Part 49

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.

354 “outward objects,” i.e. objects of which we are percipient in tactual experience, taken in this _Essay_ provisionally as the real external objects. See _Principles_, sect. 44.

355 Cf. sect. 144. Note, in this and the three preceding sections, the stress laid on the _arbitrariness_ of the connexion between the signs which suggest magnitudes, or other modes of extension, and their significates. This is the foundation of the _New Theory_; which thus resolves _physical_ causality into a relation of signs to what they signify and predict—analogous to the relation between words and their accepted meanings.

356 In sect. 67-78, Berkeley attempts to verify the foregoing account of the natural signs of Size, by applying it to solve a phenomenon, the cause of which had been long debated among men of science—the visible magnitude of heavenly bodies when seen in the horizon.

357 Cf. sect. 10.

358 Omitted in the author’s last edition. Cf sect. 76, 77.—The explanation in question is attributed to Alhazen, and by Bacon to Ptolemy, while it is sanctioned by eminent scientific names before and since Berkeley.

359 “Fourthly” in the second edition. Cf. what follows with sect. 74. Why “lesser”?

360 When Berkeley, some years afterwards, visited Italy, he remarked that distant objects appeared to him much nearer than they really were—a phenomenon which he attributed to the comparative purity of the southern air.

361 i.e. the original perception, apart from any synthetic operation of suggestion and inferential thought, founded on visual signs.

362 In Riccioli’s _Almagest_, II. lib. X. sect. 6. quest. 14, we have an account of many hypotheses then current, in explanation of the apparent magnitude of the horizontal moon.

363 Gassendi’s “Epistolæ quatuor de apparente magnitudine solis humilis et sublimis.”—_Opera_, tom. III pp. 420-477. Cf. Appendix to this _Essay_, p. 110.

364 See _Dioptrique_, VI.

_ 365 Opera Latina_, vol. I, p. 376, vol. II, pp. 26-62; _English Works_, vol. I. p. 462. (Molesworth’s Edition.)

366 The paper in the Transactions is by Molyneux.

367 See Smith’s _Optics_, pp. 64-67, and _Remarks_, pp. 48, &c. At p. 55 Berkeley’s _New Theory_ is referred to, and pronounced to be at variance with experience. Smith concludes by saying, that in “the second edition of Berkeley’s _Essay_, and also in a Vindication and Explanation of it (called the _Visual Language_), very lately published, the author has made some additions to his solution of the said phenomenon; but seeing it still involves and depends on the principle of faintness, I may leave the rest of it to the reader’s consideration.” This, which appeared in 1738, is one of the very few early references to Berkeley’s _New Theory of Vision Vindicated_.

368 Sect. 2-51.

369 This sentence is omitted in the author’s last edition.

370 What follows to the end of this section is not contained in the first edition.

371 i.e. tangible.

372 Cf. sect. 38; and _Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 31.

373 “Never”—“hardly,” in first edition.

374 Cf. Appendix, p. 208.—See Smith’s _Optics_, B. I. ch. v, and _Remarks_, p. 56, in which he “leaves it to be considered, whether the said phenomenon is not as clear an instance of the insufficiency of faintness” as of mathematical computation.

375 A favourite doctrine with Berkeley, according to whose theory of visibles there can be no absolute visible magnitude, the _minimum_ being the least that is _perceivable_ by each seeing subject, and thus relative to his visual capacity. This section is thus criticised, in January, 1752, in a letter signed “Anti-Berkeley,” in the _Gent. Mag._ (vol. XXII, p. 12): “Upon what his lordship asserts with respect to the _minimum visibile_, I would observe that it is certain that there are infinite numbers of animals which are imperceptible to the naked eye, and cannot be perceived but by the help of a microscope; consequently there are animals whose whole bodies are far less than the _minimum visibile_ of a man. Doubtless these animals have eyes, and, if their _minimum visibile_ were equal to that of a man, it would follow that they cannot perceive anything but what is much larger than their whole body; and therefore their own bodies must be invisible to them, because we know they are so to men, whose _minimum visibile_ is asserted by his lordship to be equal to theirs.” There is some misconception in this. Cf. Appendix to _Essay_, p. 209.

376 Those two defects belong to human consciousness. See Locke’s _Essay_, II. 10, on the defects of human memory. It is this imperfection which makes reasoning needful—to assist finite intuition. Reasoning is the sign at once of our dignity and our weakness.

377 Sect. 59.

378 Sect. 80-82.

379 Sect. 88-119 relate to the nature, invisibility, and arbitrary visual signs of Situation, or of the localities of tangible things. Cf. _Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 44-53.

380 Cf. sect. 2, 114, 116, 118.

381 This illustration is taken from Descartes. See Appendix.

382 Sect. 10 and 19.

383 Sect. 2-51.

384 Omitted in author’s last edition.

385 This is Berkeley’s universal solvent of the psychological difficulties involved in visual-perception.

386 Cf. sect. 103, 106, 110, 128, &c. Berkeley treats this case hypothetically in the _Essay_, in defect of actual experiments upon the born-blind, since accumulated from Cheselden downwards. See however the Appendix, and _Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 71.

387 i.e. tangible things. Cf. _Principles_, sect. 44.

388 The “prejudice,” to wit, which Berkeley would dissolve by his introspective analysis of vision. Cf. _Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 35.

389 Thus forming individual concrete things out of what is perceived separately through different senses.

390 This briefly is Berkeley’s solution of “the knot about inverted images,” which long puzzled men of science.

391 i.e. perceive _mediately_—visible objects, _per se_, having no tactual situation. Pure vision, he would say, has nothing to do with “high” and “low,” “great” and “inverted,” in the real or tactual meaning of those terms.

392 i.e. tangible.

393 e.g. “extension,” which, according to Berkeley, is an equivocal term, common (in its different meanings) to _visibilia_ and _tangibilia_. Cf. sect. 139, 140.

394 Cf. sect. 93, 106, 110, 128.

395 i.e. real or tangible head.

396 Cf. sect. 140, 143. In the _Gent. Mag._ (vol. XXII. p. 12), “Anti-Berkeley” thus argues the case of one born blind. “This man,” he adds, “would, by being accustomed to feel one hand with the other, have perceived that the extremity of the hand was divided into fingers—that the extremities of these fingers were distinguished by certain hard, smooth surfaces, of a different texture from the rest of the fingers—and that each finger had certain joints or flexures. Now, if this man was restored to sight, and immediately viewed his hand before he touched it again, it is manifest that the divisions of the extremity of the hand into fingers would be visibly perceived. He would note too the small spaces at the extremity of each finger, which affected his sight differently from the rest of the fingers; upon moving his fingers he would see the joints. Though therefore, by means of this lately acquired sense of seeing, the object affected his mind in a new and different manner from what it did before, yet, as by _touch_ he had acquired the knowledge of these several divisions, marks, and distinctions of the hand, and, as the new object of _sight_ appeared to be divided, marked, and distinguished in a similar manner, I think he would certainly conclude, _before he touched his hand_, that the thing which he now saw was _the same_ which he had felt before and called his hand.”

397 Locke, _Essay_, II. 8, 16. Aristotle regards number as a Common Sensible.—_De Anima_, II. 6, III. 1.

398 “If the visible appearance of two shillings had been found connected from the beginning with the tangible idea of one shilling, that appearance would as naturally and readily have signified the unity of the (tangible) object as it now signifies its duplicity.” Reid, _Inquiry_, VI. 11.

399 Here again note Berkeley’s inconvenient reticence of his full theory of matter, as dependent on percipient life for its reality. Tangible things are meantime granted to be real “without mind.” Cf. _Principles_, sect. 43, 44. “Without the mind”—in contrast to sensuous phenomenon only.

400 Cf. sect. 131.

401 Sect. 2, 88, 116, 118.

402 In short, we _see_ only _quantities of colour_—the real or tactual distance, size, shape, locality, up and down, right and left, &c., being gradually associated with the various visible modifications of colour.

403 i.e. tangible.

404 Sect. 41-44.

405 i.e. tangible things.

406 i.e. visible.

407 Cf. sect. 41-44. The “eyes”—visible and tangible—are themselves objects of sense.

408 Cf. _Principles_, Introduction, sect. 21-25.

409 “Visible ideas”—including sensations muscular and locomotive, _felt_ in the organ of vision. Sect. 16, 27, 57.

410 i.e. objects which, in this tentative _Essay_, are granted, for argument’s sake, to be external, or independent of percipient mind.

411 i.e. to inquire whether there are, in this instance, Common Sensibles; and, in particular, whether an _extension_ of the same kind at least, if not numerically the same, is presented in each. The Kantian theory of an _a priori_ intuition of space, the common condition of tactual and visual experience, because implied in sense-experience as such, is not conceived by Berkeley. Cf. _Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 15.

412 In the following reasoning against abstract, as distinguished from concrete or sense presented (visible or tangible) extension, Berkeley urges some of his favourite objections to “abstract ideas,” fully unfolded in his _Principles_, Introduction, sect. 6-20.—See also _Alciphron_, VII. 5-8.—_Defence of Free Thinking in Mathematics_, sect. 45-48.

413 Berkeley’s _ideas_ are concrete or particular—immediate data of sense or imagination.

414 i.e. it cannot be individualized, either as a perceived or an imagined object.

415 Sect. 105.

416 “Endeavours” in first edition.

417 i.e. a mental image of an abstraction, an impossible image, in which the extension and comprehension of the notion must be adequately pictured.

418 “deservedly admired author,” in the first edition.

419 “this celebrated author,”—“that great man” in second edition. In assailing Locke’s “abstract idea,” he discharges the meaning which Locke intended by the term, and then demolishes his own figment.

420 Omitted in the author’s last edition.

421 Omitted in last edition.

422 Omitted in last edition.

423 Omitted in last edition.

424 See _Principles_, passim.

425 Omitted in author’s last edition.

426 He probably has Locke in his eye.

427 On Berkeley’s theory, space without relation to bodies (i.e. insensible or abstract space) would not be extended, as not having parts; inasmuch as parts can be assigned to it only with relation to bodies. Berkeley does not distinguish space from sensible extension. Cf. Reid’s _Works_, p. 126, note—in which Sir W. Hamilton suggests that one may have an _a priori_ conception of pure space, and _also_ an _a posteriori_ perception of finite, concrete space.

428 Sect. 121. Cf. _New Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 15.

429 i.e. there are no Common Sensibles: from which it follows that we can reason from the one sense to the other only by founding on the constant connexion of their respective phenomena, under a natural yet (for us) contingent law. Cf. _New Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 27, 28.

430 Omitted in last edition.

431 Cf. sect. 93, 103, 106, 110.

432 Omitted in last edition.

433 Cf. sect. 43, 103, &c. A plurality of co-existent _minima_ of coloured points constitutes Berkeley’s visible extension; while a plurality of successively experienced _minima_ of resistant points constitutes his tactual extension. Whether we can perceive visible extension without experience of muscular movement at least in the eye, he does not here say.

434 Omitted in last edition.

435 Real distance belongs originally, according to the _Essay_, to our tactual experience only—in the wide meaning of touch, which includes muscular and locomotive perceptions, as well as the simple perception of contact.

436 Added in second edition.

437 Omitted in last edition.

438 See also Locke’s “Correspondence” with Molyneux, in Locke’s _Works_, vol. IX. p. 34.—Leibniz, _Nouveaux Essais_, Liv. II. ch. 9, who, so far granting the fact, disputes the heterogeneity.—Smith’s _Optics._—_Remarks_, §§ 161-170.—Hamilton’s Reid, p. 137, note, and _Lect. Metaph._ II. p. 176.

439 Omitted in last edition.

440 Cf. _Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 70.

441 Cf. sect. 49, 146, &c. Here “same” includes “similar.”

442 i.e. visible and tangible motions being absolutely heterogeneous, and the former, _at man’s point of view_, only contingent signs of the latter, we should not, at first sight, be able to interpret the visual signs of tactual phenomena.

443 Cf. sect. 122-125.

444 Cf. _Principles_, sect. 111-116; also _Analyst_, query 12. On Berkeley’s system space in its three dimensions is unrealisable without experience of motion.

445 Here the term “language of nature” makes its appearance, as applicable to the ideas or visual signs of tactual realities.

446 Cf. sect. 16, 27, 97.

447 Is “tangible” here used in its narrow meaning—excluding muscular and locomotive experience?

448 i.e. as natural signs, divinely associated with their thus implied meanings.

449 Cf. _New Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 35.

450 Berkeley, in this section, enunciates the principal conclusion in the _Essay_, which conclusion indeed forms his new theory of Vision.