while they argued for material _substance_, denied the _causal
efficiency_ of sensible things. Berkeley’s new Principles are
presented as the foundation in reason for this denial, and for the
essential spirituality of all active power in the universe.
625 On the principle, “Entia non sunt multiplicanda præter
necessitatem.”
626 “external things,” i.e. things in the abstract.
627 That the unreflecting part of mankind should have a confused
conception of what should be meant by the _external reality_ of
matter is not wonderful. It is the office of philosophy to improve
their conception, making it deeper and truer, and this was
Berkeley’s preliminary task; as a mean for shewing the impotence of
the things of sense, and conclusive evidence of omnipresent
spiritual activity.
628 Cf. sect. 4, 9, 15, 17, 22, 24.
629 i.e. their _sense-ideas_.—Though sense-ideas, i.e. the appearances
presented to the senses, are independent of the _will_ of the
individual percipient, it does not follow that they are independent
of _all perception_, so that they can be real in the absence of
realising percipient experience. Cf. sect. 29-33.
630 By shewing that what we are percipient of in sense must be _idea_,
or that it is immediately known by us only as sensuous appearance.
631 i.e. “imprinted” by unperceived Matter, which, on this dogma of a
representative sense-perception, was assumed to exist behind the
perceived ideas, and to be the _cause_ of their appearance. Cf.
_Third Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous_.
632 Hence the difficulty men have in recognising that Divine Reason and
Will, and Law in Nature, are coincident. But the advance of
scientific discovery of the laws which express Divine Will in
nature, instead of narrowing, extends our knowledge of God. And
_divine_ or _absolutely reasonable_ “arbitrariness” is not caprice.
633 “ideas,” i.e. ideas of _sense_. This “experience” implied an
association of sensuous ideas, according to the divine or reasonable
order of nature.
634 Cf. sect. 25-33, and other passages in Berkeley’s writings in which
he insists upon the _arbitrariness_—divine or reasonable—of the
natural laws and sense-symbolism.
635 Cf. sect. 3, 4, 6, 22-24, 26, in which he proceeds upon the
intuitive certainty of his two leading Principles, concerning
_Reality_ and _Causation_.
636 In short, what is virtually the language of universal natural order
is the divine way of revealing omnipresent Intelligence; nor can we
conceive how this revelation could be made through a capricious or
chaotic succession of changes.
637 He here touches on moral purpose in miraculous phenomena, but
without discussing their relation to the divine, or perfectly
reasonable, order of the universe. Relatively to a fine knowledge of
nature, they seem anomalous—exceptions from general rules, which
nevertheless express, immediately and constantly, perfect active
Reason.
638 “ideas,” i.e. the phenomena presented to the senses.
639 “imaginable”—in first edition.
640 “the connexion of ideas,” i.e. the presence of law or reasonable
uniformity in the coexistence and succession of the phenomena of
sense; which makes them interpretable signs.
641 According to Berkeley, it is by an abuse of language that the term
“power” is applied to those ideas which are invariable antecedents
of other ideas—the prior forms of their existence, as it were.
642 Berkeley, in meeting this objection, thus implies Universal Natural
Symbolism as the essential character of the sensible world, in its
relation to man.
643 See Locke’s _Essay_, Bk. IV, ch. 3, § 25-28, &c., in which he
suggests that the secondary qualities of bodies may be the natural
issue of the different relations and modifications of their primary
qualities.
644 With Berkeley, _material substance_ is merely the natural
combination of sense-presented phenomena, which, under a _divine_ or
_reasonable_ “arbitrariness,” constitute a concrete thing. Divine
Will, or Active Reason, is the constantly sustaining cause of this
combination or substantiation.
645 i.e. that it is not realised in a living percipient experience.
646 For “place” is realised only as perceived—percipient experience
being its concrete existence. Living perception is, with Berkeley,
the condition of the possibility of concrete locality.
647 So in the Cartesian theory of occasional causes.
648 So Geulinx and Malebranche.
649 As known in Divine intelligence, they are accordingly _Divine
Ideas_. And, if this means that the sensible system is the
expression of Divine Ideas, which are its ultimate archetype—that
the Ideas of God are symbolised to our senses, and then interpreted
(or misinterpreted) by human minds, this allies itself with Platonic
Idealism.
650 “It seems to me,” Hume says, “that this theory of the universal
energy and operation of the Supreme Being is _too bold_ ever to
carry conviction with it to a mind sufficiently apprised of the
weakness of human reason, and the narrow limits to which it is
confined in all its operations.” But is it not virtually presupposed
in the assumed trustworthiness of our experience of the universe?
651 Accordingly we are led to ask, what the deepest support of their
reality must be. Is it found in living Spirit, i.e. Active Reason,
or in blind Matter?
652 e.g. Descartes, Malebranche, Locke, &c.
653 In short, if we mean by Matter, something unrealised in percipient
experience of sense, what is called its _reality_ is something
unintelligible.
654 And if sensible phenomena are _sufficiently_ externalised, when
regarded as regulated by Divine Reason.
655 Twenty years after the publication of the _Principles_, in a letter
to his American friend Johnson, Berkeley says:—“I have no objection
against calling the Ideas in the mind of God _archetypes_ of ours.
But I object against those archetypes by philosophers supposed to be
real things, and so to have an absolute rational existence distinct
from their being perceived by any mind whatsoever; it being the
opinion of all materialists that an ideal existence in the Divine
Mind is one thing, and the real existence of material things
another.”
656 Berkeley’s philosophy is not inconsistent with Divine Ideas which
receive expression in the laws of nature, and of which human science
is the imperfect interpretation. In this view, assertion of the
existence of Matter is simply an expression of faith that the
phenomenal universe into which we are born is a reasonable and
interpretable universe; and that it would be fully interpreted, if
our notions could be fully harmonised with the Divine Ideas which it
expresses.
657 Cf. sect. 3-24.
658 So that superhuman persons, endowed with a million senses, would be
no nearer this abstract Matter than man is, with his few senses.
659 Matter and physical science is _relative_, so far that we may
suppose in other percipients than men, an indefinite number of
additional senses, affording corresponding varieties of qualities in
things, of course inconceivable by man. Or, we may suppose an
intelligence destitute of _all our_ senses, and so in a material
world wholly different in its appearances from ours.
660 The authority of Holy Scripture, added to our natural tendency to
believe in external reality, are grounds on which Malebranche and
Norris infer a material world. Berkeley’s material world claims no
logical proof of its reality. His is not to prove the reality of the
world, but to shew what we should mean when we affirm its reality,
and the basis of its explicability in science.
661 i.e. existing unrealised in any intelligence—human or Divine.
662 “external things,” i.e. things existing really, yet out of all
relation to active living spirit.
663 Simultaneous perception of the “same” (similar?) _sense_-ideas, _by
different persons_, as distinguished from purely individual
consciousness of feelings and fancies, is here taken as a test of
the _virtually external reality_ of the former.
Berkeley does not ask whether the change of the rod into a serpent,
or of the water into wine, is the issue of divine agency and order,
otherwise than as all natural evolution is divinely providential.
664 Some of the Consequences of adoption of the New Principles, in their
application to the physical sciences and mathematics, and then to
psychology and theology, are unfolded in the remaining sections of
the _Principles_.
665 Berkeley disclaims the supposed _representative_ character of the
ideas given in sensuous perception, and recognises as the real
object only what is ideally presented in consciousness.
666 So Hume, Reid, and Hamilton, who all see in a wholly representative
sense-perception, with its double object, the germ of total
scepticism. Berkeley claims that, under _his_ interpretation of what
the reality of the material world means, immediate knowledge of
mind-dependent matter is given in sense.
667 “scepticism”—“sceptical cant” in the first edition.
668 This sentence is omitted in the second edition.
669 Berkeley’s argument against a _finally representative_ perception so
far resembles that afterwards employed by Reid and Hamilton. They
differ as regards the dependence of the sensible object upon
percipient spirit for its reality.
670 Omitted in second edition.
671 Omitted in second edition.
672 But whilst unthinking things depend on being perceived, do not our
spirits depend on ideas of some sort for their percipient life?
673 The important passage within brackets was added in the second
edition.
674 “reason,” i.e. reasoning.
675 “Notion,” in its stricter meaning, is thus confined by Berkeley to
apprehension of the _Ego_, and intelligence of _relations_. The term
“notion,” in this contrast with _his_ “idea,” becomes important in
his vocabulary, although he sometimes uses it vaguely.
676 Locke uses _idea_ in this wider signification.
677 Inasmuch as they are _real_ in and through living percipient mind.
678 i.e. _unthinking_ archetypes.
679 In this section Berkeley explains what he means by _externality_.
Men cannot act, cannot live, without assuming an external world—in
some meaning of the term “external.” It is the business of the
philosopher to explicate its true meaning.
680 i.e. they are not _substances_ in the truest or deepest meaning of
the word.
681 “Ideas of the corporeal substances.” Berkeley might perhaps
say—Divine Ideas which are _themselves_ our world of sensible things
in its ultimate form.
682 On the scheme of ideal Realism, “creation” of matter is presenting
to finite minds sense-ideas or phenomena, which are, as it were,
letters of the alphabet, in that language of natural order which God
employs for the expression of _His_ Ideas to us.
683 The _independent_ eternity of Matter must be distinguished from an
unbeginning and endless _creation_ of sensible ideas or phenomena,
in percipient spirits, according to divine natural law and order,
with implied immanence of God.
684 Because the question at issue with Atheism is, whether the universe
of things and persons is finally substantiated and evolved in
unthinking Matter or in the perfect Reason of God.
685 Of which Berkeley does _not_ predicate a _numerical_ identity. Cf.
_Third Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous_.
686 “matter,” i.e. matter abstracted from all percipient life and
voluntary activity.
687 “external”—not in Berkeley’s meaning of externality. Cf. sect. 90,
note 2.
_ 688 Si non rogas, intelligo._ Berkeley writes long after this to
Johnson thus:—“A succession of ideas (phenomena) I take to
_constitute_ time, and not to be only the sensible measure thereof,
as Mr. Locke and others think. But in these matters every man is to
think for himself, and speak as he finds. One of my earliest
inquiries was about _time_; which led me into several paradoxes that
I did not think it fit or necessary to publish, particularly into
the notion that the resurrection follows the next moment after
death. We are confounded and perplexed about time—supposing a
succession in God; that we have an abstract idea of time; that time
in one mind is to be measured by succession of ideas in another
mind: not considering the true use of words, which as often
terminate in the will as in the understanding, being employed to
excite and direct action rather than to produce clear and distinct
ideas.” Cf. Introduction, sect. 20.
689 As the _esse_ of unthinking things is _percipi_, according to
Berkeley, so the _esse_ of persons is _percipere_. The real
existence of individual Mind thus depends on having ideas of some
sort: the real existence of matter depends on a percipient.
690 This sentence is omitted in the second edition.
691 Cf. _New Theory of Vision_, sect. 43.
692 “objects of sense,” i.e. sensible things, practically external to
each person. Cf. sect. 1, on the meaning of _thing_, as distinct
from the distinguishable ideas or phenomena that are naturally
aggregated in the form of concrete things.
693 Omitted in second edition.
694 Omitted in second edition.
695 Cf. Introduction, sect. 1-3. With Berkeley, the real essence of
sensible things is given in perception—so far as our perceptions
carry us.
696 e.g. Locke’s _Essay_, Bk. IV. ch. 3.
697 Berkeley advocates a Realism, which eliminates effective causation
from the material world, concentrates it in Mind, and in physical
research seeks among data of sense for their divinely maintained
natural laws.
698 In interpreting the data of sense, we are obliged to assume that
every _new_ phenomenon must have previously existed in some
equivalent form—but not necessarily in this or that particular form,
for a knowledge of which we are indebted to inductive comparisons of
experience.
699 The preceding forms of new phenomena, being finally determined by
Will, are, in that sense, arbitrary; but not capricious, for the
Will is perfect Reason. God is the immanent cause of the natural
order.
700 He probably refers to Bacon.
701 Omitted in second edition.
702 What we are able to discover in the all-comprehensive order may be
subordinate and provisional only. Nature in its deepest meaning
explains itself in the Divine Omniscience.
703 i.e. inductively.
704 i.e. deductively.
705 “seem to consider signs,” i.e. to be grammarians rather than
philosophers: physical sciences deal with the grammar of the divine
language of nature.
706 “A man may be well read in the language of nature without
understanding the grammar of it, or being able to say,” &c.—in first
edition.
707 “extend”—“stretch”—in first edition.
708 Omitted in second edition.
709 In the first edition, the section commences thus: “The best grammar
of the kind we are speaking of will be easily acknowledged to be a
treatise of _Mechanics_, demonstrated and applied to Nature, by a
philosopher of a neighbouring nation, whom all the world admire. I
shall not take upon me to make remarks on the performance of that
extraordinary person: only some things he has advanced so directly
opposite to the doctrine we have hitherto laid down, that we should
be wanting in the regard due to the authority of so great a man did
we not take some notice of them.” He refers, of course, to Newton.
The first edition of Berkeley’s _Principles_ was published in
Ireland—hence “neighbouring nation.” Newton’s _Principia_ appeared
in 1687.
710 “Motion,” in various aspects, is treated specially in the _De Motu_.
An imagination of trinal space presupposes locomotive
experience—unimpeded, in contrast with—impeded locomotion. Cf. sect.
116.
711 Omitted in second edition.
712 Added in second edition.
713 Omitted in second edition.
714 See Locke’s _Essay_, Bk. II. ch. 13, §§ 7-10.
715 “applied to”—“impressed on”—in first edition.
716 “applied to”—“impressed on”—in first edition.
717 “the _force_ causing the change”—which “force,” according to
Berkeley, can only be attributed metaphorically to the so-called
impelling body; inasmuch as _bodies_, or the data of sense, can only
be signs of their consequent events, not efficient causes of change.
718 Added in second edition.
719 What follows to the end of this section is omitted in the second
edition.
720 “seems impossible”—“is above my capacity”—in first edition.
721 In short, empty Space _is_ the sensuous idea of unresisted motion.
This is implied in the _New Theory of Vision_. He minimises Space,
treating it as a datum of sense.
722 He probably refers to Samuel Clarke’s _Demonstration of the Being
and Attributes of God_, which appeared in 1706, and a treatise _De
Spatio Reali_, published in the same year.
723 Sect. 118-132 are accordingly concerned with the New Principles in
their application to Mathematics. The foundation of the mathematical
sciences engaged much of Berkeley’s thought in early life and in his
later years. See his _Analyst_.
724 Numerical relations are _realised_ only in concrete experience.
725 Cf. _New Theory of Vision_, sect. 107, &c.
726 Ibid. sect. 122-125, 149-160.
727 An infinitely divided extension, being unperceived, must be
unreal—if its existence is made real only in and through actual
perception, or at least imagination. The only possible extension is,
accordingly, sensible extension, which could not be infinitely
divided without the supposed parts ceasing to be perceived or real.
728 “converted Gentile”—“pagan convert”—in first edition.
729 Cf. Locke’s _Essay_, Bk. I, ch. 3, § 25.
730 “will perhaps in virtue thereof be brought to admit,” &c.—“will not
stick to affirm,” &c.—in first edition.
731 Omitted in second edition. See the _Analyst_.
732 “we must mean”—“we mean (if we mean anything)”—in first edition.
733 Omitted in the second edition.
734 Does this refer to the intended “Part II” of the _Principles_?
735 “men of great abilities and obstinate application,” &c.—“men of the
greatest abilities and most obstinate application,” &c.—in first
edition.
736 What follows to the end of this section is omitted in the second
edition.
737 “absolute,” i.e. abstract, independent, irrelative existence—as
something of which there can be no sensuous perception or
conception.
738 Matter unrealised in perception—not the material world that is
realised in percipient experience of sense.
739 Omitted in second edition.
740 Sect. 135-156 treat of consequences of the New Principles, in their
application to sciences concerned with our notions of _Spirit_ or
_Mind_; as distinguished from sciences of ideas in external Nature,
and their mathematical relations. Individual mind, with Berkeley,
needs data of sense in order to its realisation in consciousness;
while it is dependent on God, in a relation which he does not define
distinctly.
741 e.g. Locke suggests this.
742 Is this analogy applicable?
743 Omitted in second edition, as he had previously learned to
distinguish _notion_ from _idea_. Cf. sect. 89, 142.
744 Ibid. In the omitted passage it will be seen that he makes _idea_
and _notion_ synonymous.
745 Is the reality of mind as dependent on having ideas (of some sort)
as ideas are on mind; although mind is more deeply and truly real
than its ideas are?
746 Introduced in second edition.
747 We know _other finite persons_ through sense-presented phenomena,
but not as themselves phenomena. Cf. sect. 145. It is a mediate
knowledge that we have of other persons. The question about the
individuality of finite egos, as distinguished from God, Berkeley
has not touched.
748 These sentences are omitted in the second edition.
749 “the soul,” i.e. the individual Ego.
750 Cf. sect. 2; 25-27.
751 This is Berkeley’s application of his new conception of the reality
of matter, to the final human question of the self-conscious
existence of the individual human Ego, after physical death.
Philosophers and theologians were accustomed in his generation to
ground their argument for a future life on the metaphysical
assumption of the physical indivisibility of our self-conscious
spirit, and on our contingent connexion with the body. “Our bodies,”
says Bishop Butler, “are no more _ourselves_, or _part of
ourselves_, than any other matter around us.” This train of thought
is foreign to us at the present day, when men of science remind us
that self-conscious life is found only in correlation with corporeal
organisation, whatever may be the abstract possibility. Hope of
continued life after physical death seems to depend on ethical
considerations more than on metaphysical arguments, and on what is
suggested by faith in the final outcome of personal life in a
_divinely_ constituted universe.
752 Mind and the ideas presented to the senses are at opposite poles of
existence. But he does not say that, thus opposed, they are each
independent of the other.
753 What follows was introduced in the second edition, in which _notion_
is contrasted with _idea_.
754 Here is a germ of Kantism. But Berkeley has not analysed that
activity of mind which constitutes _relation_, nor systematically
unfolded the relations involved in the rational constitution of
experience. There is more disposition to this in _Siris_.
755 As with Locke, for example.
756 Note this condemnation of the tendency to substantiate “powers of
mind.”
757 Omitted in second edition. Berkeley was after all reluctant to
“depart from received modes of speech,” notwithstanding their often
misleading associations.
758 Omitted in second edition.
759 This is one of the notable sections in the _Principles_, as it
suggests the _rationale_ of Berkeley’s rejection of Panegoism or
Solipsism. Is this consistent with his conception of the reality of
the material world? It is objected (e.g. by Reid) that ideal realism
dissolves our faith in the existence of other persons. The
difficulty is to shew how appearances presented to my senses, which
are sensuous and subjective, can be media of communication between
persons. The question carries us back to the theistic presupposition
in the trustworthiness of experience—which is adapted to deceive if
I am the only person existing. With Berkeley a chief function of
ideas of sense is to signify other persons to each person. See
_Alciphron_, Dial. IV; _New Theory of Vision Vindicated_, and
_Siris_.
760 “repugnant”—for it would involve thought in incoherence, by
paralysis of its indispensable causal presupposition.
761 Is not God the indispensable presupposition of trustworthy
experience, rather than an empirical inference?
762 This suggests an explanation of the objective reality and
significance of _ideas of sense_; through which they become media of
social intercourse in the fundamentally divine universe. God so
regulates the sense-given ideas of which human beings are
individually percipient, as that, _while numerically different, as
in each mind_, those ideas are nevertheless a sufficient medium for
social intercourse, if the Power universally at work is morally
trustworthy. Unless our God-given experience is deceiving, Solipsism
is not a necessary result of the fact that no one but myself can be
percipient of my sensuous experience.
763 Omitted in second edition.
764 Malebranche, as understood by Berkeley. See _Recherche_, Liv. III.
p. ii. ch. 6, &c.
765 For all finite persons _somehow_ live, and move, and have their
being “in God.” The existence of _eternal_ living Mind, and the
_present_ existence of other men, are both _inferences_, resting on
the same foundation, according to Berkeley.
766 The theistic trust in which our experience is rooted remaining
latent, or being unintelligent.
767 Cf. sect. 25-28, 51-53, 60-66. His conception of Divine causation in
Nature, as the constant omnipresent agency in all natural law, is
the deepest part of his philosophy. It is pursued in the _De Motu_.
768 Is not the unbeginning and unending natural evolution, an articulate
revelation of Eternal Spirit or Active Reason at the heart of the
whole?
769 Omitted in second edition.
770 So Pascal in the _Pensées_.
771 Divine reason ever active in Nature is the necessary correlate to
reason in man; inasmuch as otherwise the changing universe in which
we live would be unfit to be reasoned about or acted in.