Part 51

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_.

624 He refers to Descartes, and perhaps Geulinx and Malebranche, who, 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.