
345 Sect. 49.
346 Cf. sect. 139, 140, &c.
347 “situation”—not in the earlier editions.
348 Sect. 55.
349 Omitted in the author’s last edition.
350 Ordinary sight is virtually foresight. Cf. sect. 85.—See also
Malebranche on the external senses, as given primarily for the
urgent needs of embodied life, not to immediately convey scientific
knowledge, _Recherche_, Liv. I. ch. 5, 6, 9, &c.
351 Sect. 44.—See also sect. 55, and note.
352 This supposes “settled” _tangibilia_, but not “settled” _visibilia_.
Yet the sensible extension given in touch and locomotive experience
is also relative—an object being _felt_ as larger or smaller
according to the state of the organism, and the other conditions of
our embodied perception.
353 What follows, to end of sect. 63, added in the author’s last
edition.