Part 48

M250 S. M251 E. S. M252 M. P. E.

_ 175 Recherche_, I. 19.

M253 P.

176 i.e. of his own individual mind.

M254 M. P.

177 i.e. to _a_ percipient mind, but not necessarily to _mine_; for natural laws are independent of individual will, although the individual participates in perception of the ordered changes.

178 Cf. the _Arithmetica_.

M255 M. N. M256 G. M257 S.

179 i.e. which are not phenomena. This recognition of originative Will even then distinguished Berkeley.

M258 M.

180 Is this Part II of the _Principles_, which was lost in Italy?

M259 I. S. M260 I. Mo. M261 S.

181 The thought of articulate _relations_ to which real existence must conform, was not then at least in Berkeley’s mind. Hence the empiricism and sensationalism into which he occasionally seems to rush in the _Commonplace Book_, in his repulsion from empty abstractions.

M262 G. S.

182 This is the essence of Berkeley’s philosophy—“a blind agent is a contradiction.”

M263 G. M264 S. M265 S. M266 S. Mo. M267 Mo. N. M268 M.

183 This is the basis of Berkeley’s reasoning for the necessarily _unrepresentative_ character of the ideas or phenomena that are presented to our senses. _They_ are the originals.

M269 M. S. M270 S. M271 S. M272 S. M273 M. M274 M. M275 G.

184 Berkeley’s horror of abstract or unperceived space and atoms is partly explained by dogmas in natural philosophy that are now antiquated.

M276 I. E. M277 G.

185 Ralph [?] Raphson, author of _Demonstratio de Deo_ (1710), and also of _De Spatio Reali, seu ente Infinito: conamen mathematico-metaphysicum_ (1697), to which Berkeley refers in one of his letters to Johnson. See also Green’s _Principles of Natural Philosophy_ (1712). The immanence of omnipotent goodness in the material world was unconsciously Berkeley’s presupposition. In God we have our being.

M278 S. M279 S. M280 G. M281 E. N.

186 Note here Berkeley’s version of the causal principle, which is really the central presupposition of his whole philosophy—viz. every event in the material world must be the issue of acting Will.

M282 P. M283 S.

187 So Locke on an ideally perfect memory. _Essay_, Bk. II. ch. x. § 9.

M284 G. M285 M.

188 John Sergeant was the author of _Solid Philosophy asserted against the Fancies of the Ideists_ (London, 1697); also of _the Method to Science_ (1696). He was a deserter from the Church of England to the Church of Rome, and wrote several pieces in defence of Roman theology—some of them in controversy with Tillotson.

M286 S. M287 E. S.

189 Spirit and Matter are mutually dependent; but Spirit is the realising factor and real agent in the universe.

M288 M. M289 P. M290 G.

190 See Descartes, _Meditations_, III; Spinoza, _Epist._ II, ad Oldenburgium.

M291 S.

191 Cf. _Principles_, sect. 2.

M292 S. M293 S. M294 N. S. M295 Mo. M296 Mo. M297 Mo. N.

192 Is “inclusion” here virtually a synonym for verbal definition?

M298 S. M299 N. M300 N. M301 S. M302 I. M303 I. M304 I. M305 M. M306 M. M307 M. S.

193 See _Principles_, sect. 2. The universe of Berkeley consists of Active Spirits that perceive and produce motion in impotent ideas or phenomena, realised in the percipient experience of persons. All supposed powers in Matter are refunded into Spirit.

M308 P. M309 P. M310 I. M311 S. M312 S. M313 S. M314 S.

194 When self-conscious agents are included among “things.” We can have no sensuous image, i.e. idea, of _spirit_, although he maintains we can use the word intelligently.

M315 Mo. M316 M. M317 S. G. M318 P. M319 M. M320 S. M321 M. P. M322 Mo. N.

195 Berkeley insists that we should individualise our thinking—“ipsis consuescere rebus,” as Bacon says,—to escape the dangers of artificial signs. This is the drift of his assault on abstract ideas, and his repulsion from what is not concrete. He would even dispense with words in his meditations in case of being sophisticated by abstractions.

M323 N.

196 Nature or the phenomenal world in short is the revelation of perfectly reasonable Will.

M324 M. S. M325 S.

197 Gerard De Vries, the Cartesian.

M326 S. M327 G. T. M328 T. M329 T. M330 T. M331 M. M332 M. M333 M. M334 M.

198 Are the things of sense only modes in which percipient persons exist?

M335 N.

199 See Locke’s _Essay_, Bk. II. ch. 9. § 8.

M336 M. S. M337 M. M338 M. M339 T. M340 M. M341 N. M342 M. M343 T.

200 Time being relative to the capacity of the percipient.

201 See Locke’s _Essay_, Bk. II. ch. 9. § 8.

M344 M.

202 To perceive what is not an idea (as Berkeley uses idea) is to perceive what is not realised, and therefore not real.

203 So things have a _potential_ objective existence in the Divine Will.

204 With Berkeley, change is time, and time, abstracted from all changes, is meaningless.

205 Could he know, by seeing only, even that he _had_ a body?

M345 M. M346 M. M347 M. M348 M. M349 M. N. M350 N.

206 “the ideas attending these impressions,” i.e. the ideas that are correlatives of the (by us unperceived) organic impressions.

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207 The Italian physical and metaphysical philosopher Fardella (1650-1718) maintained, by reasonings akin to those of Malebranche, that the existence of the material world could not be scientifically proved, and could only be maintained by faith in authoritative revelation. See his _Universæ Philosophiæ Systema_ (1690), and especially his _Logica_ (1696).

M354 M.

208 Locke’s _Essay_, Bk. IV. ch. 11.

209 What does he mean by “unknown substratum”?

M355 M. M356 S. M357 M. M358 M.

210 He gets rid of the infinite in quantity, because it is incapable of concrete manifestation to the senses. When a phenomenon given in sense reaches the _minimum sensibile_, it reaches what is for us the margin of realisable existence: it cannot be infinitely little and still a phenomenon: insensible phenomena of sense involve a contradiction. And so too of the infinitely large.

M359 T.

211 In short he would idealise the visible world but not the tangible world. In the _Principles_, Berkeley idealises both.

M360 S. M361 M.

212 Cf. _Essay on Vision_, sect. 149-59, where he concludes that “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.

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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.”

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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.

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_ 238 Essay on Vision_, sect. 88-119.

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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_.

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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.

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244 This suggests a negative argument for Kant’s antinomies, and for Hamilton’s law of the conditioned.

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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.

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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.