not only the particular ideas of sense and imagination—Berkeley’s
“ideas”—but these considered relatively, and so seen intellectually,
when Locke calls them abstract, general, or universal. Omniscience
in its all-comprehensive intuition may not require, or even admit,
such general ideas.
498 Here and in what follows, “abstract _notion_,” “universal _notion_,”
instead of abstract _idea_. Notion seems to be here a synonym for
idea, and not taken in the special meaning which he afterwards
attached to the term, when he contrasted it with idea.
499 “notions,” again synonymous with ideas, which are all particular or
concrete, in his meaning of _idea_, when he uses it strictly.
_ 500 idea_, i.e. individual mental picture.
501 In all this he takes no account of the intellectual relations
necessarily embodied in concrete knowledge, and without which
experience could not cohere.
502 “have in view,” i.e. actually realise in imagination.
503 What follows, to the end of this section, was added in the second or
1734 edition.
504 So Bacon in many passages of his _De Augmentis Scientiarium_ and
_Novum Organum_.
505 “wide influence,”—“wide and extended sway”—in first edition.
506 “idea,” i.e. individual datum of sense or of imagination.
507 See Leibniz on Symbolical Knowledge (_Opera Philosophica_, pp. 79,
80, Erdmann), and Stewart in his _Elements_, vol. I. ch. 4, § 1, on
our habit of using language without realising, in individual
examples or ideas, the meanings of the common terms used.
508 “doth”—“does,” here and elsewhere in first edition.
509 “ideas,” i.e. representations in imagination of _any_ of the
individual objects to which the names are applicable. The sound or
sight of a verbal sign may do duty for the concrete idea in which
the notion signified by the word might be exemplified.
510 This sentence is omitted in the second edition.
511 Elsewhere he mentions Aristotle as “certainly a great admirer and
promoter of the doctrine of abstraction,” and quotes his statement
that there is hardly anything so incomprehensible to men as notions
of the utmost universality; for they are the most remote from sense.
_Metaph._, Bk. I. ch. 2.
512 Added in second edition.
513 Omitted in second edition.
514 Omitted in second edition.
515 Omitted in second edition.
516 “my own ideas,” i.e. the concrete phenomena which I can realise as
perceptions of sense, or in imagination.
517 He probably refers to Locke.
518 According to Locke, “that which has most contributed to hinder the
due tracing of our ideas, and finding out their relations, and
agreements or disagreements one with another, has been, I suppose,
the ill use of words. It is impossible that men should ever truly
seek, or certainly discover, the agreement or disagreement of ideas
themselves, whilst their thoughts flutter about, or stick only in
sounds of doubtful and uncertain significations. Mathematicians,
abstracting their thoughts from names, and accustoming themselves to
set before their minds the ideas themselves that they would
consider, and not sounds instead of them, have avoided thereby a
great part of that perplexity, puddering, and confusion which has so
much hindered men’s progress in other parts of knowledge.” _Essay_,
Bk. IV. ch. 3, § 30. See also Bk. III. ch. 10, 11.
519 General names involve in their signification intellectual relations
among ideas or phenomena; but the relations, _per se_, are
unimaginable.
520 The rough draft of the Introduction, prepared two years before the
publication of the _Principles_ (see Appendix, vol. III), should be
compared with the published version. He there tells that “there was
a time when, being bantered and abused by words,” he “did not in the
least doubt” that he was “able to abstract his ideas”; adding that
“after a strict survey of my abilities, I not only discovered my own
deficiency on this point, but also cannot conceive it possible that
such a power should be even in the most perfect and exalted
understanding.” What he thus pronounces “impossible,” is a
_sensuous_ perception or imagination of an intellectual relation, as
to which most thinkers would agree with him. But in so arguing, he
seems apt to discard the intellectual relations themselves that are
necessarily embodied in experience.
David Hume refers thus to Berkeley’s doctrine about “abstract
ideas”:—“A great philosopher has asserted that all general ideas are
nothing but particular ones annexed to a certain term, which gives
them a more extensive signification. I look upon this to be one of
the greatest and most valuable discoveries that has been made of
late years in the republic of letters.” (_Treatise of H. N._ Pt. I,
sect. 7.)
521 This resembles Locke’s account of the ideas with which human
knowledge is concerned. They are all originally presented to the
senses, or got by reflexion upon the passions and acts of the mind;
and the materials contributed in this external and internal
experience are, with the help of memory and imagination, elaborated
by the human understanding in ways innumerable, true and false. See
Locke’s _Essay_, Bk. II, ch. 1, §§ 1-5; ch. 10, 11, 12.
522 The ideas or phenomena of which we are percipient in our five senses
make their appearance, not isolated, but in individual masses,
constituting the things, that occupy their respective places in
perceived ambient space. It is as _qualities_ of _things_ that the
ideas or phenomena of sense arise in human experience.
523 This is an advance upon the language of the _Commonplace Book_, in
which “mind” is spoken of as only a “congeries of perceptions.” Here
it is something “entirely distinct” from ideas or perceptions, in
which they exist and are perceived, and on which they ultimately
depend. Spirit, intelligent and active, presupposed with its
implicates in ideas, thus becomes the basis of Berkeley’s
philosophy. Is this subjective idealism only? Locke appears in sect.
1, Descartes, if not Kant by anticipation, in sect. 2.
524 This sentence expresses Berkeley’s New Principle, which filled his
thoughts in the _Commonplace Book_. Note “in _a_ mind,” not
necessarily in _my_ mind.
525 That is to say, one has only to put concrete meaning into the terms
_existence_ and _reality_, in order to have “an intuitive knowledge”
that matter depends for its real existence on percipient spirit.
526 In other words, the things of sense become real, only in the
concrete experience of living mind, which gives them the only
reality we can conceive or have any sort of concern with. Extinguish
Spirit and the material world necessarily ceases to be real.
527 That _esse_ is _percipi_ is Berkeley’s initial Principle, called
“intuitive” or self-evident.
528 Mark that it is the “natural or real existence” of the material
world, in the absence of all realising Spirit, that Berkeley insists
is impossible—meaningless.
529 “our own”—yet not exclusively _mine_. They depend for their reality
upon _a_ percipient, not on _my_ perception.
530 “this tenet,” i.e. that the concrete material world could still be a
reality after the annihilation of all realising spiritual life in
the universe—divine or other.
531 “existing unperceived,” i.e. existing without being realised in any
living percipient experience—existing in a totally abstract
existence, whatever that can mean.
532 “notions”—a term elsewhere (see sect. 27, 89, 142) restricted, is
here applied to the immediate data of the senses—the ideas of sense.
533 This sentence is omitted in the second edition.
534 In the first edition, instead of this sentence, we have the
following: “To make this appear with all the light and evidence of
an Axiom, it seems sufficient if I can but awaken the reflexion of
the reader, that he may take an impartial view of his own meaning,
and turn his thoughts upon the subject itself; free and disengaged
from all embarras of words and prepossession in favour of received
mistakes.”
535 In other words, active percipient Spirit is at the root of all
intelligible trustworthy experience.
536 ’proof’—“demonstration” in first edition; yet he calls it
“intuitive.”
537 “the ideas themselves,” i.e. the phenomena immediately presented in
sense, and that are thus realised in and through the percipient
experience of living mind, as their factor.
538 As those say who assume that perception is ultimately only
representative of the material reality, the very things themselves
not making their appearance to us at all.
539 He refers especially to Locke, whose account of Matter is
accordingly charged with being incoherent.
540 “inert.” See the _De Motu_.
541 “ideas existing in the mind,” i.e. phenomena of which _some_ mind is
percipient; which are realised in the sentient experience of a
living spirit, human or other.
542 What follows to the end of the section is omitted in the second
edition.
543 “the existence of Matter,” i.e. the existence of the material world,
regarded as a something that does not need to be perceived in order
to be real.
544 Sometimes called _objective_ qualities, because they are supposed to
be realised in an abstract objectivity, which Berkeley insists is
meaningless.
545 See Locke’s _Essay_, Bk. II, ch. 8, §§ 13, 18; ch. 23, § 11; Bk. IV,
ch. 3, § 24-26. Locke suggests this relation between the secondary
and the primary qualities of matter only hypothetically.
546 “in the mind, and nowhere else,” i.e. perceived or conceived, but in
no other manner can they be real or concrete.
547 “without the mind,” i.e. independently of all percipient experience.
548 Extension is thus the distinguishing characteristic of the material
world. Geometrical and physical solidity, as well as motion, imply
extension.
549 “number is the creature of the mind,” i.e. is dependent on being
realised in percipient experience. This dependence is here
illustrated by the relation of concrete number to the point of view
of each mind; as the dependence of the other primary qualities was
illustrated by their dependence on the organisation of the
percipient. In this, the preceding, and the following sections,
Berkeley argues the inconsistency of the abstract reality attributed
to the primary qualities with their acknowledged dependence on the
necessary conditions of sense perception.
550 Cf. _New Theory of Vision_, sect. 109.
551 e.g. Locke, _Essay_, Bk. II, ch. 7, § 7; ch. 16, § 1.
552 “without any alteration in any external object”—“without any
external alteration”—in first edition.
553 These arguments, founded on the mind-dependent nature of _all_ the
qualities of matter, are expanded in the _First Dialogue between
Hylas and Philonous_.
554 “an outward object,” i.e. an object wholly abstract from living
Mind.
555 This sentence is omitted in the second edition.
556 “reason,” i.e. reasoning. It is argued, in this and the next
section, that a reality unrealised in percipient experience cannot
be proved, either by our senses or by reasoning.
557 Omitted in the second edition, and the sentence converted into a
question.
558 But the ideas of which we are cognizant in waking dreams, and dreams
of sleep, differ in important characteristics from the external
ideas of which we are percipient in sense. Cf. sect. 29-33.
559 “external bodies,” i.e. bodies supposed to be real independently of
all percipients in the universe.
560 i.e. they cannot shew how their unintelligible hypothesis of Matter
accounts for the experience we have, or expect to have; or which we
believe other persons have, or to be about to have.
561 “the production,” &c., i.e. the fact that we and others have
percipient experience.
562 Mind-dependent Matter he not only allows to exist, but maintains its
reality to be intuitively evident.
563 i.e. bodies existing in abstraction from living percipient spirit.
564 “Matter,” i.e. abstract Matter, unrealised in sentient intelligence.
565 The appeal here and elsewhere is to consciousness—directly in each
person’s experience, and indirectly in that of others.
566 i.e. otherwise than in the form of an idea or actual appearance
presented to our senses.
567 This implies that the material world may be realised in imagination
as well as in sensuous perception, but in a less degree of reality;
for reality, he assumes, admits of degrees.
568 “to conceive the existence of external bodies,” i.e. to conceive
bodies that are not conceived—that are not ideas at all, but which
exist in abstraction. To suppose what we conceive to be unconceived,
is to suppose a contradiction.
569 This sentence is omitted in the second edition.
570 “The existence of things without mind,” or in the absence of all
spiritual life and perception, is what Berkeley argues against, as
_meaningless_, if not _contradictory_; not the existence of a
material world, when this means the realised order of nature,
regulated independently of individual will, and to which our actions
must conform if we are to avoid physical pain.
571 Here again _notion_ is undistinguished from _idea_.
572 This and the three following sections argue for the essential
impotence of matter, and that, as far as we are concerned, so-called
“natural causes” are only _signs_ which foretell the appearance of
their so-called effects. The material world is presented to our
senses as a procession of orderly, and therefore interpretable, yet
in themselves powerless, ideas or phenomena: motion is always an
effect, never an originating active cause.
573 As Locke suggests.
574 This tacitly presupposes the necessity in reason of the Principle of
Causality, or the ultimate need for an efficient cause of every
change. To determine the sort of Causation that constitutes and
pervades the universe is the aim of his philosophy.
575 In other words, the material world is not only real in and through
percipient spirit, but the changing forms which its phenomena
assume, in the natural evolution, are the issue of the perpetual
activity of in-dwelling Spirit. The argument in this section
requires a deeper criticism of its premisses.
576 In other words, an agent cannot, as such, be perceived or imagined,
though its effects can. The spiritual term _agent_ is not
meaningless; yet we have no _sensuous idea_ of its meaning.
577 Omitted in second edition.
578 This sentence is not contained in the first edition. It is
remarkable for first introducing the term _notion_, to signify
_idealess meaning_, as in the words soul, active power, &c. Here he
says that “the operations of the mind” belong to notions, while, in
sect. 1, he speaks of “_ideas_ perceived by attending to the
‘operations’ of the mind.”
579 “ideas,” i.e. fancies of imagination; as distinguished from the more
real ideas or phenomena that present themselves objectively to our
senses.
580 With Berkeley the world of external ideas is distinguished from
Spirit by its essential passivity. Active power is with him the
essence of Mind, distinguishing me from the changing ideas of which
I am percipient. We must not attribute free agency to phenomena
presented to our senses.
581 In this and the four following sections, Berkeley mentions _marks_
by which the ideas or phenomena that present themselves to the
senses may be distinguished from all other ideas, in consequence of
which they may be termed “external,” while those of feeling and
imagination are wholly subjective or individual.
582 This mark—the superior strength and liveliness of the ideas or
phenomena that are presented to the senses—was afterwards noted by
Hume. See _Inquiry concerning Human Understanding_, sect. II.
583 Berkeley here and always insists on the _arbitrary_ character of
“settled laws” of change in the world, as contrasted with “necessary
connexions” discovered in mathematics. The material world is thus
virtually an interpretable natural language, constituted in what, at
our point of view, is _arbitrariness_ or _contingency_.
584 Under this conception of the universe, “second causes” are _divinely
established signs_ of impending changes, and are only metaphorically
called “causes.”
585 So Schiller, in _Don Carlos_, Act III, where he represents sceptics
as failing to see the God who veils Himself in everlasting laws. But
in truth God is eternal law or order vitalised and moralised.
586 “_sensations_,” with Berkeley, are not mere feelings, but in a sense
external appearances.
587 “_more_ reality.” This implies that reality admits of degrees, and
that the difference between the phenomena presented to the senses
and those which are only imagined is a difference in degree of
reality.
588 In the preceding sections, two relations should be carefully
distinguished—that of the material world to percipient mind, in
which it becomes _real_; and that between changes in the world and
spiritual agency. These are Berkeley’s two leading Principles. The
first conducts to and vindicates the second—inadequately, however,
apart from explication of their root in moral reason. The former
gives a relation _sui generis_. The latter gives our only example of
active causality—the natural order of phenomena being the outcome of
the causal energy of intending Will.
589 Sect. 34-84 contain Berkeley’s answers to supposed _objections_ to
the foregoing Principles concerning Matter and Spirit in their
mutual relations.
590 To be an “idea” is, with Berkeley, to be the imaginable object of a
percipient spirit. But he does not define precisely the relation of
ideas to mind. “Existence in mind” is existence _in this relation_.
His question (which he determines in the negative) is, the
possibility of concrete phenomena, naturally presented to sense,
_yet out of all relation to living mind_.
591 Omitted in second edition.
592 i.e. of imagination. Cf. sect. 28-30.
593 Cf. sect. 29.
594 “more reality.” This again implies that reality admits of degrees.
What is perceived in sense is more real than what is imagined, and
eternal realities are more deeply real than the transitory things of
sense.
595 Cf. sect. 33. “Not fictions,” i.e. they are presentative, and
therefore cannot misrepresent.
596 With Berkeley _substance_ is either (_a_) active reason, i.e.
spirit—substance proper, or (_b_) an aggregate of sense-phenomena,
called a “sensible thing”—substance conventionally and
superficially.
597 And which, because realised in living perception, are called
_ideas_—to remind us that reality is attained in and through
percipient mind.
598 “combined together,” i.e. in the form of “sensible things,”
according to natural laws. Cf. sect. 33.
599 “thinking things”—more appropriately called _persons_.
600 Berkeley uses the word idea to mark the fact, that sensible things
are real only as they manifest themselves in the form of passive
objects, presented to sense-percipient mind; but he does not, as
popularly supposed, regard “sensible things” as created and
regulated by the activity of his own individual mind. They are
perceived, but are neither created nor regulated, by the individual
percipient, and are thus _practically external_ to each person.
601 Cf. sect. 87-91, against the scepticism which originates in alleged
fallacy of sense.
602 Omitted in second edition.
603 It is always to be remembered that with Berkeley ideas or phenomena
presented to sense are _themselves_ the real things, whilst ideas of
imagination are representative (or misrepresentative).
604 Here feelings of pleasure or pain are spoken of, without
qualification, as in like relation to living mind as sensible things
or ideas are.
605 That the ideas of sense should be seen “at a distance of several
miles” seems not inconsistent with their being dependent on a
percipient, if ambient space is _itself_ (as Berkeley asserts)
dependent on percipient experience. Cf. sect. 67.
606 In the preceding year.
_ 607 Essay_, sect. 2.
608 Ibid. sect. 11-15.
609 Ibid. sect. 16-28.
610 Ibid. sect. 51.
611 Ibid. sect. 47-49, 121-141.
612 Ibid. sect. 43.
613 i.e. what we are _immediately_ percipient of in seeing.
614 Touch is here and elsewhere taken in its wide meaning, and includes
our muscular and locomotive experience, all which Berkeley included
in the “tactual” meaning of distance.
615 To explain the condition of sensible things _during the intervals of
our perception of them_, consistently with the belief of all sane
persons regarding the material world, is a challenge which has been
often addressed to the advocates of ideal Realism. According to
Berkeley, there are no intervals in the existence of sensible
things. They are permanently perceivable, under the laws of nature,
though not always perceived by this, that or the other individual
percipient. Moreover they always exist _really_ in the Divine Idea,
and _potentially_, in relation to finite minds, in the Divine Will.
616 Berkeley allows to bodies unperceived by me potential, but (for me)
not real existence. When I say a body exists thus conditionally, I
mean that if, in the light, I open my eyes, I shall see it, and that
if I move my hand, I must feel it.
617 i.e. unperceived material substance.
618 Berkeley remarks, in a letter to the American Samuel Johnson, that
“those who have contended for a material world have yet acknowledged
that _natura naturans_ (to use the language of the Schoolmen) is
God; and that the Divine conservation of things is equipollent to,
and in fact the same thing with, a continued repeated creation;—in a
word, that conservation and creation differ only as the _terminus a
quo_. These are the common opinions of Schoolmen; and Durandus, who
held the world to be a machine, like a clock made up and put in
motion by God, but afterwards continued to go of itself, was therein
particular, and had few followers. The very poets teach a doctrine
not unlike the Schools—_mens agitat molem_ (Virgil, Æneid, VI). The
Stoics and Platonists are everywhere full of the same notion. I am
not therefore singular in this point itself, so much as in my way of
proving it.” Cf. _Alciphron_, Dial. IV. sect. 14; _Vindication of
New Theory of Vision_, sect. 8, 17, &c.; _Siris_, _passim_, but
especially in the latter part. See also _Correspondence between
Clarke and Leibniz_ (1717). Is it not possible that the universe of
things and persons is in continuous natural creation, unbeginning
and unending?
619 Cf. sect. 123-132.
620 He distinguishes “idea” from “mode or attribute.” With Berkeley, the
“substance” of _matter_ (if the term is still to be applied to
sensible things) is the naturally constituted aggregate of phenomena
of which each particular thing consists. Now extension, and the
other qualities of sensible things, are not, Berkeley argues, “in
mind” either (_a_) according to the abstract relation of substance
and attribute of which philosophers speak; nor (_b_) as one idea or
phenomenon is related to another idea or phenomenon, in the natural
aggregation of sense-phenomena which constitute, with him, the
_substance_ of a _material_ thing. Mind and its “ideas” are, on the
contrary, related as percipient to perceived—in whatever “otherness”
that altogether _sui generis_ relation implies.
621 “Matter,” i.e. abstract material Substance, as distinguished from
the concrete things that are realised in living perceptions.
622 “take away natural causes,” i.e. empty the material world of all
originative power, and refer the supposed powers of bodies to the
constant and omnipresent agency of God.
623 Some philosophers have treated the relation of Matter to Mind in
_perception_ as one of cause and effect. This, according to
Berkeley, is an illegitimate analysis, which creates a fictitious
duality. On his New Principles, philosophy is based on a recognition
of the fact, that perception is neither the cause nor the effect of
its object, but in a relation to it that is altogether _sui
generis_.