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 SELECTIONS FROM BERKELEY 
 
 FRASER
 
 Hontion 
 HENRY FROWDE 
 
 OXFOHD UWIVEKSITY PKESS "WAREHOTTSE 
 AMEN CORNER
 
 SELECTIONS FEOM BERKELEY 
 
 WITH 
 
 AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 
 
 FOR THF USE OF STUDENTS IX 
 THE UNIVERSITIES 
 
 BY 
 
 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL ERASER, D.C.L. OxoN. 
 
 Prafcssor of Lo(jic and Mciaxihys'ics in the Vniversitii of Edinbiirak 
 THIRD EDITION, REVISED 
 
 AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 
 
 1884 
 [ All riglits reserved ]
 
 NOTE TO SECOND EDITION. 
 
 In this Edition the Introduction to the Selections has 
 been rewritten, and the relevant parts of the Supplementary 
 Note merged in it; the three Prefatory Notes have been 
 revised ; a number of foot-notes have been added, and the 
 others amended or withdrawn. The volume has been kept 
 nearly within its original dimensions by the subtraction of 
 portions of the text, in the Vindication and in Siris, that 
 seemed unnecessary. It is hoped that these changes may 
 make the work less unworthy of the indulgent reception it 
 has already met with in this country and in America. 
 
 October, 1878. 
 
 NOTE TO THIRD EDITION. 
 
 The demand for a third Edition of the Selections has 
 afforded an opportunity for amending the expression of the 
 thought contained in the General Introduction and in the 
 Annotations. It is hoped that the book is now, thus and 
 otherwise, better fitted for its intended office, as an aid to 
 reflection on the fundamental questions raised in Berkeley's 
 short and easy method with Materialists, or new metaphy- 
 sical conception of the Universe. 
 
 Xavemhcr, 18S3.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Editor's General Introduction . . . . vii 
 
 I. 
 
 Matter necessarily dependent on Mind. 
 Prefatory Note by the Editor . . . .3 
 
 Author's Preface to the Principles of Human 
 
 Knowledge ....... 9 
 
 Author's Introduction to the Principles . .11 
 Principles of Human Knowledge : Part I. . .35 
 
 II. 
 
 Visual rheyiomena significant of Mind. 
 
 Prefatory Note by the Editor . . . .147 
 
 Essay towards a New Theory of Vision . .155 
 Visual Language : A Dialogue . . . .229 
 Letter to the Author of the Dialogue . .276 
 Extracts from the Theory of Visual Language 
 
 Vindicated 283 
 
 III. 
 
 The Universe and the Universal Mind. 
 
 Prefatory Note by the Editor .... 309 
 
 Extracts from Siris : a Chain of Philosophical 
 
 PtEFLEXIONS 313 
 
 Index 365
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE 
 SELECTIONS. 
 
 The design of these Selections is to afford appropriate 
 mental exercise to those who are engaged in Psychology 
 and Metaphysics. 
 
 Berkeley may be used for this purpose for the following 
 among other reasons : — 
 
 1. His philosophical writings, although only philosophical 
 fragments, are English classics of true metaphysical genius, 
 which present subtle thought in gi^aceful and transparent 
 language. 
 
 2. Their principal doctrine, about the metaphysical mean- 
 ing of Matter, is itself an acknowledged ' touchstone of meta- 
 physical sagacity,' while it is found on further reflection to 
 raise the chief questions of physical and theological philo- 
 sophy. 
 
 3. Berkeley is an important factor in the development of 
 modern pliilosophy. Its sceptical crisis in Hume was pre- 
 cijiitated by the new question about Matter that Berkeley 
 raised, and the intellectual revolution followed in which 
 Descartes, Hobbes, and Locke were exchanged for the 
 transcendental criticism of Kant, the Association psychology 
 or physiology, and Eeid's appeal to the common rational sense. 
 
 The intrinsic freshness of Berkeley's thought, the literary 
 charm of its expression, the romantic interest of his Im- 
 materialism, its intellectual reach when it is pushed into its 
 issues, with his historical importance, all unite in recom-
 
 viii Introduction to the Selections. 
 
 meiuling him as a good companion for a student of philo- 
 sophy at an early period in his course. 
 
 This estimate of the educational value of Berkeley does 
 not of course oblige us to receive his most celebrated con- 
 clusion as final and sufficient ; nor even as a profound answer 
 to the ultimate question. 
 
 Berkeley's personal histoiy is full of interest. His early 
 years and ancestry are curiously shrouded in a mystery that 
 is in keeping with the halo of romance in which his life 
 is enveloped. The following facts are well known. He 
 was born in the county of Kilkenny, in March, 1685. In 
 March, 1 700, he entered Trinity College, Dublin, where his 
 next thirteen years were spent. Peter Browne, afterwards 
 the philosophical bishop of Cork, was then provost of Trinity, 
 and the seeds of modern thovight were then finding their way 
 into the College. Through the influence of Locke's friend 
 and correspondent, William Molyneux, the Essay of Human 
 Understanding had been introduced in Dublin, and Male- 
 branche, the French philosophical contemporary of Locke, 
 was not unknown there. The spirit of Descartes and of 
 Bacon, the early operations of the Eoyal Society, and the 
 discoveries of Newton and Leibnitz, were all rousing Irish 
 intellect to action. Berkeley's published and unpublished 
 writings show his eai'ly familiarity with Locke and Newton, 
 Descartes and Malebranche. 
 
 AVhen Bei'keley was in Dublin, and before he reached 
 his thirtieth year, he produced the three small volumes 
 which state and defend his famous new conception of Matter. 
 In 1709 his Essay towards a New Theory of Vision 
 appeared, and opened the way for the other two. It was fol- 
 lowed in 1710 by the Princij^les of Human Knowledge — the 
 most systematically reasoned exj)osition of this new con- 
 ception. In 1 713 he pojDularly explained and illustrated 
 it in Tliree Dialogues between Ilylas and Fhilonous. Thus,
 
 Berhelei/s Personal History. ix 
 
 like Descartes, Spinoza, and Hume, and in contrast to 
 Locke, Kant, and Reid, the distinctive speculation of Ber- 
 keley was given to the world in early life, a fact in keeping 
 with the fervid impetuosity of his temperament. 
 
 The stages of his intellectual growtli in his first years at 
 Trinity College may be traced in his metaphysical Common- 
 lilace Booh. This is one of the most interesting records in 
 existence of the juvenile struggles of philosophical genius. It 
 was written in 1705 and the two or three following years, 
 and was first published in 1871, in the Clarendon Press 
 edition of his "Works and Life. 
 
 In 1 7 1 3 Berkeley visited London. The next twenty years 
 of his life were spent for the most part in England, on the 
 Continent, and in America. The accomj)lishment and charm 
 of his conversation, as well as the surprise occasioned by his 
 paradoxical expression of what is meant by the reality of the 
 material world, attracted his most eminent contemporaries. 
 Dui'ing some of these years he indulged an artistic taste by a 
 long stay in Italy. On his return, although in 1724 he 
 became Dean of Derry, ardent philanthropy carried him to 
 North America, at the age of forty-five, to devote the re- 
 mainder of his life to spreading Christian civilisation and 
 learning there, by a College at the Bermudas. After three 
 years of delay in Rhode Island, withdrawal of the support on 
 which the enterprise depended obliged him to return home. 
 
 His last twenty years were spent in comparative retire- 
 ment, in the south of Ireland, as Bishop of Cloyne. 
 
 Neither in the twenty years of movement, nor in the closing 
 twenty years of retirement, was philosophy forgotten by Ber- 
 keley. A Latin tract on the uncaused cause of Motion, the 
 fruit of studies in Italy, appeared in 1 721, on his return from 
 the Continent. AlcipTiron or the Minute Tliilosoijlier, a book 
 of dialogues, directed against sceptics in religion, containing 
 important fragments of psychology and applications of his 
 conception of Matter, was the fruit of studies in Rhode
 
 X Tniroduction to the Selections. 
 
 Island. It was published in 1732, soon after his return from 
 America. This was followed, the year after, by a subtle 
 Vindication of his theory of vision. The latest development 
 of his philosophical thought was the issue of his seclusion 
 at Cloyne. It appeared in 1744, under the title of Siris : 
 a Chain of Fhilosoj^Mcal Reflexions. Here the Immaterialisra 
 of his youth, regarded now from the point of view of Plato 
 and Plotinus rather than of Locke, becomes more compre- 
 hensive in its scope, and more ready to connect itself with 
 speculations at the point of view of Kant or of Hegel. 
 
 Berkeley spent the evening of his days in works of philan- 
 thropy and in meditative quiet. For Cloyne he had a par- 
 ticular fondness. Its very obscurity and remoteness had a 
 contemplative charm. But at last, when declining health 
 needed change, his love for learned retirement carried him to 
 Oxford, which for years had been before him in imagination 
 as the ideal home of his old age. He enjoyed it only for a 
 few months. There death suddenly closed this pious, in- 
 genious, and beautiful life, in January 1753. His body rests 
 in the Cathedral of Christ Church^. 
 
 That all the things we see and touch, with their sujiposed 
 inherent powers, are neither more nor less than ap peai'an ces 
 in the five senses, presented by Divine power, in what is 
 called natural order ; and further, that the natural appear- 
 ances so presented are dependent on living minds being 
 percipient of them — this was the new conception of Matter 
 announced and defended throughout Bei'keley's philosophical 
 works. It arose in his mind in the natural course of English 
 metaphysical thought under the influence of Locke, and it 
 was modified in his later life by sympathy with Plato. The 
 
 ' For the details of Berkeley's liistory the reader is referreil to my 
 liife of Berkeley, in vol. iv of the Clarendon Press edition of his Works 
 (published ^separately), which likewise contains his Commonplace Booh. 
 See also Etude sur la Vie et les CEavres Philosophiques de Georges 
 Berlceley, par A. Penjon (Paris, 1878).
 
 Modern Philosoplii/ before Berheley. xi 
 
 historical consequences of its publication justify us in regard- 
 ing it as one of the epoch-making doctrines that are springs 
 of intellectual progress. 
 
 The history of modern philosophy as it was before and 
 after Berkeley illustrates this. A survey of the history, 
 with this in view, may prepare the reader for the SeUc- 
 tions. 
 
 Descartes (1596-1650) was the father of modern philo- 
 sophy. It originated in his famous endeavour to exj)lode 
 Dogmatism by means of tent ative D oubt. As the first step 
 in philosophy Descartes refused to accept without proof 
 any belief which, after trial, he might find it intellectually 
 possible to hold in suspense. He announced this as the best 
 method for purifying conclusions from irrationality and pre- 
 judice in their premisses, and for finding the ultimate con- 
 stitution of reason. He recommended it to others as a 
 panacea for transforming the early life of blind trust in 
 authority into the philosophic life of rational insight. This 
 Cartesian sj^irit of free inquiry, stimulated by temporary 
 doubt, is the distinctive mark of modern thought. 
 
 In trying what may be called the mental experiment of 
 temporarily suspending all his ordinary beliefs, as well as all 
 philosophical dogmas, Descartes found his tentative doubt 
 arrested by one irresistible conviction — th at of his o wn 
 exis tenc e as a conscious p erson. This consciousness, and 
 this only, it seemed to him that he could not even experi- 
 mentally hold in suspense. He expressed the philoso- 
 phical experience thus obtained in the celebrated formula — 
 cogit o ergo sum. This means that the ever-changing phe- 
 nomena that each one is conscious of, so necessarily 
 pi-esuppose an unchanging ego or self, to sustain and 
 connect them, that one cannot, even when one tries the ex- 
 periment, conceive them appearing and the transcendent ego
 
 xii Iniroduction to the Selections. 
 
 not existing. From this starting-point in consciousness, 
 not thus recognised in the ancient world, the speculative 
 pliilosophy of modern Euroj)e has pursued its course. 
 
 One who had imbibed Cartesianism accordingly began with 
 being surer of his own existence as a conscious person, than 
 of any supposed reality external to himself and to the pheno- 
 mena of which he was conscious. He was thus led to regard 
 self-conscious existence as the ultimate assumption, and as 
 a fact of more interest and importance than any unconscious 
 thing. We know ourselves and our own conscious life with 
 the most perfect assurance that is conceivable : we know 
 our own bodies even, and all things external to them, only 
 through this conscious or mental experience. For, if we 
 were to cease to be conscious, the things of sense would 
 cease to exist, as far as we were concerned. And if all 
 the conscious life in the universe were to die, the dead 
 universe which remained would be as good as non-existent. 
 The things contained in space are unconscious of their own 
 or any other existence ; onlyjjonscious beings kno w th em- 
 selves, and they give unconscious things their ordy intelligible 
 i-eality, in feeling and knowing them. A conscious person, 
 revealed to himself in the ideas of which be is conscious, 
 is therefore the primary reality, at the Cartesian point of 
 view. To be conscious is to have ideas — to have our own 
 individual existence manifested to us. The existence of 
 things external to himself and, his ideas was a fallible in- 
 ference, which Descartes vindicated on the ground of the 
 innate idea that he supposed we have of our own existence 
 as rooted in God or Perfect Being. This made him con- 
 clude we are not deceived, regarding what we have a clear 
 and distinct conviction of, as we seemed to him to have of 
 the substantial existence of extended things. 
 
 Descartes thus found two opposed substances and powers 
 — the one conscious and unextended, and the other ex- 
 tended and unconscious — with the idea, and therefore (so he
 
 Descartes and the Cartesians. xiii 
 
 argues) the reality, of the Perfect Being or God, on whom 
 both the opposed substances and powers depend. This 
 ultimate Duality of two opposed and dependent beings in the 
 universe was the great difficulty of early modern jihilosophy. 
 How was the antithesis of a conscious substance and power 
 and an extended substance and power — of living thought 
 and dead matter — to be reconciled 1 This, in different phases 
 of it, became the question of questions for modern philosophy. 
 The world of extended substance was so opposed by the 
 Cartesian to the self of which he was conscious, that the ex- 
 planation of causal intercourse between them, and an in- 
 telligible theory of the universe, seemed impossible. Ex- 
 tension and conscious life are in their nature mutually 
 exclusive. How can they be mixed in perception, and in 
 our voluntary movements ? How can extended things cause 
 or be caused by conscious states, or how can our volitions 
 either be changed by, or produce changes in, extended 
 things'? This Dualism was the perplexity of Cartesian 
 jDhilosoi^hers. 
 
 Yet, as a matter of fact, it could not be denied that we 
 perceive, and that external changes follow our volitions. 
 The explanation of this offered by Cartesianism was, that 
 the two mutually exclusive substances were perpetually) 
 dependent on Divine activity. All changes in the extended 
 things were to be viewed as effects of which the will of God 
 is the only efficient cause. The material world existed as 
 a substance merely as an occasion for constant Divine effi- 
 ciency. On occasion of an impression on the human body, 
 God caused the corresponding perception in the human 
 mind : when one exerted one's will, God made the body 
 move. The one was the occ asiona l cause of the other. 
 This conception of causality in nature, as phenomenal and 
 not efficient, was further developed by the Cartesians Geulinx 
 and Malebranche. With Malebranche ( 1638-17 15) matter, 
 as extended, could not become an object of perception or
 
 xiv Introduction to the Selections. 
 
 consciousness, and as impotent and unintelligent, could not 
 Le itself the efficient cause of a perception of its existence. 
 So he was led on to the hypothesis that, while our mere 
 sensations of taste, smell, sound, and so on, are produced by 
 Divine power, our ideas, or cognitions of things as extended 
 and under space relations, are our actual participations in 
 the Divine intelligence, and that thus we may be said to 
 know the external or extended world ' in God.' This tendency 
 of Cartesianism reached its extreme in Spinoza (1632-77), 
 who abolished as contradictory the supposed duality in sub- 
 stance, and treated thought and extension as necessary modes 
 of One S ubstance — cal led by him God. Leibnitz (1646-17 16) 
 was dissatisfied with the merely modal existence of spirit 
 and matter of Spinoza ; and rejected the constant agency of 
 God of the Cartesians, as involving the miraculousness of the 
 common order of nature. He proposed the theory that the 
 monads of existence were rationally pre arranged by G od, so 
 that the thus necessitated changes in mind and matter cor- 
 respond to one another in pre-established harmony. The 
 original and eclectic genius of Leibnitz, the first great 
 German philosopher, found points of agreement and of dif- 
 ference with the Cartesians, and also with Spinoza. 
 
 It was in this way that the material world was conceived 
 in the development of Cartesian free thought represented 
 by the speculative theory of Spinoza. Another development, 
 chiefly in England, took the form of experiential and prac- 
 tical psychology; and thus Descartes was, indirectly at least, 
 as Dugald Stewart describes him, ' the father of the experi- 
 mental philosophy of the human mind.' 
 
 Eacon (1561-1626) in his Novum Orgamwi had urged 
 the need for purifying the human mind from the prejudices 
 generated by early and inevitable submission to authority. 
 He too recommended preliminary doubt and inquiry, as 
 essential to the philosophic spirit, and an indispensable first
 
 Bacon and LocJce. xv 
 
 step in the analysis of experience. Bacon was the English 
 prophet of the modern physical sciences, which men were 
 learning to construct, by better calculated observation of the 
 co-e xistences a nd se quences of phenomen a in nature. He 
 represented the sjoirit and the method which Locke — l)y his 
 own account influenced much also by Descartes — afterwards 
 applied to determine the origin and limits of our knowledge. 
 
 Locke (1632-1704) was the founder of modern experien- 
 tial psychology. He addressed himself, in the Baconian 
 spirit, not to the facts of external nature, but to the fac ts 
 of consciou sness, as manifested in the self-conscious being 
 whose existence had arrested Cartesian doubt. These facts 
 were for him facts beyond all others, for this reason, that 
 only by their means were facts of whatever kind converted 
 into knowledge, of which in consequence they formed the 
 ultimate explanation. He sought for them above all in his 
 own consciousness, but also in the expressed consciousness 
 of other persons ; not in order to construct an imposing 
 speculative theory of Being, but modestly to mark the growth 
 and take the measure of that power of knowing what exists, 
 with which, as a matter of fact, human beings find them- 
 selves endowed. By thus investigating, ' in a plain historical 
 way, the source of the ideas, notions, or whatever else you 
 please to call them, which a man is conscious to himself he 
 has in his own mind,' he hoped ' to shoAV what knowledge 
 the understanding hath by those ideas ; the certainty, evi- 
 dence, and extent of it; and the nature and grounds of faith 
 or opinion, and the reasons and degrees of assent \' 
 
 The result of Locke's researches with this design in view, 
 pursued systematically for nearly twenty years, appeared in 
 his Essay on Hximan Understanding (1690) — one of the two 
 most influential works of modern philosophy. He there 
 argues, after a study of the facts, that all tha t each man 
 can know is made up of simple or unanalysable ideas — 
 * See Intr>)duction to Locke's Essay.
 
 xvi Introduction to the Selections. 
 
 concerned either with what is presented to our five senses, 
 or with what is presented when we reflect upon our mental 
 operations ; and that nothing can be even conceived by us 
 that has not been present in one or other of these ways. 
 He gives this as the verified issue of an examination of 
 consciousness. He discards biological and ontological hypo- 
 theses, — avoiding 'the physical consideration of the mind,' 
 and declining to examine ' wherein its essence consists, or 
 by what motions of our spirits, or alterations of our bodies, 
 we come to have any sensation by our organs, or any ideas 
 in our understandings ; and whether these ideas do in their 
 formation, any or all of them, depend on matter or no \' 
 In this way he separated from the materialistic psychology 
 of Hobbes (i 588-1 679), who did not, like Descartes and 
 Locke, make consciousness his starting-point and deepest 
 fact, but treated ' minds ' as visible organisms, fitted to last 
 it might be for seventy or eighty years, which, through 
 concourse of their atoms, had somehow mysteriously pro- 
 duced the Cartesian ultimate fact cogito — an ultimate fact 
 fated to disappear in their dissolution. 
 
 Locke professed to explain our intuitive, our demonstra- 
 tive, and our sense knowledge, as well as our judgments of 
 probability, by what we get in ex per ience. Our gradual 
 acquisitions through the five senses and through reflection 
 seemed to him to account for what we know, or can believe 
 with reasonable probability. Nevertheless, with a semblance 
 of inconsistency, he recognises and applies principles regu- 
 lative of knowledge and belief, of the universality or necessity 
 of which he has afforded no sufficient explanation. Take, for 
 instance, his account of his ' knowledge ' of his own existence, 
 and of that of God and of Matter. 
 
 (a) The truth of liis own existence he resolved, like 
 Descartes, into irresistible ' intuition.' Experience shows us 
 that we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence — 
 ^ See Essay, b, I. cb. i. § 2.
 
 LocTce on Knowledge of God mid of Matter, xvii. 
 
 an internal, infallible perception that we are. ' If I doubt 
 of all other things, that very doubt makes me per- 
 ceive my own existence, and will not suffer me to doubt 
 of that.' — (&) The existence of God or Eternal Mind he 
 found to issue as a necess ary consequence of a universal 
 or necessary demand of reason for an eternal Cause of 
 his own self-conscious existence. — (c) Our knowledge of 
 Matter, or things that exist in space, independent of what 
 we are conscious of, we have, he says, * onl y by sen- 
 sation.' Here too he virtually proceeds upon an unex- 
 plained principle of causality. For, no man can know the 
 existence of any ' other being,' he argues, but only when, 
 *by its actual operating upon him,' that being 'makes itself 
 felt by him.' The sense appearances, and 'ideas of sense,' 
 which we thus passively receive, make us believe, through 
 the principle of causality, that ' something ' exists without 
 us, at the time we have them, which is 'the cause' of our 
 having them ; and we believe in the existence of this ex- 
 ternal cause of our sensations with a certainty 'as great as 
 human nature is capable of conceiving the existence of any- 
 thing but a man's self alone and God^.' — That God, and not 
 this superfluous ' something,' is the constantly operative 
 cause of the phenomena presented to us in our five senses, 
 was, on the principle of pai'ciniony, Berkeley's simplifi- 
 cation of Locke's description of our knowledge of God and 
 Matter. 
 
 Locke resolved into two classes the equalities of this 
 ' something,' call ed Ma tter, which he supposed to exist in 
 space, and to be the cause of what we are conscious of in 
 sense. Those qualities in the external ' something ' which 
 were dogmatically assumed by him to be ' like ' what we 
 see and touch, he called ])rimar7/, real, or original; the 
 others, in themselves unlike our sensations, were called 
 
 * See E.<8ay, b. IV. ch. 9, 10, 11, for Locke's explanation of our real 
 'knowledge' of ourselves, God, and ' other thing.s.' Cf. ch. 2. § 14. 
 
 b
 
 xviil Introduction to the Selections. 
 
 secondarxj or hn-puled. To the former class belong the sizes, 
 figures, motions, impeneti'ability, and divisibility of things : 
 these qualities (or rather relations of quantity) we cannot 
 conceive any particle of matter to be destitute of : they 
 belong to the things themselves, for they would be what 
 we perceive them to be, even if there was no living person 
 in the universe to perceive them. The others, such as the 
 colours, sounds, tastes, and odours of things, ai'e, so far as 
 we have ideas of them, manifestations of our owu sentient 
 mind, which thus, by its varied sensations, all referable to 
 extended things, gives variety and interest to the material 
 world. The heat we feel cannot be felt by the atoms which 
 form the visible fire, nor can our taste be in the visible 
 orange. What heat and taste are in the ' something ' 
 without us, Locke cannot even imagine, if they are not 
 unknown modifications of its primary qualities, or rather 
 quantities. For, like the atomists, he conjectured that the 
 secondary qualities might exist in the thing, in the form of 
 subsensible modes of its primary atoms, connected by natural 
 law with the colours, sounds, tastes, odours, heat and cold, 
 to which they give rise. But even if we could discover 
 these undiscoverable atoms, Locke insisted that we could 
 never predict a jpriori the sensations to which they would 
 give rise. It is therefore a fundamental doctrine in the 
 -Essay that a demonstrable science of the things of sense 
 is impossible, consistently with the conditions of human 
 knowledge : their laws, as discoverable by us, are arbitrary 
 and only more or less probable. 
 
 Locke's doctrine of a ' something ' or ' substance,' external 
 to, and the cause of, what is present in the senses, was 
 partly connected with what he taught about ' abstract ' and 
 ' general' ideas. ' Idea' was the vague name then commonly 
 applied by philosophers to Avhatever we are conscious of, and 
 was not confined to the internal representations of imagination 
 and thought now popularly called ideas. The word in this
 
 Locke's Abstract Ideas. xix 
 
 wide meaning was natuiiilly of frequent occurrence in Lool<e's 
 Essay^. And he seemed to find, in tlie course of his re- 
 searches, in human ' understanding,' that men, especially plii- 
 losophers, ar e consc ious not only of ideas of indivi dual 
 thi ngs in sen se, and of copies of these in imagi nation, but 
 al so of ideas that are n ot idea s o f individual th ings, and 
 w hich in consequence are difficult to api)reh end. These are 
 his ' a bstract ' id eas, reached only when we know the rela- 
 tions of individual things. The idea of a triangle was one 
 of his examples. It is a figure ' neither oblique nor rect- 
 angle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all 
 and none of these at once ; something imperfect that cannot 
 exist ; an idea wherein some parts of different and incon- 
 sistent ideas are put together,' A more important example 
 was the genei'al idea of substance. This was an idea, made 
 by abstraction, of a ' substratum which we accustom our- 
 selves to suppose,' as that in which the qualities of things 
 subsist, and from which they result ; something related as 
 a support and centre of unity to phenomena, but which is 
 not itself got as a simple idea either in sensation or re- 
 flection. This abstract idea is one on which our knowledge 
 of matter, or the ' something without us,' depends. 
 
 Locke describes it in terms which prepare for Berkeley's 
 
 * Students of the present day are apt to misconceive the psychology 
 of the seventeenth century from want of due regard to the different 
 meanings of the word idta. By P lato it was used o bjectiv ely, to express 
 the archetypal essence of things. Through the Aristotelian distinction 
 of form and matter, it came gradually to lo se its obie ctive application 
 for that of mental imag e or representation, until with Descartes, Locke, 
 and others, it was appli ed indiscrimi nately to an y phenom ena of which 
 w e are co n scious in sense or otherw ise. Berkeley, in his earlier writings, 
 uses ' idea' in this wi de meaning. In Siris he reverts to its Platonic 
 meaning, and uses pheiiomenon occasionally for the presentations of 
 which we are conscious in sense. — Another term apt to mislead the 
 reader is p crcep lioii, now usually limited by the psychologist to sen se. 
 With Locke and Berkeley imm ediate pe rception is equ ivalent to c on- 
 sc iousnesB of phenom ena, ment al or mat erial ; which with Berkeley 
 developes, through what he calls suggestion, into our acquired perception 
 of individual things in space — and at a more advanced stage, into induc- 
 tive generalisation and scientific prevision. 
 
 b 2
 
 XX 
 
 Introduction to the Selections. 
 
 reasonings aLout what is meant by ]\fatter. ' The mind,* he 
 says, 'being furnished with a great number of the simple 
 ideas conveyed in by the senses, as they are found in exterior 
 things, or by reflection on its own operations, takes notice 
 also that a certain number of these ideas go constantly 
 together ; which — being presumed to belong to one thing — 
 are called, so united in one subject, by one name ; which, by 
 inadvertency, we are apt afterward to talk of and consider 
 as one simple idea, which indeed is a complication of many 
 ideas together ; because, not imagining how these simple 
 ideas can subsist by themselves, we accustom ourselves to 
 suppose some substratum wherein they do subsist, and from 
 which they do result ; which therefore we call Substance. 
 So that if any one will examine himself concerning his notion 
 of pure substance in general, he will find he has no other 
 idea of it at all, but only a supposition of he knows not what 
 support of such qualities, which are capable of producing 
 simple ideas in us',' 
 
 Locke refers to other parts of his Essay for an answer 
 to the question, — whether the fact ' that we accustom our- 
 selves to suppose ' a substance is all that can be said on 
 behalf of material substance ; as well as to the further ques- 
 tion, — whether this ' custom ' is (unconsciously) grounded 
 upon reason or not. When treating of abstraction and 
 general ideas, he shows that the ' general idea of substance ' 
 was formed ' by abstracting ; ' — that our idea of body or 
 matter was of ' an extended solid substance/ and our idea 
 of mind or soul that of ' a substance that thinks ' or is 
 conscious. But in none of these mental experiences does 
 he profess to find a ' clear and distinct ' idea of substance ; 
 he only finds that we are somehow obliged to suppose ' we 
 know not what.' ' We have no other idea or notion of 
 Matter but something wherein many sensible qualities which 
 affect our senses do subsist.' In like manner, 'by sup- 
 ' Essay, b. II. cli. 23. §§ i, 2.
 
 Abstract Idea of Matter. xxi 
 
 posing a substance wlierein thinking, knowing, donbtiug, 
 and a power of moving do subsist,' we have thus ' as clear 
 a notion of Spirit as we have of Body, the one being sup- 
 posed to be (without our knowing what it is) tlie substratum 
 to those simple ideas we have from without ; and the other 
 supposed (with a like ignorance of what it is) to be the 
 substratum to those operations we experiment in ourselves 
 within.' It is plain ' that the idea of corporeal substance 
 is as remote from our conceptions and apprehensions as 
 that of spiritual substance or spirit; and therefore from 
 our not having any notion of the substance of spirit, we 
 can no more conclude its non-existence than we can for 
 the same reason deny the existence of body.' It is ' as 
 rational ' to affirm there is no body, because we have no 
 clear and distinct idea of the substance of matter, as to say 
 there is no spirit, because we have no clear and distinct idea 
 of the substance of a spirit.' But ' whatever be the secret 
 abstract nature of substance in general, all the ideas we have 
 of particular distinct sorts of substances are nothing but 
 several combinations of simple ideas ^, coexisting in such, 
 though unknown, cause of their union, so as to make the 
 whole subsist of itself.' ' Powers make a great part of our 
 complex ideas of substances.' — All this goes against a 
 substance constitutive of conscious life, as well as against a 
 substance constitutive of sensible qualities, if it is a ground 
 of objection to either, though Berkeley aj)plied it only to the 
 latter. 
 
 The Essay of Locke was coming into vogue when Berkeley 
 was beginning to think. At the time, it awakened his fresh 
 and original mind more, probabl}^, than any other philo- 
 sophical book. But it failed to satisfy him in what it 
 taught about the independent reality of the jirimary qua- 
 lities of Matter ; and also about abstract ideas, especially 
 
 * 'Simple ideas' — virtually the qualities coexisting, &c.
 
 xxli Introduction to the Selections. 
 
 the ' obscure and relative ' abstract idea of material Sub- 
 stance. 
 
 Certain contemporary tendencies inci'eased Berkeley's dis- 
 satisfaction with these opinions of Locke. The age was 
 prolific of atomic jNIaterialism. The rise of the mixed 
 mathematical sciences, and the intellectual habits formed by 
 exclusive attention to external nature, were leading many 
 to attribute their very consciousness itself — that conscious- 
 ness which Descartes assumed as the ground of all know- 
 ledge, and among the facts of which Locke searched for tlie 
 actual constitution of human knowledge and beliefs — to the 
 powers of unconscious Matter — that external substance or 
 ' something without us,' which Locke said was the cause 
 of our sensations. This imintelligible flatter, it seemed, 
 might be the source of all the phenomena of our conscious 
 life, as well as of all that happens in extended nature. 
 Locke himself had attributed our sensations to it : he had 
 even suggested that God might give it, in some of its pos- 
 sible organisations, power to be conscious in all the other 
 states of which we are conscious. ' It is not,' he says, ' much 
 more remote from our comprehension to conceive this than 
 to conceive that God should superadd to it another sub- 
 stance with a faculty of thinking ; since we know not in 
 what thinking consists, nor to what sort of substances the 
 first eternal thinking Being has been pleased to give that 
 power ^.' Locke here suggests, however, only a created, not 
 an ultimate materialism, for he refers the ultimate de- 
 pendence of matter and its powers to Supreme Mind and 
 Will. 
 
 Such were some of the early issues of the endeavour of 
 modern philosophy to explain conscious life and our know- 
 ledge of solid and extended things. It was unwilling to 
 
 ' See Ensaij, b. IV. cli. 7. § 9 ; also b, I. ch. 4. § 18 ; TI. cli. 23 ; III. 
 10. § 15-
 
 Berkeley's Neiv Qi(estioii about Blatter. xxiii 
 
 accept external perception and free or moral agency as 
 irreducible facts ; and it saw that extended things could not 
 be exactly what we now find them, if there were no per- 
 cipient beings in existence to endow them with at least their 
 secondary qualities. The tendency of Descartes, Malebranche, 
 and Leibnitz was to explain perception by the agency of God 
 — to find power only in Spirit — to assume the impotence of 
 Matter. Hobbes, Gassendi, and other atomists or corpus- 
 cularians, at the opposite extreme, found power only in 
 matter, and assumed that what is unconscious was the 
 cause of conscious intelligence. Spinoza, in his higher 
 speculative flight, emj)tied natural things and finite spirits 
 of real substance and jDOwer, and even the Unica Sub- 
 stantia of any really free or moral agency. The moderate, 
 cautious, and pious Locke found in physical impulse the 
 phenomenal, but not the efficient or final, cause of our 
 simple ideas of sense ; for he somewhat incoherently referred 
 this {ihenomenal causality of matter to the spiritual power 
 of God. All this is disclosed in a retrospect of the seventy 
 years' interval between Descartes and Berkeley. 
 
 It was at this juncture that it occurred to Berkeley to ask 
 a question which had not been put, from the point of view 
 at which he put it, by any ancient or modern. He found 
 those presuppositions about matter — the supposed cause of 
 our sensations — making men either materialists or sceptics. 
 He pressed upon the world, with all the fervour of his 
 Irish temperament, this New Question, to be answered 
 before men could rest either in dogmatic materialism or 
 in scepticism : — "What in reason should we mean when 
 we assume the existence of ' matter ; ' and to what po wer 
 must we refer the phenomena tha t are daily presented to 
 our senses ? — if, in the spirit of Locke, we are to be faithful 
 to the facts of our mental experience. In other words, what 
 is the true meaning of ' external substance ' and * external
 
 xxiv Introduction to the Selections. 
 
 cause ' 1 A more faitliful psychological examination of our 
 experience might perhaps show that philosophers had been 
 making an irrational assumption, in supposing that what 
 we see and touch involves the existence of an unconscious 
 substance of unknown power; or that we are obliged, as 
 j^hilosophers, to defend belief in this, when, with the mass 
 of mankind, we affirm the real existence of the material 
 world. 
 
 To convert our conception of Matter into an intelligible 
 conception, and to determine the true function of the only 
 intelligible material world, in the spiritual economy of the 
 universe, was virtually what Berkeley attempted. His con- 
 temporaries and predecessors had been taking for granted 
 that the things presented to sense exist substantially or 
 unphenomenally ; some had even thought that they were 
 somehow the cause of self-consciousness or intelligence. He 
 entreated them to doubt their dogma, and to cease to sup- 
 pose that unreason could solve, in whole or in part, the 
 mystery of the universe. Let them first ascertain that 
 this Materialism could really explain anything, or, indeed, 
 that it was an intelligible dogma. Instead of accepting 
 meaningless propositions about the real existence, outward- 
 ness, and efficiency of material substance, he would first 
 ask what existence, and being real, external, substantial, and 
 2)owerful, can in I'eason mean, when these predicates are 
 asserted of the things that we are daily seeing and touching. 
 
 "What Berkeley tried to do was to get tliis, as a previous 
 question, put in place of the old scientific and theological 
 controversies about an unintelligible matter, and space, and 
 power. He wanted to settle the pJdl osophical m eaning of 
 ' ma terial subs tance ;' he did not want to prove the practical 
 reality of the material world, which no sane person could 
 doubt. He wanted, also, to settle the philoso2)hical meaning 
 of ' power ' or ' cau se,' when these terms are applied to 
 sensible things j he did not doubt that there was a way in
 
 Berkeley's Appeal to our Menial Expier'ience. 
 
 XXV 
 
 which even sensible things might be spoken of as powers or 
 causes. 
 
 Berkeley's place in history cannot be understood by readers 
 who do not see that what he tried to do was thus to change 
 the (philosophical) question about the material world, with 
 which his predecessors had been busy, into what he believed 
 to be a deeper and more urgent one. With this question 
 changed, he hoped that thinking men might be relieved from 
 speculative perplexities about the external things we see 
 and touch — which retarded the physical sciences ; and that 
 they might also discover the iri-ationality of referring self- 
 conscious life, whether manifested in sense or in any other 
 way, to blind unconscious matter as its cause. Find what 
 m atter m eans, when we are faithful to facts, and are not 
 misled by empty words and metaphysical abstractions. This 
 was his fervid entreaty. His promise was that when we 
 have found this we shall at once see that we do not need 
 to search for evidence of its 'reality;' and also that there 
 is no room in reason for materialistic assumptions of ' power ' 
 in matter — because in truth the things we see and touch, 
 as only caused causes, not uncaused or originating causes, 
 can in reason have only a phenomenal and inefficient sort 
 of power. 
 
 But what are the psychological facts to which we must 
 be faithful ? Here Berkeley started with Locke's ambi- 
 guous thesis, that human knowledge is the issue of experience 
 — in our senses and in reflection \ 
 
 When he reflected further upon our knowledge of the 
 things presented to our senses, with which all phj^sical and 
 natural sciences are concei^ned, and which are commonly 
 called matter, he said that hecould not find in this m atter 
 Locke's a bstract idea of sub stance. On the contrary, ab- 
 stract or unphenomenal substance seemed to him either a 
 
 * See Berkeley's metaphysical Commonplace Booh {Works, vol. iv). 
 Compare Principles of Human KnowLedye, §§ i, 2.
 
 xxvi IniroJuction to the Selections. 
 
 meaningless term or to involve a contradiction ; and what 
 is either meaningless or contradictory cannot be real. He 
 found sights and touches and sounds and tastes and smells. 
 He found also — so he believed — himself, conscious of these 
 sights and touches, and sounds, and tastes, and smells- 
 conscious too of his own identity through all their changes, 
 and of his own power to produce to some extent changes 
 in Avhat he saw and touched. AVhen he reflected upon his 
 experience of what is called matter, he found only sense- 
 phenomena (sights, touches, &c.), presented according to 
 natural laws, and necessarily dependent on some persorx 
 being percipient of them. Space and its contents, he con- 
 cluded, must be essentially what through our senses we 
 perceive. Thus tested, they are essentially phenomena ^ ; — ■ 
 what we call ' external things ' must thei'efore be the phe- 
 nomena i^resented to us by the five senses. These Ave cannot 
 without absurdity regard as either the representations or the 
 effects of an abstract, unphenomenal, and therefore unin- 
 telligible, ' substance.' 
 
 It Avas thus that Berkeley melted ^ matt er' down into 
 phe nomena present to the senses. The existence of this 
 matter was incapable even of Cartesian doubt. When we 
 say that we see or touch a material object, all (according 
 to his report) that we can truly mean is, that we are per- 
 cipient, i.e. conscious in sense, of phenomena which have 
 a very practical meaning. Of these, while we are percipient 
 of them, we have the same sort of evidence that we have of 
 our own existence. In being percipient, we find our mind 
 and mental agency; we also find passive and mind-de- 
 pendent sense-phenomena. We are conscious of the former : 
 we are pe7xipient — if this term is preferred to * conscious- 
 ness' — of the latter. There is as little room for doubt 
 and problematical inference in the one case as in the other. 
 Human knowledge begins with these two (for Berkeley) 
 ' 111 Berkeley's nomenclature ideas.
 
 A Neiv Concepiioii of Matter. xxvii 
 
 irreducible facts — («) self conscious of self, and (6) percipient j 
 of sense-phenomena that are in themselves unsubstantial and 1 
 powerless. 
 
 But Berkeley found more than this, when he still further 
 reflected upon our knowledge of solid and extended bodies, 
 of different sizes, placed in space. For, we are obliged to 
 believe that these continue to exist indej)endently of the 
 individual mind ; but the sights or sounds present in actual 
 perception are transitory. They cannot form a knowledge 
 of solid and extended things that do not pass away. We 
 are obliged to recognise in the things of sense more than 
 a series of isolated sense-phenomena. We perceive clusters \ 
 of phenomena, which we call individual things, and we re- i 
 gard the phenomena as their 'qualities.' Into what ultimate 
 facts of our mental experience is this developed perception 
 of qualified things to be resolved 1 If things exist only 
 while they actually appear to our senses, what is meant by 
 their individual permanence and by their qualities ] 
 
 If the material world were reduced to nothing more than 
 passing sensations, the existence of things would be inter- 
 mittent and fragmentary, not permanent and individualised. 
 The tree that I suppose I am looking at — from a distance, 
 exists as my visual phenomena only while I am looking at it. 
 And even then only in a very small number of the pheno- 
 mena which, under the name of ' qualities,' I refer to it ; for, 
 being at a distance, the invisible qualities, which I find I 
 can intelligibly attribute to it, are not, at the time, my 
 actual_sensations. Do they all the while exist ] If not, 
 the greater part of what is meant by the tree, which I 
 suppose I am looking at, is (because external to my 2)resent 
 sense-perceptions) not real, even at the very time that I say 
 ' I see the tree.' If external matter means only act ual sen sa- 
 tions, all visible qualities of things must relapse into non- 
 entity when they are left in the dark ; and their tangible 
 ones too, in the light as well, unless a percipient is always
 
 xxviii Infroduct'ioti to the Selections. 
 
 in actual contact with every part of them. The external 
 world could not have existed millions of ages before men, 
 or other sentient beings, began to be conscious of sensations, 
 if only this is what is meant by its real existence ^. 
 
 Here Berkeley acknowledges the validity of what he calls 
 'judgments ' of ' suggestion,' but without ojBPering any analysis 
 of their rational ground. Suugestion is one of the terms he 
 uses to express the mental tendency (by him unanalysed) 
 that produces our expectation of a reappeai'ance of phe- 
 nomena, previously connected in our experience, when one 
 or more of them has been again perceived. Perception 
 through suggestion, — which presupposes memory and imagi- 
 nation, i.e. what has been called representative, in contrast to 
 presentative, consciousness ; and also the existence of rational 
 order in the phenomenal world — developesJhusinto^ac^'rm'ecZ 
 or expectant perception, and ultimately into scientific pre- 
 vision. The actual sight of the tree suggests the phe- 
 nomenon of resistance, as naturally so connected with what 
 is seen that Ave expect to encounter that phenomenon, after 
 going through the locomotive experience required to bring us 
 into collision with its trunk. The one sense-phenomenon is the 
 sufjfjesting sign of the other. This connexion between them 
 is (so far as the sense of sight is concerned) what Berkeley 
 means by ' visual language.' But significance is not con- 
 fined (as he confines it) to visual phenomena. All phenomena 
 in all the senses are significant. One sense virtually does 
 duty for others. What is called the material world is thus 
 found in experience to consist not of mere phenomena, but of 
 significant 2>henomena. As such, it is interpretable in its 
 nature. It is a cosmos and jiot a chaos of phenomena. 
 
 * This question is virtually raised by Locke (J^ssay, b. IV. cli. Ii), 
 when he assumes tliat the things of sense are ' known' l)y us only while 
 they are actually pre.sent to our senses — their past and future e.xi^tence 
 being only 'presumed.' He fails to show how anything at all can 
 be known in a so-called knowledge that is confined to present sen- 
 sations.
 
 The Matenal World a Natural Language, xxix 
 
 It gradually emerges too as a cosmos of individual phe- 
 nomenal things placed in space. 
 
 The most striking examples of this all-important general 
 fact, that s ense-]jhenomena c onstitute a n interpretable la n- 
 guage, are with out doubt those presented by Sight. But 
 one must never forget that this Symbolism constructs our 
 whole sense-experience, and that we are continually trans- 
 lating the language of each sense above all into the original 
 and fundamental data of Touch. The intluctive inferences 
 of previsive science are only more conscious and elaborate 
 translations of tliis sort, founded ultimately on rational 
 suggestion. External nature is sense symbolism. Every 
 appearance of which we are conscious in our senses is 
 significant of other appearances in sense, which at the time 
 we are not conscious of, but only imagine. The significations 
 are not indeed discoverable in the mere sensation, nor by any 
 h 'priori reasoning. Our suggested or habitual interpreta- 
 tions are the result of custom ; but it is a custom which is 
 found on further analysis to be latent reason : what in its 
 higher and calculated form is inductive reasoning commences 
 in the form of mechanical habit. 
 
 The objective connexion between a present phenomenon in 
 sense and expected phenomena which it signifies is said by 
 Berkeley to be ' arbitrary.' He enlarges on this arbitrariness, 
 and founds on it his favourite analogy of a visual language 
 — the connexion between names and their meanings being 
 also arbitrary. This may seem to imply that the natural 
 laws which govern what is presented in sense are capricious, 
 or not to be depended on. What he really intends appears 
 to be, that there is no eternal reason in the nature of things 
 why a tree seen from a distance should 'suggest' an expec- 
 tation of the particular tactual and muscular phenomena 
 which it does suggest ; nor why any one of the constant 
 connexions among phenomena which forn^^ the web of phy- 
 sical science should not have been other than it is in fact.
 
 XXX Iniroductwn to the Selections. 
 
 Physical causation is really physical signification, — a natural 
 language. It is not more a necessary connexion than is the 
 customary connexion between a word in any human language 
 and the meaning which men have arbitrarily agreed to con- 
 nect with the word. In both cases we have established 
 custom. God, in the exercise of His free-will, is accustomed 
 to maintain sensible things and their natural laws as we 
 find them. He might have abstained from creation ; or the 
 physical laws might have been originally made different 
 from what they are, including (Bei'keley would atld) even the 
 spacial relations of things. 
 
 Belief in a divinely established connexion among sen se- 
 phenomena is Berkel ey's expression for belief in natu ral law. 
 This 'experienced' permanence in the relations Ijetween the 
 present and the expected, among the different clusters of phe- 
 nomena — assumed by him as common sense — is his (virtually 
 common sense) explana tion of o ur belief in the 'perman ence' 
 o f sensible things, during the intervals in which they are 
 not actually perceived. To illustrate expectations due to 
 ordinary suggestion and habit is one use of his writings on 
 Vision, making them an important contribution to psychology. 
 There is neither contradiction nor meaninglessness, he would 
 say, in a material woi'ld that is thus composed of the signi- 
 ficant sense-2)henomena which we all practically interpret : 
 there must be either meaninglessness or contradiction in 
 the material world of the philosophers, which consists 
 of abstract, and tlierefoi-e unintelligible, ' substances ' and 
 ' powers.' 
 
 But we find in our knowledge of the material world, 
 Berkeley tells us, when we reflect still further, more even 
 than this present perception, and this expectation or ac- 
 quired perception. Causation, in its highest meaning, is 
 more than the significance, that is to say the steady natural 
 order, of the phenomena of sense. Indeed it is quite other 
 than this. It is not phenomenal at all. It is unj)henomenal,
 
 Nature significant of Sj)irit. xxxi 
 
 as I find it in my common sense conviction of my own re- 
 sponsible agency. It is involved in the use of the personal 
 pronoun ' I,' and in the assertion ' I can! The germ at least 
 of this teaching may, I think, he attributed to Berkeley. 
 
 Besides the present and the suggested perceptions of sense, 
 he finds that experience involves the 'notion' (not 'idea') 
 of the perceiving active being that each one calls myself. 
 I cannot indeed be percipient of myself in the phenomenal 
 way I am percipient of sights or sounds. Still, I can 
 use the personal pronoun with meaninfj ; I can speak 
 intelliyihly of my own continued identity. I am obliged 
 too, in my moral experience, to believe in my own free 
 voluntary activity; so that I practically understand what 
 responsible power means. It is only in this way indeed that 
 the word power gathers meaning ; for ' power ' affirmed of 
 mere phenomena, present or expected, is meaningless. My 
 conviction of my own power is as certain as my conviction 
 of my own existence, at least to the extent to which I 
 acknowledge moral responsibility for my volitions. 
 
 But there must be Power in the universe other than each 
 man's personal power; for we all find ourselves unable at 
 will to produce the phenomena of which we are percipient 
 in our senses, or to change the natural laws of their 
 occurrence. We overcome external nature only by sub- 
 mission to the divinely established order in which its 
 phenomena have to appear. In our experience of things 
 we find ourselves able and yet unable ; sometimes we can 
 and sometimes we cannot ; and our experienced ability is 
 small indeed in its range compared to our experienced 
 inability. But in this experience of his own limited power 
 each one finds himself; we also have in this our one intelli- 
 gible illustration of what the words power and impotence 
 mean. That which is done, but which I am thus morally 
 convinced is not done by me, must have been done (so 
 Berkeley argues) by the only kind of power which experience
 
 xxxii Inirodud'ion io the Selecliotis. 
 
 gives me any example of. That is to say, it must be due to 
 Mind in its moral agency. When we speak of any other sort 
 of power than this, we are involving ourselves in meaning- 
 less abstractions \ Materialistic Causation is therefore 
 impossible. 
 
 It thus becomes necessary in reason that the things of 
 sense, in themselves unsubstantial and imjiotent, should be 
 sustained and regulated by moral agency. This moral 
 agency is what we mean by God. AVe cannot go deeper. 
 The Divine or Perfect Agent presents to us the phenomena 
 of which Ave are conscious in the five senses. God potentially 
 holds, and ever and anon suggests, in and through custom 
 based on reason, the phenomena which we exjoect. All the 
 natui'a l laws of the unive rse are simply manifestations of the 
 Acti ve Intelligence in which the universe c entres, and in 
 which its ultimate explanation is found. This is the effi- 
 cient cause at work in those metamorphoses of sense- 
 phenomena, and of the ' things ' they constitute, with Avhich 
 the physical and natural sciences are concerned; — the formal 
 cause of the relations which make natural law, and all real 
 science ; — their final cause too is this intending rational Will. 
 In the knowledge of God or Supreme Reason, the material 
 world becomes intelligible. Its permanence, amidst the 
 constant changes of its constituent phenomena, is thus 
 accounted for. Its primary qualities, as well as the propo- 
 sitions of science concerning things and their laws, which, 
 on this theory, at first seemed dissolved in perishable sensa- 
 tions, are in the end restored in the Divine Rational 
 Providence. 
 
 Such in its development would be Berkeley's explanation 
 of what is implied in the reality we attribute to the material 
 world. It virtually takes in the three connected objects of 
 
 ' There is some analogy between wliat may thus be developed out of 
 Berkelej^ and the explanation of belief in the not-sulf long afterwards 
 offered by Fichte.
 
 Spiritual Function of the Material World, xxxiii 
 
 metaphysical inquiry — Self, the AVorld, and God — that 
 is to say, the two opposed and dependent substances, and 
 the one supreme Substance and Power of Cartesianism. 
 But it is not worked out into a j^hilosophy by Berkeley 
 himself. What he attempted was done, he modestly says, 
 ' with a view to giving hints to thinking men who have 
 leisure and curiosity to go to the bottom of things, and 
 pursue them in their own minds.' The final result of his 
 new conception of Matter was the substitution of God for 
 the unintelligible material substance and power of Locke. 
 The rej)ort he made, after he had reflected upon ' the facts 
 of consciousness ' — freed from the bondage of abstract words, 
 against which he vehemently protested — was in effect this : — 
 "We in this mortal life reach a practical knowledge of our- 
 selves and of God, through our consciousness of the significant 
 and interpretable phenomena of sense, commonly called the 
 material world — the final moral end of whose significant 
 and interpretable presence in the universe seems to be, to 
 enable finite spirits who are percipient of them to become 
 self-conscious, cognizant of one another, and cognizant of 
 God, in whom we all live and move and have our being. 
 
 Berkeley, as we have seen, started from Locke's ambi- 
 guous formula which reduces human knowledge, in its last 
 analysis, to human ' e xperie nce.' But both Locke and 
 Berkeley, without critical analysis of what they thus assume, 
 presuppose in experience more than mer& phenomena. 
 Locke's employment of the rational principle of causality, 
 in his explanation of our knowledge of God, for instance, is 
 a virtual acknowledgment of other than merely pheno- 
 menal elements in its constitution. Dr. Samuel Clarke 
 (167 5-1 7 2 9), a philosophical theologian of Locke's School, 
 worked out a ' demonstration ' of the necessity for an 
 eternal or uncaused Cause, in the form of an appeal to that 
 in mind which intellectually obliges us — without a pheno- 
 menal experience of the fact — to believe that space and time
 
 XXXIV 
 
 Introduction to the Selections. 
 
 must be infinite, and that an eternal free cause is of tlie 
 essence of reason. The phenomena presented by Clod to the 
 senses, along with the sense-interpretations of mere suggestion, 
 do not exhaust the psychology of Berkeley. Custom induced 
 suggestion was in the end contrasted by him with rational 
 inference. ' To perceive,' he tells us in one of his later 
 works, 'to perceive^' is one thing : to judge is another. So 
 likewise to be suggested is one thing, and to be inferred 
 another. Things are suggested and j)erceived by sense. "We 
 make judgments and inferences by the understanding. We 
 infer causes from effects, effects from causes, and properties 
 from one another, where the connexion is necessary^.' 
 
 In Siris he puts present sense and the suggestions of 
 custom still more in the background, and God and Reason 
 becomes all in all. When he there attributes to Ai'istotle 
 the doctrine ' that the mind of man is a tabula rasa, without 
 innate ideas,' in contrast to Plato who found in the mind 
 ' notions which never were nor can be in the sense,' 
 he hints his own opinion. ' Some perhaps may think the 
 truth to be this : — that there are properly no ideas, or 
 passive objects [phenomena] in the mind but what were 
 derived from sense, but that there are also besides these 
 her own acts or operations. Such are notions' (§ 308.) 
 Again : ' The perceptions of sense are gross : but even in 
 
 the senses thei'e is a difference By experiments of sense 
 
 we become acquainted with the lower faculties of the soul ; 
 and from them, whether by a gradual evolution or ascent, we 
 arrive at the highest. Sense supplies images to memor3\ 
 These become subjects for fancy to work upon. Reason con- 
 siders and judges of the imaginations. And these acts of 
 reason become new objects to the understanding. In this 
 scale each lower faculty is a step that leads to one above it. 
 And the uppermost naturally leads to the Deity; which is 
 
 * 'to perceive,' i.e. to have sensations. 
 
 ^ Vindication of New Theory of Vision, sect. 42.
 
 Modern PMlosoph/ shice Berkeley. xxxv 
 
 rather the object of intellectual knowledge than even of the 
 discursive faculty, not to mention the sensitive.' (§ 303.) 
 
 If Berkeley in his youth sometimes seems to resolve the 
 material world and mind itself into Sensation, the pervading 
 tendency of Siris is to find the essence of the universe in 
 Reason, and to see in its phenomena an opportunity, through 
 physical research and science, for the education of reason in 
 the individual mind. 
 
 Such was Berkeley's j)hilosophical conception of Matter, as 
 it appears, first in the reasonings of his youth, and then in 
 the more developed speculations of his later life. We may 
 now look at some of its histoiical issues. 
 
 Six years before Siris appeared, Locke's vague formula 
 regarding human knowledge, as in some way the issue of 
 'experience,' had been interpreted by David Humk 
 (171 1-76) so as to include in exjierience only the transitory 
 phenomena of sense and habit. Reason was melted down 
 into impressions, and the suggested ideas of these impi'es- 
 sions. ' Impressions,' or the original data of sense, and faint 
 images of these called ' ideas ' — through habit giving rise 
 to new impressions — this was in the end his theoiy of know- 
 ledge ^. The universe was pronounced ' a riddle, an senigma, 
 an inexplicable mystery.' — It was by this agnostic con- 
 sequence, deduced from these premises, that Hume obliged 
 metaphysicians to reconsider much that they had before 
 taken for granted, and to search further for the roots of 
 knowledge, if it was to remain rooted at all. 
 
 Hume's sceptical paralysis of intelligence and philosophical 
 agnosticism was the crisis of the Modern or Cartesian 
 movement of philosophy. His exposure of the impossibility 
 of knowledge, — if knowledge at last means only expei'ience, 
 and if experience consists only of impressed and blindly 
 suggested phenomena, — was the act in the history of philo- 
 
 * See Hume's Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, ch. 2-8.
 
 xxxvi Introduction to the Selections. 
 
 sophy next following Bei'keley's arguments for the absolute 
 dependenc e of Matte r and of the mate rial wo rld on per- 
 cipie nt a nd active min d. Blind Materialism seemed, in 
 Berkeley's theory of existence, to become impossible, and 
 to be replaced by a mind-constituted u niverse, in which 
 all solid and extended things, including our bodily organisms, 
 can exist only as group s of depende nt and powerless phe- 
 nomena, perceived and changed in part by fi nite mi nds, and 
 
 above all by ever-active Divine Mind. But Berkeley's 
 
 mind-constituted universe, it was argued by Hume, involved 
 assumptions which — on the hypothesis of pure empiricism, 
 that all knowledge is merely phenomena connected by habit 
 — might be proved (if proof of anything were possible on 
 this hypothesis) to be as absurd as Berkeley had found 
 abstract material substance to be. 
 
 Hume's attempt to show that, on Berkeley's original 
 lAL . principles, mind or self is as merely phenomenal as 
 
 matter — as unsubstantial and as impotent — is what gives 
 him his epoch-making place in modern history. His scep- 
 tical account of knowledge was first proposed, without 
 qualification, in his Treatise on Human Nature, in 1738 ; 
 then, in a milder way, in 1748, in his Inquiry co7icerning 
 Human Understanding. In both he refers to Berkeley's 
 rejection of abstract ideas, and analysis of matter into the 
 phenomena of sense, as new lessons in philosophy. Looking 
 only at the negative part of what Berkeley taught about the 
 meaning of the word ' real,' when applied to sensible things, 
 he claims for him a place among the (unconscious) sceptics ; 
 adding, as evidence of this, that his ' arguments admit of 
 no answer, and yet produce no conviction, their only effect 
 being to produce that momentary amazement, irresolution, 
 and confusion, which is the result of scepticism '.' 
 
 The way in which Hume would bar Berkeley's ascent 
 in Siris (a book to which he makes no reference), from the 
 
 * Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, sect. xii. pt. i., note.
 
 Ihime's sceptical analysis of the notion of Mind, xxxvii 
 
 * gross perceptions of sense ' to ' the intellectual knowledge of 
 Deity,' is argued and illustrated in detail throughout his 
 Treatise and Inquiry, 
 
 A significant passage to begin with is that in which Hume 
 deals with Berkeley's ' not ion ' o f Self. This Berkeley takes 
 for granted we are conscious of, finding as he thinks the 
 evidence of it in a certain ' inwar d feeling or reflec tion/ 
 Apart from this ' notion,' generated by the ' feeling,' a mind- 
 constituted universe dissolves into mere phenomena, as 
 readily as abstract matter did, at the point of view 
 Berkeley occupied. ' There are,' argued Hume, ' some phi- 
 losophers, who imagine we are every moment conscious of 
 what we call our self ; that we feel its existence and 
 its continuance in existence ; and are certain, beyond the 
 evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and 
 simplicity. . . . Unluckily all these positive assertions are con- 
 trary to that very experience, which is pleaded for them. . . . 
 For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call 
 myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or 
 other — of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or 
 pleasure (i.e. something merely phenomenal). I never can 
 catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can 
 observe anything but the perception. When my perceptions 
 are removed for any time, as by sound sleep, so long atn I 
 insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. And 
 were all my perceptions (i.e. phenomena) removed by death, 
 and I could neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor 
 hate ; after the dissolution of my body I should be entirely 
 annihilated ; nor do I conceive what is farther requisite to 
 make me a perfect nonentity \' Elsewhere he argues that 
 ' the question concerning the substance of the said is an 
 absolutely unintelligible question,' as much so as Berkeley 
 
 * See Hume's Treatise on Human Nature, heivg an attempt to intro- 
 duce the Experimental Method of reasoning into Moral Subjects, b. i. 
 pt. iv. sect. 6. 
 
 •jc^.
 
 xxxviii lidroducllon to the Selections. 
 
 had shown that about material substance, abstracted from 
 its phenomena, to be. 
 
 "We have Berkeley's reply to this, by anticipation, in the 
 third of his Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. 
 ' It seems to me,' Hylas objects, ' that according to your 
 own way of thinking, and in consequence of your own 
 })rinciples, it should follow that you are only a system 
 of floating ideas, without any substance to support them. 
 Words are not to be used without a meaning ; and as there is 
 no more meaning in sjnrltual substa7ice than in material 
 substance, the one ought to be exploded as well as the other.' 
 ' How often,' replies Philonous (representing Berkeley), ' must 
 I repeat that / know or am conscious of my own being ; and 
 that I mjyself am not my ideas, but somewhat else — a 
 thinking active principle that perceives, knows, wills, and 
 operates about ideas. I know that I — one and the same 
 self — perceive both colours and sounds : that a colour cannot 
 perceive a sound, nor a sound a colour : that I am therefore 
 one individual principle, distinct from colour and sound ; and, 
 for the same I'eason, from all other sensible things and inert 
 ideas. But I am not in like manner conscious either of the 
 existence or essence of [abstract or unphenomenal] matter ^' 
 ■,/^a V"^ Take, next, Hume's demand for evidence of that con- 
 ^ /i2iza^"*tinual depend ence of the coexistences and changes which 
 constitute the World o n supreme active Min d, which 
 Berkeley had argued for. — ' It seems to me,' he 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 man sufficiently apprised of the weakness of human reason, 
 and the narrow limits to which it is confined in its operations. 
 . . . Our line is too short to fathom such immense abysses. 
 And however we may flatter ourselves that we are guided 
 
 ^ See Berkeley's \Y()rl:!<, vol. i. pp. 328-29. Berkeley has only partly 
 met tlie objection that if unimaginable matter is ab.surd, all unimaginable 
 self must be absurd too.
 
 Hume's sce/pt'ical analysis of the notion of Providence, xxxix 
 
 in every step we take by a kind of verisimilitude and ex- 
 perience ; we may be assured that this fancied experience 
 has no authority, when we thus apply it to subjects that lie 
 entirely out of the reach of experience. . . . We are ignoi'ant, 
 it is true, of the manner in which bodie s operate on each 
 other : their " force" or " energy" is entirely incomprehensil)le. 
 But are we not equally ignorant of the manner or force in 
 which a mind — even the Supreme Mind — operates either on 
 itself or on body? Wlience, I beseech you, do we acquire 
 any idea of it ? We have no sentiment or consciousness of 
 this power in ourselves. We have no idea of the Supreme 
 Being but what we learn by reflection upon our own facul- 
 ties. Were our ignorance therefore a good reason for reject- 
 ing anything, we should be led into that principle of denying 
 all energj^ in the Supreme Being as much as in the grossest 
 matter. We surely compre hend as little the operatio ns of 
 th e on e as of the other. Is it more difficult to conceive that 
 motion may arise from imjyulse than that it may arise from voli- 
 tion ? All we know is our profound ignorance in both cases ^.' 
 
 Berkeley's favourite doctrine of a Divine arbitrariness in 
 the original establishment of the significations of the phe- 
 nomena presented to the senses is by Hume carried out into 
 an inex2)licable arbitrariness — in which anything may a priori 
 be the ' cause ' of anything that happens, either in matter or 
 in mind. For this maxim is not confined by Hume to 
 causation between the things of sense only, but is applied 
 also to the causation in a higher meaning, supposed by 
 Berkeley necessarily to connect phenomena and their changes 
 with mind and moral agency. All alike are inexplicably 
 phenomena that are somehow practically significant ; but 
 there is no rational meaning involved in their developments. 
 The conception of rationally Avilled connexion carries with it, 
 when it disappears, — («) Berkeley's implied contrast between 
 natural signs and the rational will of God, which gives 
 
 * See Hume's Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, sect. \ ii.
 
 xl Introduction to the Selections. 
 
 them their significance, and (&) the dependence in reason of 
 the orderly phenomenal world on Mind or Spirit, as the 
 only formal, efficient, and final cause of the whole. There is 
 no reason in the Universe recognised in Hume's philosophy, 
 only blind uncertain fate. All so-called knowledge is only 
 inexplicably produced belief, mechanically due to custom. 
 Take the following : — ' "Whatever is may not be. No ne- 
 tration of a fact can involve a contradiction. The non- 
 
 o 
 
 existence of any being ^, without exception, is as clear and 
 distinct an idea as its existence. The proposition which 
 affirms it not to be, however false, is no less conceivable and 
 intelligible than that which affirms it to be. The case is 
 different with the sciences, properly so called. Every pro- 
 position which is not true is there unintelligible. That 
 the cube of sixty-four is equal to the half of ten is a false 
 proposition, and can never be distinctly conceived. But 
 that Caesar, or the angel Gabriel, or any being never existed, 
 may be a false proposition, but still is perfectly conceivable, 
 and implies no contradiction. The existence, therefore, of 
 any being can only be proved by arguments from its cause or 
 its effect ^ ; and these arguments are founded entirely on ex- 
 perience. If we reason a priori, anything may appear able 
 to produce anything. The falling of a pebble may, for aught 
 we know, extinguish the sun ; or the wish of a man controul 
 the planets in their orbits. It is only experience which 
 teaches us the nature and bounds of cause and effect, and 
 enables us to infer the existence of one object [either 
 ' material ' or ' mental '] from that of another. . . . Not only 
 the will of the Supreme Being may create matter ; but for 
 aught we know a priori, the will of any other being might 
 create it, or any other cause that the most whimsical imagin- 
 ation can assign ^' 
 
 ' This includes of course the Divine Being. 
 
 '' He means from its phenomenal or caused cause — its established 
 sign, as Berkeley would say. 
 
 ^ ln([U,iry, sect. xii. pt. iii. — We find in Philosophy three divergent
 
 Hume resolves Reason into Custom. xli* 
 
 The principle that in the end determines all real inferences, 
 Hume argues, can be nothing more than blind Custom in 
 Nature, which occasions habits in us. ' For, wherever the 
 repetition of any particular act or operation produces a pro- 
 pensity to renew the same act or operation, without being 
 impelled by any reasoning or process of the understanding ; 
 we always say that this propensity is the effect of Custom. 
 By employing that word, we pretend not to have given the 
 ultimate reason of such propensity. We only point out a 
 principle of human nature, which is universally acknowledged, 
 and which is well known by its effects. Perhaps we can 
 push our enquiries no farther ^.' 
 
 Berkeley's short and easy method with Materialism, in his 
 explanation of the philosophical meaning of Matter, was 
 thus followed — in the next great movement in European 
 thought — not by a fuller development of Spiritual Phi- 
 losophy, but by a Scepticism which professed inability to 
 find more in experience than inexplicably associated phe- 
 nomena, which, through * custom,' inexplicably issue in beliefs 
 that are ultimately blind. To this the modern philosophical 
 movement, as represented in Locke, was conducted, when 
 Locke and Berkeley were interjDreted by Hume. This 
 philosophical disintegration of rational belief surrendered all 
 
 views about Causalit}', correspondinp: .severally to each of the two 
 extreme positions — pure Empiricism and absolute Idealism, and to 
 the ' broken system ' which acknowledges an inexplicable duality, 
 wisely resting satisfied with an acknowledgment of irreducible con- 
 victions, latent in our rational and moral nature, but ready to be 
 developed by reflection. — According to one of these views, anything 
 may, as far as we know, be the cause of anything, and it is pre- 
 sumptuous to speak of any alleged cause as ' sufficient' or ' insuflB- 
 cient.' This is Hume's account of the matter. — According to the 
 opposite extreme view, each thing must be caused by everything that 
 exists, in the infinite concatenation of existence, according to an immanent 
 rational necessity. This is the outcome of the mathematical philosophy 
 of Spinoza, and of the rational thought of Hegel. Berkeley tends 
 towards it sometimes in Siris. — The third view finds the only true and 
 ' sufficient ' cause in the power of a moral agent — exemplified in our 
 own moral experience of free personal agency. 
 ' See Inquiry, sect. v. p. i.
 
 xlii Introduction to the Selections. 
 
 faith which depends on other elements in knowledge than 
 phenomena connected by custom, — thus dissolving Berkeley's 
 conception of a mind-constituted-universe. 
 
 In this Avay, in the middle of last century, the modern 
 movement in quest of philosophy seemed to have exhausted 
 itself. — The inductive psychology to which it had given rise, 
 represented in Britain by the custom and association theory 
 of Hume, had no further word to say — unless in due time, in 
 Hartley and his school, to repeat the word ' association.' And 
 in France an attenuated edition of Locke was maintaining a 
 declining existence, in the school of Condillac. — On the other 
 hand, the line of dogmatic demonstrative metaphysicians who 
 succeeded S^Dinoza — after being represented in Germany, 
 partly in reaction against him, by Leibnitz — seemed about to 
 expire in the arid scholasticism of the German school of Wolff. 
 
 Thus one of the great intellectual tendencies which followed 
 the original Cartesian impulse issued, in the middle of the 
 eighteenth century, in the philosophical nescience of Hume, 
 and the other in the dogmatic reasonings of the Wolffians. 
 
 But the disposition to seek for philosophy is permanent 
 in human nature. In none of the preceding intellectual 
 struggles had the complete philosophic form of knowledge 
 been reached. Each of them contributed, however*, to its 
 disclosure. None was more effectual in this way than the 
 empirical scepticism of Hume, which the Immaterialism of 
 Berkeley occasioned if it did not justify. For this scepticism 
 led to the reconsideration of ultimate principles, in the light 
 either (a) of the actual constitution of our human nature, or 
 (J)) of the rational constitution of any possible experience. 
 
 One of the immediate and direct effects of Hume was the 
 attempt of Ekid (1710-96), by jDatient reflection, to make 
 patent principles latent in the human consciousness, some of 
 which had been proceeded upon but not formally recognised 
 in Locke's account of knowledge. Another was the attempt
 
 Reid and Kant. xliii 
 
 of Kant (i 724-1804), by transcendental criticism, to explain 
 by experience the constructive activity of universal reason. 
 Reid says that he at first accepted Berkeley's system, till, 
 finding 'other consequences' to follow from it (i.e. from his 
 own interpretation of it), which gave him ' inore uneasiness 
 than the want of a material woi'ld,' it occurred to him to 
 reconsider what he believed to be the pervading assumption 
 of Cartesianism — that we can be immediately percipient only 
 of representative ideas. Kant found his point of departure 
 in Hume's empirical explanation of our belief in the causal 
 connexion of the universe as the effect of custom. 
 
 It is beyond the design of this Introduction to trace 
 philosophy in the second stage of its modern history — its 
 revival after its sceptical dissolution by Hume. In this 
 stage, which extends from the latter part of last century to 
 the present day, Kant holds a jilace so far similar to that 
 of Descartes in the preceding epoch. Each is related to the 
 preceding condition of opinion somewhat as Socrates or 
 Plato was to Heraclitus and Protagoras. Kant too tried 
 to accomplish more thoroughly the work undertaken by 
 Descartes ; as Plato did that of Socrates, or Aristotle that of 
 Plato. The reflective criticism of the first stage in modern 
 philosophy was insufficient ; its recognition of the contents 
 of experience was inadequate. This gave rise to the scep- 
 ticism, which professed its inability to find at last more 
 than blindly-produced belief within our reach on any sub- 
 ject ; and argued that, since ' knowledge ' is the issue only of 
 transitory phenomena of sense, associated by custom, there 
 can be no true knowledge at all. Eeid as well as Kant 
 gave expression to the consequent need for reconsidering 
 the postulates without which our physical and moral ex- 
 perience would be impossible. Some of these indeed had 
 been proceeded upon, as the guarantees of scientific gene- 
 ralisation, and of theological belief, by philosophers who,
 
 xHv hifroduction to tJie Selections. 
 
 lilie Locke, and Berkeley in his earlier works, vaguely pro- 
 fessed to explain all knowledge from 'experience.' But a 
 more faithful and thorough investigation of the constitution 
 of reason in man, and in any possible experience, was induced 
 by the reaction from Hume. In particular, it led to Kant's 
 search for elements in pure reason that necessarily connect 
 phenomena in physical experience, and for others, in moral 
 or practical reason, which justify faith in God, and in the 
 free agency and immortality of man. 
 
 The consequences of Kant's so - called ' transcendental 
 criticism ' of the rational constitution of experience, in the 
 second epoch of modern philosophy, presents analogies to 
 the historical issues, in the preceding century, of the more 
 tentative speculation of Descartes — but with the advantage, 
 on the whole, that is gained for each later development of 
 philosophy over the more imperfect system which pi'ecedes it. 
 In no single system of philosophy do we find the full realisa- 
 tion of the philosophical ideal — only an approach to this, and 
 an approach that has j)robably been assisted by the collisions 
 of previous thought. In the post-Kantian period, Hegelianism 
 has been interpreted as developed Kantism, as Spinozism was 
 intei'preted as developed Cartesianism. Yet the influence of 
 Kant, in another aspect of his philosophy, appears in Comte 
 and Positivism, as that of Descartes did in Hume. 
 
 True philosophy must at least not be logically inconsistent 
 with itself. It must also be in harmony with those universal 
 judgments of reason which our physical and our moral expe- 
 rience can be proved to presuppose. And it ought not to reject 
 practical beliefs, hitherto permanent in human nature (though 
 often dormant in individuals), which are not shown to be in- 
 consistent with the necessary judgments of pure reason. To 
 these three conditions the student of philosophy should 
 conform. 
 
 To awaken intelligently in individual minds such rational 
 judgments and natural convictions is the chief aim of philo-
 
 Philosophical Education and Pi'or/ress. xlv 
 
 soj)liical education. From Socrates onwards tliis luis been 
 the effort of the true teacher of phih^sophy. The genuine 
 elements of reason and of human nature are not always recog- 
 nised consciously. Some of them are dormant ; or they are 
 acted on without a distinct consciousness of what they mean. 
 They are potentially rather than actually ' universal and 
 necessary.' Thus the conviction that wc are free rational 
 beings, and therefore morally obliged and responsible, is often 
 weak ; or it is acted on without a philosophical recognition 
 of what it implies. The same is true as to those convictions 
 of God and the higher life that belong to our moral ex- 
 perience. It is the office of philosophical education to assist 
 in making patent in the individual consciousness Avhat was 
 latent in human nature, but implied in the TJuiversal 
 Reason in which we all more or less share. 
 
 History is full of the records of reactions against principles 
 thus latent, which have lost their influence for a time, 
 through some transient turn in the course of philosophical 
 thought, or in the habit of the popular imagination. Reason 
 is eternal ; our individual consciousness of the reason latent 
 in nature and in spirit fluctuates and may be paralyzed. 
 Thus the recluse, by habitual introspection, weakens his 
 practical conviction of external reality, and of his own indi- 
 vidual personality and responsibility. And a person who is 
 exclusively devoted to physical science loses the power of 
 apprehending the facts of spiritual experience — even the 
 meaning wrapped up in the personal pronoun 'I.' All that 
 transcends external experience becomes illusory, including 
 the conviction of spiritual personality, and of the moral 
 truths involved in that, which give meaning to faith in God 
 or Moral Government. 
 
 In this latter part of the nineteenth century, the material 
 world, and the means of making ourselves more comfortable, 
 through sldlful applications of its laws in our service, occupy 
 people's imagination as perhaps they never did before — not
 
 xlvi Introduction to the Selections. 
 
 even in the outbreak of physical research when Berkeley 
 produced his Immaterialism. At a time like this, faith in 
 nietajihysical realities — God, free agency, and individual 
 responsibility — dissolves in doubt, because it does not admit 
 of verification by the senses, but only of verification by spirit. 
 That certainty which is reached through verification by phe- 
 nomena presented to the senses — altliough it involves faith, 
 and postulates of reason — is held paramount ; the certainty 
 that is reached without any appeal to the facts of sense, be- 
 cause it involves faith, is rejected as illusory. That is to say, 
 faith in physical government — the basis of our inferences in 
 the sciences of natui-e — is strong. Faith in inferences which 
 presume moral or spiritual government — not less lawfully 
 rested on the postulates of our moral experience — is weak. 
 
 Materialism, as it has formerly done, must disappear, if it 
 contradicts what, when men try through reflection, are found 
 to be constituents of reason and of human nature — though 
 often dormant — existing only potentially, not actually, in 
 many individual minds. As philosophy has done before, 
 it may even swing to the opposite extreme, in its current 
 conceptions in the next age. For, its past history has been 
 a succession of oscillations, between one-sided physics and 
 one-sided metaphysics — between extreme Materialism, which 
 explains consciousness and thought by motion, and extreme 
 Idealism, which explains the phenomenal things of sense and 
 their motions by pure thought. These two systems of Monism, 
 in their sviccessive reappearances, have been the subjects of 
 the reductio ad absurdum, in the Scepticism to which each 
 extreme has given rise. Sceptical Nescience too, in its 
 turn, passes away, when the genuine convictions of luiman 
 nature have been recovered, and philosophic insight of them 
 probably deej)ened by the preceding collision of the two 
 extremes, with its sceptical issue. riiilosophy is then 
 better prepared than before to pass through the ordeal of 
 another and more enlightened development of extreme
 
 The Three Divisions of /he '■ Select ions<^ xlvii 
 
 Materialism and extreme Idealism, which ai'e in turn cor- 
 rected by a new manifestation of sceptical despair. It is 
 thus that it advances, in depth and comprehensiveness, through 
 successive sceptical crises, consequent upon the collision of 
 its own extreme developments. What is permanent in the 
 spiritual nature of man may strengthen in the end, even 
 through the series of philosophical eclipses. 
 
 These Selections from Berheley, aided by the annotations, 
 are meant to incite to further reflection about his conclusions 
 and assumptions. They are so arranged as to carry the 
 reader through Berkeley's reasoned conception of Matter as 
 necessarily dependent on pei'cipient and active Mind ; his 
 analysis of the growth of visual perception through habit 
 and suggestion of visual meanings ; and his speculative hints 
 as to the ultimate constitution of the universe in Mind. 
 
 The Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge forms 
 the First Division of the Selections. It is a defence and 
 application, at Locke's point of view, of the hypothesis that 
 Matter or the material world can consist only of ordered 
 phenomena that are necessarily dependent on a percipient 
 agent — that its esse is percijn ^ 
 
 Berkeley's analysis of the development of Visual Percep- 
 tion, in the form of interpretations of significant visual 
 phenomena, follows in the Second Division of the Selections. 
 The extracts illustrate his psychological explanation of our 
 acquired perception in Sight of things in s]3ace, and (so far) 
 of our inductive and theological judgments. They all conduct 
 
 ^ The reader is referred, under this head, to the Dialogues behveen 
 Hylas and Philonous, in the 'Collected Works' of Berkeley. His 
 explanation of what is meant by Matter is further explained and illus- 
 trated in that charming example of philosophical exjiosition.
 
 xlviii Infroduct'ion to the Selections. 
 
 to the conclusion that the phenomena presented to sight are 
 significant of Mind ^ 
 
 Extracts from Siris form the Third Division of the 
 Selections. These contain Berkeley's Platonic meditations, 
 on the ultimate constitution of the universe in the Universal 
 Mind, and on the organic unity of knowledge ; with fragments 
 of ancient and medieval metaphysics. 
 
 A more detailed account of the contents of these three 
 Divisions is given in the Prefatory Notes prefixed to each. 
 The foot-notes occasionally raise some of the ultimate ques- 
 tions which a philosophical student is supposed to be trying 
 to settle for himself. 
 
 A. CAMPBELL TEASER. 
 
 * Some may prefer to begin with the psychological analyses of visual 
 perception in the Second Division of the Selections, and then return 
 to the metaphysical reasonings about Matter contained in the First 
 Division.
 
 I. 
 
 Matter necessarily dependent on Mind. 
 
 A TREATISE 
 
 CONCERNING THE 
 
 PKINCIPLES OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 The same Pi'inciples which, at first view, lead to Scepticism, pursued 
 to a certain point, bring men back to Common Sense. — Berkeley's 
 Third Dialogue.
 
 EDITOK'S PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 This Treatise is a reasoned statement and defence of the 
 theory that the Material World depends for its actual exist- 
 ence on percipient and active Mind. The latter part of it 
 is an application of this theory to the promotion of physical, 
 psychological, and theological science. 
 
 The Introduction (pp. 14-34) contains an exposure of the 
 abuse of terms andLanguage,bymen in general,but particularly 
 by philosophers. Language had been the shield of scholastic 
 abstractions. The key to Berkeley's original point of view 
 may be found in his attack on ' abstract ideas ' in this Intro- 
 duction — resumed in other places. The underlying principle 
 is, — that real knowledge is concerned only with individual 
 things ; that thei'e can be no intelligible reality in the things 
 of sense apart from the perceptions of a living mind ; and 
 that to test the meaning of common terms, especially terms 
 which have become so abstract as Matter and Mind, we must 
 realise in actual perception, or in imagination, individual 
 things which they denote. This means that all genuine 
 knowledge of things may be individualised. It is what has 
 been called his Nominalism. 
 
 Not to pretend in words to substantiate mere abstractions 
 which cannot be individualised, and always to verify our 
 terms by what is conceivable, is the lesson of the Introduc- 
 tion. It warns those entering on philosophy that above all 
 they must avoid empty verbal abstractions.
 
 4 Prefatoiy Note. 
 
 The first two sections of the Princ{j)les (pp. 35, 36) offer 
 a statement of the sorts of ideas we are capable of con- 
 ceiving, which may be compared with Locke's account of 
 the origin of our knowledge. 
 
 In the 154 sections W'hich follow, the lesson of the In- 
 troduction is applied to the meaning of the abstract term 
 Matter. Berkeley argues that the things of sense mean 
 sensations, actual or imagined, of which some one must be 
 conscious, and that no effort of abstraction can exclude 
 sensation from what is meant by external things, and at 
 the same time jireserve intelligibility. 
 
 Tldngs, existing intelligibly, he calls ideas. (The term 
 ' idea ' is apt to mislead. "VVe might substitute significant 
 sensation, or significant 2)henome7ion 2>'resented in sense.) 
 
 Now, is there, he asks, any reason for supposing, under 
 the empty name of Matter, that to exist which cannot be 
 individualised, either in sense or in imagination, and is 
 therefore unintelligible 1 We cannot have an abstract idea 
 of Matter, or indeed any conception of it other than what 
 is derived from its manifestations in the actual perceptions 
 or consciousnesses of sense. Must not the real material world 
 then be the sense experience of living persons ; and in all our 
 infei'ences about matter, should we not regard it as so consti- 
 tuted that its very esse is jJ^i'cij^i '? — This is the chief question 
 of Berkeley's philosophy, raised in Sect. 3, and pursued through 
 the Princii^iles. It opens the whole theory of knowledge. 
 
 That and the sections which follow may be conveniently 
 arranged thus : — 
 
 I. (Sect. 3-33). A reasoned statement of what is meant 
 by the real existence of the material world. Here Matter 
 is melted down into significant sensation, instead of being 
 an irreducible and meaningless abstraction. The chief con- 
 clusions may be thus expressed : —
 
 Prefatori/ Note. 5 
 
 1. Abstract Matter — unperceiving and unperceiverl 'some- 
 thing' — whether viewed as Substance or as Cause — is a 
 meaningless abstraction. "When we try to give it meaning 
 we necessarily involve ourselves in a contradiction of terms, 
 
 2. The only intelligible Substance, i.e. independent and 
 permanent existence, is conscious Mind or Spirit ; and the 
 only intelligible Cause of changes is Mind or Spirit in free 
 voluntary action. 
 
 3. The only intelligible material world must thus con- 
 sist of what is perceived in sense. What is perceived in 
 the senses, Berkeley calls sensation, or, because dependent 
 on being perceived, idea. These perceived sensations or 
 ideas appear, disappear, and reappear (so common sense 
 obliges us to believe) independently of our will, in an order 
 commonly called the order of nature. The only possible 
 material substances (if we are still to speak of material sub- 
 stance) are the clusters of them called ' things,' formed and 
 kept together by a Will that is independent of the individual 
 human will, and therefore called 'external;' and the only 
 possible material causes and effhcts (if we are still to apply 
 the terms cause and effect to matter) are sensations, and 
 clusters of sensations, that are connected in an Order which 
 common sense makes us regard as uniform, which true philo- 
 sophy refers to the supreme rational WilP. 
 
 These 31 sections contain reasons for adopting this con- 
 ception of the necessary dependence of the material world 
 on Mind. A logical analysis of the reasons, and refutatio]i 
 of objections, is a good intellectual exercise. 
 
 11. (Sect. 34-84). A criticism of this theory of the ne- 
 cessary dependence of Matter on Mind, and of the evidence 
 
 * In Berkeley's nomenclature, external things are ideas; we have 
 notions of self-conscious mind as substance and as cause, and also of 
 relations among our ideas ; but we can have neither an idea nor a 
 notion of Matter abstracted out of all relation to the conscious life of 
 feeling and thought.
 
 6 Vrefatory Note. 
 
 by which it is supported — in the form of a statement and 
 refutation of fourteen Objections to it. 
 
 Other objections and difficulties, not conceived by Berkeley, 
 and partly arising in later philosoi)hical thought, might be 
 added, and critically examined by the student. Some of 
 them are referred to in foot-notes which I have introduced. 
 
 III. (Sect. 85-1 56). The conception of Matter as consisting 
 of sensations, or phenomena of sense, necessarily dependent on 
 a conscious mind for their intelligible existence, thus examined 
 and guarded against objections, is next applied to expel Scepti- 
 cism and restore Belief as well as to improve the Sciences. 
 The relative sections may be thus subdivided : — 
 
 1. (Sect. 85-100). Application of the theory of the neces- 
 sary dependence of the material world on percipient and 
 active Mind — - 
 
 (fl) To i-estore, in an intelligible form. Beliefs which were 
 dissolving in Scepticism (Sect. 85-96); 
 
 (6) To free language and thought from unmeaning ab- 
 sti'actions (Sect. 97-100) ; 
 
 2. (Sect. 101-134). Its application to the Sciences of 
 External Nature — 
 
 {a) In purifying and advancing Experimental Physics, 
 impeded by empty abstractions of Matter, Causation, Space, 
 Time, and Motion (Sect. 101-116); 
 
 (6) In making Mathematics more intelligible, by relieving 
 perplexities and contradictions to which the abstraction of 
 Quantitative Infinity had given rise, in reasonings about 
 number and space. 
 
 3. (Sect. 135-156). Its application to our knowledge of 
 the world of Spirits — human and Divine — 
 
 (a) By explaining and sustaining faith in the natural 
 Immortality of men (Sect. 137-144); 
 
 {I}) By explaining the belief which each man has in the 
 existence of other men (Sect. 145);
 
 Prefatory Note. 7 
 
 (c) By explaining and sustaining faith in the existence of 
 God (Sect. 146-156). 
 
 This Treatise, intended as a short and easy method with 
 Materialists, is the most systematic and comprehensive of 
 Berkeley's philosophical works \ It is an attempt to anal^'se 
 the meaning of the common term ' Matter,' in a severe 
 adherence to our concrete experience, purified from the 
 abstractions that empty words are so apt to conceal. The 
 student may find some of his best philosophical education 
 and discipline in trying to determine whether its conception 
 of what Matter means is after all a sufficient philosophical 
 representation of human experience. 
 
 A. C. F. 
 
 ' It is, however, only Part First of the Treatise as originally de- 
 signed. Three years later its leading Principle was placed in new lights 
 in his Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous ( Works, vol. I. 
 pp. 241-360), as a further preparation for Part Second, which never 
 appeared. Much of the Second Part was written, but the manuscript 
 was lost when Berkeley was travelling in Italy. This is mentioned in 
 a letter from Berkeley to Dr. Samuel Johnson of New York, lately 
 recovered among Dr. Johnson's correspondence. See Beardsley's ' Life 
 and CoiTcspondence of Samuel Johnson, D.D.' (New York, 1874.)
 
 THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 "What I here make public has, after a loug and scrupulous 
 inquiry, seemed to me evidently true, and not unuseful to be 
 known — particularly to those who are tainted with Scepti- 
 cism^, or want a demonstration'^ of the Existence and Imma- 
 teriality of God, or the Natural Immortality of the Soul. 
 "Whether it be so or no I am content the reader should im- 
 partially examine ; since I do not think myself any farther 
 concerned for the success of what I have written than as it is 
 agreeable to truth. But, to the end this may rot suffer, I 
 make it my request that the reader suspend his judgment till 
 he has once at least read the whole through with that degree 
 of attention and thought which the subject-matter shall seem 
 to deserve. For, as there are some passages that, taken by 
 
 ^ 'Scepticism,' in the form of doubt or disbelief of dogmatic assump- 
 tions of Theology, was what gave rise to Berkeley's reconsideration of 
 the meaning of what we call Matter. Hume afterwards, putting a 
 purely empirical interpretation on the philosophy of Locke and Berkeley, 
 transformed the spiritualised universe of the latter into universal scep- 
 tical nescience. 
 
 '^ Does he here use 'demonstration' in its looser meaning of ana- 
 logical proof which leaves no room for reasonable doubt that a thing is 
 true in fact, or in its strict sense of something shown to be necessary in 
 itself, the opposite being contrary to the absolute nature of things ? It 
 appears that Berkeley had intended to explain this in the Principles, 
 but the intention was not carried out. 'I shall demonstrate all my 
 doctrines. The nature of demoristration to be set forth and insisted on 
 in the Introduction. In that I must differ from Locke, for he makes all 
 demonstration to be about abstract ideas, which I say we have not and 
 cannot have' {Commonplace Book, in Works, vol. IV. p. 439). — Locke 
 held that we cannot Icnow external things except while they are actually 
 present to our senses : all beyond is presumed as more or less probable. 
 Except the existence of God, only the relations of abstract ideas are 
 demonstrable according to Locke.
 
 10 The Author's Preface. 
 
 themselves, are very liable (uor could it be remedied) to gross 
 misinterpretation, and to be charged with most absurd con- 
 sequences, which, nevertheless, upon an entire perusal will 
 appear not to follow from them ; so likewise, though the 
 whole should be read over, yet, if this be done transiently, it 
 is very probable my sense may be mistaken ; but to a think- 
 ing reader I flatter myself it will be throughout clear and 
 obvious. — As for the characters of novelty and singularity 
 which some of the following notions may seem to bear, it is, 
 I hope, needless to make any apology on that account. He 
 must surely be either very weak, or very little acquainted 
 with the sciences, who shall reject a truth that is capable of 
 demonstration, for no other reason but because it is newly 
 known, and contrary to the prejudices of mankind. Thus 
 much I thought fit to premise, in order to pi-event, if pos- 
 sible, the hasty censures of a sort of men who are too apt to 
 condemn an opinion before they rightly comprehend it.
 
 THE AUTHOE'S INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I. Philosophy being nothing else but the study of wisdom 
 and truth \ it may with reason be expected that those who 
 have spent most time and pains in it should enjoy a greater 
 calm and serenity of mind, a greater clearness and evidence 
 of knowledge, and be less disturbed with doiibts and diffi- 
 culties than other men. Yet so it is, we see the illiterate 
 bulk of mankind, that walk the high-road of plain common 
 sense, and are governed by the dictates of nature, for the most 
 part easy and undisturbed. To them nothing that is familiar 
 appears unaccountable or difficult to comprehend. They com- 
 
 • The definitions of Philosophy which have been given are various. 
 They imply in general that it is the deepest and truest insight into the 
 ultimate meaning of our experience. Its aim, as distinguished from 
 ordinary knowledge and science, is, if possible, to conceive the universe 
 under the unity of a single rational principle. 
 
 But it does not follow that this aim is fully attainable, or that our 
 experience can (by us) be reduced to a rational unity in which faith 
 is entirely eliminated by being converted into reasoned knowledge. 
 Philosophy as ' the study of wisdom' may issue in the discovery that 
 this result is inconsistent with a due recognition of our physical and 
 moral experience. Bacon thus puts it in speaking of theology : — ' As 
 for perfection or completeness in divinity it is not to be sought. For 
 he that will reduce a knowledge into an art will make it round and 
 uniform ; but in divinity many things must be left abrupt' (Advance- 
 ment of Learning). The history of Philosophy has been the history of 
 a struggle between, on the one side, Idealism or Materialism, as com- 
 plete explanations, and, on the other side, those who find themselves 
 obliged by the data of experience to leave many things ' abrupt.' — In 
 this and the four sections which follow, the imaginative ardour of 
 Berkeley too much encourages the expectation that philosophy can solve 
 all difficulties ; and in the end he professes to have done this — as far as 
 the material world is concerned. All tlu:ough, however, there is even 
 with him an unexplained residuum — a moral duality in experience — 
 and the recognition of an end higher than philosophical science.
 
 12 I)iiro(lnctio7i. 
 
 plain not of any want of evidence in tlieir senses, and are out 
 of all danger of becoming Sceptics. But no sooner do we 
 depart from Sense and Instinct to follow the light of a 
 superior principle — to reason, meditate, and reflect on the 
 nature of things, but a thousand scruples spring up in our 
 minds concerning those things which before we seemed fully 
 to comprehend. Prejudices and errors of sense do from all 
 parts discover themselves to our vieAv ; and, endeavouring to 
 correct these by Reason, we are insensibly drawn into uncouth 
 paradoxes, difficulties, and inconsistencies, which multiply 
 and grow upon us as we advance in specidation, till at length, 
 having wandered through many intricate mazes, we find 
 ourselves just where we were, or, which is worse, sit down in 
 a forlorn Scepticism ^. 
 
 2. The cause of this is thought to be the obscurity of 
 things, or the natural weakness and imperfection of our 
 understandings. It is said, * the faculties we have are few, 
 and those designed by nature for the support and pleasure of 
 life, and not to penetrate into the inward essence and consti- 
 tution of things. Besides, the mind of man being finite, when 
 it treats of things which partake of infinity, it is not to be 
 Avondei-ed at if it run into absurdities and contradictions, out 
 of which it is impossible it should ever extricate itself, it 
 being of the nature of infinite not to be comprehended by 
 that which is finite ^' 
 
 ^ The aim of Berkeley was to reconcile Philosophy — the ultimate 
 meaning of the universe in which we find ourselves — with the unphilo- 
 sophised experience of common sense. He worked for this by trying to 
 substitute facts for empty verbal abstractions. 
 
 ^ Cf. Descartes' Third Meditation ; also Locke's Essay, Introduction, 
 sect. 4-7. Locke attributes the perplexities and unprogressiveness of 
 Philosophy to our narrow faculties, which are meant only to regulate 
 our lives, and not to make the universe perfectly intelligible. The 
 uncertainty of metaphysics, and the inability of the mass of mankind to 
 understand its language, is a constant complaint, paralleled by the 
 constancy with which metaphysical speculation is nevertheless sustained 
 in each successive age — to satisfy a want that is deeply seated, if not 
 in many intelligently developed.
 
 FMlosophy and its Perplexities. 13 
 
 3. But, perhaps, we may be too partial to ourselves in 
 placing the fault originally in our faculties, and not rather 
 in the wrong use we make of them. It is a hard thing to 
 suppose that right deductions from true principles should 
 ever end in consequences which cannot be maintained or 
 made consistent. We should believe that God has dealt 
 more bountifully with the sons of men than to give them a 
 strong desire for that knowledge which he had placed quite 
 out of their reach. This were not agreeable to the wonted 
 indulgent methods of Providence, which, whatever appetites 
 it may have implanted in the creatures, doth usually furnish 
 them with such means as, if rightly made use of, will not 
 fail to satisfy them\ UiDon the whole, I am inclined to think 
 that the far greater part, if not all, of those difficulties which 
 have hitherto amused philosophers, and blocked up the way 
 to knowledge, are entirely owing to oui'selves — that we have 
 first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see. 
 
 4. My purpose therefore is, to try if I can discover what 
 those Principles are which have introduced all that doubt- 
 fulness and uncertainty, those absiu'dities and contradictions, 
 into the several Sects of Philosophy; insomuch that the wisest 
 men have thought our ignorance incurable, conceiving it to 
 arise from the natural dulness and limitation of our faculties. 
 And surely it is a work well deserving our pains to make 
 a strict inquiry concerning the First Principles of Human 
 Knowledge, to sift and examine them on all sides ; especially 
 since there may be some grounds to suspect that those lets 
 and difficulties, which stay and embarrass the mind in its 
 
 * Have we any reason a priori to suppose that our moral and physical 
 experience is (by us) resolvable into an intelligible unity ? Does it not 
 at last issue in the moral trust that it is somehow capable of solution, 
 though not by us, whose experience is intelligible only under relations 
 of time ? To take the universe as we find it, after we have exhausted 
 reflection upon it, is ' wisdom,' even if we find that it consists at last of 
 irreducible facts. We are not to assume that the chief end of man is 
 to reach a knowledge which makes no demand upon faith, because 
 purged of all that is mysterious or inexplicable.
 
 •jGi. 
 
 14 hilrodnction, 
 
 search after truth, do not spring from any darkness and in- 
 tricacy in tlie objects, or natural defect in the understanding, 
 so much as from False Principles which have been insisted 
 on, and might have been avoided ', 
 
 5. How difficult and discouraging soever this attempt may 
 seem, when I consider what a number of very great and ex- 
 traordinary men have gone before me in the like designs, yet 
 I am not without some hojies — upon the consideration that 
 the largest views are not always the clearest, and that he who 
 is short-sighted will be obliged to draw the object nearer, 
 and may, perhaps, by a close and narrow survey, discern that 
 which had escaped far better eyes. 
 
 6. In order to prepare the mind of the reader for the 
 easier conceiving what follows, it is proper to premise some- 
 what, by way of Introduction, concerning the Nature and 
 Abuse of Language. But the uni-avelling this matter leads 
 me in some measure to anticipate my design, by taking 
 notice of what seems to have had a chief part in rendering 
 speculation intricate and perplexed, and to have occasioned 
 innumerable errors and difficulties in almost all parts of 
 knowledge. And that is the ojpinion that the mind hath a 
 power of framing abstract ideas or notions of things. He 
 who is not a perfect sti-anger to the writings and disputes 
 of philosophers must needs acknowledge that no small part 
 of them are spent about abstract ideas ^. These are in a more 
 especial manner thought to be the object of those sciences 
 which go by the name of Logic and Metaphysics, and of all 
 
 ^ Berkeley, as we shall see, finds an explanation of the anarchy of 
 Philosophy in assumptions — meaningless, and therefore impossible to 
 believe — to which, under cover of empty names, it had helped to give 
 currency. 
 
 '"' Berkeley's use of 'idea' — as equivalent to phenomenon present 
 in sense, or represented in imagination — must be distinguished from 
 the Platonic or the Kantian Idea, and from his own later use of the 
 term 'notion.' By idea he here means phenomena either present in 
 sense or imaginable. For him 'abstract ideas' would be abstract phe- 
 nomena — plienomena that are not phenomena.
 
 Assumption that we have Abstract Ideas of Things. 15 
 
 that which passes under the notion of the most abstracted 
 and sublime learning, in all which one shall scarce find any 
 question handled in such a manner as does not suppose their 
 existence in the mind, and that it is well acquainted with 
 them^ 
 
 7. It is agreed on all hands that the qualities or modes of 
 things do never really exist each of them apart by itself, and 
 separated from all others, but are mixed, as it were, and 
 blended together, several in the same object. But, we are 
 told, the mind being able to consider each quality singly, or 
 abstracted from those other qualities with which it is united, 
 dots by that means frame to itself abstract ideas. For 
 example, there is perceived by sight an object extended, 
 coloured, and moved : this mixed or compound idea the mind 
 resolving into its simple, constituent parts, and viewing each 
 by itself, exclusive of the rest, does frame the abstract ideas 
 of extension, colour, and motion. Not that it is possible for 
 colour or motion to exist without extension ; but only that 
 the mind can frame to itself by abstraction the idea of colour 
 exclusive of extension, and of motion exclusive of both colour 
 and extension, 
 
 8. Again, the mind having observed that in the particular 
 extensions perceived by sense there is something common 
 
 ^ Compare with what follows against abstract ideas (as Berkeley 
 understands idea), sect. 97-100, 118-132, 143; Neto Theory of Vision, 
 sect. 122-125. See also Alciphron, Dial. vii. 5-7, and Defence of Free 
 Thinhinrj in Mathematics, sect. 45-4S, in Works, vols. ii. iii. But in the 
 end compare all this with Siris, sect. 335, and the sections in Siris 
 which follow, on the ' Ideas' of Plato, to which Berkeley's ' notions' are 
 nearer than his ideas. 
 
 In the following sections, on the abuse and legitimate use of words 
 and of the faculty of abstraction, Berkeley has Locke much in view. 
 What is said of 'abstract ideas' in Locke's Essay may be studied in 
 this connexion. Hume refers to Berkeley {Treatise of Human Nature, 
 b. I. part I. chap. 7) as having, by bringing to light the absurdity of 
 abstract ideas, produced ' one of the greatest and most valuable dis- 
 coveries that has been made of late years in the republic of letters.' 
 See also J. S. Mill, in Fortnightly Beview for Nov. 1871, on Berkeley's 
 ' discovery' of the true nature and office of abstraction in the formation 
 of human knowledge.
 
 16 Introduction. 
 
 and alike in all, and some other tilings peculiar, as this or 
 that figure or magnitude, which distinguish them one from 
 another ; it considers apart or singles out by itself that 
 which is common, making thereof a most abstract idea of 
 extension, which is neither line, surface, nor solid, nor has 
 any figure or magnitude, but is an idea entirely prescinded 
 fi'om all these \ So likewise the mind, by leaving out of the 
 particular colours perceived by sense that which distinguishes 
 them one from another, and retaining that only which is 
 common to all, makes an idea of colour in abstract which is 
 neither red, nor blue, nor white, nor any other determinate 
 colour. And, in like manner, by considering motion ab- 
 stractedly not only from the body moved, but likewise from 
 the figure it describes, and all particular directions and velo- 
 cities, the abstract idea of motion is fi'amed ; which equally 
 corresponds to all jj(irticular motions whatsoever that may 
 be perceived by sense. 
 
 9. And as the mind frames to itself abstract ideas of 
 qualities or modes, so does it, by the same j^recision or mental 
 ■ ; A ^ separation, attain abstract ideas of the more compounded 
 beings which include several co-existent qualities. For ex- 
 ample, the mind having observed that Peter, James, and 
 John resemble each other in certain common agreements of 
 shape and other qualities, leaves out of the complex or com- 
 pounded idea it has of Peter, James and any other particular 
 man, that which is peculiar to each, retaining only what is 
 common to all, and so makes an abstract idea wherein all the 
 particulars equally jiartake — abstracting entirely from and 
 cutting off all those circumstances and differences which might 
 determine it to any particular existence. And after this 
 manner it is said Ave come by the abstract idea of man, or, 
 if you please, humanity, or human nature ; wherein it is true 
 
 ^ 'Prescinded,' i.e. exclusively attended to. To prescind an idea 
 or phenomenon is to attend to it to the exclusion of other ideas or 
 phenomena.
 
 Our Ideas tnust be of Particular Things. 17 
 
 there is included colour, because there is no man but has 
 some colour, but then it can be neither white, nor black, nor 
 any particular colour, because there is no one particular 
 colour wherein all men partake. So likewise there is in- 
 cluded stature, but then it is neither tall stature, nor low 
 stature, nor yet middle stature, but something abstracted 
 from all these. And so of the rest. Moreover, there being 
 a great variety of other creatures that partake in some parts, 
 but not all, of the complex idea of man, the mind, leaving 
 out those parts which are peculiar to men, and retaining 
 those only which are common to all the living ci'eatures, 
 frames the idea of animal, which abstracts not only from 
 all particular men, but also all birds, beasts, fishes, and in- 
 sects. The constituent parts of the abstract idea of animal 
 are body, life, sense, and spontaneous motion. By body is 
 meant body without any particular shape or figure, there 
 being no one shape or figure common to all animals, without 
 covering, either of hair, or feathers, or scales, &c., nor yet 
 naked : hair, feathers, scales, and nakedness being the dis- 
 tinguishing properties of particular animals, and for that 
 reason left out of the abstract idea. Upon the same account 
 the spontaneous motion must be neither walking, nor flying, 
 nor creeping ; it is nevertheless a motion, but what that 
 motion is it is not easy to conceive. 
 
 10. "Whether others have this wonderful faculty of ab- 
 stracting their ideas, they best can tell. For myself, I find 
 indeed I have indeed a faculty of imagining, or representing 
 to myself, the idea of those particular things I have per- 
 ceived, and of variously compounding and dividing them. I 
 can imagine a man with two heads, or the upper parts of a 
 man joined to the body of a horse. I can consider the hand, 
 the eye, the nose, each by itself abstracted or separated from 
 the rest of the body. — But then whatever hand or eye I 
 imagine, it must have some particular shape and colour. 
 
 c
 
 18 Introduction. 
 
 Likewise the idea of man that I frame to myself must 1)6 
 either of a white, or a black, or a tawny, a straight, or a 
 crooked, a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man. I cannot 
 by any effoi't of thought conceive ^ the abstract idea above 
 described. — And it is equally impossible for me to form the 
 abstract idea of motion distinct from the body moving, and 
 which is neither swift nor slow, cur\ilinear nor rectilinear ; 
 and the like may be said of all other abstract general ideas 
 whatsoever. To be plain, I own mj^self able to abstract in 
 one sense, as when I consider some particular parts or 
 qualities separated from others, with which, though they are 
 united in some object, yet it is possible they may really exist 
 without them. But I deny that I can abstract from one 
 another, or conceive separately, those qualities which it is 
 impossible should exist so separated ; or that I can frame a 
 general notion^, by abstracting from particulars in the manner 
 aforesaid — which last are the two proper acceptations of 
 abstraction. And there is ground to think most men will 
 acknowledge themselves to be in my case. The generality 
 of men which are simple and illiterate never pretend to ab- 
 stract notions '^. It is said they are difficult and not to be 
 attained without pains and study; we may therefore reason- 
 ably conclude that, if such thei'e be, they are confined only 
 to the learned. 
 
 II. I proceed to examine what can be alleged in defence 
 of the doctrine of abstraction, and try if I can discover what 
 it is that inclines the men of speculation to embrace an 
 opinion so remote from Common Sense as that seems to be. 
 There has been a late deservedly esteemed ijliilosopher^ who, 
 
 ^ ' Conceive' = realise in imagination. 
 
 ^ Here 'notion ' = abstract idea = abstract imatre, wliicli last is mani- 
 festly absurd. The so-called abstract ideas are really relations of 
 ideas, and relations as such cannot be individualised either in sense 
 or in imagination. 
 
 ' Locke. E.xamine whether Locke means by ' abstract ideas ' what
 
 LocJces account of Ahstract Ideas of Things. 19 
 
 no (loul)t, has given it very mucli countenance, by seeming 
 to think the liaving abstract general ideas is what puts the 
 widest diflference in point of understanding betwixt man and 
 beast. ' The having of general ideas,' saith he, ' is that which 
 puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an 
 excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means 
 attain unto. For, it is evident we observe no foot-steps in 
 them of making use of general signs for universal ideas ; 
 from which we have reason to imagine that they have not 
 the faculty of abstracting, or making general ideas, since they 
 have no use of words or any other general signs.' And a 
 little after : ' Therefore, I think, we may suppose that it is in 
 this that the species of brutes are discriminated from men, 
 and it is that proper difference wherein they are wholly sepa- 
 rated, and which at last widens to so wide a distance. For, 
 if they have any ideas at all, and are not bare machines (as 
 some^ would have them), we cannot deny them to have some 
 reason. It seems as evident to me that they do, some of 
 them, in certain instances reason as that they have sense ; 
 but it is only in particular ideas, just as they receive them 
 from their senses. They are the best of them tied up within 
 those narrow bounds, and have not (as I think) the faculty to 
 enlarge them by any kind of abstraction.' — Essay on Human 
 Understanding, b. II. ch. ii. §§ lo and ii. I readily agree 
 with this leai-ned author, that the faculties of brutes can by 
 no means attain to abstraction. But then if this be made 
 the distinguishing property of that sort of animals, I fear a 
 great many of those that pass for men must be reckoned into 
 
 Berkeley supposes he does. The objections in the text are due to 
 ^ ^^ Berkeley's arbitrary limitation of the term 'idea' to the perceived 
 ^^-fefand the imagined, to the exclusion of the results of the mind's own 
 X 4^7*4'^'^'^"™*^^® activity, when we ge ner alise from the data of sense and 
 J T imagination, and form what are called conceptif. 
 
 ^ The Cartesians, rejecting one of the alternatives open in their 
 
 philosophy — that brutes are self-conscious spirits independent of and 
 
 separable from their bodies, preferred the only other — that they are 
 
 vital organisms without self-consciousness. 
 
 C 2 
 
 /!sa|]
 
 20 Introduclion. 
 
 their number. The reason that is here assigned why we have 
 no grounds to think brutes have abstract general ideas is, 
 that we observe in them no use of words or any other 
 general signs ; which is built on this sujiposition — that the 
 making use of words implies the having general ideas. From 
 which it follows that men who use language are able to ab- 
 stract or generalise their ideas. That this is the sense and 
 arguing of the author will further appear by his answering 
 the question he in another place puts : ' Since all things that 
 exist are only particulars, how come we by general terms'?' 
 His answer is : ' "Words become general by being made the 
 signs of general ideas.' — Essay on Human Understanding, 
 b. III. ch. 3. § 6.\ — But it seems that a word becomes general 
 by being made the sign, not of an abstract general idea, but 
 of several particular ideas, any one of which it indifferently 
 suggests to the mind. | For example, when it is said ' the 
 change of motion is proportional to the impressed force,' or 
 that ' whatever has extension is divisible,' these propositions 
 are to be understood of motion and extension in general ; 
 and nevertheless it will not follow that they suggest to my 
 thoughts an idea of motion without a body moved, or any 
 determinate direction and velocity, or that I must conceive 
 an abstract general idea of extension, which is neither line, 
 surface, nor solid, neither great nor small, black, white, nor 
 red, nor of any other determinate colour. It is only implied 
 that whatever particular motion I consider, whether it be 
 swift or slow, perpendicular, horizontal, or oblique, or in 
 whatever object, the axiom concerning it holds equally true. 
 As does the other of every 2)(irticular extension, it matters 
 not whether line, surface, or solid, whether of this or that 
 magnitude or figure'. 
 
 * 'A concept as such cannot be presented intuitively ; but it must 
 contain no attribute which is incompatible with the intuitive presenta- 
 tion of its object. It is not itself an individual, but it m ust comprehend 
 such attributes as are capable of individualisation. . . . The rule 
 individualise your concepts does not mean sensationalise them, unless
 
 How Ideas may he General, yet not Abstract. 21 
 
 12. By observing how ideas become general, we may the 
 better judge how words are made so. I And here it is to be 
 noted that I do not deny absolutely there are general ideas, 
 but only that there are any abstract general ideas ; for, in 
 the passages we have quoted wherein there is mention of 
 general ideas, it is always supposed that they are formed by 
 abstraction, after the manner set forth in sections 8 and 9.) 
 Now, if we will annex a meaning to our words, and speak 
 only of what we can conceive, I believe we shall acknowledge 
 that an id ea which, considered in itself, is jDarticular, becomes 
 general by being made to represent or stand for all other 
 particular ideas of the same sort. — To make this plain by an 
 example, suppose a geometrician is demonstrating the method 
 of cutting a line in two equal parts. He draws, for instance, 
 a black line of an inch in length : this, which in itself is a 
 particular line, is nevertheless with regard to its signification 
 general, since, as it is there used, it represents all parti- 
 cular lines whatsoever; so that what is demonstrated of it 
 is demonstrated of all lines, or, in other words, of a line 
 in general. And, as that particular line becomes general 
 by being made a sign, so the oiame ' line,' which taken ab- 
 solutely is particular, by being a sign is made general. 
 And as the former owes its generality not to its being 
 the sign of an abstract or general line, but of all parti- 
 cular right lines that may possibly exist, so the latter must 
 be thought to derive its generality from the same cause, 
 namely, the various particular lines which it indifferently 
 denotes^. 
 
 the senses are the only sources of presentation.' (Mansel; see Proleg. 
 Lorjka, pp. 23, 33.) 
 
 ^ Berkeley does not go so far as to say, with the extreme Nominalists, 
 that a particular idea becomes general only by the fact of its being 
 annexed to a general term, and that the 'generality' consists in the 
 accident of this term being applied to many individuals in common. 
 He here explains how a particular ' idea ' may stand for an indefinite 
 number of other particular ' ideas,' individualising the concept which 
 thus logically connects them. Their common name, itself a particular
 
 22 Introduction. 
 
 13. To give the reader a yet clearer view of the nature of 
 abstract ideas, and the uses they are thought necessary to, 
 I shall add one more passage out of the Essay on Human 
 Understanding , which is as follows : — ' Abstract ideas are 
 not so obvious or easy to children or the yet unexercised 
 mind as particular ones. If they seem so to grown men it 
 is only because by constant and familiar use they are made 
 so. For, when we nicely reflect upon them, we shall find that 
 general ideas are fictions and contrivances of the mind, that 
 carry difficulty with them, and do not so easily offer themselves 
 as we are apt to imagine. For examjile, does it not require 
 some pains and skill to form the general idea of a triangle 
 (which is yet none of the most abstract, comprehensive, and 
 difficult) ; for it must be neither oblique nor rectangle, neither 
 equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these 
 at once 1 In effect, it is something imperfect that cannot 
 exist, an idea wherein some parts of several different and in- 
 consistent ideas are put together. It is true the mind in tliis 
 imperfect state has need of such ideas, and makes all the 
 haste to them it can, for tlie conveniency of communication 
 and enlargement of knowledge, to both which it is naturally 
 very much inclined. But yet one has reason to suspect such 
 ideas are marks of our imperfection. At least this is enough 
 to shew that the most abstract and general ideas are not 
 those that the mind is first and most easily acquainted with, 
 nor such as its earliest knowledge is conversant about.' — 
 B. IV. ch. 7. § 9. If any man has the faculty of framing in 
 his mind such an idea of a triangle as is here described, it is 
 in vain to pretend to dispute him out of it, nor would I go 
 about it. All I desire is that the reader would fully and 
 certainly inform himself whether he has such an idea or no. 
 
 thing, is connected with their concept by an arbitrary association — for 
 the name — spoken or written — is not itsdf an individual example of 
 the concept which it signifies. It is only arbitrarily associated with it 
 by custom.
 
 Inconsistency implied in Ideas of Things heing Alstract. 23 
 
 And this, methinks, can be no hard task for any one to per- 
 form. What more easy than for any one to look a little into 
 his own thoughts, and there try whether he has, or can attain 
 to have, an idea that shall correspond with the description 
 that is here given of the general idea of a triangle — which 
 is neither oblique nor rectangle, equilateral, equicrural nor 
 scalenon, but all and none of these at once^ % 
 
 14. Much is here said of the difficulty that abstract ideas 
 carry with them, and the pains and skill requisite to the 
 forming them. And it is on all hands agreed that there is 
 need of great toil and labour of the mind, to emancipate our 
 thoughts from particular objects, and raise them to those 
 sublime speculations that are conversant about abstract ideas. 
 From all which the natural consequence should seem to be, 
 that so difficult a thing as the forming abstract ideas was not 
 necessary for communication, which is so easy and familiar 
 to all sorts of men. But, we are told, if they seem obvious 
 and easy to grown men, it is only because by constant and 
 familiar use they are made so. Now, I would fain know 
 at what time it is men are employed in surmounting that 
 difficulty, and furnishing themselves with those necessary helps 
 for discourse. It cannot be when they are grown up, for then 
 it seems they are not conscious of any such painstaking ; it 
 remains therefore to be the business of their childhood. And 
 surely the great and multiplied labour of framing abstract 
 notions will be found a hard task for that tender age. Is it 
 not a hard thing to imagine that a couple of children cannot 
 prate together of their sugar-plums and rattles and the rest 
 of their little trinkets, till they have first tacked together 
 
 * The language of Locke is awkward; but does it mean more than 
 that the concept of a triangle may be individualised in any one of its 
 many possible applications — oblique, equilateral, &c. — all of which it is 
 po tent ially, but no one of them actii^lly, till it is exemplified in that 
 particular application? No concept, formed hy genei'alisation, can be 
 represented in imagination except in an individual example. In itself 
 it belongs to the formal constitution, not to the phenomenal material, 
 of human knowledge.
 
 24 Introduction. 
 
 numberless inconsistencies, and so framed in their minds 
 abstract general ideas, and annexed them to every common 
 name they make use of? 
 
 15. Nor do I think them a whit more needful for the 
 enlargement of Jcnotvlechje than for communication. It is, 
 I know, a point much insisted on, that all knowledge and 
 demonstration are about universal notions, to wdiich I fully 
 agree : but then it does not appear to me that those notions 
 are formed by abstraction in the manner premised — univer- 
 sality, so far as I can comprehend, not consisting in the abso- 
 lute, positive nature or conception of anything, but in the 
 relation it bears to the particulars signified or represented 
 by it ; by virtue whereof it is that things, names, or notions \ 
 being in their own nature x>(^'''^ic'^^<^'>'j ^-re rendered universal. 
 Thus, when I demonstrate any proposition concei'ning trian- 
 gles, it is to be supposed that I have in view the universal 
 idea of a triangle ; which ought not to be understood as if 
 I could frame an idea of a triangle which was neither equi- 
 lateral, nor scalenon, nor equicrural ; but only that the par- 
 ticular triangle I consider, wdiether of this or that sort it 
 matters not, doth equally stand for and represent all recti- 
 linear triangles whatsoever, and is in that sense universal. 
 All which seems very plain and not to include any difficulty 
 in it 2. 
 
 16. But here it will be demanded, how we can know any 
 proposition to be true of all particular triangles, except we 
 have first seen it demonstrated of the abstract idea of a tri- 
 angle which equally agrees to all 1 For, because a property 
 may be demonstrated to agree to some one particular triangle, 
 
 ^ 'Notions' here = Berkeley's ideas, i.e. individual perceptions and 
 imaginations. 
 
 * This and the next are important sections. They touch the great 
 question — ivhat that is in the objective constitution of things which 
 enables us to find the universal in the particular, and to extend our 
 real knowledge beyond the data of sense and memory, by deductive 
 or inductive inferences. This question lies at the root of mediaeval 
 Realism, and also of modern inductive logic.
 
 TIow General jReasonings are Possible. 25 
 
 it will not thence follow that it equally ])elongs to any other 
 triangle, which in all respects is not the same with it. For 
 example, having demonstrated that the three angles of an 
 isosceles rectangular triangle are equal to two right ones, I 
 cannot therefore conclude this affection agrees to all other 
 triangles which have neither a right angle nor two equal 
 sides. It seems therefore that, to be certain this proposition 
 is universally true, we must either make a particular demon- 
 stration for every particular triangle, which is impossible, or 
 once for all demonstrate it of the abstract idea of a triangle, 
 in which all the particulars do indifferently partake and by 
 which they are all equally represented. — To which I answer, 
 that, though the idea I have in view whilst I make the de- 
 monstration be, for instance, that of an isosceles rectangular 
 triangle whose sides are of a determinate length, I may never- 
 theless be certain it extends to all other rectilinear triangles, 
 of what sort or bigness soever. And that because neither the 
 right angle, nor the equality, nor determinate length of the 
 sides are at all concerned in the demonstration. It is true 
 the diagram I have in view includes all these particulars, but 
 then there is not the least mention made of them in the proof 
 of the proposition. It is not said the three angles are equal 
 to two right ones, because one of them is a right angle, or 
 because the sides comprehending it are of the same length. 
 Which sufficiently shews that the right angle might have been 
 oblique, and the sides unequal, and for all that the demon- 
 stration have held good. And for this reason it is that I 
 conclude that to be true of any obliquangular or scalenon 
 which I had demonstrated of a particular right-angled equi- 
 crucal triangle, and not because I demonstrated the propo- 
 sition of the abstract idea of a triangle, p And here it must 
 be acknowledged that a man may consider a figure merely as 
 triangular, without attending to the particular qualities of 
 
 ' What follows to the end of this section was added in Berkeley's 
 third edition.
 
 26 Introduction. 
 
 the angles, or relations of the sides. So far he may abstract^; 
 but this will never prove that he can frame an abstract, 
 general, inconsistent idea of a triangle. In like manner we 
 may consider Peter so far forth as man, or so far forth as 
 animal, without framing the forementioned abstract idea, 
 either of man or of animal, inasmuch as all that is perceived 
 is not considered.] 
 
 1 7. It were an endless as well as an useless thing to trace 
 the Schoolmen, those great masters of absti'action, through 
 all the manifold inextricable labyrinths of error and dispute 
 which their doctrine of abstract natui*es and notions seems 
 to have led them into. What bickerings and controversies, 
 and what a learned dust have been raised about those 
 matters, and what mighty advantage has been from thence 
 derived to mankind, are things at this day too clearly known 
 to need being insisted on. And it had been well if the ill 
 effects of that doctrine were confined to those only who make 
 the most avowed profession of it. When men consider the 
 great pains, industry, and parts that have for so many ages 
 been laid out on the cultivation and advancement of the 
 sciences, and that notwithstanding all this the far greater part 
 of them remain full of darkness and uncertainty and disputes 
 that are like never to have an end, and even those that are 
 thought to be supported by the most clear and cogent demon- 
 strations contain in them paradoxes which are perfectly irre- 
 concilable to tlie understandings of men, and that, taking all 
 together, a very small portion of them does supply any real 
 benefit to mankind, otherwise than by being an innocent 
 diversion and amusement — I say, the consideration of all this 
 is apt to throw them into a despondency and perfect contempt 
 
 ^ Here Berkeley grants that without abstraction there can be no 
 scientific knowledge of things, provided that by absti'action is meant no 
 more than exclusive attention to the common attributes or relations of 
 indiridual tilings — a !^pontaneous process at first, afterwards matured 
 in scientific researches, by help of common terms and their definitions, 
 through logically calculated experiments and induction.
 
 Words a Cover for Uniply Abstractions. 27 
 
 of all study. But this may perhaps cease upon a view of 
 the False Principles that have obtained in the world, amongst 
 all which there is none, methinks, hath a more wide and 
 extended sway over the thoughts of speculative men than 
 this of ahstracl general ideas ^ 
 
 1 8. I come now to consider the source of this prevailing 
 notion, and that seems to me jto^beJLanguage. And surely 
 nothing of less extent than reason itself could have been the 
 source of an opinion so universally received. The truth of 
 this appears as from other reasons so also from the plain 
 confession of the ablest patrons of abstract ideas, who ac- 
 knowledge that they are made in order to naming; from 
 which it is a clear consequence that if there had been no 
 such thing as speech or universal signs there never had been 
 any thought of abstraction. See b. III. ch. 6. § 39, and else- 
 where of the Essay on Human Understanding. Let us 
 examine the manner wherein Words have contributed to the 
 origin of that mistake^. — First then, it is thought that every ^ 
 name has, or ought to have, one only precise and settled-* 
 signification; which inclines men to think there are certain 
 abstract, determinate ideas that constitute the trive and 
 only immediate signification of each general name, and 
 that it is by the mediation of these abstract ideas that a 
 general name comes to signify any particular thing. AVhereas, 
 in truth, there is no such thing as one precise and definite 
 signification annexed to any general name, they all signifying 
 
 ' To say that the abstract ideas against whicli Berkeley argues are 
 impossible is to say that abstract phenomena, or substances abstracted 
 from phenomena, are impossible. But this does not prove that isolated 
 phenomena constitute real knowledge ; or that they can become know- 
 ledge without connecting or constituting judgments of relations being 
 involved ; or that progress in real knowledge is other than an ever 
 widening and deepening appreliension of such relations. 
 
 ^ What follows on thought and language is a commentary on the 
 abuse of abstraction, especially in verbal controversies of meta- 
 physics and theology, and on the need for ' individualising our con- 
 cepts,' if we are to keep within the boundary of good sense and positive 
 knowledge.
 
 28 Introduction. 
 
 indifferently a great number of particular ideas ^. All which 
 does evidently follow from what has been already said, and 
 will clearly appear to any one by a little reflexion. To this 
 it will be objected that every name that has a definition is 
 thereby restrained to one certain signification. For example, 
 a triangle is defined to be 'a plain surface comprehended by 
 three right lines,' by which that name is limited to denote 
 one certain idea and no other. To which I answer, that in 
 the definition it is not said whether the surface be great or 
 small, black or white, nor whether the sides are long or 
 short, equal or unequal, nor with what angles they are in- 
 clined to each other ; in all which there may be great variety, 
 and consequently there is no one settled idea which limits 
 the signification of the word triangle. It is one thing for to 
 keep a name constantly to th e same de finition, and another 
 to make it stand everywhere^for the same idea ; the one is . .. 
 
 necessary, the other useless and impracticable '^. "' '" "^ 
 
 19. But, to give a farther account how words came to 
 produce the doctrine of abstract ideas, it must be observed 
 that it is a received opinion t hat language has no other end 
 but the communicating our id eas, and that every signifi cant 
 name stands for a n idea. This being so, and it being withal 
 certain that names which yet are not though t alto gether i n- 
 significant do not always mark out particular conceivable 
 ideas, it is straightway concluded t hat they stand for a bstract 
 notions. That there are many names in use amongst specu- 
 lative men which do not always suggest to others determinate 
 particular ideas, or in truth anything at all, is what nobody 
 will deny. And a little attention will discover that it is not 
 
 ^ This must be understood of the denotation rather tlian the conno- 
 tation and definition of a name. The same connotation may be found 
 exemplified in any one of many particular objects, irrespectively of their 
 individual differences. 
 
 ^ Yet a definition vlrtnnlly determines the individual objects (' ideas,' 
 as Berkeley would say) to which the name is applicable, although the 
 relations which constitute the concept expressed by the name defined 
 cannot be individualised in ima<jination.
 
 The Functions of Language hi Thought. 29 
 
 necessary (eveu in the strictest reasonings) significant names 
 whicli stand for ideas should, every time they are used, excite 
 in the understanding the ideas they are made to stand for — • 
 in reading and discoursing, names being for the most part 
 used as letters are in Algebra, in which, though a particular 
 quantity be marked by each letter, yet to proceed right it 
 is not requisite that in every step each letter suggest to 
 your thoughts that particular quantity it was ajjpointed to 
 stand for \ 
 
 20. Besides, the communicating of ideas marked by words 
 is not the chief and only end of language, as is commonly 
 supposed. There are other ends, as the raising of some 
 passion, the exciting to or deterring from an action, the 
 putting the mind in some particular disposition — to which 
 the former is in many cases barely subservient, and some- 
 times entirely omitted, when these can be obtained without 
 it, and I think does not unfrequently happen in the familiar 
 use of language. I entreat the reader to reflect with himself, 
 and see if it does not often happen, either in hearing or 
 reading a discourse, that the passions of fear, love, hatred, 
 admiration, and disdain, and the like, ax'ise immediately in 
 his mind upon the perception of certain words, without any 
 ideas coming between ^ At first, indeed, the words might 
 have occasioned ideas that were fitting to produce those 
 emotions ; but, if I mistake not, it will be found that, when 
 language is once grown familiar, the hearing of the sounds, or 
 
 ^ The 'symbolical knowledge' of Leibnitz (Opera Philosophica, 
 pp. 79-80, Erdmann), and Stewart on 'Abstraction' (Elements, vol. I. 
 chap. 4. §§ 1 and 2) — where he treats of signs, resembling and verbal 
 or non-resembling, and of the analogies of algebra and verbal signs ^ 
 may be compared with this. 
 
 * That is to say, without any ' ideas ' (particular examples) of the 
 sort of objects denoted by the words being sugsfested in his imagination 
 in the act of hearing or of reading — the word doing service instead. 
 Thought in this way proceeds more rapidly and easily ; but we are 
 apt, in consequence, to accept words that are meaningless or non- 
 sensical. To escape this we should test our supposed concepts by 
 individualising them, meantime dismissing the names till their intel- 
 ligibility has been verified.
 
 30 Intro(hiction. 
 
 sight of the characters, is oft immediately attended with tliose 
 passions which at first were wont to be produced by the 
 intervention of ideas that are now quite omitted. May we 
 not, for example, be affected with the promise of a good thing, 
 though we have not an idea of what it is 1 Or is not the 
 being threatened with danger sufficient to excite a dread, 
 though we think not of any particular evil likely to befall us, 
 nor yet frame to ourselves an idea of danger in abstract ? If 
 any one shall join ever so little reflexion of his own to what 
 has been said, I believe that it will evidently appear to him 
 that general names are often used in the propriety of lan- 
 guage without the speaker's designing them for marks of 
 ideas in his own, which he would have them raise in the 
 mind of the hearer. Even proper names themselves do not 
 seem always spoken with a design to bring into our view the 
 ideas of those individuals that are supposed to be marked by 
 them. For example, when a schoolman tells me ' Aristotle 
 hath said it,' all I conceive he means by it is to dispose me 
 to embrace his opinion with the deference and submission 
 which custom has annexed to that name. And this effect 
 is often so instantly produced in the minds of those who are 
 accustomed to resign their judgment to authority of that 
 philosopher, as it is impossible any idea either of his person, 
 writings, or reputation should go befoi'e. So close and im- 
 mediate a connexion may custom establish betwixt the very 
 tvord Aristotle and the motions of assent and reverence in 
 the minds of some men. Innumerable examples of this kind 
 may be given, but why should I insist on those things which 
 every one's experience will, I doubt not, plentifully suggest 
 unto him M 
 
 ' CoiDpare Alciphron, Dial. VII. sect. 8-10. Berkeley here show.s how 
 names — CHpeeially in jn)litic:s, tlieology, and metapliysics —may impose 
 upon the uneducated and half-educated, determining their feelings and 
 conduct independently of their intelligence. History records theological 
 controversies, and also social changes which were largely due to the in- 
 fluence on ill-educated minds of verbal shibboleths used without meaning.
 
 Bemedies for ilie Alnae of Words. 31 
 
 2 1 . We have, I think, shewn the imj)ossibility of Abstract 
 Ideas. We liave considered what has been said for them by 
 their ablest pati'ons ; and endeavoured to shew they are of 
 no use for those ends to which they are thought necessary. 
 And lastly, we have traced them to the source from whence 
 they flow, which appears evidently to be language. — It can- 
 not be denied that words are of excellent use, in that by their 
 means all that stock of knowledge which has been purchased 
 by the joint labours of inquisitive men in all ages and nations 
 may be drawn into the view and made the possession of one 
 single person. But most parts of knowledge have been 
 strangely perplexed and darkened by the abuse of Avords 
 and general ways of speech wherein they are delivered. 
 Since therefore words are so apt to impose on the un- 
 derstanding, whatever ideas I consider, I shall endeavour 
 to take tliem bare and naked into my view, keeping out 
 of my thoughts, so far as I am able, those names which 
 long and constant use hath so strictly united with them ; 
 from which I may expect to derive the following advan- 
 tages : — 
 
 2 2. First, I shall be sure to get clear of all controversies 
 purely verbal — the springing up of which weeds in almost all 
 the sciences has been a main hindrance to the growth of true 
 and sound knowledge. Secondly, this seems to be a sure 
 way to extricate myself out of that fine and subtle net of 
 abstract ideas which has so miserably perplexed and en- 
 tangled the minds of men ; and that with this peculiar 
 circumstance, that by how much the finer and more curious 
 Avas the wit of any man, by so much the deeper was he 
 likely to be ensnared and faster held therein. Thirdly, 
 so long as I confine my thoughts to my own ideas divested 
 of words, I do not see how I can easily be mistaken. The 
 objects I consider, I clearly and adequately know. I can- 
 not be deceived in thinking I have an idea which I haA'^e 
 not. It is not possible for me to imagine that any of
 
 33 Introduction. 
 
 my own ideas are alike or unlike that are not truly so. 
 To discern the agreements or disagreements there are be- 
 tween my ideas, to see what ideas are included in any 
 compound idea and what not, there is nothing more requi- 
 site than an attentive perception of what passes in my own 
 understanding ^ 
 
 23. But the attainment of all these advantages does pre- 
 suppose an entire deliverance from the deception of words 
 which I dare hardly promise myself; so difficult a thing it 
 is to dissolve an union so early begun, and confirmed by so 
 long a habit as that betwixt words and ideas. Which diffi- 
 culty seems to have been very much increased by the doc- 
 trine of abstraction. For, so long as men thought abstract 
 ideas were annexed to their words, it does not seem strange 
 that they should use words for ideas — it being found an 
 impracticable thing to lay aside the word, and retain the 
 abstract idea in the mind, which in itself was perfectly 
 inconceivable. 
 
 This seems to me the principal cause why those who have 
 so emphatically recommended to others the laying aside all 
 use of words in their meditations, and contemplating their 
 bare ideas, have yet failed to perform it themselves. Of late 
 many have been very sensible of the absurd opinions and in- 
 significant disputes which grow out of the abuse of words. 
 And, in order to remedy these evils, they advise well, that 
 we attend to the ideas signified, and draw off our attention 
 from the words which signify them '^. But, how good soever 
 this advice may be they have given others, it is plain they 
 could not have a due regard to it themselves, so long as they 
 
 * Berkeley ajipeals throughout to this test. He everywhere entreats 
 the student to examine his own consciousness and find whether he 
 can conceive clearly and distinctly the meanings of his philosophical 
 terms. 
 
 '•^ See Locke, Essay, b. II. ch. 13. §§ iS, 28 ; also b. III. oh. 10. The 
 drift of Berkeley's exhortation is good so far as it is fitted to guard us 
 against the dangerous tendency to accept empty words instead of concepts 
 that can be individualised.
 
 The Curiam of Words. 33 
 
 thought the only immediate use of words was to signify ideas, 
 and that the immediate signification of every general name 
 was a determinate abstract idea. 
 
 24. But, these being known to be mistakes, a man may 
 with greater ease prevent his being imposed on by words. 
 He that knows he has no other than particular ideas, will 
 not puzzle himself in vain to find out and conceive the ab- 
 stract idea annexed to any name. And he that knows names 
 do not always stand for ideas will spare himself the labour 
 of looking for ideas where there are none to be had. It 
 were, thei-efore, to be wished that every one would use his 
 utmost endeavours to obtain a clear view of the ideas he 
 would consider, separating from them all that dress and im- 
 cumbrance of words which so much contribute to blind the 
 judgment and divide the attention ^. In vain do we extend 
 our view into the heavens and pry into the entrails of the 
 earth, in vain do we consult the writings of learned men and 
 trace the dark footsteps of antiquity — we need only draw 
 the curtain of words, to behold the fairest tree of know- 
 ledge, whose fruit is excellent, and within the reach of our 
 hand. 
 
 25. Unless we take care to clear the First Principles of 
 Knowledge from the embarras and delusion of words, we 
 may make infinite reasonings upon them to no purpose ; we 
 may draw consequences from consequences, and be never the 
 wiser. The farther we go, we shall only lose ourselves the 
 more irrecoverably, and be the deeper entangled in difficulties 
 and mistakes. Whoever therefore designs to read the follow- 
 ing sheets, I entreat him that he would make my words the 
 occasion of his own thinking, and endeavour to attain the 
 same train of thoughts in reading that I had in writing them. 
 
 ' The student may perhaps ask here what he is to do when his words 
 signify what Berkeley afterwards called notions, and not idea^, if it ia 
 true that all words must at bottom signify what is representable in 
 imagination, under conditions of time.
 
 34 Introduction. 
 
 By this means it will be easy for him to discover the truth 
 or falsity of what I say. He will be out of all clanger of 
 being deceived by my words, and I do not see how he can 
 be led into an error by considering his own naked, undis- 
 guised ideas.
 
 OF THE 
 
 PEINCIPLES 
 
 OF 
 
 HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 I. IT is evident to any one wlio takes a survey of the 
 objects of human knowledge, that they are either ideas''- 
 actually imprinted ^ on the senses ; or else such as are per- 
 ceived ' by attending to the passions and operations of the 
 mind ; or lastly, ideas formed by help of memory and ima- 
 gination — either compounding, dividing, or barely represent- 
 ing those originally pei-ceived in the aforesaid ways*, — By 
 
 ^ Berkeley assumes at the outset with Locke that all we can know 
 must consist of ideas, meaning by ideas what Locke means. He after- 
 wards (§§ 3-24) goes on to argue that there can be nothing hyperphe- 
 nomenal in the things of sense, consistently with that acceptance of 
 experience and rejection of abstractions void of ideas on which he had 
 insisted in his Introduction. He does not raise the question, whether 
 unrelated phenomena can be knowledge. 
 
 - What precisely is here meant by ' imprinted ' ? So Hume's promi- 
 nent use afterwards of 'impression,' as distinguished from 'idea' — in 
 Hmne's meaning of idea. 
 
 * The term 'perception' is here applied to consciousness of internal 
 as well as of external phenomena. 
 
 * This sentence expresses Locke's thesis about our ' ideas ' in the 
 second book of the Essay. According to him they are all either simple 
 ideas, got either by the senses, or by reflexion on the ' passions and 
 operations of the miud ; ' or they are complex ideas, ' formed by help of 
 
 D 2
 
 36 Of ilie Principles 
 
 siglit I have the ideas of light and colours, with their several 
 degrees and variations. By touch I perceive hard and soft, 
 heat and cold, motion and resistance, and of all these more 
 and less either as to quantity or degree. Smelling furnishes 
 me with odours ; the palate with tastes ; and hearing con- 
 veys sounds to the mind in all their vai'iety of tone and com- 
 position. — And as several of these are observed to accom- 
 pany each other, they come to be marked by one name, and 
 so to be reputed as one thing ^. Thus, for examjile, a certain 
 colour, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been ob- 
 served to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, sig- 
 nified by the name ajiiile ; other collections of ideas consti- 
 tute a stone, a tree, a book, and the like sensible things — 
 which as they are pleasing or disagreeable excite the passions 
 of love, hatred, joy, grief, and so forth. 
 
 2. But, besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects 
 of knowledge, there is likewise something which kaoHa or 
 pergeives_them ; and exercises divers operations, as willing, 
 imagining, remembering, about them. This perceiving, ac- 
 tive being is what I call mind, spirit, soul, or myself. By 
 which words I do not denote any one of my ideas, but a 
 thing entirely distinct from_them, wherein they exist, or, 
 which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived — for 
 the e xistence of an idea consists in being p erceived '^. 
 
 memory and imagination,' and some (Locke adds) by abstraction. This 
 thesis is ambiguous as expressed both by Locke and by Berkeley ; and 
 Berkeley even more than Locke fails, in his earlier writings, to recog- 
 nise theoretically elements in knowledge on which he proceeds in his 
 reasoning. 
 
 ^ Is mere ' observation' enough to account for this synthesis, in which 
 ideas or phenomena are aggregated, and thus converted into things ? 
 Nothing is here said of sugrjedion — which has a function so im- 
 portant in his explanation of visual perception — nor of notions and 
 their office. See Commonplace Book (p. 444) on 'thing' and 'idea' as 
 equivalents. 
 
 * We have here rudiments of Berkeley's early Psychology — a rough 
 outline of sorts of ideas of which we can be conscious. He recognises 
 three sorts : — (a) those ' actually imprinted on the senses,' afterwards 
 (sect. 3) called ' sensations ' — as when what we are conscious of is
 
 of Human Knowledge. 37 
 
 3. That neither our thouglits, nor passions, nor ideas 
 formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what 
 everybody will allow. And to me it is no less evident that 
 the various sensations, or ideas ini'i^rinted on the sense, how- 
 ever blended or combined together (that is, wh atever objec ts 
 th ey com pose), cannot exist otherwise than in a mind per- 
 ceiving them — I think an intuitive knowledge may be ob- 
 tained of this by any one that shall attend to what is meant 
 
 something coloured, hard, odorous, &c. ; (h) 'passions and operations 
 of the mind ' — as when we are conscious of pleasurable or painful feel- 
 ings, or of exerting ourselves corporeally or intellectually ; (c) mental 
 representations and elaborations — as when we remember a scene we 
 have witnessed, or imagine one of our own creation, or generalise with 
 the help of words. These ideas are, as in Locke's Essay, the simple 
 and complex material of our knowledge. Their rational elaboration 
 is made to presuppose consciousness of self as its intellectual centre 
 and the principle of causality, which Berkeley afterwards used as uni- 
 versal, like Locke, but without critical examination of the origin of its 
 universality. 
 
 All this may be compared with Locke's 'plain historical' account of 
 our ideas in the second and third books of his Essays, and with his 
 account of our himvledge in the fourth book ; also with Hume's ' impres- 
 sions and ideas,' and their blind 'associations' directed by custom; 
 and with Kant's manifold of sense, understanding and its categories, 
 and reason. 
 
 The necessary correlate of all 'ideas' or 'phenomena' — that in and 
 through which they are intelligible, and in which their changes originate 
 — is, according to Beikeley, self-conscious Mind — of which each sense- 
 conscious self is an example. — Phenomena are phenomena, and are 
 phenomenal things, only on condition of the existence of mind ; for 
 the known necessarily implies a knower. — He does not ask whether 
 knowing may not equally require a something known (not necessarily 
 an idea of sense, however), in order to its realisation. — Note that 
 Berkeley's 'Mind' is an individual spirit — living and conscious — not] 
 abstract thought relations of an impersonal Ego. Compare with Kant's 
 synthetical unity of apperception, 
 
 Berkeley's analysis of the constitution of human knowledge thus in a 
 manner recognises (a) phenomena given in sense, (b) reproduced in 
 memory and imagination, (c) logically elaborated in generalisations, 
 (d) through reason and rational insight. The last is, in the Principles, 
 obscurely, if at all, recognised, in an undeveloped doctrine of ' notions.' 
 It is different in Siris. 
 
 The triplicity of Cognition, Feeling or Desire, and Will or moral 
 agency, including the contrast of passive and active consciousness, also 
 dimly appears in these sections. The actual relations of these three 
 among themselves, in the individual, give rise to the facts with which 
 Psychology deals.
 
 38 Of the Principles 
 
 by tlie term exist when applied to sensible things. The table 
 I write on I say exists, that is, I see and. feel it ; and if I 
 were out of ray study I should say it existed — meaning 
 thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that 
 some other spirit actually does perceive it. There was an 
 odour, that is, it was smelt ; there was a sound, that is, it 
 was heard ; a colour or figure, and it was perceived by sight 
 or touch. This is all that I can understand by these and the 
 like expressions. — For as to what is said of the absolute 
 existence of unthinking things without any relation to their 
 being perceived, that is to me perfectly unintelligible. Their 
 esse is jperc?j5t, nor is it possible they should have any exist- 
 ence out of the minds or thinking things which perceive 
 them \ 
 
 ^ It is in this tliird section that Berkeley first raises the characteristic 
 question of his philosophy, which might be thus expressed : — Do the 
 phenomena present in the five senses, and the individual things of 
 sense, which seem to be composed of what is presented to our senses, 
 really exist as substances, i. e. as entities that are independent of a 
 percipient mind ; or, if not, do they at least represe^it what so exists ? 
 Are what we call ' solid and extended things ' — wlifcE we actually touch 
 and see — independent of mind, in a way that imaginations and feelings 
 of the mind itself are not ? His answer is, that they cannot exist other- 
 wise than as phenomena of which a (not necessarily my) mind must be 
 percipient : their esse is percipi (he does not define what is ultimately 
 and necessarily involved in percipi, or in pcrcipcre, as Kant has tried to 
 do) ; for the supposition of a cluster of phenomena, or even a single 
 phenomenon, existing — as an abstraction — when no one is percipient 
 of it, is a meaningless supposition. To say 'the table exists^ means, 
 if it has any meaning, ' that it is seen or felt.' Out of all conscious 
 relation to its qualities — i. e. the phenomena of which it is made up — 
 the word ' table ' is an empty abstraction. (But what, one may ask, is 
 implied in the 'it;' and is Berkeley entitled, on his principles, to mean 
 by 'it' more than I see or feel in a particular ivay ? He has to explain 
 the transformation of mere sensations into perceptions of things existing 
 in space — the transformation oi feelings which are subjective into know- 
 ledge which is objective.) 
 
 Ueberweg charges Berkeley with begging his whole question because 
 he sets out by calling the things of sense sensations or ideas, thus im- 
 plying in the very connotation of their name that they have only a 
 subjective and phenomenal reality. But Berkeley need not, at setting 
 out, be supposed to mean more than that all that we are conscious of 
 must at any rate be present in consciousness, and must therefore be, 
 «o far, idea — leaving it still open to inquire, whether what is perceived
 
 of Human Knowledge. 39 
 
 4. ' It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst 
 men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible 
 objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their 
 being perceived by the understanding. But, with how great 
 an assurance and acquiescence soever this jDrinciple may be 
 entertained in the world, yet whoever shall find in his heart 
 to call it in question may, if I mistake not, perceive it to 
 involve a manifest contradiction. For, what are the fore- 
 mentioned objects but t he things we perceive by sens e % and 
 what do we perceive besides our ownj.deas or sens ations % and 
 is it not plainly repugnant that any one of iAese, or any com- 
 bination of them, should exist unperceived ^ ? 
 
 5. If we thoroughly examine this tenet it will, perhaps, be 
 found at bottom to depend on the doctrine of abstract ideas. 
 For can there be a nicer strain of abstraction than to dis- 
 tinguish the existence of sensible objects from their being 
 perceived, so as to conceive^ them existing unperceived 1 Light 
 and colours, heat and cold, extension and figures — in a word 
 the things we see and feel — what are they but so many sen- 
 sations, notions, ideas, or impressions on the sense * ? and is 
 
 in the five senses is more than this — whether it is, or at least repre- 
 sents, an independent entity. 
 
 ^ Sections 4-24 contain Berkeley's reasoned exposition of his answer 
 to the question about Matter raised in sect. 3. The truth of his own 
 answer to the question naust, he thinks, be self-evident to any one who 
 should attend to what must be meant by the word ' exist' when applied 
 to sensible things. That people are notwithstanding disposed to give a 
 different answer, he attributes (sect. 5) to our tendency to substantiate 
 verbal abstractions, on which he had enlarged in the Introduction. 
 
 ^ How does Berkeley in thus limiting our ' perceptions ' to the 
 ' ideas ' or phenomena of which we are individually conscious in sense 
 — 'our own ideas' — explain the objectivity of the material world? 
 His theory of vision would make it a ' suggestion ' of ' experience.' 
 
 ^ Must ' conceive ' here mean have an idea or mental image of, or 
 may it mean have a (Berkeleian) notion of? 
 
 * Here the ' things ' of sense are vaguely called ' notions,' as well as 
 ' sensations,' • ideas,' ' impressions on sense.' In Siris he calls them 
 ' phenomena.' Berkeley has not defined what he means, here and else- 
 where, by the metaphor ' impressions on sense,' which taken literally 
 makes perception motion in the organism instead of consciousness.
 
 40 Of the Trinciples 
 
 it possible to separate, even in thought, any of these from 
 perception % For my part, I might as easily divide a thing 
 from itself. I may, indeed, divide in my thoughts, or con- 
 ceive apart from each other, those things which, pei'haps, I 
 never perceived by sense so divided. Thus, I imagine the 
 trunk of a human body without the limbs, or conceive the 
 smell of a rose without thinking on the rose itself. So far, 
 I will not deny, I can abstract — if that may properly be 
 called abstraction which extends only to the conceiving sepa- 
 rately such objects as it is possible may really exist or be 
 actually perceived asunder. But my conceiving or imagining 
 power does not extend beyond the possibility of real exist- 
 ence or perception \ Hence, as it is impossible for me to see 
 or feel anything without an actual sensation of that thing, so 
 is it impossible for me to conceive in my thoughts any sensible 
 thing or object distinct from the sensation or perception of it. 
 pin truth, the object and the sensation are the same thing 
 and cannot therefore be abstracted from each other.] 
 
 6. Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind 
 that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take 
 this important one to be, viz. that all the choir of heaven and 
 furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which com- 
 pose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence 
 without a mind — that their being is to be ^perceived or known; 
 that consequently so long as they are not actually perceived 
 by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other 
 created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or 
 else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit — it being 
 perfectly unintelligible, and involving all the absurdity' of 
 abstraction, to attribute to any single part of them an exist- 
 ence independent of a spirit. To be convinced of which, the 
 reader need only reflect, and try to separate in his own 
 
 ^ But does our power of forming ' notions ' not extend beyond what 
 is phenomenal ; and may we not ' consider separately ' in thought what 
 in the perceptions of sense is always found united with something else 1 
 
 ^ This sentence is omitted in Berkeley's Second Edition.
 
 of Human Knoivledge. 41 
 
 thoughts the heing of a sensible thing from its being per- 
 ceived ^ 
 
 7. From wliat has been said it is evident there is not any 
 other Substance " tlian spirit, or that whic h perceive s '. But, 
 for the fuller demonstration of this point, let it be considered 
 the sensible qualities are colour, figure, motion, smell, taste, 
 &c., i. e. the ideas perceived by sense. Now, for an idea to 
 exist in an unperceiving thing is a manifest contradiction, 
 for to have an idea is all one as to perceive; that therefore 
 wherein colour, figure, &c. exist must perceive them ; hence 
 it is clear there can be no unthinking substance or substratum 
 of those ideas. 
 
 8. But, say you, thongh the ideas themselves do not exist 
 without the mind*, yet there may be things like them, 
 
 * Ueberweg grants Berkeley's argument as regards the necessary 
 dependence of phenomena of sense, severally or in aggregates, on perci- 
 pient mind : he denies that he has proved that there may not also be 
 external things, existing independently of their being perceived, which 
 may so operate on our senses that — in consequence of the organic agita- 
 tion produced — the spirit which animates every part of the organism 
 generates the perceptions of phenomena. 
 
 Berkeley has not here given articulate reason for adopting the alter- 
 native, that sensible things subsist ' in the mind of some Eternal 
 Spirit,' during intervals in which they are not perceived by finite spirits 
 — instead of the counter supposition of their having 'no existence at all,' 
 during such intervals. He does not even ask ivhy we are obliged to 
 suppose their continuity. Still less does he explain the manner in which 
 things exist in the Eternal Mind, which might be objected to as equally 
 unintelligible with their abstract or unperceived existence. Do they 
 exist as perceptions of sense, or as abstractions of reason, in the mind of 
 God ? Of this afterwards. 
 
 ^ He does not say distinctly what he means by existing substantially. 
 He seems (like Descartes) to suppose a relative as well as an absolute 
 substance or independence — the absolute Substance being God, or Sub- 
 stance in its highest meaning. 
 
 ^ It is implied that a mind or spirit must be ahvays conscious of 
 phenomena — that mind must think always. Otherwise, in unconscious 
 spirit we should still, on Berkeley's premises, have an empty abstraction 
 open to his objections against unperceived things. Indeed he argues 
 elsewhere that the essencejof mind is conscious. activity ; — an ' unthink- 
 ing substance or substratum of ideas * being a ' manifest contradiction?' 
 See Commonplace Book, pp. 439, 444, &c. 
 
 * As Sir \V. Hamilton, for instance, says the object present in per- 
 ception does. That 'object' is with him the animated and extended 
 organism of the percipient, which is at once within and without the
 
 42 Of the Principles 
 
 whereof they are copies or resemblances, which things exist 
 without the mind in an unthinking substance '. I answer, 
 an idea can be like nothing but an idea ; a colour or figure 
 can be like nothing but another colour or figure ^. If we look 
 but never so little into our own thoughts, we shall find it 
 impossible for us to conceive a likeness excejit only between 
 our ideas. Again, I ask whether those supposed originals or 
 external things, of which our ideas are the pictures or repre- 
 sentations, be themselves perceivable or no 1 If they are, 
 then they are ideas and we have gained our point ; but if you 
 say they are not, I appeal to any one whether it be sense to 
 assert a colour is like something which is invisible ; hard or 
 soft, like something which is intangible ; and so of the rest. 
 
 9. Some there are who make a distinction betwixt ^;rimar?/ 
 and secondary qualities ^. By the former they mean exten- 
 
 animating mind (see Hamilton's Eeid, pp. 860, &c.). There are curious 
 
 analogies between Berkeley and Hamilton in their view of external 
 
 perception. 
 
 ^ As those say who hold that our perception of the sensible world is 
 
 essentially mediate, implying either that external things are lihe our 
 
 feelings and cognitions, and thus literally representations of them ; or 
 \ else that the medium is something mysterious — neither a conscious 
 ' state or act, nor the extended external entity. Berkeley goes on to 
 
 argue that perception of sensible things can be like nothing hut itself. 
 
 ' An idea can be like nothing but an idea.' 
 
 * The reader may reflect on this assumption, illustrating it to himself 
 and examining its reason, as a useful exercise in psychology. Compare 
 with Locke's doctrine that our ideas of the immary qualities of matter 
 are resemblances of what really exists in bodies that are external. Is 
 Berkeley justified in putting 'figure' on the same footing as 'colour,' 
 as a mere 'idea or sensation' ? 
 
 * Locke is more immediately in his view. See Essay, b. II. ch. 8. 
 "We have here Berkeley's own treatment of the Qualities of Matter — 
 classed by Locke and other philosophers, according to their supposed in- 
 dependence of, or dependence on, a sentient mind. By the primary 
 (called also objective and mathematical) qualities of external things, of 
 which a list is here given, they meant properties of matter as such, 
 inhering in the thing — which exist unperceiving, and do not need to be 
 perceived. The secondary (jualities comprehend indefinitely numerous 
 properties of matter, as it is this, that, or the other kind of body, which 
 are manifested in our individual sensations. We knoic the primary 
 and we f \(; l the secondary qualities ; objective perception, it is said, 
 is only of the former. Now, Berkeley tries, in what follows, to melt 
 down the primary into sense-dependent phenomena like the secondary,
 
 of Human Knoioledge. 43 
 
 s ion, figure , motion, res t, solidity or impenetrability, and 
 number ; by the latter they denote all other sen sible qu alities, 
 as colours, sounds, tastes, and so forth. The ideas we have 
 of these last they acknowledge not to be the resemblances of 
 anything existing without the mind, or unperceived, but they 
 will have our ideas of the primary qualities to be patterns or 
 images of things which exist without the mind, in an un- 
 thinking substance which they call Matter. — By Matter, there- 
 fore, we are to understand an inert ^, sensdess substance, in \ 
 vjhich extension, figure, and motion do actually subsist. But 
 it is evident, from what we have already shewn, that exten- 
 sion, figure, and motion are only^ ideas existing in the mind, 
 and that an idea can be like nothing but another idea, and 
 that consequently neither they nor their archetypes can exist 
 in an unperceiving substance. Hence, it is plain that the 
 very notion of what is called Hatter or corporeal substance 
 involves a contradiction in it ^. 
 
 lo. They who assert that figure, motion, and the rest of 
 the primary or original qualities do exist without the mind 
 in unthinking substances, do at the same time acknowledge 
 that colours, sounds, heat, cold, and suchlike secondary quali- 
 ties, do not — which they tell us are sensations existing in the 
 
 affirming at the same time the practical reality of both. The argument 
 which follows is more fully unfulded in the First of his Three Dialogues, 
 in which the sensuous or phenomenal nature of the primary is main- 
 tained on the same grounds as that of the secondary qualities of things. 
 (See Works, vol. I. pp. 278-85.) 
 
 * The necessary ijowerlessness of the solid and extended things of 
 sense, with the consequent absurdity of all materialistic explanations 
 of the universe, is the essence of Berkeley's own philosophy. 
 
 * ' Only.' Has he shewn that the phenomenal things of sense may 
 not presuppose necessary mathematical relations, without which they 
 could not enter an intelligible experience ? 
 
 ' In this section Berkeley has defined the sort of 'Matter' against 
 which his reasoning is directed. It is inert, and senseless or unper- 
 ceiving ; yet extension, figure, and motion are supposed to exi.st in it, 
 as its objective qualities, so that it is per se extended, figured, and 
 moved. He tries to show that the very notion of this Matter is self- 
 contradictory. The reasoning implies that even our mathematical 
 knowledge of sensible things may be melted down into phenomena in 
 sense, which can exist only when and as perceived.
 
 44 Of the Principles 
 
 mind alone, that depend on and are occasioned by the dif- 
 ferent size, texture, and motion of the minute particles of 
 matter'. This they take for an undoubted truth, which they 
 can demonstrate beyond all exception. Now, if it be certain 
 that those original qualities are inseparably united with the 
 other sensible qualities, and not, even in thought, capable of 
 being abstracted from them, it jjlainly follows that they exist 
 only in the mind. But I desire any one to reflect and try 
 whether he can, by any abstraction of thought, conceive the 
 extension and motion of a body without all other sensible 
 qualities ^ For my own part, I see evidently that it is not in 
 my power to frame an idea of a body extended and moving, 
 but I must withal give it some colour or other sensible 
 quality which is acknowledged to exist only in the mind. . In 
 short, extension, figure, and motion, abstracted from all other 
 qualities, are inconceivable. Where therefore the other sen- 
 sible qualities are, there must these be also, to Avit, in the 
 mind and nowhere else. 
 
 II. Again, great and small, swift and slow, are allowed to 
 exist nowhere without the mind, being entirely relative, and 
 changing as the frame or position of the organs of sense 
 varies. The extension therefore which exists without the 
 mind is neither great nor small, the motion neither swift nor 
 slow, that is, they are nothing at all. But, say you, they are 
 extension in genei-al, and motion in general : thus we see 
 
 * See Locke's Essay, h. II. cli. 8. sect. 16-18 ; ch. 23. sect. 11; 
 b. IV. ch. 3. sect. 24-26, for his opinion, liere alluded to, about the 
 relation of the secondary to the primary qualities of matter — the former 
 being the supposed causal issue of (by us) unperceivable modifications 
 of the latter. Locke consequently denies the possibility for man of 
 any strictly demonstrative science of nature, holding that inferences in 
 physical science can ultimately only be inductive presumptions. Berkeley 
 puts all qualities — secondary and primary — on the same footing. Their 
 essence is percipi. 
 
 ^ That we cannot be percipient of extension and motion unless they 
 are blended with sensations of secondary (jualities may be granted. 
 There is another question as to the possibility of objective relations 
 of extension and motion, and of our having notions of these.
 
 of Human Knoioledge. 45 
 
 how much the tenet of extended moveable substances exist- 
 ing without the mind depends on that strange doctrine of 
 abstract ideas ^. And here I cannot but remark how nearly 
 the vague and indeterminate description of IMatter or cor- 
 poreal substance, which the modern philosophers are run 
 into by theii* own principles, resembles that antiquated and 
 so much ridiculed notion of materia prima, to be met with 
 in Aristotle and his followers -. "Without extension solidity 
 cannot be conceived ; since therefore it has been shewn that 
 extension exists not in an unthinking substance, the same 
 must also be true of solidity. 
 
 12. That number is entirely the creature of the mind ^, 
 even though the other qualities be allowed to exist without, 
 will be evident to whoever considers that the same thing 
 bears a different denomination of number as the mind views 
 it with different respects. Thus, the same extension is one, 
 or three, or thirty-six, accoi'ding as the mind considers it 
 with reference to a yard, a foot, or an inch. Number is so 
 visibly relative, and dependent on men's understanding, that 
 it is strange to think how any one should give it an absolute 
 existence without the mind. AVe say one book, one page, one 
 line, &c. ; all these are equally units, though some contain 
 several of the others. And in each instance, it is plain, the 
 unit relates to some particular combination of ideas ai'bitrarily 
 put together by the mind. 
 
 * Does it follow that the Extension, which, viewed relatively to 
 the sense-perceptions of individual sentients is neither great nor 
 small, or the Motion which, also viewed relatively is neither swift 
 nor slow — must absolutely, or in the light of pure intelligence, be 
 'nothing at all' ? 
 
 ^ For a definition of Aristotle's vpurrj vKrj, see his Phys. T. 9 ; also 
 Metaph. VII. 3. See also De Anima, III. 4, for what he says of the 
 relation of the actual (not potential) reality of things to a knowledge 
 of them by individuals. 
 
 ^ If Number is entirely a 'creature of the mind,' how does Berkeley 
 reconcile this with what he says elsewhere about a plurality oi finite 
 Bpirits ? Does not this relativity of number, if meant as relating to 
 individual mind, make God immanent in spirits as well as in sensible 
 things
 
 46 Of ihe Principles 
 
 13. Uulty I know some^ will have to be a simple or un- 
 compouuded idea, accomj)anying all other ideas into the 
 mind. That I have any such idea answering the woi'd unity 
 I do not find ; and if I had, methinks I could not miss finding 
 it : on the contrary, it should be the most familiar to my 
 understanding, since it is said to accompany all other ideas, 
 and to be perceived by all the ways of sensation and reflexion. 
 To say no more, it is an abstract idea ^. 
 
 14. I shall further add, that, after the same manner as 
 modern philosophers prove certain sensible qualities to have 
 no existence in Matter, or without the mind, the same thing 
 may be likewise proved of all other sensible qualities what- 
 soever. Thus, for instance, it is said that heat and cold are 
 affections only of the mind, and not at all patterns of real 
 beings, existing in the corporeal substances which excite 
 them, for that the same body which appears cold to one hand 
 seems warm to another'. Now, why may we not as well 
 argue that figure and extension are not patterns or resem- 
 blances of qualities existing in Matter, because to the same 
 eye at different stations, or eyes of a different texture at the 
 same station, they appear various, and cannot therefore be 
 the images of anything settled and determinate without the 
 mind ? Again, it is proved that sweetness is not really in the 
 
 ^ Locke for instance. See Essay, b. II. ch. 7- § 7- 
 
 ^ The dependence of Number — another of the primary qualities — on 
 the elaborative activity of the understanding, i. e. on the way in which 
 mind ' considers ' the ' objects ' numbered, is affirmed, in this and the 
 preceding section ; just as the dependence on sense of other primary quali- 
 ties is inferred, in what precedes and follows, from their being necessarily 
 blended with the ' sensations' of the percipient. It may be urged, as an 
 objection to this, that mind does not proceed by a capricious elaboration, 
 but according to essential relations in nature, when it considers three 
 trees, for instance, as three things, and not as ten or twenty things, 
 determined by some accidents of the phenomena ; and also that ' num- 
 ber,' as such, is a necessary constructive form of understanding. In 
 Bee. 13 Berkeley opposes Locke. Cf. Locke's Essay, b. II. ch. 7. § 7; 
 ch. 13. § 26 ; ch. 16. § I. 
 
 ^ Yet we find a standard in the thermometer, in which motion 
 (a primary (juality) is substituted for individual sensations of heat and 
 cold (secondary qualities).
 
 of Jluman Knowledge. 417 
 
 sapid thing, because the thing remaining unaltered the sweet- 
 ness is changed into bitter, as in case of a fever or otherwise 
 vitiated palate. Is it not as reasonable to say that motion is 
 not without the mind, since if the succession of ideas in the 
 mind become swifter the motion, it is acknowledged, shall 
 appear slower without any alteration in any external object. 
 
 15. In short, let any one consider those arguments which 
 are thought manifestly to prove that colours and tastes exist 
 only in the mind, and he shall find they may with equal force 
 be brought to prove the same thing of extension, figure, and 
 motion, — Though it must be confessed this method of arguing 
 does not so much prove that there is no extension or colour 
 in an outward object, as that we do not know by sense which 
 is the true extension or colour of the object. But the argu- 
 ments foregoing plainly shew it to be impossible that any 
 colour or extension at all, or other sensible quahty whatsoever, 
 should exist in an unthinking subject without the mind, or 
 in truth, that there should be any such thing as an outward 
 object^. 
 
 1 6. But let us examine a little the received opinion. — It 
 is said extension is a mode or accident of Matter, and that 
 Matter is the substratum that supports it. Now I desire that 
 you would explain to me what is meant by Mattei''s support- 
 ing extension. Say you, I have no idea of Matter and there- 
 fore cannot explain it. I answer, though you have no posi- 
 tive, -yet, if you have any meaning at all, you must at least 
 have a relative idea of Matter ; though you know not what 
 it is, yet you must be supposed to know what relation it 
 bears to accidents, and what is meant by its supporting them. 
 It is evident ' support' cannot here be taken in its usual or 
 
 ^ His conclusion, in this part of the argument, which turns on the 
 Qualities of Matter, is that all its so-called qualities — the primary or 
 mathematical as much as the secondary — must be resolved into pheno- 
 mena of sense, which presuppose a perceiving subject. Otherwise they 
 become meaningless ; and the supposed residual ' Matter' becomes an 
 unintelligible abstraction.
 
 48 Of the Vfhicli^les 
 
 literal sense — as wlienwe say that pillars support a building; 
 in what sense thei'efore must it be taken ^ % 
 
 17. If we inquire into what the most accurate philosophers 
 declare themselves to mean by material substance, we shall 
 find them acknowledge they have no other meaning annexed 
 to those sounds but the idea of being in general, together 
 with the relative notion of its supporting accidents. The 
 general idea of Being appeareth to me the most abstract and 
 incomprehensible of all other ; and as for its supporting 
 accidents, this, as we have just now observed, cannot be 
 understood in the common sense of those words; it must 
 therefore be taken in some other sense, but what that is they 
 do not explain. So that when I consider the two parts or 
 branches which make the signification of the words material 
 substance, I am convinced there is no distinct meaning 
 annexed to them. But why should w^e trouble ourselves any 
 farther, in discussing this material substratum or 'support' 
 of figure, and motion, and other sensible qualities ? Does it 
 not suppose they have an existence without the mind 1 And 
 is not this a direct repugnancy, and altogether inconceivable^ ? 
 
 1 8. But, though it were possible that solid, figured, move- 
 able substances may exist without the mind, corresponding 
 
 * He argues in this and next section as if the difficulty in question 
 applies exclusively to material subdance, and is not of force against 
 spiritual substance. He accepts spiritual substance, on grounds de- 
 fended in his Third Dialogue. 
 
 ^ This 'repugnancy' or ' contradiction' consists in the supposffcon of 
 what is perceived existing without being perceived — the phenomenal 
 being unphenomenal. He seems to have Locke in view. Cf. Locke's 
 Essay, h. I. ch. 4. § 18; b, II. ch. 12, §§ 3-6; ch. 13. § 19; ch. 23, 
 where our idea of substance, as distinct from qualities, is said to be 
 dark, confused, and of little use. Yet Locke hesitates to dismiss entirely 
 this obscure idea — as Hume afterwards did ; or even to exclude it 
 from our knowledge of the material world — as Berkeley is here doing. 
 Locke's 'substance' is 'one knows not what support' of 'those qualities 
 we find existing — a " support " which we are somehow intellectually 
 obliged to suppose.' Berkeley does not here refer, as he might, to the 
 difference between propositions which are self-contradictory and tliose 
 which express a meaning that, because of the finitude of human intel- 
 ligence, is necessarily incomplete and mysterious.
 
 of Human Knowledge, 49 
 
 to the ideas we have of bodies, yet how is it possible for us 
 to know this % Either we must know it by Sense or by 
 Eeason. — As for our senses, by them we have the know- 
 ledge only of our sensations, ideas, or those things that are 
 immediately perceived by sense, call them what you will : 
 but they do not inform us that things exist without the 
 mind, or unperceived, like to those which are perceived. 
 This the Materialists themselves acknowledge^. — It remains 
 therefore that if we have any knowledge at all of external 
 things, it must be by Reason inferring their existence from 
 what is immediately perceived by sense. But what reason 
 can induce us to believe the existence of bodies without the 
 mind, from what we perceive, since the very patrons of 
 Matter themselves do not pretend there is any necessary con- 
 nexion betwixt them and our ideas ? I say it is granted on 
 all hands — and what happens in dreams, frenzies, and the 
 like, puts it beyond dispute — that it is possible we might be 
 affected with all the ideas we have now, though there were no 
 bodies existing without resembling them. Hence, it is evident 
 the supposition of external bodies is not necessary for the pro- 
 ducing our ideas ; since it is granted they are produced some- 
 times, and might possibly be produced always in the same 
 order we see them in at present, without their concurrence. 
 
 19. But, though we might possibly have all our sensations 
 without them, yet perhaps it may be thought easier to con- 
 ceive and explain the manner of their production, by sup- 
 posing external bodies in their likeness ^ rather than otherwise, 
 and so it might be at least probable there are such things 
 
 * ' Materialist ' includes all who maintain the existence of what is 
 irapercipient and unperceived ; for the designation is not here limited, 
 as it commonly is, to those who recognise no oJ/ier'than impercipient 
 and unperceived substance. — Materialism is a term vaguely and am- 
 biguously used. The hypothesis that God, by divinely established law 
 in nature, has made human organisms self-conscious, however incoherent, 
 must be distinguished from the absolute Materialism which substitutes 
 unconscious atoms for God. 
 
 - ' In their likeness,' i. e. in the likeness of the phenomena of which 
 we are percipient in the five senses.
 
 50 Of the Principles 
 
 as bodies that excite their ideas in our minds. But neither 
 can this be said ; for, though we give the ruaterialisls their 
 external bodies, they by their own confession are never the 
 nearer knowing liow our ideas are produced ; since they own 
 themselves unable to comprehend in what manner body can 
 act upon spirit, or how it is possible it should imprint any 
 idea in the mind. Hence it is evident the production of 
 ideas or sensations in our minds can be no reason why we 
 should suppose Matter or corporeal substances, since that is 
 acknowledged to remain equally inexplicable with or without 
 this supposition. If therefore it were possible for bodies to 
 exist without the mind, yet to hold they do so must needs be 
 a very precarious opinion; since it is to suppose, without any 
 reason at all, that God has created innumerable beings that 
 are entirely useless, and serve to no manner of purpose ^. 
 
 20. In short, if there were external bodies, it is impossible 
 we should ever come to know it ; and if there were not, we 
 might have the very same reasons to think there were that 
 we have now. Suppose — what no one can deny possible — 
 an intelligence without the help of external bodies, to be 
 affected with the same train of sensations or ideas that you 
 are, imprinted in the same order and with like vividness in 
 his mind. I ask whether that intelligence hath not all the 
 reason to believe the existence of corporeal substances, repre- 
 sented by his ideas, and exciting them in his mind, that you 
 can possibly have for believing the same thing 1 Of this 
 there can be no question — which one consideration were 
 enough to make any reasonable person suspect the strength 
 of whatever arguments he may think himself to have, for the 
 existence of bodies without the mind^. 
 
 ^ Not 'useless' If it can be shown that the existence of things as 
 independent entities is presupposed in the acknowledged fact of social 
 intercourse between intelligent beings; in the existence of law or con- 
 tinuity in nature ; and even in the realization of our individual exist- 
 ence as conscious persons. Of all which afterwards. 
 
 '■* Although 'sensations' may not reveal to us either 'solid, extended.
 
 of Human Knowledge. 51 
 
 2 1. Were it necessary to add any farther proof against the 
 Existence of Matter, after what has been said, I could instance 
 several of those errors and difficulties (not to mention im- 
 pieties) which have sprung from that tenet. It has occasioned 
 numberless controversies and disputes in philosophy, and not 
 a few of far greater moment in religion. But I shall not 
 enter into the detail of them in this place, as well because I 
 think arguments a iwsteriori are unnecessary for confirming 
 Avhat has been, if I mistake not, sufficiently demonstrated a 
 priori, as because I shall hereafter find occasion to speak 
 somewhat of them^ 
 
 2 2. I am afraid I have given cause to think I am needlessly 
 prolix in handling this subject. For, to what purpose is it 
 to dilate on that which may be demonstrated with the utmost 
 evidence in a line or two, to any one that is capable of the 
 least reflection 1 It is but looking into your own thoughts, 
 and so trying Avhether you can conceive it possible for a sound, 
 or figure, or motion, or colour to exist without the mind or 
 unperceived. This easy trial may perhaps make you see 
 
 and moveable' substance, or 'abstract' material substance without 
 qualities — are there any permanent relations so involved in the pheno- 
 mena of sense as to constitute notions of ' things,' converting mere sen- 
 sation into perception, and thus explaining sense-knowledge ? Berkeley 
 does not rise to this question. Dreams, for example, as interpreted 
 during the dream by the dreamer, are not in harmony with the natural 
 laws which determine the ordered dream of real life, by which natural 
 reality is distinguished from illusions of fancy. Whether Berkeley's 
 conception of what the material world means can be reconciled with 
 law in nature, without presupposing (unconsciously) what it professedly 
 rejects, is a consideration which here begins to suggest itself. If the 
 reality of law in nature presupposes the unperceived or independent 
 existence of what is manifested to us as extended, solid, and moveable, 
 Berkeley must not say that phenomenal things as independent entities 
 are ' entirely ueeless,' and ' serve no manner of purpose.' Consider 
 whether, under Berkeley's conception of the material world, objective 
 law does not dissolve into subjective association of ideas. 
 
 ^ In the old meaning of the terms, ' reasoning a priori ' is from the 
 essential nature or real definition of a cause, prior to any experience of its 
 effects ; 'reasoning a posteriorV is based upon a comparative observation of 
 effects. The premisses of the former are principles ; those of the latter facts. 
 The method of the former is deductive ; that of the latter inductive.
 
 ^3 Of the Principles 
 
 that what you contend for is a downright contradiction. Inso- 
 much that I am content to put the whole upon this issue : — 
 If you can but conceive it possible for one extended move- 
 able substance, or, in general, for any one idea, or anything 
 like an idea, to exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving it ; 
 I shall readily give up the cause. And, as for all that 
 compages of external bodies you contend for, I shall grant 
 you its existence, though you cannot either give me any 
 reason why you believe it exists, or assign any use to it 
 when it is supposed to exist. I say, the bare possibility 
 of your opinions being true shall pass for an argument that 
 it is so^ 
 
 23. But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for 
 me to imagine trees, for instance, in a park, or books existing 
 in a closet, and nobody by to perceive them. I answer, you 
 may so, there is no difficulty in it ; but what is all this, I 
 beseech you, more than framing in your mind certain ideas 
 which you call books and trees, and at the same time omitting 
 to frame the idea of any one that may perceive them % But 
 do not you yourself perceive or think of them all the while % 
 This therefore is nothing to the purpose : it only shews you 
 have the power of imagining or foi'ming ideas in your mind ; 
 but it does not shew that you can conceive it possible the 
 objects of your thought may exist without the mind. To 
 make out this, it is necessary that ?/ow conceive them exist- 
 I ing unconceived or unthought_of, which is a manifest repug- 
 nancy. When we do our utmost to conceive the existence 
 of external bodies, we are all the while only contemplating 
 our own ideas. But the mind, taking no notice of itself, is 
 deluded to think it can and does conceive bodies existing 
 
 * In all this Berkeley takes for granted that he has already suffici- 
 ently shown that neither an object phenomenal in sense, nor anything 
 like one, can exist as an independent entity. This assumed, it is of 
 course a contradiction to say that it can so exist — or that we can 
 imagine its continued existence, after the withdrawal of the perception 
 in and through which phenomena of sense are possible.
 
 of Human Knowledge. 53 
 
 unthought of or without the mind, though at the same time 
 they are apprehended by or exist in itself ^ A little atten- 
 tion will discover to any one the truth and evidence of wliat 
 is here said, and make it unnecessary to insist on any other 
 proofs against the existence of material substance"^. 
 
 24. It is very obvious, upon the least inquiry into our 
 own thoughts, to know whether it be possible for us to un- 
 derstand what is meant by the absolute existence of sensible 
 objects in themselves or without the mind. To me it is evi- 
 dent those words mark out either a direct contradiction, or 
 else nothing at all. And to convince others of this, I know 
 no readier or fairer way than to entreat they would calmly 
 attend to their own thoughts ; and if by this attention the 
 emptiness or repugnancy of those expressions does appear, 
 surely nothing more is requisite for their conviction. It is 
 on this thei'efore that I insist, to wit, that the absolute ex- 
 istence of unthinking things are words without a meaning, 
 or which include a contradiction^. This is what I repeat 
 
 * It may be asked whether this argument does not equally apply to 
 the existence, independently of me, of other conscious persons, whose 
 existence it is nevertheless one aim of Berkeley's philosophy to vindi- 
 cate. A self-conscious life external to my own, is not meaninr/less, 
 however, in the way in which his supposed unphenomenal matter is. 
 It is, he would maintain, an intelligible externality, of which we can 
 have a ' notion,' derived from our notion of our own self-conscious 
 e xistenc e. " 
 
 '^Is there not in this section a confusion of existence in sense with 
 existence in imagination ? What we i magine exis ts, b ut it e xists only 
 sub j ecti vely^not as^parLof the uiLi?ersal system of order§d o r object ive 
 thmgs. Now, it is the interrupted phenomenal existence, in human 
 experience, of the thinr/s which exhibit this order that Berkeley has to 
 reconcile with their permanence and identity. 
 
 ^ A 'contradiction' if it means that sensible objects are at once per- 
 ceived and yet not perceived — that they are phenomenal and yet not 
 phenomenal; 'words without a meaning' if what is intended is, that 
 'Matter in itself is something not phenomenal or qualified. The argu- 
 ment rests on the assumption that what cannot be sensibly phenomenal 
 is not merely unimaginable by us, but must in itself be an empty verbal 
 abstraction. But for Berkeley's recognition elsewhere of our 'notion' of 
 Mind it would involve the empirical phenomenalism of Hume. 
 
 Berkeley rejects, as meaningless, a material world that may exist 
 without being phenomenal in any sentient intelligence. He takes no 
 account of the distinction between existence that is only potential and
 
 54 Of the Principles 
 
 and inculcate, and earnestly recommend to the attentive 
 thoughts of the reader. 
 
 25. All our ideas, sensations, notions, or the things Avhich 
 we perceive, by whatsoever names they may be distinguished, 
 are visibly inac tive— there is nothing of Power or Agency 
 included in them. So that one idea or object of thought 
 cannot produce or make any alteration in another. — To be 
 satisfied of the truth of this, there is nothing else requisite 
 but a bare observation of our ideas. For, since they and 
 every part of them exist only in the mind, it follows that 
 there is nothing in them but what is perceived : but whoever 
 shall attend to his ideas, whether of sense or reflection, will 
 not perceive in them any power or activity; there is, there- 
 fore, no such thing contained in them, A little attention 
 will discover to us that the very being of an idea implies 
 passiveness and inertness in it, insomuch that it is im possi ble. 
 for an idea- to do anything, or, strictly speaking, to be the 
 cause of anything : neither can it be the resemblance or pat- 
 tern of any active being, as is evident from sect. 8. Whence 
 it plainly follows that extension, figure, and motion cannot 
 be the cause of our sensations. To say, therefore, that these 
 are the effects of powers resulting from the configuration, 
 number, motion, and size of corpuscles, must certainly be 
 falser 
 
 existence that is actual. The function of x in finite knowledge is a 
 subject to be here pondered, and also the question whether any progress 
 of philosophical speculation can ever eliminate x from a knowledge that 
 is finite. 
 
 ^ We have here the rudiments of that theory of Causality and Power 
 from which Berkeley deduces the impotence as well as the unsubstan- 
 tiality of Matter. In section 25 he turns from Mind, giving actual 
 reality to the material world in and through the perceptions of sense, 
 to Mind as the only indepeniUiit orifjinatinfj cause and actual agent. 
 Here his first position is, that there can be no jjower or efficient causality 
 in phenomena of sense: 'bare observation' of these is to him proof 
 of their inactivity. Customar y co nnexion, established by God among 1 
 phenomenal things, independently of human will, is the only sort of I
 
 of Iliimaii Knowledge, 55 
 
 26. We perceive a continual succession of ideas ; some are 
 anew excited, otliers are clanged or totally disappear. There 
 is therefore some Cause of these ideas, whereon they depend, 
 and which produces and changes them. That this cause can- 
 not be any quality, or idea, or combination of ideas is clear 
 from the preceding section. It must therefoi'e be a sub- 
 stance ; but it has been shewn that there is no corporeal or 
 material substance : it remains therefore that the cause of 1 
 ideas is an incoi^poreal active substance or Spirit^. ' 
 
 'causality' which Berkeley recognises in the material world, which is 
 with him a divinely established system of sensible signs, in which 
 a priori anything might by God have been made the sign of anything. 
 ' Established connexion' is the conception of causality afterwards professed 
 by Hume, Brown, Comte, the Mills, and others, and is in harmony with 
 Bacon's favourite conception of external nature as interpretable. With 
 them, however, it was not, as with Berkeley, liuiited to the material 
 world, and so with them independent originating causality or free 
 agency is left out of account. 
 
 ^ Berkeley, like Locke, here assumes, without analysis of the meta- 
 phijdcal principle of Causality — that every change necessarily presup- 
 poses the existence of something in which it originates, and out of 
 which it issues. Causality with liiui is not, however, merely a relation 
 of established signs under which phenomena happen to be connected. 
 He sees in tangible and visible phenomena ordered signs, Spirit alone 
 being the ultimate cause. The material woi'ld is thus emptied of power, 
 its supposed ' powers ' being refunded into Spirit. Every appear- 
 ance in sense is caused : only Spirit causes. Except metaphorically, 
 he does not attribute any sort of efficacy to any sensible thing : the 
 material world contains substances and causes only in a figurative way. 
 He grants, indeed, that metaphorically each phenomenal thing may be 
 called a ' substance,' and each instance of uniform phenomenal succes- 
 sion a case of 'causality.' Spirits themselves are not phenomena, he 
 seems to say ; for each eyo remains the same, while the phenomena 
 of which it is conscious, in sense and otherwise, are changing. 
 
 In these sections Berkeley seems to found our notion of Power and 
 Causation on our conviction of our own free voluntary activity — akin to 
 the solution adopted afterwards by Reid, Stewart, Maine de Birau, and 
 others. Elsewhere (e.g. Sirig, 257) he seems to trace it more to our 
 moral experience of responsibility. His views (more developed in the 
 Vindication and in Siriti) may be compared witli those of Locke, Essay, 
 b. II. ch. 21 and ch. 26; also with the reduction of the causal relation 
 afterwards proposed by Hume ; with the analysis of causation by Kant, 
 as a 'category* constitutive of experience; or (turning to ancient 
 speculation) with the Aristotelian Four Causes. Hume tries to shew that 
 any supposed necessity of connexion among phenomena is an illusion, 
 generated by custom, as a necessary relation cannot be phenomenal- 
 ised, or resolved into an impression : Kant finds the notion of cause,
 
 56 Of the Principles 
 
 27. A Spirit is one simple, undivided, active being — as it 
 perceives ideas it is called the Understanding, and as it jpro- 
 duces or otherwise operates about them it is called the Will. 
 Hence there can be no idea formed of a soul or spirit ; for, 
 all ideas whatever, being passive and inert, (vid. sect. 25,) 
 cannot represent unto us, by way of image or likeness, that 
 which acts. A little attention will make it plain to any one 
 that to have an idea which shall be like that active principle 
 of motion and change of ideas is absolutely impossible. Such 
 is the nature of Sj^it, or that which acts, tha t it cannot be 
 of itselfj2erceived, but only by the e ffect s which it produceth. 
 — If any man shall doubt of the truth of what is here de- 
 livered, let him but reflect and try if he can frame the idea 
 of any Power or Active Being; and whether he has ideas of 
 two principal poAvers, max'ked by the names Will and Un- 
 der standinr/, distinct ft-om each other, as well as from a third 
 idea of Substance or Being in general, with a relative notion 
 of its supporting or being the subject of the aforesaid powers 
 — which is signified by the name Soul or Spirit \ This is 
 what some hold ; but, so far as I can see, the words will, 
 soul, sjnrit, do not stand for different ideas, or, in truth, for 
 any idea at all, but for something which is very different 
 from ideas, and which, being an Agent, cannot be like unto, 
 or represented by, any idea whatsoever. [Though it must be 
 owned at the same time that we have some notion''' of soul, 
 
 like that of substance, in a necessity of the understanding, presupposed 
 in the very possibility of intelligible experience. According to Aris- 
 totle, everything presupposes matter of which it is made ; form or essence 
 by which it may be defined ; force or eificiency by which the matter and 
 form have been united in its constitution ; and end or 'purpose which it . 
 is its function to fulKl ; — so that a full knowledge of a thing would be a 
 knowledge of it in these four relations of its causality. 
 
 ' According to Locke we have no positive idea either of corporeal 
 or of spiritual substance, yet he recognises a sort of nc(/ative idea of 
 both. Berkeley accepts, in the form of co7iscious7iess of self , the 'notion' 
 of spiritual substance. Hume afterwards rejected, or at least pro- 
 claimed ignorance of both. Kant recalled the notion of substance, as 
 a relation involved in an intelligible experience. 
 
 " According to Berkeley, the notions of substance and cause are given
 
 of Human Knowledge, 57 
 
 spirit, and the operations of the mind ; such as willing, loving, 
 hating — inasmuch as we know or understand the meaning of 
 these words'.] 
 
 28. I find I can excite ideas in my mind at pleasure, and 
 vary and shift the scene as oft as I think fit. It is no more 
 than willing, and straightway this or that idea arises in my 
 fancy; and by the same power it is obliterated and makes way 
 for another. This making and unmaking of ideas doth very 
 pi'operly denominate the mind active. Thus much is certain 
 and grounded on experience: but when we talk of unthinking 
 agents, or of exciting ideas exclusive of Volition, we only 
 amuse ourselves with words. 
 
 ^29. But, whatever power I may have over my own 
 thoughts, I find the ideas actually perceived by Sense have 
 not a like dependence on my wilP. When in broad daylight 
 I open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose whether I 
 shall see or no, or to determine what particular objects shall 
 present themselves to my view ; and so likewise as to the 
 hearing and other senses, the ideas imprinted on them are 
 not creatures of my will. There is therefore some oilier 
 Will or Spirit that produces them^. 
 
 30. The ideas of Sense are more strong, lively, and distinct/ 
 
 to us in the fact of our being conscious of ourselves as freely acting 
 spirits, not as categories necessarily involved in an experience of phe- 
 nomena. He says that we have ' notions,' not ' ideas,' of them ; for 
 Spirit cannot be phenomenalised. Ueberweg suggests that Berkeley's 
 reasoning implies that I can know only my individual notions of what I 
 call other spirits — thus leading, as a reductio ad absurdum, to Egoism 
 or Solipsism. 
 
 ^ This sentence was added in the Second Edition of the Principles. 
 It introduces the term nQ^on in its strict Berkeleian meaning of an 
 intelligent api^rehension of Mind, and of relations among phenomena. 
 
 ^ Here 'thoughts,' as individual mental images, are contrasted 
 with phenomena actually perceived in the senses. Cf. Locke, Essay, 
 b.IV. ch. II. 
 
 ^ In this and the following sections we have Berkeley's account of 
 the difference between Perception and Imagination. He tries to ex- 
 plain the objectivity of the former in contrast with the subjectivity of 
 the latter.
 
 58 Of the Pr'mci2des 
 
 than those of the Imagination ; they have likewise a steadi- ' 
 ness, order, and coherence, and are not excited at random, as 
 those which are the effects of human wills often are, but in a 
 regular train or series — the admirable connexion whereof 
 sufficiently testifies the wisdom and benevolence of its Author. 
 Now the set rules or established methods wherein the Mind 
 we depend on excites in us the ideas of sense, are called the 
 la ws of na ture ; and these we learn by experience^, which 
 teaches us that such and such ideas are attended with such 
 and such other ideas, in the ordinary course of things. 
 
 31. This gives us a sort of foresight which enables us to 
 regulate our actions for the benefit of life. And without this 
 we should be eternally at a loss ; we could not know how to 
 act anj^thing that might procure us the least pleasure, or 
 remove the least pain of sense. That food noui-ishes, sleep 
 refreshes, and fire warms us ; that to sow in the seed-time 
 is the way to reap in the harvest; and in general that to 
 obtain such or such ends, such or such means are conducive 
 — all this we know, not by discovering any necessary con- 
 nexion between our ideas, but only by the observation of the 
 settled laws_ of nature, without which we should be all in 
 uncertainty and confusion, and a grown man no more know 
 how to manage himself in the affairs of life than an infant 
 just born ^. 
 
 32. And yet this consistent uniform working, which so 
 evidently displays the goodness and wisdom of that Govern- 
 ing Spirit whose Will constitutes the laws of nature, is so 
 far from leading our thoughts to Him, that it rather sends 
 them wandering after second causes. For, when we perceive 
 
 ' Something more than the merely phenomenal is here tacitly in- 
 cluded in ' experience.' For, how does experience explain our convic- 
 tion of the wiiiversalitij of order, if it means only particular phenomena 
 that are present as transient sensations ? 
 
 ^ This reduction of Perception into observationally reached expecta- 
 tion or prevision may be compared with J. S. JNIill's ' ps3'chological ' 
 theory of belief in the external world {Examination 0/ Hamilton, 
 ch. XII).
 
 of Human Knowledge. 59 
 
 certain ideas of Sense constantly followed by other ideas, 
 and we know this is not of our own doing, we forthwith 
 attribute power and agency to the ideas themselves, and 
 make one the cause of another, than which nothing can be 
 more absurd and unintelligible. Thus, for example, having 
 observed that Avhen we perceive by sight a certain round 
 luminous figure we at the same time perceive by touch the 
 idea or sensation called heat, we do from thence conclude the 
 sun to be the cause of heat. And in like manner perceiving 
 the motion and collision of bodies to be attended with sound, 
 we are inclined to think the latter the effect of the fonner. 
 
 33. The ideas imprinted on the Senses by the Author of 
 nature are called real tilings : and those excited in the Ima- 
 gination being less regular, vivid, and constant, are more 
 properly termed ideas, or images of things, which they copy 
 and represent. But then our sensations, be they never so 
 vivid and distinct, are nevertheless ideas, that is, they exist 
 in the mind^, or are perceived by it, as truly as the ideas of 
 its own framing. The ideas of Sense are allowed to have 
 more reality in them, that is, to be more strong, orderly, and 
 coherent than the creatures of the mind ; but this is no 
 argument that they exist without the mind. They are also 
 less dependent on the spirit, or thinking substance which 
 perceives them, in that they are excited by the will of an- 
 other and more powerful Spirit ; yet still they are ideas, and 
 certainly no idea, whether faint or strong, can exist otherwise 
 than in a mind perceiving it ^ 
 
 ^ ' In the mind ' is here and elsewhere used figuratively for being 
 actually perceived ; not of course in the sense of being locally within 
 the mind, to which the terms ' within ' and ' without,' in this meaning, 
 are foreign. 
 
 ^ Such is Berkeley's account of the difference between real and 
 merely imaginary things — between the actually perceived and the merely 
 imagined, in our mental experience. ' Sensations ' — the real pheno- 
 mena of which we are actually percipient — are, he says, (a) involuntaiy, 
 as far as each individual percipient is concerned, while the creatures of 
 imagination are not ; (6) they are more strong, lively, and distinct than 
 the latter, thus differing from them in degree ; (c) they are units in the
 
 60 Of the Principles 
 
 34 ^, Before we proceed any farther it is necessary we spend 
 some time in answering Objections which may probably be 
 made against the principles we have hitherto laid down. In 
 doing of which, if I seem too prolix to those of quick appre- 
 hensions, I desire I may be excused, since all men do not 
 equally apprehend things of this nature, and I am willing to 
 be understood by every one. 
 
 First, then, it will be objected that by the foregoing prin- 
 ciples all that is real and substantial in nature is banished 
 out of the world, and instead thereof a chimerical scheme of 
 ideas takes place. All things that exist exist only in the 
 mind, that is, they are purely notional. "What therefore 
 becomes of the sun, moon, and stars ? What must we think 
 of houses, rivers, mountains, trees, stones : nay, even of our 
 own bodies 1 Are all these but so many chimeras and illu- 
 sions on the fancy ? — To all which, and whatever else of the 
 same sort may be objected, I answer, that by the principles 
 premised we are not deprived of any one thing in nature. 
 Whatever we see, feel, hear, or any wise conceive or under- 
 universal system of coherent relations which constitutes objective 
 Nature. The second of these distinguishing marks was afterwards 
 emphasised by Hume, in his contrast between impressions and (their 
 representative) ideas in imagination (Treatise- of Human Nature, b. I. 
 pt. I. sect. I, 3. pt. 4. sect. 7 ; Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, 
 sect. 2). Hume explains all belief as the issue of an inexplicable 
 tendency of custom ' to enliven some ideas beyond others.' ' The 
 memory, senses, and understanding are,' he says, ' all of them founded 
 on the imagination, or the vivacity of our ideas.' — See also Leibnitz, 
 De modo distingiiendi Phenomena Realia ab Imaginariis, and Loclce, 
 Essay, b. IV. ch. 2. § 14; ch. 4 ; ch. 11, for opinions antecedent to 
 Berkeley. 
 
 The result of the preceding argumentation (Sect. 3-33) might be thus 
 expressed : — Phenomenal things can be substantiated and caused only 
 by self-conscious spirit, for no other substantiation or causation is intel- 
 ligible ; to affirm that the phenomenal things of which alone we are 
 immediately percipient can be, or can represent, non-phenomenal or 
 abstract substances, and originating causes, would be to affirm a contra- 
 diction in terms. 
 
 * Sect. 34-84 contain Berkeley's answers to a series of supposed 
 objections to the conception of Matter that has been reasoned out in the 
 preceding sections.
 
 of Human Knowledge. 61 
 
 stand, remains as secure as ever, and is as real as ever. 
 There is a rerum natura, and the distinction between realities 
 and chimeras retains its full force. This is evident from 
 sect. 29, 30, and 33, where we have shewn what is meant by 
 real things, in opposition to chimeras or ideas of our own 
 framing ; but then they both equally exist in the mind, and 
 in that sense are alike ideas. 
 
 35. I do not argue against the existence of any one thing 
 that we can apprehend either by sense or reflection. That 
 the things I see with my eyes and touch with my hands do 
 exist, really exist, I make not the least question. The only 
 thing Avhose existence we deny is that which philosojdiers call 
 Matter or corporeal substance. And in doing of this there is 
 no damage done to the I'est of mankind, who, I dare say, will 
 never miss it. The Atheist indeed will want the colour of 
 an empty name to support his impiety ; and the Philosophers 
 may possibly find they have lost a great handle for trifling 
 and disputation. 
 
 36. If any man thinks this detracts from the existence or 
 reality of things, he is very far from understanding what hath 
 been premised in the plainest terms I could think of. Take 
 here an abstract of what has been said : — There are spiritual 
 substances, minds, or human souls, which will or excite ideas ^ 
 in themselves at pleasure ; but these are faint, weak, and 
 unsteady in respect of others they perceive by Sense — which, 
 being impressed upon them according to certain Rules or 
 Laws of Nature, speak themselves the effects of a Mind more 
 powerful and wise than human spirits. These latter are said 
 to have 7no7'e reality in them than the former ; — by which is 
 meant that they are more affecting, orderly, and distinct, and 
 that they are not fictions^ of the mind perceiving them. And 
 in this sense the sun that I see by day is the real sun, and that 
 
 ^ ' Ideas,' i. e. phenomena of imagination. 
 
 ^ ' Not fictions,' because they are the ultimate data, immediately pre- 
 sented in sense ; and these cannot misrepresent, because they are not repre- 
 sentative of what is beyond themselves. They are the sensible reality.
 
 62 Of the Pnnc'iples 
 
 which I imagine by night is the idea of the former ^ In the 
 sense here given of reality, it is evident that every vegetable, 
 star, mineral, and in general each part of the mundane 
 system, is as much a real being by our principles as by any 
 other. Whether others mean anything by the term reality 
 different from what I do, I entreat them to look into their 
 own thoughts and see. 
 
 37, It will be urged that thus much at least is true, to wit, 
 that we take away all corporeal substances. To this my 
 answer is, that if the word substance be taken in the vulgar 
 sense — for a combination of sensible qualities, such as exten- 
 sion, solidity, weight, and the like — this we cannot be accused 
 of taldng away ; but if it be taken in a philosophic sense — 
 for the support of accidents or qualities without the mind — 
 then indeed I acknowledge that we take it away, if one may 
 be said to take away that which never had any existence, not 
 even in the imagination ^. 
 
 38. But after all, say you, it sounds very harsh to say we 
 eat and drink ideas, and are clothed with ideas. I acknow- 
 ledge it does BO — the word idea not being used in common 
 discourse to signify the several combinations of sensible quali- 
 ties which are called things ; and it is certain that any ex- 
 pression which varies from the familiar use of language will 
 seem harsh and ridiculous. But this doth not concern the 
 truth of the proposition, which in other words is no more 
 than to say, we are fed and clothed with those things which 
 we perceive immediately by our senses. The hardness or 
 
 ^ Here again we have the difference between Imagination and 
 Perception insisted on, and sought to be reconciled with the already 
 arcnied necessary unsubstantiality and impotence of sensible things apart 
 from percipient and active mind. 
 
 ^ The ' observed ' existence of established aggregates of phenomena of 
 sense, actuaTTiTi? potential, commonly called ' things,' is acknowledged ; 
 but a ' substance ' abstracted out of all relation to a percipient is rejected 
 as meaningless, if not self-contradictory. We cannot, he argues, find 
 any substance or power in nJras or p/ieuomcva ; but we have notions of 
 both substance and power notwithstanding, implied in our consciousness 
 of self and belief in our own personal agency.
 
 of Human Knowledge. 63 
 
 softness, the colour, taste, warmth, figure, or suchlike quali- 
 ties, which, combined together, constitute the several sorts of 
 victuals and apparel, have been shewn to exist only in the 
 mind that perceives them ; and this is all that is meant by 
 calling them ideas ; which word if it was as ordinarily used 
 as thing, would sound no harsher nor more ridiculous than 
 it. I am not for disputing about the propriety, but the truth 
 of the expression. If therefore you agree with me that we 
 eat and drink and are clad with the immediate objects of 
 sense, which cannot exist unperceived or without the mind, 
 I shall readily grant it is more proper or conformable to 
 custom that they should be called things rather than ideas^. 
 
 39. If it be demanded why I make use of the word idea, 
 and do not rather in compliance with custom call them things; 
 I answer, I do it for two reasons : — first, because the term 
 thing, in contradistinction to idea, is generally supposed to 
 denote somewhat existing without the mind ; secondly, be- 
 cause tiling hath a more comprehensive signification than 
 idea, including spirit or thinking things as well as ideas ". 
 Since therefore the objects of sense exist only in the mind, 
 and are withal thoughtless and inactive^, I chose to mark them 
 by the word idea, which implies those properties *. 
 
 40. But, say what we can, some one perhaps may be apt 
 to reply, he will still believe his senses, and never suffer any 
 arguments, how plausible soever, to prevail over the certainty 
 
 1 The point for consideration here is, whether this deviation from the 
 ordinary custom of language does not necessarily imply a deviation from 
 rational suppositions on which all experience of things depends. What 
 is meant by eating phenomena presented in sense ? and is not the eater 
 as ideal or phenomenal as the thing eaten 1 Berkeley might say that 
 * I am eating ' involves the ' notion ' of will and personality, and is not 
 a mere phenomenon. 
 
 ^ Spirits are more properly called persons than things. 
 
 ^ He takes for granted that he has already proved their unsubstan- 
 tiality and impotence. 
 
 * The terms 'sensation,' 'sense idea,' 'real idea,' 'impression,' 'per- 
 cept,' 'phenomenon,' might be substituted, though objections are open to 
 them all. As in some respects the least objectionable, I prefer phe- 
 nomenon prese7it in sense.
 
 64 Of the Principles 
 
 of them. Be it so ; assert the evidence of sense as high as 
 you please, we are willing to do the same. That what I see, 
 hear, and feel doth exist, that is to say, is perceived by me, 
 I no more doubt than I do of my own being. But I do not 
 see how the testimony of sense can be alleged as a proof for 
 the existence of anything which is not perceived by sense. 
 We are not for having any man turn sceptic and disbelieve 
 his senses ; on the contrary, we give them all the stress and 
 assurance imaginable; nor are there any principles more 
 opposite to Scepticism than those we have laid down, as 
 shall be hereafter clearly shewn ^ 
 
 41. Secondly, it will be objected that there is a great dif- 
 ference betwixt real fire for instance, and the idea of fire, 
 betwixt dreaming or imagining oneself burnt, and actually 
 being so : if you suspect it to be only the idea of fire which 
 you see, do but put your hand into it and you will be con- 
 vinced with a witness^. This and the like may be urged in 
 opposition to our tenets. — To all which the answer is evident 
 from what hath been already said, and I shall only add in 
 this place, that if real fire be very diff'erent from the idea of 
 fire, so also is the real pain that it occasions very different 
 from the idea of the same pain, and yet nobody will pretend 
 that real pain either is, or can possibly be, in an unperceiving 
 thing, or Avithout the mind, any more than its idea^. 
 
 1 Berkeley argues that to suppose phenomenal things still exist- 
 ing phenomenally, which nevertheless are not perceived by any 
 mind, is as absurd as to suppose an actual perception of them 
 without their perceived existence. But if he resolves matter into 
 present phenomena of sense only, his real world is without any 
 principle for their synthesis, and so unintelligible. How does this 
 eject Scepticism ? Is it with his vague theory of ' suggestion ' of 
 which he makes so much in his writings on visual perception ; or with 
 his undeveloped doctrine of ' notions ' and reason, as in Siris ; or with 
 both, that he would meet this question ? 
 
 2 So Locke, Esmy, b. IV, ch. 1 1. §§ 7, 8. 
 
 ^ But is there no more objectivity in the extended things of sense 
 than there is in our private and purely personal pains and pleasures 
 — though both, it is granted, are different from the bare imagination 
 of either ?
 
 - ' "o/' Human Knowletlcje. . 65 
 
 (±2JThirdli/, it will be objected that we see things actually 
 witliout or at a distance from us, and which consequently do 
 not exist in the mind ; it being absurd that those things which 
 are seen at the distance of several miles should be as near to 
 us as our own thoughts. In answer to this, I desire it may be 
 considered that in a dream we do oft perceive things as exist- 
 ing at a great distance off, and yet for all that, those things 
 are acknowledged to have their existence only in the mind. 
 
 43. But, for the fuller clearing of this point, it may be worth 
 while to consider how it is that we perceive distance and 
 things placed at a distance by sight. For, that we should in 
 truth see external space, and bodies actually existing in it — 
 some nearer, and others farther off — seems to carry with it 
 some opposition to what hath been said of their existing no- 
 where without the mind. The consideration of this difficulty 
 it was that gave birth to my Essay towards a New Theory of 
 Vision, which was published not long since — whei-ein it is 
 shewn that distance or outness is neither immediately of itself 
 perceived by sight, nor yet apprehended or judged of by lines 
 and angles, or anything that hath a necessary connexion with 
 it ; but that it is only s uggest ed ^ to our thoughts by certain 
 visible ideas and sensations attending vision, which in their 
 own nature have no manner of similitude or relation either 
 with d istance or things placed at a Viistance ; but, by a con- 
 nexion taught us by experience^, fhey come to signify and 
 suggest them to us, after the same manner that words of any 
 language suggest the ideas they are made to stand for ; inso- 
 much that a man born blind and afterwards made to see, 
 would not, at first sight, think the things he saw to be with- 
 
 ■^ Note that the term suggestion, so significant in the psychology of 
 Berkeley, here first makes its appearance in the Principles. See Neio 
 Theory of Vision, sect. i6, note, and Vindication, sect. 42. — The term 
 ' suggestion ' — simple and relative — was much employed long afterwards, 
 in the subtle psychology of Dr. Thomas Brown. 
 
 ^ ' Suggestion ' is here rested upon ' experience ' or custom, and is then 
 made the constructive principle in the explanation of visual perception, 
 if not ultimately of all human knowledge.
 
 66 Of the Principles 
 
 out his mind, or at any distance from him. See sect. 41 of 
 the forementioned treatise. 
 
 44. The ideas of siglit and touch make two spefiks entirely 
 di_stinct andjieterogeneous. The former are marks and pro- 
 gnostics of the latter. That the proper objects of sight neither 
 exist without the mind, nor are the images of external things, 
 was shewn even in that treatise. Though throughout the 
 same the contrary be supposed true of tangible objects — not 
 that to suppose that vulgar error was necessary for establish- 
 ing the notion therein laid down, but because it was beside 
 my purpose to examine and refute it in a discourse concern- 
 ing Yision^. So that in strict truth the ideas of sight, when 
 we apprehend by them distance and things placed at a dis- 
 tance, do not suggest or mark out to us things actually exist- 
 ing at a distance, but only admonish us what ideas of touch ^ 
 will be imprinted in our minds at such and such distances of 
 time, and in consequence of such and such actions. It is, 
 I say, evident from what has been said in the foregoing parts 
 of this Treatise, and in sect. 147 and elsewhere of the Essay 
 concerning Vision, that visible ideas are the Language whereby 
 the Governing Spirit on whom we depend informs us what 
 tangible ideas he is about to imprint upon us, in case we 
 excite this or that motion in our own bodies. But for a 
 fuller information in this point I refer to the Essay itself^. 
 
 45. Fourthly, it will be objected that from the foregoing 
 
 1 In the Essay on Vision he was inserting the thin end of the wedge 
 of his new conception of reality and externalUy. 
 
 ^ Under ' touch ' and ' tangible ideas ' he includes our (active) 
 sense-consciousness of locomotion. He virtually treats Space as con- 
 sisting in a succession of phenomena presented in touch and signified 
 in what we see. Thus mathematics becomes the science of number, 
 which is itself, as he had argued, dependent on percipient mind. 
 
 ^ Berkeley's theory of visual perception (virtually visual expectation) 
 may be developed into one of universal sense symbolism, based on an 
 assumption of physical causality as consisting of ordered phenomenal 
 signs, and of the consequent interpretabiiity of nature by an inductive 
 comparison of the orderly or significant plienomena.
 
 of Human Knowledge. 67 
 
 principles it follows things arc every moment annihilated 
 and created anew. The objects of sense exist only when they 
 are perceived ; the trees therefore are in the garden, or the 
 chairs in the parlour, no longer than while there is somebody 
 by to perceive them. Upon shutting ray eyes all the furni- 
 ture in the room is reduced to nothing, and barely i;pon 
 opening them it is again created. — In answer to all which, 
 I refer the reader to what has been said in sect. 3, 4, &c., 
 and desire he will consider whether he means anything by 
 the actual existence of an idea distinct from its being per- 
 ceived. For my part, after the nicest inquiry I could make, 
 I am not able to discover that anything else is meant by those 
 words ; and I once more entreat the reader to sound his own 
 thoughts, and not suffer himself to be imposed on by words. 
 If he can conceive it possible either for his ideas or their arche- 
 types to exist without being perceived, then I give up the cause ; 
 but if he cannot, he will acknowledge it is unreasonable for 
 him to stand up in defence of he knows not what, and pretend 
 to charge on me as an absurdity the not assenting to those 
 propositions which at bottom have no meaning in them^ 
 
 46. It will not be amiss to observe how far the received 
 principles of philosophy are themselves chargeable with those 
 pretended absurdities. It is thought strangely absurd that 
 upon closing my eyelids all the visible objects around me 
 should be reduced to nothing; and yet is not this what philo- 
 sophers commonly acknowledge, when they agree on all hands 
 that lig ht an d colours, which alone^ are the proper and imme- 
 diate objects of s ight, are mere sensations'- that exist no longer 
 
 * This repeats the warning with which he introduced us to philosophy 
 — against empty abstractions ; for such, according to his argument, 
 material substances and powers that are supposed to exist unperceived 
 by any mind must be. 
 
 ^ But the 'extended thing' said to excite these sensations was supposed 
 to exist as an independent entity, and its secondary qualities (by Locke 
 and others regarded as unknown modifications of the primary) were 
 assumed to be the cause of the sensations. Berkeley's recognition of 
 power or independent causality as existing only in Spirit dissolves the
 
 68 Of the Principles 
 
 than tliey are perceived % Again, it may to some perhaps 
 seem very incredible that things should be every moment 
 creating, yet this very notion is commonly taught in the 
 schools. For the Schoolmen, though they acknowledge the 
 existence of matter, and that the whole mundane fabric is 
 framed out of it, are nevertheless of opinion that it cannot 
 subsist without the divine conservation, which by them is 
 expounded to be a continual creation-'. 
 
 47. Farther, a little thought will discover to us that though 
 we allow the existence of Matter or corporeal substance, yet 
 it will unavoidably follow, from the principles which ai'e now 
 generally admitted, that the particular bodies, of what kind 
 soever, do none of them exist whilst they ai'e not perceived. 
 For, it is evident, from sect. 11 and the following sections, 
 that the Matter jDhilosophers contend for is an incomprehen- 
 sible somewhat, which hath none of those particular qualities 
 whereby the bodies falling under our senses are distinguished 
 one from another. But, to make this more plain, it must be 
 remarked that the infinite divisibility of Matter is now uni- 
 versally allowed, at least by the most approved and consider- 
 able philosophers, who, on the received principles, demonstrate 
 it beyond all exception. Hence, it follows there is an infinite 
 number of parts in each particle of Matter which are not per- 
 ceived by sense ^. The reason therefore that any particular 
 body seems to be of a finite magnitude, or exhibits only a 
 finite number of parts to sense, is, not because it contains no 
 more, since in itself it contains an infinite number of parts, 
 
 supposed power of the ' extended thing,' and substitutes the constant 
 activity of God as the cause of the phenomena which are presented to 
 us in our senses (sect. 6, 48, &c.) 
 
 ^ It is the implied want of fjlicnomenal continuity in sensible existence 
 tha*! is objected to Berkeley's view; but this does not fully apply to that con- 
 stant preservation of things supposed continuouHly to exist imUpciidently 
 of perception, which is meant by many who speak of 'constant creation.' 
 
 ^ The divisibility of matter was supposed to be jjotentially, not actually, 
 infinite ; for it is of the essence of infinite division that it can never be 
 completed, and that every actual division may be carried further. The 
 divitsiiility, not any actual division ever observable by us, is infinite.
 
 of Human Knoioledge. 69 
 
 but because the sense is not acute enough to discern them. 
 In proportion therefore as the sense is rendered more acute, 
 it perceives a greater number of parts in the object, that is, 
 the object appears greater, and its figure varies, those parts 
 in its extremities which were before unperceivable appearing 
 now to bound it in very different lines and angles from those 
 perceived by an obtuser sense. And at length, after various 
 changes of size and shape, when the sense becomes infinitely 
 acute the body shall seem infinite. During all which there 
 is no alteration in the body, but only in the sense. Eacli 
 body therefore, considei-ed in itself, is infinitely extended, and 
 consequently void of all shape and figure^. — From which it 
 follows that, though we should grant the existence of Matter 
 to be never so certain, yet it is withal as certain, the Mate- 
 rialists themselves are by their own principles forced to ac- 
 knowledge, that neither the particular bodies perceived by 
 sense, nor anything like them, exists without the mind. 
 Matter, I say, and each particle thereof, is according to them 
 infinite and shapeless, and it is the mind that frames all that 
 variety of bodies which compose the visible world, any one 
 whereof does not exist longer than it is perceived. 
 
 48. But, after all, if we consider it, the objection proposed 
 in sect. 45 will not be found reasonably charged on the prin- 
 ciples we have premised, so as in truth to make any objection 
 at all against our notions. For, though we hold indeed the 
 objects of sense to be nothing else but ideas which cannot 
 exist unperceived, yet we may not hence conclude they have 
 no existence except^nly^whilejhey are perceived byjis ; since 
 there may be some other spirit that perceives them though 
 we do n ot. AVherever bodies are said to have no existence 
 without the mind, I would not be understood to mean this 
 or that particular mind, but all minds whatso ever. It does 
 not therefore follow from the foregoing principles that bodies 
 
 ' Does this follow, if the parts diminish in size in an infinite ratio ? 
 This reasoning about an infinity of parts becomes obscure.
 
 70 Of tJie Principles 
 
 are annihilated and created every moment, or exist not at all 
 during the intervals between our perception of them^ 
 
 49. FiftJdy, it may perhaps be objected that if extension 
 and figure exist only in the mind, it foUoAvs that the mind 
 is extended and figured ; since extension is a mode or attri- 
 bute which (to speak with the schools) is predicated of the 
 subject in which it exists. — I answer, those qualities are in 
 the mind only as they are perceived by it — that is, not by 
 way of mode or attribute, but only by way of idea ; and it no 
 
 ^ To explain our common sense belief in the permanence and identity 
 of the things we see and touch, notwithstanding the constant flux of 
 their constituent phenomena in our senses, and to shew how they exist 
 during intervals in which there may be no perception of them by any 
 finite mind, is the difficulty, under Berkeley's conception of what the 
 material world means. What amount of phenomenal change in the 
 ' things of sense ' is consistent with the individual identity of each thing? 
 
 With reference to Berkeley's reply to the fourth objection, it might 
 be urged that if sensible things exist continuously, either potentially, 
 or supernaturally in God's will and thought; and if, as actual, they are 
 dependent on our (often interrupted) sense-perceptions, — then, what 
 we call the same thing is for each of us many things, each of them 
 annihilated and created anew with every opening and closing of our 
 eyes. — Did the Herculanean manuscripts, Ueberweg asks, not exist 
 actually during the centuries in which they were buried, and shall we 
 say that when they were discovered God created them anew ? Can this 
 restoration be consistently explained by Berkeley merely by the fact that 
 all phenomena in sense are governed by natural law ? Is law in nature 
 possible except on the supposition that things exist indej^endently of all 
 finite percipients during the intervalu of their being perceived ? and 
 would not their supposed Divine Ideal (potential, as concerns us) exist- 
 ence imply their eternal and necessary existence, because the Ideas of 
 God are eternal and necessary ? — Kant, in a passage in his Critique of 
 Fare Reason ('Transcendental Dialectic,' b. II. ch. 2. sect. 6), accepts a 
 position not unlike Bei'keley's. ' The objects of experience are not,' he 
 concludes, ' things in themselves {dinge an sich), but are given in ex- 
 perience, independently of which they have no existence. That there 
 may be inhabitants in the moon, though no one has ever observed them, 
 must be admitted ; but this means only that in the progress of know- 
 ledge we may discover them at some future time. That which stands 
 in connexion with a present perception according to the progress of the 
 laws of experience is real.' (' Inhabitants of the moon ' are hardly in 
 point, for, if they are conscious, their own conscious life maintains their 
 existence.) 
 
 On the 'sameness' of sensible things, see Third Dialogue {WorJcs, 
 vol. I. pp. 343-345) ; also on the opinions of the Schoolmen on ' constant 
 creation,' see Life 0/ Berkeley, p. 108.
 
 of Human Knowledge, 71 
 
 more follows the soul or mind is extended, because extension 
 exists in it alone, than it does that it is red or blue, because 
 those colours are on all hands acknowledged to exist in it, 
 and nowhere else. As to what j)hilosophers say of ' subject' 
 and ' mode,' that seems very groundless and unintelligible. 
 For instance, in this proposition — ' a die is hard, extended, 
 and square,' they will have it that the word die denotes a 
 subject or substance, distinct from the hardness, extension, 
 and figure which are predicated of it, and in which they 
 exist. This I cannot comprehend : to me a die seems to be 
 nothing distinct from those things which are termed its 
 modes or accidents. And, to say 'a die is hard, extended, 
 and square' is not to attribute those qualities to a subject 
 distinct from and supporting them, but only an explication 
 of the meaning of the word cZ^e^ 
 
 50. Sixthly, you will say there have been a great many 
 things explained by matter and motion; take away these 
 and you destroy the whole corpuscular philosophy, and un- 
 dermine those mechanical principles which have been applied 
 
 1 If Space and extended things are phenomenal only in and through 
 percipient mind, it may seem that mind is itself extended, so that after 
 all we are landed in Materialism. — Berkeley's reply here throws light on 
 his conception of the relation between percipients and perceived pheno- 
 mena — between the conscious self and the flux of 'sensations' of which 
 self is cognisant. A 'percipient is not, he assumes, related to what is per- 
 ceived either (a) under the unmeaning relation of subject {vTroKfifxtvoi/) 
 and attributes, which scholastics, who substantiate abstractions, talk 
 about ; or (h) as one phenomenon is related to another, in those steady 
 aggregates of presented phenomena which compose ' things.' On the 
 contrary, percipisntjnind is related to the phenomena of extension, 
 figure, and what else is given in sense, simply as percipient and ^per- 
 ceived — knower an d known -object — with whatever ' otherness ' that 
 altogether sui generis relation may involve. But it is not so related 
 as that the extended phenomenon is an attribute of the ego. 
 
 (Berkeley here means by subject ' substratum,' or impercipient and 
 uuperceived subject ; not the conscious or percipient subject, — the vtto- 
 KfifjLfvov of the Peripatetics ; not their ovaia or rt tarlv, which includes also 
 the essence which makes a thing what it is, and which is expressed in its 
 definition. The term is also used, as he shews, to designate a grammatical 
 term in a proposition. The deep question of the ontological import of 
 judgments rises here.)
 
 72 Of the Principles 
 
 with so much success to account for the phenomena. In 
 short, whatever advances have been made, either by ancient 
 or modern philosophers, in the study of Nature do all pro- 
 ceed on the supposition that corporeal substance or Matter 
 doth really exist. — To this I answer that there is not any 
 one phenomenon explained on that supposition which may 
 not as well be explained without it, as might easily be made 
 appear by an induction of particulars'. To explain the phe- 
 nomena, is all one as to shew why, upon such and such occa- 
 sions, we are affected with such and such ideas. But how 
 Matter should oj^erate on a Spirit, or produce any idea in it, 
 is what no philosopher will pretend to explain ; it is there- 
 fore evident there can be no use of Matter in Natural Phi- 
 losophy^. Besides, they who attempt to account for things 
 do it not by corporeal substance, but by figure, motion, and 
 other qualities, which are in truth no more than mere ideas, 
 and therefore cannot be the cause of anything, as hath been 
 already shewn. See sect. 25. 
 
 51. Seventlily, it will upon this be demanded whether it 
 
 ^ It has been objected to this — that all physico-mathematical explana- 
 tions of events in nature rest on the hypothesis that changes in the 
 material world are independent of every percipient mind — that they 
 are in an objective causal relation to one another and to our organism — 
 and in particular that Berkeley's conception of what 'reality' of the 
 material world means is inconsistent with the conservation of ' force ' 
 through its successive metamorphoses. 
 
 ^ The question for Materialism is — whether conscious life, in all its 
 -rational and voluntary manifestations, more probably issues (a) from a 
 power like itself, or is (Jj) the blind outcome of phenomenal organization 
 — by actual but inexplicable law. And the most plausible and consis- 
 tent materialism professes only its own probability, rather than to be 
 a demonstrable explanation of the universe : we have probable evidence, 
 it argues, that molecular motions, on the one side, and states or acts 
 of conscious life, on the other, are related as constant antecedent and 
 consequent, and we probably cannot go deeper than this probable fact. 
 — With Berkeley the organism, in itself unsubstantial and impotent, is 
 ultimately dependent on Mind ; though each individual mind may be 
 conditioned by its own organism, as healthy or diseased. The Materialist 
 assumes with regard to power in the universe that, a priori, anything 
 may be caused by anything, instead of its being necessarily the issue 
 of elements in its productive cause which are rationally adequate for 
 its production.
 
 of Human Knowledge. 73 
 
 does not seem absurd to take away Natural Causes, and as- 
 cribe everything to the immediate operation of Spirits % We 
 must no longer say upon these principles that fire heats, or 
 water cools, but that a Spirit heats, and so forth. Would not 
 a man be deservedly laughed at, who should talk after tliis 
 manner ? — I answer, he would so ; in such things we ought 
 to ' think with the learned, and speak with the vulgar.' They 
 who to demonstration are convinced of the truth of the Co- 
 pernican system do nevertheless say ' the sun rises,' ' the sun 
 sets,' or ' comes to the meridian ; ' and if they affected a con- 
 trary style in common talk it would without doubt appear 
 very ridiculous. A little reflection on what is here said will 
 make it manifest that the common use of language would re- 
 ceive no manner of alteration or disturbance from the admis- 
 sion of our tenets. 
 
 52. In the ordinary affairs of life, any phrases may be re- 
 tained, so long as they excite in us proper sentiments, or dis- 
 positions to act in such a manner as is necessary for our well- 
 being, how false soever they may be if taken in a strict and 
 speculative sense. Nay, this is unavoidable, since, propriety 
 being regulated by custom, language is suited to the received 
 opinions, which are not always the truest. Hence it is im- 
 possible — even in the most rigid, philosophic reasonings — 
 so far to alter the bent and genius of the tongue we speak as 
 never to give a handle for cavillers to pretend difficulties and 
 inconsistencies. But a fair and ingenuous reader will collect 
 the sense from the scope and tenor and connexion of a dis- 
 course, making allowances for those inaccurate modes of 
 speech which use has made inevitable. 
 
 53. As to the opinion that there are no Corporeal Causes, 
 this has been heretofore maintained by some of the School- 
 men, as it is of late by others among the modern philoso- 
 phers, who, though they allow Matter to exist, yet will have 
 God alone to be the immediate efficient cause of all things. 
 These men saw that amongst all the objects of sense there
 
 74 Of the Principles 
 
 was none which liad any power oi* activity included in it ; 
 and that by consequence this was likewise true of whatever 
 bodies tliey supposed to exist without the mind, like unto 
 the immediate objects of sense. But then, that they should 
 suppose an innumerable multitude of created beings, which 
 they acknowledge are not capable of producing any one effect 
 in nature, and which therefore are made to no manner of 
 purpose, since God might have done everything as well with- 
 out them — this I say, though we should allow it possible, 
 must yet be a very unaccountable and extravagant sup- 
 position \ 
 
 54. In the eigldh place, the universal concurrent Assent 
 of Mankind may be thought by some an invincible argument 
 in behalf of Matter, or the existence of external things'^. 
 Must we suppose the whole world to be mistaken % And if 
 so, what cause can be assigned of so widespread and pre- 
 dominant an error % — I answer, first, that, upon a narrow in- 
 quiry, it will not pei'haps be found so many as is imagined 
 do really believe the existence of Matter or things without 
 the mind. Strictly speaking, to believe that which involves 
 
 ^ The reference in this section is to Malebranche, Geulinx, and other 
 so-called Occasionalists in the seventeenth century, who, while they 
 argued for the substantial existence of sensible things, denied, like 
 Berkeley, but on other grounds, their proper efficiency. They inferred 
 from the Cartesian assumption of the perfect heterogeneity of what is 
 extended and what is conscious, the impossibility of action or reaction 
 between tlie two. Tliey concluded that, on occasion of the affection of 
 the organism, the corresponding perception in us is produced by God — 
 that He moves our limbs for us, on occasion of our desire to move them. 
 
 ^ This is the argument from ' common sense ' for the reality of the 
 material world, afterwards put by Reid and other Scottish psychologists. 
 The point in question is not, however, whether the material world really 
 exists, but what we must mean, if we mean anything, and do not 
 indulge in empty veibal abstraction, when we affirm its real existence. 
 That the unreflecting part of mankind should have a confused view of 
 what matter and external reality mean is not to be wondered at. It 
 is the very office of pliilosophical meditation to improve their concep- 
 tion, making it deeper and truer. But it does not follow from this that 
 Berkeley has not emptied perception of elements which are essential 
 to it, in his desire for unity and simplicity, and to avoid verbal abstrac- 
 tion.
 
 of Human Knowledge. 75 
 
 a contradiction, or has no meaning in it, is impossible ; and 
 wlietlier tlie foregoing expressions are not of that sort, I refer 
 it to the impartial examination of the reader. In one sense, 
 indeed, men may be said to believe that Matter exists ; that 
 is, they act as if the immediate cause of their sensations, 
 which affects them every moment, and is so nearly present to 
 them, were some senseless unthinking being. But, that they 
 should clearly apprehend any meaning marked by those words, 
 and form thereof a settled speculative opinion, is what I am 
 not able to conceive. This is not the only instance wherein 
 men impose upon themselves, by imagining they believe those 
 propositions which they have often heai-d, though at bottom 
 they have no meaning in them ^. 
 
 55. But secondly, though we should grant a notion to be 
 never so universally and stedfastly adhered to, yet this is but 
 a weak argument of its truth to whoever considers what a 
 vast number of prejudices and false opinions are everywhere 
 embraced with the utmost tenaciousness, by the unreflecting 
 (which are the far greater) part of mankind. There was a 
 time when the antipodes and motion of the earth were looked 
 upon as monstrous absurdities even by men of learning : and 
 if it be considered what a small proportion they bear to the 
 rest of mankind, we shall find that at this day those notions 
 have gained but a very inconsiderable footing in the world. 
 
 56. But it is demanded that we assign a Cause of this - 
 
 Prejudice, and account for its obtaining in the world. — To 
 
 this I answer, that men knowing they perceived several ideas, 
 
 whereof they themselves were not the authors — as not being 
 
 excited from within nor depending on the operation of tlieir 
 
 wills — this made them maintain those ideas or objects of 
 
 perception had an existence independent of and without the 
 
 mind, wdthout ever dreaming that a contradiction was involved 
 
 1 That our perceptions of the material world are perceptions of 
 ordered phenomena dependent on percipient and active mind is hardly 
 what Reid set himself to refute. •
 
 76 Of the Principles 
 
 in those words. But, philosophers having phiinly seen that 
 the immediate objects of perception do not exist without 
 the mind, they in some degree corrected the mistake of the 
 vulgar, but at the same time run into another which seems 
 no less absurd, to wit, that there are certain objects really 
 existing without the mind, or having a subsistence distinct 
 from being perceived, of which our ideas are only images or 
 resemblances, imprinted by those objects on the mind. And 
 this notion of the philosophers owes its origin to the same 
 cause with the former, namely, their being conscious that thetj 
 were not the authors of their own sensations, which they evi- 
 dently knew were imprinted from without, and which there- 
 fore must have some cause distinct from the minds on which 
 they are imprinted \ 
 
 57. But why they should suppose the ideas of sense to be 
 excited in us by tilings in their likeness, and not rather have 
 recourse to Spirit which alone can act, may be accounted for, 
 first, because they Avere not aware of the repugnancy there is, 
 as well in supposing things like unto our ideas existing with- 
 out, as in attributing to thpm power or activity. Secondly, 
 because the Supreme Spirit whicli excites those ideas in our 
 minds, is not marked out and limited to our view by any 
 particular finite collection of sensible ideas, as human agents 
 are by their size, complexion, limbs, and motions. And 
 thirdly, because His operations are regular and uniform. 
 AVhenever the course of nature is interrupted by a miracle, 
 men are ready to own the presence of a superior agent. But, 
 when we see things go on in the ordinary course they do not 
 excite in us any reflection ; their order and concatenation, 
 though it be an argument of the greatest wisdom, power, and 
 goodness in their creator, is yet so constant and familiar to 
 us that we do not think them the immediate effects of a 
 
 * A representative pei-ception in sense presupposes ' things in them- 
 selves' — unperceived things — existing hi hind the perceived phenomena 
 which they are supposed to cause. Compare with this section the close 
 of the Third Dialogue (^Works, vol. I. pp. 339-360).
 
 of Human Knowledge. 77 
 
 FEEE SPiEiT ; especially since inconsistency and mutability 
 in acting, tliougli it be an imperfection, is looked on as 
 a mark of freedom \ 
 
 58. ^Tenthly, it will be objected that the notions we advance 
 are inconsistent with several sound truths in Philosophy and 
 Mathematics. For example, the motion of the earth is now 
 universally admitted by astronomers as a truth grounded 
 on the clearest and most convincing i-easons. But, on the 
 foregoing principles, there can be no such thing. For, 
 motion being only an idea, it follows that if it be not per- 
 ceived it exists not : but the motion of the earth is not per- 
 ceived by sense. — I answer, that tenet, if rightly understood, 
 will be found to agree with the principles we have premised ; 
 for, the question whether the earth moves or no amounts in 
 reality to no more than this, to wit, whether we have reason 
 to conclude, from what has been observed by astronomers, 
 that if we were placed in such and such circumstances, and 
 such or such a position and distance both from the earth and 
 sun, we should perceive the former to move among the choir 
 of the j)lanets, and appearing in all respects like one of 
 them ; a'nd this, by the established rules of nature which we 
 have no reason to mistrust, is reasonably collected from the 
 phenomena. 
 
 59. We may, from the experience we have had of the 
 train and succession of ideas ^ in our minds, often make, I 
 
 ' Some confound Divine ' arbitrariness ' with caprice. Hence their 
 difficulty in allowing that Divine Will originates and maintains the 
 laws of nature. Philosophy struggles to resolve the seeming contin- 
 gencies of nature into a rational unity that is at fii'st only dimly re- 
 vealed in what we are conscious of in sense. Sense in us is confused 
 thought, which the rational constitution latent in nature enables our in- 
 telligence more or less to convert into physical science. Whether the in- 
 tellectual power of man can ever entirely eliminate contingency from our 
 knowledge of nature is another question. Locke denied that it could. 
 
 ^ The ninth objection seems to be in sect. 56. 
 
 ^ 'Succession of ideas,' i.e. of phenomena presented in sense. Our 
 actual experience is here supposed to consist in the divinely established
 
 78 Of tJie Principles 
 
 will not say uncertain conjectures, but sure and well-gi'ounded 
 predictions concerning the ideas we shall be affected with 
 pursuant to a great train of actions, and be enabled to pass a 
 right judgment of what would have appeared to us, in case 
 we were placed in circumstances very different from those we 
 are in at present. Herein consists the knowledge of nature, 
 which may pi-eservc its use and certainty very consistently 
 with what hath been said. It will be easy to apply this to 
 whatever objections of the like sort may be drawn from the 
 magnitude of the stars, or any other discovei'ies in astronomy 
 or nature. 
 
 60. In the eleventh place, it will be demanded to what 
 purpose serves that curious organization of plants, and the 
 animal mechanism in the ])arts of animals ; might not 
 vegetables grow, and shoot forth leaves and blossoms, and 
 animals perform all their motions as well without as with all 
 that variety of internal parts so elegantly contrived and put 
 together ; which, being ideas, have nothing powerful or 
 operative in them, nor have any necessary connexion with 
 the effects ascribed to them 1 If it be a Spirit that imme- 
 diately produces every effect by a Jiat or act of his will, we 
 must think all that is fine and artificial in the works, Avhether 
 of man or nature, to be made in vain. By this doctrine, 
 though an artist has made the spring and wheels, and every 
 movement of a watch, and adjusted them in such a manner 
 as he knew would produce the motions he designed, yet he 
 must think all this done to no purpose, and that it is an 
 Intelligence which directs the index, and points to the hour 
 of the day. If so, why may not the Intelligence do it with- 
 out his being at the pains of making the movements and 
 
 associations of those phenomena — not in what is commonly meant by 
 ' association of ideas.' This miglit be Berkeley's answer to the objection 
 that the possibility of forming reasonable expectations cannot be ex- 
 plained merely by association of i'Z«/,s, but presupposes ohjects that exist 
 independently, i. e. universally or for all, and not privately or only for me.
 
 of Human Knoioledge. 79 
 
 putting them together 1 Why does not an empty case serve 
 as well as another ? And how comes it to pass that when- 
 ever there is any fault in the going of a watch, there is some 
 corresponding disorder to be found in the movements, which 
 being mended by a skilful hand all is I'ight again 1 The like 
 may be said of all the Clockwork of Nature, great part 
 whereof is so wonderfully fine and subtle as scarce to be 
 discerned by the best microscope. In short, it will be asked, 
 how, upon our principles, any tolerable account can be given, 
 or any final cause assigned, of an innumerable multitude of 
 bodies and machines, framed with the most exquisite art, 
 which in the common philosophy have very apposite uses as- 
 signed them, and serve to explain abundance of phenomena ? 
 
 6 1. To all which I answer, first, that though there were 
 some difiiculties relating to the administration of Providence, 
 and the uses by it assigned to the several parts of nature, 
 which I could not solve by the foregoing principles, yet this 
 objection could be of small weight against the truth and 
 certainty of those things which may be proved a 'priori, with 
 the utmost evidence and I'igour of demonstration ^. Secondly, 
 but neither are the received principles free from the like 
 difiiculties ; for, it may still be demanded to what end God 
 should take those roundabout methods of eff'ecting things by 
 instruments and machines, which no one can deny might 
 have been effected by the mere command of His will without 
 all that apparatus : nay, if we narrowly consider it, we shall 
 find the objection may be retorted with greater force on 
 those who hold the existence of those machines without the 
 mind ; for it has been made evident that solidity, bulk, figure, 
 motion, and the like have no activity or efficacy in them, so 
 as to be capable of producing any one effect in nature. See 
 sect 25 ^. Whoever therefore supposes them to exist (allowing 
 
 * He here assumes that his proof of the unsubstantiality and impo- 
 tence of the material world, grounded on its essence being only pheno- 
 menal, offered in sect. 3-33, is strictly demonstrative. 
 
 * This proof, in sect. 25, rests on reflex 'observation' of consciousness.
 
 80 Of the Principles 
 
 the supposition possible) wlien they are not perceived does ifc 
 manifestly to no purpose ; since the only use that is assigned 
 to them, as they exist unperccived, is that they produce those 
 l^erceivable effects which in truth cannot be ascribed to 
 anything but Spirit. 
 
 62. But, to come nigher the difficulty, it must be observed 
 that though the fabrication of all those parts and organs be 
 not absolutely necessary to the producing any effect, yet it is 
 necessary to the producing of things in a constant regular 
 way according to the laivs of nature. There are certain 
 general laws that run through the whole chain of natural 
 effects : these are learned by the observation and study of 
 nature, and are by men applied as well to the framing artificial 
 things for the use and ornament of life as to the explaining 
 the various phenomena — which explanation consists only in 
 shewing the conformity any particular phenomenon hath to 
 the general laws of natui'e, or, which is the same thing, in dis- 
 covering the uniformity there is in the production of natural 
 effects ; as will be evident to whoever shall attend to the 
 several instances wherein philosophers pretend to account for 
 appearances. That there is a gi'eat and conspicuous use in these 
 regular constant methods of working observed hy the Supreme 
 Agent hath been shewn in sect. 31. And it is no less visible 
 that a particular size, figure, motion, and disposition of parts 
 are necessary, though not absolutely to the producing any 
 effect, yet to the producing it according to the standing 
 mechanical laws of nature. Thus, for instance, it cannot be 
 denied that God, or the Intelligence that sustains and rules 
 the ordinary course of things, might, if He were minded to 
 produce a miracle, cause all the motions on the dial-plate of 
 a watch, though nobody had ever made the movements and 
 put them in it : but yet, if lie will act agreeably to the rules 
 
 It assumes, as proved, that solidity, bulk, figure, motion — the primary 
 qualities in short — can exist only as phenomena of which there is a 
 sense-consciousness or perception.
 
 of Human Knowledge, 81 
 
 of meclianism — by Him for wise ends established and main- 
 tained in the creation — it is necessary that those actions of 
 the watchmaker, whereby he makes the movements and 
 rightly adjusts them, precede the production of the aforesaid 
 motions ; as also that any disorder in them be attended with 
 the perception of some corresponding disorder in the move- 
 ments, which being once corrected all is right again^. 
 
 63. It may indeed on some occasions be necessary that the 
 Author of nature display His overruling power in producing 
 appearances out of the ordinary series of things. Such excep- 
 tions from the general rules of nature are proper to surprise 
 and awe men into an acknowledgment of the Divine Being ; 
 but then they are to be used but seldom, otherwise thei-e is a 
 plain reason why they fail of that effect. Besides, God seems 
 to choose the convincing our reason of His attributes by the 
 works of nature, which discover so much harmony and contriv- 
 ance in their make, and are such plain indications of wisdom 
 and beneficence in their Author, rather than to astonish us into 
 a belief of His Being by anomalous and surprising events-. 
 
 ^ This reply, good in itself according to Ueberweg, contains, he 
 argues, a principle the application of which breaks up the whole Berke- 
 leian conception of what an external world really means. When Berkeley 
 recognizes rational order in nature, his position, it is urged, is un- \ 
 tenable, because he can only assume, not prove, the conformity of the | 
 phenomena presented in sense to that order ; — and further, this as- 
 sumption implies that things exist independently of being perceived : 
 knowledge of phenomenal things that express law presupposes their 
 independent existence. Between our perceptions in eating and our 
 perceptions of the consequent growth of our bodies, for instance, many 
 processes are interposed, which exist unperceived by any finite mind, 
 but which, as each had a beginning and an end, cannot, it is argued, 
 when thus existing unperceived, be identified with the Eternal Ideas of 
 God. So too with the existence of the planets anterior to all sentient 
 life. — On the other hand, Berkeley might ask in reply, whether the 
 material world could maintain an inielliyible existence after the extinc- 
 tion of all conscious intelligence, finite and Divine ; also whether there 
 is more difficulty in explaining (consistently with his philosophical 
 conception of the material world) the unperceived growth of our 
 bodies, or the early geological periods, than there is in explaining the 
 existence of the invisible qualities of a house or a mountain when one 
 is only seeing it. 
 
 ^ The nature and educational oflfice of miracles is here touched. If
 
 82 Of the Princij)les 
 
 64. To set this matter in a yet clearer light, I shall observe 
 that what has been objected in sect. 60 amounts in reality to 
 uo more than this : — ideas are not anyhow and at random 
 produced, there being a certain order and connexion between 
 them, like to that of cause and eflfect : there are also several 
 combinations of them made in a very regular and artificial 
 manner, which seem like so many instruments in the hand 
 of nature that, being hid as it were behind the scenes, have a 
 secret operation in producing those appearances which are 
 seen on the theatre of the world, being themselves disceraible 
 only to the curious eye of the philosopher. But, since one 
 idea cannot be the cause of another, to what purpose is that 
 connexion 1 And, since those instniments — being barely ineffi- 
 cacious perceptions in the mind — are not subservient to the 
 production of natural efiFects, it is demanded why they are 
 made ; or, in other words, what reason can be assigned why 
 God should make us, upon a close inspection into His works, 
 behold so great variety of ideas so artfully laid together, 
 and so much according to rule ; it not being credible that He 
 would be at the esjiense (if one may so speak) of all that art 
 and regularity to no purpose 1 
 
 65. To all which my answer is, first, that the connexion of 
 ideas does not imply the relation of cause and ej fect, but only 
 of a r aarh or sifjn wi th the thim] signif ied^. The fire which 
 I see is not the cause of the pain I suffer upon my approach- 
 ing it, but the mark that forewarns me of it. In like 
 manner the noise that I hear is not the eff"ect of this or that 
 
 the whole evolution of events in nature is perpetually caused by God, 
 where, it maybe asked, is the room for supernatural events ? Berkeley's 
 answer to this may be gathered from sect. 62, where room is left for 
 extraordinary physical events. These, in the system of spiritual 
 government, may be fitted to develope our spiritual insight. Faith, 
 in itself independent of sensible signs, may thus be evoked and trained 
 by them. 
 
 ^ When it is objected that what is iinperceived hy me must have ex- 
 isted independently of ray perception, it should be remembered that the 
 sense-sjTnboiism here supposed to constitute externality in nature is 
 shared in by all human minds.
 
 of Human Knoioledge. 83 
 
 motion or collision of the ambient bodies, but the sign 
 thereof. Secondly, the reason why ideas are formed into 
 machines, that is, artificial and regular combinations, is the 
 same ■with that for combining letters into words. That a 
 few original ideas may be made to signify a great number of 
 effects and actions, it is necessary they be variously combined 
 together. And, to the end their use be permanent and uni- 
 versal, these combinations must be made by rule, and with 
 wise contrivance. By this means abundance of information 
 is conveyed unto us, concerning what we are to expect from 
 such and such actions, and Avhat methods are proper to be 
 taken for the exciting such and such ideas — which in effect 
 is all that I conceive to be distinctly meant when it is said^ 
 that, by discerning the figure, texture, and mechanism of the 
 inward parts of bodies, whether natural or artificial, we may 
 attain to know the several uses and properties depending 
 thereon, or the nature of the thing '^. 
 
 ()6. Hence, it is evident that those things which, under 
 the motion of a cause co-operating or concurring to the 
 production of effects, are altogether inexplicable, and run us into 
 great absurdities, may be very naturally explained, and have 
 a proper and obvious use assigned to them, when they are 
 considered only as marks or signs for our information. And 
 it is the searching after and endeavouring to understand this 
 Language (if I may so call it) of the Author of Nature, that 
 ought to be the employment of the natural philosopher'; and 
 not the jDretending to explain things by corporeal causes*, 
 which doctrine seems to have too much estranged the minds 
 
 ^ By Locke, for instance, in his view of the established dependence of 
 the secondary on the primary qualities of matter. 
 
 ^ This section exj^resses well the office of an orderly system of phe- 
 nomena in educating finite spirits, morally as well as intellectually — 
 which perhaps is the final cause of the existence of the material world. 
 
 ^ Compare this with the 'homo naturae minister et interpres' of 
 Bacon, and with Berkeley himself on Visual Language. 
 
 * 'Corporeal causes' — which Berkeley has already disposed of in his 
 ' proof that productive power cannot be found within the world of sense, 
 and that mind — moral agency — is the only real power in nature. 
 
 G 2
 
 84 Of the Principles 
 
 of men from that Active Principle, that supreme and wise 
 Spirit ' in whom we live, move, and have our being ^' 
 
 67. In the twelfth \}\vic(i, it may pei'haps be objected that — 
 though it be clear from what has been said that there can be 
 no such thing as an inert, senseless, extended, solid, figured, 
 moveable substance existing without the mind, such as phi- 
 losophers describe Matter, — yet, if any man shall leave out of 
 his idea of matter the positive ideas of extension, figure, soli- 
 dity and motion, and say that he means only by that word an 
 inert, senseless substance, that exists without the mind or 
 unperceived, which is the occasion of our ideas, or at the 
 presence whereof God is pleased to excite ideas in us — it 
 doth not appear but that Matter taken in this sense may pos- 
 sibly exist. — In answer to which I say, first, that it seems no 
 less absurd to suppose a substance without accidents, than it 
 is to suppose accidents without a substance. But secondly, 
 though we should grant this unknown substance may possibly 
 exist, yet xvhere can it be supposed to be ] That it exists not 
 in the mind is agreed ; and that it exists not in jilace is no less 
 certain — since all place or extension exists only in the mind^, 
 as hath been already proved. It remains therefoi'e that it 
 exists nowhere at all. 
 
 68. Let us examine a little the desci-iptiou that is here 
 given us of Matter. It neither acts, nor perceives, nor is 
 perceived ; for this is all that is meant by saying it is an 
 inert, sensel ess, u nknown substance ; which is a definition 
 entirely made up of negatives^, excepting only the relative 
 
 ^ The search for physical 'causes' thus becomes a search for the 
 meaning of the 'language' of the Author of Nature — a figure which is 
 carried by Berkeley througli all the speculations about physical causa- 
 tion implied in his Theory of Visual Language. Docs the causality 
 that belongs to the material world mean no more than is signified by 
 this metaphor? 
 
 '' i. e. exists intelligibly only so far forth as it is actually perceived. 
 
 ^ This approaches Kant's ' thing in itself {ding an sich), made up of 
 negatives, though he seema to assume its power to jiroduce sensations.
 
 of Human Knowledge. 85 
 
 notion of its standing under or suj)poi-ting. But then it 
 must be observed that it supports nothing at all, and how 
 nearly this comes to the description of a nonentity I desire 
 may be considered. But, say you, it is the unh iown oc casion, 
 at the presence of which ideas are excited in us by the will 
 of God. Now, I would fain know how anything can be 
 present to us, which is neither perceivable by sense nor re- 
 flection, nor capable of producing any idea in our minds, nor 
 is at all extended, nor hath any form, nor exists in any place. 
 The words 'to be present,' when thus applied, must needs 
 be taken in some abstract and strange meaning, and which 
 I am not able to comprehend. 
 
 69. Again, let us examine what is meant by occasio n. So 
 far as I can gather from the common use of language, that 
 word signifies either the agent which produces any effect, or 
 else something that is observed^ to accompany or go before it 
 in the ordinary course of things. But when it is applied to 
 Matter as above described, it can be taken in neither of those 
 senses ; for Matter is said to be passive and inert, and so 
 cannot be an agent or efficient cause. It is also unperceiv- 
 able, as being devoid of all sensible qualities, and so cannot 
 be the occasion of our perceptions in the latter sense — as 
 when the burning my finger is said to be the occasion of 
 the pain that attends it. What therefore can be meant by 
 calling Matter an occasion ? This term is either used in no 
 sense at all, or else in some very distant from its received 
 signification. 
 
 70. You will perhaps say that Matter, though it be not 
 perceived by us, is nevertheless perceived by God, to whom 
 it is the occasion of exciting ideas in our minds. For, say 
 you, since we observe our sensations to be imprinted in an 
 orderly and constant manner, it is bvit reasonable to suppose 
 
 ' That which is the occasion of Divine activity need not lie within 
 the sphere of our observation, though it may be reached by our in- 
 ferences.
 
 86 Of the Pmicij)les 
 
 that there are certain constant and regular occasions of their 
 being produced. That is to say, that there are certain per- 
 manent and distinct parcels of Matter, corresponding to our 
 ideas, which, though they do not excite them in our minds, 
 or anywise immediately affect us, as being altogether passive 
 and unperceivable to us, they are nevertheless to God, by 
 whom they are jyerceivecl, as it were so many occasions to 
 remind Him when and what ideas to imprint on our minds — 
 that so things may go on in a constant uniform manner. 
 
 71. In answer to this, I observe that, as the notion of 
 Matter is here stated,* the question is no longer concerning 
 the existence of a thing distinct from Sjjirit and idea, from 
 perceiving and being perceived ; but whether there are not 
 certain Ideas, of I know not what sort, in the mind of God, 
 which are so many marks or notes that direct Him how to 
 produce sensations in our minds in a constant and regular 
 method — much after the same manner as a musician is di- 
 rected by the notes of music to produce that harmonious 
 strain and composition of sound which is called a tune, 
 though they who hear the music do not perceive the notes, 
 and may be entirely ignorant of them. But, this notion of 
 Matter (which after all is the only intelligible one that I can 
 pick from what is said of unknown occasions) seems too ex- 
 travagant to deserve a confutation ^ Besides, it is in effect no 
 objection against what we have advanced, viz. that there is 
 no senseless unjyerceived substance. 
 
 72. If we follow the light of reason, we shall, from the 
 constant uniform method of our sensations, collect the good- 
 ness and wisdom of the Spirit who excites them in our 
 minds ; but this is all that I can see reasonably concluded 
 from thence. To me, I say, it is evident that the being of 
 a Spii'it infinitely wise, good, and powerful is abundantly 
 
 ' Here Berkeley rejects the suggestion that the supposed ' things in 
 themselves' can be Ideas of God — an objection to this by others being, 
 that the Ideas of God are eternal, while the material world is transitory. 
 Afterwards he seems more favourable to it (see sect. 76, nota).
 
 of Human Knowledge. 87 
 
 sufficient to explain all the appearances of nature. But, as 
 for ine,rt, senseless Matter, nothing that I perceive has any 
 the least connexion with it, or leads to the thoughts of it. 
 And I would fain see any one explain any the meanest phe- 
 nomenon in nature by it, or shew any manner of reason, 
 though in the lowest rank of probability, that he can have 
 for its existence, or even make any tolerable sense or mean- 
 ing of that supposition. For, as to its being an occasion, we 
 have, I think, evidently shewn that with regard to us it is 
 no occasion. It remains therefore that it must be, if at all, 
 the occasion to God of exciting ideas in us ; and what this 
 amounts to we have just now seen^. 
 
 73. It is worth while to reflect a little on the motives 
 which induced men to suppose the existence of material sub- 
 stance ; that so having observed the gradual ceasing and 
 expiration of those motives or reasons, we may proportionably 
 withdraw the assent that was grounded on them. First, 
 therefore, it was thought that colour, figure, motion, and the 
 rest of the sensible qualities or accidents, did really exist 
 without the mind^; and for this reason it seemed needful to 
 suppose some unthinking substratum or substance wherein 
 they did exist — since they could not be conceived to exist by 
 themselves''. Afterwards, in process of time, men being con- 
 \'inced that colours, sounds, and the rest of the sensible, 
 secondare/ qualities had no existence without the mind, they 
 stripped this substratum or material substance of those 
 qualities — leaving only the 2>'>'ima7-y ones, figure, motion, and 
 suchlike, which they still conceived to exist without the 
 mind, and consequently to stand in need of a material sup- 
 port. But, it having been shewn that none even of these 
 
 ' Compare with this and the preceding sections Berkeley's Second 
 Dialogue (Woi-ks, vol. I. pp. 308-314). 
 
 ^ This is the uneducated supposition, which assumes that the material 
 world would be exactly what we experience in sense, if no one was 
 experiencing it — ignoring even what is added by our sensations in the 
 case of the secondary qualities. 
 
 ^ He nowhere explains the ground of this assumption.
 
 88 Of the Vnnciples 
 
 can possibly exist otherwise than in a Spirit or Mind which 
 perceives them, it follows that we have no longer any reason 
 to suppose the being of Matter, nay, that it is uttei'ly impos- 
 sible that there should be any such thing — so long as that 
 word is taken to denote an unthinking substratum of quali- 
 ties or accidents wherein they exist without the niind^. 
 
 74. But — though it be allowed by the Materialists them- 
 selves that Matter was thought of only for the sake of sup- 
 porting accidents, and, the reason entirely ceasing, one might 
 expect the mind should naturally, and without any reluctance 
 at all, quit the belief of what was solely gi'ounded thereon — 
 yet the prejudice is I'iveted so deeply in our thoughts, that 
 we can scarce tell how to part with it, and are therefore in- 
 clined, since the thing itself is indefensible, at least to retain 
 the name, which we apply to I know not what abstracted and 
 indefinite notions of Being, or Occasion, though without any 
 show of reason, at least so far as I can see. For, what is 
 there on our part, or what do we perceive, amongst all the 
 ideas, sensations, notions which are imprinted on our minds, 
 either by sense or reflection^, from Avhence may be inferred 
 the existence of an inert, thoughtless, unperceived occasion 1 
 and, on the other hand, on the part of an All-sufficient Spirit, 
 what can there be that should make us believe or even sus- 
 pect He is directed by an inert occasion to excite ideas in 
 our minds ? 
 
 75. It is a very extraordinary instance of the force of 
 prejudice, and much to be lamented, that the mind of man 
 retains so great a fondness, against all the evidence of reason, 
 
 ' It has been argued, in opposition to this, that although none of the 
 sensible qualities can exist per se as they do in our experience in sense, 
 yet the steady order of the phenomena that are presented when we 
 perceive, implies existence of a 'thing in itself,' endowed with un- 
 perceivable attributes. — Instead of this ' thing in itself,' with unknown 
 attributes, Berkeley finds God. See also sect. 78. 
 
 "^ Here he uses ' idea, sensation, and notion ' as synonymous, and 
 speaks metaphorically of ideas of reflection even, as ' imprinted ' on our 
 minds.
 
 of Kiiman Knowledge. 89 
 
 foi' a stiqnd tliongldless Somewhat, by the interposition wliere- 
 of it would as it were screen itself from the Providence 
 of God, and remove Him farther off from the afiPairs of the 
 world. But, though we do the utmost we can to secure the 
 belief of Matter ; though, when reason forsakes us, we endea- 
 vour to support our opinion on the bare possibility of the 
 thing, and though we indulge ourselves in the full scope of 
 an imagination not regulated by reason to make out that 
 poor possibility, yet the upshot of all is — that there are cer- 
 tain unknoivn^ Ideas in the mind of God; for this, if anything, 
 is all that I conceive to be meant by occasion with regard to 
 God. And this at the bottom is no longer contending for 
 the thing, but for the name. 
 
 76. Whether therefore there are such Ideas in the mind of 
 God, and whether they may be called by the name Matter, I 
 shall not dispute. But, if you stick to the notion of an un- 
 thinking substance or support of extension, motion, and other 
 sensible qualities, then to me it is most evidently impossible 
 there should be any such thing ; since it is a plain repug- 
 nancy that those qualities should exist in or be supported by 
 an unperceiving substance '^. 
 
 77. But, say you, though it be granted that there is no 
 thoughtless support of extension and the other qualities or 
 accidents which we perceive, yet there may perhaps be some 
 inert, unperceiving substance or substratum of some other 
 qualities, as incomprehensible to us as colours are to a man 
 
 ' But which become more or less known to us in natural science. 
 
 ^ Berkeley says years afterwards that he has ' no objection to calling 
 the Ideas in the mind of God archetypes of ours,' and that he objects 
 only to those [unthinking] arclietypes supposed by philosophers to exist 
 without any consciousness at all of them. {TAJe of Berheley, pp. 1 76 
 177.) And in truth his conception of what the reality of the material 
 world means presupposes Divine conceptions, towards which human 
 science in its successful search for the laws of nature is approximating. 
 The assertion that ' the material world exists ' would when so under- 
 stood, be simply the assertion, that what we perceive is part of an 
 interpretable universe. It is actually interpreted to the extent that 
 our scientific conceptions are in harmony with the divinely established 
 laws obeyed by phenomenal things. Cf. Sirls, sect. 335.
 
 90 Of the Principles 
 
 born blind, because we Lave not a sense adapted to them. 
 But, if we had a new sense, we should possibly no more 
 doubt of their existence than a blind man made to see does 
 of the existence of light and colours. — I answer, first, if what 
 you mean by the word Matter be only the unknown support 
 of unknown qualities, it is no matter whether there is such 
 a thing or no, since it no way concerns us ; and I do not see 
 the advantage there is in disputing about what we know not 
 tvlhat, and we know not why. 
 
 78. But, secondly, if we had a new sense it could only 
 furnihh us with new ideas or sensations ; and then we should 
 have the same reason against their existing in an unper- 
 ceiving substance that has been already offered with relation 
 to figure, motion, colour, and the like. ' QuaUties,' as hath 
 been shewn, are nothing else but sensations or ideas, which 
 exist only in a mind perceiving them ; and this is true not 
 only of the ideas we are acquainted with at present, but like- 
 wise of all possible ideas whatsoever, 
 
 79. But, you will insist, what if I have no reason to be- 
 lieve the existence of Matter? what if I cannot assign any 
 use to it or explain anything by it, or even conceive what is 
 meant by that word 1 yet still it is no contradiction to say 
 that Matter exists, and that this Matter is in general a sub- 
 stance, or occasion of ideas ; though indeed to go about to 
 unfold the meaning or adhere to any particular explication 
 of those words may be attended with great difficulties. I 
 answer, when words are used without a meaning, you may 
 put them together as you please without danger of running 
 into a contradiction. You may say, for example, that twice 
 two is equal to seven, so long as you declare you do not take 
 the words of that proposition in their usual acceptation but 
 for marks of you know not what. And, by the same reason, 
 you may say there is an inert thoughtless substance without 
 accidents which is the occasion of our ideas. And we shall 
 understand just as much by one proposition as the other.
 
 of Human Knoivledge. 91 
 
 80. In the last place, you will say, what if we give up the 
 cause of material Substance, aud stand to it that Matter is 
 an unknown Somewhat — neither substance nor accident, spii'it 
 nor idea, inert, thoughtless, indivisible, immoveable, unex- 
 tended, existing in no place 1 For, say you, whatever may be 
 urged against substance or occasion, or any other positive or 
 relative notion of Matter, hath no place at all, so long as this 
 negative definition of Matter is adhered to. — I answer, you 
 may, if so it shall seem good, use the word ' Matter ' in the 
 same sense as other men use ' nothing,' and so make those 
 terms convertible in your style. For, after all, this is what 
 appears to me to be the result of that definition — the parts 
 whereof when I consider with attention, either collectively or 
 separate from each other, I do not find that there is any kind 
 of effect or impression made on my mind difierent from what 
 is excited by the term nothing. 
 
 81. You will reply, perhaps, that in the aforesaid definition 
 is included what doth sufficiently distinguish it from nothing 
 — the positive abstract idea of quiddity/, entity, or existence. 
 I own, indeed, that those who pretend to the faculty of 
 framing abstract general ideas do talk as if they had such an 
 idea, which is, say they, the most abstract and general notion 
 of all ; that is, to me, the most incomprehensible of all others^. 
 That there are a great variety of spirits of different orders 
 and capacities, whose faculties both in number and extent are 
 far exceeding those the Author of my being has bestowed on 
 me, I see no reason to deny. And for me to pretend to deter- 
 mine, by my own few, stinted, narrow inlets of perception, 
 what ideas the inexhaustible power of the Supreme Spirit 
 may imprint upon them were certainly the utmost folly and 
 presumption — since there may be, for aught that I know, 
 innumerable sorts of ideas or sensations, as different fi'om one 
 another, and from all that I have perceived, as colours are 
 from sounds. But, how ready soever I may be to acknow- 
 
 * Being = Nothing.
 
 93 Of ihe Principles 
 
 ledge the scantiness of my comprehension with regard to the 
 endless variety of spirits and ideas that may possibly exist, 
 yet for any one to pretend to a notion of Entity or Existence, 
 abstracted from spirit and idea, from perceived and being per- 
 ceived, is, I suspect, a downright repugnancy and trifling with 
 words ^. 
 
 It remains that we consider the objections which may pos- 
 sibly be made on the part of Eeligion. 
 
 82. Some there are who think that, though the arguments 
 for the real existence of bodies which are drawn from Reason 
 be allowed not to amount to demonstration, yet the Holy 
 Scriptures are so clear in the point as will sufficiently con- 
 vince every good Christian that bodies do really exist, and 
 are something more than mere ideas ; there being in Holy 
 Writ innumerable facts related which evidently suppose the 
 reality of timber and stone, mountains and rivers, and cities, 
 and human bodies. To which I answer that no sort of 
 writings whatever, sacred or profane, which use those and 
 the like woi'ds in the vulgar acceptation, or so as to have a 
 meaning in them, are in danger of having their truth called 
 in question by our doctrine. That all those things do really 
 exist, that there are bodies, even corporeal substances, when 
 taken in the vulgar sense, has been shewn to be agreeable to 
 our Principles : and the difference betwixt things and ideas, 
 realities and chimeras, has been distinctly explained. See 
 sect. 29, 30, 33, 36, &c. And I do not think that either 
 what philosophers call Matter, or the existence of objects 
 without the mind, is anywhere mentioned in Scripture. 
 
 83. Again, whether there be or be not external things, it 
 is agreed on all hands that the proper use of woi'ds is the 
 marking our conceptions, or things only as they are known 
 
 ' Compare this and the preceding section with the Second Dialogue 
 {Works, vol. I. pp. 315-320).
 
 of Human Knowledge. 93 
 
 and perceived by us ; ■whence it plainly follows that in the 
 tenets we have laid down there is nothing inconsistent with 
 the right use and significancy of language, and that discourse, 
 of what kind soever, so far as it is intelligible, remains un- 
 disturbed. But all this seems so very manifest, from what 
 has been largely set forth in the premises, that it is needless 
 to insist any farther on it. 
 
 84. But, it will be urged that Miracles do, at least, lose 
 much of their stress and import by our principles. What 
 must we think of Moses' rod % was it not really turned into 
 a serpent, or was there only a change of ideas in the minds 
 of the spectators % And, can it be supposed that our Saviour 
 did no more at the marriage-feast in Cana than impose on 
 the sight, and smell, and taste of the guests, so as to create 
 in them the appearance of idea only of wine % The same 
 may be said of all other miracles ; which, in consequence of 
 the foregoing principles, must be looked upon only as so many 
 cheats, or illusions of fancy. — To this I reply, that the rod 
 was changed into a real serpent, and the water into real wine. 
 That this does not in the least contradict what I have else- 
 where said will be evident from sect. 34 and 35. But this 
 business of real and imaginary has been already so plainly 
 and fully explained, and so often referred to, and the diffi- 
 culties about it are so easily answered from what has gone 
 before, that it were an affront to the reader's understanding 
 to resume the explication of it in its place. I shall only 
 observe that if at table all who were present should see, and 
 smell, and taste, and drink wine, and find the effects of it, 
 with me there could be no doubt of its reality ; — so that at 
 bottom the scruple concerning real miracles has no place at 
 all on ours, but only on the received principles, and conse- 
 quently makes rather for than against what has been said ^, 
 
 ^ Participation in similar sense experiences by all human beings, 
 according to an established order of nature, is here offered as a test 
 of the 'reality' of these sense experiences. Ueberweg allows that 
 
 /
 
 94 Of the Principles 
 
 85. Having done with the Objections S which I endeavoui'ed 
 to propose in the clearest light, and gave them all the force 
 and weight I could, we proceed in the next place to take a 
 view of our tenets in their Consequences '. 
 
 Some of these appear at first sight — as that several difficult 
 and obscure questions, on which abundance of speculation has 
 been thrown away, are entirely banished from philosophj'^. 
 ' Whether corpoi'eal substance can think,' ' whether Matter be 
 infinitely divisible,' and ' how it operates on spirit' — these and 
 
 Berkeley's principles can be reconciled with miracles, but reiterates that 
 they (and miracles too) are irreconcilable with a thorough-going recog- 
 nition of law in natiire. He proposes an ingenious theory for liarmonizing 
 Berkeley's philosophical conception of the reality of the material world 
 with the Catholic miracle of transubstantiation — with which that con- 
 ception is usually assumed to be inconsistent. Its consistency with a 
 resurrection of the human body is also a question. )See sect. 95. 
 
 ^ In the eighty-two foregoing sections, we have many arguments for 
 and against Berkeley's philosophical explanation of the terms ' reality ' 
 and ' externality,' as applicable to the material world. Ins tead of the 
 unreflecting assumption, that things around us would be what we now 
 perceive, although no conscious being was perceiving — he arguesjtliat 
 they must be composed of the significant ]ihenomena i^resent to our 
 senses, whose significance was establi shed and i s constantly sustained by 
 God, witli iiit ;iu\ iii^K |ii ii'lriit siihs tance or power in themselves . The 
 meaningk-^sii' :-s nf ' cxit-nial ivaUt y,' on any other view than this of what 
 matter and force mean, and the contradiction involved in any attempt 
 to introduce meaning into the meaningless, might be called h is met a- 
 physical argument. The need for resolving the primary or mathe- 
 matical, aslnuch as the secondary qualities of matter, into the passive 
 and transitory, although significant, phenomena present in sense is 
 his p sychologi cal arg ument. There is besides the practical argument, 
 that the existence of sensible things as independent entities would after 
 all make no difference in our actions. 
 
 The chief objections to all this (only some of which are seen by 
 Berkeley in the preceding sections) are — (a) the difficulty of reconciling 
 it with the continuous identity of things, and with the universality of 
 their mathematical, or even their physical laws ; {h) its elimination of 
 presuppositions implied in our belief of the existence of other finite 
 persons ; (c) the uusubstantiality and impotence of persons as well as of 
 tilings if the new conception of matter is to be consistently carried 
 out. Berkeley's Commonplace Booh shows that this last difficulty at 
 first influenced him enough to make his starting-point like Hume's. 
 
 ^ Sect. 85-156 contain Berkeley's application, of the new conception 
 of the meaning and function of the material world. — And first he shows 
 its efficacy as against theological scepticism (sect. 86 -96), and in 
 purifying thought of empty abstractions (sect. 97-100).
 
 of Human Krwwledge, 95 
 
 the like inquiries have given infinite amusement to philosophers 
 in all ages ; but, depending on the existence of Matter, they 
 have no longer any place on our principles. Many other 
 advantages there are, as well with regard to religion as the 
 sciences, which it is easy for any one to deduce from what has 
 been premised ; but this will appear more plainly in the sequel. 
 
 86. From the Principles we have laid down it follows 
 Human Knowledge may naturally be reduced to two heads — 
 that of IDEAS ^ and that of spirits. Of each of these I shall 
 treat in order. 
 
 And first as to ideas or unthinking things. Our know- 
 ledge of these has been very much obscured and confounded, 
 and we have been led into very dangerous errors, by sup- 
 posing a two-fold existence of the objects of sense — the one 
 intelligible or in the mind ; the other real and without the 
 mind, whereby unthinking things are thought to have a 
 natural subsistence of their own, distinct from being perceived 
 by spirits^. This, which, if I mistake not, hath been shewn 
 to be a most groundless and absurd notion, is the very root 
 of Scepticism ; for, so long as men thought that real things 
 subsisted without the mind, and that their knowledge was 
 only so far forth real as it was conformable to real things, it 
 follows they could not be certain that they had any real 
 knowledge at all. For, how can it be known that the things 
 which are perceived are conformable to those which are not 
 perceived, or exist without the mind ^ ? 
 
 1 Berkeley's use of idea to signify what is present to sense, and his 
 conclusion that the material world consists of what is thus present, 
 has led to his being called an Idealist. But, on the same ground, he 
 might be called a Phenomenalist, or a Sensationist — negatively au Im- 
 niaterialist — so far as this half of his philosophy is concerned. — It is 
 with reference to the other (constructive and terminal) side of his philo- 
 sophy that he becomes Idealist in the higher meaning. 
 
 ^ Kant reversely views the things which are independent of percep- 
 tions as the intelUyible world, while he regards phenomenal things as the 
 objectively real for us. 
 
 ^ This question expresses what has been regarded as an insuperable 
 objection to a representative perception. — How can we be assured of the 
 
 fl.
 
 96 Of the Principles 
 
 87. Colour, figure, motion, extension, and the like, con- 
 sidered only as so many sensations in the mind, are perfectly 
 known, there being nothing in them which is not jDcrceived. 
 But, if they are looked on as notes or images, referred to 
 things or archetyjpes existing without the mind, then are we 
 involved all in scepticism. We see only the appearances, and 
 not the real qualities of things. What may be the extension, 
 figure, or motion of anything really and absolutely, or in 
 itself, it is impossible for us to know, but only the proportion 
 or relation they bear to our senses. Things remaining the 
 same, our ideas vary, and which of them, or even whether 
 any of them at all, represent the true quality really existing 
 in the thing, it is out of our reach to determine. So that, for 
 aught we know, all we see, hear, and feel, may be only phantom 
 and vain chimera, and not at all agree with the real things 
 existing in rerum natura. All this sceptical cant follows 
 from our supposing a difference between things and ideas, 
 and that the former had a subsistence Avithout the mind or 
 unperceived. It were easy to dilate on this subject, and shew 
 how the arguments urged by sceptics in all ages depend on 
 the supposition of external objects. 
 
 88. So long as we attribute a real existence to unthinking 
 things, distinct from their being perceived, it is not only im- 
 possible for us to know with evidence the nature of any real 
 unthinking being, but even that it exists. Hence it is that 
 we see philosophers distrust their senses, and doubt of the 
 existence of heaven and earth, of everything they see or feel, 
 even of their own bodies. And, after all their labouring and 
 struggle of thought, they are forced to own we cannot attain 
 to any self-evident or demonstrative knowledge of the exist- 
 ence of sensible things. But all this doubtfulness, which so 
 bewilders and confounds the mind and makes philosophy 
 ridiculous in the eyes of the world, vanishes if we annex a 
 
 harmony of the representation with the real thing — if the real thiiuj 
 exists unperceived ? We cannot in that case compare the two.
 
 of Human Knoioledge. 97 
 
 meaning to our words, and not amuse ourselves with the 
 terms ' absolute,' ' external/ ' exist,' &c. — signifying we know 
 not what. For my part, I can as well doubt of my own 
 being as of the being of those things which I actually ]}er- 
 ceive by sense^ ; it being a manifest contradiction that any 
 sensible object should be immediately perceived by sight or 
 touch, and at the same time have no existence in nature, 
 since the very existence of an unthinking being consists in 
 being perceivecP. 
 
 89. Nothing seems of more importance towards erecting 
 a firm sj'stem of sound and real knowledge, which may be 
 proof against the assaults of Scepticism, than to lay the 
 beginning in a distinct explication of ivhat is meant by thing, 
 EEALiTT, EXISTENCE ; for ill vain shall we dispute concerning 
 the 'real existence' of things, or pretend to any knowledge 
 
 ' i. e. as long, at least, as I am in tlie act of perceiving them. See 
 Locke's Essaij, b. IV.' ch. 1 1 . § 9. 
 
 ^ The difficulty of supposing that we can have a knowledge of things, 
 if our knowledge of them may be melted down into 2:)henomen;i, has 
 been acknowledged by philosophers. The difficulty raises the chief 
 question in philosopliy, which has to shew the rationality of what we 
 assume to be knowledge. Berkeley argues that the favourite hypothesis 
 of pliilosophers — that matter is not directly pei'ceived, but has to be in- 
 ferred from representative phenomena of which we are conscious — need- 
 lessly increases the difficulty. Let us, he says, recognise the reality as 
 already given phenojnenalh/ in perception, — not as something dependent 
 on a • conformity ' — impossible to ascertain — between an unperceiv- 
 able 'matter' and the representation of which alone, on this hypothesis, 
 we are supposed to be percipient, — and then the difficulty is relieved. 
 But does Berkeley's conception of the phenomena, which he assumes 
 to be thus given, include all that is essential to objective reality ? 
 
 On the connexion between scepticism and this ' representative percep- 
 tion' wliicli Berkeley rejects, see Hume's Inquiry concerjiing Human 
 Understanding, sect. xii. pt. i (which might be a text for discussing the 
 'immediate percejition ' of Reid and Hamilton, and for comparing it 
 with the ' perception ' and ' suggestion ' of Berkeley) ; also Hamilton's 
 Discussions, ' Philosophy of Perception.' — For an account of vainous 
 modifications of this representative Perception, see Eeid's Second Essay 
 on the Intellectual Powers, and Hamilton's Dissertations B and C. 
 These Scotch psychologists taught that an immediate revelation of the 
 material world in sense-perception is an ultimate fact of consciousness, 
 the rejection of which is of the essence of a univei'sal scepticism, as 
 involving distrust in the ultimate criterion of belief; but they did not, 
 like Berkeley, try to explain what they meant philosophically by Matter.
 
 98 Of the Principles 
 
 thereof, so long as we have uot fixed the meaning of those 
 words\ Thing or being is the most general name of all: it 
 comprehends under it two kinds entirely distinct and hetero- 
 geneous, and which have nothing common but the name, viz. 
 SP IBITS an d ideas. The former are active, indivisible [^ in- 
 corruptible] substances : the latter are inert, fleeting, or de- 
 pendent beings, which subsist not by themselves, but ai'c 
 supported by, or exist in minds or si^iritual substances. 
 [^ We comprehend our own existence by inward feeling or 
 Eeflection, and that of other spirits by Reason*. — We may be 
 said to have some knowledge or notion of our own minds, of 
 spirits and active beings — whereof in a strict sense we have 
 not ideas. In like manner, we know and have a notion of 
 relations between things or ideas — which relations are dis- 
 tinct from the ideas or things related, inasmuch as the latter 
 may be perceived by us without our perceiving the fox'mer®. 
 To me it seems that ideas, spirits, and relations are all, in 
 their respective kinds, the object of human knowledge and 
 subject of discourse, and that the term idea would be im- 
 properly extended to signify everything we know or have any 
 notion of.] 
 
 90. Ideas imprinted on the senses are ' I'eal' things, or do 
 really exist : this we do not deny ; but we deny they can 
 subsist without the minds which perceive them, or that they 
 are resemblances of any archetypes" existing without the 
 
 ^ This throws light on Berkeley's purpose, which was not to prove the 
 reality of the material world, but — by showing what intelligible ' reality ' 
 involves, and what we are entitled to mean wlien we say that an external 
 thing ' exists ' — to make proof superfluous. 
 
 - Withdrawn in Second Edition of Principles. 
 
 ^ The remainder of this section was added in the Second Edition of 
 the Frinciples, when he began to i-ecognise a distinction between ideas 
 and notions which, in one form of expression or another, goes deep into 
 his and every philosophy. For his reasons for recognising independent 
 substance in Spirit, while he rejects it in the material world, see his 
 21i.ird Dialogue {Workx, vol. I. pp. 327-329). 
 
 * i. e. reasoning or inference. 
 
 '•" This seems to say that we may have knowledge of mere phenomena. 
 
 " i. e. unperceived and tmiierceiving archetypes.
 
 of Human Knoioledye. 99 
 
 mind; since the very being of a sensation or idea consists in 
 being perceived, and an idea can be like nothing but an idea. 
 — Again, the things perceived by sense may be termed 
 'external,' with regard to their origin, in that they are not 
 generated from within by the mind itself ^, but imprinted by 
 a Spirit distinct from that which jierceives them. — Sensible 
 objects may likewise be said to be 'without the mind' in 
 another sense, namely when they exist in some other mind ; 
 thus, when I shut my eyes, the things I saw may still exist, 
 but it must be in another mind^. 
 
 91. It were a mistake to think that what is here said 
 derogates in the least from the reality of things. It is 
 acknowledged, on the received principles, that extension, 
 motion, and in a word all sensible qualities, have need of a 
 support, as not being able to subsist by themselves. But the 
 objects perceived by sense are allowed to be nothing but 
 combinations of those qualities, and consequently cannot 
 subsist by tliem selves. Thus far it is agreed on all hands. 
 So that in denying the things perceived by sense an exist- 
 ence independent of a substance or support wherein they may 
 exist ^ we detract nothing from the received opinion of their 
 reality, and are guilty of no innovation in that respect. All 
 the difference is that, according to us, the unthinking beings 
 perceived by sense have no existence distinct from being per- 
 ceived, and cannot therefore exist in any other substance than 
 those unextended indivisible substances or Spirits which act 
 and think and perceive them ; whereas philosophers vulgarly 
 hold the sensible qualities do exist in an inert, extended, un- 
 -perceiving substance which they call Matter — to which they 
 
 1 Here Berkeley's view differs from Fichte's, so far as the latter con- 
 siders the individual (?) mind — the subjective (?) Ego — as the origin of 
 vvliat we call the external world, and thus lands in Egoism. 
 
 ^ This takes for granted our individuality. Bei-keley in this section 
 offers various intelligible meanings of ' real ' — ' external ' — ' without the 
 mind,' 
 
 ^ Which, in the next sentence, he concedes to conscious life, inherent 
 in an E<jo or spiritual substance. Cf. sect. 16, 17. 
 
 H 2
 
 100 Of the Principles 
 
 attribute a natural subsistence, exterior to all thinking beings, 
 or distinct from being perceived by any mind whatsoever, 
 even the eternal mind of the Creator, Avherein they suppose 
 only Ideas of the corporeal substances created by Him : if 
 indeed they allow them to be at all created. 
 
 92. For, as we have shewn the doctrine of ^fatter or 
 Corporeal Substance to have been the main pillar and support 
 of Scepticism, so likewise upon the same foundation have 
 been raised all the impious schemes of Atheism and Irreligion. 
 N"ay, so great a difficulty has it been thought to conceive 
 Matter^ produced out of nothing, that the most celebrated 
 among the ancient philosophers, even of those who maintained 
 the being of a God, have thought Matter to be uncreated 
 and coeternal with Him. How great a friend material sub- 
 stance has been to Atheists in all ages were needless to relate- 
 All their monstrous systems have so visible and necessary a 
 dependence on it that, when this corner-stone is once removed, 
 the whole fabric cannot choose but fall to the ground, inso- 
 much that it is no longer worth Avhile to bestow a particular 
 consideration on the absurdities of every wretched sect of 
 Atheists^. 
 
 93. That impious and profane pei'sons should readily fall 
 in with those systems which favour their inclinations, by 
 deriding immaterial substance, and supposing the soul to be 
 divisible and subject to corruption as the body; which ex- 
 clude all freedom, intelligence, and design from the formation 
 of things, and instead thereof make a self-existent, stujiid, 
 unthinking substance the root and origin of all beings ; that 
 
 ' Tliat is to Ray, Matter abstracted fi'ora phenomena. 
 
 ^ Yet with Hume, and in later Positive Philosophy, the analysis of 
 the material world into significant ]Dhenomona dependent on a perci- 
 pient — on the ground of the inconceivability of the hyper-phenomenal, 
 has, on this same ground, been used for analysing the percipient spirit 
 too into transitory conscious states, with a confession of ultimate philo- 
 sophical nescience. Berkeley of course alleges reason for retaining 
 moral substance and agency, while he rejects the supposed substance 
 and power of matter.
 
 of Human Knowledge. 101 
 
 they should hearken to those who deny a Providence, or 
 inspection of a Superior Mind over the affairs of the world, 
 attributing the whole series of events either to blind chance 
 or fatal necessity arising from the impulse of one body on 
 another — all this is very natural. And, on the other hand, 
 when men of better principles observe the enemies of religion 
 lay so great a stress on unthinking Matter, and all of them 
 use so much industry and artifice to reduce everything to it\ 
 methinks they should rejoice to see them deprived of their 
 grand support, and driven from that only fortress, without 
 which your Epicureans, Hobbists^, and the like, have not even 
 the shadow of a pretence, and become the most cheap and 
 easy triumph in the worlds 
 
 94. The existence of Matter, or bodies unperceived, has not 
 only been the main support of Atheists and Fatalists, but on 
 the same principle doth Idolatry likewise in all its various 
 forms depend. Did men but consider that the sun, moon, 
 and stars, and every other object of the senses, are only so 
 many sensations in their minds, which have no other exist- 
 ence but barely being perceived, doubtless they would never 
 fall down and worship their own ideas — but rather address 
 their homage to that Eternal Invisible Mind which produces 
 and sustains all things. 
 
 95. The same absurd principle, by mingling itself with the 
 articles of our faith, has occasioned no small difficulties to 
 Christians. For example, about the Kesurrection, how many 
 scruples and objections have been raised by Socinians and 
 othei's 1 But do not the most plausible of them depend on the 
 supposition that a body is denominated the same, with regard 
 
 * Rather, now-a-days, it is the fashion to get rid of all ultimate 
 difficulties by assuming our necessary ignorance of other than negative 
 answers to the ultimate questions. 
 
 ^ Epicurus, following Democritus, resolved thought, as well as sensible 
 things, ultimately into inexplicable concourse of atoms, and the teaching 
 of Hobbes was akin to this. 
 
 ^ Does Berkeley's account of what the material world means really 
 accomplish so much ?
 
 102 Of the Trhic'ipJes 
 
 not to the form, or that which is perceived by sense, but the 
 material substance, which remains the same under several 
 forms 1 Take away this material substance — about the 
 identity whereof all the dispute is — and mean by body what 
 every plain ordinary person means by that word, to wit, that 
 which is immediately seen and felt, which is only a combina- 
 tion of sensible qualities or ideas, and then their most 
 unanswerable objections come to nothing^, 
 
 96. Matter ^ being once expelled out of nature drags with 
 it so many sceptical and impious notions, such an incredible 
 number of disputes and puzzling questions, which have been 
 thorns in the sides of divines as well as philosophers, and 
 made so much fruitless work for mankind, that if the argu- 
 ments we have produced against it are not found equal to 
 demonstration (as to me they evidently seem), yet I am sure 
 all friends to knowledge, peace, and religion have reason to 
 wish they were. 
 
 97. Beside the external existence of the objects of per- 
 ception, another great source of errors and difficulties with 
 regard to ideal knowledge' is the doctrine of 'abstract ideas,' 
 such as it hath been set forth in the Introduction. The 
 plainest things in the world, those we are most intimately 
 acquainted with and perfectly know, when they are considered 
 in an abstract way, appear strangely difficult and incom- 
 prehensible. Time, Place, and Motion, taken in particular 
 or concrete, are Avhat everybody knows ; but, having passed 
 through the hands of a metaphysician, they become too ab- 
 stract and fine to be apprehended by men of ordinary sense. 
 Bid your servant meet you at such a time in such a place, 
 
 * On the meaning of the word ' same,' in its application to sensible 
 things, see Third Bi(doyue {Works, vol. I. pp. 343-345). He does not 
 inquire however what, on his new conception of things, the sameness 
 of the self or ego means. 
 
 ^ Not the phenomena presented to our senses and their established 
 order, of coui'se, but only a supposed abstract Matter, is here meant. 
 
 ' 'Ideal knowledge' — knowledge of significant and interpretable 
 phenomena.
 
 of Hainan Knowledge. 103 
 
 and he shall never stay to deliberate on the meaning of 
 those words ; in conceiving that particular time and place, 
 or the motion by which he is to get thither, he finds 
 not the least difficulty. But if Time be taken exclusive of 
 all those ^>fn-<iCMZar actions and ideas that diversify the 
 day, merely for the continuation of existence, or duration in 
 abstract, then it will perhaps gravel even a philosopher to 
 comprehend it. 
 
 98. For my own part, whenever I attempt to fi-ame a 
 simple idea of Time, abstracted from the succession of ideas 
 in my mind, which flows uniformly and is participated by all 
 beinsrs, I am lost and embrangled in inextricable difficulties ^ 
 I have no notion of it at all : only I hear others say it is 
 infinitely divisible, and speak of it in such a manner as leads 
 me to harbour odd thoughts of my existence; — since that 
 doctrine lays one under an absolute necessity of thinking, 
 either that he passes away innumerable ages without a 
 thought, or else that he is annihilated every moment of his 
 life, both which seem equally absurd. Time therefore being 1 
 wo^^in^, abstracted from the succession of ideas in our minds,' 
 it follows that the duration of any finite spirit must be esti- 
 mated by the number of ideas or actions succeeding each 
 other in that same spirit or mind. Hence, it is a plain con- 
 sequence that the soul aliuays thinks ; and in truth whoever 
 shall go about to divide in his thoughts, or abstract the 
 existence of a spii*it from its cogitation, will, I believe, find it 
 no easy task-. 
 
 1 Locke's account of Time {Essay, b. II. ch. 14. §§ 3, 5, 17) mriy be 
 compared with this. See also Berkeley's Commonplace Book, in Life 
 of Berkeley, pp. 439, 468. Thoiigh observed changes in phenomena of 
 which we are conscious or percipient may, as a matter of fact, develope 
 in us the notion of time, it does not follow that they philosophically 
 explain it. 
 
 '■^ Berkeley says elsewhere: — 'A succession of ideas I take to constitute 
 time, and not be only the sensible measure thereof, as Mr. Locke and 
 others think. One of my earliest enquiries was about time, which led 
 me into several paradoxes that I did not think fit or necessary to 
 publish.' {Life of Berkeley, p. 177.) 'Si non rogas intelligo ' may be
 
 104 Of the Vnnciples 
 
 99, So likewise when we attempt to abstract Extension 
 and Motion from all other qualities, and consider them by 
 themselves, we presently lose sight of them, and run into 
 great extravagances. All which depend on a twofold ab- 
 straction ; — first, it is supposed that extension, for example, 
 may be absti-acted from all other sensible qualities ; and 
 secondly, that the entity of extension may be abstracted from 
 its being perceived. But, whoever shall reflect, and take 
 care to understand what he says, will, if I mistake not, ac- 
 knowledge that all sensible qualities are alike sensations and 
 alike real — that where the extension is, there is the colour 
 too, %. e. in his mind ; that their archetypes can exist only 
 in some otJier inind ; and that the objects of sense are 
 nothing but those sensations combined, blended, or (if one 
 may so speak) concreted together^ — none of all which can be 
 supposed to exist unperceived. 
 
 100. What is it for a man to be happy, or an object good, 
 every one may think he knows. But to frame an abstract 
 idea of happiness, prescinded from all particular pleasure, or 
 of goodness fi-om everything that is good, this is what few 
 can pretend to. So likewise a man may be just and virtuous 
 without having precise ideas of justice and virtue. The 
 opinion that those and the like woi'ds stand for general 
 notions, abstracted from all particular persons and actions, 
 seems to have i-endered Morality very difficult, and the study 
 thereof of small use to mankind. And in effect one may 
 make a great progress in school-ethics without ever being 
 the wiser or better man for it, or knowing how to behave 
 himself in the affairs of life more to the advantage of himself 
 
 said of Time, in itself inconceivable when we try to abstract it, and yet 
 necessarily mixed up witli our experience. 
 
 With Berkeley. ' the soul always thinks ;' for ' time' abstracted from 
 change of conscious state would not be time at all. (Here he differs 
 from Locke. See Esmy, b. II. ch. i, §§ 9-19.) Hence too, since the 
 essence of things is percipi — or (as in Siris) intellUji, so the esse of 
 spirits would be percipere — or intcUhjere, 
 
 ^ By Supreme Mind and Will.
 
 of Human Knowledge. 105 
 
 or his neighbours thau he did before. This hint may suffice 
 to let any one see the doctrine of abstraction has not a little 
 contributed towards spoiling the most useful parts of know- 
 ledge ^ 
 
 loi. The two great provinces of speculative science con- 
 versant about ideas received from Sense, are Natural Phi- 
 losophy and Mathematics; with regard to each of these I 
 shall make some observations ^. 
 
 And first I shall say somewhat of Natural Philosophy. 
 On this subject it is that the sceptics triumph. All that 
 stock of arguments they produce to dejjreciate our faculties 
 and make mankind appear ignorant and low, are drawn prin- 
 cipally from this head, namely, that we j,re under iin,ia\incible 
 bUndness as_toJ;he true and rea( nature of things. This they 
 exaggerate, and love to enlarge on. We are miserably 
 bantered, say they, by our senses, and amused only with the 
 outside and show of things. The real essence — the internal 
 qualities and constitution — of every the meanest object, is hid 
 from our view ; something there is in every di'op of water, 
 every grain of sand, which it is beyond the power of human 
 understanding to fathom or comj)reliend. But, it is evident 
 from what has been shewn that all this complaint is ground- 
 less, and that we are influenced by false principles to that 
 degree as to mistrust our senses, and think we know notliing 
 of those things which we perfectly comprehend. 
 
 1 02. O ne g reat inducement to our pronouncing ourselves 
 ignorant of the nature of things is the current opinion that 
 
 1 The substitution of facts for empty abstractions is, with Berkeley, 
 the beginning and end of philosophy. This is tlie lesson of the ' Intro- 
 ductiou ' to the Principles, here made one of their applications. There 
 is great value in his condemnation of our disposition to substantiate 
 meaningless abstractions, even if, here and elsewhere, he too much 
 attemj)ts to eliminate all mystery from our ultimate convictions. 
 
 - In Kant's 'Aesthetic' and 'Analytic' we have his explanation and 
 defence of mathematical and physical science, as against the sceptical 
 dissolution of it into phenomena habitually connected — all which may be 
 compared with sect. 101-134, which is at the point of view of Locke.
 
 106 Of the Principles 
 
 everything includes within itself the cause of its properties ; 
 or that tliere is in each object an inward essence which is the 
 source whence its discernible qualities flow, and whereon 
 they depend ^ Some have pretended to account for appear- 
 ances by occult qualities : but of late they are mostly resolved 
 into mechanical causes, to wit, the figure, motion, weight, and 
 suchlike qualities^, of insensible particles ; — whereas, in truth, 
 there is no other agent or efficient cause than spirit, it being 
 evident that motion, as well as all other ideas, is perfectly 
 inert. See sect. 25. Hence, to endeavour to explain the 
 production of colours or sounds, by figure, motion, magnitude 
 and the like, must needs be labour in vain. And accordingly 
 we see the attempts of that kind ai*e not at all satisfactory. 
 Which may be said in general of those instances wherein one 
 idea or quality is assigned for the cause of another. I need 
 not say how many hypotheses and speculations are left out, 
 and how much the study of nature is abridged by this 
 doctrine ^. 
 
 103. The great raechanical principle now in vogue is 
 Attraction. That a stone falls to the earth, or the sea swells 
 towards the moon, may to some appear sufficiently explained 
 thei'eby. But how are we enlightened by being told this is 
 done by attraction 1 Is it that that word signifies the manner 
 of the tendency, and that it is by the mutual drawing of 
 bodies instead of their being impelled or protruded towards 
 
 1 Tliis is the Aristotelian and Scholastic teaching, according to which 
 the essential nature or formal cause of anything {ovaia, to ri fjv 
 tlvai) explains its secondary qualities (Troia), and is unfolded in its 
 definition. The form or essence of a thing thus consists of what 
 is essential to its existence as that thing, and is always present in all 
 its developments. 
 
 ^ i. e. the primary qualities, regarded as the explanation of the dif- 
 ferences in the secondary qualities of things, as even Locke suggests. 
 
 ^ Berkeley's conception of the material world is a sort of Spiritual 
 Positivism, which eliminates all real substance and power from the 
 things we see and touch, and finds it in Mind. He sees in the order or 
 significance of the phenomena presented to the senses laws according to 
 which the Supreme Power regulates their coexistences and successions, 
 in the experience of finite percipients.
 
 of Human Knoioleilge. 107 
 
 « 
 each other 1 But nothing is determined of the manner or 
 action, and it may as truly (for aught we know) be termed 
 ' impulse,' or ' protrusion,' as ' attraction.' Again, the parts 
 of steel we see cohere firmly together, and this also is ac- 
 counted for by atti-action ; but, in this as in the other in- 
 stances, I do not perceive that anything is signified besides 
 the efi'ect itself; for as to the manner of the action whereby 
 it is produced, or the cause which produces it, these are not 
 so much as aimed at ^. 
 
 104. Indeed,. if we take a view of the several phenomena, 
 and compare them together, we may observe some likeness 
 and conformity between them. For example, in the falling 
 of a stone to the ground, in the rising of the sea towards the 
 moon, in cohesion, crystallization, &c., there is something alike, 
 namely, an union or mutual approach of bodies. So that any 
 one of these or the like phenomena may not seem strange or 
 surprising to a man who has nicely observed and compared 
 the effects of nature. For that only is thought so which 
 is uncommon, or a thing by itself, and out of the ordinary 
 course of our observation. That bodies should tend towards 
 the centre of the earth is not thought strange, because it is 
 what we perceive every moment of our lives. But, that they 
 should have a like gravitation towards the centre of the moon 
 may seem odd and unaccountable to most men, because it is 
 discerned only in the tides. But a philosojiher, whose thoughts 
 take in a larger compass of nature, having observed a certain 
 similitude of appearances, as well in the heavens as the earth, 
 that argue innumei^able bodies to have a mutual tendency 
 towards each other, which he denotes by the general name 
 ' attraction,' whatever can be reduced to tliat he thinks justly 
 accounted for. Thus he explains the tides by the attraction 
 of the terraqueous globe towards the moon, which to him 
 
 ' Whether Gravitation is included in the ' essence ' or ' form ' of the 
 material world has been a disputed question, which, like others about 
 physical causation, Berkeley summarily disposes of by referring all law 
 in nature to an Agent that is rational and free.
 
 108 Of the Tnncij^les 
 
 does not appear odd or anomalous, but ouly a particular 
 example of a general rule or law of nature. 
 
 105. If therefore we consider the difference there is betwixt 
 natural philosophers and other men, with regard to their 
 knowledge of the phenomena, we shall fiud it consists not in 
 an exacter knowledge of the efficient cause, that produces 
 them — for that can be no other than the will of a spit-it — but 
 only in a greater lai'geness of comprehension, whereby analo- 
 gies, harmonies, and agreements are discovered in the works 
 of nature, and the particular effects explained, that is, reduced 
 to general rules, see sect. 62 ; which rules, grounded on the 
 analogy and uniformness observed in the production of natu- 
 ral effects, are most agreeable and sought after by the mind ; 
 for that they extend our prospect beyond what is present and 
 near to us, and enable us to make very probable conjectures 
 touching things that may have happened at very great dis- 
 tances of time and place, as well as to predict things to come ; 
 which sort of endeavour towards Omniscience is much affected 
 by the mind \ 
 
 106. But we should proceed warily in such things, for we 
 are apt to lay too gi-eat a stress on analogies ", and, to the pre- 
 judice of truth, humour that eagerness of the mind whereby 
 it is carried to extend its knowledge into general theorems. 
 For example, in the business of gravitation or mutual attrac- 
 tion, because it appears in many instances, some are straight- 
 
 ^ The Modem Physical Sciences, with their hypothetical and induc- 
 tive inferences of past, distant, and future phenomena, are here referred 
 to, and the method of their formation is suggested. Tlie ideal of induc- 
 tive research would be reached, in the discovery of the relation of each 
 event to the Divine conception of the whole. But our scientific 
 generalisations are only partial, and this ideal belongs to philosophy. 
 
 ^ 'Analogy.' He implies that our knowledge of nature and its laws 
 is based on analogy. See IS iris, sect. 252. It is thus presumption and 
 not demonstrable science. This is Locke's doctrine, founded on his 
 view of the causal dependence of the secondary qualities on the primary 
 qualities. Our so-called science of nature is therefore only probable, not 
 rationally necessary. ' That which cliiefly constitutes probability,' says 
 Butler, ' is expressed in the word lihdij, i. e. like (analogous to) some 
 truth' or real event. {Analogy, p. 2.)
 
 of Human Knoioledrje. 109 
 
 way for pronouncing it universal ; and that to attract and 
 be attracted by every other body is an essential quality in- 
 herent in all bodies whatsoever. Whereas it is evident the 
 fixed stars have no such tendency towards each other ; and, 
 so far is that gravitation from being essential to bodies that 
 in some instances a quite conti'ary principle seems to shew 
 itself; as in the perpendicular growth of plants, and the elas- 
 ticity of the air. There is nothing necessary or essential in 
 the case^ but it depends entirely on the Will of the Governing 
 Spirit, who causes certain bodies to cleave together or tend 
 towards each other according to various laws, whilst He keeps 
 others at a fixed distance ; and to some He gives a quite 
 contrai-y tendency to fly asunder just as He sees convenient^. 
 107. After what has been premised, I think we may lay 
 down the following conclusions. — First, it is plain philosophers 
 amuse themselves in vain, when they enquire for any natural 
 efficient cause, distinct from a Mind or Sjnfit. Secondly, 
 considering the whole creation is the workmanship of a wise 
 and good Agent, it should seem to become philosophers to 
 employ their thoughts (contrary to what some hold) about 
 the final causes of things ; and I must confess I see no reason 
 why pointing out the various ends to which natural things 
 are adapted, and for which they were originally with un- 
 speakable wisdom contrived, should not be thought one good 
 way of accounting for them, and altogether woi"thy a philoso- 
 pher. Thirdly, from what has been premised no reason can 
 be drawn why the history of nature should not still be studied, 
 and observations and experiments made — which, that they 
 
 1 It may well be that we are intellectually obliged to thinh that eacli 
 new event must have previously existed in the form of a preceding 
 phenomenon, but not necessarily in this, that, or the other particular 
 phenomenon ; for a knowledge of this last we are dependent on obser- 
 vation. 
 
 ■^ Physical research has outgrown Berkeley's examples in this section. 
 The movement of the solar system and of the fixed stars is now recog- 
 nised by astronomers : neither the growth of plants nor the elasticity of 
 the air contradicts gravity.
 
 110 Of the Frhic'qjles 
 
 are of use to mankind, and enable us to di^aw any general 
 conclusions, is not the result of any immutable habitudes or 
 relations between things themselves, but only of God's good- 
 ness and kindness to men in the administi'ation of the world. 
 See sect. 30 and 31. Fourthly, by a diligent observation of 
 the phenomena within our view, Ave may discover the general 
 laws of nature, and from them deduce the other phenomena ; 
 I do not say demonstrate, for all deductions of that kind de- 
 pend on a supposition that the Author of Nature always 
 operates uniformly, and in a constant observance of those 
 rules we take for principles — which we cannot evidently 
 know ^. 
 
 108. Those men who frame general rules for the phe- 
 nomena, and afterwards derive the phenomena from those 
 rules, seem to consider Signs rather than Causes. A man 
 may well understand natural signs without knowing their 
 analogy, or being able to say by what rule a thing is so or so. 
 And, as it is very possible to write impropei-ly, through too 
 strict an observance of general grammar-rules ; so, in arguing 
 from general laws of nature, it is not impossible we may 
 extend the analogy too far, and by that means run into 
 mistakes. 
 
 109. As in reading other books a wise man will choose to 
 fix his thoughts on the sense and aj^ply it to use, rather than 
 lay them out in grammatical remarks on the language ; so, 
 in perusing the Volume of Nature, methinks it is beneath 
 the dignity of the mind to affect an exactness in reducing 
 each particular phenomenon to general rules, or shewing how 
 it follows from them. AVe should propose to ourselves nobler 
 
 ^ What right has one to take for granted (in opposition to teaching 
 like Berkeley's) that the material world is something that is ulti- 
 mately independent of lleason and Will, or that physical laws are 
 in themselves necessary and eternal ? Can we assert that the things 
 we see and touch must gravitate, or else that expei-ience would be 
 impossible ; or that, by a like necessity of all possible experience, 
 matter is indestructiljle, and foi'ce identical tln-ough all its meta- 
 morphoses ']
 
 of Unman Knowledfje. Ill 
 
 views, namely, to recreate and exalt the mind with a prospect 
 of the beauty, order, extent, and variety of natural things : 
 hence, by proper inferences, to enlarge our notions of the 
 grandeur, wisdom, and beneficence of the Creator ; and lastly, 
 to make the several parts of the creation, so far as in us lies, 
 subservient to the ends they wei-e designed for — God's glory, 
 and the sustentation and comfort of ourselves and fellow- 
 creatures ^ 
 
 no. The best key for the aforesaid Analogy or Natural 
 Science will be easily acknowledged to be a certain celebrated 
 Treatise of Mechanics'^. In the entrance of which justly 
 admired treatise, Time, Space, and Motion are distinguished 
 into absolute and relative, true and a2)2xirent, mathematical 
 and vulgar ; — which distinction, as it is at large explained 
 by the author, does suppose those Quantities to have an ex- 
 istence without the mind, and that they are ordinarily con- 
 ceived with relation to sensible things, to which nevertheless 
 in their own nature they bear no relation at all. 
 
 III. As for Time, as it is there taken in an absolute or 
 abstracted sense, for the duration or perseverance of the ex- 
 istence of things, I have nothing more to add concerning it 
 after what has been already said on that subject. Sect. 97 
 and 98. For the rest, this celebrated author holds there is 
 an A hsolute Space, which, being unperceivable to sense, re- 
 mains in itself similar and immoveable ; and relative space to 
 be the measure thereof, which being moveable, and defined 
 by its situation in respect of sensible bodies, is vulgarly taken 
 for immoveable space. Place he defines to be that part of 
 space which is occupied by any body ; and according as the 
 space is absolute or relative so also is the place. Absolute 
 
 1 So Bacon, in passages which, like this one, illustrate the broad 
 humanity which animates the best English philosophy, and its wise 
 contentment with ' broken knowledge,' when the facts of experience 
 refuse to submit to ' our little systems.' 
 
 - Newton's Pnncipia, published in 1687, on which Berkeley com- 
 ments in the followingr sections.
 
 112 Of the Principles 
 
 Motion is said to be the translation of a body from absolute 
 place to absolute place, as relative inoiion is from one relative 
 place to another. And, because the parts of Absolute Space 
 do not fall under our senses, instead of them we are obliged 
 to use their sensible measures, and so define both place and 
 motion with respect to bodies which we regard as immove- 
 able. But, it is said in })hilosophical matters we must abstract 
 from our senses, since it may be that none of those bodies 
 which seem to be quiescent are truly so, and the same thing 
 which is moved relatively may be really at rest ; as likewise 
 one and the same body may be in relative rest and motion, 
 or even moved with contrary relative motions at the same 
 time, according as its place is variously defined. All which 
 ambiguity is to be found in the apparent motions, bu.t not at 
 all in the ti'ue or absolute, which should therefore be alone 
 regarded in philosophy. And the true we are told are dis- 
 tinguished from appai'ent or relative motions by the following 
 properties. — First, in true or absolute motion all parts which 
 preserve the same position with respect of the whole, partake 
 of the motions of the whole. Secondly, the place being moved, 
 that which is placed therein is also moved ; so that a body 
 moving in a place which is in motion doth participate the 
 motion of its place. Thirdly, true motion is never generated 
 or changed otherwise than by force impressed on the body 
 itself. Fourthly, true motion is always changed by force im- 
 pressed on the body moved. Fifthly, in circular motion 
 barely relative there is no centrifugal force, which neverthe- 
 less, in that which is true or absolute, is proportional to the 
 quantity of motion. 
 
 112. But, notwithstanding what has been said, I must 
 confess it docs not appear to me that there can be any motion 
 other than relative ; so that to conceive motion there must 
 be at least conceived two bodies, whereof the distance or 
 position in regard to each other is varied. Hence, if there 
 was one only bodj^ in being it could not possibly be moved.
 
 of Human Knoicledge. 113 
 
 This to me seems very evident, in that the idea I have of 
 motion does necessarily include relation \ 
 
 113. But, though in every motion it be necessary to con- 
 ceive more bodies than one, yet it may be that one only is 
 moved, namely, that on which the force causing the change 
 in the distance or situation of the bodies is impressed. For, 
 however some may define relative motion, so as to term that 
 body mowec? which changes its distance from some other body, 
 whether the force or action causing that change were im- 
 pressed on it or no, yet as relative motion is that which is 
 perceived by sense, and regarded in the ordinary affairs of 
 life, it follows that every man of common sense knows what 
 it is as well as the best philosopher. Now, I ask any one 
 whether, in his sense of motion as he walks along the streets, 
 the stones he passes over may be said to move, because they 
 change distance witli his feet 1 To me it appears that though 
 motion includes a relation of one thing to another, yet it is 
 not necessary that each term of the relation be denominated 
 from it. As a man may think of somewhat which does not 
 think, so a body may be moved to or from another body 
 which is not therefore itself in motion. — I mean relative 
 motion, for other I am not able to conceive. 
 
 114. As the place happens to be variously defined, the 
 motion which is related to it varies. A man in a ship may 
 be said to be quiescent with relation to the sides of the vessel, 
 and yet move with relation to the land. Or he may move 
 eastward in respect of the one, and westward in respect of 
 the other. In the common affairs of life men never go be- 
 yond the Earth to define the place of any body ; and what is 
 quiescent in respect of that is accounted absolutely to be so. 
 But philosophers, who have a greater extent of thought, and 
 juster notions of the system of things, discover even the 
 
 1 What has been alleged as to all this is, that 'experience' pre- 
 supposes objective relations which constitute and are in a manner 
 embedded in all real knowledge. On Motion, cf. Berkeley, De Motu 
 {Work?, vol. III. pp. 75-100). 
 
 I
 
 114 Of the Principles 
 
 Earth itself to be moved. In order therefore to fix their 
 notions, they seem to conceive the Corj)oreal World as finite, 
 and the utmost unmoved walls or shell thereof to be the 
 place whereby they estimate true motions. If we sound our 
 own conceptions, I believe we may find all the absolute 
 motion we can frame an idea of to be at bottom no other 
 than relative motion thus defined. For, as has been already 
 -observed, absolute motion, exclusive of all external relation, 
 is incomprehensible ; and to this kind of relative motion all 
 the above-mentioned properties, causes, and effects ascribed 
 to absolute motion will, if I mistake not, be found to agree. 
 As to what is said of the centrifugal force, that it does not 
 at all belong to circular relative motion, I do not see how 
 this follows from the experiment which is brought to prove 
 it. See Philoso'phicB Naturalis Principia Mathematica, in 
 Schol. Def. VIII. For the water in the vessel at that time 
 wherein it is said to have the greatest relative circular 
 motion, has, I think, no motion at all ; as is plain from the 
 foregoing section. 
 
 115. For, to denominate a body moved it is requisite, first, 
 that it change its distance or situation with regard to some 
 other body ; secondly, that the force occasioning that change 
 be impressed on it. If either of these be wanting, I do not 
 think that, agreeably to the sense of mankind, or the pro- 
 priety of language, a body can be said to be in motion. I 
 grant indeed that it is possible for us to think a body which 
 we see change its distance from some other to be moved, 
 though it have no force applied to it (in which sense there 
 may be apparent motion) ; but then it is because the force 
 causing the change of distance is imagined by us to be ap- 
 plied or impressed on that body thought to move ; which 
 indeed shews we are capable of mistaking a thing to be in 
 motion which is not, and that is all. 
 
 116. From what has been said it follows that the philo- 
 sophic consideration of motion does not ioiply the being of
 
 of Human Knoioledge. 115 
 
 an Absolute Space, distinct from that which is perceived hy 
 sense and related to bodies ; wliich that it cannot exist with- 
 out the mind is clear upon the same principles that demon- 
 strate the like of all other objects of sense. — And perhaps, if 
 we inquire narrowly, we shall find we cannot even frame an 
 idea of Pure Space exclusive of all body. This I must con- 
 fess seems impossible, as being a most abstract idea. When 
 I excite a motion in some part of my body, if it be free or 
 without resistance, I say there is Space ; but if I find a re- 
 sistance, then I say there is Body : and in proportion as the 
 resistance to motion is lesser or greater, I say the space is 
 more or less jmre. So that when I speak of pure or empty 
 space, it is not to be supposed that the word 'space' stands 
 for an idea distinct from or conceivable without body and 
 motion — though indeed we are apt to think every noun sub- 
 stantive stands for a distinct idea that may be separated from 
 all others ; which has occasioned infinite mistakes. When, 
 therefore, supposing all the world to be annihilated besides 
 my own body, I say there still remains Pure Sjjace, thereby 
 nothing else is meant but only that I conceive it possible for 
 the limbs of my body to be moved on all sides without the 
 least resistance ; but if that too were annihilated then there 
 could be no motion, and consequently no Space \ Some, per- 
 haps, may think the sense of seeing does furnish them with 
 the idea of Pure Space ; but it is plain from what we have 
 elsewhere shewn, that the ideas of Space and Distance are not 
 obtained by that sense. See the Essay concerning Vision. 
 
 117. What is here laid down seems to put an end to all 
 those disputes and difficulties that have sprung up amongst 
 the learned concerning the nature of Pure Space. But the 
 chief advantage arising from it is that we are freed from 
 that dangerous dilemma, to which several who have em- 
 
 * Though pure space is unimaginable, it does not follow that the 
 mathematical relations embedded in our experience are unintelligible : 
 for experience of external things cannot be intelligibly formed inde- 
 pendently of their geometrical relations. 
 
 I 2
 
 116 Of the Tnnc'iphs 
 
 ployed their thoughts on that subject imagine themselves 
 reduced, viz. of thinking either that Real Space is God, or 
 else that there is something beside God which is eternal, un- 
 created, infinite, indivisible, immutable. Both which may 
 justly be thought pernicious and absurd notions. It is cer- 
 tain that not a few divines, as well as philosophers of great 
 note, have, from the difficulty they found in conceiving either 
 limits or annihilation of space, concluded it must be Divine. 
 And some of late have set themselves particularly to shew 
 the incommunicable attributes of God agree to it^. Which 
 doctrine, how unworthy soever it may seem of the Divine 
 Nature, yet I must confess I do not see how we can get clear 
 of it, so long as we adhere to the received opinions^. 
 
 1 1 8. Hitherto of Natural Philosophy: we come now to 
 make some inquiry concerning that other great branch of 
 speculative knowledge, to wit, Mathematics. These, how 
 celebrated soever they may be for their clearness and cer- 
 tainty of demonstration, Avhich is hardly anywhere else to be 
 found, cannot nevertheless be supposed altogether free from 
 mistakes, if so be that in their principles there lurks some 
 secret error which is common to the professors of those 
 sciences Avith the rest of mankind. Mathematicians, though 
 they deduce their theorems from a great height of evidence, 
 yet their first principles are limited by the consideration of 
 
 ^ See Dr. Samuel Clarke's Demonstration of the Being and Attributes 
 of God, which appeared in 1 706. 
 
 - ' Abstract Space ' is with Berkeley space out of relation to the 
 empirical data of sense — neither seen nor touched. His own view is 
 that space is at last only a certain succession of phenomena, its relations 
 being thus resolvable into those of time and change. 
 
 The mathematical type of atheism then prevalent accounts for Berke- 
 ley's recurrence to space, and his endeavours to melt it down into 
 phenomena. He thus got rid of an abstraction which seemed to him 
 the essence of Materialism. (See Commonplace Boole, p. 490.) — Yet 
 space suggests the Infinite, or at least the inability of man to rest 
 satisfied with what is finite, and our intellectual obligation to think of 
 something beyond any limited space. Some have even found the origin 
 of religion in our mental experience of inability to arrest imagination by 
 an absolute limit when we contemplate space.
 
 of Human Knoioledge. 117 
 
 Quantity : and they do not ascend into any inquiry concern- 
 ing those transcendental maxims which influence all the par- 
 ticular sciences, each part whereof, Mathematics not ex- 
 cepted, does consequently participate ' of the errors involved 
 in them. That the principles laid down by mathematicians 
 are true, and their way of deduction from those principles 
 clear and incontestible, we do not deny ; but, we hold there 
 may be certain erroneous maxims of greater extent than the 
 object of Mathematics, and for that reason not expressly 
 mentioned, though tacitly supposed throughout the whole 
 progress of that science ; and that the ill effects of those 
 secret unexamined errors are diffused through all the branches 
 thereof \ To be plain, we suspect the mathematicians are no 
 less deeply concerned than other men in the errors arising 
 from the doctrine of abstract general ideas, and the existence 
 of objects without the mind. 
 
 119. Arithmetic has been thought to have for its object 
 abstract ideas of Number ; of which to understand the pro- 
 perties and mutual habitudes, is supposed no mean part of 
 speculative knowledge. The opinion of the pure and intel- 
 lectual nature of numbers in abstract has made them in 
 esteem with those philosophers who seem to have affected an 
 uncommon fineness and elevation of thought. It hath set a 
 price on the most trifling numerical speculations, which in 
 practice are of no use, but serve only for amusement ; and 
 hath heretofore so far infected the minds of some, that they 
 have dreamed of mighty mysteries involved in numbers, and 
 attempted the explication of natural things by them^. But, 
 if we narrowly inquire into our own thoughts, and consider 
 
 * The preceding sentences imply the difference between philosophy 
 and science. As concerned only with sjience, mere mathematicians do 
 not, as metaphysical ])hilosophers are obliged to do, ascend into an 
 inquiry concerning those transcendental maxims which influence all the 
 particular sciences. It is this ' transcendental' inquiry that Bei-keley is 
 here engaged in. 
 
 ^ The Pythagoreans for instance, in the beginnings of philosophy.
 
 118 Of the Trhmples 
 
 what has been premised, we may perhaps entertain a low 
 opinion of those high flights and abstractions, and look on 
 all inquiries about numbers only as so many difficiles nugoR, 
 so far as they are not subservient to practice, and promote 
 the benefit of life. 
 
 1 20. Unity in abstract we have before considered, in 
 sect. 13, from which, and what has been said in the Intro- 
 duction, it plainly follows there is not any such idea. But, 
 number being defined a ' collection of units,' we may con- 
 clude that, if there be no such thing as unity or unit in ab- 
 stiact, there are no ideas of number in abstract denoted by 
 the numei'al names and figures. The theories therefore in 
 Arithmetic, if they are abstracted from the names and figures, 
 as likewise from all use and practice, as well as from the par- 
 ticular things numbered, can be supposed to have nothing 
 at all for their object ; hence we may see how entirely the 
 science of numbers is subordinate to practice, and how jejune 
 and trifling it becomes when considered as a matter of mere 
 speculation ^ 
 
 121. However, since there may be some who, deluded by 
 the specious show of discovering abstracted verities, waste 
 their time in arithmetical theorems and problems which have 
 not any use, it will not be amiss if we more fully consider 
 and expose the vanity of that pretence ; and this will plainly 
 
 ' As in treating of Space, which he resolves into an aggre,£fate of 
 sensible minima, thus making geometry an application of arithmetic, so 
 now, in treating of Number itself, he fails to recognise in it elements not 
 given as phenomena, or to distinguish between ideas or sensations which 
 call forth the 'notion' of number and the notion itself — between an ex- 
 perience inrolvinrj numerical relations and mere phenomena themselves 
 being those relations. Even Locke had assigned a humbler function 
 to sense in arithmetical knowledge, and sfyoke of the idea of number 
 as ' suggested ' by the data of experience. ' Amongst all the ideas we 
 have, as there is none suggested to the mind by more ways, so there is 
 none more simple than unity or one. Every oljject our senses are 
 employed about, every idea in our understandings, brings this idea 
 along with it. It is the most universal idea we have. For number 
 applies itself to everything that either doth exist or can be imagined ' 
 {Essay, b. II. ch. 16. § i).
 
 of Human Rnoivledge. 119 
 
 appear by taking a view of Arithmetic in its infancy, and 
 observing what it was that originally put men on the study 
 of that science, and to what scope they directed it. It is 
 natural to think that at first, men, for ease of memory and 
 help of computation, made use of counters, or in writing of / 
 single strokes, points, or the like, each whereof was made to 
 signify au_unit, i.e. some one thing of whatever kind they 
 had occasion to reckon. Afterwards they found out the 
 more compendious ways of making one character stand in Z 
 place of several strokes or points. And, lastly, the notation 
 of the Arabians or Indians came into use, ^herein, by the ^ 
 repetition of a few characters or figures, and varying the sig- 
 nification of each figure according to the place it obtains, all 
 numbers may be most aptly expressed ; which seems to have 
 been done in imitation of language, so that an exact analogy 
 is observed betwixt the notation by figures and names, the 
 nine simple figures answering the nine first numeral names 
 and places in the former, corresponding to denominations in 
 the latter. And agreeably to those conditions of the simple 
 and local value of figures, were contrived methods of finding, 
 from the given figures or marks of the parts, what figures j 
 and how placed are proper to denote tlie whole, or vice versa. ' 
 And having found the sought figures, the same rule or analogy] 
 being observed throughout, it is easy to read them into words;! 
 and so the number becomes perfectly known. For then the 
 number of any particular things is said to be known, when we 
 know the name or figures (with their due arrangement) that 
 according to the standing analogy belong to them. For, 
 these signs being known, we can, by the operations of arith- 
 metic, know the signs of any* part of the particular sums sig- 
 nified by them ; and, thus computing in signs, (because of the 
 connexion established betwixt them and the distinct multi- 
 tudes of things whereof one is taken for an unit), we may be 
 able rightly to sum up, divide, and proportion the things 
 themselves that we intend to number.
 
 120 Of the Vrinciples 
 
 12 2. In Arithmetic, therefore, we regaixl not the tilings but 
 the signs, which nevertheless are not regai'ded for their own 
 sake, but because they direct us how to act with relation to 
 things, and dispose rightly of them. Now, agreeably to what 
 we have before observed of words in general (sect. 19, Introd.) 
 it happens here likewise that abstract ideas are thought to 
 be signified by numeral names or characters, while they do 
 not suggest ideas of 'particular things to our minds. I shall 
 not at present enter into a more particular dissertation on 
 this subject, but only observe that it is evident, from what 
 has been said, those things which pass for abstract truths and 
 theorems concerning numbers, are in reality conversant about 
 no object distinct from particular numerable things, except 
 only names and characters, which originally came to be con- 
 sidered on no other account but their being signs, or capable 
 to represent aptly whatever particular things men had need 
 to compute. Whence it follows that to study them for their 
 own sake would be just as wise, and to as good purpose, as 
 if a man, neglecting the true use or original intention and 
 subserviency of language, should spend his time in imper- 
 tinent criticisms upon words, or reasonings and controversies 
 purely verbaP. 
 
 123. From numbers we proceed to speak of Extension, 
 which is the object of Geometry. The infinite divisibility of 
 finite extension, though it is not expressly laid down either 
 as an axiom or theorem in the elements of that science, yet 
 is throughout the same everywhere supposed and thought to 
 have so insejDarable and essential a connexion with the prin- 
 ciples and demonstrations in Geometry, that mathematicians 
 never admit it into doubt, or make the least question of it. 
 And, as this notion is the source from whence do spring all 
 those amusing geometrical paradoxes which have such a direct 
 
 ' This is his old argument against abstractions, applied to pure as 
 distinguished from mixed arithmetic, from which he concludes that the 
 former is a sham science of empty verbal signs.
 
 of Human Knowledge. 121 
 
 repugnancy to the plain common sense of mankind, and 
 are admitted with so much reluctance into a mind not yet 
 debauched by learning ; so is it the principal occasion of all 
 that nice and extreme subtilty which renders the study of 
 Mathematics so very difficult and tedious. Hence, if we can 
 make it appear that no finite extension contains innumerable 
 jyarts, or is infinitely divisible, it follows that we shall at once 
 clear the science of Geometry from a great number of diffi- 
 culties and contradictions which have ever been esteemed a 
 reproach to human reason, and withal make the attainment 
 thereof a business of much less time and pains than it 
 hitherto has been. 
 
 124. Every j)articular finite extension which may possibly 
 be the object of our thought is an idea existing only in the 
 mind, and consequently each part thereof must be perceived. 
 If, therefore, I cannot perceive innumerable parts in any 
 finite extension that I consider, it is certain they are not 
 contained in it ; but, it is evident that I cannot distinguish 
 innumerable parts in any particular line, surface, or solid, 
 which I either perceive by sense, or figure to myself in my 
 mind : wherefore I conclude they are not contained in it. 
 Nothing can be plainer to me than that the extensions I have 
 in view are no other than my own ideas; and it is no less 
 plain that I cannot resolve any one of my ideas into an in- 
 finite number of other ideas, that is, that they are not infi- 
 nitely divisible. If by finite extension be meant something 
 distinct from a finite idea, I declare I do not know what that 
 is, and so cannot affirm or deny anything of it. But if the 
 terms ' extension,' ' parts,' &c., are taken in any sense con- 
 ceivable, that is, for ideas, then to say a finite quantity or ex- 
 tension consists of parts infinite in number is so manifest and 
 glaring a contradiction, that every one at first sight acknow- 
 ledges it to be so ^ ; and it is impossible it should ever gain 
 
 ' The contradiction is not so manifest. Locke more cautiously re- 
 marks, that ' the divisibility in injinitum of any finite extension involves
 
 122 Of the Prindples 
 
 the assent of any reasonable creature who is not brought to 
 it by gentle and slow degrees, as a converted Gentile to the 
 belief of trausubstantiation. Ancient and rooted prejudices 
 do often pass into princijiles ; and those propositions which 
 once obtain the force and credit of a princi2)le, are not only 
 themselves, but likewise whatever is deducible from them, 
 thought j)rivileged from all examination. And there is no 
 absurdity so gross, which, by this means, the mind of man 
 may not be prepared to swallow. 
 
 125. He whose understanding is prepossessed with the 
 doctrine of abstract general ideas may be persuaded that 
 (whatever be thought of the ideas of sense) extension in ab- 
 stract is infinitely divisible. And any one who thinks the 
 objects of sense exist without the mind Avill j^erhaps in virtue 
 thereof be brought to admit that a line but an inch long may 
 contain innumerable pai'ts — really existing, though too small 
 to be discerned. These errors are grafted as well in the 
 minds of geometricians as of other men, and have a like in- 
 fluence on their reasonings ; and it were no difficult thing 
 to shew how the arguments from Geometry made use of to 
 support the infinite divisibility of extension are bottomed on 
 them. At present we shall only observe in general whence 
 it is the mathematicians are all so fond and tenacious of 
 that doctrine. 
 
 us, whether we grant or deny it, in consequences impossible to be ex- 
 plicated, or made in our apprehensions consistent.' Essay,\). II. ch. 23. 
 § 31. What Berkeley teaches is that infinitely divided extension, being 
 in its infinite division unperceived, must be non-existent — as existence 
 necessarily depends on a percipient. The only possible extension must 
 be a perceived extension, which can of course be divided only down to 
 the point at which its parts cease to be perceived. 
 
 He thus makes sense and imagination the criterion of possibility, and 
 seeks to eliminate the puzzles and paradoxes of the infinitely little in 
 space (so too of the infinitely great) by applying his phenomenalist test 
 to space as well as to matter. Locke had illustrated the consciousness 
 of infinity through number and numerical quantity. 'The endless 
 addition or addibility of numbers, so apparent to the mind, is that,' he 
 says, ' which gives us the clearest and most distinct idea of infinity ' 
 {Essay, b. II. ch. 16. § 8). And endlessness of course cannot be mentally 
 imaged, as every mental image is bounded.
 
 of Ilmnan Knoiolerlgc. 123 
 
 126. It has been observed in another place that the 
 theorems and demonstrations in Geometry are conversant 
 about universal ideas (sect. 1 5. Introd.) ; where it is ex- 
 plained in what sense this ought to be understood, to wit, 
 the ^x^riicular lines and figures included in the diagram are 
 supposed to stand for innumerable others of different sizes ; 
 or, in other words, the geometer considers them abstracting 
 from their magnitude — which does not imply that he forms an 
 abstract idea, but only that he cares not what the particular 
 magnitude is, whether great or small, but looks on that as 
 a thing indifferent to the demonstration. Hence it follows 
 that a line in the scheme but an inch long must be spoken 
 of as though it contained ten thousand parts, since it is 
 regarded not in itself, but as it is universal ; and it is uni- 
 versal only in its signification, whereby it represents innu- 
 merable lines greater than itself, in which may be distin- 
 guished ten thousand parts or more, though there may not 
 be above an inch in it. After this manner, the properties 
 of the lines signified are (by a very usual figure) transferred 
 to the sign, and thence, through mistake, thought to apper- 
 tain to it considered in its own nature ^ 
 
 127. Because there is no number of parts so great but it 
 is possible there may be a line containing more, the inc7i-\ine 
 is said to contain pai'ts more than any assignable number ; 
 which is true, not of the inch taken absolutely, but only for 
 the things signified by it. But men, not retaining that dis- 
 tinction in their thoughts, slide into a belief that the small 
 particular line described on paper contains in itself parts in- 
 numerable. There is no such thing as the ten thousandth 
 part of an inch ; but there is of a mile or diameter of the 
 earth, which may be signified by that inch. When therefore 
 I delineate a triangle on paper, and take one side not 
 above an inch, for example, in length to be the radius, this 
 
 * This is using an imaginable individual as a relative image or speci- 
 men of a class. It is thinking by help of a resembling sign.
 
 124 Of the Principles 
 
 I consider as divided into 10,000 or 100,000 parts or more; 
 for, though the ten thousandth part of tlmt line considered in 
 itself is nothing at all, and consequently may be neglected 
 without any error or inconveniency, yet these described lines, 
 being only marks standing for greater quantities, whereof it 
 may be the ten thousandth part is very considerable, it follows 
 that, to prevent notable errors in practice, the radius must 
 be taken of 10,000 parts or more. 
 
 128. From what has been said the reason is plain why, to 
 the end any theorem become universal in its use, it is neces- 
 sary we speak of the lines described on paper as though they 
 contained parts which really they do not. In doing of which, 
 if we examine the matter thoroughly, we shall perhaps dis- 
 cover that we cannot conceive an inch itself as consisting of, 
 or being divisible into, a thousand parts, but only some other 
 line which is far greater than an inch, and represented by 
 it ; and that when we say a line is infinitely divisible, we 
 must mean a line which is infinitely great ^ What we have 
 here observed seems to be the chief cause why, to suppose 
 the infinite divisibility of finite extension has been thought 
 necessary in geometry. 
 
 129. The several absurdities and contradictions which 
 flowed from this false principle might, one would think, have 
 been esteemed so many demonstrations against it. But, by 
 I know not what logic, it is held that proofs a posteriori are 
 not to be admitted against propositions relating to infinity — 
 as though it were not impossible even for an infinite mind 
 to reconcile contradictions ; or as if anything absurd and re- 
 pugnant could have a necessary connexion with truth or flow 
 from it. But, whoever considers the weakness of this pre- 
 
 ' But what, on his own principles, and using his criterion, is meant 
 by ' a line infinitely great ' ? Is the boundlessness of space more com- 
 prehensible in imagination than the infinite divisibility of any finite 
 portion of it ? The antinomies of Kant, in his ' Dialectic,' and the 
 contradictions found by Hamilton and Mansel, are the issue of the 
 attempt to construe quantitative infinity in terms of finite quantity 
 and of the imagination.
 
 of Human Knowledge. 125 
 
 tence will think it was contrived on purpose to humour the 
 laziness of the mind which had rather acquiesce in an indo- 
 lent scepticism than be at the pains to go through with a 
 severe examination of those principles it has ever embraced 
 for true. 
 
 130. Of late the speculations about Infinites have run so 
 high, and grown to such strange notions, as have occasioned 
 no small scruples and disputes among the geometers of the 
 present age. Some there are of great note who, not content 
 with holding that finite lines may be divided into an infinite 
 number of parts, do yet farther maintain that each of those 
 infinitesimals is itself subdivisible into an infinity of other 
 parts or infinitesimals of a second order, and so on ad infini- 
 tum. These, I say, assert there are infinitesimals of infini- 
 tesimals of infinitesimals, &c., without ever coming to an end : 
 so that according to them an inch does not barely contain 
 an infinite number of parts, but an infinity of an infinity 
 of an infinity ad infinitum of parts. Others there be who 
 hold all orders of infinitesimals below the first to be nothing 
 at all ; thinking it with good reason absurd to imagine there 
 is any positive quantity or part of extension which, though 
 multiplied infinitely, can never equal the smallest given ex- 
 tension. And yet on the other hand it seems no less absurd 
 to think the square, cube, or other power of a positive real 
 root, should itself be nothing at all ; which they who hold 
 infinitesimals of the first order, denying all of the subsequent 
 orders, are obliged to maintain. 
 
 131. Have we not therefore reason to conclude they are 
 both in the wrong, and that there is in effect no such thing 
 as parts infinitely small, or an infinite number of parts con- 
 tained in any finite quantity 1 But you will say that if this 
 doctrine obtains it will follow the very foundations of Geo- 
 metry are destroyed, and those great men who have raised 
 that science to so astonishing a height, have been all the 
 while building a castle in the air. To this it may be replied
 
 126 Of the Pnnc'q-iles 
 
 that wliatever is useful in geometry, and promotes the benefit of 
 human life, does still remain firm and unshaken on our prin- 
 ciples — that science considered as practical will rather receive 
 advantage than any prejudice from what has been said. But 
 to set this in a due light, and shew how lines and figures 
 may be measured, and their properties investigated, without 
 supposing finite extension to be infinitely divisible, may be 
 the proper business of another place ^ For the rest, though 
 it should follow that some of the more intricate and subtle 
 parts of Speculative Mathematics may be pared off without 
 any prejudice to tiiith, yet I do not see what damage will be 
 thence derived to mankind. On the contrary, I think it 
 were highly to be wished that men of great abilities and 
 obstinate application would draw off their thoughts from 
 those amusements, and employ them in the study of such 
 things as lie nearer the concerns of life, or have a more direct 
 influence on the manners. 
 
 132. If it be said that several theorems undoubtedly true 
 are discovered by methods in which Infinitesimals ai-e made 
 use of, which could never have been if their existence in- 
 cluded a contradiction in it — I answer that upon a thorough 
 examination it will not be found that in any instance it is 
 necessary to make use of or conceive infinitesimal parts of 
 finite lines, or even quantities less than the minimum sensihile; 
 nay, it will be evident this is never done, it being impossible. 
 
 133' By what we have hitherto said, it is plain that very 
 numerous and important errors have taken their rise from 
 those false Principles which were impugned in the foregoing- 
 parts of tliis treatise ; and the opposites of those erroneous 
 
 ^ In Berkeley's Analyst, published more than twenty years after the 
 Principles, the consequences which follow where Infinitesimals are 
 accepted as fixed quantities are deduced. But are they quantities, as 
 Berkele3''s objections would imply, and do his contradictions disappear 
 when they cease to be so regarded? Cf. Hume's Treatise of Unman 
 Nature, pt. II. sect, i, 2, for his reasoning about the infinite divisibility 
 of finite S2)ace8 and times.
 
 of Iluiiian Knowledge. 127 
 
 tenets at the same time appear to be most fruitful Principles, 
 from whence do flow innumerable consequences highly ad- 
 vantageous to true philosophy, as well as to religion. Par- 
 ticularly Matter, or the absolute existence of corporeal objects, 
 hath been shewn to be that wherein the most avowed and 
 pernicious enemies of all knowledge, whether human or 
 divine, have ever placed their chief strength and confidence ^ 
 And surely if by distinguishing the real existence of un- 
 thinking things from their being 2)erceived, and allowing them 
 a subsistence of their own out of the minds of spirits, no one 
 thing is explained in nature, but on the contrary a great 
 many inexplicable difficulties arise ; if the supposition of 
 Matter is barely precarious, as not being grounded on so 
 much as one single reason ; if its consequences cannot endure 
 the light of examination and free inquiry, but screen them- 
 selves under the dark and general pretence of Infinites being 
 incomprehensible ; if withal the removal of this Matter be 
 not attended with the least evil consequence ; if it be not 
 even missed in the world, but everything as well, nay much 
 easier, conceived without it ; if, lastly, both Sceptics and 
 Atheists are for ever silenced upon supposing only spirits 
 and IDEAS ^, and this scheme of things is pei'fectly agreeable 
 both to Eeason and Religion — methinks we may expect it 
 should be admitted and firmly embraced, though it were 
 
 * A question by which modern thought is troubled is partly raised 
 in these sections, in connexion with the infinite divisibility of finite 
 extension, to wit, the possibility of a knowledge by man of the Infinite 
 in Quantity. Is the term ' infinite ' the Agn of a meaningless abstrac- 
 tion, or does it correspond to something in our mental experience ; and 
 if so, what is that to which it corresponds ? Is it rational intuition or 
 mysterious belief? Is space or time infinite in the same way as we 
 suppose God infinite ? or does the infinite mean the rational relations 
 which constitute experience ? Do space and time, as infinite, transcend 
 the category of quantity altogether ? 
 
 ^ They are ' for ever silenced ' if it has been proved that Moral 
 Reason and Moral Government is supreme in the universe. But is that 
 necessarily involved in the supposition that only spirits and phenomena 
 dependent on a percipient can exist ; and is this supposition the only one 
 that effectually silences atheistic rejection of the suprenuvcy of moral 
 government ?
 
 128 Of the Principles 
 
 proposed only as an hyiwthesis, and the existence of Matter 
 had been allowed possible — which yet I think we have evi- 
 dently demonstrated that it is not. 
 
 134. True it is that, in consequence of the foregoing Prin- 
 ciples, several disputes and speculations which are esteemed 
 no mean parts of learning, are rejected as useless. But, how 
 great a prejudice soever against our notions this may give 
 to those who have already been deeply engaged and made 
 large advances in studies of that nature, yet by others we 
 hope it will not be thought any just ground of dislike to the 
 principles and tenets herein laid down — that they abridge 
 the labour of study, and make human Sciences far more clear, 
 compendious, and attainable than they were before. 
 
 135. Having despatched what we intended to say con- 
 cerning the knowledge of Ideas, the method we proposed 
 leads us in the next place to treat of Spirits — with regard 
 to which, perhaps, human knowledge is not so deficient as is 
 vulgarly imagined ^. The great reason that is assigned for 
 our being thought ignorant of the nature of Spirits is — our 
 not having an idea of it. But, surely it ought not to be 
 looked on as a defect in a human understanding that it does 
 not perceive the idea of spirit, if it is manifestly impossible 
 there should be any such idea. And this if I mistake not 
 has been demonstrated in section 27 ; to which I shall here 
 add — that a spirit has been shewn to be the only substance 
 or support wherein unthinking beings or ideas can exist; 
 but that this substance Avhich supports or j)erceives ideas 
 should itself be an idea or like an idea is evidently absurd. 
 
 * In sections 101-34 Berkeley has mentioned improvements in the 
 sciences of" nature which mii;ht follow a general acceptance of his philo- 
 sophical conception of matter. He proceeds, in sections 135-56, to 
 trace the consequences of the conception in its application in studies 
 which are concerned with the origin and destiny of men, and with the 
 being and attributes of God. Sections 101-56 may be compared with 
 Locke's Essay, b. IV. ch. 2-11, and with Kant's 'Dialectic,' b. II. 
 ch. I, 3.
 
 of Human Knoioledge. 129 
 
 136. It will perhaps be said that we want a sense (as some 
 have imagined) proper to know substances withal, which, if 
 we had, we might know our own soul as we do a triangle. 
 To this I answer, that, in case we had a new sense bestowed 
 upon us, we could only receive thereby some new sensations 
 or ideas of sense. But I believe nobody will say that what 
 he means by the terms soul and substance is only some par- 
 ticular sort of idea or sensation. We may therefore infer 
 that, all things duly considered, it is not more reasonable to 
 think our faculties defective, in that they do not furnish us 
 with an idea of spirit or active thinking substance, than it 
 would be if we should blame them for not being able to com- 
 prehend a round square. 
 
 137. From the opinion that spirits are to be known after 
 the manner of an idea or sensation have risen many absurd 
 and heterodox tenets, and much scepticism about the nature 
 of the soul. It is even probable that this opinion may have 
 produced a doubt in some whether they had any soul at all 
 distinct from their body, since upon inquiry they could not 
 find they had an idea of it. That an idea, which is inactive 
 and the existence whereof consists in being perceived, should 
 be the image or likeness of an agent subsisting by itself, 
 seems to need no other refutation than barely attending to 
 •what is meant by those words. But pei'haps you will say 
 that though an idea cannot resemble a spirit in its thinking, 
 acting, or subsisting by itself, yet it may in some other 
 respects ; and it is not necessaiy that an idea or image be 
 in all respects like the original. 
 
 138. I answer, if it does not in those mentioned, it is im- 
 possible it should represent it in any other thing. Do but 
 leave out the power of willing, thinking, and perceiving ideas, 
 and there remains nothing else wherein the idea can be like 
 a spirit. For, by the wor d spirit we mean only^ that which 
 thinks, wills, andjgcrceives ; this, and this alone, constitutes 
 the signification of that term. If therefore it is impossible 
 
 K
 
 130 Of the Frincijdes 
 
 that any degree of those powers slioukl be represented in an 
 idea, it is evident there can be no idea of a spirit. 
 
 139. But it will be objected that, if there is no idea sig- 
 nified by the tenns ' soul,' ' spirit,' and ' substance,' they are 
 wholly insignificant, or have no meaning in them^. I answer, 
 those words do mean or signify a real thing — which is neither 
 an idea nor like an idea, l)ut that which perceives ideas, 
 and wills, and reasons about them. "What I am myself — 
 that which I denote by the term / — is the same with what 
 is meant by soul or spiritual substance. But if I should say 
 that / was nothing, or that / was an idea, nothing could be 
 more evidently absurd than either of these propositions. If 
 it be said that this is only quarrelling at a word, and that, 
 since the immediate significations of other names are by 
 common consent called ideas, no reason can be assigned why 
 that which is signified by the name spirit or soul may not 
 partake in the same appellation, I answer — All the unthink- 
 ing objects of the mind agree in that they are entirely passive, 
 
 1 and their existence consists only in being perceived ; whereas 
 
 ; a soul or spirit is an active being, whose existence consists, 
 
 ':not in being perceived, but in perceiving ideas and thinking ^ 
 
 It is therefore necessary — in order to prevent equivocation 
 
 and confounding natures perfectly disagreeing and unlike — 
 
 that we distinguish between sp:kit and idea. See sect. 27. 
 
 140. In a large sense indeed, we may be said to have an 
 idea [or rather a notion''] of spirit ; that is, we understand the 
 meaning of the woixl, otlierwise wc could not alTirnT or deny 
 
 * 'Rational psychology,' says Kant, ' has its oritjin in a mere mis- 
 understanding. The unity of self-consciousness is confused with intuition 
 of the subject as an oijject, and the object thus sui)posed to b» intuited 
 is, moreover, substantiated. But this 'subject' is really nothing more 
 than a unity in thought, in which no object is given, and to which 
 thereff)re the category of substance, which jH-esupposes an object, cannot 
 be applied. Therefore ihe subject cannot be known as a substance.' 
 
 ^ If it consists in uclual perception, or being conscious, one cannot be 
 unconscious without ceasing to exist. 
 
 ^ Added in Second Edition of tlie Principles,
 
 of JTnman Knoidedge. 131 
 
 ■anything of it\ ]\roreovcr, as we conceive the ideas that are 
 in the minds of other spirits by means of our own, which we 
 suppose to be resemblances of them ; , so we know other spirits 
 by means of our own soul — which in that sense is the image 
 or idea of tliem; it having a like re&^pect to other spirits that 
 blueness or heat by me perceived has to those ideas perceived 
 by another ^ 
 
 141. The Natural Immortality of the Soul is a necessary 
 consequence of the foregoing doctrine. But before we 
 attempt to prove this, it is fit that we explain the meaning 
 of that tenet. It must not be supposed that they who assert 
 the natural immortality of the soul are of opinion that it is 
 absolutely incapable of annihilation even by the infinite power 
 
 ^ By spiritual substance Berkeley means ' what I denote by the 
 personal pronoun I.' This cannot, he urges, be an idea or [ihenomenon. 
 The knower cannot be also an object phenomenally known ; yet, as I am 
 presupposed in all my knowledge, I cannot be ignorant of myself. 
 Hume afterwards applied Berkeley's own reasoning against abstract 
 matter to this ' notion ' of self, and argued that the knower as well as 
 the known niay be resolved into passing phenomena, whose union in 
 imagination gives rise to the illusion of individuality. {Treatise of 
 Human Nature, b. TV. sect. 6.) — Berkeley's answer to this is given by 
 anticipation in his Third Dialogue ( TFo/'/i-s, vol. I. pp. 327-29), where 
 he meets the objection that 'as there is no more meaninq \\i spiritual 
 substance than in material substance, the one is to be exploded as well 
 as the other.' Kant (Dialec. II. i) argues that our having the notion 
 of self is indispensable to our having experience, but that it is impos- 
 sible to settle whether we exist as substance or as accident. 
 
 ^ That is to say, we become aware of the existence of other human 
 spirits, not as phenomena perceived, but by inference basr-d partly on 
 our consciousness of self, and partly on the signs of a similar self- 
 conscious life in them presented in our perceptions of their corporeal 
 actions. We can conceive another conscious life, while unperceiving 
 and unperceived matter is at the most a meaningless negation. 
 
 Berkeley's account of the relations of free human spirits to the 
 Supreme Spirit, and to the system of nature, is obscure. The question 
 whether each human spirit is part of the Cosmos, its birth being an 
 event in time, lie does not touch ; — nor yet our relation to the Universal 
 Consciousness or God, of which, Pantheists say, we are the individuals 
 — Grod being the universal form of which each of us is the phenomenal 
 manifestation, and human individuality an illusion. — Is not the i-oot of 
 individuality to be found in the freedom of action through which man 
 is able to destroy his true spiritual life by sin ? 
 
 K 2
 
 132 Of the Trinciples 
 
 of the Creator Avho first gave It beiiig, but only that it is not 
 
 liable to be broken or dissolved by the or dinary laws of 
 
 nature or motion. They indeed who hold the soul of man 
 
 to be only a thin vital flame, or system of animal spirits, 
 
 make it perishing and corruptible as the body; since there is 
 
 nothing more easily dissipated than such a being, which it is 
 
 naturally impossible should survive the ruin of the tabernacle 
 
 wherein it is enclosed. And this notion has been greedily 
 
 embraced and cherished by the worst part of mankind, as 
 
 the most effectual antidote against all impressions of virtue 
 
 and religion. But it has been made evident that bodies, of 
 
 what frame or texture soever, are barely passive ideas in the 
 
 7)iind — which is more distant and heterogeneous from them 
 
 than light is from darkness. We have shewn that the soul 
 
 is indivisible, incorporeal, unextended, and it is consequently 
 
 incorruptible. Nothing can be plainer than that the motions, 
 
 changes, decays, and dissolutions which we hourly see befall 
 
 natural bodies (and which is what we mean by the course of 
 
 nature) cannot possibly affect an active, simple, uncompounded 
 
 substance : such a being therefore is indissoluble by the force 
 
 of nature ; that is to say — the soul of man is natitrally 
 
 immortal ^ 
 
 * This is Berkeley's application of his philosophy of perception to the 
 awful senigma of the grave — the continued existence or not of self- 
 conscious life after the dissolution of our bodily organism in Death. 
 J'rom the neces^ary depindence of body on conscious spirit, and the 
 independence of self-conscious spirit of the phenomena presented to onr 
 jive senses (all which he assumes that he has already proved), he argues 
 I the conclusion of the natural immortality of man. There is therefore 
 no absurdity in supposing our continued self-consciousness as unbodied 
 spirit, without connexion between the dissolution of the body and 
 extinction of consciousness; tliough, as far as power to do so goes, 
 God may, at death, or afterwards, cause self conscious life to cease. 
 'I see no difficulty,' he says elsewhere, 'in conceiving a change of 
 state, such as is vulgarly called Death, as well without as with 
 material substance. It is sufficient for that pur))ose that we allow 
 sensible bodies ; the existence of which I am so far from questioning 
 (as philosophers are used to do) that I establish it, I think, upon 
 evident principles. Now, it seems very easy to conceive the soul to exist 
 in a separate state (i. e. diverted from tliose limits and laws of motion 
 and perception with which she is embarrassed here), to exercise herself
 
 of Human Knowledge. 133 
 
 142. After what has been said, it is, I suppose, plain tliat 
 our souls are not to be known in the same manner as sense- 
 on new ideas, without the intervention of those tangible things we call 
 bodies. It is even very possible to conceive how the soul may have 
 ideas of colour without an eye, or of sounds without an ear.' {Life of 
 Berkeley, p. i8i.) 
 
 It was conuuon among philosophers and theologians of the Car- 
 tesian peiiod to defend faith in life after death by the indivisibility of 
 mind, its independence of extended things, or its connexion with 
 them merely in the way of occasional causation. Hence the then 
 prevailing view of the connexion between our bodies and our self- 
 conscious life as only temporary and instrumental. Thus Bishop Butler 
 takes for granted that 'all presumption of death's being the destruction 
 of living beings must go upon the supposition that they are compounded 
 and so discerptible ;' adtling as he does that, since consciousness 'is a 
 single and indivisible power, it should seem that the subject in which 
 it resides must be so too.' And even if it should not be ' absolutely in- 
 discerptible,' we have no way, he argues, of determining by experience 
 ' what its bulk in space is ; and till it can be shown that what I call 
 my'<elf is larger in bulk than the solid elementary particles of matter 
 (atoms), which there is no ground to think any natural power can 
 dissolve, there is no sort of reason to think death to be oar dissolution.' 
 Referring to our connexion with our bodies, he says that ' upon the 
 supposition that the living being each man calls himself is a single 
 being . . . our organised bodies are no more ourselves, or part of our- 
 selves, than any other matter around us.'' ' It is as easy to conceive,' 
 he continues, 'that we may exist out of bodies as in them; that we 
 might have animated bodies of any other organs, and senses wholly 
 different from those now given us ; and that we may hereafter animate 
 these same or new bodies variously modified and organised, as to con- 
 ceived how we can animate such bodies as our present ; and the disso- 
 lution of all these several organised bodies, supposing ourselves to have 
 successively animated them, would have no more conceivable tendency 
 to destroy the living beings, ourselves, or deprive us of living faculties, 
 than the dissolution of any foreign matter ' {Analogy, pt. I. ch. i). 
 
 This train of thought is more foreign to the present generation, when 
 physical research insists that the organic unity of self-conscious life 
 in dependence on the corporeal frame is proved by a sufficient induction 
 of facts, whatever may be the abstract possibility of conceiving the con- 
 scious being to exist independently of the body. The only conscious life 
 we have any experience of, it would be argued, is one that is known 
 in organic union with the corporeal structure in correlation with which 
 it developes. Speculations like those of Berkeley and Butler would be 
 condemned as unverified hypotheses regarding abstractions. 
 
 One may still reply that in the moral experience of the organised 
 unity I call mysef, there is evidence that the organic change called 
 Death is not the end of me. In one view the rising of the sun to- 
 morrow, and the conscious life after death of any person who has not 
 yet died, are both ' beyond experience.' In another definition of ex- 
 perience, neither is 'beyond' it, if the one is involved in the rational 
 constitution of natui-al and the other in that of moral experience.
 
 134 Of the Priiiciples 
 
 less, inactive objects, or by way of idea. Spirits diudi ideas are 
 things so wholly difiFerent, that when we say ' they exist,' 
 ' they are known,' or the like, these words must not be thought 
 to signify anything common to both natures. There is nothing 
 alike or common in them ; and to expect that by any multi- 
 plication or enlargement of our faculties we may be enabled 
 to know a spirit as we do a triangle, seems as absurd as if 
 we should hope to see a sound. This is inculcated because 
 I imagine it may be of moment towards clearing several im- 
 portant questions, and preventing some very dangerous errors 
 concerning the Nature of the Soul. [^ We may not, I think, 
 strictly be said to have an idea of an active being, or of an 
 action, although we may be said to have a notion of them. 
 I have some knowledge or notion of my mind, and its acts 
 about ideas — inasmuch as I know or understand what is 
 meant by these words. What I know, that I have some 
 notion of. I will not say that the terms idea and notion 
 may not be used couvertibly, if the world will have it so ; 
 but yet it conduceth to clearness and propriety that we dis- 
 tinguish things very different by different names. It is also 
 to be remarked that, all relations including an act of the 
 mind, we cannot so properly be said to have an idea, but 
 rather a notion of the relations and habitudes between 
 things ^. But if, in the modern way, the word idea is ex- 
 tended to spirits, and relations and acts, this is, after all, 
 an affair of verbal concern ^.] 
 
 ' What follows to the end of this section was introduced in the second 
 edition of the Principles, like the other passages in which notion is dis- 
 tinguished from idea. 
 
 ''■ There is perhaps a faint anticipation of Kantism in this. But a 
 transcendental analysis of rational relations presupposed in real know- 
 ledge is foreign to the method and spirit of Berkeley. 
 
 ^ Berkeley does not after all so explain in what way spiritual sub- 
 stance is ' known ' as to prove that we cannot in the same way have a 
 ' notion ' of substance in .sensible phenomena. What he says goes rather 
 to establish that we find in the fact called self that to which there is 
 nothing analogous in the phenomena of wliich we are conscious in any 
 of our five senses. He seems to mean that our continuous individual
 
 of Human Knoiolcdge, 135 
 
 143. It will not be amiss to atlcl, tliat the doctrine of 
 abstract ideas has had no small share in rendering those 
 sciences intricate and obscure which are particularly conver- 
 sant about spiritual things. Men have imagined they could 
 frame abstract notions of the jpoiuers and acts of the mind, 
 and consider them prescinded as well from the mind or spirit 
 itself, as from their respective objects and effects. Hence a 
 great number of dark and ambiguous terms, presumed to 
 stand for abstract notions, have been introduced into meta- 
 physics and morality, and from these have grown infinite 
 distractions and disputes among the learned ^ 
 
 144. But, nothing seems more to have contributed towards 
 engaging men in controversies and mistakes with regard to 
 the nature and operations of the mind, than the being used 
 to speak of those things in terms borrowed from sensible 
 ideas. For example, the will is termed the motion of the 
 soul : this infuses a belief that the mind of man is as a ball 
 in motion, impelled and determined by the objects of sense, 
 as necessarily as that is by the stroke of a racket. Hence 
 arise endless scruples and errors of dangerous consequence 
 in morality. All Avhich, I doubt not, may be cleared, and 
 truth appear plain, uniform, and consistent, could but philo- 
 sophers be prevailed on to depart from some I'eceived preju- 
 dices and modes of speech, and retire into themselves, and 
 attentively consider their own meaning. 
 
 personality is an irreducible fact, sui generis, and untranslatable into the 
 language of mere phenomena. 
 
 ^ In this section Berkeley refers to the so-called ' powers ' or ' facul- 
 ties ' in mind, by which some psychologists account for experience. 
 These ' powers ' per se he regards as substantiated abstractions, which 
 no more explain our cognitions than the supposition of 'forces' inherent 
 in matter ultimately explains the phenomena of external nature. Shall 
 we then — abandoning mental ' powers ' or ' faculties ' — account for our 
 experience not by them but by laivs of association among sensations and 
 ideas, determined perhaps ultiniately by physical evolution, as with 
 Herbert Spencer ; or shall we explain it by categories of thought, 
 involved as necessary elements in experience, as with Kantists ? 
 Berkeley does not touch this question. — Compare sect. I, 2 j also Siris, 
 sect. 303.
 
 136 Of the Trinclples 
 
 145. From what has been said, it is plain that we cannot 
 know the existence of oilier sjnrits otherwise than by their 
 operations, or tlie ideas by them excited in us. I perceive 
 several motions, changes, and combinations of ideas, that 
 inform me there are certain particular agents, like myself, 
 which accompany them and concur in their production. 
 Hence, the knowledge I have of other spirits is not imme- 
 
 i diate, as is the knowledge of my ideas ; but depending on 
 { the intervention of ideas, by me referred to agents or spirits 
 distinct from myself, as effects or concomitant signs ^. 
 
 146. But, though there be some things which convince us 
 human agents are concerned in producing them, yet it is 
 evident to every one that those things which are called the 
 Works of Nature — that is, the far greater part of the ideas 
 or sensations perceived by us — are not produced by, or de- 
 pendent on, the wills of men. There is therefore some other 
 Spirit that causes them; since it is repugnant that they should 
 subsist by themselves. See sect. 29. But, if we attentively 
 consider the constant regularity, order, and concatenation of 
 natural things, the surprising magnificence, beauty and per- 
 fection of the larger, and the exquisite contrivance of the 
 smaller parts of the creation, together with the exact har- 
 mony and correspondence of the whole ; but above all the 
 
 ^ This is one of the most interesting sections in the Principles. How 
 can one individual mind communicate with another individual mind ? 
 It has been alleged that, on Berkeley's conception of what the material 
 world is, I have no reason to believe in the existence of other men ; 
 — that, at most, I can discover only my own existence and that of God. 
 I find that / intend or will — all in nature that my will fails to deter- 
 mine being God's doing, my volitions and His determine all changes. — 
 Berkeley, however, might argue that, under his view of nature, the con- 
 currence of divine or ])erfectly reasonable Will is a security that we are 
 not deceived when significant changes in our sensations suggest the 
 intentions and meanings of other conscious agents like ourselves as their 
 cause. (Is this, we may ask, mere 'suggestion' or is it 'inference'? 
 See Vindication of 'Theory of Visio7i, §§11,12,42.) The diflSculty still is 
 to understand how the phenomena of which I am conscious when I use 
 my senses — if they are numerically different from those of which any other 
 mind is conscious — can be media of communication with another mind. 
 In sect. 147 he says vaguely that God 'maintains that intercourse between 
 spirits whereby they are able to perceive the existence of each other.'
 
 of Human Knoivleclge. 137 
 
 never-enoiigli-admired laws of pain and pleasure, and the 
 instincts or natural inclinations, appetites, and jiassions of 
 animals — I say if we consider all these things, and at the 
 same time attend to the meaning and imjiort of the attrihutes 
 One, Eternal, Infinitely "Wise, Good, and Perfect, we shall 
 clearly perceive that they belong to the aforesaid Spirit, 
 ' who works all in all,' and ' by whom all things consist.' 
 
 147. Hence, it is evident that God is known as certainly 
 and immediately as any other mind or spirit whatsoever dis- 
 tinct from ourselves. AVe may even assert that the existence 
 of God is far more evidently perceived than the existence of 
 men ; because the effects of Nature are infinitely more nu- 
 merous and considerable than those ascribed to human agents. 
 There is not any one mark that denotes a man, or effect 
 produced by him, which does not more strongly evince the 
 being of that Spirit who is the Author of Nature ^ For, it is 
 evident that in affecting other persons the will of man has no 
 other object than barely the motion of the limbs of his body ; 
 but that such a motion should be attended by, or excite any 
 idea in the mind of another, depends wholly on the will of 
 the Creator. He alone it is who, 'upholding all things by 
 the word of His power,' maintains that intercourse between 
 spirits whereby they are able to perceive the existence of each 
 other. And yet this pure and clear light which enlightens 
 every one is itself invisible. 
 
 148. It seems to be a general pi-etence of the unthinking 
 herd that they cannot see God. Could we but see Him, say 
 they, as we see a man, we should believe that He is, and be- 
 lieving obey His commands. But alas, Ave need only open 
 our eyes to see the Sovereign Lord of all things, with a more 
 full and clear view than we do any one of our fellow-creatures. 
 Not that I imagine we see God (as some will have it) by a 
 direct and immediate view; or see corporeal things, not by 
 
 * The reasoning in this and the two next sections is expanded in the 
 Dialogue on Divine Visual Language.
 
 138 Of the Trmciples 
 
 themselves, but by seeing that which represents them in the 
 essence of God, which doctrine is, I must confess, to me in- 
 comprehensible ^. But I shall explain my meaning : — A 
 human sjairit or person is not perceived by sense, as not being 
 an idea ; when therefore we see the colour, size, figure, and 
 motions of a man, we perceive only certain sensations or 
 ideas excited in our own minds ; and these being exhibited 
 to our view in sundry distinct collections, serve to mark out 
 unto us the existence of finite and created spirits like our- 
 selves. Hence it is plain we do not see a man — if by man is 
 meant that which lives, moves, perceives, and thinks as we 
 do — but only such a certain collection of ideas as directs us 
 to think there is a distinct jjrinciple of thought and motion, 
 like to ourselves, accompanying and represented by it. And 
 after the same manner we see God ; all the difference is that, 
 whereas some one finite and narrow assemblage of ideas de- 
 notes a jjarticular human mind, whithersoever we direct our 
 view, we do at all times and in all places pei'ceive manifest 
 tokens of the Divinity — everything we see, hear, feel, or any- 
 wise perceive by Sense, being a sign or effect of the power of 
 God ; as is our perception of those very motions which are 
 produced by men ^. 
 
 1 He refers to Malebranche, whose doctrine — that we perceive the 
 material world in and through God — was an attempt to reconcile the 
 Cartesian duality of finite substances — self-conscious and unextended, 
 extended and unconscious — with the unity of our perception. Berkeley 
 does not, like Malebranche, say that we perceive things by perceiving 
 God, but only that phenomena are presented to us in our perceptions, 
 according to what we call 'natural order,' but which is really the 
 immediate issue and expression of the Will and Ideas of God. The 
 phenomena i)resent in our senses, which are wholly passive, cannot, 
 he argues, be like the divine substance, which is wholly active. See 
 Berkeley's Woihs, vol. I. p. 308. 
 
 ^ The eternal existence of God and the present existence of other 
 human spirits are thus both reached through phenomena of sense, 
 according to Berkeley, and at first only in the way of ' suggestion.' 
 The Dialogue on Vinual Language is an expansion of this section. 
 Neither here nor there does he I'efer to the evidence of God in conscience, 
 as Butler does in his supremacy of conscience, whicli is practically the 
 supremacy of God, or as Kant does in his Practical Reason. Berkeley's 
 ethical theory is inadequate.
 
 of Human Knowledge. 139 
 
 149. It is therefore pluin tliat nothing can be more evi- 
 dent to any one that is capable of the least reflection than 
 the existence of God, or a Spirit who is intimately present to 
 our minds — producing in tliem all that variety of ideas or 
 sensations Avhich continually affect us, on whom we have an 
 absolute and entire dependence, in short ' in whom we live, 
 and move, and have our being.' That the discovery of this 
 great truth, which lies so near and obvious to the mind, 
 should be attained to by the reason of so very few, is a sad 
 instance of the stupidity and inattention of men, who, though 
 they are surrounded with such clear manifestations of the 
 Deity, are yet so little affected by them that they seem, as it 
 were, blinded with excess of light. 
 
 150. But you will say. Hath Nature no share in the pro- 
 duction of natural things, and must they be all ascribed to the 
 immediate and sole operation of God % I answer, if by Nature 
 is meant only the visible series of effects or sensations im- 
 printed on our minds, according to certain fixed and genei'al 
 laws, then it is plain that Nature, taken in this sense, cannot 
 produce anything at all. But, if by Nature is meant some 
 being distinct from God, as well as from the laws of nature, 
 and things perceived by sense, I must confess that word is 
 to me an empty sound without any intelligible meaning 
 annexed to it. Natui'e, in this acceptation, is a vain chimera, 
 introduced by those heathens who had not just notions of 
 the omnipresence and infinite perfection of God\ But, it 
 is more unaccountable that it should be received among 
 Christians, professing belief iia the Holy Scriptures, which 
 constantly ascribe those effects to the immediate hand of 
 God that heathen philosophers are wont to impute to Nature. 
 
 * Thus in Aristotle's conception of Nature {<pvais) as something inter- 
 mediate between Necessity and Chance — as the efficient cause of the 
 Cosmos, of which God is the final cause. So too in the impersDual 
 ' force ' of modern scientific assumption. Are conservation and trans- 
 formation of force more than names for a supposed /aw of changes in the 
 universe, under which every perishing phenomenon has its equivalent in 
 a new one ?
 
 140 Of the Princijdes 
 
 ' The Lord He causeth the vapours to ascend ; He maketh 
 lightnings with rain ; He bringeth forth the wind out of His 
 treasures.' Jerem. x. 13. * He turneth the shadow of death 
 into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night.' Amos 
 V. 8. ' He visiteth the earth, and maketh it soft with 
 showers : He blesseth the springing thereof, and crowneth 
 the year with His goodness ; so that the pastures are clothed 
 with flocks, and the valleys are covered over with corn.' See 
 Psal. Ixv. But, notwithstanding that this is the constant 
 language of Scripture, yet we have I know not what aversion 
 from believing that God concerns Himself so nearly in our 
 affairs. Fain would we suppose Him at a great distance off, 
 and substitute some blind unthinking deputy in His stead, 
 though (if we may believe Saint Paul) ' He be not far from 
 every one of us.' 
 
 151. It will, I doubt not, be objected that the slow, gradual, 
 and roundabout methods observed in the production of natural 
 things do not seem to have for their cause the inimediate 
 hand of an Ahnighty Agent. Besides, monsters, untimely 
 births, fruits blasted in the blossom, rains falling in desert 
 places, miseries incident to human life, and the like, are so 
 many arguments that the whole frame of nature is not imme- 
 diately actuated and superintended by a Spirit of infinite 
 wisdom and goodness ^ But the answer to this objection is 
 in a good measure plain from sect. 62 ; it being visible that 
 the aforesaid Methods of Nature are absolutely necessary, in 
 order to working by the most simple and general rules, and 
 after a steady and consistent manner ; which argues both the 
 wisdom and goodness of God. Such is the artificial con- 
 trivance of this mighty ^Machine of Nature that, whilst its 
 motions and various phenomena strike on our senses, the 
 hand which actuates the whole is itself unperceivable to men 
 
 * So J. S. Mill, in his Autobiography and posthumous Esmys, in 
 which he conjectures a Manichpeist solution of the difficulties of our 
 moral experience, instead of referring them to the immoral agency of 
 finite sijirits. See note on p. 143, on Manichteism.
 
 of Unman Knowledge. 141 
 
 of flesh and blood. * Verily ' (saitli the prophet) ' thou art 
 a God that hidest thyself^.' Isaiah xlv. 15. But, though the 
 Lord conceal Himself from the eyes of the sensual and lazy, 
 who will not be at the least expense of thought, yet to an 
 unbiassed and attentive mind nothing can be more plainly 
 legible than the intimate presence of an All-wise Spii'it, who 
 fashions, regulates, and sustains the whole system of beings. 
 It is clear, from what we have elsewhere observed, that the 
 operating according to general and stated lav,'s is so necessary 
 for our guidance in the affairs of Life, and letting us into the 
 secret of Nature, that without it all reach and compass of 
 thought, all human sagacity and design, could serve to no 
 manner of purpose ; it were even impossible there should be 
 any such faculties or powers in the mind. See sect. 31. 
 Which one consideration abundantly outbalances whatever 
 particular inconveniences may thence arise ^. 
 
 152. But we should fui'ther consider that the very blemishes 
 and defects of Nature are not without their use, in that they 
 make an agreeable sort of variety, and augment the beauty 
 of the rest of the creation, as shades in a picture serve to set 
 off the brighter and more enlightened parts. We would like- 
 wise do well to examine whether our taxing the waste of 
 seeds and embryos, and accidental destruction of plants and 
 animals, before they come to full maturity, as an imprudence 
 in the Author of Nature, be not the effect of prejudice con- 
 tracted by our familiarity with impotent and saving mortals. 
 In man indeed a thrifty management of those things which 
 he cannot procure without much pains and industry may be 
 esteemed wisdom. But, we must not imagine that the inex- 
 plicably fine machine of an animal or vegetable costs the 
 great Creator any moi'e pains or trouble in its production 
 
 * So Pascal in the Pensees, on God as a God 'that hideth himself.' 
 ^ We should be virtually irrational if we lived in a physical Chaos 
 instead of the Cosmos ; for sense-phenomena would then have no mean- 
 ing on which our cognitive power might be exercised. The objective 
 Cosmos is the correlate of our personal reason.
 
 142 Of the Princ'qdes 
 
 than a pebble does ; nothing being more evident than that 
 an Onini})otent Spirit can indifferently produce everything 
 by a laQreJiat or act of his will ^. Hence, it is plain that the 
 splendid profusion of natural things should not be inter- 
 preted weakness or prodigality in the agent who produces 
 them, but rather be looked on as an argument of the riches 
 of his power. 
 
 153. As for the mixture of pain or uneasiness which is in 
 the world, pursuant to the general Laws of Nature, and the 
 actions of finite, imperfect spirits, this, in the state we are in 
 at present, is indispensably necessary to our well-being. But 
 our prospects are too narrow. AVe take, for instance, the 
 idea of some one particular pain into our thoughts, and ac- 
 count it evil; whereas, if we enlarge our view, so as to 
 comprehend the various ends, connexions, and dependencies 
 of things, on what occasions and in what proportions we 
 are affected with pain and pleasure, the nature of human 
 freedom, and the design with which we are put into the 
 world ; we shall be forced to acknowledge that those par- 
 ticular things which, considered in themselves, appear to be 
 evil, have the nature of good, when considered as linked with 
 the whole system of beings ^. 
 
 154. From what has been said, it will be manifest to any 
 considering person, that it is merely for want of attention 
 and comprehensiveness of mind that there are any favourers 
 
 ^ By a power that, as Berkeley views it, is not immanent but in- 
 dependent of nature. He supposes nature to be freely sustained, not 
 necessarily evolved. 
 
 '■' So afterwards Butler. ' Our n-hole nature leads us to ascribe moral 
 perfection to God, and to deny all imperfection of Him. And t/iis must 
 for ever be a practical proof of His moral character. From thence we 
 conclude that virtue must be the hap[iiness and vice the misery of 
 every creature ; and that regularity, order, and right cannot but 
 prevail finally, in a universe under His government. Jiut tee arc in no 
 sort judtjes what are the neccsmry means of accomplishiny this end.^ 
 {Ancdof/y, Introduction.) See also his Sermon on the ' Ignorance of 
 Man.' — In the Theodicde of Leibnitz, published in the same year as the 
 Principles of Berkeley, the difficulties of this and next section are 
 discussed.
 
 of Human Knowledge. 143 
 
 of Atheism or the llanichoean Heresy to be found ^. Little 
 and unreflecting souls may indeed burlesque the works of 
 Providence — the beauty and order whereof they have not 
 capacity, or will not be at the pains, to comprehend ; but 
 those who are masters of any justness and extent of thought, 
 and are withal used to reflect, can never sufficiently ad- 
 mire the divine traces of Wisdom and Goodness that shine 
 throughout the Economy of Nature. But what truth is 
 there which glares so strongly on the mind that, by an 
 avei'sion of thought — a wdlful shutting of the eyes — we may 
 not escape seeing it, at least with a full and direct view % Is 
 it therefore to be wondered at, if the generality of men, who 
 arc ever intent on business or pleasure, and little used to fix 
 or open the eye of their mind, should not have all tliat con- 
 viction and evidence of the Being of God which might be 
 expected in reasonable creatures % 
 
 155. We should rather wonder that men can be found so 
 stupid as to neglect, than that neglecting they should be 
 unconvinced of such an evident and momentous truth. And 
 yet it is to be feared that too many of parts and leisure, who 
 live in Christian countries, are, merely through a supine and 
 dreadful negligence, sunk into Atheism '^. They cannot say 
 
 * Manichseism, the doctrine of Manes, a Persian philosopher of the 
 third century, who appears to have held the eternal Duality of the 
 Supreme Power to be the explanation of the mingled good and evil 
 that is in the universe. The existence of free agents, who, as free, must 
 be able to act immorally as well as virtuously, might seem to be a 
 modified Manichitism ; — especially if accompanied by the supposition 
 that the universe into which finite agents can thus introduce evil is 
 incapable of ultimate restoration, and that uniestored it is absolutely a 
 failure, which last it is doubtful whether the Manichaeans themselves 
 meant to say. Is the existence of cre:itors of actions which may be evil 
 as well as good the existence of potential evil ? A sense of the im- 
 portance of responsible human agents in the government (physical and 
 nioral) of the universe has, through Christianity, grown in medieval 
 and modern times, as compared with the indifi'erent feeling towards 
 2)ersons of Greek and other ancient philosopliers. 
 
 - Our ultimate ignorance of the origin, constitution, and destiny of 
 the universe is the assumption at the root of objections at the present 
 day to the recognition of Perfect Mind as its ultimate explanation. 
 Hume proceeds partly on this, when he treats the universe as a ' singular
 
 144 Of the Principles of Human Knoioledge. 
 
 there is not a God, but neither are they convinced that there 
 is. Since it is downright impossible that a soul pierced and 
 enlightened with a thorough sense of the omnipresence, holi- 
 ness, and justice of that Almighty Spirit should persist in a 
 remorseless violation of His laws. We ought, therefore, 
 earnestly to meditate and dwell on those important points ; 
 that so we may attain conviction without all sci'uple ' that 
 the eyes of the Lord are in every place beholding the evil 
 and the good ; that He is with us and keepeth us in all places 
 whither we go, and giveth us bread to eat and raiment to 
 put on ;' that He is present and conscious to our innermost 
 thoughts ; in fine, that we have a most absolute and immediate 
 dependence on Him. A clear view of which great truths 
 cannot choose but fill our hearts with an awful circumspec- 
 tion and holy fear, which is the sti'ongest incentive to Virtue 
 and the best guard against Vice. 
 
 156. For, after all, what deserves the first place in our 
 studies is the consideration of God and our Duty; which 
 to promote, as it was the main drift and design of my labours, 
 so shall I esteem them altogether useless and ineffectual if, 
 by what I have said, I cannot inspire my readers with a pious 
 Sense of the Presence of God ; and, having shewn the false- 
 ness or vanity of those barren speculations which make the 
 chief employment of learned men, the better dispose them to 
 ^reverence and embrace the salutary truths of the Gospev 
 which to know and to practise is the highest perfection of 
 human nature. 
 
 effect,' which can be interpreted only so far as this present life of sense 
 is concerned (and even that in a merely jjfobable interpretation), but 
 which at last dissolves in 'a riddle, an asiiignia, an inexplicable 
 mystery.' Does not the true pliilosophical analysis show that our 
 knowledge of the universe cannot be even so much as this without 
 being more than this ? 
 
 \
 
 II. 
 
 Visual Phenomena significant of Mind. 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 FROM 
 
 BERKELEY'S WRITINGS 
 
 ON 
 
 VISUAL SUGGESTION; 
 
 ALSO ON THE 
 
 THEISTIC INTERPRETATION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 VISUAL SIGNS. 
 
 It was the great object of Berkeley's Theory of Vision to shew the 
 effect of constant and early habits, and it is this which gives to that 
 work its chief value when considered in connexion with the philosophy 
 of the human mind. — Stewart's Dissertation. 
 
 In Him we live, and move, and have our being. — Acts xvii. 28.
 
 PEEFATORY NOTE. 
 
 The Essay towards a New Theory of Vision was published 
 in 1 709, a year before the Principles. It is the first in chro- 
 nological order of those writings of Berkeley which, ostensibly 
 concerned with Visual Perception, treat by implication of the 
 nature of inductive science and our belief in the Order of 
 Nature, in relation to our theistic belief Twenty-three years 
 after the publication of the juvenile Essay on Vision — in 
 which the student is introduced to the psychology of the Five 
 Senses, especially of seeing and touching — certain theological 
 inferences involved in the Essay were followed out in the 
 Fourth Dialogue of A leiphron, on ' Visual Language.' And 
 in the following year he gave his last word on these subjects 
 in his Theory of Visual Language Vindicated and Explained. 
 The selections which follow are taken from these three works. 
 
 According to Berkeley's Principles of Enotoledge, the 
 supposition that body exists unperceived is unintelligible : 
 the existence of a material world divorced from perception 
 involves the absurdity of conscious experience existing without 
 any one to be conscious of it. 
 
 Yet all bodies exist 'without mind,' if what is meant 
 by 'without' is, that they exist 'in space.' And that theyi 
 exist in space, or consist of ^)«rfes extra partes, cannot be 
 doubted. Do we not see them so existing — in seeing that 
 they are e xten ded ; and also in seeizig that each ext ra-org anic 
 body is place d relatively to other extra-organic bodies, and 
 to the l iving body of th e percipient 1 Now what, Berkeley 
 
 L 2
 
 148 Vrefaiorjj Note. 
 
 asks, is the deepest and truest meaning of that ' outness' or 
 'externality' which consists in occupying space; and is the 
 space which bodies occupy originally seen % This question 
 leads us into the heart of the philosophy of Perception. 
 
 The Essay on Vision is part of Berkeley's answer. lu 
 this Essay he holds in reserve the more sweeping doctrine 
 of the Princijyles — that the material world cannot in any 
 of its qualities exist actually or intelligibly without being 
 perceived : he is satisfied with the more limited thesis, that 
 its visible extension is dependent on a percipient. The 
 claims of what is perceived by touch to iudeiiendent ex- 
 ternality are meanwhile reserved. He argues that, because \ 
 the relations of space are unintelligible apart from the expe- { 
 rience we have when we touch things, and when we movef 
 our bodies, therefore space cannot be perceived originally by ] 
 sight. The Essay is concerned with the origin — whether in 
 sight, or touch, or otherwise — of our perception of Extension, 
 as well as with the suggestions and judgments which this 
 perception involves when it is developed. It may be used 
 for mental exercises in the part of psychology that relates to 
 the Five Senses and the growth of Perception. 
 
 The reader has to observe that what Berkeley has written 
 — nominally about Vision — in the Essay, the Dialogue, and 
 the Vindication, advances from the qualities of the things 
 of sense, through the theory of their natural laws as in- 
 ductively interjireted in the physical sciences, to our faith 
 in the Supreme Mind, here alleged as the ultimate or pliilo- 
 soi)hical explanation of all the changes of the sensible world. 
 Our power of seeing things in ' ambient space' is thus 
 explained to be virtually a power of seeing sensible signs 
 of the constant regulative activity of God, and one is thus 
 led from the lower to the higher faculties of Intellect. 
 
 Tl)e Essay on Vision was the first elaborate attempt by 
 any philosoplier to shew that our ordinary visual ' percep- 
 tions' of extended things, existing outside of our bodies, are
 
 'Prefatory Note. 149 
 
 not our original yhunX perceptions; that, on the contrary, 
 they are expectations of perceptions of touch, which have, by 
 habit and ' suggestion,' become connected with what we origi- 
 nally see. Berkeley traces the eai'ly growth of our know- 
 ledge of space, in its three dimensions of length, breadth, 
 and thickness, out of our habit of associating the iDhenomena 
 of colour and organic sensations in the eye, with phenomena 
 of muscnlar resistance and locomotion which have previously 
 accompanied them. The former in process of time do duty 
 for the latter, so that by habit we can be ' admonished 
 by what we see of what sensations of touch will affect us, 
 at such and such distances of time, in consequence of such 
 and such actions.' Our educated or acquired power of 
 Visual j^erception is thus explained as the issue of Habit 
 and Su ggestion. 
 
 Locke had said that 'men perceive by sight distance 
 between bodies, and between parts of the same body,' and 
 that it was ' as unnecessary to prove this as to prove that we 
 see colours themselves.' He had added that our idea of 
 Space was derived from sight and touch. 
 
 Berkeley started with the permitted assumption that Colour 
 and Colour only is the proper and immediate object of sight. 
 Without denying that the colour we see is in a sort extended, 
 he analysed this coloured extension, in order to show that 
 it is different in kind from the phenomenon of resistant 
 extension, on which our knowledge of real ' outness' is based 
 by him. He tries to shew that when one says that a thing 
 is ' at a distance,' what is meant is that he foresees that, in 
 order to touch the thing, he must pass through sensations 
 of movement, more or less numerous according to the length 
 of the distance from him at Avhich the thing is placed. 
 Seeing is thusforggeeing. If people had never experienced 
 locomotive sensations, they could not, he argues, understand 
 what the word SpaQg. means ; for it means room to move in, 
 a notion we could not have had without some experience
 
 150 Prefatory Note. 
 
 of movement. The so-called ' sight' of distance is therefore 
 the acquired power of interpreting visual phenomena that are 
 found by experience to signify that we have to pass through 
 so much locomotive experience befoi'e we can touch the dis- 
 tant object. Our knowledge of what the visual appearances 
 signify, he further argues, is not instinctive ; nor is it con- 
 nected with what we see by an abstract necessity of reason, 
 so that it can be demonstrated a priori : it is the gradual 
 issue of the habit of connecting in thought what has previ- 
 ously coexisted regularly in sense ; in the same way as words 
 by habit suggest their established meanings. 
 
 This is the answer given by Berkeley to the question, How 
 it comes to pass that we apprehend, by what we see, what 
 is not originally seen; and what neither resembles, nor 
 causes, nor is caused by, nor has any necessary connexion 
 with what is originally seen ] This answer implies, how- 
 ever, that what we see is connected with its tactual meaning, 
 ohjectively, or by natural law ; not merely subjectively, or by 
 the tendency to associate in imagination ideas that have by 
 accident often been together in our minds. The objective 
 ground and meaning of Law in Nature, and not merely the 
 'laws of association' in the individual mind, is (almost uncon- 
 sciously on the part of Berkeley) thus proposed for reflection. 
 Natural law is resolved into divinely established association 
 among sense-phenomena ; and tJiis association is said to be 
 'arbitrary' because God might have connected any meaning 
 with the significant phenomena, thus making the laws of 
 nature different from what they actually are. This arbitra- 
 riness is what Berkeley intends in his metaphor of 'Visual 
 Language.' But one difference between the spoken or written 
 words of men and the visible words daily addressed to us 
 by God in the language of the senses is, that the connexion 
 between words and tlieir meanings is due to human conven- 
 tion, whereas the connexion between what we see and the 
 muscular and locomotive experience which we expect is
 
 Prefatory Note. 151 
 
 grounded on the rational will of God. As he puts it, ' visi.ble 
 ideas are the language whereby the Governing Spirit, on 
 whom we depend, informs us what tangible ideas He is about 
 to imprint upon us, in case we excite this or that motion in 
 our own bodies.' When applied to all the phenomena pre- 
 sented in the five senses, and not merely to those of sight, 
 this means that Order in Nature is contingent on Rational 
 Will — that the physical government of external things is 
 subordinate to the moral government of persons — and that 
 our knowledge of the natural laws of the material world is 
 incapable of ever becoming demonstrable a 'priori. 
 
 The early Essay on Vision, which only opens this vista 
 of speculation, consists of a series of psychical analyses, 
 meant to bring out the antithesis between coloured or visible 
 extension and resistant or tangible extension. These analyses 
 all lead up to Divine Will as being the objective basis of 
 the ' suggestions ' through which our original sense of sight 
 becomes our visual perception of things existing under space 
 relations. This implies that Space in the abstract is a mean- 
 ingless word, and that all actual spaces can be resolved into 
 significance in the phenomena presented to sight. 
 
 The conclusions argued for in the Essay may be con- 
 veniently presented as follows : — 
 
 I. (Sect. 2-51). Distance, meaning by that depth or 
 thickness of space and things in space, as distinguished from 
 plane superficial extension, is originally invisible : it is ' sug- 
 gested' by association between tactual phenomena and visual 
 phenomena, which are the established signs of what is thus 
 suggested. 
 
 II. (Sect. ^2-%i). Magnitude, or size of sensible things, 
 is necessarily invisible : what we see is only a larger or 
 smaller number of coloured points {minima visihilia) :, our 
 supposed power of seeing magnitude is a gradually acquired
 
 152 Prefatory Note. 
 
 powei' of ' suggesting' the tactual meaning of colours and 
 of organic sensations which we experience in seeing. 
 
 III. (Sect. 88-120). The Situations of sensible things 
 are necessarily invisible : all that we can see is variety in 
 colours : our supposed power of seeing places is really a 
 power acquired by 'suggestion' of interpreting visible and 
 organic signs of locality. 
 
 TV. (Sect. 1 21-146). There is no phenomenon in sense 
 common to sight and touch : space or extension, which has 
 the sti'ongest claim to be both visible and tangible, and 
 which is nominally both seen and touched, is not merely 
 numerically different but different in kind in these two 
 senses : and the supposition of an extension that is neither 
 seen nor touched involves the absurdity of an ' abstract' 
 idea. 
 
 V. (Sect. 147-148). The ultimate explanation of the 
 established connexion between visible and tangible phe- 
 nomena is found in the fact that the visual are, through 
 laws in nature which are really laws of God, the signs to 
 us of tactual jihenomena, and may therefore be said to 
 form a Divine Language, significant of the relations of 
 things as extended. 
 
 VI. (Sect. 149-160). What is studied in Geometry is the 
 resistant extension of touch, not the coloured extension of 
 sight. 
 
 Berkeley's account of how we learn to see the places of things 
 implies that if a person born blind was enabled to see, he 
 could at first have no knowledge of outness, sizes, or situations 
 by his eyes ; that the sun and stars, with all else, near or 
 remote, must seem to be ' in his mind.' This is a con- 
 clusion which might be tested by experiments on individuals 
 as well as by psychological analysis. Appropriate tests
 
 Prefaton/ Note. 153 
 
 would be — (a) cases of persons relieved from born-blind- 
 ness; (h) investigation of the conception of space possessed 
 by those not so relieved ; (c) experiments on persons able 
 to see, but who had no sense of contact or of movement 
 in their bodily organs (if such could be found) ; {d) the 
 facts of sight in human infants ; (e) in the lower animals. 
 Berkeley contributes no original observations gathered on 
 any of these fields. 
 
 The Essay and the other writings on Visual Language 
 which follow may be used by the student as aids to a 
 psychological analysis ascending from the lower to the higher 
 faculties of knowledge : — the Five Senses and their original 
 Perceptions; the develojiment of perceptions through Sug- 
 gestion ; the meaning of Law in Nature, with the ground 
 of our expectatio'n of its constancy; the relation between 
 the natural order of the phenomena of Sense and fi'ee or 
 supernatural agency ; and the ground of our belief in God in 
 whom ' we live and move and have our being.' 
 
 A. C. F.
 
 AN ESSAY 
 
 A NEW THEOEY OF VISION. 
 
 1 . My design is to shew the manner wherein we perceive 
 by Sight the Distance, Magnitude, and Situation of objects ; 
 also to consider the difference there is betwixt the ideas of 
 Sight and Touch, and whether there be any idea common to 
 both senses ^. 
 
 2. It is, I think, agreed by all that Distance of itself, andy<^7«-2?4^ 
 immediately, cannot be seen. For, distance being a line ^az;^ /saz 
 directed endwise to the eye, it projects only one point in the^^^-""'— ' ' 
 fund of the eye — which point remains invariably the same, 
 whether the distance be longer or shorter '^. 
 
 ^ The design of this Essay is, to compare the phenomena presented 
 in Sight and in Touch, and to shew how we learn to see the primary 
 or mathematical qualities of things. But we are led to consider the 
 office of all the Five Senses in the formation of knowledge, in the course 
 of this analysis of Sight, ' the most perfect and delightful' of them all. 
 
 '^ Sect. 2-51 explain how we learn to 'see' Distance, or an interval 
 between two visible points. (Cf. Vindication, sect. 62-69.) Sect. 2 
 takes for granted, but without distinct proof, that distance is neces- 
 sarily invisible. It must be noted that the 'distance' of which this 
 can be assumed is space in its third dimension — dep th or th ickness ; not 
 space merely as plane superficial extension. In relation to the distance 
 which Berkeley says cannot be seen — that which is in the line .Qf sight, 
 the percipient is at the end of a straight line, the interval between 
 the two points of which must, it is argued, be invisible, because only 
 one of them can be seen. When we see supt-rficial distance, on the 
 other hand, we are at the side, and not at the end of the line — at a 
 point where it forms a larger or smaller angle with the eye ; so that 
 this sort of distance is called lateral, transverse, or angular. Any
 
 156 An Essa^ towards a 
 
 3. I find it also acknowledged that the estimate we make 
 of the distance of objects considerably remote is rather an 
 act of judgment ^ grounded o n experienc e than of sense. For 
 example, when I perceive a great number of intermediate 
 objects, such as houses, fields, rivers, and the like, which I 
 have experienced to take up a considerable space, I thence 
 form a judgment or conclusion, that the object I see beyond 
 them is at a great distance. Again, when an object appears 
 faint and small which at a near distance I have experienced 
 to make a vigorous and large appearance, I instantly con- 
 clude it to be far off. — And this, it is evident, is the result of 
 ^iij experience ; without which, from the faiutness and littleness, 
 
 ■^'*^'*"'^T should not have inferred anything concerning the distance 
 'J__ of objects ^ 
 
 r-^,*..- fiii^-- 4- But, when an object is placed at so near a distance as 
 a^-i/jf::*- - that the interval between the eyes bears any sensible propor- 
 tion to it, the opinion of speculative men is, that the two 
 optic axes (the fancy that we see only with one eye at once 
 
 • distance that is strictly in the line of sight must, in order to become 
 visible, be as it were transformed into lateral distance — from a re- 
 lation in the third dimension of space into plane superficial extension. 
 But it has then ceased to be the distance or outness here alleged to 
 be invisible. 
 
 Some of Berkeley's critics have referred to sect. 2 as if it expressed 
 his famous ' theory of vision,' and his 'sole argument in support of it.' 
 It is merely a statement of one of several assumptions on which the 
 theory rests. He does not liere say whether the ' point in the fund of 
 the eye' is itself visible : in the Vindication (sect. 50) he denies that, 
 properly speaking, it can be seen, 'being tangible, and apprehended only 
 by imagination.' 
 
 ^ See the account of what Locke calls judgment (i. e. presumption of 
 probability) in his Essay, b. IV. ch. 14, 15, 16. Like 13erkeley here, 
 he opposes it to hnowhd(je strictly so called. 
 
 ^ What does Berkeley here and in what follows intend by a 'necessary 
 connexion'? Is it too a factitious, a posteriori necessity, generated, as 
 Hume, Mill, or Herbert Spencer might say, by the habits of the indi- 
 vidual, or of the race? Or is it a transcendental necessity, due to the 
 rational constitution of mind as mind ? That it is meant to be' more 
 than the former seems imjilied in the subsequent analysis of our beliefs 
 in laws of nature into mere suggestions of our habit. Necessary in- 
 ference he here grants seemingly to mathematics, although the outcome 
 of his Essay tends to reduce mathematical necessity itself to the creative 
 will of God.
 
 Neio Theory of Vision. 157 
 
 being exploded), coneurring at the object, do there make an 
 angle, by means of which, according as it is greater or lesser, 
 the object is perceived to be nearer or farther off. 
 
 5. Betwixt which and the foregoing manner of estimating 
 distance there is this remarkable difference ; — that, whereas 
 there was no apparent J^ecessar^co?^7^ea;^07^^ between small 
 distance and a large and strong appearance, or between great 
 distance and a little and faint appearance, there appears a 
 very necessary connexion between an obtuse angle and near 
 distance, and an acute angle and farther distance. It does 
 not in the least depend upon experience, but may be evidently 
 known by any one before he had experienced it, that the 
 nearer the concurrence of the optic axes the greater the angle, 
 and the remoter their concurrence is the lesser will be the 
 angle comprehended by them ^. 
 
 6. There is another way, mentioned by optic writers, 11- 
 whereby they will have us judge of those distances in re- 
 spect of which the breadth of the pupil hath any sensible 
 bigness. And that is the greater or lesser divergency of the 
 rays, which, issuing from the visible point, do fall on the 
 pupil — that point being judged nearest which is seen by 
 most diverging rays, and that remoter which is seen by 
 less diverging rays ; and so on, the apparent distance still 
 
 * What artists call aerial and linear perspectives are here taken as 
 acknowledged signs of ' considerably remote ' distances. But the main 
 question is, the manner in which we learn to see near distances out- 
 wards. In Berkeley's day even, it was ' agreed by all ' that ' the 
 remoter distances ' outwards are ' suggested ' by ' arbitrary signs ; ' near 
 distances were supposed to be inferred froin (not suggested by) ' neces- 
 sary connexions ' with lines and angles. This last supposition Berkeley 
 proceeds to refute in the following sections. 
 
 ^ Here again, what ^ort of ' necessity ' does he intend in the ' con- 
 nexion ' (sect, 5, 7) between angles and distances, and between diver- 
 gency of rays and degrees of distance ? The varieties in the possible 
 meaning of the ambiguous term ' necessity ' should be here distinguished 
 by the student. Is there ground for ultimatelij distinguishing the 
 necessity in virtue of which this is the cause of that from tlie necessity 
 for a cause of ecery change ; also for distinguishing mathematical from 
 metaphysical necessity, and both from the intellectual obligation to 
 avoid a contradiction in terms.
 
 158 Ati Essay towards a 
 
 increasing, as the divergency of tlie rays decreases, till at 
 length it hecomes infinite when the rays that fall on the 
 pupil are to sense parallel. And after this manner it is said 
 we perceive distance when we look only with one eye. 
 
 7. In this case also it is plain we are not beholden to expe- 
 rience : it being a certain, necessary truth that, the nearer 
 the direct rays falling on the eye approach to a parallelism, 
 the farther off is the point of their intersection, or the visible 
 point from whence they flow. 
 
 8. Now, though the accounts here given of perceiving near 
 distance by sight are received for true, and accordingly made 
 use of in determining the apparent places of objects, they do 
 nevertheless seem to me very unsatisfactory, and that for these 
 following reasons : — 
 
 '• 9. First, It is evident that, when the mind perceives any 
 ^ idea, not i mmediately an d of itself, it m ust be by the m eans 
 of some other idea. Thus, for instance, the passions which 
 \ ^'■' are in the mind of another are of themselves to me invisible. 
 I may nevertheless perceive them by sight, though not imme- 
 diately, yet by means of the colours they produce in the 
 countenance. We often see shame or fear in the looks of 
 a man, by perceiving the changes of his countenance to red 
 or pale. 
 
 10. Moreover, it is evident that no idea which i s not itself 
 perc eived can be to me the means of perceiving a ny other 
 idea ^. If I do not perceive the redness or paleness of a man's 
 face themselves, it is impossible I should perceive by them 
 the passions which are in his mind. 
 
 11. Now, from sect. 2, it is plain that distance is in its 
 
 ' Here 'perceived' means being actually conscious of phenomena 
 present in sense ; ' perceiving ' means being aware (through what he 
 afterwards calls suggestion) of what is signified by them. So in the 
 following sections what is 'imperceptible' is yet ' perceived,' or judged 
 through suggestion. The former is immediate and the latter developed 
 or acquired perception. 

 
 'Neio Theory of Y'uioii. 159 
 
 own nature imperceptible ; and yet it is perceived by sight. 
 It remains, therefore, that it be brought into view by means 
 of some other idea, that is itself immediately perceived in 
 the act of vision. /^Zc^fcu. 
 
 12. But those lines and angles by means whereof some /^.^^^^^^ 
 men pretend to explain the percejition of distance, are them- ^ , . 
 selves not at all perce ived, nor are they in truth ever thought 
 
 of by those unskilful in optics. I appeal to any one's expe- ^^^ .^^ 
 rience, whether, upon sight of an object, he computes its dis-^ ^^^ir^ 
 tance by the bigness of the angle made by the meeting of the /r-z«^" . 
 two optic axes'? or whether he ever thinks of the greater or^^ / ^ - • ^ 
 lesser divei-gency of the rays which arrive from any point to «c. ;.ai^' i 
 his pupil ? nay, whether it be not perfectly impossible for i y>jC — 
 him to i^erceive by sense the various angles wherewith the 
 rays, according to their greater or lesser divergence, do fall 
 on the eye % Every one is himself the best judge of what he 
 perceives, and what not. In vain shall any man tell me, that 
 I perceive certain lines and angles which introduce into my 
 mind the various ideas of distance, so long as I myself am 
 conscious of no such thing. 
 
 13. Since therefore those angles and lines are not them- 
 selves perceived by sight, it follows, from sect. 10, that the 
 mind does not by them judge of the distance of objects. 
 
 14. Secondly, The truth of this assertion will be yet 
 farther evident to any one that considers th ose lines and 
 angles have no real existence in nature, being only an hypo- 
 thesis framed by the mathematicians, and by them introduced 
 into optics that they might treat of that science in a geo- 
 metrical way. 
 
 15. The third and last reason I shall give for rejecting that 
 doctrine is, that though we should grant the real existence of 
 those optic angles, &c., and that it was possible for the mind 
 to perceive them, yet these princi ples wo uld not be f ound 
 sufficien t to explain the phen omena of distance, as shall be 
 shewn hereafter.
 
 
 ry~7 -i6^Noy,it bein^jdreadv shftwn*tliat disran ce is sugge sted^ 
 
 to tire mind, by the afed iation of some other idea which is 
 
 ^■i''' " ^.tJ^t^ -'' Note ill sect. 16 the first use in the Essay of the term sugf/estion — 
 / J already referred to as expressive of the way in which our acquired power 
 
 fJtm of interpreting what we see, and thus going beyond pare visual sense, 
 
 has been explained by Berkeley. He exp lains o ur acquired visual per- 
 ception of things by resolving it i nto what he calls sugg estion. — The 
 next (|uestioii is, "\Vha t~croes he mean by Sug gestion! Is it more than 
 the blind issue of unconscious habit ? Does it mean a special faculty '? 
 Is it an exercise of thought ? (See Vindication, sect. 42.) The answer 
 to this question goes so far to settle Ber keley's p lace as (unconsciously) a 
 mere p henomena list. like Hume, or as (unconsciously) an ticipating Reid, 
 if not Kant, in tlie foundation of his ph ilosophy. — Eeid, in his Inquiry, 
 often uses the word ' suggestion ' when treating of the five senses and the 
 relations of their phenomenal data to one another, making it mean the 
 ,'L' - common rational convictions of which no further explanation can be 
 
 given. ' I Tiiiow no word,' he says, ' more proper to express a power of 
 the mind which sesms entirely to have escaped the notice of philosophers, 
 and to which we owe many of our simple ideas which are neither im- 
 pressions nor ideas, as well as many original principles of belief. . . . 
 There is suggestion which is not natural or original : it is the result of 
 experience and habit. . . . But I think it appears that there are [also] 
 natural sur/gestions : — that sensation suggests the notion of present 
 existence, and the belief that what we perceive or feel does now exist ; 
 that memory suggests the notion of past existence, and the belief that 
 what we remember did exist in time past ; and that our sensations and 
 thoughts suggest the notion of a mind, and the belief of its existence, 
 and of its relation to our thoughts. By a like natural principle it is 
 that a beginni ng of exis tence, or any change in nature, suggests to us 
 the notion of a ca use, and compels ou r belief of its ex istence. And in 
 like manner, certain sensati ons of t ouch, by the constitution of our 
 nature, suggest to us extension, s olidit y, and mot ion, which are nowise 
 like sensations, although they have been hitherto confounded with them' 
 {Inquiry, ch. II. sect 7). 'This class of intimations,* says Stewart, with 
 reference to this passage, ' result from the original frame of the human 
 mind, and ' were quite overlooked by Berkeley.' — The question which 
 Berkeley would solve by ' suggestion ' is really the great one afterwards 
 proposed by Hume, in his Inquiry conceryiing Human Understanding, 
 section IV, and which the remainder of that work is an attempt to 
 
 i answer : — ' What is the nature of that eviden ce which assures us of any 
 matter of fa ct that lies beyond the pr esent te stimony of our senses or 
 th e records of our memor y?' This is ]u.st to ask what the ultimate 
 constitutive principle of our knowledge of nature is, in virtue of which 
 phenomena of sense become acquired perceptions and physical science. 
 That Hume says is custom and mental association. With Berkeley 
 perception is developed by ' suggestion,' to which the origin of our 
 judgments of Extension is thus referred. What the term Suggestion 
 is used by Berkeley to connote, and whether, with this connota- 
 I tion, the.se judgments are adequately explained l)y him, is what the 
 critical reader of I3erkeley has to consider. — The analysis mjfy be 
 compared with Kant's, by whom phenomena of sense were supposed
 
 ?/?;:■;« 
 
 dJ^J. 
 
 
 
 .-^-.^ 
 
 <> 
 
 iV(?z<? Theory of Vision. 161 
 
 itself perceived in the act of seeing, it remains that we in- 
 quire wliat ideas or sensations there be that attend vision -''^^-'^ 
 unto which we may suppose the ideas of distance are con- 
 nected, and by which they are introduced into the mind\ 
 
 And, first, it is certain by e xperie nce, that when we look 
 at a near object with both eyes, according as it approaches 
 or recedes from us, we alter the disposi tion o f our eyes, by - 
 
 lessening or widening the interval betwe en the pupils. This .ut.'U^.'" 
 disjoosition or turn of the eyes is attended with a sensation ^, 
 which seems to me to be that which in this case brings the 
 idea of greater or lesser distance into the mind. ^' '*'^^'^^*^ 
 
 17. Not that there is any natural or necessary connexion^'^'' "^^ 
 between the sensation we perceive by the turn of the eyes /'T^""*^ 
 and ffreater or lesser distance. But — because the mind has, -p, , . >- 
 by constant experience, found the different sensations corre-.^/.^ ^/■'i'' 
 spending to the different dispositions of the eyes to be attended '^•p^^ ^'''^ 
 each with a different degree of distance in the object — there 
 has grown an habitual or customary connexion^ between 
 those two sorts of ideas ; so that the mind no sooner perceives 
 the sensation arising from the different turn it gives the eye?, 
 in order to bring the pupils nearer or farther asunder, but it 
 withal perceives the different idea of distance which was wont 
 
 to be translated into perceptions, under 'forms' that belong to mind and 
 not to phenomena, but which are objectively valid because they are 
 forms under which phenomena, as matter of experience, must be pre- 
 sented ; also with the transformed sensations of Condillac ; and with the 
 antitliesis of extension and sensation of Reid. 
 
 "• Sect. 16-27 giv6 three sorts of arbitrary signs of ' near distances' 
 — recognition of their athih'ariness being what Berkeley considers the 
 important outcome of his whole investigation into vision, as it empties 
 natural law and physical science of a priori necessity. 
 
 ^ This ' sensation ' of organic movement in the eye is of course not 
 itself seen. It belongs to our tactual experience — in Berkeley's wide 
 meaning of ' touch.' It may be called tiiswai, but it is not_ns/6Ze. Thus 
 the visual signs through which we learn to see things in their places 
 are some of them invisible while others are visible. 
 
 ^ This ' customary connexion,' elsewhere called arbitrary, need not 
 therefore be capricious. The ' suggestions ' to which it gives rise 
 may-involve reason; and 'arbitrary' maybe understood to mean the 
 expression of will, as opposed to hlind necessity — so that in rational . 
 will would thus be the essence of the visible universe. 
 
 M
 
 162 An Essay towards a 
 
 to be connected with that sensation. Just as, upon hearing 
 a certain sound, the idea is immediately suggested to the 
 understanding which custom had united with it. 
 
 18. Nor do I see how I can easily be mistaken in this 
 matter. I know evidently that distance is not perceived of 
 itself — that, by consequence, it must be perceived by means 
 of some other idea, which is immediately perceived, and varies 
 with the different degrees of distance. I know also that the 
 sensation arising from the tur n of the ey es is of itself imme- 
 di ately perce ived, and various degrees thereof are connected 
 with different distances, which never fail to accompany them 
 into my mind, when I view an object distinctly with both 
 eyes whose distance is so small that in respect of it the 
 interval between the eyes has any considerable magnitude. 
 
 19. I know it is a received opinion that, by altei'ing the 
 disposition of the eyes, the mind perceives whether the angle 
 of the optic axes, or the lateral angles comprehended between 
 the interval of the eyes or the optic axes, are made greater 
 or lesser ; and that, accordingly, by a kind of natural geo- 
 metry, it judges the point of their intersection to be nearer 
 or farther off. But that this is not true I am convinced by 
 my own experience, since I am not conscious that I make 
 any such use of the perception I have by the turn of my eyes. 
 And for me to make those judgments, and draw those conclu- 
 sions from it, without knowing that I do so, seems altogether 
 incomprehensible. 
 
 20. From all which it follows, that the judgment we make 
 of the dis tance of an obje ct viewed with l)oth eyes is entirely 
 the re sult o f exp erience^. If we had not constantly found 
 certain sensations, arising from the various dispositions of 
 the eyes, attended with certain degrees of distance, we should 
 never make those sudden judgments from them concerning 
 
 ^ ' Experience,' i. e. phenomena of sense organised into experience 
 by 'suggestion,' which he held sufficient to explain this 'judgment' or 
 presumption.
 
 Neio Theory of Vision. 163 
 
 the distance of objects ; no more than we would pretend to 
 judge of a man's thoughts by his pronouncing woixls we had 
 never heard before. . -^i 
 
 21. Secondly, an object placed at a certain distance from ' '*^'y ^ 
 the eve, to which the breadth of the pupil bears a consider- / 
 able proportion, being made to approach, is seen more con- -^ ^ 
 fusedly. And the nearer it is brought the more confused 
 appearance it makes. And, this being found constantly to 
 be so, there arises in the mind an hab itual conn exion between • 
 the several degrees of confusion a nd dista nce ; the greater 
 confusion still implying the lesser distance, and the lessei^ 
 confusion the greater distance of the object ^. 
 
 2 2. This confused appearance of the object doth therefore 
 seem to be the medium whereby the mind judges of distance, 
 in those cases wherein the most approved writers of optics 
 will have it judge by the different divergency with which the 
 rays flowing from the radiating point fall on the pupil. No 
 man, I believe, will pretend to see or feel those imaginary 
 angles that the rays are supposed to form according to their 
 various inclinations on his eye. But he cannot choose seeing 
 whether the object appear more or less confused. It is there- 
 fore a manifest consequence from what has been demonstrated 
 that, instead of the greater or lesser divergency of the rays, 
 the mind makes use of the greater or lesser confusedness of j 
 the appearance, thereby to determine the apparent place of 
 an object. 
 
 23. Nor doth it avail to say there is not any necessary 
 connexion between confused vision and distance great or 
 small. For I ask any man what necessary connexion he sees 
 between the redness of a blush and shame 1 And yet no 
 sooner shall he behold that colour to arise in the face of 
 
 ^ The explanation here, so far as it goes, turns upon what has since 
 been called Inseparable Association. See Mill's Examination of 
 Ilamllton, ch. XIV. But can belief be resolved into habit and associa- 
 tion ? This may explain, in a physical way, connexions between thoughts 
 in an individual mind but not the conviction of objective reality. 
 
 M 2
 
 164 An Essay towards a 
 
 another but it brings into his mind the idea of that passion 
 which hath been observed to accompany it. 
 
 24. What seems to have misled the writei's of optics in 
 this matter is, that they imagine men judge of distance as 
 they do of a conclusion in mathematics ; betwixt which and 
 the premises it is indeed absolutely requisite there be an 
 apparent, necessary connexion ^. But it is far otherwise in 
 the sudden judgments men make of distance. We are not to 
 think that brutes and childi'en, or even grown reasonable men, 
 whenever they perceive an object to approach or depart from 
 them, do it by virtue of geometry and demonstration. 
 
 25. That one idea may suggest another to the mind, it will 
 suffice that they have been observed to go together, without 
 any demonstration of the necessity of their coexistence, or 
 without so much as knowing what it is that makes them so 
 to coexist. Of this there are innumerable instances, of which 
 no one can be ignorant ^. 
 
 26. Thus, greater confusion having been constantly attended 
 with nearer distance, no sooner is the former idea perceived 
 but it suggests the latter to our thoughts. And, if it had 
 been the ordinary course of nature that the farther off an 
 object were placed the more confused it should appear, it is 
 certain the very same perception that now makes us think 
 an object approaches would then have made us to imagine it 
 
 1 Is this consistent with Berkeley's ultimate explanation of mathe- 
 matical science, and the intellectual necessity of its demonstrations? 
 
 '^ Here and throughout Berkeley presupposes a natural tendency to 
 connect together ever after phenomena of sense which have often been 
 present simultaneously, or in immediate succession — a tendency the 
 strength of which may be so coniirmed through repetition, that we at 
 last become unable to separate them mentally. This is the as^socintive 
 tendency, since made so much of by some psychologists, which thus 
 with Berkeley as with Aristotle is mixed up with the psychology of the 
 Benses. Because it is dependent on the variable experience of each 
 person, it has been called a subjective law or tendency, in contrast 
 to relations which issue from irreversible necessities that are of the 
 essence of reason. The difference between the subjective tendency to 
 associate and the objective relations of reason is obscured by association 
 psychology.
 
 "Kew Theory of Vision. 165 
 
 went farther off — that perception, abstracting from custom 
 and experience, being equally fitted to pi-oduce the idea of 
 great distance, or small distance, or no distance at all. ^ ■ 
 
 27. Tldrdhj, an object being placed at the distance abov6^'^!^ ^^^^ 
 specified, and brought nearer to the eye, we may nevertheless /^ ^-:, 
 prevent, at least for some time, the appearance's growing more ^ 
 confused, by str aining the eye. In which case th at sensa tion 
 supplies th e place of confused vision , in ai ding the m ind to 
 
 .judg e of the distance of the o bject; it being esteemed so 
 much the nearer by how much the effort or straining of the 
 eye in order to distinct vision is greater. f 
 
 28. I have here set down those sensations or ideas that 
 seem to be the constant and general occasions of introducing 
 into the mind the different ideas of near distance. It is true, 
 in most cases, that divers other circumstances contribute to 
 frame our idea of distance, viz. the particular number, size, 
 kind, &c. of the things seen ^. Concerning which, as well as 
 all other the forementioned occasions which suggest distance, 
 I shall only observe, they have none of them, in their own 
 nature, any relation or connexion with it : nor is it possible 
 they should ever signify the various degrees thereof, other- 
 wise than as by experience they have been found to be con- 
 nected with them ^ 
 
 ***** 
 
 ^ Visible signs mix with those that are merely visual. The latter 
 are felt in the organ of sight, but are not themselves seen. 
 
 * The visual ' signs ' given in the preceding sections are all either 
 (a) visible or (h) invisible. Under neither head is Berkeley's list 
 exhaustive, nor even accurate as far as it goes. Recent German and 
 British physiologists have discovered others : Miiller, Helmholtz, and 
 Lotze have mentioned visual signs not recognised by Berkeley. But 
 these and other matters of biological psychology were for him questions 
 of detail. The distinction between the sensory and motor nerves, 
 important in connexion with the correlative difference between passive 
 and active sense-consciousness, was unknown to Berkeley, to whose 
 philosophy also recent views of the organic unity of conscious life and 
 the nervous system were foreign. 
 
 In sect. 29-41, here omitted, Berkeley proceeds to verify his invisible 
 and visible signs, by showing that one class of them can explain a 
 curious optical phenomenon that had baffled Barrow and others.
 
 166 An Essa?/ towards a 
 
 41. From what hath been premised, it is a manifest con- 
 sequence, that a man born Wind, being made to see, would at 
 first have no idea of Distance by sight : the sun and stars, 
 the remotest objects as well as the neai'er, would all seem to 
 be in his eye, or rather in his mind ^. The objects iutromitted 
 by sight would seem to him (as in truth they are) no other 
 than a new set of thoughts or sensations, each whereof is as 
 near to him as the perceptions of pain or pleasure, or the 
 most inward passions of his soul. For, our judging objects 
 perceived by sight to be at any distance, or without the mind, 
 is (vid. sect. 28) entirely the effect of experience, which one 
 in those circumstances could not yet have attained to. 
 
 42. It is indeed otherwise upon the common supposition — 
 that men judge of distance by the angle of the optic axes, just 
 as one in the dark, or a blind man by the angle comprehended 
 by two sticks, one whereof he held in each hand. For, if this 
 W' ere true, it would follow that one blind from his birth, being 
 made to see, sliould stand in need of no new experience, in 
 order to perceive distance by sight. But that this is false 
 has, I think, been sufficiently demonstrated ^ 
 
 43. ^And perhaps, upon a strict inquiry, Ave shall not find 
 
 ^ ' In his eye ' and ' in bis mind ' — i.e. as existing dependency on the 
 organ, or rather on the percipient mind. 
 
 ■^ He does not here refer as one miglit expect to experimental veri- 
 fication in actual cases of born-blind jjersons made to see. Of these 
 afterwards. 
 
 ^ Berkeley now advances from his argmnent that our power to see 
 outward distances is due to ' s ugge stion,' and proceeds to draw con- 
 clusions from the fact that phenomena of^cplour are the only phenomena 
 of wh ich we are orijjiiially c onscious (percipient) when we see. Having 
 shewn that distances, whether near or remote, are not aei'ii but only 
 suggested by arbitrary ^i;jns, he now proceeds to the more subtle 
 question of the externality or no n-externali ty of the phenomena of 
 colour — extern ality meaninjr independence of a pe rcipient. — In what 
 follows he argues that colour cannot be thus external : in the Principles 
 he includes in the argument what is perceived in any or all of tlie 
 five senses, not excejjting even touch. 
 
 One may here ask, why touch is commonly regarded as the test of 
 externality, and why mere visibility without tangibility is supposed to
 
 New Theory of Vision. 167 
 
 that even those who from their birth have grown up in a 
 continued habit of seeing are irrecoverably prejudiced on the 
 other side, to wit, in thinking what they see to be at a dis- 
 tance from them. For, at this time it seeTns agreed on all 
 hands, by those who have had any thoughts of that matter, that 
 colotirs, which are t he proper and immediate object of sight ^, 
 are not without the mind. — But then, it will be said, by sight 
 we have also the ideas of extension, and figure, and motion ; 
 all which may well be thought without and at some distance 
 from the mind, though colour should not. In answer to 
 this, I appeal to any man's experience, whether the visible 
 extension of any object do not appear as near to him as 
 the colour of that object ; nay, whether they do not both 
 seem to be in the very same place. Is not the extension 
 we see coloured, and is it possible for us, so much as in 
 thought, to separate and abstract colour from extension 1 
 Now, where the extension is, there surely is the figure, and 
 there the motion too. I sjieak of those which are perceived 
 by sight ^ 
 
 imply that what is seen is illusory ? Berkeley, though he argued the 
 purely ideal nature of visible things sooner than the purely ideal nature 
 of tangible things, does not make the distinction between the illusory 
 and the real turn ultimately upon the tangibility of the latter. (See 
 Prmciples, sect. 28-33.) But see Mansel's Metaphysics, p. 346; also 
 Brown's Lectures, xxiv. 
 
 * With psychologists generally, since Aristotle {DeAnima, b. II. ch, 7), 
 he assumes that colour, and whatever colour implies, is the only original 
 datum of sight. 
 
 ^ Berkeley started, in sect. 2, with the assumption that distance in the 
 line of sight is in its nature invisible ; on this foundation he proceeded 
 in the proof, given in sections 3-28, that all outward distances are 
 perceptions of sight only so far as they are ' suggestions ' acquired 
 by customary visual signs. He enters here on his second line of 
 proof, which opens the way to his distinctive theory of matter. He 
 argues that what we see cann ot be independent of perc eption. This 
 is founded on a second assumption, also sustained by concurrent 
 authority — that coloxur is the only immediate object of sight. — Locke 
 had said that we can see distances between bodies, and between parts 
 of the same body. But can colour involve distance ? What Berkeley 
 wants to show is, that distance and extension are ambiguous words — 
 the distances we see being different in kind from those of touch. The 
 common doctrine had been, that light or colour is what we see — including
 
 168 An Essa^ towards a 
 
 44. But, for a fuller explication of this point, and to shew 
 that the immediate objects of sight are not so much as the 
 ideas or resemblances of things placed at a distance, it is re- 
 quisite that Ave look nearer into the matter, and carefully 
 observe what is meant in common discourse when one says, 
 that which he sees is at a distance from him. Suppose, for 
 example, that looking at the moon I should say it were 
 fifty or sixty semidiameters of the earth distant fx'om me. 
 Let us see what moon this is spoken of. It is plain it cannot 
 be the visible moon, or anything like the visible moon, or 
 that which I see — which is only a round luminous plain, of 
 about thirty visible points in diameter. For, in case I am 
 carried from the place where I stand directly towards the 
 moon, it is manifest the object varies still as I go on ; and, by 
 the time that I am advanced fifty or sixty semidiameters of 
 the earth, I shall be so far from being near a small, round, 
 luminous flat that I shall perceive nothing like it— this 
 object having long since disappeared, and, if I would recover 
 it, it must be by going back to the earth from whence I set 
 out. Again, suppose I perceive by sight the faint and 
 obscure idea of something, which I doubt whether "it be a 
 man, or a tree, or a towei', but judge it to be at the distance 
 of about a mile. It is plain I cannot mean that what I see 
 is a mile off, or that it is the image or likeness of anything 
 which is a mile off; since that every step I take towards it 
 the appearance alters, and from being obscure, small, and 
 faint, grows clear, large, and vigorous. And when I come 
 to the mile's end, that which I saw first is quite lost, neither 
 do I find anything in the likeness of it ^. 
 
 whatever extension is necessarily involved in seeing colour ; for it was 
 supposed that colour, as originally seen, was in some sort extended, 
 or accompanied by an intuition of extension. The question still uncon- 
 sidered was the nature of lis extension. Is it of two dimensions or of 
 three ? Is it identical with, or even at all similar to, the extension of 
 touch ? 
 
 * The sceptical objections of the Eleatics and others to the trust- 
 worthiness of our senses, referred to by Des Cartes, in his Meditations,
 
 New Theory of Tismi. 169 
 
 45. In these and the like instances, the truth of the matter, A^^^ 
 
 I find, stands thus: — Having of a long time experienced 
 certain ideas perceivable by touch^ — as distance, tangible; 
 figui-e, and solidity — to have been connected with certain 
 ideas of sight, I do, upon perceiving these ideas of sight, 
 forthwith conclude what tangible ideas are, by the Avonted 
 ordinary course of nature, like to follow. Looking at an 
 object, I perceive a certain visible figure and colour, with 
 some degree of faiutness and other circumstances, which, 
 from what I have formei'ly observed, determine me to think 
 that if I advance forward so many paces, miles, &c., I shall 
 be affected with such and such ideas of touch. So that, in 
 truth and strictness of speech, I neither see distance itself, 
 nor anj'thing that I take to be at a distance. I say, neither 
 distance nor things placed at a distance are themselves, or 
 their ideas, truly perceived by sight. This I am persuaded 
 of, as to what concerns myself. And I believe whoever will 
 look narrowly into his own thoughts, and examine what he 
 means by saying he sees this or that thing at a distance, will 
 agree with me, that what he sees only suggests to his under- i 
 standing that, after having passed a certain distance, to be | 
 
 and by Malebranche, in the first book of his Recherche, may have 
 suggested the illustrations in this section. The sceptical difBculty rises 
 out of the supposition that the extended colour we see, when the tangible 
 object is near, is the same extended colour that we see, when the tangible 
 object is more remote. Berkeley insists that what is strictly seen in 
 these cases is different, but that what is signified or suggested by what 
 is seen may be the same. He does not here pursue the question 
 about the continuous identity of what we touch ; or the question 
 what is ultimately meant by sameness in sensible things — foreign 
 to an Essay on Sight, but which he has to meet in defending his 
 conception of Matter as a reality that is necessarily dependent on 
 percipient mind. 
 
 ^ This is the first distinct mention of 'touch' in the Essay— a. term 
 which with Berkeley includes not merely the organic sense of simple 
 
 (contact, but also the sense of muscular resistance, and the active sense- 
 consciousness connected with the movenients of our bodies or their 
 orgaiis.' Prom this point he begins to unfold the antithesis of the visible 
 and the tangible worlds — of coloured and resistant extension. To 
 explain by suggestion the synthesis of these opposite elements in our 
 acquired perceptions in sight is the aim of his theory of vision.
 
 170 A)i Essay towards a 
 
 measured by the motion of Jds body, wliicli is perceivable by 
 touch, he shall come to perceive such and such tangible ideas, 
 which have been usually connected with such and such visible 
 ideas ^. But, that one might be deceived by these suggestions 
 of sense, and that there is no necessary connexion between 
 visible and tangible ideas suggested by them, we need go no 
 farther than the next looking-glass or picture to be con- 
 vinced. — Note that, when I speak of tangible ideas, I take the 
 word idea for any the immediate object of sense or under- 
 standing — in which large signification it is commonly used 
 by the moderns ^. 
 
 46. From what we have shewn, it is a manifest consequence 
 that the ideas of Space, Outness, and things placed at a dis- 
 tance are not, strictly speaking, the object of sight ; they are 
 not otherwise perceived by the eye than by the ear. Sitting 
 in my study I hear a coach drive along the street ; I look 
 through the casement and see it ; I walk out and enter into 
 it. Thus, common speech would incline one to think I heard, 
 saw, and touched the same thing, to wit, the coach. It is 
 nevertheless certain the ideas intromitted by each sense are 
 widely different, and distinct from each other ; but, having 
 been observed constantly to go together, they are spoken of 
 as one and the same thing. By the variation of the noise, I 
 
 ' The important office of our active consciousness of bodily movement, 
 in the development at once -of self-consciousness and of the perception 
 of things, might be illustrated in connexion with this sentence. We 
 thus begin to distinguish between ' I can ' and ' I cannot ;' and the con- 
 viction of personality, personal identity, and personal responsibility is 
 gradually drawn out by the antithesis. 
 
 ^ ' Moderns ' — Locke and Des Cartes for instance. With Locke 
 {Essay, Introduction, § 8), ' ideas ' mean the phenomena we are con- 
 scious of—' whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man 
 thinks;' and the ideas we are conscious of in sense-perception include 
 those which he says 'resendjle' the primary qualities of external 
 things, and also the sensations which the j)rimary (qualities produce, 
 referi'ed by him to what he calls secondary qualities in the things. By 
 Des Cartes, ' idea ' is sometimes applied to the psychical perception or 
 consciousness, and sometimes to the organic motion or physical im- 
 pression with which the former is connected by arbitrary divine ap- 
 pointment.
 
 el 
 
 Neio Theory of Vision. 171 
 
 perceive tlie different distances of the coach, and know that 
 
 it approaches before I look out. Thus, by tlie ear I perceive '^>*^ **/' 
 
 distance just after the same manner as I do by the eye \ 
 
 47. I do not nevertheless say I hear distance, in like 
 manner as I say that I see it — the ideas pei'ceived by hearing 
 not being so apt to be confounded with the ideas of touch as 
 those of sight are. So likewise a man is easily convinced 
 that bodies and external things are not properly tlie object of 
 hearing, but only sounds, by the mediation whereof the idea 
 of this or that body, or distance, is suggested to his thoughts^. 
 But then one is with more difficulty brought to discern the 
 difference there is betwixt the ideas of sight and touch 
 though it be certain, a man no more sees and feels the same 
 thing, than he hears and feels the same thing. 
 
 48. One reason of which seems to be this. It is thought 
 a great absurdity to imagine that one and the same thing 
 should have any more than one extension and one figure. 
 But, the extension and figure of a body being let into the 
 mind two ways, and that indifferently, either by sight or 
 touch, it seems to follow that we see the same extension and 
 the same figure which we feel. 
 
 49. But, if we take a close and accurate view of the matter, 
 it must be acknowledged that we never see and feel one and 
 the same object. That which is seen is one thing, and that 
 which is felt is another. If the visible figure and extension 
 be not the same with the tangible figure and extension, we 
 are not to infer that _one and the same thing has divers ex- 
 tensions. The true consequence is that the objects of sight 
 and touch are two distiric.t_things. It may perhaps require 
 some thought rightly to conceive this distinction. And the 
 difficulty seems not a little increased, because the combination 
 of visible ideas hath constantly the same name as the com- 
 
 * i.e. the ' perception ' in both cases is a suggested expectation. 
 
 * The original data peculiar to the sense of Hearing might be here 
 analysed by the student, and compared with those of Sight and of Touch.
 
 173 An Esso!/ toivards a 
 
 bination of tangible ideas wherewith it is connected — which 
 doth of necessity arise from the use and end of language. 
 
 50. In order, therefore, to treat accurately and uncon- 
 fusedly of vision, we must bear in mind that there are two 
 sorts of objects apprehended by the eye — the one primarily K****^ 
 and immediately, the other secondarily and by intervention of jSi^l^ 
 the former. Those of the first sort neither are nor appear 
 
 to be without the mind, or at any distance oif. They may, 
 indeed, grow greater or smaller, more confused, or more clear, 
 or more faint. But they do ^at, cannot approach or recede 
 from us. Whenever we say an object is at a distance, when- 
 ever we say it draws near, or goes farther off, we mu^t always 
 mean it of the latter sort, which properly belong to the touch, 
 and are not so truly perceived, as suf/gested by the eye, in like 
 manner as thouglits by the ear^. 
 
 51. No sooner do we hear the woi'ds of a familiar language 
 pronounced in our ears but the ideas corresponding thereto 
 present themselves to our minds : in the very same instant 
 the sound and the meaning enter the understanding; so closely 
 are they united that it is not in our power to keep out the 
 one except we exclude the other also. We even act in all 
 respects as if we heard the very thoughts themselves. So like- 
 wise the secondary objects, or those which are only suggested 
 by sight, do often more strongly affect us, and are more re- 
 garded, than the proper objects of that sense; along with 
 which they enter into the mind, and with which they have a 
 far more strict connexion than ideas have with words. Hence 
 it is we find it so difficult to discriminate between the im- 
 mediate and mediate objects of sight, and are so prone to 
 attribute to the former what belongs only to the latter. They 
 are, as it were, most closely twisted, blended, and incorpo- 
 rated together. And the prejudice is confirmed and riveted 
 
 ' Whether what is perceived in touching is as dependent on a per- 
 cipient mind as what is perceived in seeing, Berkeley does not discuss 
 in this Essay. That, as already noted, is the wider question considered 
 in his Principles.
 
 f 
 
 Keio Theory of Vision. 173 
 
 in our thoughts by a long tract of time, by the use of 
 language, and want of reflection. However, I doubt not but 
 any one that shall attentively consider what we have already 
 said, and shall say upon this subject before we have done 
 (especially if he pursue it in his own thoughts), may be able 
 to deliver himself from that prejudice. Sure I am, it is 
 wox'th some attention to whoever would understand the true 
 nature of vision ^. 
 
 52. I have now done with distance, and proceed to shew 
 how it is that we perceive by sight the Ma gnitu de of objects^, 
 — It is the opinion of some that we do it by angles, or by 
 angles in conjunction with distance. But, neither angles nor 
 distance being perceivable by sight, and the things we see 
 being in truth at no distance from us, it follows that, as we 
 have shewn lines and angles not to be the medium the mind 
 makes use of in apprehending the apparent place, so neither 
 are they the medium whereby it apprehends the apparent 
 magnitude of objects. 
 
 53. It is well known that the same extension at a near 
 distance shall subtend a greater angle, and at a farther dis- 
 tance a lesser angle. And by this principle (we are told) 
 the mind estimates the magnitude of an object, comparing the 
 angle under which it is seen with its distance, and thence in- 
 ferring the magnitude thereof. What inclines men to this 
 mistake (beside the humour of making one see by geometry) 
 is, that the same perceptions or ideas which suggest distance 
 
 1 The attempt to find the original phenomenal data of any of the 
 senses, taken singly, illustrates this difficulty; but it is more obtrusive 
 in sight and in touch, because the perceptions of extension and its 
 relations (the chief difficulty in the analysis) seem to rise (somehow) 
 in visual and tactual experience exclusively. In his Commonplace Booh 
 (p. 494) Berkeley well remarks that 'extension is blended with tangible 
 or visible ideas, and by the mind prescinded therefrom.' 
 
 - Sect. 52-87 treat of the necessary invisibility of the real (tangible) 
 Magnitudes of things — the distances between their parts as data of 
 Touch (in its wide meaning). Cf. Vindication, sect. 54-61.
 
 174 A7i EssaT/ towards a 
 
 do also suggest magnitude. But, if we examine it, we sliall 
 find they suggest the latter as immediately as the former. I 
 say, they do not first suggest distance and then leave it to 
 the judgment to use that as a medium whereby to collect the 
 magnitude ; but they have as close and immediate a connexion 
 with the magnitude as with the distance ; and suggest magui- 
 tude as independently of distance, as they do distance inde- 
 pendently of magnitude. All which will be evident to whoever 
 considers what has been already said and what follows. 
 
 54. It has been shewn there are two sorts of objects appre- 
 hended by sight, each whereof has its distinct magnitude, or 
 extension — the one, properly tangible, i. e. to be perceived and 
 measured by touch, and not immediately falling under the 
 sense of seeing ; the other, properly and immediately visible, 
 by mediation of which the former is brought in view. Each 
 of these magnitudes are greater or lesser, according as they 
 contain in them more or fewer points, they being made up of 
 points or minimums. For, whatever may be said of extension 
 in absti'act, it is certain sensible extension is not infinitely 
 divisible. There is a minimum tangibile, and a minimum 
 visibile, beyond which sense cannot perceive^. This every 
 one's experience will inform him. 
 
 55. The mag nitude of the object which ex ists wi thout the 
 mind, and is at a distance, continue s always invari ably the 
 same : but, the visible objcgt still changing as you ajiproach 
 
 ^ There is a minimum visihile at which we cease to be percipient of 
 colour, and also a minimum tanyibile at which all sense of resistance 
 and contact disappears from our sense-consciousness. This |)oint is, 
 for us, the necessary limit in imagination of (visible or tangible) ex- 
 istence. 
 
 Though Berkeley regards visible extension as, in itself, necessarily 
 dependent on a percipient mind, he docs not mean that mind, in per- 
 ceiving extension, itself becomes extended. With him, extensi(m — 
 existing only as a greater or smaller number of coloured or resistant 
 ininimd, i. c. only ' in mind' — nevertheless does not exist in mind as an 
 attribute. (Cf. Principles, sect. 49.) Mind, he would say, can. be con- 
 scious without being conscious of what is extended : on the other hand, 
 what is extended cannot e.\ist without mind.
 
 • u2i/ 
 
 "New Theory of Vision. 175 
 
 to or recede from the tangible object, it hat h no fixed and 
 dete rminate gr eatness. Whenever therefore we speak of the 
 magnitude of any thing, for instance a tree or a house, we 
 must mean the tangible magnitude ; otherwise there can be 
 nothing steady and free from ambiguity spoken of it ^ Now, 
 thougli the tangible and visil)le magnitude do in truth belong 
 to two distinct objects, I shall nevertheless (especially since 
 those objects are called by the same name, and are observed 
 to coexist), to avoid tediousness and singularity of speech, 
 sometimes speak of them as belonging to one and the same 
 thing^. 
 
 56. Now, in order to discover by what means the magni- 
 tude of tangible objects is perceived by sight, I need only 
 reflect on what passes in my own mind, and observe what 
 those things be which introduce the ideas of greater or lesser "^^li^iir. 
 into my thoughts when I look on any object^. And these 
 I find to \>Q,jirst, the magnitude or extension of the visible "2" 
 object, which, being immediately perceived by sight, is con- 
 nected with that other which is tangible and placed at a dis- 
 tance : secondly, the confusion or distinctness : and thirdly, , 
 the vigorousness or faintness of the aforesaid visible appear- 
 ance. Cceleris paribus, by how much the greater or lesser 
 the visible object is, by so much the greater or lesser do 
 
 ' But is not this ' unsteadiness ' or relativity found in what we touch 
 as well as in what we see — though less obtrusively ? A felt thing is felt 
 to be larger or smaller according to the state of the organism of the per- 
 cipient at the time of the perception. The perception is relative to the 
 state of the sense organ. 
 
 ^ Ordinary language identifies what psycholoo-ical analysis of the 
 original data of the senses seems to Berkeley to distinguish. May 
 language not correspond with a deeper analysis of extension than Ber- 
 keley entertains? 
 
 ^ The 'signs' which 'suggest,' and so enable us to 'judge' of, the 
 real magnitudes of things are inquired about in the following sections. 
 They are found to be (a ) the proportion of the field of sight which the 
 object occupies, (h) the clearness or indistinctness of its outlines, (c) the 
 lightness or faintness of its colours, (d) the number of intervening 
 visible objects, and (e) the amount of muscular strain in directing both 
 eyes to the object.
 
 176 An Essay towards a 
 
 I conclude the tangible object to be. But, be the idea imme- 
 diately perceived by sight never so large, yet, if it be withal 
 confused, I judge the magnitude of the thing to be but small. 
 If it be distinct and clear, I judge it greater. And, if it be 
 faint, I apprehend it to be yet greater. What is here meant 
 by confusion and faintness has been explained in sect. 35 ^. 
 
 57. Moreover, the judgments we make of greatness do, in 
 '^" like manner as those of distance, depend on the disposition of 
 
 the eye ; also on the figure, number, and situation of inter- 
 mediate objects, and other circumstances that have been 
 observed to attend great or small tangible magnitudes. Thus, 
 for instance, the very same quantity of visible extension which 
 in the figure of a tower doth suggest the idea of great magni- 
 tude shall in the figure of a man suggest the idea of much 
 smaller magnitude. That this is owing to the experience we 
 have had of the usual bigness of a tower and a man, no one, 
 I suppose, need be told. 
 
 58. It is also evident that confusion or faintness have no 
 more a necessary connexion with little or great magnitude 
 than they have with little or great distance. As they suggest 
 the latter, so they suggest the former to our minds. And, by 
 consequence, if it were not for experience, we should no more 
 judge "^ a faint or confused appearance to be connected with 
 great or little magnitude than we should that it was connected 
 with great or little distance. 
 
 59. Nor will it be found that great or small visible magni- 
 tude hath any necessary i-elation to great or small tangible 
 magnitude — so that the one may certainly and infallibly be 
 inferred from the other. — But, before we come to the proof of 
 this, it is fit we consider the difference there is betwixt the 
 
 1 See Berkeley's Worlct:, vol. I. p. 49. 
 
 ^ 'Judge,' i.e. preawmc, as tiufficiently proved— agiun in Locke's mean- 
 ing of 'judgment,' in contrast with what is either intuitively or 
 demonstratively 'known.' With Berkeley rational judgments xoinehoio 
 rise out of the ' suggestions ' of experience, but he does not explain how 
 or why.
 
 Neiv Theory of Jlsion. 177 
 
 extension and figure wliicli is the proper object of touch, and 
 that other which is termed visible ; and how the former is 
 principally, though not immediately, taken notice of when we 
 look at any object. This has been before mentioned, but we 
 shall here inquire into the cause thereof. We regard the 
 objects that environ us in proportion as they are adapted to 
 benefit or injure our own bodies, and thereby produce in our 
 minds the sensations of pleasure or pain. Now, bodies 
 operating on our organs by an immediate application, and the 
 hurt and advantage ai'ising therefrom depending altogether 
 on the tangible, and not at all on the visible, qualities of any "7" ^ 
 object — this is a plain reason why those should be regarded -/ ^^ 
 
 by us much more than these. And for this end the visive 
 sense seems to have been bestowed on animals, to wit, that, 
 by the perce2)tion of visible ideas ^ (which in themselves are 
 not capable of affecting or anywise altering the frame of their 
 bodies), they may be able to foresee (from the experience 
 they have had what tangible ideas are connected with such 
 and such visible ideas) the damage or benefit which is 
 like to ensue upon the application of their own bodies to 
 this or that body which is at a distance. "Which fore- 
 sight, how necessary it is for the preservation of an animal, 
 every one's experience can inform him ^. Hence it is that, 
 when we look at an object, the tangible figure and ex- 
 tension thereof are principally attended to ; whilst there is 
 small heed taken of the visible figure and magnitude, which, 
 though more immediately perceived, do less sensibly affect 
 
 1 'Perception of visible ideas,' i.e. of the phenomena presented to 
 sight. He proceeds to offer reasons for the greater practical import- 
 ance of touch than of sight (even when we are using the latter sense), 
 and therefore for associating reality with the former rather than with 
 the latter. 
 
 ^ Much of what is commonly called 'vision' is really prevision, and 
 proceeds on an unconscious assumption of law in nature. In all 
 developed visual perception we go beyond present sense, just as we do 
 in all the inferences of physical science, and virtually on the same 
 rational basis; the judgment in science being however conscious of 
 a rational ground, and not the issue of habit only.
 
 178 An Essay towards a 
 
 us, and are not fitted to produce any alteration in our 
 bodies. 
 
 60. That the matter of fact is true will be evident to any 
 one who considers that a man placed at ten foot distance is 
 thovTght as great as if he were placed at the distance only of 
 five foot ; which is true, not with relation to the visible, but 
 tangible greatness of the object : the visible magnitude being 
 far greater at one station than it is at the other. 
 
 61. Inches, feet, &c. are settled, stated lengths, whereby 
 we measure objects and estimate their magnitude. We say, 
 for example, an object appears to be six inches, or six foot 
 long. Now, that this cannot be meant of visible inches, &c. 
 is evident, because a visible inch is itself no constant deter- 
 minate magnitude, and cannot therefore serve to mark out 
 and determine the magnitude of any other thing. Take an 
 inch marked upon a ruler ; view it successively, at the dis- 
 tance of half a foot, a foot, a foot and a half, &c. from the 
 eye : at each of which, and at all the intermediate distances, 
 the inch shall have a different visible extension, i. e. there shall 
 be more or fewer points discerned in it. Now, I ask which of 
 all these various extensions is that stated determinate one 
 that is agreed on for a common measure of other magnitudes? 
 No reason can be assigned why we should pitch on one more 
 than another. And, except there be some invariable deter- 
 minate extension fixed on to be marked by the word inch, it 
 is plain it can be used to little purpose ; and to say a thing 
 contains this or that number of inches shall imply no more 
 than that it is extended, witliout bringing any particular idea 
 of that extension into the mind. Farther, an inch and a foot, 
 from different distances, shall both exhibit the same visible 
 magnitude, and yet at the same time you shall say that one 
 seems several times greater than the other. From all which 
 it is manifest, that the judgments we make of the magni- 
 tude of objects by sight are altogether in reference to their 
 tangible extension. AVIienever we say an object is great or
 
 Neio Theory of Vision. ' 179 
 
 small, of this or that determinate measure, I say, it must be 
 meant of the tangible and not the visible extension, which, 
 though immediately perceived, is nevertheless little taken 
 notice of^ 
 
 62. Now, that thei'e is no necessary connexion between 
 these two distinct extensions is evident from hence — because 
 our eyes might have been framed in such a manner as to be 
 able to see nothing but what were less than the minimum 
 tangibile. In which case it is not impossible we might have 
 perceived all the immediate objects of sight the veiy same 
 that we do now ; but unto those visible appearances there 
 would not be connected those different tangible magnitudes 
 that are now. Which shews the judgments we make of the 
 magnitude of things placed at a distance, from the vai'ious 
 greatness of the immediate objects of sight, do not arise from 
 any essential or necessary, but onl}' a customary^ tie which 
 has been observed betwixt them. 
 
 63. Moreover, it is not only certain that any idea of sight 
 might not have been connected with this or that idea of touch 
 we now observe to accompany it, but also that the greater 
 visible magnitudes might have' been connected with and 
 introduced into our minds lesser tangible magnitudes, and 
 the lesser visible magnitudes greater tangible magnitudes. 
 Nay, that it actually is so, we have daily experience — that 
 object which makes a strong and large appearance not seem- 
 ing near so great as another the visible magnitude whereof is 
 much less, but more faint, and the appearance upper, or 
 
 1 But if the phenomenon of extension is an empirical datum of sense, 
 and if resistant as well as coloured extension fluctuates relatively to the 
 state of the sense organism, we need an objective criterion of the former 
 as well as of the latter. What is it ? 
 
 * So Hume afterwards, who tried to reduce all so-called ' neces.^ary' 
 connexion in the universe to the physical issue of habit, induced by 
 custom or previous experience. 'All inferences from experience,' he 
 concludes, 'are effects of cuatom not {conclusions) of reasoninr/. Custom 
 is the great guide of Iniman life.' {Inqidry, V. p. i.) With Bishop 
 Butler, in like manner, ' probability is the guide of life.' {Analogy, 
 Introd.) So too Pascal and Locke. 
 
 ^ 2
 
 180 An Essa^ tojvards a 
 
 ■wliicli is the same thing, painted lower on the retina, which 
 faiutness and situation suggest botli greater magnitude and 
 greater distance. 
 
 64. From which, and from sect. 57 and 58, it is manifest 
 that, as we do not perceive the magnitude of objects immedi- 
 ately by sight, so neither do we j)erceive them by the medi- 
 ation of anything which has a necessary connexion with them. 
 Those ideas that now suggest unto us the various magnitudes 
 of external objects before we touch them might jDossibly have 
 suggested no such thing ; or they might have signified them 
 in a direct contrary manner, so that the very same ideas on 
 the perception whereof we judge an object to be small might 
 as well have served to make us conclude it great ; those ideas 
 being in their own nature equally fitted to bring into our minds 
 the idea of small or great, or no size at all, of outward objects, 
 just as the words of any language are in their own nature 
 indifferent to signify this or that thing, or nothing at all. 
 
 6k. As we see distance so we see magnitude. And we see 
 ^ both in the same way that we see shame or anger in the looks 
 of a man. Tliose passions are themselves invisible ; they are 
 nevertheless let in by the eye along with colours and altera- 
 tions of countenance which are the immediate object of vision, 
 and which signify them for no other reason than barely 
 because they have been observed to accompany them. "Without 
 which experience we should no more have taken blushing for 
 a sign of shame than of gladness. 
 
 66. We are nevertheless exceedingly prone to imagine those 
 things which are perceived only by the mediation of others to 
 be themselves the immediate objects of sight, or at least to 
 have in their own nature a fitness to be suggested by them 
 before ever they had been experienced to coexist with them. 
 From which prejudice every one perhaps will not find it easy 
 to emancipate himself, by any the clearest convictions of 
 reason. And there are some grounds to think that, if there 
 was one only invariable and universal language in tlie world,
 
 New Theory of Vision. 181 
 
 and that men were bom with the faculty of speaking it, it 
 would be the opinion of some, that the ideas in other men's 
 minds were properly perceived by the ear, or had at least 
 a necessary and inseparable tie with the sounds that were 
 affixed to them. All which seems to arise from want of a due 
 application of our discerning faculty, thereby to discriminate 
 between the ideas that are in our understandings, and con- 
 sider them apart from each other ; which would preserve us 
 from confounding those that are different, and make us see 
 what ideas do, and what do not, include or imply tliis or that 
 other idea \ 
 
 ****** 
 
 77. For the further clearing up of this point, it is to be ob- 
 served, that what we immediately and properly see are only 
 lights and^olours in sundry situations and shades, and de- 
 grees of faintness and clearness, confusion and distinctness. 
 All which visible objects are only in the mind ^ ; nor do they 
 suggest aught externaP, whether distance or magnitude, other- 
 wise than by habitual connexion, as words do things. "VYe 
 are also to remark, that beside the straining of the eyes, and 
 beside the vivid and faint, the distinct and confused appear- 
 ances (which, bearing some proportion to lines and angles, 
 
 * Mark the stress put in these sections on the ariitrariness of the 
 connexion between the visual signs which suggest tangible magnitudes, 
 and that which they signify — a fundamental principle throughout the 
 Esi<ay, just as in language any terra might a priori be made the sign of 
 any meaning. This so far accords with Hume, when he says that ' if 
 we reason a 'priori anjthing may appear able to produce anything. 
 The falling of a pebble may, for all we know, extinguish the sun ; or 
 the wish of a man control tlie planets in their orbits. It is only ex- 
 perience that teaches us the nature and bounds of cause and effect * 
 {Inquiry, ch. XII. pt. 3). Here 'cause' means sign, and physical cau- 
 sation means natural signification. 
 
 In sect. 67-77, which are here omitted, Berkeley tries to verify the 
 preceding doctrines, as to the visual signs of Magnitude, by applying 
 them to solve a scientific puzzle of long standing — the fact of the greater 
 visible magnitude of the moon and other heavenly bodies when in the 
 horizon. See Berkeley's Works, vol. I. 
 
 ^ ' in the mind,' i. e. dependent on being perceived. 
 
 * ' External,' i. e. given in touch, the data of which are (meantime) 
 granted to be possibly independent of perception.
 
 182 An Essai/ ioivards a 
 
 liave been substituted instead of them in the foregoing part 
 of this Treatise), there are other means which suggest both 
 distance and magnitude — jDarticuharly the situation of visible 
 points or objects, as upper or lower ; the former suggesting a 
 farther distance and greater magnitude, the latter a nearer 
 distance and lesser magnitude — all Avhich is an effect only of 
 custom and experience, there being really nothing interme- 
 diate in the line of distance between the uppermost and the 
 lowermost, which are both equidistant, or rather at no dis- 
 tance from the eye ; as there is also nothing in upper or lower 
 which by necessary connexion should suggest greater or lesser 
 magnitude. Now, as these customary experimental means 
 of suggesting distance do likewise suggest magnitude, so they 
 suggest the one as immediately as the other. I say, they do 
 not (vide sect. 53) first suggest distance, and then leave the 
 mind from thence to infer or compute magnitude, but sug- 
 gest magnitude as immediately and directly as they suggest 
 distance ^. 
 
 78. This phenomenon of the horizontal moon is a clear in- 
 stance of the insufficiency of lines and angles for explaining 
 the way wherein the mind jDerceives and estimates the magni- 
 tude of outward objects. There is, nevertheless, a use of 
 computation by them — in order to determine the apparent 
 magnitude of things, so far as they have a connexion with 
 and are proportional to those other ideas or perceptions which 
 are the true and immediate occasions that suggest to the 
 mind the apparent magnitude of things. But this in general 
 may, I think, be observed concerning mathematical compu- 
 tation in optics — that it can never be very jirecise and exact, 
 since the judgments we make of the magnitude of external 
 things do often depend on several circumstances which are 
 not proportional to or capable of being defined by lines and 
 angles. 
 
 * Note the contrast here between ' inference ' and ' suggestion.' See 
 Vindication, sect. 42.
 
 New Theory of Vision. 183 
 
 79. From what lias been said, we may safely deduce this 
 consequence, to wit, that a man born blind, and made to see, 
 would, at first opening of his eyes, make a very different 
 judgment of the magnitude of objects intromitted by them 
 from what others do. He would not consider the ideas of 
 sight with reference to, or as having any connexion with the 
 ideas of touch. His view of them being entirely terminated 
 within themselves, he can no otherwise judge them great or 
 small than as they contain a greater or lesser number of i 
 visible points. Now, it being certain that any visible point I 
 can cover or exclude from view only one other visible point, 
 it follows that whatever object intercepts the view of another 
 hath an equal number of visible points with it ; and, conse- 
 quently, they shall both be thought by him to have the same 
 magnitude. Hence, it is evident one in those circumstances 
 would judge his thumb, with which he might hide a tower, 
 or hinder its being seen, equal to that tower; or his hand, 
 the interposition whereof might conceal the firmament from 
 his view, equal to the firmament : how great an inequality 
 soever there may, in our apprehensions, seem to be betwixt 
 those two things, because of the customary and close con- 
 nexion that has grown up in our minds between the objects 
 of sight and touch, whereby the very different and distinct 
 ideas of those two senses are so blended and confounded 
 together as to be mistaken for one and the same thing — out 
 of which prejudice we cannot easily extricate ourselves. 
 
 80. For the better explaining the nature of vision, and 
 setting the manner wherein we perceive Magnitudes in a due 
 light, I shall proceed to make some observations concerning 
 matters relating thereto, whereof the want of reflection, and 
 duly separating between tangible and visible ideas, is apt to 
 create in us mistaken and confused notions. 
 
 And, Jirst, I shall observe, that the minimum visihile is 
 exactly equal in all beings whatsoever that are endowed with
 
 184) An Essa^ toioards a 
 
 the visive faculty. No exquisite formation of the eye, no 
 peculiar sliarpness of sight, can make it less in one creature 
 than in another ; for, it not being distinguishable into parts, 
 nor in anywise consisting of them, it must necessarily be the 
 same to all. For, suppose it otherwise, and that the minimum 
 visibile of a mite, for instance, be less than the minimum 
 visibile of a man ; the latter therefore may, by detraction of 
 some part, be made equal to the former. It doth therefore 
 consist of parts, which is inconsistent with the notion of a 
 minimum visibile or point ^. 
 
 8 1. It will, perhaps, be objected, that the minimum visibile 
 of a man doth really and in itself contain parts whereby it 
 surpasses that of a mite, though they are not perceivable by 
 the man. To which I answer, the minimum, visibile having 
 (in like manner as all other the proper and immediate objects 
 of sight) been shewn not to have any existence without the 
 mind of him who sees it, it follows there cannot be any part 
 of it that is not actually perceived and therefore visible. 
 Now, for any object to contain several distinct visible parts, 
 and at the same time to be a minimum visibile, is a manifest 
 contradiction. 
 
 82. OfJliese visible jpoints we see at all times ^an equal 
 number. It is every whit as great when our view is con- 
 tracted and bounded by near objects as when it is extended 
 to larger and remoter ones. For, it being impossible that 
 one minimum visibile should obscure or keep out of sight 
 more than one other, it is a plain consequence that, when my 
 view is on all sides bounded by the walls of my study, I see 
 just as many yisible points as I could in case that, by the 
 
 ^ On Berkeley's principles, there can be no independent visible (or 
 tangible) magnitude — independent, that is, of all percipients, and there- 
 fore no absolute minimum visibile — the mi nimu m being in each case 
 the least that can he actually perceived, and tiius relative to the perci- 
 pient ari3 his organ. This aljolishes an objective standard of perceived 
 magnitudes, or at least refers the relations of primary quantities with 
 secondary qualities to the voluntary institution by God of the Order of 
 Nature.
 
 Neio Theorrj of Vision. 185 
 
 removal of the study-walls and all other obstructions, I had 
 a full prospect of the circumjacent fields, mountains, sea, and 
 open firmament. For, so long as I am shut up within the 
 walls, by their interposition every point of the external objects 
 is covered from my view. But, each point that is seen being 
 able to cover or exclude from sight one only other corre- 
 sponding point, it follows that, whilst my sight is confined to 
 those narrow walls, I see as many points or minima visibilia 
 as I should were those walls away, by looking on all the ex- 
 ternal objects whose prospect is intercepted by them. When- 
 ever, therefore, we are said to have a greater prospect at one 
 time than another, this must be understood with relation, 
 not to the proper and immediate, but the secondary and 
 mediate objects of vision — which, as hath been shewn, dp 
 properly belong to the touch. 
 
 83. The visive faculty, considered with reference to its 
 immediate objects, may be found to labour of two defects. 
 First, in respect of the extent or number of visible points 
 that are at once perceivable by it, which is narrow and limited 
 to a certain degree. It can take in at one view but a certain 
 determinate number of minima visibilia, beyond which it 
 cannot extend its prospect. Secondly, our sight is defective 
 in that its view is not only narrow, but also for the most 
 part confused. Of those things that we take in at one 
 prospect, we can see but a few at once clearly and uncon- 
 fusedly ; and the more we fix our sight on any one object, 
 by so much the darker and more indistinct shall the rest 
 appear ^. 
 
 84. Corresponding to these two defects of sight, we may 
 imagine as many perfections, to wit, ist. That of compre- 
 hending in one view a greater number of visible points; 2ndly. 
 of being able to view them all equally and at once, with 
 
 ^ This is the natural issue of Attention, which is concentration of 
 consciousness, and hence involves a withdrawal of the consciousness 
 expended in other directions, if each person has only a limited amount 
 of disposable conscious energy.
 
 186 Aji Essay toioards a 
 
 tlie utmost clearness and distinction. That those perfections 
 are not actually in some intelligences of a different order and 
 capacity from ours, it is impossible for us to know ^ 
 
 85. In neither of those two ways do microscopes contribute 
 to the improvement of sight. For, when we look through 
 a raici'oscope, we neither see more visible points, nor are the 
 collateral points more distinct than when we look with the 
 naked eye at objects placed at a due distance. A microscope 
 brings us, as it were, into a new world. It presents us with 
 a new scene of visible objects, quite different from what we 
 behold with the naked eye. But herein consists the most 
 remarkable difference, to wit, that whereas the objects per- 
 ceived by the eye alone have a certain connexion with tan- 
 gible objects, whereby we are taught to foresee Avhat will 
 ensue upon the approach or application of distant objects to 
 the pai'ts of our own body — which much conduceth to its 
 preservation — there is not the like connexion between things 
 tangible and those visible objects that are perceived by help 
 of a fme microscope. 
 
 86. Hence, it is evident that, were our eyes turned into 
 the nature of microscopes, we should not be much benefitted 
 by the change. We should be deprived of the forementioned 
 advantage we at present receive by the visive faculty, and 
 have left us only the empty amusement of seeing, without 
 any other benefit arising from it. But, in that case, it will 
 perhaps be said, our sight would be endued with a far greater 
 sharpness and penetration than it now hath. But I would 
 fain know wherein consists that sharpness which is esteemed 
 so great an excellency of sight. It is certain, from what we 
 
 ^ These defects belong to the intuitive consciousness of a finite being. 
 Cf. Locke's Eiisny, b. II. ch. 10. § 8, on inevitable defects of a finite or 
 human memory. — Hence too tlie need, in a finite mind, for inferential 
 or ratiocinatiie activity — reasoning being a function intermediate be- 
 tween Seni<e and Omniscience. Our scientific inferences are the results 
 of tentative struggles to reach the laws of the Universal Order, hid 
 beneath the changing phenomena that induce us to search for their 
 causes — or, as Berkeley might say, for their meanings.
 
 New Theory of Vision. 187 
 
 have already shewn, that the minimum visibile is never greater 
 or lesser, but in all cases constantly the same. And, in the 
 case of microscopical eyes, I see only this difference, to wit, 
 that upon the ceasing of a certain observable connexion be- 
 twixt the divers perceptions of sight and touch, which before 
 enabled us to regulate our actions by the eye, it would now 
 be rendered utterly unserviceable to that purpose ^. 
 
 87. Upon the whole it seems that, if we consider the use 
 and end of sight, together with the present state and circum- 
 stances of our being, we shall not find any great cause to 
 complain of any defect or imperfection in it, or easily con- 
 ceive how it could be mended. "With such admirable wisdom 
 is that faculty contrived, both for the pleasure and con- 
 venience of life. 
 
 88. Having finished what I intended to say concerning the 
 Distance and Magnitude of objects, I come now to treat of 
 the manner wherein the mind perceives by sight their Situa- 
 tion '^. Among the discoveries of the last age, it is reputed 
 none of the least, that the manner of vision has been more 
 clearly explained than ever it had been before. There is, at 
 this day, no one ignorant that the pictures of external objects 
 are painted on the retina or fund of the eye ; that we can see 
 nothing which is not so painted ; and that, according as the 
 picture is more distinct or confused, so also is the perception 
 we have of the object. 
 
 ^ Unless indeed the corresponding perceptions of touch were to be 
 changed too, and brought into harmony with this more refined and 
 intensified sight. — The capacity of our present senses singly, and in 
 their co-operative ' suggestions,' for further development ; also the possi- 
 bility of additional senses, each affording data as foreign to our present 
 experience as colours are to the experience of one born blind — and that 
 either in other beings, or in us human beings at some future stage of 
 our existence — all afford interesting scope for imaginative speculation. 
 
 * Sect. 88-119 refer to the nature, necessary invisibility, and arbi- 
 trary visual signs of the actual Situations or Places of the various bodies 
 we see. [GL Vindication, sect. 48-53.) They contain an ingenious 
 attempt to solve the once famous puzzle — an erect vision of things by 
 means of inverted images on the retina.
 
 188 Ati Essay towards a 
 
 But then, in this explication of vision, there occurs one 
 mighty difficulty — The objects are iDainted in an inverted 
 order on the bottom of the eye : the upper part of any object 
 being painted on the lower part of the eye, and the lower 
 pai't of the object on the upper part of the eye ; and so also 
 as to right and left. Since, therefore, the 'pictures are thus 
 inverted, it is demanded how it comes to pass that we see 
 the objects erect and in their natural posture ] 
 
 89. In answer to this difficulty, we are told that the mind, 
 perceiving an impulse of a ray of light on the upper part 
 of the eye, considers this i-ay as coming in a direct line from 
 the lower part of the object ; and, in like manner, tracing the 
 ray that strikes on the lower part of the eye, it is directed to 
 the upper part of the object. Thus, in the adjacent figure, 
 
 C, the lower point of the object A B C, is projected on c the 
 upper part of the eye. So likewise, the highest point A is 
 projected on a the lowest part of the eye ; which makes the 
 representation cb a inverted. But the mind — considering the 
 stroke that is made on c as coming in the straight line C c 
 from the lower end of the object; and the stroke or impulse 
 on a, as coming in the line A a from the upper end of the 
 olyect — is directed to make a vi'^ht jn J (jment of the situation 
 of the object A B C, notwithstanding the picture of it be 
 inverted. Moreover, this is illustrated by conceiving a blind 
 man, who, holding in his hands two sticks that cross each 
 other, doth with tliem touch the extremities of an object, 
 placed in a perpendicular situation. It is certain this man
 
 New Theory of T'mon. 189 
 
 will judge that to be the upper part of the object which he 
 touches witli the stick hekl in the untlermost hand, and that 
 to be the lower part of the object which he touches with 
 the stick in his uppermost hand. This is the common ex- 
 plication of the erect appearance of objects, which is gene- 
 rally received and acquiesced in, being (as Mr. Molyneux 
 tells us, Dioft. part ii. ch. vii. p. 289) 'allowed by all men 
 as satisfactory.' 
 
 90. But this account to me does not seem in any degree 
 true. Did I perceive those impulses, decussations, and 
 dii'ections of the rays of light, in like manner as hath been 
 set forth, then, indeed, it would not at first view be altogether 
 void of probability. And there might be some pretence for 
 the comparison of the blind man and his cross sticks. But 
 the case is far otherwise. I know very well that I perceive 
 no such thing. And, of consequence, I cannot thereby make 
 an estimate of the situation of objects. Moreover, I appeal 
 to any one's experience, whether he be conscious to himself 
 that he thinks on the intersection made by the radius pencils, 
 or pursues the impulses they give in right lines, whenever he 
 perceives by sight the position of any object 1 To me it 
 seems evident that crossing and tracing of the rays, &c. is 
 never thought on by children, idiots, or, in truth, by any other, 
 save only those who have applied themselves to the study of 
 Optics. And for the mind to judge of the situation of objects 
 by those things without perceiving them, or to perceive them 
 without knowing it^, take which you please, it is perfectly 
 beyond my comprehension. Add to this, that the explaining 
 the manner of vision by the example of cross sticks, and 
 hunting for the object along the axes of the radius pencils, 
 
 ^ ' To perceive them without itnowing it.' Berkeley makes nothing 
 here of a rational activity of which the apparent agent is unconscious; 
 nor of the reason that is often latent in habit or suggestion — views 
 which, since Leibnitz, have mixed so much with psychological and 
 physiological speculation. Yet he had afterwards glimpses of this. See 
 IS iris, sect. 257, and note.
 
 190 Aft Essay towards a 
 
 doth suppose the proper objects of sight to be perceived at a 
 distance from us, contrary to what hath been demonstrated. 
 
 91. It remains, therefore, that we look for some other ex- 
 plication of this difficulty. And I believe it not impossible 
 to find one, provided we examine it to the bottom, and care- 
 
 ,,. fully distinguish between the ideas of Sight and Touch ^ ; which 
 ' . cannot be too oft inculcated in treating of vision. But, more 
 especially throughout the consideration of this affair, we ought 
 to carry that distinction in our thoughts, for that from want 
 of a right understanding thereof, the difficulty of explaining 
 erect vision seems chiefly to arise ^. 
 
 92. In order to disentangle our minds from whatever pre- 
 judices we may entertain with relation to the subject in hand, 
 nothing seems more apposite than the taking into our 
 thoughts the case of one born blind, and afterwards, when 
 grown up, made to see. And — though perhaps it may not 
 be a task altogether easy and familiar to us, to divest our- 
 selves entirely of the experiences received from sight, so as to 
 be able to put our thoughts exactly in the posture of such a 
 one's — we must, nevertheless, as far as possible, endeavour to 
 frame true conceptions of what might reasonably be supposed 
 to pass in his mind. 
 
 93. It is certain that a man actually blind, and who had 
 ' continued so from his birth, would, by the sense of feeling, 
 ^ attain to have ideas of upper and lower. By the motion of 
 
 his hand, he might discern the situation of any tangible 
 object phiced within his reach. That part on which he felt 
 himself supported, or towards which he perceived his body to 
 
 ^ ' Ideas ' of Sight and Touch, i. c. the phenomena presented in each 
 of these senses singly, apart from what their data ' suggest,' wlien one 
 sense does duty for another. 
 
 " This contrast between the data in question is what the analytical 
 part of the Essay endeavours to enforce. Its ' theory of vision,' or con- 
 structive part, is the explanation, by ' suggestion,' of our tendency to 
 'judge' or interpret one class of the contrasted phenomena in terms 
 significant of the other. This in the end becomes an explanation of our 
 inductive interpretation of nature and of the logic of experience.
 
 I^ev) Theory of Vision. 191 
 
 gravitate, he would term ' lower/ and the contrary to this 
 ' upper ; ' and accordingly denominate whatsoever ohjects he 
 touched. 
 
 94. But then, whatever judgments he makes concealing 
 the situation of objects are confined to those only that are 
 perceivable by touch. All those things that are intangible, 
 and of a spiritual nature — his thoughts and desii'es, his pas- 
 sions, and in general all the modifications of his soul — to 
 these he Avould never apply the terms upper and lower, 
 except only in a nietaphorical sense. He may perhaps, by 
 way of allusion, speak of high or low thoughts : but those 
 terms, in their proper signification, would never be aj^plied to 
 anything that was not conceived to exist without the mind. 
 For, a man born blind, and remaining in the same state, 
 could mean nothing else by the words ' higher ' and ' lower ' 
 than a greater or lesser distance from the earth — which 
 distance he would measure by the motion or application of 
 his hand, or some other part of his body. It is, therefore, 
 evident that all those things which, in respect of each other, 
 would by him be thought higher or lower, must be such as 
 were conceived to exist without his mind, in the ambient 
 space. 
 
 95. Whence it plainly follows, that such a one, if we sup- 
 pose him made to see, would not at first s ight think that 
 anything he saw was high or low, erect or inverted. For, it 
 hath been already demonstrated, in sect. 41, that he would 
 not think the things he perceived by sight to be at any 
 distance from him, or without his mind. The objects to 
 which he had hitherto been used to apply the terms ' up ' and 
 ' down,' ' high ' and ' low,' were such only as affected, or were 
 some way jjerceived by his touch. But, the proper objects of 
 vision make a new set of ideas, perfectly distinct and dif- 
 ferent from the former, and which can in no sort make them- 
 selves perceived by touch. There is, therefore, nothing at all 
 that could induce him to think those terms applicable to
 
 192 An Essay toivards a 
 
 them. Nor would he ever tliink it, till such time as he had 
 observed their connexion with tangible objects, and the same 
 prejudice began to insinuate itself into his understanding, 
 which, from their infancy, had grown up in the understand- 
 ings of other men. 
 
 96. To set this matter in a clearer light, I shall make use 
 of an example. Suppose the above-mentioned blind person, 
 by his touch, perceives a man to stand erect. Let us inquire 
 into the manner of this. By the application of his hand to 
 the several parts of a human body, he had perceived different 
 tangible ideas, which being collected into sundry complex 
 ones have distinct names annexed to them. Thus, one com- 
 bination of a certain tangible figure, bulk, and consistency of 
 parts is called the 'head;' another the 'hand;' a thii'd the 
 * foot,' and so of the rest — all which complex ideas could, in 
 his understanding, be made up only of ideas perceivable by 
 touch. He had also, by his touch, obtained" an idea of ' earth ' 
 or ' ground,' towards which he perceives the parts of his body 
 to have a natural tendency. Now — by ' erect ' nothing more 
 being meant than that perpendicular position of a man 
 wherein his feet are nearest to the earth — if the blind person, 
 by moving his hand over the parts of the man who stands 
 before him, do perceive the tangible ideas that compose the 
 head to be farthest from, and those that compose the feet to 
 be nearest to, that other combination of tangible ideas which 
 he calls earth, he will denominate that man erect. But, if we 
 suppose him on a sudden to receive his sight, and that he 
 behold a man standing before him, it is evident, in that case, 
 he would neither judge the man he sees to be erect nor in- 
 verted; for he, never having known those terms applied to 
 any other save tangible things, or which existed in the space 
 without him, and what he sees neither being tangible, nor 
 perceived as existing without, he could not know that, in 
 propriety of language, they were a])plicable to it. 
 
 97. Afterwards, when, upon turning his head or eyes up
 
 J^ew Theory of Vision, 193 
 
 and down to the right and left, he shall observe the visible 
 objects to change, and shall also attain to know that they are 
 called by the same names, and connected with the objects 
 perceived by touch ; then, indeed, he will come to speak of 
 them and their situation in the same terms that he has been 
 used to apply to tangible things : and those that he perceives 
 by turning up his eyes he will call ' upper,' and those that by 
 turning down his eyes he will call ' lower.' 
 
 98. And this seems to me the true reason why he should 
 think those objects uppermost that are painted on the lower 
 part of his eye. For, by turning the eye up they shall be 
 distinctly seen; as likewise they that are painted on the 
 highest part of the eye shall be distinctly seen by turning the 
 eye down, and are for that reason esteemed lowest. For, we 
 have shewn that to the immediate objects of sight, considered 
 in themselves, he would not attribute the terms high and low. 
 It must therefore be on account of some circumstances which 
 are observed to attend them. And these, it is plain, are the 
 actions of turning the eye up and down, which suggest a very 
 obvious reason why the mind should denominate the objects i 
 of sight accordingly high or low. And, without this motion 
 of the eye — this turning it up and down, in order to discern 
 different objects — doubtless ' erect,' ' inverse,' and other the 
 like terms relating to the position of tangible objects, would 
 never have been transferred, or in any degree apprehended to 
 belong to the ideas of sight — the mere act of seeing in- 
 cluding nothing in it to that purpose ; whereas the different 
 situations of the eye naturally direct the mind to make a 
 suitable judgment of the situation of objects introraitted 
 byit^ 
 
 ^ This briefly is Berkeley's solution of what he calls elsewhere ' the 
 knot about inverted images.' {Vindication, sect. 52.) He does not 
 here say whether in seeing we really see the (inverted) images on the 
 retina — whether in short we see our own eyes ; or, if not, why the 
 images should be so elaborately delineated although they are invisible 
 to the percipient. 
 
 These sections are apt to make the reader ask how space, and objects
 
 194 An Essay tovjards a 
 
 99. Farther, when he has by experience learned the con- 
 nexion there is between the several ideas of sight and touch, 
 he will be able, by the perception he has of the situation of 
 visible things in respect of one another, to make a sudden 
 and true estimate of the situation of outward, tangible things 
 corresj)onding to them. And thus it is he shall perceive by 
 siglit the situation of external objects, which do not properly 
 fall under that sense ^. 
 
 100. I know we are very prone to think that, if just made 
 to see, we should judge of the situation of visible things as 
 we do now. But we are also as prone to think that, at first 
 sight, we should in the same way apprehend the distance and 
 magnitude of objects, as we do now ; which hath been shewn 
 to be a false and groundless persuasion. And, for the like 
 reasons, the same censure may be passed on the positive 
 
 placed in it, are actually conceived by persons who have never been able 
 to see. ' Observation of the born-blind,' says Plainer, in a well-known 
 passage, ' has convinced me that the sense of Touch, hy itself, is altogether 
 incompetent to afford us the representation of space, and is not even 
 cognizant of local exteriority ; in a word, that a man born destitute of 
 sight has absolutely no perception of an outer world, beyond the existence 
 of something effective, different from his own feeling of passivity ; and in 
 general only of the numericcd diversity [i.e. as distinguished from the 
 partes extra partes of Outwardness proper] — shall I say of mental im- 
 pressions or of things 1 In fact, to those born blind, time serves instead 
 of space. Vicinity and di.stance mean in their mouths nothing more 
 than the longer or shorter time — the smaller or greater number of 
 feeling.s — which they find it necessary to pass through in order to attain 
 from some one feeling to some other. Inasmuch as space and extension 
 are empirically possible only through the perceptions of sight, one bom 
 blind, after his eyes are freed from cataract, must first learn to live, in 
 e^ace.' — All this goes to confirm the opinion that the perception of 
 Space is not called forth merely in sensations of felt resistance and 
 bodily movement ; that it is only called forth after we have also had 
 eensations of colour, and can interpret these as significant of past and 
 future sensations of touch — that sigM in short is somehow indispensable 
 to the development of our perception (if Space. — Docs this consist with 
 the view of SLi' W. Hamilton and others, tliat the jiheuomena of which we 
 are conscious in all the five senses, being tlie phenomena of an extended 
 organism, afford us immediately and necessarily an apprehension of 
 extension ; or does Hamilton's later view itself agree with his previ- 
 ously (see his Lectures on Metaphysics, XXVIII) professed inability 
 to determine whether sight niay not exclusively give us our empirical 
 knowledge of extension and space ?
 
 Neiv Theory of Fision. 195 
 
 assui-ancc that most men, before they have thought suffi- 
 ciently of the matter, might have of their being able to 
 determine by the eye, at first view, whether objects were erect 
 or inverse. 
 
 loi. It will perhaps be objected to our opinion, that a 
 man, for instance, being thought erect when his feet are next 
 the earth, and inverted when his head is next the earth, 
 it doth hence follow that, by the mere act of vision — without 
 any experience or altering the situation of the eye — we 
 should have determined whether he were erect or inverted. 
 For, both the earth itself, and the limbs of the man who 
 stands thereon, being equally perceived by sight, one cannot 
 choose seeing what part of the man is nearest the earth, 
 and what part farthest from it, i. e. whether he be erect or 
 inverted. 
 
 102. To which T answer, the ideas which constitute the 
 tangible earth and man are entirely different from those 
 which constitute the visible earth and man. Nor was it pos- 
 sible, by virtue of the visive faculty alone — without super- 
 adding any experience of touch, or altering the position of 
 the eye — ever to have known, or so much as suspected, there 
 had been any relation or connexion between them. Hence, 
 a man at first view would not denominate anything he saw, 
 ' earth,' or ' head,' or ' foot ; ' and consequently, he could not 
 tell, by the mere act of vision, whether the head or feet were 
 nearest the earth. Nor, indeed, would we have thereby any 
 thought of earth or man, erect or inverse, at all — which will 
 be made yet more evident, if we nicely observe, and make a 
 particular comparison between, the ideas of both, senses. 
 
 103. That which I see is only variety of light and colours. 
 That which IJeel is hard or soft, hot or cold, rough or smooth. 
 What similitude, what connexion, have those ideas with these 1 
 Or, how is it possible that any one .should see reason to give 
 one and the same name to combinations of ideas so very dif- 
 ferent, before he had experienced their co-existence 1 We do 
 
 2
 
 196 All Essay towards a 
 
 not find there is any necessary connexion betwixt this or that 
 tangible quality and any colour whatsoever. And we may 
 sometimes perceive colours, where there is nothing to be felt. 
 All which doth make it manifest that no man, at first re- 
 ceiving of his sight, woiild know there was any agreement 
 between this or that particular object of his sight and any 
 object of touch he had been ali'eady acquainted with. The 
 colours therefore of the head would to him no more suggest 
 the idea of head^ than they would the idea of feet. 
 
 104. Farther, we have at large shewn (vid. sect. 63 and 
 64) there is no discoverable necessary connexion between 
 any given visible magnitude and any one particular tangible 
 magnitude ; but that it is entirely the result of custom and 
 experience, and depends on foreign and accidental circum- 
 stances, that we can, by the pei'ception of visible extension, 
 inform ourselves what may be the extension of any tan- 
 gible object connected with it. Hence, it is certain, that 
 neither the visible magnitude of head or foot would bring 
 along with them into the mind, at first opening of the eyes, 
 the respective tangible magnitudes of those parts. 
 
 105. By the foregoing section, it is plain the visible figure 
 of any part of the body hath no necessary connexion with the 
 tangible figure thereof, so as at first sight to suggest it to the 
 mind. For, figure is the termination of magnitude. Whence 
 it follows that no visible magnitude having in its own natui'e 
 an aptness to suggest any one particular tangible magnitude, 
 so neither can any visible figure be inseparably connected 
 with its corresponding tangible figure, so as of itself, and in 
 a way prior to experience, it might suggest it to the under- 
 standing. This will be farther evident, if we consider that 
 what seems smooth and round to the touch may to siglit, if 
 
 ' viewed through a microscope, seem quite otherwise. 
 
 106. From all which, laid together and duly considei'ed, 
 we may clearly deduce this inference : — In the first act of 
 
 ^ ' idea of head,' i.e. pheuomena of tbe tangible or real head.
 
 Neio Theory of Vision. 197 
 
 vision, no iJea entering by tlic eye would have a perceivable 
 connexion with tlie ideas to which the names earth, man, 
 head, foot, &c, were annexed in the understanding of a person 
 blind from his birth; so as in any sort to introduce them 
 into his mind, or make themselves be called by the same 
 names, and reputed the same things with them, as afterwards 
 they come to be. 
 
 107. There doth, nevertheless, remain one difficulty, which 
 to some may seem to press hard on our opinion, and deserve 
 not to be passed over. For, though it be granted that neither 
 the colour, size, nor figure of the visible feet have any neces- 
 sary connexion with the ideas that compose the tangible feet, 
 so as to bring them at first sight into my mind, or make me 
 in danger of confounding them, before I had been used to 
 and for some time experienced their connexion ; yet thus 
 much seems undeniable, namely, that the number of the 
 visible feet being the same with that of the tangible feet, I 
 may from hence, without any experience of sight, reasonably 
 conclude that they represent or are connected with the feet 
 rather than the head. I say, it seems the idea of two visible 
 feet will sooner suggest to the mind the idea of two tangible 
 feet than of one head — so that the blind man, upon first 
 reception of the visive faculty, might know wliich were the 
 feet or two, and which the head or one. 
 
 108. In order to get clear of this seeming difficulty, we 
 need only observe that diversity of visible objects does not 
 necessarily infer diversity of tangible objects corresponding 
 to them. A picture painted with great variety of colours 
 affects the touch in one uniform manner ; it is t herefore e vi- 
 dent that I do not, by any necessary consecution, independent 
 of experience, judge of the number of things tangible from 
 the njimber of things viable. I should not therefore at first 
 opening my eyes conclude that because I see two I shall feel 
 two. How, therefore, can I, before experience teaches me, 
 know that the visible legs, because two, are connected with the
 
 198 An Essay totoards a 
 
 tangible legs ; or the visible head, because one, is connected 
 
 with the tangible head 1 The truth is, the things I^ see are 
 
 so very different and heterogeneous from the things I^ feel 
 
 that the perception of the one would never have suggested 
 
 the other to my thoughts, or enabled me to pass the least 
 
 judgment thereon, until I had experienced their connexion ^ 
 
 109. But, for a fuller illustration of this matter, it ought 
 
 to be considered, that n umb er (however some may reckon it 
 
 amongst the primary qualities) is nothing fixed and settled, 
 
 j really existing in things themselves^. It is entirely the 
 
 j creature of the mind, considering either a simple idea by itself, 
 
 1 or any combination of simple ideas to which it gives one 
 
 name, and so makes it pass for a unit. According as the 
 
 mind variously coCiBines its ideas, the unit varies ; and as 
 
 the unit, so the number, which is only a collection of units, 
 
 doth also vary. We call a window one, a chimney one ; and 
 
 ■^ A man born blind, it has been objected, ' would, by being accus- 
 tomed to feel one hand with the other, have learned to perceive 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 were to receive the sense 
 of seeing, and immediately on getting this sense to look at his hand 
 before he touched it again, it is manifest that the divisions of its ex- 
 tremity into fingers would be visible. He would note too the small 
 spaces at the extremity of each finger, which affected his sight differently 
 from the fingers ; upon moving his fingers he would see the joints. 
 Though therefore, by means of this lately acquired sense of seeing, the 
 hand 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 hln hand, 
 that the thing which he now saw was the same whicli he had felt before 
 and called liis hand.' The text shows liow Berkeley would reply to 
 this. — The dependence on experience of our visual judgments of objects 
 previously familiar to touch is discussed by Eeid. See Inquiry, ch. VI. 
 
 ^ It must be remembered that the 'primary qualities' of bodies, 
 according to Locke, are solidity, extension, fujure, motion or rest, and 
 number. See Essay, b. II. ch. 8. § 9. Their dependence, at least so 
 far as they are data of siglit, on percipient mind, is what Berkeley 
 here insists on. — On the subjectivity (or at least relativity) of ' number,' 
 of. Principles, sect. 12, 13, 119-123.
 
 New Theory of V'mon, 199 
 
 yet a bouse, in which there are many windows and many 
 chimneys, has an equal right to be called one ; and many 
 houses go to the making of one city. In these and the like 
 instances, it is evident the unit constantly relates to the par- 
 ticular draughts the mind makes of its ideas, to which it 
 affixes names, and wherein it includes more or less, as best 
 suits its own ends and purposes. Whatever therefore the 
 mind considers as one, that is an unit. Every combination 
 of ideas is considered as one thing by the mind, and in token 
 thereof is marked by one name. Now, this naming and com- 
 bining together of ideas is perfectly arbitrary, and done by the 
 mind in such sort as experience shews it to be most conve- 
 nient — without which our ideas had never been collected into 
 such sundry distinct combinations as they now are. 
 
 no. Hence, it follows that a man born blind, and after- 
 wards, when grown up, made to see, would not, in the first 
 act of vision, parcel out the ideas of sight into the same dis- 
 tinct collections that others do who have experienced which 
 do regulai-ly co-exist and are iwoiier to be bundled up together 
 under one name. He would not, for example, make into one 
 complex idea, and thereby esteem and unite all those parti- 
 cular ideas which constitute the visible head or foot. For, 
 there can be no reason assigned why he should do so, barely 
 upon his seeing a man stand upright before him. There 
 crowd into his mind the ideas which compose the visible man, 
 in company with ^11 the other ideas of sight perceived at the 
 same time. But all these ideas offered at once to his view 
 he would not distribute into sundry distinct combinations, 
 till such time as, by observing the motion of the parts of the 
 man and other experiences, he comes to know which are to be 
 separated, and which to be collected together^. 
 
 Ill, From what hath been premised, it is plain the objects 
 
 * In forming our units of numerable things, the mind, it may be 
 argued, must proceed in conformity with objective relations in nature, 
 and thus found on reason, not on individual caprice.
 
 20D An Essay towards a 
 
 of sight and touch make, if I may so say, two sets of ideas, 
 ■which are widely differeut from each other. To objects of 
 either kind we indifferently attribute the terms high and low, 
 right and left, and such like, denoting the position or situation 
 of things ; but then we must well observe that the pos ition 
 of any object is determined with respect only to objects of 
 the same^sense. "We say any object of touch is high or low, 
 according as it is more or less distant from the tangible earth : 
 and in like manner we denominate any object of .sight high 
 or low, in proportion as it is more or less distant from the 
 visible earth. But, to define the situation of visible things 
 with relation to the distance they bear from any tangible 
 thing, or vice versa, this were absurd and perfectly unintel- 
 ligible. For all visible things are equally in the m ind, and 
 take up no part of the external space ; and consequently 
 are equidistant from any tangible thing, which exists without 
 the mind^. 
 
 112. Or rather, to speak truly, the proper objects of sight 
 are at no distance, neither near nor far from any tangible 
 thing. For, if we inquire narrowly into the matter, we shall 
 find that those things only are compared together in respect 
 of distance which exist after the same manner, or appertain 
 unto the same sense. For by the distance between any two 
 points, nothing more is meant than the number of interme- 
 Idiate points. If the given points are visible, the distance 
 Ibetween them is marked out by the number of the interjacent 
 visible points ; if they are tangible, the distance between 
 them is a line consisting of tangible points ; but, if they are 
 one tangible and the other visible, the distance between them 
 doth neither consist of points perceivable by sight nor by 
 
 * Note Berkeley's continued reticence in this Essay as to his ' dis- 
 covery ' of the essential dependence of the material world on percipient 
 and active mind. Meantime he does not deny that ' tangible things ' 
 may exist ' without the mind,' i. e. unpcrceived. In the Principles he 
 of course maintains that even this is an illegitimate sort of ' externality,' 
 and he tries to determine what external existence really means.
 
 Neiv Theory of Vision. 201 
 
 touch, i.e. it is utterly inconceivable. — This, perhaps, will not 
 find an easy admission into all men's understanding. How- 
 ever, I should gladly be informed wliether it be not true, by 
 any one who will be at the pains to reflect a little, and apply 
 it home to his thoughts. 
 
 113. The not observing what has been delivered in the 
 two last sections, seems to have occasioned no small part of 
 the diflSculty that occurs in the business of erect appearances. 
 The head, which is painted nearest the earth, seems to be 
 farthest from it ; and on the other hand, the feet, which are 
 painted farthest from the earth, are thought nearest to it. 
 Herein lies the difiiculty, which vanishes if we express the 
 thing more clearly and free from ambiguity, thus : — How 
 comes it that to the eye, the visible head, which is nearest 
 the tangible earth, seems farthest fi^ora the earth ; and the 
 visible feet, which are farthest from the tangible earth, seem 
 nearest the earth 1 The question being thus proposed, who 
 sees not the difficulty is founded on a sujjposition that the eye 
 or visive faculty, or rather the soul by means thereof, should 
 judge of the situation of visible objects with reference to 
 their distance from the tangible earth 1 Whereas, it is 
 evident the tangible earth is not perceived by sight. And it 
 hath been shewn, in the two last preceding sections, that 
 the location of visible objects is determined only hy the 
 distance they bear from one another, and that it is nonsense 
 to talk of distance, far or near, between a visible and tangible 
 thing. 
 
 114. If we confine our thoughts to the proper objects of 
 sight, the whole is plain and easy. The h ead is painted f ar- 
 th est from , and t he feet nearest to, t he vis ible earth ; and so 
 they appear to be. What is there strange or unaccountable 
 in this ? Let us suppose the pictures in the fund of the eye 
 to be the immediate objects of sight. The consequence is 
 that things should appear in the same posture they ai^e i:)ainted 
 in : and is it not so 1 The head which is seen seems farthest
 
 202 An Essay towards a 
 
 from the earth which is seen ; and the feet which are seen 
 seem nearest to the earth which is seen. And just so they 
 arc painted ^ 
 
 115. But, say you, the picture of the man is inverted, and 
 yet the appearance is erect. I ask, what mean you by the 
 picture of the man, or, which is the same thing, the visible 
 man's being inverted ? You tell me it is inverted, because 
 the heels are uppermost and the head undermost. Explain 
 me this. You say that by the head's being undermost, you 
 mean that it is nearest to the earth ; and, by the heels being 
 uppermost, that they are farthest from the earth. I ask 
 again, what earth you mean ] You cannot mean the earth 
 that is painted on the eye or the visible earth — for the pic- 
 ture of the head is farthest from the picture of the earth, and 
 the picture of the feet nearest to the picture of the earth ; and 
 accordingly the visible head is farthest from the visible earth, 
 and the visible feet nearest to it. It remains, therefore, that 
 you mean the tangible earth ; and so determine the situation 
 of visible things with respect to tangible things — contrary to 
 what hath been demonstrated in sect, iii and 112. The two 
 distinct provinces of sight and touch should be considered 
 apart, and as though their objects had no intercourse, no 
 manner of relation to one another, in point of distance or 
 position. 
 
 116. Farther, what greatly contributes to make us mistake 
 in this matter is that, when we think of the pictures in the 
 fund of the eye, we imagine ourselves looking on the fund of 
 another's eye, or another looking on the fund of our own eye, 
 and beholding the pictures painted thereon. Suppose two 
 eyes, A and B. A from some distance looking on the pic- 
 tures in B sees them inverted, and for that reason concludes 
 they are inverted in B. But this is wrong. There are pro- 
 jected in little on the bottom of A the images of the pictures 
 
 * This almost seems to say that the inverted image on the retina is 
 itself seen. 
 
 A
 
 Neiv Theory of Vision. 203 
 
 of, suppose, man, earth, &c., which are painted on B. And, 
 besides these, the eye B itSelf, and the objects which environ 
 it, together with another earth, are projected in a larger size 
 on A. Now, by the eye A these larger images are deemed 
 the true objects, and the lesser only pictures in miniature. 
 And it is with respect to those greater images that it deter- 
 mines the situation of the smaller images ; so that, comparing 
 the little man with the great earth, A judges him inverted, 
 or that the feet are farthest from and the head nearest to the 
 great earth. Whereas, if A compare the little man with the 
 little earth, then he will appear erect, i. e. his head shall seem 
 farthest from and his feet nearest to the little earth. But we 
 must consider that B does not see two earths as A does. It 
 sees only what is represented by the little pictures in A, and 
 consequently shall judge the man erect. For, in truth, the 
 man in B is not inverted, for there the feet are next the 
 earth ; but it is the representation of it in A which is inverted, 
 for there the head of the representation of the picture of the 
 man in B is next the earth, and the feet farthest from the 
 earth — meaning the earth which is without the representation 
 of the pictures in B. For, if you take the little images of 
 the pictures in B, and consider them by themselves, and with 
 respect only to one another, they are all erect and in their 
 natural posture. 
 
 117. Farther, there lies a mistake in our imagining that 
 the pictures of external^ objects are painted on the bottom of 
 the eye. It has been shown there is no resemblance between 
 the ideas of sight and things tangible. It hath likewise been 
 demonstrated, that the proper objects of sight do not exist 
 without the mind. Whence it clearly follows that the pic- 
 tures painted on the bottom of the eye are not the j)ictures 
 of externaP objects. Let any one consult his own thoughts, 
 
 ^ 'External,' i.e. given phenomenally in touch; but without any inquiry 
 by Berkeley here whether the extension and externality so given does 
 or does not depend on a percipient.
 
 204 An Essay towards a 
 
 and then tell me, what affinity, what likeness, there is between 
 that certain variety and disposition of colours which con- 
 stitute the visible man, or picture of a man, and that other 
 combination of far different ideas, sensible by touch, which 
 compose the tangible man. But, if this be the case, how come 
 they to be accounted pictures or images, since that supposes 
 them to copy or represent some originals or other ? 
 
 1 1 8. To which I answer — In the forementioned instance, 
 the eye A takes the little images, included within the repre- 
 sentation of the other eye 5, to be pictures or copies, whereof 
 the archetypes are not things existing without, but the larger 
 pictures projected on its own fund ; and which by A are not 
 thought pictures, but the originals or true things themselves. 
 Though if we suppose a third eye C, from a due distance, to 
 behold the fund of A, then indeed the things projected thereon 
 shall, to C, seem pictui-es or images, in the same sense that 
 those projected on B do to A . 
 
 119. Kightly to conceive the business in hand, we must 
 carefully distinguish between the ideas of sight and touch, 
 between the visible and tangible eye ; for certainly on the 
 tangible eye nothing either is or seems to be painted. Again, 
 the visible eye, as well as all other visible objects, hath been 
 shewn to exist only in the mind ; which, perceiving its own 
 ideas, and comparing them together, does call some pictures 
 in respect to others. What hath been said, being rightly 
 comprehended and laid together, does, I think, afford a full 
 and genuine explication of the ei-ect appearance of objects — 
 which phenomenon, I must confess, I do not see how it can 
 be explained by any theories of vision hitherto made public. 
 
 120. In treating of these things, the use of language is apt 
 to occasion some obscurity and confusion, and create in us 
 Avrong ideas. For, language being accommodated to the 
 common notions and prejudices of men, it is scarce possible 
 to deliver the naked and precise truth, without gi*eat circum-
 
 New Theorij of Vision. 205 
 
 locution, Impropriety, and (to an unwai-y reader) seeming con- 
 tradictions. I do, therefore, once for all, desire whoever 
 shall think it worth his while to understand what I have 
 written concerning Vision, that he would not stick in this or 
 that phrase or manner of expression, but candidly collect my 
 meaning from the whole sum and tenor of my discourse, and, 
 laying aside the words as much as possible, consider the bare 
 notions ^ themselves, and then judge whether they are agree- </ 
 able to truth and his own experience or no. 
 
 121. We have shewn the way wherein the mind, by media- 5^^'' '^ 
 tion of visible ideas '^, doth perceive or apprehend the distance, 
 magnitude, and situation of tangible objects. I come now to 
 inquire more particularly concerning the difference between 
 the ideas of Sight and Touch which are called by the same 
 names, and see whether there be any idea common to both r 
 senses. From what we have at large set forth and demon- ^ 
 stx'ated in the foregoing parts of this treatise, it is plain there 
 is no one self-same numencal Extension, perceived both by 
 sight and touch ; but that the particular figures and exten- 
 sions peixeived by sight, however they may be called by the 
 same names, and reputed the same things with those perceived 
 by touch, are nevertheless different, and have an existence 
 very distinct and separate from them. So that the question 
 is not now concerning the same numerical ideas, but whether 
 there be any one and the same sort or si^ecies of ideas equally 
 perceivable to both senses ? or, in other words, whether ex- 
 tension, figure, and motion perceived by sight, are not speci- 
 fically distinct from extension, figure, and motion perceived' 
 by touch ? 
 
 ' This appeal is in the spirit of Descartes' rule about clear and dis- 
 tinct ideas as the test of truth, and of the logical precept to individualise 
 our concepts. 
 
 ^ ' Visible ideas' — say rather visual ideas or sensations ; for he here 
 includes not only colours which we see, but also the invisible 'sensations' 
 in the visual organ — muscular and locomotive — which are felt (not 
 seen). Cf. sect. 16-27, 56, 57.
 
 206 An Ussay toicards a 
 
 12 2. But, before I come more particularly to discuss this 
 matter, I find it proper to take into my thoughts extension 
 in abstract. For of this there is much talk ; and I am apt 
 to think that when men speak of extension as being an idea 
 common to two senses, it is with a secret supposition that we 
 can single out extension from all other tangible and visible 
 qualities, and form thereof an abstract idea, which idea they 
 will have common both to sight and touch. We are therefore 
 to understand by extension in abstract, au idea of extension — 
 for instance, a line or sui-face entirely stripped of all other 
 sensible qualities and circumstances that might determine it 
 to any particular existence ; it is neither black, nor white, 
 nor red, nor hath it any colour at all, or any tangible quality 
 whatsoever, and consequently it is of no finite determinate 
 magnitude ; for that which bounds or distinguishes one ex- 
 tension from another is some quality or circumstance wherein 
 they disagree ^. 
 
 123. Now, I do not find that I can perceive, imagine, or 
 anywise frame in my mind such an abstract idea as is here 
 spoken of. A line or surface which is neither black, nor 
 white, nor blue, nor yellow, &c. ; nor long, nor short, nor 
 rough, nor smooth, nor square, nor round, &c.^ is perfectly 
 incompi^hensible. This I am sure of as to myself ; how far 
 the faculties of other men may reach they best can tell '. 
 
 124. It is commonly said that the object of Geometry is 
 
 * This assault on ' abstract ideas ' is resumed in the * Introduction ' to 
 the Principles, published a year after this Essay. 
 
 ^ We may, however, make a concept of a ' line,' which concept can 
 be exemplified for the imagination in each of these particular ways, 
 although the attributes which constitute its content are not necessarily 
 connected with any one of the individual exemplifications included 
 under its extent. 
 
 ^ In this reasoning against the possibility of abstract, as distinguished 
 from phenomenal Extension, Berkeley alleges his usual objections to 
 metaphysical abstractions. That there may be a perception of Space 
 necessarily involved, by the very constitution of reason, in all visual 
 and tactual perception, constitutive of its outwardness, and explaining 
 perception in its diflference from mere sensation (as afterwards held 
 by Kant), nowhere occurs to him.
 
 'New Theory of Vision. 207 
 
 abstract extension. But geometry contemplates figures : now, 
 figure is the termination of magnitude ; but we have shewn 
 that extension in abstract hath no finite determinate magni- 
 tude ; whence it clearly follows that it can have no figure, 
 and consequently is not the object of geometry. It is indeed 
 a tenet, as well of the modern as the ancient philosophers, 
 that all general truths are concerning universal abstract ideas ; 
 without which, we are told, there could be no science, no 
 demonstration of any general proposition in geometry. But 
 it were no hard matter, did I think it necessary to my pre- 
 sent purpose, to shew that propositions and demonstrations 
 in geometry might be universal, though they who make them 
 never think of abstract general ideas of triangles or circles ^. 
 
 125. After reiterated efforts and pangs of thought to 
 apprehend the general idea of a triangle, I have found it 
 altogether incomprehensible. And surely, if any one were 
 able to let that idea into my mind, it must be the author of 
 the Essay concerning Human Understanding : he, who has 
 so far distinguished himself from the generality of writers, by 
 the clearness and significancy of what he says. Let us there- 
 fore see how that great man describes the general or abstract 
 idea of a triangle. ' It must be,' says he, ' neither oblique nor 
 rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenum ; but 
 all and none of these at once. In effect it is somewhat im- 
 perfect that cannot exist; an idea, wherein some parts of 
 several different and inconsistent ideas are put together.' 
 {Essay on Human Understanding, b. IV. ch. 7. s. 9.) This 
 is the idea which he thinks needful for the enlargement of 
 
 * It was the question of ' the possibility of pure mathematics, or a 
 necessary science of the laws of space,' which suggested to Kant the 
 analysis of perception that issued in the theory of space given in his 
 'Esthetic' The need for explaining the existence of mathematics is 
 an obvious difficulty in the way of those who, like Berkeley, dissolving 
 extension in sensible minima, have never entertained the perception of 
 space as that on which the successive data of the senses depend for 
 their perceivability, and which explains their transformation out of 
 mere i^henomena that follow one, another into outward things.
 
 208 An Essai/ towards a 
 
 knowledge, which is the svibject of mathematical demonstra- 
 tion, and without which Ave could never come to know any 
 general pi-oposition concerning triangles. That author ac- 
 knowledges it doth ' require some pains and skill to form 
 this general idea of a triangle.' {Ibid) But, had he called to 
 mind Avhat he says in another place, to wit, ' that ideas of 
 mixed modes wherein any inconsistent ideas are put together, 
 cannot so much as exist in the mind, i. e. be conceived,' (vid. 
 b. III. ch. 10. s. 33, ibid.) — I say, had this occurred to his 
 thoughts, it is not improbable he would have owned it above 
 all the pains and skill he was master of to form the above- 
 mentioned idea of a triangle — which is made up of manifest 
 staring contradictions. That a man, who thought so much 
 and so well, and laid so great a stress on clear and determinate 
 ideas, should nevertheless talk at this rate, seems very sur- 
 prising. But the wonder will lessen, if it be considered that 
 the source whence this opinion flows is the prolific womb 
 which has brought forth innumerable errors and difficulties, 
 in all parts of philosophy, and in all the sciences. But this 
 matter, taken in its full extent, were a subject too vast and 
 comprehensive to be insisted on in this place ^. And so much 
 for extension in abstract. 
 
 126. Some, perhaps, may think pure si^ce, vacuum, or 
 trine dimension, to be equally the object of sight and touch. 
 But, though we have a very great propension to think the 
 ideas of Outness and Space to be the immediate object of 
 sight, yet, if I mistake not, in the foregoing parts of this 
 Essay, that hath been clearly demonstrated to be a mere 
 delusion, arising from the quick and sudden suggestion of 
 
 * The question here is as to what the triangnlarify o( any 'particular' 
 triangle consists in. Does it consist in transitory phenomena, whether 
 of colour or resistance ; or in permanent intelligible relations, the pre- 
 sence of which converts the 'phenomena ' into scientific knowledge of a 
 triangle, and also explains the universality of mathematical propositions ? 
 Neither Locke nor Berkeley looks at the question in this light, nor in- 
 quires into the respective offices of Sense, with its empirical data, and of 
 Reason, with its fixed relations, in the constitution of human knowledge.
 
 'New Theory of Vision. 209 
 
 fancy, which so closely connects the idea of distance with 
 those of sight, that we are apt to think it is itself a proper 
 and immediate object of that sense, till reason corrects the 
 mistake ^. 
 
 127. It having been shewn that there are no abstract ideas 
 of figure, and that it is impossible for us, by any j)recision 
 of thought, to frame an idea of extension separate from all 
 other visible and tangible qualities, which shall be common 
 both to sight and touch — the question now remaining is, 
 Whether the particular extensions, figures, and motions per- 
 ceived by sight, be of the same kind with the particular ex- 
 tensions, figures, and motions perceived by touch 1 In answer 
 to which I shall venture to lay down the following propo- 
 sition : — The extension, figures, and motions 2)erceived by 
 sight are specifically distinct fi-om the ideas of touch, called 
 by the same names ; nor is there any such thing as one idea, 
 or kind of idea, common to both senses'^. This proposition 
 may, without much difficulty, be collected from what hath 
 
 ' Does he mean to imply that Outness could be supposed to be the 
 immediate object of eithei- sense, if by this be meant that it is presented 
 as a mere aggregate of miuiiwi visibilia (sensations of colour) or of 
 minima taiujibilia (sensations of movement and resistance) ? This way 
 of expressing it is surely inadequate to the facts of which we are con- 
 scious, when we perceive phenomena as outwai-d objects, whether in 
 seeing or in touching them. But whether the genuine perception of 
 outwardness is called forth in touch, in sight, or in comparing the pre- 
 sentations of sight with those of touch, or in each of the five senses, may 
 still be a question. 
 
 '^ This implies that there are no ' common sensibles,' as Aristotle 
 called them, and as the primary qualities are by many held to be. 
 That space may be a conunon and presupposed perception, necessarily 
 involved in all perceptions of sense, while per se inconceivable apart 
 from these perceptions, does not occur to Berkeley. He rightly insists 
 on the impossibility of perceiving or conceiving space separately from 
 empirical phenomena of sense ; but he does not seem to apprehend the 
 counter impossibility of anything external being perceived or conceived 
 as outward without space ; nor that the perceptions which involve ex- 
 tension may be occasioned by sensations in touch or in sight, without 
 space being therefore identified either with feelings or with sensations of 
 colour. Is it not the perception -thus occasioned that giics outness to 
 what we are conscious of in sense, and enables us to conceive objects as 
 'outward,' or in space — not merely as unknown powers that are 'ex- 
 ternal ' to, because uncontrollable by, our free agency ?
 
 210 An Essa?/ fo wards a 
 
 been said in Fcvcral places of this Essay. But, because it 
 seems so remote from, and contrary to the received notions and 
 settled opinion of mankind, I shall attempt to demonstrate it 
 more particularly and at large by the following arguments : — 
 
 128. First, When, upon j)erception of an idea, I range it 
 under this or that sort, it is because it is perceived after the 
 same manner, or because it has a likeness or conformity with 
 or affects me in the same way as the ideas of the sort I rank 
 it under. It short, it must not be entirely new, but have 
 something in it old and already perceived by me. It must, 
 I say, have so much, at least, in common with the ideas I 
 have befoi'e known and named, as to make me give it the 
 same name with them. But, it has been, if I mistake not, 
 clearly made out that a man born blind would not, at first 
 reception of his sight, think the things he saw were of the 
 same nature with the objects of touch, or had anything in 
 common with them ; but that they were a new set of ideas, 
 perceived in a new manner, and entirely different from all 
 he had ever perceived before. So that he would not call 
 them by the same name, nor repute them to be of the same 
 sort, with anything he had hitherto known. 
 
 129. Secondly, Light and colours are allowed by all to 
 constitute a sort or species entirely different from the ideas 
 of touch ; nor will any man, I presume, say they can make 
 themselves perceived by that sense. But there is no other 
 immediate object of sight besides light and colours. It is 
 therefore a direct consequence, that there is no idea common 
 to both senses. 
 
 130. It is a prevailing opinion, even amongst those who 
 have thought and writ most accurately concerning our ideas, 
 and the ways whereby they enter into the undei-stauding, that 
 something more is perceived by sight than barely light and 
 colours with their vai'iations. Mr. Locke termcth sight ' the 
 most comprehensive of all our senses, conveying to our minds 
 the ideas of light and colours, which are j)cculiar only to that
 
 'Neio Theory of Vision. 211 
 
 sense ; and also the far diffei'ent ideas of space, figure, and 
 motion.' {Essay on Human Understanding, b. H. cli. 9. s. 9.) 
 Space or distance, we have shewn, is no otherwise the object 
 of sight tlian of hearing. (Vid. sect. 46.) And, as for figure 
 and extension, I leave it to any one that shall calmly attend 
 to his own clear and distinct ideas to decide whether he has 
 any idea intromitted immediately and properly by sight save 
 only light and colours : or, whether it be possible for him to 
 frame in his mind a distinct abstract idea of visible extension, 
 or figure, exclusive of all colour ; and, on the other hand, 
 whether he can conceive colour without visible extension ? 
 For my own part, I must confess, I am not able to attain so 
 great a nicety of abstraction. I know very well that, in a 
 strict sense, I see nothing but light and colours, with their 
 several shades and variations ^. He who beside these doth 
 also perceive by sight ideas far diiferent and distinct from 
 them, hath that faculty in a degree more perfect and com- 
 prehensive than I can pretend to. It must be owned, indeed, 
 that, by the mediation of light and colours, other far different 
 ideas are suggested to my mind. But then, upon this score, 
 I see no reason why the sight should be thought more ' com- 
 prehensive' than the hearing, which, beside sounds which are 
 peculiar to that sense, doth, by their mediation, suggest not 
 only space, figure, and motion, but also all other ideas what- 
 soever that can be signified by words. 
 
 131. Thirdly, It is, I think, an axiom universall}' received, 
 that ' quantities of the same kind may be added together and 
 make one entire sum.' Mathematicians add lines together ; 
 but they do not add a line to a solid, or conceive it as making 
 one sum with a surface. These three kinds of quantity being 
 thought incapable of any such mutual addition, and conse- 
 quently of being compared together in the several ways of 
 
 1 This is consistent with perception of an extension that is visible 
 — the constituent colours being seen 'in sundry institutions' (sect. 77), 
 and composed of a larger or smaller number of coloured points {minima 
 visihilia), coe.xisting each outside of the other. 
 
 P 2
 
 212 'An Essa?/ towards a 
 
 porportion, are by them for that reason esteemed entirely 
 disparate and heterogeneous. Now let any one try in his 
 thoughts to add a visible line or surface to a tangible line or 
 surface, so as to conceive them making one continued sum or 
 whole. He that can do this may think them homogeneous ; 
 but he that cannot must, by the foregoing axiom, think them 
 heterogeneous. A blue and a red line I can conceive added 
 together into one sum and making one continued line ; but, 
 to make, in my thoughts, one continued line of a visible and 
 tangible line added together, is, I find, a task far more diffi- 
 cult, and even insurmountable — and I leave it to the re- 
 flection and experience of every particular person to determine 
 for himself. 
 
 132. A farther confirmation of our tenet may be drawn 
 from the solution of Mr. Molyneux's problem, published by 
 Mr. Locke in his Essay: which I shall set down as it there 
 lies, together with Mr. Locke's opinion of it : — ' Suppose a 
 man born blind, and now adult, and taught by liis touch to 
 distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the same metal, 
 and nighly of the same bigness, so as to tell when he felt one 
 and the other, which is the cube and which the sphere. Sup- 
 pose then the cube and sphere placed on a table, and the 
 blind man made to see : Quaere, Whether by his sight, before 
 he touched them, he could now distinguish, and tell, which 
 is the globe, which the cube. To which the acute and judi- 
 cious proposer answers : Not. For, though he has obtained 
 the experience of how a globe, how a cube affects his touch ; 
 yet he has not yet attained the experience, that what affects 
 his touch so or so must affect his sight so or so : or that 
 a protuberant angle in the cube, that pressed his hand 
 unequally, shall appear to his eye as it doth in the cube. 
 I agree with this thinking gentleman, whom I am proud to 
 call my friend, in his answer to this his problem ; and am of 
 opinion that the blind man, at first sight, would not be able 
 with certainty to say, Avhich was the globe, which the cube,
 
 New Tlteory of Vision. 213 
 
 whilst he only saw them.' [Essay on Human Understa^iding, 
 b. 11. ch. 9. s. 8 \) 
 
 133. Now, if a square surface perceived by touch be of the 
 same sort with a square surface perceived by sight, it is 
 certain the blind man here mentioned might know a square 
 surface as soon as he saw it. It is no more but introducing 
 into his mind, by a new inlet, an idea he has been already 
 Avell acquainted with. Since therefore he is supposed to have 
 known by his touch that a cube is a body terminated by 
 square surfaces; and that a sphere is not terminated by 
 square surfaces — ujion the supposition that a visible and 
 tangible square differ only in numero, it follows that he might 
 know, by the unerring mark of the square surfaces, which 
 was the cube, and which not, while he only saw them. We 
 must therefore allow, either that visible extension and figures 
 are specifically distinct from tangible extension and figures, 
 or else, that the solution of this problem, given by those two 
 thoughtful and ingenious men, is wrong. 
 
 134. Much more might be laid together in proof of the 
 proposition I have advanced. But, what has been said is, if 
 I mistake not, suflScient to convince any one that shall yield 
 a reasonable attention. And, as for those that will not be at 
 the pains of a little thought, no multiplication of words will 
 ever suffice to make them understand the truth, or rightly 
 conceive my meaning. 
 
 135. I cannot let go the above-mentioned problem without 
 some reflection on it. It hath been made evident that a man 
 blind from his birth would not, at first sight, denominate 
 anything he saw, by the names he had been used to appro- 
 priate to ideas of touch. (Vid. sect. 106.) Cube, sphere, 
 table are words he has known applied to things perceivable 
 by touch, but to things perfectly intangible he never knew 
 them applied. Those words, in their wonted application, 
 
 * See Leibnitz {Nouveaux Essais, liv. II. ch. 9), who disputes the 
 alleged heterogeneity.
 
 214 An EssaT/ towards a 
 
 always marked out to his mind bodies or solid things which 
 were perceived by the resistance they gave. But thei-e is no 
 solidity, no resistance or protrusion, perceived by sight. In 
 short, the ideas of sight are all new perceptions, to which 
 there be no names annexed in his mind ; he cannot therefore 
 understand what is said to him concerning them. And, to 
 ask of the two bodies he saw placed on the table, which was 
 the sphere, which the cube, were to him a question down- 
 right bantering and unintelligible ; nothing he sees being able 
 to suggest to his thoughts the idea of body, distance, or, in 
 general, of anything he had already known. 
 
 136. It is a mistake to think the same thing affects both 
 sight and touch. If the same angle or square which is the 
 object of touch be also the object of vision, what should 
 hinder the l)lind man, at first sight, from knowing it % For, 
 though the manner wherein it affects the sight be different 
 from that wherein it affected his toucb, yet, there being, 
 beside this manner or circumstance, which is new and un- 
 known, the angle or figure, which is old and known, he cannot 
 choose but discern it. 
 
 137. Visible figure and extension having been demonstrated 
 to be of a nature entirely different and heterogeneous from 
 tangible figure and extension, it remains that we inquire con- 
 cerning motion. Now, that visible motion is not of the same 
 sort with tangible motion seems to need no farther proof; 
 it being an evident corollary from what we have shewn con- 
 cerning the difference there is betwixt visible and tangible 
 extension. But, for a more full and expi'ess proof hereof, we 
 need only observe that one who had not yet experienced 
 vision would not at fiist sight know motion. Whence it 
 clearly follows that motion perceivable by sight is of a sort 
 distinct from motion perceivable by touch. The antecedent 
 I prove thus — By touch he could not perceive any motion 
 but what was up or down, to the right or left, nearer or 
 farther from him ; besides these, and their several varieties
 
 Neio Theory of Vision. 215 
 
 or complications, it is impossible he sliould have any idea of 
 motion. He would not therefore think anything to be 
 motion, or give the name motion to any idea, which he could 
 not range under some or other of those particular kinds 
 thereof. But, from sect. 95, it is plain that, by the mere 
 act of vision, he could not know motion upwards or down- 
 wai'ds, to the right or left, or in any other possible direction. 
 From which I conclude, he would not know motion at all at 
 first sight \ — As for the idea of motion in abstract, I shall 
 not waste paper about it, but leave it to my i-eader to make 
 the best he can of it. To me it is perfectly unintelligible. 
 
 138. The consideration of motion may furnish a new field 
 for inquiry. But, since the manner wherein the mind appre- 
 hends by sight the motion of tangible objects, with the 
 various degrees thereof, may be easily collected from what 
 has been said concerning the manner wherein that sense doth 
 suggest their various distances, magnitudes, and situations, I 
 shall not enlarge any farther on this subject, but proceed to 
 inquire what may be alleged, with greatest appearance of 
 reason, against the proposition we have demonstrated to be 
 true ; for, where there is so much prejudice to be encountei-ed, 
 a bare and naked demonstration of the truth will scarce 
 suffice. We must also satisfy the scruples that men may 
 start in favour of their preconceived notions, shew whence 
 the mistake arises, how it came to spread, and carefully 
 disclose and root out those false persuasions that an early 
 prejudice might have implanted in the mind. 
 
 139. First, therefore, it will be demanded how visible ex- 
 
 ' We should not, at first, he hokls, be able to interpret the visual 
 signs of real movements — organic or extra-organic. On Berkeley's 
 fm'ther developed doctrine, real space in its three dimensions consists of 
 tactual sensations and active consciousness of movements ; but the 
 sight of coloured extension, and familiarity with the signs of real exten- 
 sions which it affords, is required as a condition for enabling us dis- 
 tinctly to imaye local exteriority, or an ■ ambient space ' — very much as 
 artificial language is a condition indispensable to our being able to pursue 
 a train of reasonin;^.
 
 216 An Essay toicards a 
 
 tension and figures come to be called by the same name with 
 tangible extension and figures, if they are not of tlie same 
 kind with them % It must be something more than humour 
 or accident that could occasion a custom so constant and 
 universal as this, wdiich has obtained in all ages and nations 
 of the world, and amongst all ranks of men, the learned as 
 well as the illiterate. 
 
 140. To which I answer, we can no more argue a visible 
 and tangible square to be of the same species, from their 
 being called by the same name, tlian we can that a tangible 
 square, and the monosyllable consisting of six letters whereby 
 it is marked, are of the same species, because they are both 
 called by the same name. It is customary to call written 
 words, and the things they signify, by the same name : for, 
 words not being regai*ded in their own nature, or otherwise 
 than as they are marks of things, it had been superfluous, and 
 beside the design of language, to have given them names 
 distinct from those of the things mai-ked by them. The same 
 reason holds here also. Visible figures are the marks of 
 tangible figures ; and, from sect. 59, it is plain that in them- 
 selves they are little regarded, or upon any other score than 
 for their connexion with tangible figures, which by nature 
 they are ordained to signify. And, because this Language of 
 Nature does not vary in different ages or nations, hence it is 
 that in all times and places visible figures are called by the 
 same names as the resj)ective tangible figures suggested by 
 them ; and not because they are alike, or of the same sort 
 with them. 
 
 141. Biit, say you, surely a tangible square is liker to a 
 visil '3 square than to a visible circle : it has four angles, and 
 as many sides ; so also has the visible square — but the visible 
 circle has no such thing, being bounded by one uniform curve, 
 without right lines or angles, which makes it unfit to repre- 
 sent the tangible square, but very fit to represent the tangible 
 circle. Whence it cleai'ly follows, that visible figures are
 
 Neio Theory of Vision. 217 
 
 patterns of, or of the same species with, the respective tan- 
 gible figures represented by them ; that they are like unto 
 them, and of their own nature fitted to represent them, as 
 being of the same sort ; and that they are in no respect 
 arbitraxy signs, as words. 
 
 142. I answer, it must be acknowledged the visible square 
 is fitter than the visible circle to represent the tangible 
 square, but then it is not because it is liker, or more of a 
 species with it ; but, because the visible square contains in it 
 several distinct parts, whereby to mark the several distinct 
 corresponding parts of a tangible square, whereas the visible 
 circle doth not. The square perceived by touch hath four 
 distinct equal sides, so also hath it four distinct equal angles. 
 It is therefore necessary that the visible figure which shall be 
 most proper to mark it contain four distinct equal parts, cor- 
 responding to the four sides of the tangible square ; as like- 
 wise four other distinct and equal parts, whereby to denote 
 the four equal angles of the tangible square. And accordingly 
 we see the visible figures contain in them distinct visible 
 parts, answering to the distinct tangible parts of the figures 
 signified or suggested by them. 
 
 143. But, it will not hence follow that any visible figure is 
 like unto or of the same species with its corresponding tangible 
 figure — unless it be also shewn that not only the number, but 
 also the kind of the parts be the same in both. To illustrate . 
 this, I observe that visible figures represent tangible figures 
 much after the same manner that written words do sounds. ' 
 Now, in this respect, words are not arbitrary; it not being 
 indifferent what written word st nds for any sound. But, it 
 is requisite that each worl contain in it as many distinct 
 characters as there are variations in the sound it stands for. 
 Thus, the single letter a is proper to mark one simple uniform 
 sound ; and the word adultery is accommodated to represent 
 the sound annexed to it — in the formation whereof there 
 being eight different collisions or modifications of the air by
 
 218 An Essai/ toivards a 
 
 the organs of speech, each of which produces a difference of 
 
 sound, it was fit the word representing it should consist of as 
 
 many di&tinct characters, thereby to mark each particular 
 
 difference or part of the whole sound. And yet nobody, I 
 
 presume, will say the single letter a, or the word adultery, 
 
 are alike unto or of the same species with the respective 
 
 sounds by them rej)resented. It is indeed ai'bitrary that, in 
 
 , general, letters of any language represent sounds at all ; but, 
 
 when that is once agreed, it is not arbitrary what combination 
 
 ' of letters shall represent this or that particular sound. I 
 
 ! leave this with the reader to pursue, and apply it in his own 
 
 thoughts. 
 
 144. It must be confes.^ed that we are not so apt to con- 
 found other signs with the things signified, or to think them 
 of the same species, as we are visible and tangible ideas. 
 But, a little consideration will shew us how this may well be, 
 without our supposing them of a like nature. These signs are 
 constant and universal ; their connexion with tangible ideas 
 has been learnt at our first entrance into the world ; and ever 
 since, almost every moment of our lives, it has been occurring 
 to our thoughts, and fastening and striking deeper on our 
 minds. When we observe that signs are variable, and of 
 human institution ; when we remember there was a time 
 they were not connected in our minds with those things 
 they now so readily suggest, but that their signification was 
 learned by the slow steps of experience : this preserves us 
 from confounding them. But, when we find the same signs 
 suggest the same things all over the world ; when wc know 
 they are not of human institution, and cannot remember that 
 we ever learned their signification, but think that at first 
 sight they would have suggested to us the same things they 
 do now : all this persuades us they are of the same species 
 as the things respectively represented by them, and that 
 it is by a natural resemblance they suggest them to our 
 minds.
 
 New Theory of Vision. 219 
 
 145. Add to this that whenever we make a nice survey of 
 any object, successively directing the optic axis to each point 
 thereof, there are certain lines and figui'os, described by the -' 
 motion of the head or eye, which, being in truth perceived by 
 feeling, do nevertheless so mix themselves, as it were, with 
 the ideas of sight that we can scarce think but they appertain 
 to that sense. Again, the ideas of sight enter into the mind j 
 several at once, more distinct and unmingled than is usual in 
 the other senses beside the touch. Sounds, for example, per- 
 ceived at the same instant, are apt to coalesce, if I may so 
 say, into one sound : but we can perceive, at the same time, 
 great variety of visible objects, very separate and distinct from 
 each other. Now, tangible extension being made up of 
 several distinct coexistent parts, we may hence gather an- 
 other reason that may dispose us to imagine a likeness or 
 analogy between the immediate objects of sight and touch. 
 But nothing, certainly, does more conti'ibute to blend and 
 confound them together, than the strict and close connexion , 
 they have with each other. We cannot open our eyes but 
 the ideas of distance, bodies, and tangible figures are suggested 
 by them. So swift, and sudden, and unperceived is the 
 transit from visible to tangible ideas that we can scarce 
 forbear thinking them equally the immediate object of 
 vision, 
 
 146. The prejudice whicli is grounded on these, and what- 
 ever other causes may be assigned thereof, sticks so fast on 
 our understandings, that it is imj^ossible, without obstinate 
 striving and labour of th(i mind, to get entirely clear of it. 
 But then the reluctancy we find in rejecting any opinion can 
 be no argument of its truth, to whoever considers what has 
 been already sliewn with regard to the prejudices we enter- 
 tain concerning the distance, magnitude, and situation of 
 objects ; prejudices so familiar to our minds, so confirmed 
 and inveterate, as they will hardly give way to the clearest 
 demonstration.
 
 . ^ 220 An Ussa^ towards a 
 
 y^ 147 ^- Upon the whole, I think we may fairly conclude that 
 it^ '"'"'^'^'Wie proper objects of vision constitute the Universal Language 
 of Nature, whereby wc are instructed how to regulate our 
 actions, in order to attain those things that are necessary to 
 the preservation and well-being of our bodies, as also to avoid 
 whatever may be hurtful and destructive of them. It is by 
 their infoniiation that we are principally guided in all the 
 transactions and concerns of life. And the manner wherein 
 they signify and mai-k out unto us the objects which are at a 
 distance is the same with that of languages and signs of human 
 appointment ; which do not suggest the things signified by 
 any likeness or identity of nature, but only by an habitual 
 connexion that experience has made us to observe between 
 them. 
 
 148. Suppose one who had always continued blind be told 
 by his guide that after he has advanced so many steps he 
 shall come to the brink of a precipice, or be stopped by a 
 wall ; must not this to him seem very admirable and sur- 
 prising 1 He cannot conceive how it is possible for mortals to 
 frame such predictions as these, which to him would seem as 
 strange and unaccountable as prophecy does to others. Even 
 they who are blessed with the visive faculty may (though 
 familiarity make it less observed) find therein sufficient cause 
 of admiration. The wonderful art and contrivance wherewith 
 it is adjusted to those ends and purposes for which it was 
 apparently designed ; the vast extent, number, and variety of 
 
 * In this and the next section Berkeley sums up the ' theory ' which 
 the preceding analyses called for ; after having as lie believed shewn the 
 complete heterogeneity of the original data in the sciie : of Sight, and 
 the original data in the sense of Touch. He had b-cn gradually ap- 
 proaching it in the preceding sections, where his avourite metaphor of 
 a ' language ' in nature occurs, with the implied arhitrarincss and 
 generality in the signs. When this theory is pushed into its issues, the 
 mathematical as well as physical sciences appear as if based on arbitrary 
 relations among the data of the two senses, all their inferences being 
 sustained by 'suggestions' which are themselves not fully exjjlained, 
 and which yield only general, not iieccsnary or universal conclusions. 
 Compare Vindication, sect. 35-47.
 
 Neto Theory of Vision. 221 
 
 objects that are at once, with so much ease, and quickness, 
 and pleasure, suggested by it — all these afford subject for 
 much and pleasing speculation, and may, if anything, give us 
 some glimmering analogous proenotion of things, that are 
 placed beyond the certain discovery and comprehension of 
 our present state \ 
 
 149. I do not design to trouble myself much with drawing 
 corollai'ies from the doctrine I have hitherto laid down. If it 
 bears the test, others may, so far as they shall think con- 
 venient, employ their thoughts in extending it farther, and 
 applying it to whatever purposes it may be subservient to. 
 Only, I cannot forbear making some inquiry concerning the 
 object of Geometry, which the subject we have been upon does 
 naturally lead one to. We have shewn there is no such idea 
 as that of extension in abstract, and that there are two kinds 
 
 of sensible extension and figures, which are entirely distinct ^,,^^^_^^-^ 
 and heterogeneous from each other. Now, it is natural to y d-ucA. . /■■ 
 inquire which of these is the object of geometry ^ '^'^""•^ .v-i-//-.^ : 
 
 150. Some things there are which, at first sight, incline one 
 to think geometry conversant about visible extension. The 
 constant use of the eyes, both in the practical and speculative 
 parts of that science, doth very much induce us thereto. It 
 would, without doubt, seem odd to a mathematician to go 
 about to convince him the diagrams he saw upon paper were 
 not the figures, or even the likeness of the figures, which 
 make the subject of the demonstration — the contrary being 
 held an unquestionable truth, not only by mathematicians, but 
 also by those who apply themselves more particularly to the 
 
 ^ Mixed mathematical science is on Berkeley's theory previsive. The 
 Book of Vision is throughout a Book of God, which we are really inter- 
 preting, when we seem to be seeing, and which we find to be literally 
 a Book of Prophecy. 
 
 ^ But it has been held that the 'object of geometry' is neither the 
 phenomena of colour nor the phenomena of resistance, but an extension 
 that is necessarily presupposed in all perception of sensible objects, 
 although not in its intelligible relations an object of any of the senses. 
 This view of space, as somehow universally and necessarily blended 
 with the data of sight and touch, is not entertained in the Esmy.
 
 222 An Essay towards a 
 
 study of logic ; I mean who consider the nature of science, 
 certainty, and demonstration ; it being by them assigned as 
 one reason of the extraordinary clearness and evidence of 
 geometry, that in that science the reasonings are free from 
 those inconveniences which attend the use of arbitrary signs, 
 the very ideas themselves being copied out, and exposed to 
 view upon paper. But, by the bye, how well this agrees with 
 what they likewise assert as abstract ideas being the object of 
 geometrical demonstration I leave to be considered. 
 
 151. To come to a resolution in this point, we need only 
 observe what has been said in sect. 59, 60, 61, where it is 
 shewn that visible extensions in themselves are little regarded, 
 and have no settled determinate greatness, and that men 
 measui'e altogether by the application of tangible extension 
 to tangible extension. All which makes it evident that 
 visible extension and figures are not the object of geometry. 
 
 152. It is therefore plain that visible figures are of the 
 same use in geometry that words are. And the one may as 
 well be accounted the object of that science as the other; 
 neither of them being any otherwise concerned therein than 
 as they represent or suggest to the mind the particular tan- 
 gible figures connected with them. There is, indeed, this 
 difference betwixt the signification of tangible figures by 
 visible figures, and of ideas by words — that whereas the 
 latter is variable and uncertain, depending altogether on the 
 arbitrary appointment of men, the former is fixed, and im- 
 mutably the same in all times and places, A visible square, 
 for instance, suggests to the mind the same tangible figure 
 in Europe that it doth in America. Hence it is, that the 
 voice of nature, which speaks to our eyes, is not liable to 
 that misinterpretation and ambiguity that languages of human 
 contrivance are unavoidably subject to. From which may, 
 in some measure, be derived that peculiar evidence and clear- 
 ness of geometrical demonstrations. 
 
 153. Though what has been said may suffice to shew what
 
 Neio Theory of Vision. 223 
 
 ought to be determined with relation to the object of geometry, 
 I shall, nevertheless, for the fuller illustration thereof, take 
 into my thoughts the case of an intelligence or unbodied spirit, 
 which is supposed to see perfectly well, i. e. to have a clear 
 perception of the proper and immediate objects of sight, but 
 to have no sense of touch. Whetlier there be any such being 
 in nature or no, is beside my purpose to inquire ; it suffices, 
 that the supposition contains no contradiction in it. Let us 
 now examine what proficiency sucli a one may be able to 
 make in geometry. "Which speculation will lead us more 
 clearly to see whether the ideas of sight can possibly be the 
 object of that science^. 
 
 154. First, then, it is certain the afoi'csaid intelligence 
 could have no idea of a solid or quantity of three dimensions, 
 which follows from its not liaving any idea of distance. We, 
 indeed, are prone to think that we have by sight the ideas of 
 space and solids ; which arises from our imagining that we 
 do, strictly speaking, see distance, and some parts of an object 
 at a greater distance than others ; which has been demon- 
 strated to be the effect of the experience we have had what 
 ideas of touch are connected with such and such ideas attend- 
 ing vision. But the intelligence hei'e spoken of is supposed 
 to have no experience of touch. He would not, therefoi-e, 
 judge as we do. nor have any idea of distance, outness, or 
 profundity, nor consequently of space or body, either imme- 
 diately or by suggestion. "Whence it is plain he can have no 
 notion of those parts of geometry which relate to the men- 
 suration of solids, and their convex or concave surfaces, and 
 
 * This is a conjecture, not as to the possible conceptions of the born 
 blind, but as to the conceptions of an 'unbodied' intelligence, capable 
 only of the ' ideas ' of pure vision. Compare Reid's speculations on the 
 'Geometry of Visibles ' and the Idomenians, Inquiry, ch. vi. s. 9 — as 
 to which Priestley remarks, ' I do not remember to have seen a more 
 egregious piece of solemn trifling than the chapter which our author 
 calls the "Geometry of Visibles," and his account of the "Idomenians," 
 as he terms those imaginai-y beings who have no ideas of substance but 
 from sight.' See Reid's allusion to this passage in his Esmijs on the 
 Intellectual Powers, p. 282, Hamilton's Edition.
 
 224 An Essay towards a 
 
 contemplate the properties of lines generated by the section 
 of a solid. The conceiving of any part whereof is beyond the 
 reach of his faculties. 
 
 155. Farther, he cannot comprehend the manner wherein 
 geometers describe a right line or circle ; the rule and com- 
 pass, with their use, being things of which it is impossible he 
 should have any notion. Nor is it an easier matter for him 
 to conceive the placing of one plane or angle on another, in 
 order to prove their equality ; since that sujDposes some idea 
 of distance, or external space. All which makes it evident 
 our pure intelligence could never attain to know so much as 
 the first elements of plain geometry. And perhaj)s, upon a 
 nice inquiry, it will be found he cannot even have an idea of 
 plain figures any more than he can of solids ; since some idea 
 of distance is necessary to form the idea of a geometrical 
 plane, as will appear to whoever shall reflect a little on it. 
 
 156. All that is propei'ly perceived by the visive faculty 
 amounts to no more than colours with their variations, and 
 different proportions of light and shade — but the perpetual 
 mutability and fleetingness of those immediate objects of sight 
 render them incapable of being managed after the manner of 
 geometrical figures ; nor is it in any degree useful that they 
 should. It is true there be divers of them perceived at once ; 
 and more of some, and less of others ; but accurately to com- 
 pute their magnitude, and assign pi'ecise determinate propor- 
 tions between things so variable and inconstant, if we suppose 
 it possible to be done, must yet be a very trifling and insigni- 
 ficant labour. 
 
 157. I must confess, it seems to be the opinion of some 
 very ingenious men that flat or plane figures are immediate 
 objects of sight, though they acknowledge solids are not. And 
 this opinion of theirs is grounded on what is observed in 
 painting, wherein (say they) the ideas immediately imprinted 
 in the mind are only of planes variously coloured, which, by 
 a sudden act of the judgment, are changed into solids : but,
 
 Neio Theori/ of Vision. 225 
 
 with a little attention, we shall find the planes here men- 
 tioned as the immediate objects of sight are not visible but 
 tangible planes. For, when we say that pictures are planes, 
 we mean thereby that they appear to the touch smooth and 
 uniform. But then this smoothness and uniformity, or, in 
 other words, this planeness of the picture is not perceived 
 immediately by virion ; for it appeareth to the eye various 
 and multiform. 
 
 158. From all which we may conclude that planes are no 
 more the immediate object of sight than solids. What we 
 strictly see are not solids, nor yet planes variously coloured — 
 they are only diversity of colours. And some of these sug- 
 gest to the mind solids, and others plain figures ; just as they 
 have been experienced to be connected with the one or the 
 other: so that we see jilanes in the same way that we see 
 solids — both being equally suggested by the immech'ate objects 
 of sight, which accordingly are themselves denominated planes 
 and solids. But, though they are called by the same names 
 with the things marked by them, they ai-e, nevertheless, of a 
 nature entirely different, as hath been demonstrated^. 
 
 * Does Berkeley mean to hint, in this and the preceding sections, that 
 the only proper object of sight is unextended colour — that even super- 
 ficial extension is invisible — and that, apart from sensations and exer- 
 tions in the motor organs, all vtsibilia are regarded as unextended 
 points ? For, it has since been asked whether even the smallest coloured 
 extension could be seen without an experience of organic movement ? 
 Among British writers, Brown {Lectures, XXIX), J. S. Mill {Exam, 
 of Hamilton, pp. 285-287), and Dr. Bain {Senses and Intellect, 
 pp. 366-378), answer this question in the negative. They virtu- 
 ally analyse our perception of extension in length and breadth, as 
 well as in depth, into sensations of impeded and unimpeded organic 
 movement, including muscular expansion and contraction. They deny 
 that/or»i, can be seen in colour alone, or that what we mean by visible 
 form can be conceived by one who has never been conscious of sensa- 
 tions of locomotion — at least in the eye. They suppose us to understand 
 by a ' round' form something that presupposes a felt sweep of the eye to 
 enable us to apprehend it. We nmst, it is argued, have experience of 
 movement before we can find any extension in our visual perceptions of 
 colour. ' I cannot,' says Mill, ' admit that we could have what is meant 
 by a perception of superficial space, unless we conceived it as something 
 which the hand could be moved across.' Yet both Mill and Dr. Bain 
 seem to allow that when the extended area is very small (less than --^ of 
 
 Q
 
 226 All Essa?/ toioards a 
 
 159. What has been said is, if I mistake not, sufficient to 
 decide the question we proposed to examine, concerning the 
 ability of a pure spirit, such as we have described, to know 
 geometry. It is, indeed, no easy matter for us to enter pre- 
 cisely into the thoughts of such an intelligence; because we 
 cannot, without great pains, cleverly separate and disentangle 
 in our thoughts the proper objects of sight from those of 
 touch which are connected with them. This, indeed, in a 
 complete degree seems scarce possible to be perfoi-med; which 
 will not seem sti-ange to us, if we consider how hard it is for 
 any one to hear the words of his native language, which is 
 familiar to him, pronounced in his ears without understand- 
 
 an inch in diameter), it can be seen without any motion even in the 
 visual organ. On this subject see Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics, 
 vol. II. p. 165, where a reason is offered for concluding the necessary 
 implication of superficial extension in all sense-experience of colours. 
 
 As to all this the question arises, whether the very perception of 
 phenomena in motion does not necessarily presuppose that of space or 
 room, as the condition of our having it. If so, the proposed explanation 
 of the latter by the former would involve petitio principii. Can the 
 notion of motion be resolved into that of successive phenomena of any 
 kind ? As a relative question, one might also ask what conception of 
 motion is possible to a person born blind ? 
 
 Some hold that all sensuous impressions, in all the senses, are origin- 
 ally given as external to one another in place — in short, that we cannot 
 have any organic sensation without a corresponding perception of an 
 involved extension — that ' sensation proper [of our organism] and per- 
 ception proper [of the extended] exist only as they co-exist,' though 
 always in an inverse ratio of intensity — and that we are originall}- and 
 properly sentient and percipient of our own extended organism and of 
 that onlj'. ' All the senses,' says Hamilton, ' simply or in combination, 
 afford conditions for the perception of the primary qualities ' (Reid, 
 Works, p. 864). But of what sort of ' extension ' is this affii-med ; and 
 do we find as a fact in any of the senses that, in any meaning of exten- 
 sion, we perceive the extent of the organ affected ? 
 
 ' Mmd alone,^ says Mansel, 'is not capable of sensation ; for it is sen- 
 tient only so far as it animates a bodily organism. That a disembodied 
 spirit has consciousness we must believe ; — at least it is impossible to 
 conceive how spiritual existence can be otherwise manifested ; — but 
 it is impossible to conceive such consciousness as at all resembling our 
 own, at any rate in the jiarticular phenomena which are conveyed by 
 means of the senses' {Metaphysics, p. 91). Compare this assumption 
 with Berkeley, quoted in note i, p. 132, who assumes, on the contrary, 
 that it is possible to be conscious of seeing colours without our having 
 an eye, and sounds when we are destitute of our present organ of 
 bearing.
 
 'Neio Theory of Vision. 227 
 
 ing them. Though lie endeavour to disunite the meaning 
 from the sound, it will nevertheless intrude into his thoughts, 
 and he shall find it extreme difficult, if not impossible, to put 
 himself exactly in the posture of a foreigner that never learnt 
 the language, so as to be affected barely with the sounds 
 themselves, and not perceive the signification annexed to 
 them. — By this time, I suppose, it is clear that neither 
 abstract nor visible extension makes the object of geometry ; 
 the not discerning of which may, perhaps, have created some 
 difficulty and useless labour in Mathematics. 
 
 *^* I am informed that, soon after the first edition of this 
 treatise, a man somewhere near London was made to see, 
 who had been born blind and continued so for about twenty 
 years ^. Such a one may be supposed a proper judge to 
 decide how far some tenets laid down in several places of 
 the foregoing Essay are agreeable to truth ; and if any 
 curious person hath the opportunity of making proper inter- 
 rogatories to him thereon, I should gladly see my notions 
 either amended or confirmed by experience. 
 
 ' This reference (added in the second edition) seems to be to a case, 
 described in the Tatler (No. 55) of August 16, 1709, of a young man, 
 William Jones, born blind, who, at the age of twenty, on the 29th of 
 June preceding, had received sight by a surgical operation. The ques- 
 tion which these experiments may help to determine is, whether the 
 space perceived in sight and the space perceived in touch are identical ; 
 or whether, on the contrary, our tendency to suppose them the same 
 may not be explained by the fact that the data of sight are signs which 
 lead us, through suggestion consequent upon custom, to anticipate ex- 
 periences of tactual extension which the visual signs signify — thus pro- 
 ducing an illusion of their sameness. 
 
 i 
 
 Q 2
 
 DIVINE VISUAL LANGUAGE 
 
 A DIALOGUE.
 
 DIVINE VISUAL LANGUAGE: 
 
 A DIALOGUES 
 
 I. EAE.LY the next morning, as I looked out of my 
 window, I saw Alciphron walking in the garden with all the 
 
 * This is the Fourth of the Seven Dialogues, published by Berkeley 
 in 1732, under the title of Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher. 
 ' Minute philosophers ' were sensationalist sceptics. Alcij^ihron and 
 Lysicles represent minute philosophy — the former in its more intel- 
 lectual form, and the latter as received by men of pleasure ; Euphranor 
 and Cri_to vindicate religion. The following Dialogue discusses the 
 reason for our faith in the perpetual activity of God in the world to i 
 which we are awakened in the Senses. As the Power that regulates 
 the succession of phenomena present in the senses is continually 
 making us percipient in Sight of significant phenomena, which are to all 
 intents and purposes a Universal Language, it is argued that we have 
 the same kind (and a greater amount) of eviilence for that Power being 
 an intelligent and intending Spirit as we have for the existence of a 
 human being when one is actually speaking to us. The explanation 
 raises the inquiry, how individual mind communicates with individual 
 mind through the medium of a material world composed of sense phe-, 
 noinena. The lesson is that the world of visible phenomena is a sym- 
 bolical revelation of God; that nature is significant of a religious 
 meaning ; that natural laws are the expression of a constant providence. 
 
 The subject is introduced in sect. 1-7. The theory that what is 
 commonly called ' seeing ' is to a great degree interpreting what is seen 
 is explained in sect. 8-15 ; where it is argued that, as the visible 
 world at least has no independent existence, the phenomena presented 
 to Sight, in their orderly and therefore significant relations to those 
 of Touch, must be the expression of Supreme Rational Will. — The 
 remainder of the DialoLfue (sect. 16-24) is devoted to a discussion of 
 the nature and limits of human knowledge of the Supreme Power. 
 Crito argues that it cannot be merely negative ; for absolute nescience 
 is not consistent with faith. It is a supreme governing Spirit, on 
 whom we all depend ; the knowledge or ' notion ' we have of our own 
 er/o being the root of our knowledge of all spiritual agency — finite or 
 Divine. God is inferred from the significant phenomena of the visible 
 world in the same sort of way that other human spirits are inferred from 
 their words and actions manifested to our senses. 
 
 This Dialogue may be taken as an introduction to Natural Theology, 
 founded on the suggested significance of the data of Sense — especially 
 of sight.
 
 232 Divine Visual Language: A Dialogue. 
 
 signs of a man in deep thought. Upon which I went down 
 to him. 
 
 Alciphron, said I, this early and profound meditation puts 
 me in no small fright. 
 
 How so ? 
 
 Because I should be sorry to be convinced there was no 
 God. The thought of anarchy in Nature is to me more 
 shocking than in civil life : inasmuch as natural concerns are 
 more important than civil, and the basis of all others. 
 
 I grant, replied Alciphron, that some inconvenience may 
 possibly follow from disproving a God : but as to what you 
 say of fright and shocking, all that is nothing but mere pre- 
 judice. Men frame an idea or chimera in their own minds, and 
 then fall down and worship it. Notions govern mankind : 
 but of all notions that of God's governing the world hath 
 taken the deepest root and spread the farthest : it is there- 
 fore in philosophy an heroical achievement to dispossess this 
 imaginary monarch of his government, and banish all those 
 fears and spectres which the light of reason can alone 
 
 dispel : 
 
 Non radii solis, non lucida tela diei 
 Discutiunt, sed naturae species ratioque *. 
 
 My part, said I, shall be to stand by, as I have hitherto 
 done, and take notes of all that passeth during this memor- 
 able event; while a minute philosopher, not six feet high, 
 attempts to dethrone the monarch of the universe. 
 
 Alas ! replied Alciphron, arguments are not to be measured 
 by feet and inches. One man may see more than a million ; 
 and a short argument, managed by a free-thinker, may be 
 .sufficient to overthrow the most gigantic chimera. 
 
 As we were engaged in this discourse, Crito and Euphranor 
 joined us. 
 
 I find you have been beforehand with us to-day, said Crito 
 to Alciphron, and talvcn the advantage of solitude and early 
 
 ' Lucretius.
 
 The existence of God. 233 
 
 hours, while Euphranor and I were asleep in our beds. We 
 may, therefore, expect to see Atheism placed in the best 
 light, and supported by the strongest arguments. 
 
 2. Ale, The being of a God is a subject upon which there 
 has been a world of commonplace, which it is needless to re- 
 peat. Give me leave therefore to lay down certain rules and 
 limitations, in order to shorten our present conference. For, 
 as the end of debating is to persuade, all those things which 
 are foreign to this end should be left out of our debate. 
 
 First then, let me tell you I am not to be persuaded by 
 met^_physical arguments ; such, for instance, as are drawn 
 from the idea of an all-perfect being, or the absurdity of an 
 infinite progression of causes. This sort of arguments I have 
 always found dry and jejune \ and, as they are not suited to 
 my way of thinking, they may perhaps puzzle, but never will 
 convince me. Secondly, I am not to be persuaded by the 
 authority either of past or present ages, of mankind in 
 general, or of particular wise men, all which passeth for little 
 or nothing with a man of sound argument and free thought. 
 Thirdly, all proofs drawn from utility or convenience are 
 foreign to the purpose. They may prove indeed the useful- 
 ness of the notion, but not the existence of the thing. What- 
 ever legislators or statesmen may think, truth and convenience 
 are very different things to the rigorous eye of a philosopher. 
 
 And now, that I may not seem partial, I will limit myself 
 also not to object, in the first place, from anything that may 
 seem irregular or unaccountable in the works of nature, 
 against a cause of infinite power and wisdom ; because I 
 already know the answer you will make, to wit, that no one 
 can judge of the symmetry and use of the parts of an infinite 
 machine, which are all relative to each other, and to the 
 whole, without being able to comprehend the entire machine, 
 or the whole universe. And, in the second place, I shall 
 engage myself not to object against the justice and providence 
 of a supreme Being from the evil that befalls good men, and
 
 234 Divine Visual Language: A Dialogue. 
 
 the prosperity which is often the portion of wicked men in 
 this life ; because I know that, instead of admitting this to be 
 an objection against a Deity, you would make it an argument 
 for a future state, in which there shall be such a retribution 
 of rewards and punishments as may vindicate the Divine 
 attributes, and set all things right in the end. Now, these 
 answers, though they should be admitted for good ones, are 
 in truth no proofs of the being of God, but only solutions of 
 certain difficulties which might be objected, supposing it 
 already proved by proper arguments. Thus much I thought 
 fit to premise, in order to save time and trouble both to you 
 and myself. 
 
 Cri. I think that as the proper end of our conference ought 
 to be supposed the discovery and defence of truth, so truth 
 may be justified, not only by persuading its adversaries, but, 
 where that cannot be done, by shewing them to be unreason- 
 able. Arguments, therefore, which carry light have their 
 effect, even against an opponent who shuts his eyes, because 
 they shew him to be obstinate and prejudiced. Besides, this 
 distinction between arguments that puzzle and that convince, 
 is least of all observed by minute philosophers, and need not 
 therefore be observed by others in their favour. — But, 
 perhaps, Euphranor may be willing to encounter you on your 
 own terms, in which case I have nothing further to say. 
 
 3. Ewph. Alciphron acts like a skilful general, who is bent 
 upon gaining the advantage of the ground, and alluring the 
 enemy out of their trenches. We who believe a God are en- 
 trenched within ti'adition, custom, authority, and law. And, 
 nevertheless, instead of attempting to force us, he proposes 
 that we should voluntarily abandon these intrenchments, and 
 make the attack ; when we may act on the defensive with 
 much security and ease, leaving him the trouble to dispossess 
 us of what we need not resign. Those reasons (continued he, 
 addressing himself to Alciphron) which you have mustered 
 up in this morning's meditation, if they do not weaken, must
 
 Can ive see God? 235 
 
 establish our belief of a God ; for the utmost is to be ex- 
 pected from so great a master in his profession, when he 
 sets his strength to a point. 
 
 Ale. I hold the confused notion of a Deity, or some in- 
 visible power, to be of all prejudices the most unconquerable. 
 When half-a-dozen ingenious men are got together over a 
 glass of wine, by a cheerful fire, in a room well lighted, we 
 banish with ease all the spectres of fancy and education, and 
 are very clear in our decisions. But, as I was taking a 
 solitary walk before it was broad daylight in yonder grove, 
 methought the point was not quite so clear ; nor could I 
 readily I'ecollect the force of those arguments which used to 
 appear so conclusive at other times. I had I know not what 
 awe upon my mind, and seemed haunted by a sort of jjanic, 
 which I cannot otherwise account for than by supposing it the 
 effect of prejudice : for, you must know, that I, like the rest 
 of the world, was once upon a time catechised and tutored into 
 the belief of a God or Spirit. There is no surer mark of pre- 
 judice than the believing a thing without reason. What ne- 
 cessity then can there be that I should set myself the difficult 
 task of proving a negative, when it is sufficient to observe 
 that there is no proof of the affirmative, and that the ad- 
 mitting it without proof is unreasonable ] Prove therefore 
 your opinion ; or, if you cannot, you may indeed remain 
 in possession of it, but you will only be possessed of a 
 prejudice. 
 
 Eu2)h. O Alciphron, to content you we must prove, it 
 seems, and we must prove upon your own terms. But, in 
 the first place, let us see what sort of proof you expect. 
 
 Ale. Perhaps I may not expect it, but I will tell you what 
 sort of proof I would have : and that is, in short — such proof 
 as every man of sense requires of a matter of fact, or the 
 existence of any other particular thing. For instance, should 
 a man ask why I believe there is a king of Great Britain ? I 
 might answer — Because I had seen him. Or a king of Spain 1
 
 236 Divine Visual Language: A Dialogue. 
 
 Because I had seen those who saw him. But as for this 
 King of kings, I neither saw him myself, or any one else 
 that ever did see Him, Surely, if there be such a thing 
 as God, it is very strange that He should leave Himself 
 without a witness ; that men should still dispute His being ; 
 and that there should be no one evident, sensible, plain 
 proof of it, without recourse to philosophy or metaphysics. 
 A matter of fact is not to be proved by notions, but by 
 facts \ This is clear and full to the point. You see what 
 I would be at. Upon these principles I defy superstition. 
 
 Eupli. You believe then as far as you can see % 
 
 Ale. That is my rule of faith, 
 
 Eupli. How ! will you not believe the existence of things 
 which you hear, unless you also see them ? 
 
 Ale. I will not say so neither, AVhen I insisted on seeing, 
 I would be understood to mean perceiving; in general. Out- 
 ward objects make very different impressions upon the animal 
 spirits, all of which are comprised under the common name 
 of sense. And whatever we can perceive hy any sense we 
 may be sure of. 
 
 ' So Hume in Inquiry concerning Understanding, sect. 4, pt. i. 
 Those matters of fact for which we have not the direct evidence of 
 sense cannot be ascertained in the same way as abstract conclusions, 
 which are demonstratively certain. ' The contrary of every matter of 
 fact,' he points out, ' is still po.ssible, because it can never imply a 
 contradiction . , . That the sun will not rise to-morrow is no less in- 
 telligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the 
 affirmation, that it will rise . . . All reasonings concerning matters of 
 fact seem to be founded on the relation of cause and effect. [This 
 relation with Hume, as with Berkeley, is virtually that of sign and 
 thing signified.] If you ask a man why he believes any matter of fact 
 which is absent, he would give you a reason ; and this reason would be 
 some other fact' [which is present], — But is God in this respect like ordi- 
 nary matters of fact, as Berkeley tries to make out ? His existence ia 
 the fact of the absolute supremacy of reason and moral government in 
 the universe ? ' The existence and nature of the Supreme Being,' says 
 Reid (so far recognising the peculiarity), ' is the only real fact that is 
 necessary. Other real existences are the effects of will and power. They 
 liad a beginning and .are mutable.' (Hamilton's Ruid, p. 442.) In this 
 respect the existence of God is unique, and thus out of analogy with 
 the existence of an embodied human spirit, external to me.
 
 Spirit signified in Sense. 237 
 
 4. Ewi^h. "What ! do you believe then that there are such 
 things as_ainmal spirits ? 
 
 Ale. Doubtless. 
 
 Euph. By what sense do you perceive them 1 
 
 Ale. I do not perceive them immediately by any of my 
 senses. I am nevertheless persuaded of their existence, be- 
 cause I can collect it from their.ejBfects and operations. They 
 are the messengers which, running to and fro in the nerves, 
 preserve a communication between the soul and outward 
 objects. 
 
 Ewph. You admit then the being of a soul % 
 
 Ale. Provided I do not admit an immaterial substance, I 
 see no inconvenience in admitting there may be such a thing 
 as a soul. And this may be no more than a thin fine texture 
 of subtle parts or spirits residing in the brain, 
 
 Eui:)h, I do not ask about its nature. I only ask whether 
 you admit that there is a principle of thought and action, and 
 whether it be perceivable by sense. 
 
 Ale. I gi'ant that there is such a j)i'incij)le, and that it is 
 not the object of sense itself, but inferred from appearances 
 which are perceived by sense. 
 
 Ewph. If I understand you rightly, from animal functions 
 and motions you infer the existence of animal spirits, and 
 from reasonable acts you infer the existence of a reasonable 
 soul. Is is not so ? 
 
 Ale. It is. 
 
 Exiph. It should seem, therefore, that the being of things 
 imperceptible to sense may be collected from effects and signs, 
 or sensible tokens. 
 
 Ale. It may. 
 
 Eupli. Tell me, Alciphron, is not the soul that which 
 makes the principal distinction between a real person and a 
 shadow, a living man and a carcass ] 
 
 Ale. I grant it is. 
 
 Ewph. I cannot, thei'efove, know that you, for instance, are
 
 238 Divine Visual Language: A Dialogue. 
 
 a distinct thinking individual, or a living real man, by surer 
 or other signs than those from which it can be inferred that 
 you have a soul % 
 
 Ale. You cannot. 
 
 Ewph. Pray tell me, are not all acts immediately and pro- 
 perly perceived by sense reducible to motion ? 
 
 Ah. They are. 
 
 Eufh. From motions, therefore, you infer a mover or cause ; 
 and from reasonable motions (or such as appear calculated 
 for a reasonable end) a rational cause, soul or spirit % 
 
 Ale. Even so. 
 
 5. Ewph. The soul of man actuates but a small body, an 
 insignificant particle, in respect of the great masses of Natui'e, 
 the elements, and heavenly bodies, and System of the World. 
 And the wisdom that appears in those motions which are 
 the effect of human reason is incomparably less than that 
 which discovers itself in the structure and use of organised 
 natural bodies, animal or vegetable. A man with his hand 
 can make no machine so admirable as the hand itself; nor 
 can any of those motions by which we trace out human 
 reason approach the skill and contrivance of those wonderful 
 motions of the heart, and brain, and other vital parts, which 
 do not depend on the will of man. 
 
 Ale. All this is true. 
 
 Eiqoh. Doth it not follow, then, that from natural motions, 
 independent of man's will, may be inferi-ed both power and 
 wisdom incomparably greater than that of the human soul 1 
 
 Ale. It should seem so. 
 
 Euplh. Further, is there not in natural productions and 
 effects a visible unity of counsel and design % Are not the 
 rules fixed and immoveable % Do not the same laws of motion 
 obtain throughout ? The same in China and here, the same 
 two thousand years ago and at this day ? 
 
 Ale. All this I do not deny. 
 
 Euph. Is there not also a connexion or relation between
 
 Ca7i I see You? 239 
 
 animals and vegetables, between botb and the elements, be- 
 tween the elements and heavenly bodies ; so that, from their 
 mutual respects, influences, subordinations, and uses, they 
 may be collected to be parts of one whule, conspiring to one 
 and the same end, and fulfilling the same design ? 
 
 Ale. Supposing all this to be true. 
 
 Euph. Will it not then follow that this vastly great, or 
 infinite, power and wisdom must be supposed in one and 
 the same Agent, Spirit, or Mind ; and that we have at least 
 as clear, full, and immediate certainty of the being of this 
 infinitely wise and powerful Spirit, as of any one human soul 
 whatsoever besides our own ? 
 
 Ale. Let me consider : I suspect vve proceed too hastily. 
 What ! Do you pretend you can have the same assurance of 
 the being of a God that you can have of mine, whom you 
 actually see stand before you and talk to you % 
 
 Eupli. The very same, if not greater. 
 
 Ale. How do you make this appear % 
 
 Etiph. By the person Alciphron is meant an individual 
 thinking thing, and not the hair, skin, or visible surface, or any | 
 part of the outward form, colour, or shape of Alcij^hron. 
 
 Ah. This I grants 
 
 Ewph. And, in granting this, you grant that, in a strict 
 sense, I do not see Alciphron, i. e. that individual thinking , 
 thing, but only such visible signs and tokens as suggest and \ 
 infer^ the being of that invisible thinking principle or soul. 
 Even so, in the self- same manner, it seems to me that, though 
 I cannot with eyes of flesh behold the invisible God, yet I do 
 
 * Later theological scepticism would object to this separate unbodied 
 individuality, as an abstraction foreign to our whole experience of self- 
 conscious personality and agency, which we always find embodied in 
 an organism. It concludes, accordingly, that self-conscious persons and 
 all their states ultimately depend on organised matter, and would accept 
 the organism as the 'individual.' 
 
 ^ Here ' suggestion' and ' inference ' are both included in the process 
 which conducts to our belief in the existence of other persons — or, as 
 Berkeley calls them, other ' thinking things.'
 
 240 Divme Visual Language: A Dialogue. 
 
 in the strictest sense behold and perceive by all my senses 
 such signs and tokens, such effects and operations, as suggest, 
 indicate, and demonstrate an invisible God— as certainly, and 
 with the same evidence, at least, as any other signs, perceived 
 by sense, do suggest to me the existence of your soul, spirit, 
 or thinking principle ; which I am convinced of only by a 
 few signs or effects, and the motions of one small organised 
 body: whereas I do at all times and in all places perceive 
 sensible signs which evince the being of God. The point, 
 therefore, doubted or denied by you at the beginning, now 
 seems manifestly to follow from the premises. Throughout 
 this whole enquiry, have we not considered every step with 
 care, and made not the least advance without clear evidence % 
 You and I examined and assented singly to each foregoing 
 proposition : what shall we do then with the conclusion % 
 For my part, if you do not help me out, I find myself under 
 an absolute necessity of admitting it for true. You must 
 therefore be content henceforward to bear the blame, if I live 
 and die in the belief of a God \ 
 
 6. Ale. It must be confessed, I do not readily find an 
 answer. There seems to be some foundation for what you 
 say. But, on the other hand, if the point was so clear as you 
 pretend, I cannot conceive how so many sagacious men of 
 our sect should be so much in the dark as not to know or 
 believe one syllable of it. 
 
 Eufh. Alciphron, it is not our present business to ac- 
 count for the oversights, or vindicate the honour, of those 
 great men the free-thinkers, when their very existence is in 
 danger of being called in question. 
 
 Ale. How so ? 
 
 Euijli. Be pleased to recollect the concessions you have 
 
 ^ The argument here ascends from facts that are given in sense to a 
 transcendent Fact. It is based on the analogy of the sensible facts 
 which are accepted as a proof of the existence of our fellow-men. But 
 if their existence is only as organised spirits, arc we to transfer this 
 analogy too to God ?
 
 God speaks to Man throiirjh the Senses. 241 
 
 made, and then shew me, if the argunionts for a Deity be not 
 conclusive, by what better arguments you can prove the 
 existence of that thinking thing^ which in strictness con- 
 stitutes tlie free-thinker. 
 
 As soon as Euphranor had uttered these words, Alciphron 
 stopped short, and stood in a posture of meditation, while the 
 rest of us continued our walk and took two or three turns, 
 after which he joined us again with a smiling countenance, 
 like one who had made some discovery. 
 
 I have found, said he, what may clear up the point in 
 dispute, and give Eujihranor entire satisfaction ; I would say 
 an argument which will prove the existence of a free-thinker, 
 the like whereof cannot be applied to prove the existence of 
 God. You must know then that your notion of our per- 
 ceiving the existence of God, as certainly and immediately as 
 we do that of a human person, I could by no means digest, 
 though I must own it puzzled me, till I had considered the 
 matter. At first methought a particular structure, shape, or 
 motion was a most certain proof of a thinking reasonable 
 soul. But a little attention satisfied me that these things 
 have no necessaiy connexion with reason, knowledge, and 
 wisdom ; and that, allowing them to be certain proofs of a 
 living soul, they cannot be so of a thinking and reasonable 
 one. Upon second thoughts, therefore, and a minute examina- 
 tion of this point, I have found that nothing so much convinces 
 me of the existence of another person as his speaking to me. 
 It is my hearing you talk that, in strict and philosophical 
 truth, is to me the best argument for your being. And this 
 is a peculiar argument, inapplicable to your purpose ; for, you 
 will not, I suppose, pretend that God speaks to man in the 
 same clear and sensible manner as one man doth to another ? 
 
 7. Eupli. How ! is then the impression of sound so much 
 more evident than that of other senses % Or, if it be, is the 
 voice of man louder than that of thunder % 
 1 See the two preceding notes. 
 R
 
 242 Divine Visual Language: A Dialogue. 
 
 Ale. Alas ! you mistake the jDoiut. What I mean is iiiot 
 the sound of speech merely as such, but the arbitrary use 
 of sensible signs, which have no similitude or necessa»ry 
 connexion with the things signified ; so as by the apposite 
 management of them to suggest and exhibit to my mind an 
 endless variety of things, differing in nature, time, and place ; 
 thereby informing me, entertaining me, and directing me 
 how to act, not only with regard to things near and present, 
 but also with regard to things distant and future. No matter 
 whether these signs ai'e pronounced or written ; whether they 
 enter by the eye or ear : they have the same use, and are 
 equally proofs of an intelligent, thinking, designing cause. 
 
 Eujyh. But what if it should appear that God really speaks 
 to man ; would this content you 1 
 
 Ale. I am for admitting no inward speech, no holy in- 
 stincts, or suggestions of light or sj)irit. All that, you must 
 know, passeth with men of sense for nothing ^ If you do 
 not make it plain to me that God speaks to men by outward 
 sensible signs, of such sort and in such manner as I have 
 defined, you do nothing. 
 
 Euph. But if it shall appear plainly that God speaks to 
 men by the intervention and use of arbitrary, outward, sen- 
 sible signs, having no resemblance or necessary connexion 
 with the things they stand for and suggest : if it shall appear 
 that, by innumerable combinations of these signs, an endless 
 variety of things is discovered and made known to us ; and 
 that we are thereby instructed or informed in their different 
 natures ; that we are taught and admonished what to shun, 
 
 ^ If ' men of sense ' could mean mere sensationalists this might pass. 
 But what if universally valid evidence of the supremacy in the universe 
 of moral reason can be found in our moral and spiritual experience — 
 evidence which if rejected would oblige us in consistency to disallow in 
 external perception all that gives permanence and objectivity to what 
 otherwise is a mere flux of unconnected phenomena ? What if the ele- 
 vation of sensation into perception is itself indefensible, except on grounds 
 which retpiire us to interpret our moral experience into a rational con- 
 viction that the universe is morally governed, and that tvJiat ought to be 
 is the deepest and truest reality]
 
 Outness in Space originally invisible. 243 
 
 and what to pursue ; and ai"e directed liow to regulate our 
 motions, and how to act with respect to things distant from 
 us, as well in time as place, will this content you 1 
 
 Ale. It is the very thing I would have you make out; for 
 therein consists the force, and use, and nature of language. 
 
 8. Eu^jh. Look, Alciphron, do you not see the castle upon 
 yonder hill 1 
 
 Ale. I do. 
 
 Eufli. Is it not at a great distance from you % 
 
 Ale. It is. 
 
 Enph. Tell me, Alciphron, is not distance^ a line turned 
 endwise to the eye 1 
 
 Ale. Doubtless. 
 
 Eujih. And can a line, in that situation, project more than 
 one single point on the bottom of the eye 1 
 
 Ale. It cannot. 
 
 Euph. Therefore the appearance - of a long and of a short 
 distance is of the same magnitude, or rather of.no magnitude 
 at all — being in all cases one single point. 
 
 Ale. It seems so. 
 
 Euph. Should it not follow from hence that distance is not 
 immediately perceived by the eye % 
 
 Ale. It should ^. 
 
 ' i. e. distance outwards or in the line of sight. 
 
 ^ ' Ap)iearance.' Does he mean here the tmible appearance, and that 
 we actually see the single point in the retina, which, as always of the 
 same size, or rather of no size, cannot be a visible sign of distances that 
 are of various degrees ; or does he mean that, being of ' no magnitude,' 
 the appearance cannot be either a visible or invisible sign ? In what 
 follows, as in the Essay, he makes nothing of instinct — which is a name 
 for the unexplained — in his account of the way we learn to see things 
 existing under space relations. To allege ' instinct ' would be to grant 
 that the visual perception of placed things is an inexplicable fact.^ If 
 Berkeley can explain it, as he professes to do, by means of ' suggestion,' 
 he might argue against its instinctive character, on the principle, cntia 
 non sunt multfplicanda praeter 'nece>:sitatem. 
 
 ^ How could it be immediately perceived in seeing, even if the 'ap- 
 pearance ' — the point in the bottom of the eye — did vary according to 
 the distance of the object seen ? 
 
 It 2
 
 244 Divine Visual Language: A Dialogue. 
 
 Euph. Must it not then be perceived by the mediation of 
 Bome other thing 1 
 
 Ale. It must. 
 
 Eu2)h. To discover what this is, let us examine what altera- 
 tion there may be in the appearance of the same object placed 
 at different distances from the eye. Now, I find by experi- 
 ence that when an object is removed still farther and farther 
 off in a direct line from the eye, its visible appearance still 
 grows lesser and fainter ; and this change of appearance, being 
 proportional and universal, seems to me to be that by which 
 we apprehend the various degrees of distance. 
 
 Ale. I have nothing to object to this. 
 
 Euph. But littleness or faintness, in their own nature, 
 seem to have no necessary connexion with greater length of 
 distance ? 
 
 Ale. I admit this to be true. 
 
 Euph. Will it not follow then that they could never sug- 
 gest it but from experience '? 
 
 Ale. It 'will. 
 
 Euph. That is to say — we perceive distance, not immedi- 
 ately, but by mediation of a sign, which hath no likeness to 
 it, or necessary connexion with it, but only suggests it from 
 repeated experience — as words do things. 
 
 Ale. Hold, Euphranor : now I think of it, the writers in 
 optics tell us of an angle made by tlie two optic axes, where 
 they meet in the visible point or object; which angle, the 
 obtuser it is the nearer it shews the object to be, and by how 
 much the acuter, by so much the farther off; and this from 
 a necessary demonstrable connexion. 
 
 Euph. The mind then finds out the distance of things by 
 geometry 1 
 
 Ale. It doth. 
 
 Euj^h. Should it not follow, therefore, that nobody could 
 see but those who had learned geometry, and knew something 
 of lines and angles ?
 
 Outness signified ly what is seen. 245 
 
 Ale. There is a sort of natural geomctiy which is got 
 without learning. 
 
 Eu^yJi. Pray inform me, Alciphron, in order to frame a 
 proof of any kind, or deduce one point from another, is it not 
 necessary that I perceive the connexion of the terms in the 
 premises, and the connexion of the premises with the con- 
 clusion ; and, in general, to know one thing by means of 
 another, must I not first know that other thing 1 When I 
 perceive your meaning by your words, must I not first per- 
 ceive the words themselves ? and must I not know the pre- 
 mises before I infer the conclusion 1 
 
 Ale. All this is true. 
 
 Eujih. AVhoever, therefore, collects a nearer distance from 
 a wider angle, or a farther distance from an acuter angle, 
 must first perceive the angles themselves. And he Avho doth 
 not perceive those angles can infer nothing from them. Is 
 it so or not 1 
 
 Ale. It is as you say. 
 
 Euph. Ask now the first man you meet whether he per- 
 ceives or knows anything of those optic angles 1 or whether 
 he ever thinks about them, or makes any inferences from 
 them, either by natui-al or artificial geometry 1 What answer 
 do you think he would make 1 
 
 Ale. To speak the truth, I believe his answer would be, 
 that he knew nothing of these matters. 
 
 EupJi. It cannot therefoi'e be that men judge ^ of distance 
 by angles : nor, consequently, can there be any force in the 
 argument you drew from thence, to prove that distance is 
 perceived by means of something which hath a necessary 
 connexion with it. 
 
 Ale. I agree with you. 
 
 * 'Judge' here seems equivalent to demonstration founded on neces- 
 sary Tflations of thought, and so is different from Locke's 'judgment,' 
 which is probable presumption based on analogy — understanding judging 
 according to the custom of sense.
 
 246 Divine Visual Lavguage: A Dialogue. 
 
 9. Eui>h. To me it seems that a man may know whether 
 he perceives a thing or no ; and, if he perceives it, whether it 
 be immediately or mediately : and, if mediately, whether by 
 means of something like or unlike, necessarily or arbitrarily 
 connected with it. 
 Ale. It seems so. 
 
 Eui^li. And is it not certain that distance is perceived only 
 by experience \ if it be neither perceived immediately by 
 itself, nor by means of any image, nor of any lines and 
 angles which are like it, or have a necessary connexion 
 with it ? 
 Ale. It is. 
 
 Eu]ph. Doth it not seem to follow, from what hath been 
 said and allowed by you, that before all experience a man 
 would not imagine the things he saw were at any distance 
 from him 1 
 
 Ale. How ! let me see. 
 
 Euiili. The littleness or faintness of appearance, or any 
 other idea or sensation not necessarily connected with or 
 resembling distance, can no more suggest diflPerent degrees of 
 distance, or any distance at all, to the mind which hath not 
 experienced a connexion of the things signifying and signified, 
 than words can suggest notions before a man hath learned 
 the language. 
 
 Ale. I allow this to be true. 
 
 Ewph. Will it not thence follow that a man born blind, 
 and made to see, would, upon first receiving his sight, take 
 the things he saw not to be at any distance from him, but in 
 his eye, or rather in his mind 1 
 
 Ale. I must own it seems so. And yet, on the other hand, 
 
 * * Experience,' namely, of the connexion, established independently 
 of our will, between what we see and our past experience of movement 
 among (what we have found to be) extra-organic bodies. Eut more 
 than mere phenomena and blind suggestion is sm-ely involved (tacitly) 
 in this account of the constitution of perception. Is not reason latent 
 in giich * suggestions ' ?
 
 Magnitudes of things are invisible. 247 
 
 I can hardly persuade myself that, if I were in such a state, 
 I should think those objects which I noio see at so great dis- 
 tance to be at no distance at all. 
 
 Euph. It seems, then, that you now think ' the objects of 
 sight are at a distance from you 1 
 
 Ale. Doubtless I do. Can any one question but yonder 
 castle is at a great distance ? 
 
 Ewph. Tell me, Alciphron, can you discern the doors, 
 windows, and battlements of that same castle % 
 
 Ale. I cannot. At this distance it seems only a small 
 round tower. 
 
 Ewph. But I, who have been at it, know that it is no 
 small round tower, but a large square building with battle- 
 ments and turrets, which it seems you do not see. 
 
 Ale. What will you infer from thence] 
 
 Eufli. I would infer that the very object which you 
 strictly and properly perceive by sight is not that thing 
 which is several miles distant. 
 
 Ale. Why so? 
 
 Eu2)h. Because a little round object is one thing, and a 
 great square object is another. Is it not ? 
 
 Ale. I cannot deny it. 
 
 Euph. Tell me, is not the visible appearance alone the 
 proper object of sight ? 
 
 Ale. It is. 
 
 What think you now (said Euphranor, pointing towards 
 the heavens) of the visible appearance of yonder planet ? Is 
 it not a round luminous flat, no bigger than a sixpence 1 
 
 Ale. What then? 
 
 Ewpli. Tell me then, what you think of the planet itself. 
 Do you not conceive it to be a vast opaque globe, with several 
 unequal risings and valleys ] 
 
 Ale. I do. 
 
 ' Think, i. c. judge — the judgmeut somehow emerging in the sugges- 
 tion. Berkeley does not explain its appearance.
 
 248 Divine Visual Language: A Dialogue. 
 
 Ewpli. How can you therefore conclude that the proper 
 object of your sight ^ exists at a distance % 
 
 Ale. I confess I know not. 
 
 Euph. For your further conviction, do but consider that 
 crimson cloud. Tiiink you that, if you were in the very 
 place where it is, }ou would perceive anything like Avhat you 
 now see 1 
 
 Ale. By no means. I should perceive only a dark mist. 
 
 Ewph. Is it not plain, therefore, that neither the castle, 
 the planet, nor the cloud, which you see here, are those real 
 ones which you supjiose exist at a distance 1 
 
 I o. A le. What am I to think then ? Do we see anything 
 at all, or is it altogether fancy and illusion 1 
 
 Euph. Upon the wliole, it seems the proper objects of sight 
 are light and colours, with their several shades and degrees ; 
 all which, being infinitely diversified and combined, do form 
 a language wonderfully adapted to suggest and exhibit to us 
 the distances, figui-es, situations, dimensions, and various 
 qualities of tangible objects — not by similitude, nor yet by 
 inference of necessary connexion, but by the arbitrary impo- 
 sition of Providence'-, just as words suggest the things sig- 
 nified by them. 
 
 Ale. How ! Do we not, strictly speaking, perceive by sight 
 such things as trees, houses, men, rivei's, and the like 1 
 
 Euph. We do, indeed, pei'ceive or apprehend ^ those things 
 
 ' 'The propel- object of sight,' i.e. the data due exclusively to sight, 
 before we have learned, in the way supposed, to read into them the 
 data of our experience of things in touch. This primary consciousness 
 cannot now be revived by us. And could we, one may ask, have read 
 extension and space, with their objective relations, into the sense phe- 
 nomena either of touch or sight, unless extension and space had been 
 already somehow latent in them ? 
 
 ^ Modern doubt would not be satisfied by so rapid a reference of 
 interpretable nature to a supreme intending Agency like our own. 
 Moreover he takes no account of the supremacy of conscience, and the 
 correlative supremacy of moral government in the universe — the essence 
 of practical Theism. — ' It is the heart and conscience, and not the 
 understanding,' says Pascal, ' that has properly the perception of God.' 
 
 ^ ' Pei'ceive or apprehend' — through suggestion, or judgment according
 
 Visual PJienomena interpretable Signs. 249 
 
 by the faculty of siglit. But will it follow from thence that 
 they are the proper and immediate objects of sight, any more 
 than that all those things are the projier and immediate 
 objects of hearing which are signified by the helji of words 
 or sounds 1 
 
 Ale. You would have us think, then, that light, shades, and 
 colours, variously combined, answer to the several articula- 
 tions of sound in language ; and that, by means thereof, all 
 sorts of objects are suggested to the mind through the eye, in 
 the same manner as they are suggested by words or sounds 
 through the ear : that is, neither from necessary deduction 
 to the judgment, nor from similitude to the fancy, but purely 
 and solely from experience, custom, and habit. 
 
 Euph. I would not have you think anything more than 
 tlie nature of things obligeth you to think, nor submit in the 
 least to my judgment, but only to the force of truth: wliich 
 is an imposition that I suppose the freest thinkers will not 
 pretend to be exempt from. 
 
 Ale. You have led me, it seems, step by step, till I am got 
 I know not where. But I shall try to get out again, if not 
 by the way I came, yet by some other of my own finding. 
 
 Here Alciphron, having made a short pause, proceeded as 
 follows — 
 
 1 1 . Answer me, Euphrauor, should it not follow from these 
 principles that a man born blind, and made to see, would, at 
 first sight, not only not perceive their distance, but also not 
 so much as know the very things themselves which he saw, 
 for instance, men or ti'ees 1 which surely to suppose must be 
 absurd. 
 
 Euplu I grant, in consequence of those principles, which 
 both you and I have admitted, that such a one would never 
 
 to sense, as distinguished by Berkeley from the mere consciousness of 
 phenomena — which also he calls ' perception' — both falling short of the 
 scientific, and still more of the philosophic understanding of things.
 
 250 Divine Visual Language: A Dialogue. 
 
 tliinlv of men, trees, or any other objects that he had been 
 accustomed to perceive by touch, upon having his mind filled 
 with new sensations of light and colours ^, whose various com- 
 binations he doth not yet understand, or know the meaning 
 of; no more than a Chinese, upon first hearing the words 
 man and tree would think of the things signified by them. 
 In both cases, there must be time and experience, by repeated 
 acts, to acquire a habit of knowing ^ the connexion between 
 the signs and things signified ; that is to say, of understand- 
 ing the language, whether of the eyes or of the ears. And 
 I conceive no absurdity in all this. 
 
 Ale. I see, therefore, in strict philosophical truth, that rock 
 only in the same sense that I may be said to hear it, when 
 the word rock is pronounced. 
 
 EwpK In the very same. 
 
 Ale. How comes it to pass then that every one shall say he 
 sees, for instance, a rock or a house, when those things are 
 before his eyes; but nobody will say he hears a rock or a house, 
 but only the words or sounds themselves by which those things 
 are said to be signified or suggested but not heard ] Besides, 
 if vision be only a language speaking to the eyes, it may 
 be asked, when did men learn this language 1 To acquire the 
 knowledge of so many signs as go to the making up a language 
 is a work of some difficulty. But, will any man say he hath 
 spent time, or been at pains, to learn this Language of Vision ? 
 
 * Here throughout he speaks of ' sensations of light and colours ' as 
 the language of vision, making no account of the visual but invisible 
 signs felt in the organ of seeing. 
 
 ^ A ' habit of knowing.' Is knowledge ultimately constituted only by 
 habit and suggestion ? if not, what higher elements are needed to con- 
 stitute it 1 — The function of custom must be recognised. It is a stage 
 on the way to rational knowledge, and in the development of the thinker. 
 'Custom,' says Pascal, 'may beconceived as a secondary nature, and 
 nature as a primary custom.' ' What,' he even asks, ' are all our 
 natural principles but principles of custom, derived by hereditary descent 
 from parents to children, as lear and flight in beasts of sport ? ' So too 
 Wordsworth — 
 
 ' And custom lie upon thee with a weight 
 . . . . deep almost as hfe.'
 
 The Visual Signs overlooked. 251 
 
 Eupli. No wonder ; we cannot assign a time beyond our 
 remotest memory. If we have been all practising this lan- 
 guage, ever since our first entrance into the world : if the 
 Author of Nature constantly speaks to the eyes of all man- 
 kind, even in their earliest infancy, whenever the eyes are 
 open in the light, whether alone or in company : it doth not 
 seem to me at all strange that men should not be aware they 
 had ever learned a language begun so early, and practised so 
 constantly, as this of Vision. And, if we also consider that 
 it is the same throughout the whole world, and not, like 
 other languages, differing in different places, it will not seem 
 unaccountable that men should mistake the connexion be- 
 tween the proper objects of sight and the things signified by 
 them to be founded in necessary relation or likeness ; or, that 
 they should even take them for the same things. Hence it 
 seems easy to conceive why men who do not think should 
 confound in this language of vision the signs with the things 
 signified, otherwise than they are wont to do in the vai'ious 
 particular languages formed by the several nations of men. 
 
 12. It may be also worth while to observe that signs, 
 being little considered in themselves, or for their own sake, 
 but only in their relative capacity, and for the sake of those 
 things whereof they are signs, it comes to pass that the mind 
 overlooks them, so as to carry its attention immediately on 
 to the things signified. Thus, for example, in I'eading we 
 run over the characters with the slightest regard, and pass 
 on to the meaning. Hence it is frequent for men to say, they 
 see words, and notions, and things in reading of a book ; 
 whereas in strictness they see only the characters which sug- 
 gest words, notions, and things. And, by parity of reason, 
 may we not suppose that men, not resting in, but overlooking 
 the immediate and proper objects of sight, as in their own 
 nature of small moment, carry their attention onward to the 
 very things signified, and talk as if they saw the secondary 
 objects ? which, in truth and strictness, are not seen, but only j
 
 252 Divine Visual Language: A Dialogue. 
 
 suggested and apprehended by means of the proper objects of 
 sight, which alone are seen. 
 
 Ale. To speak my mind freely, this dissertation grows 
 tedious, and runs into points too dry and minute for a gentle- 
 man's attention. 
 
 I thought, said Crito, we had been told that minute philo- 
 sophers loved to consider things closely and minutely. 
 
 Ale. That is true, but in so polite an age who would be 
 a mere philosopher 1 There is a certain scholastic accuracy 
 which ill suits the freedom and ease of a well-bred man. But, 
 to cut short this chicane, I propound it fairly to your own 
 conscience, whether you really think that God Himself speaks 
 every day and in every place to the eyes of all men. 
 
 Eupli. That is really and in truth my opinion ; and it 
 should be yours too, if you are consistent with yourself, and 
 abide by your own definition of language. Since you cannot 
 deny that the great Mover and Author of nature constantly 
 explaineth Himself to the eyes of men by the sensible inter- 
 vention of arbitrary signs, which have no similitude or con- 
 nexion with the things signified ; so as, by compounding and 
 disposing them, t o _ sug gest and exhibit an endless variety of 
 objects, differing in nature, time, and place ; thereby inform- 
 ing and directing men how to act with respect to things 
 distant and future, as well as near and present. In conse- 
 quence, I say, of your own sentiments and concessions, you 
 have as much reason to think the Universal Agent or God 
 speaks to your eyes, as you can have for thinking any par- 
 ticular person speaks to your ears ^ 
 
 ' This argument virtually univer»alises the fact of continuous personal 
 existence, assumed to be given in our primary consciousness (Principles, 
 § 2), and of which in Berkeley's language we have a ' notion.' It is 
 here converted, by analogy, into the ultimate principle of the imiverse. 
 The argument is an application of the analogy between the visible signs 
 of the existence of a fellow man, on the one hand, and the whole sym- 
 bolism of the sensible world, on the other hand, in the conclusion that 
 both are the organised manifestation of a spiritual agent. It implies 
 too that our causal tendency can find rest only in an uncaused Cause.
 
 Visual S/f/ns not necessar'ili/ significant. 253 
 
 Ale. I cannot help thinking that some falhicy runs through- 
 out this whole ratiocination, though perhaps I may not 
 readily point it out. Hold ! let me see. In language the 
 signs are arbitrary, are they not \ 
 
 Ewph. They are. 
 
 Ale. And, consequently, they do not always suggest real 
 matters of fact. Whereas this Natural Language, as you call 
 it, or these visible signs, do always suggest things in the same 
 uniform way, and have the same constant regular connexion 
 with matters of fact : whence it should seem the connexion 
 was necessary; and, therefore, according to the definition 
 premised, it can be no language. How do you solve this 
 objection ? 
 
 EiipTi. You may solve it yourself by the help of a picture 
 or looking-glass. 
 
 Ale. You are in the right. I see there is nothing in it. 
 I know not what else to say to this opinion, more than that 
 it is so odd and contrary to my way of thinking that I shall 
 never assent to it. 
 
 13. EujyJi. Be pleased to recollect your own lectures upon 
 prejudice, and apply them in the present case. Perhaps they 
 may help you to follow where reason leads, and to suspect 
 notions which are strongly rivetted, without having been 
 ever examined. 
 
 Ale. I disdain the susjiicion of prejudice. And I do not 
 speak only for myself. I know a club of most ingenious 
 men, the freest from prejudice of any men alive, who abhor 
 the notion of a God, and I doubt not would be very able to 
 untie this knot. 
 
 Upon which words of Alciphron, I, who had acted the 
 part of an indifferent stander-by, observed to him — That it 
 
 But the alleged analogy does not fully meet the position of those who 
 find in signs of human agency signs not of a pure unbodied spirit, but 
 of a conscious and active organism — unless indeed the sensible world 
 is to be viewed as the Divine organism, or the natural incarnation 
 of God.
 
 254 Divine Tisual Language: A Dialogue. 
 
 misbecame bis cbaracter ami repeated professions, to own an 
 attacbment to tbe judgment, or build upon the presumed 
 abilities of cither men, how ingenious soever ; and that this 
 proceeding might encourage his adversaries to have recourse 
 to authority ^, in which perhaps they would find their account 
 more than he. 
 
 Oh ! said Crito^ I have often observed the conduct of 
 minute philosophers. When one of them has got a ring of 
 disciples round him, his method is to exclaim against pre- 
 judice, and recommend thinking and reasoning, giving to 
 understand that himself is a man of deep I'esearches and 
 close argument, one who examines impartially, and concludes 
 warily. The same man, in other company, if he chance to be 
 pressed with reason, shall laugh at logic, and assume the lazy 
 supine airs of a fine gentleman, a wit, a railJeur, to avoid the 
 dryness of a regular and exact inquiry. This double face of 
 the minute philosopher is of no small use to propagate and 
 maintain his notions. Though to me it seems a plain case 
 that if a fine gentleman will shake ofi" authority, and appeal 
 from religion to reason, unto reason he must go : and, if he 
 cannot go without leading-strings, surely he had better be 
 led by the authority of the public than by that of any knot 
 of minute philosophers. 
 
 Ale. Gentlemen, this discourse is very irksome, and need- 
 less. For my part, I am a friend to inquiry. I am willing 
 reason should have its full and free scope. I build on no 
 man's authority. For my part, I have no interest in denying 
 a God. Any man may believe or not believe a God, as he 
 pleases, for me. But, aftei- all, Euphranor must allow me to 
 stare a little at his conclusions. 
 
 * ' Authority,' i. e. the authority of trusted men — faith in the insiirht 
 of other persons, as distinguished from our own. But with lierkeley's 
 view of ' language ' in Naiure, all reasonings about natural laws are, in 
 liieir ultimate ground, matter-of-fact reasonings, l)ased at last on faith 
 in the ever-active Divine Person, and are in that respect reasonings 
 grounded on authority.
 
 JFe see God as pla'Dily as tve see a Man. 255 
 
 Euph. Tlie conclusions are yours as much as mine, for you 
 were led to them by your own concessions. 
 
 14. You, it seems, stare to find that God is not far from 
 every one of us; and that in Him we live, and move, and 
 have our being ^ You, who, in the beginning of this morn- 
 ing's conference, thought it strange that God should leave 
 Himself without a witness, do now think it strange the 
 witness should be so full and clear. 
 
 Ale. I must own I do. I was aware, indeed, of a certain 
 metaphysical hj-pothesis of our seeing all things in God by 
 the union of the human soul with the intelligible substance 
 of the Deity, which neither I nor any one else could make 
 sense of ^. But I never imagined it could be pretended that 
 we saw God with our fleshly eyes as plain as we see any 
 human person whatsoever, and that He daily speaks to our 
 senses in a manifest and clear dialect. 
 
 Cri. As for that metaphysical hypothesis, I can make no 
 more of it than you. But I think it plain this Optic Lan- 
 guage hath a necessary connexion^ with knowledge, wisdom, 
 and goodness. It is equivalent to a constant creation, be- 
 tokening an immediate act of power and providence. It 
 cannot be accounted for by mechanical principles, by atoms, 
 attractions, or effluvia. The instantaneous production and 
 reproduction of so many signs, combined, dissolved, trans- 
 posed, diversified, and adapted to such an endless variety of 
 purposes, ever shifting with the occasions and suited to them, 
 
 ^ Because, on the view of things here maintained, God really animates 
 the whole sensible universe in the same sort of way as a man animates 
 the movements of his own body; and uses the physical system too as the 
 subordinate symbol or sacrament of the spiritual agency that is external- 
 ised in it, all its changes being resolved into the direct will of God. 
 
 ^ This refers to Malebranche's hypothesis, which Berkeley here and 
 elsewhere disclaims, for reasons which should be studied. It is perhaps 
 less remote from his own philosophy, as developed in Siris, than he 
 here supposes it to be. 
 
 ' He thus presumes a necessary connexion between the physical and 
 the spiritual or moral government of the universe — without explaining 
 the ' necessity.' He implies that the former is in a subordinate relation 
 to the latter.
 
 256 Divine Visnal Language: A Dialogue. 
 
 being utterly inexplicable and unaccountable by the laws of 
 motion, by chance, by fate, or the like blind principles, doth set 
 forth and testify the immediate operation of a spirit or think- 
 ing being ; and not merely of a spirit, which every motion or 
 gravitation may possibly infer, but of one wise, good, and 
 provident Spirit, which directs and rules and governs the 
 world. Some pliilosophers, being convinced of the w^isdom 
 and power of the Creator, from the make and contrivance of 
 organised bodies and orderly system of the world, did never- 
 theless imagine that he left this system with all its parts and 
 contents well adjusted and put in motion, as an artist leaves 
 a clock, to go thenceforward of itself for a certain period ^. 
 But this Visual Language proves, not a Creator merely, but 
 a provident Governor, actually and intimately present, and 
 attentive to all our interests and motions, who watches over 
 our conduct, and takes care of our minutest actions and 
 designs throughout the whole course of our lives, informing, 
 admonishing, and directing incessantly, in a most evident and 
 sensible manner. This is truly wonderful. 
 
 Euph. And is it not so, that men should be encompassed 
 by such a wonder, without reflecting on it % 
 
 15. Something there is of Divine and admirable in this 
 Language, addressed to our eyes, that may well awaken the 
 mind, and deserve its utmost attention : — it is learned with 
 so little pains: it expresseth the diff"erences of things so clearly 
 and aptly: it instructs wdth such facility and despatch, by 
 one glance of the eye conveying a greater variety of advices, 
 and a more distinct knowledge of things, than could be got 
 
 ^ This is the philosophical theory of a pre-established Causal Har- 
 mony (instead of the Cartesian constant Occasional Causation), by which 
 Leibnitz sought to explain the consistent, yet mutually independent, 
 agency of conscious persons and unconscious things. Leibnitz uses the 
 analogy of the watch in his correspondence with Clarke. See Collection of 
 Papers hettreen Leibnitz and Clarke, rclatin;/ to the Privciplen of Natural 
 Philosophy and Reli(iion{i']i']), pp. 2-6, i2-i6,28-34,&c. On Berkeley's 
 conception of what the real existence of the material world means, the 
 Cosmos must relapse into a meaninLjless abstraction, if the Divine per- 
 ception of it, and provideutial action in it, is for a moment withdrawn.
 
 Developed Vision is Prevision. 257 
 
 by a discourse of several hours. And, while it informs, it 
 amuses and entertains the mind with such singular pleasure 
 and delight. It is of such excellent use in giving a stability 
 and permanency to human discourse, in recording sounds 
 and bestowing life on dead languages, enabling us to con- 
 verse with men of remote ages and countries. And it 
 answei-s so apposite to the uses and necessities of man- 
 kind, informing us more distinctly of those objects whose 
 nearness and magnitude qualify them to be of greatest 
 detriment or benefit to our bodies, and less exactly in 
 proportion as their littleness or distance makes them of 
 less concern to us^. 
 
 Ale. And yet these strange things affect men but little. 
 
 Eu2)h. But they are not strange, they are familiar ; and 
 that makes them be overlooked. Things which rarely happen 
 strike ; whereas frequency lessens the admiration of things, 
 though in themselves ever so admirable. Hence, a common 
 man, who is not used to think and make reflections, would 
 j^robably be more convinced of the being of a God by one 
 single sentence heard once in his life from the sky than by 
 all the experience he has had of this Visual Language, con- 
 trived with such exquisite skill, so constantly addresi^ed to 
 his eyes, and so plainly declai'ing the nearness, wisdom, and 
 providence of Him with whom we have to do ^. 
 
 Ale. After all, I cannot satisfy myself how men should be 
 so little surprised or amazed about this visive faculty, if it 
 was really of a nature so surprising and amazing. 
 
 Fuph. But let us suppose a nation of men blind from their 
 infancy, among whom a stranger arrives, the only man who 
 can see in all the country ; let us suppose this stranger 
 
 ' Berkeley makes much of the sensible evidence of God being such 
 that we may be said to see Him as we see a fellow-man ; not much of 
 our finding God. still more nearly, in our own heart and conscience. 
 
 ^ * In philosophy equally as in poetry,' says Coleridge, ' it is the 
 highest and most useful prerogative of genius to produce the strongest 
 impressions of novelty, while it rescues admitted truths from the neglect 
 caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission.'
 
 258 Divine Visual Language: A Dialogue. 
 
 travelling with some of the natives, and that one while he 
 foretells to them that, in case they walk straight forward, in 
 half an hour they shall meet men or cattle, or come to a 
 house ; that, if they turn to the right and proceed, they shall 
 in a few minutes be in danger of falling down a precipice ; 
 that, shaping their course to the left, they will in such a 
 time arrive at a rivei-, a wood, or a mountain. What think 
 you? Must they not be infinitely surprised that one who 
 had never been in their country before should know it so 
 much better than themselves ] And would not those pre- 
 dictions seem to them as unaccountable and incredible as 
 Prophecy to a minute philosopher ? 
 
 Ale. I cannot deny it. 
 
 Euph. But it seems to require intense thought to be able 
 to unravel a prejudice that has been so long forming ; to get 
 over the vulgar errors or ideas common to both senses ; and 
 so to distinguish between the objects of Sight and Touch, 
 which have grown (if I may so say), blended together^ in our 
 fancy, as to be able to suppose ourselves exactly in the state 
 that one of those men would be in, if he were made to see. 
 And yet this I believe is possible, and might seem worth the 
 pains of a little thinking, especially to those men whose 
 proper employment and profession it is to think, and unravel 
 pi'ejudices, and confute mistakes. 
 
 Ale. I frankly own I cannot find my way out of this maze, 
 and should gladly be set right by those who see better than 
 myself. 
 
 Cri. The pursuing this subject in their own thoughts 
 would possibly open a new scene to those speculative gentle- 
 men of the minute philosophy. It puts me in mind of a 
 passage in the Psalmist, where he represents God to be 
 covered with light as with a garment, and would methinks be 
 no ill comment on that ancient notion of some eastern sages 
 
 * ' Blended together.' So in his Commonplace Book {Life, p. 494) he 
 eayB that ' extension is blended icith tangible or visible ideas.'
 
 Sense Sj/mbolism. 259 
 
 —that God bad light for His body, and truth for His 
 souP. 
 
 This conversation lasted till a servant came to tell us the 
 tea was ready : upon which we walked in, and found Lysicles 
 at the tea-table. 
 
 1 6. As soon as we sat down, I am glad, said Alci2)hron, 
 that I have here found my second^ a fresh man to maintain 
 our common cause, which, I doubt, Lysicles will think hath 
 suffered by his absence. 
 
 Lys. "Why so t 
 
 Ale. I have been drawn into some concessions you will not 
 like. 
 
 Li/s. Let me know what they are. 
 
 Ale. Why, that there is such a thing as a God, and that 
 His existence is very certain. 
 
 Lys. Bless me ! How came you to entertain so wild a 
 notion ? 
 
 Ale. You know we profess to follow reason wherever it 
 leads. And in short I have been reasoned into it. 
 
 Lys. Eeasoned ! You should say, amused with words, 
 bewildered with sophistry. 
 
 Eu2)h. Have you a mind to hear the same reasoning that 
 led Alciphron and me step by steji, that we may examine 
 whether it be sophistiy or no ? 
 
 Lys. As to that I am very easy. I guess all that can be 
 said on that head. It shall be my business to help my friend 
 out, whatever arguments drew him in. 
 
 * According to this philosophy, the phenomena presented in the senses, 
 conspicuously those given in sight, are types or sj'mbols of spiritual and 
 unseen realities : physical is the instrument of moral government. The 
 supporting argument for this might be, that the theistic explanation of 
 what we ' experience,' and that alone, fully satisfies the entire cognitive, 
 sensitive, and moral constitution of man ; though Berkeley relies too 
 exclusively on sense, scientific prevision, and conclusions that are 
 conceivable by the understanding judging according to the suggestions 
 of sense, and here takes little account of conscience and our moral ex- 
 perience. 
 
 S 2 
 
 ^
 
 260 Divine Visual Language: A Dialogue. 
 
 Euph. Will you admit the premises aud deny the con- 
 clusions 1 
 
 Lys. What if I admit the conclusion ? 
 
 Euph. How ! will you grant there is a God ? 
 
 Lys. Perhaps I may. 
 
 Euph. Then we are agreed. 
 
 Lys. Perhaps not. 
 
 Euph. Lysicles, you are a subtle adversary. I know 
 not what you would be at. 
 
 Jjys. You must know then that at bottom the being of 
 a God is a point in itself of small consequence, and a man 
 may make this concession without yielding much. The great 
 point is what sense the word God is to be taken in ^ The 
 very Epicureans allowed the being of gods ; but then they 
 were indolent gods, unconcerned with human affairs. Hobbes 
 allowed a corporeal god : and Spinosa held the universe to 
 be God. And yet nobody doubts they were staunch free- 
 thinkers. I could wish indeed the woi-d God were quite 
 omitted ; because in most minds it is coupled with a sort of 
 superstitious awe, the very root of all religion. I shall not, 
 nevertheless, be much disturbed, though the name be retained, 
 and the being of a God allowed in any sense but in that of 
 a Mind, which knows all things, and beholds human actions, 
 like some judge or magistrate, with infinite observation and 
 intelligence. The belief of a God in this sense fills a man's 
 mind with scruples, lays him under constraints, and embitters 
 his very being : but in another sense it may be attended with 
 no great ill consequence. This I know was the opinion of 
 our great Diagoras, who told me he would never have been 
 at the pains to find out a demonstration that there was no 
 
 ' This i9 still the ' great point ' in the pliilosophy of religion. Is 
 God a conscious Person — the ultimate Principle of the moral govern- 
 ment of the universe, and therefore incoguisable by us otherwise than 
 as a self-conscious intending agent; — or is 'God' merely a name for 
 the universal relations of thought presupposed in science ; or even for 
 the unknowable ' cause ' of nature \
 
 What the word 'God' means. 261 
 
 God^, if the received notion of God had been the same with 
 that of some Fathers and Schoolmen. 
 
 Euph. Pray what was that ? 
 
 17. Tjys. You must know, Diogoras, a man of much read- 
 ing and inquiry, had discovered that once upon a time the 
 most profound and speculative divines, finding it impossible 
 to reconcile the attributes of God — taken in the common 
 sense, or in any known sense — with human reason, and the 
 appearances of things, taught that the words knowledge, 
 vnsdom, goodness, and such like, when spoken of the Deity, 
 must be understood in quite a different sense from what they 
 signify in the vulgar acceptation, or from anything that we 
 can form a notion of or conceive. Hence, whatever objections 
 might be made against the attributes of God they easily 
 solved — by denying those attributes belonged to God, in this, 
 or that, or any known particular sense or notion ; which was 
 the same thing as to deny they belonged to Him at all. 
 And, thus denying the attributes of God, they in eflFect denied 
 His being, though perhaps they were not aware of it. 
 
 Suppose, for instance, a man should object that future con- 
 tingencies were inconsistent with the Foreknowledge of God, 
 because it is repugnant that certain knowledge should be of 
 an uncertain thing : it was a ready and an easy answer to say 
 that this may be true with respect to knowledge taken in the 
 common sense, or in any sense that we can possibly form any 
 notion of; but that there would not appear the same incon- 
 sistency between the contingent nature of things and Divine 
 Foreknowledge, taken to signify somewhat that we know 
 nothing of, which in God supplies the place of what we 
 understand by knowledge ; from which it differs not in 
 
 * The most plausible objections to Theism in this age are founded on 
 the supposition of the proved insolubility of the whole problem. Ag- 
 nosticism is offered as the alternative to either Theism or dogmatic 
 Atheism, and 'suspense of judgment' as the only possible issue of 
 utmost rational reflection. But tliere are facts of our experience in our 
 moral consciousness which forbid practical Agnosticism.
 
 262 Divme Vis2ial Language: A Dialogue. 
 
 quantity or degi-ee of perfection, but altogether, and in kind, 
 as light doth from sound ; — and even more, since these agree 
 in that they are both sensations ; whereas knowledge in God 
 hatli no sort of resemblance or agreement with any notion 
 that man can frame of knowledge. The like may be said of 
 all the other attributes, which indeed may by this means be 
 equally reconciled with everything or with nothing. But all 
 men who think must needs see this is cutting knots and not 
 untying them. For, how are things reconciled with the 
 Divine attributes when these attributes themselves are in 
 every intelligible sense denied ; and, consequently, the very 
 notion of God taken away, and nothing left but the name, 
 without any meauiiig annexed to it "? In short, the belief 
 that there is an unknown subject of attributes absolutely 
 unknown is a very innocent doctrine ; which the acute 
 Diagoras well saw, and was therefore wonderfully delighted 
 with this system. 
 
 1 8. For, said he, if this could once make its way and 
 obtain in the world, there Avould be an end to all natural or 
 rational religion, which is the basis both of the Jewish and 
 the Christian : for he who comes to God, or enters himself 
 in the church of God, must first believe that there is a God 
 in some intelliyihle sense ; and not only that there is Some- 
 thing in general, without any 2>'''oper notion, though never so 
 inadequate, of any of its qualities or attributes : for this may 
 be fate, or chaos, or plastic nature, or anything else as well 
 as God. — Nor will it avail to say : — There is something in 
 this unknown being analogous to knowledge and goodness ; 
 that is to say, which produceth those effects which we could 
 not conceive to be produced by men, in any degree, without 
 knowledge and goodness. For, this is in fact to give up the 
 point in dispute between theists and atheists — the question 
 having always been, not whether there was a Principle (which 
 point was allowed by all philosoi)hers, as well before as 
 since Auaxagoras), but whether this principle was a vcvs, a
 
 A Negative Knowledge of God. 263 
 
 thinking intelligent being : that is to say, Avheiher that oi'der, 
 and beauty, and use, visible in natural effects, could be pro- 
 duced by anything but a Mind or Intelligence, in the proper 
 sense of the word ? And whether there must not be true, 
 real, and jj roper knowledge, in the First Cause? A¥e will, 
 therefore, acknowledge that all those natural effects which 
 are vulgarly ascribed to knowledge and wisdom proceed from 
 a being in which there is, properly speaking, no knowledge 
 or wisdom at all, but only something else, which in reality 
 is the cause of those things which men, for want of knowing 
 better, ascribe to what they call knowledge and wisdom and 
 understanding. You wonder perhaps to hear a man of 
 pleasure, who diverts himself as I do, philosophize at this 
 rate. But you should consider that much is to be got by 
 conversing with ingenious men, which is a short way to 
 knowledge, that saves a man the drudgery of reading and 
 thinking. 
 
 And, now we have granted to you that there is a God in 
 this indefinite sense, 1 would fain see what use you can make 
 of this concession. You cannot argue from unknown attri- 
 butes, or, which is the same thing, from attributes in an 
 unknown sense. You cannot prove that God is to be loved 
 for His goodness, or feared for His justice, or respected for 
 His knowledge : all which consequences, we own, would follow 
 from those attributes admitted in an intelligible sense. But 
 we deny that those or any other consequences can be drawn 
 from attributes admitted in no particular sense, or in a sense 
 which none of us understand. Since, thei*efore, nothing 
 can be inferred from such an account of God, about con- 
 science, or worship, or religion, you may even make the best 
 of it. And, not to be singular, we will use the name too, 
 and so at once there is an end of atheism. 
 
 Eujdi. This account of a Deity is new to me. I do not 
 like it, and therefore shall leave it to be maintained by those 
 who do.
 
 264; Divine Visual Language: A Dialogue. 
 
 19. Cri. It is not new to me. I remember not long since 
 to have heard a minute philosopher triumph upon this very 
 point; which put me on inquiring what foundation there was 
 for it in the Fathers or Schoolmen. And, for aught that I 
 can find, it owes its original to those writings which have 
 been published under the name of Dionysius the Arcopagite^ 
 The author of which, it must be owned, hath written upon 
 the Divine attributes in a very singular style. In his treatise 
 De Hierarchia Ccelesti, he saith that God is something 
 above all essence and life, vTrep nacrnv oialau koI C^rju ; and 
 again, in his treatise De Divinis Nominihus, that He is above 
 all wisdom and understanding, iirtp iraa-ap aocpiav koi trvvea-iv, 
 ineffable and innominablc, apjjrjTos koi dvavvno^; the wisdom 
 of God he terms an unreasonable, unintelligent, and foolish 
 wisdom, TTjV oKoyov, Ka\ I'lvovv^ Kai fiwpav (To(f>iau. But then the 
 reason he gives for expressing himself in this strange manner 
 is, that the Divine wisdom is the cause of all reason, wisdom, 
 and understanding, and therein are contained the treasures of 
 all wisdom and knowledge. He calls God vntp(To(f)os and 
 vnep^as ; as if wisdom and life were words not worthy to 
 express the Divine perfections : and he adds that the attri- 
 butes unintelligent and unperceiving must be ascribed to the 
 Divinity, not kut eX\fi\f/iv, by way of defect, but Ka6' vTr(pox>)v, 
 by way of eminency ; wliich he explains by our giving the 
 name of darkness to light inaccessible. And, notwithstanding 
 
 ^ May we not say that our metaphysical understanding of the universe 
 at last necessarily merges in theological faith, in the attempt to com- 
 prehend the Power at work in tlie physical and spiritual government in 
 which, in our bodily and moral experience, we find ourselves included ? 
 May not the historical fact of Divine Incarnation, with its background 
 of myhtery, satisfy this sense of intellectual inadequacy in tlie only way 
 possible ; in making God ])ractically comprehended, while still scienti- 
 fically incomprehensible ? Does not Berkeley incline too much to the 
 anthropomorphic Theism that is content to think that God is absolutely 
 only what man is able to conceive ? ' Knowledge,' ' wisdom,' and ' good- 
 ness,' as we experience thom, may be inadequate terms when applied to 
 Deity; not because the Supreme Being includes less, but because the 
 Supreme Being includes more than even our highest spiritual experience 
 enables us to connote by these terms.
 
 D'wpi/s'nis and God's TncoinprehenHlhilUy . 265 
 
 the harsliness of liis expressions in some places, he affirms 
 over and over in others — that God knows all things ; not 
 that He is beholden to the creatures for His knowledge, but 
 by knowing Himself, from whom they all derive their being, 
 and in whom they are contained as in their cause. It was 
 late before these writings appear to have been known in the 
 world ; and, although they obtained credit during the age of 
 the Schoolmen, yet, since critical learning hath been culti- 
 vated, they have lost that credit, and are at this day given up 
 for spurious, as containing several evident marks of a much 
 later date than the age of Dionysius. — Upon the whole, 
 although this method of growing in expression and dwindling 
 in notion, of clearing up doubts by nonsense, and avoiding 
 difficulties by running into affected contradictions, may 
 perhaps proceed from a well-meant zeal, yet it appears not 
 to be according to knowledge ; and, instead of reconciling 
 atheists to the truth, hath, I doubt, a tendency to confirni 
 them in their own persuasion. It should seem, therefore, very 
 weak and rash in a Christian to adopt this harsh language 
 of an apocryphal writer preferably to that of the Holy 
 Scriptures. I remember, indeed, to have read of a certain 
 philosopher, who lived some centuries ago, that used to say — 
 if these supposed works of Dionysius had been known to the 
 primitive Fathers, they would have furnished them admirable 
 weapons against the heretics, and would have saved a world 
 of pains. But the event since their discovery hath by no 
 means confirnied his opinion ^ 
 
 ' The books attributed to Dionysius? the Areopagite {Ads xvii. 34), 
 who was said to be a contemporary of the Apostles and iirst Bishop of 
 Athens. They belong probably to the fourth century after Christ, if 
 not to a later period, and to the New Platonic school. They are 
 entitled Be. Hierurchki Cide^ti, Dc Nominibus DivinU, De HienircMa 
 Ecclesiasticn, and De Theologia My»tica. Various editions appeared in 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In common with some 
 Fathers of the Church, the pseudo-Dionysius expresses, in paradoxical 
 language, the ontological incomprehensibility of God, unbalanced by 
 the counter trutli that God may be practically known, i, e. relatively 
 to the ends of human life. He ascends (or descends) to a point at which,
 
 266 Divine Visual Language: A Dialogue. 
 
 It must be owned, tlie celebrated Picus of Mirandula*, 
 among his nine hundred conclusions (which that prince, being 
 very young, proposed to maintain by public disputation at 
 Eome), hath this for one — to wit, that it is more improper 
 to say of God, He is an intellect or intelligent Being, than to 
 say of a reasonable soul that it is an angel : which doctrine 
 it seems was not relished. And Picus, when he comes to 
 defend it, supports himself altogether by the example and 
 authority of Dionysius, and in effect explains it away into a 
 mere verbal difference — affirming that neither Dionysius nor 
 himself ever meant to deprive God of knowledge, or to deny 
 that He knows all things ; but that, as reason is of kind 
 peculiar to man, so by intellection he understands a kind or 
 manner of knowing peculiar to angels ; and that the know- 
 ledge which is in God is more above the intellection of angels 
 than angel is above man. He adds that, as his tenet consists 
 with admitting the most perfect knowledge in God, so he 
 would by no means be understood to exclude from the Deity 
 intellection itself, taken in the common or genei'al sense, but 
 only that peculiar sort of intellection proper to angels, which 
 he thinks ought not to be attributed to God any more than 
 human reason. Picus, therefore, though he speaks as the 
 apocryphal Dionysius, yet, when he explains himself, it is 
 evident he speaks like other men. And, although the fore- 
 mentioned books of the Celestial Hierarchy and of the Divine 
 Names, being attributed to a saint and martyr of the apo- 
 stolical age, were respected by the Schoolmen, yet it is certain 
 they rejected or softened his harsh expressions, and explained 
 away or reduced his doctrine to the received notions taken 
 from Holy Scripture and the light of nature. 
 
 by elimination of all positive and even negative attributes, the Supreme 
 Principle in the universe becomes inexpressible. The subject invites to 
 the study of Kant's 'Dialectic,' B. II. ch. 3, especially § 7 — in his Critick 
 of Pure Reason. 
 
 ' John Picus, Count of Mirandula, lived in the fifteenth century. 
 The disputation in which lie proposed to defend his famous nine hundred 
 theses never took place.
 
 Aiialoffical KnotvleJge of God. 267 
 
 20. Thomas Aquinas ' expressetli his sense of this point iu 
 the following manner. All perfections, saith he, derived from 
 God to the creatures are in a certain higher sense, or (as the 
 Schoolmen term it) eminently in God. Whenever, therefore, 
 a name borrowed from any perfection in the creature is attri- 
 buted to God, we must exclude from its signification every- 
 thing that belongs to the imperfect manner wherein that 
 attribute is found in the creature. AVhence he concludes that 
 knowledge in God is not a habit but a pui-e act. And again, 
 the same Doctor observes that our intellect gets its notions 
 of all sorts of perfections from the creatures, and that as it 
 apprehends those perfections so it signifies them by names. 
 Therefore, saith he, in attributing these names to God we 
 are to consider two things : first the perfections themselves, as 
 goodness, life, and the like, which are properly in God ; and 
 secondly, the manner which is peculiar to the creature, and 
 cannot, strictly and properly speaking, be said to agree to 
 the Creator. 
 
 And although Suarez -, with other Schoolmen, teacheth 
 that the mind of man conceiveth knowledge and will to be 
 in God as faculties or operations, by analogy only to created 
 beings, yet he gives it plainly as his opinion that when know- 
 ledge is said not to be pi'operly in God it must be understood 
 in a sense including imperfection, such as discursive know- 
 ledge ^, or the like imperfect kind found in the creatures : 
 
 ^ Thomas of Aquino, in the territory of Xaples (1225-74), ^"^ whose 
 worlcs the philosophy called Scholastic reached its highest point, accom- 
 modating Aristotlb to the doctrine of the Catholic Church. His philo- 
 sophical theology, or theological philosophy, is contained in his Summa 
 Theologiae. In the present connexion see especially I. qu. 2, 13, 14. 
 
 '■* Suarez, the Spanish Thomist, who died in 161 7. What follows is 
 related in his Disputatione>i Metapliysicae, XXX. ' Quid Deus sit.' 
 
 * Knowledge reached only through the intervention of what is sup- 
 posed to be ah-eady known, i. e. by tneans of reasoning, is called ' dis- 
 cursive.' Ratiocinative activity njay be regarded as a mark of the 
 finitude of the mind that is obliged to have recourse to it. ' Were we 
 capable,' it has been well said, ' of a knowledge of things and their 
 relations at a single view, discur.sive thought would be a superfluous 
 act. It is by such au intuition that we must suppose that the Supreme
 
 268 Divine Visual Language: A Dialogue. 
 
 and that, none of those imperfections in the knowledge of 
 men or angels belonging to the formal notion of knowledge, 
 or to knowledge as such, it will not thence follow that 
 knowledge, in its proper formal sense, may not be attributed 
 to God. And of knowledge taken in general for the clear 
 evident understanding of all truth, he expressly affirms that it 
 is in God, and that this was never denied by any philosopher 
 who believed a God\ It was, indeed, a current opinion in the 
 schools that even heAng itself should be attributed analogically 
 to God and the creatures. That is, they held that God, the 
 supreme, independent, self-originate cause and source of all 
 beings, must not be supposed to exist in the same sense with 
 created beings ; not that he exists less truly, properly, or 
 formally than they, but only because he exists in a more 
 eminent and perfect manner ^. 
 
 21. But, to prevent any man's being led, by mistaking the 
 scholastic use of the terms analogy and analogical, into an 
 opinion that we cannot frame in any degree a true and proper 
 notion of attributes applied by analogy, or, in the school 
 phrase, predicated analogically, it may not be amiss to inquire 
 into the true sense and meaning of those words. Every one 
 knows that analogy is a Greek word used by matliematicians 
 to signify a similitude of proportions. For instance, when 
 we observe that two is to six as three is to nine, this simi- 
 litude or equality of proportion is termed analogy. And, 
 although proportion strictly signifies the habitude or relation 
 
 Intelligence knows all things at once.' So too Pascal, in his Pensies, 
 and others. 
 
 ^ But if Divine 'knowledge' does not, like ours, jiresiippose a suc- 
 cession of self-conscious acts going on in God, contemporaneously with 
 our own conscious experience — in the same way as we represent to 
 ourselves that the conscious experience of our fellow-men is going on — 
 we then cannot represent to ourselves, as an act, the ' clear evident 
 understanding of all truth ' by God ; for any act that is representable 
 by us must be part of a succession. 
 
 ^ All this is very different from the materialistic h5'pothesis that the 
 Supreme Power in the universe is below, instead of including and rising 
 above, the personal consciousness which we each have experience of in 
 ourselves.
 
 Analogy. 269 
 
 of one quantity to another, yet, in a looser and translated 
 sense, it hath been applied to signify eveiy other habitude ; 
 and, consequently, the term analogy comes to signify all 
 similitude of relations or habitudes whatsoever. Hence the 
 Schoolmen tell us there is analogy between intellect and 
 sight ; forasmuch as intellect is to the mind what sight is to 
 the body, and that he who governs the state is analogous to 
 him who steei's a ship. Hence a prince is analogically styled 
 a pilot, being to the state as a pilot is to his vessel. 
 
 For the further clearing of this point, it is to be observed 
 that a twofold analogy is distinguished by the schoolmen — 
 metaj2lwnc8d..a^nd proper. — Of the first kind there are fre- 
 quent instances in Holy Scripture, attributing human parts 
 and passions to God. When He is represented as having a 
 finger, an eye, or an ear ; when He is said to repent, to be 
 angry, or grieved ; every one sees that analogy is metaphorical. 
 Because those parts and passions, taken in the proper signifi- 
 cation, luust, in every degree, necessarily and from the formal 
 nature of the thing, include imperfection. When, therefore, 
 it is said — the finger of God appears in this or that event, 
 men of common sense mean no more but that it is as truly 
 ascribed to God as the works wrought by human fingers are 
 to man : and so of the rest. — But the case is different when 
 wisdom and knowledge are attributed to God. Passions and 
 senses, as such, imply defect ; but in knowledge simply, or 
 as such, there is no defect '. Knowledge, therefore, in the 
 proper formal meaning of the word, may be attributed to 
 God proportionably, that is preserving a proportion to the 
 
 * But what if there is that in the elements of our knowledge, analysed 
 in philosophy, which forbids the ultimate resolution of what really 
 exists into an intelligible unity ; and which — whether under the name of 
 an unresolvable ' duality ' or any other — obliges us, if we have due regard 
 to the facts of experience, to ' leave many things abrupt,' as Bacon says 
 the philosophical theologian must at last do ? The fate of all Monist 
 systems, as contrasted with the unsystematic philosophies, seems to 
 point to this. In a finite knowledge — the only sort we have an}' 
 experience of — the facts refuse to be fully explained in our 'little 
 systems.'
 
 270 Divine Visual Language: A Dialogue. 
 
 iiifjuite nature of God\ We may say, therefore, that as God 
 is infinitely above man, so is the knowledge of God infinitely 
 above the knowledge of man, and this is what Cajetan calls 
 analogia proprie facta. And after this same analogy we 
 must understand all those attributes to belong to the Deity 
 which in themselves simply, and as such, denote perfection. 
 We may, therefore, consistently with what hath been pre- 
 mised, affirm that all sorts of perfection which we can con- 
 ceive in a finite spirit are in God, but without any of that 
 allay ^ which is found in the creatures. This doctrine, there- 
 fore, of analogical perfections in God, or our knowing God 
 by analogy, seems very much misunderstood and misapplied 
 by those who would infer from thence that we cannot frame 
 any direct or proper notion, though never so inadequate, of 
 knowledge or wisdom, as they are in the Deity ; or under- 
 stand any more of them than one born blind can of light and 
 colours ^. 
 
 2 2. And now, gentlemen, it may be expected I should ask 
 your pardon for having dwelt so long on a point of meta- 
 physics, and introduced such unpolished and unfashionable 
 
 * What does this important qualification include ? 
 
 ^ Alloy. ' Allay ' in Bacon and other early writers. 
 
 ^ In what he says about an analogical knowledge of God, Berkeley 
 had partly in view two contemporary theologians — both Irish bishops. 
 Among other rej)lies to Toland's Christianity not Mijsferioas (1696) 
 was a Letter by Peter Browne, afterwards Bishop of Cork and Ross, 
 which appeared in 1699. Browne maintains (so far in verbal agree- 
 ment with Berkeley) that we have no idea of spirit ; and further that 
 our knowledge of the spiritual world is gained by ' analogy ' from our 
 knowledge of the operations of embodied human spirit. In I'jog, Arch- 
 bishop King published a Sermon on the Consinteiicy of Predestination 
 and Foreknoivtedge with the Freedom of Man''s Will, which he defended 
 on the same foundation of analogy, in a way that seemed to imply that 
 our highest conceptions of God are mere metajihors, which mean nothing 
 real. Browne's view of human theological knowledge is fully stated in 
 his Procedure, Extent, and Limits of JIuman riidcrstanding (1 728), and 
 in likings Divine and Supernatural conceived hy Analogy with Things 
 Natural and Human (17.^3'*. — Butler's ' analogy ' between the visible 
 constitution of things experienced on this side of death, and that larger 
 constitution that is put before us in conscience and Christianity, justify- 
 ing expectations of a life beyond death, is not to be confounded with 
 Browne's ' analogical interpretation ' of the attributes of God.
 
 God is Co7iscious TntelUgence. 271 
 
 writers as the Schoolmen into good company; but, as Lysicles 
 gave the occasion, I leave him to answer for it. 
 
 Lys. I never dreamt of this dry dissertation. But, if I 
 have been the occasion of discussing these scholastic points, 
 by my unluckily mentioning the Schoolmen, it was my first 
 fault of tlie kind, and I promise it shall be the last. Tlic 
 meddling with crabbed authors of any sort is none of my 
 taste. I graut one meets now and then with a good notion 
 in what we call dry writers, such a one for example as this 
 I was sj)eaking of, which I must own struck my fancy. But 
 then, for these we have such as Prodicus or Diagoras, 
 who look into obsolete books, and save the rest of us that 
 trouble. 
 
 Cri. So you pin your faith upon them % 
 
 Lys. It is only for some odd opinions, and matters of fact, 
 and critical points. Besides, we know the men to whom we 
 give credit : they are judicious and honest, and have no end 
 to serve but truth. And I am confident some author or 
 other has maintained the forementioned notion in the same 
 sense as Diagoras related it. 
 
 Cri. That may be. But it never was a received notion, 
 and never will, so long as men believe a God : the same argu- 
 ments that prove a first cause proving an intelligent cause ; — 
 intelligent, I say, in the proper sense ; wise and good in the 
 true and formal acceptation of the words. Otherwise, it is 
 evident that every syllogism brought to prove those attri- 
 butes, or, which is the same thing, to prove the being of a 
 God, will be found to consist of four terms, and consequently 
 can conclude nothing ^ But for your part, Alcijihron, you 
 have been fully convinced that God is a thinking intelligent 
 
 ^ 'Four ttrms' — one of the commonest of fallacies, due to the ambi- 
 guity, and therefore imperfection, of language. This supposed syllogism 
 does not exemplify it, however, if the terms ' knowledge,' ' wisdom,' 
 'goodness,' &c. — in their application to God involving an incompre- 
 hensibilitj' not found in their application to human agents — are yet 
 sufficiently near their ordinary connotation when they express the prac- 
 tical knowledge of God which we may reach.
 
 272 Divine Visual Language: A Dialogue, 
 
 being, in the same sense with other spirits ; though not in 
 the same imperfect manner or degree. 
 
 23. AT.C. And yet I am not without my scruples : for, with 
 knowledge you infer Avisdom, and with wisdom goodness. 
 But how is it possible to conceive God so good and man so 
 wicked % It may, perhaps, with some colour be alleged that 
 a little soft shadowing of evil sets off the bright and luminous 
 parts of the creation, and so contributes to the beauty of the 
 whole piece ; but for blots so large and so black it is impos- 
 sible to account by that principle. That there should be so 
 much vice, and so little virtue upon earth, and that the laws 
 of God's kingdom should be so ill observed by His subjects, 
 is what can never be reconciled with that surpassing wisdom 
 and goodness of the supreme Monarch \ 
 
 Euph. Tell me, Alcij)liron, w^ould you argue that a state 
 was ill administered, or judge of the manners of its citizens, 
 by the disorders committed in the jail or dungeon 1 
 
 Ale. I would not. 
 
 Eufh, And, for aught we know, this spot, with the few 
 sinners on it, bears no greater proportion to the universe of 
 intelligences than a dungeon doth to a kingdom. It seems 
 we are led not only by revelation, but by common sense, 
 observing and inferring from ihe analogy of visible things, to 
 conclude there are innumerable orders of intelligent beings 
 more happy and more perfect than man ; whose life is but 
 a span, and whose place, this earthly globe, is but a point, 
 in respect of the whole system of God's creation. We are 
 dazzled, indeed, with the glory and grandeur of things here 
 below, because we know no better. But, I am apt to think, 
 if we knew what it was to be an angel for one hour, we 
 should return to this world, though it were to sit on the 
 
 ' This familiar theological difficulty. does not rise, like that which occa- 
 sioned the analogical hypothesis, from the need for infiMite intelligence 
 in order to comprehend Infinite Quantity. It is occasioned by the 
 moral disorder in which we find ourselves, and in which we seem to find 
 the universe.
 
 The 'Existence of Eiil. 2/3 
 
 brightest throne in it, with vastly more loathing and re- 
 luctance than we would now descend into a loathsome 
 dungeon or sepulchre ^. 
 
 24. Cri. To me it seems natural that such a weak, pas- 
 sionate, and short sighted creature as man should be ever 
 liable to scruples of one kind or other. But, as this same 
 creature is apt to be over-positive in judging, and over-hasty 
 in concluding ^, it falls out that these difficulties and scruples 
 about God's conduct are made objections to His being. And 
 so men come to argue from their own defects against the 
 Divine perfections. And, as the views and humours of men 
 are different and often opposite, you may sometimes see them 
 deduce the same atheistical conclusions from contrary pre- 
 mises. I knew an instance of this in two minute philosophers 
 of my acquaintance, who used to argue each from his own 
 temper against a Providence. One of them, a man of a 
 choleric and vindictive spirit, said he could not believe a Pro- 
 vidence, because London was not swallowed up or consumed 
 by fire from heaven ; the streets being, as he said, full of people 
 who shew no other belief or worship of God but perpetually 
 praying that He would damn, rot, sink, and confound them. 
 The other, being of an indolent easy temper, concluded there 
 could be no such thing as Providence ; for that a being of con- 
 summate wisdom must needs employ himself better than in 
 minding the prayers and actions and little interests of mankind. 
 
 Ale. After all, if God have no passions, how can it be true 
 that vengeance is His 1 Or how can He be said to be jealous 
 of His glory 1 
 
 ^ This solution of the difficulty of the physical and moral evil is in the 
 spirit of Butler's ' Analogy ' rather than of Browne's, and especially of 
 Butler's Sermon on the ' Ignorance of Man.' 
 
 * ' Thus much at least,' s;iys Butler, ' will be found, not taken for 
 granted but proved [i. e. by the analogy of the supernatural to the 
 natural], that any reasonable man, who will thoroughly consider the 
 matter, may be as much assured as he is of his own being, that it is not 
 BO clear a case that there is a nothing' — in the religious views e.g. of 
 the supremacy of moral government in the universe, and of our conscious 
 life, and continued moral agency, after death.
 
 274 Divine Visiml Language: A Dialogue. 
 
 Cri. We believe that God executes vengeance without 
 revenge, and is jealous without weakness, just as the mind of 
 man sees without eyes, and apprehends without hands. 
 
 25. Ale. To put a period to this discourse, we will grant 
 there is a God in this dispassionate sense: but what then 1 
 What hath this to do Avith Religion or Divine worship 1 To 
 what purpose are all these prayers, and praises, and thanks- 
 givings, and singing of praises, which the foolish vulgar call 
 serving God ? What sense, or use, or end is there in all these 
 things 1 
 
 Cri. We worship God, we praise and pray to Him : not 
 because we think that He is proud of our worship, or fond of 
 our praise or prayers, and affected with them as mankind 
 are ; or that all our service can contribute in the least degree 
 to His happiness or good : but because it is good for us to 
 be so disposed towards God : because it is just and right, and 
 suitable to the nature of things, and becoming the relation 
 we stand in to our supi^eme Lord and Governor. 
 
 Ale. If it be good for us to worship God, it should seem 
 that the Christian Religion, w^hich pretends to teach men the 
 knowledge and worship of God, was of some use and benefit 
 to mankind, 
 
 Cri. Doubtless. 
 
 Ale. If this can be made appear, I shall own myself very 
 much mistaken. 
 
 Cri. It is now near dinner-time. Wherefore, if you please, 
 we will put an end to this conversation for the present ^ 
 
 * Berkeley, in the preceding Dialogue, argues that our knowledge of 
 God niay be explained in the same way as the knowledge we have of 
 our fellow-men. He makes it a suggested judgment, which presupposes 
 a consciousness of ourselves, and which also presupposes a tendency 
 to suggest what has been previously experienced by us. He realises the 
 universe as consisting in the mental experience of a hierarchy of inter- 
 communicating spirits — intercommunicating by means of the |>henomena 
 given in sense, and all in communion with the Divine Spirit Supreme. 
 With his aversion to metaphysical abstractions, he never raises the 
 antinomies of Kant, and he ignores the unica substantia of Spinoza,
 
 Modern Theological Bifficnlties. 275 
 
 God is with him the self-conscious Spirit, Supreme in tlie hierarchy, on 
 whom .all other conscious spirits depend. 
 
 But one may well ask whether this conception enough recognises that 
 ineffable mysteriousness of God and the Infinite which nourishes the 
 sentiment of reverence, so efficacious in our spiritual life ? 
 
 At the opposite extreme God disapjjears in the Unknowable. 
 
 The difficulty of an intermediate between these extremes of anthro- 
 pomorphism and ilifulogical nescience perplexes modern thought. A 
 comprehensible God is no God : an entirely unknown God cannot even 
 engage faith. Berkeley seems unconscious of the difficulty. Out of it 
 has arisen the theological agnosticism of modern' physical science, and 
 its counterpart gnosticism in Absolute Thought — personified in finite 
 spirits. iSirig carries us deeper into this subject. 
 
 The preceding Dialogue hardly recognises the difiSculties which in 
 these days are most apt to beset the philosophical inquirer in theology; 
 for it countenances the assumption that there is no alternative inter- 
 mediate between Theism (in a somewhat anthropomorpliic form of it 
 too) and dogmatic Atheism. Nothing is said about those who pronounce 
 the whole problem insoluble — in Hume's words, ' a riddle, an aenigma, 
 an inexplicable mystery'; with 'doubt, uncertainty, and suspense of 
 judgment,' as 'the only result of our most accurate scrutiny into it ' — 
 and who thus hold themselves absolved from offering any ultimate 
 explanation at all. Thanks indirectly to Hume and Kant, perhaps we 
 are learning that if the ultimate problem is practically insoluble, then 
 even the working principles of life must, on the same ground, be un- 
 worthy of trust. 
 
 T 2
 
 ANONYMOUS LETTER 
 
 In September, 1732, a few months after the preceding 
 Dialogue was published, the following anonymous Letter to 
 its author appeared in the Daily Post Boy : — 
 
 Reverend Sir, 
 I have read over your treatise called Alciphron, in which 
 the Free-thinkers of the present age, in their various shifted 
 tenets, are pleasantly, elegantly, and solidly confuted. The 
 style is easy, the language plain, and the arguments are 
 nervous. But upon the Treatise annexed thereto, and upon 
 that part where you seem to intimate that Vision is the sole- 
 Language of God, I beg leave to make these few obser- 
 vations, and offer them to your's and your readers' con- 
 sideration ' : — 
 
 1. Whatever it is without that is the cause of any idea 
 within, I call the object of sense : the sensations arising from 
 such objects, I call ideas. The ' objects,' therefore, that cause 
 such sensations are without us, and tiie 'ideas' within. 
 
 2. Had we but one sense, we might be apt to conclude that 
 there were no objects at all without us, but that the whole 
 scene of ideas which passed through the mind aiose from its 
 internal operations ; but since the same object is the cause of 
 ideas by different senses, thence we infer its existence. But, 
 though the object be one and the same, the ideas that it pro- 
 
 * The original Essay on Vision, publisliod in 1 709, was ' annexed ' to 
 Alcijjhron. Tlie preceding Dialogue is the poniou of Alciphron to 
 which this Letter refers as that in which Berlieley ' intimates that 
 Vision is the sole (?) language of God.'
 
 Objections to a Divine Visual Language. 277 
 
 duces in different senses have no manner of similitude with 
 one another. Because, 
 
 3. Whatever connexion there is betwixt the idea of one 
 sense and the idea of another, produced by the same object, 
 arises only from experience. To explain this a little familiarly, 
 let us suppose a man to have such an exquisite sense of 
 feeling given him that he could perceive plainly and distinctly 
 the inequality of the surface of two objects, which, by its 
 reflecting and refracting the rays of light, pi'oduces the ideas 
 of colours. At first, in the dark, though he plainly per- 
 ceived a difference by his touch, yet he could not possibly 
 tell which was red and which was white, whereas a little ex- 
 perience would make him feel a colour in the dark, as well 
 as see it in the light. 
 
 4. The same word in languages stands veiy often for the 
 object without, and the ideas it produces within, in the several 
 senses. When it stands for any object without, it is the re- 
 presentative of no manner of idea; neither can we possibly 
 have any idea of what is solely without us. Because, 
 
 5. Ideas within have no other connexion with the objects 
 without than from the frame and make of our bodies, which is 
 by the arbitrary appointment of God ; and, though we cannot 
 well help imagining that the objects without are something like 
 our ideas within, yet a new set of senses, or the alteration of 
 the old ones, would soon convince us of our mistake; and, 
 though our ideas would then be never so different, yet the 
 objects might be the same. 
 
 6. However, in the present situation of affairs, there is an 
 infallible certain connexion betwixt the idea and the object ; 
 and, therefore, when an object produces an idea in one sense.
 
 278 Anonymous Letter. 
 
 we know, but from expei'ience only, what idea it will produce 
 in another sense. 
 
 7. The alteration of an object may produce a different idea 
 in one sense from what it did before, which may not be dis- 
 tinguished by another sense. But, where the alteration occa- 
 sions different ideas in different senses, we may, from our 
 infallible experience, argue from the idea of one sense to 
 that of the other ; so that, if a different idea arises in two 
 senses from the alteration of an object, either in situation or 
 distance, or any other way, when we have the idea in one 
 sense, we know from use what idea the object so situated will 
 produce in the other. 
 
 8. Hence, as the operations of Nature are always regular 
 and uniform, where the same alteration of the object occa- 
 sions a smaller difference in the ideas of one sense, and a 
 greater in the other, a curious observer may argue as well 
 from exact observations as if the difference in the ideas was 
 equal ; since experience plainly teaches us that a just pro- 
 portion is observed in the alteration of the ideas of each 
 fcense, from the alteration of the object. Within this sphere 
 is confined all the judicious observations and knowledge of 
 mankind. 
 
 Now, from these observations, rightly understood and con- 
 sidered, your New Tlieory of Vision must in a great measure 
 fall to tlie ground, and the laws of Optics will be found to 
 stand upon the old unshaken bottom. For, though our ideas 
 of magnitude and distance in one sense arc entirely different 
 from our ideas of magnitude and distance in another, yet we 
 may justly argue from one to the other, as they have one 
 common cause ivithout, of Avhich, as without, we cannot 
 possibly have the faintest idea. The ideas I have of distance 
 and magnitude by feeling are widely different from the ideas
 
 Objections to a Divine Vistial Language. 279 
 
 I have of them by seeiBg ; but that something without which 
 is the cause of all the variety of the ideas within, in one sense, 
 is the cause also of the variety in the other ; and, as they have 
 a necessary connexion with it, we may very justly demonstrate 
 from our ideas of feeling of the same object what will be our 
 ideas in seeing. And, though to talk of seeing by tangible 
 angles and tangible lines be, I agree with you, direct non- 
 sense, yet to demonstrate from angles and lines in feelings, to 
 the ideas in seeing that arise from the same common object, 
 is very good sense, and so vice versd. 
 
 From these observations, thus hastily laid together, and a 
 thorough digestion thereof, a great many useful corollaries in 
 all philosophical disputes might be collected. 
 
 I am, 
 your humble servant, &c. 
 
 This anonymous Letter was the occasion of the following 
 Vindication of the Theory of Visual Language, by Berkeley, 
 which appeared in March, 1733. 
 
 The Vindication contributes to his previous reasonings — 
 
 {a) Important explanations of his original theory of the 
 development of the power of Seeing through suggestion. In 
 so doing he points to lines of thought which may be run 
 deeper, especially the distinction between the suggested objects 
 of sense and their ultimate or rational cause (sect 9-18). 
 
 (6) Answers to the eight objections of the preceding Letter 
 to the Theory of a Divine Visual Language (sect. 19-34). 
 
 (c) A deductive or synthetical exposition and application 
 of the theory of how we learn to See, — the analytical order 
 of exposition adopted in the original Essay on Vision being 
 reversed. At the close there is an allusion to Cheselden's 
 since celebrated case.
 
 280 Anonymous Letter. 
 
 ■The psychological inquiry into the philosophy of Percep- 
 tion leads in this Vindication to a consideration of our judg- 
 ment of Causality. It is argued that causation involves 
 more than the natural succession and metamorphosis of phe- 
 nomena, seeing that i-eason cannot be satisfied with a caused 
 cause ; that we find ourselves obliged to interpret the events 
 of sense as ultimately the expression of Rational Will ; and 
 that we are led, by sustained reflection, to transform the 
 visible, and indeed the whole sensible world, into a perpetual 
 Divine Government — physical and at last moral. 
 
 A. C. F.
 
 THE 
 
 THEOHY OF VISUAL LANGUAGE 
 
 VINDICATED AND EXPLAINED.
 
 EXTRACTS FROM 
 THE THEORY OF VISUAL LANGUAGE 
 
 VINDICATED AND EXPLAINED. 
 
 9. By a sensible object I understand that which is pi'operly 
 pei;ceived by sense. Things properly perceived by sense are 
 im medi ately/ perceived ^. — Besides things properly and imme- 
 diately perceived by any sense, there may be also other things 
 suggested to the mind by means of those proper and imme- 
 diate objects ; — which things so suggested are not objects of 
 that sense, being in truth only objects of the imagination ^, 
 and originally belonging to some other sense or faculty. 
 Thus, sounds are the proper object of hearing, being properly 
 and immediately perceived by that, and by no other sense. 
 But, by the mediation of sounds or words, all other things 
 may be suggested to the mind ; and yet things so suggested 
 are not thought the object of hearing. 
 
 10. The peculiar objects of each sense, although they are 
 truly or strictly perceived by that sense alone, may yet be 
 suggested to the imagination by some other sense. The objects 
 therefore of all the senses may become objects of imagination 
 — which faculty represents all sensible things. A colour, there- 
 
 * Do we become at all percipient — meaning^ by that cognisant of some- 
 thing that is independent of transient phenomena — in any one of our 
 five senses, taken singly ? Does externality so belong to any one of 
 them that, in that one, we have not only sensations, but also apprehend 
 a real object — and an object that is distinguished (not necessarily as 
 something extended) from the percipient ? If so, on what rational prin- 
 ciple is the distinction made ? These questions are scarcely touched 
 by Berkeley. 
 
 ^ ' Imagination,' i. e. expectant imagination, or rather expectant 
 conception, discursive thought and rational common sense being latent 
 in the ' suggestion. '
 
 284 The Theory of Visual Language 
 
 fore, which is truly perceived by sight alone, may, neverthe- 
 less, upon hearing the words blue or red, be apprehended by 
 the imagination. It is in a primary and peculiar manner 
 the object of sight ; in a secondary manner it is the object of 
 imagination : but cannot properly be supposed the object of 
 hearing ^. 
 
 1 1 . The objects of sense, being things immediately per- 
 ceived, are otherwise called ideas'^. 
 
 The cause ^ of these ideas, or the power of producing them, 
 is not the object of sense — not being itself perceived, but 
 only inferred by reason from its effects, to wit, those objects 
 or ideas which are perceived by sense. From our ideas of 
 sense the inference of reason is good to Power, Cause, Agent. 
 But we may not therefore infer that our ideas are like unto 
 this Power, Cause, or Active Being. On the contrary, it 
 seems evident that an idea can be only like another idea, and 
 that in our ideas or immediate objects of sense, there is 
 nothing of Power, Causality, or Agency included. 
 
 12. Hence it follows that the power or cause of ideas is 
 not an object of sense, but of reason. Our knowledge of the 
 cause is measured by the effect ; of the power, by our idea. 
 To the absolute nature, therefore, of outward causes or 
 
 ^ In this and the preceding section he distinguishes the perception 
 that is immediate and original, given in the senses singly — in each of 
 which he assumes that we are conscious of phenomena ajipropriate 
 to the sense — from suggestion, in which a plurality of the senses is in- 
 volved, and by which our developed perception of extra-organic things 
 is held by him to be constituted. Berkeley's ' immediate perception ' is 
 simply consciousness of phenomena of sense ; bis suggestion — developed 
 or acquired perception — is tlie interpretation of the significant pheno- 
 mena of sense that is occasioned by custom or experience. 
 
 - Elsewhere called also 'sensations' and 'real ideas' (in contrast 
 with ' chimeras ' of mere imagination), and afterwards in Siris called 
 ' phenomena.' To ' phenomenon,' as on the whole the most convenient 
 term, I hivve usually adhered in these annotations. 
 
 ' 'Cause' here is not the phenomenal sign, but the efficient and 
 primary productive cause; and that with Berkeley must be (uiipheno- 
 menal) spirit — cannot be phenomena of which we are percipient in sense.
 
 Vindicated and Explained. 285 
 
 powers, we have nothing to say: they are no ohjects of our 
 sense or perception. Whenever, therefore, the appellation of 
 sensible object is used in a determined intelligible sense, it is 
 not applied to signify the absolutely existing outward cause 
 or power, but the ideas themselves produced thereby \ 
 
 13. Ideas which are observed to be connected together are 
 vulgarly considered under the relation of cause and effect, 
 whereas, in strict and philosophic truth, they are only related 
 as the sign to the thing signified ^. For, we know our ideas, 
 and therefore know that one idea cannot be the cause of 
 another. We know that our ideas of sense are not the cause 
 of themselves. We know also that we do not cause them. 
 Hence we know they inust have some other efficient cause, 
 distinct from them and us. 
 
 14. In treating of Vision, it was ray jiurpose to consider 
 the effects and appearances — the objects perceived by my 
 senses — the ideas of sight as connected with those of touch ; 
 to inquire how one idea comes to suggest another belonging 
 to a different sense ; how things visible suggest things 
 tangible ; how present things suggest things more remote 
 and future — whether by likeness, by necessary connexion, by 
 geometrical inference, or by arbitrary institution. 
 
 15. It hath indeed been a prevailing opinion and un- 
 
 * This seems to say that the ' objects ' of Sense are subjective phe- 
 nomena, given in each of our senses ; or suggested, when the data 
 of one sense are interpreted as evidence of sensations to be expected in 
 another of our senses. The relations of Reason on the other hand 
 transcend phenomena. He neither analyses the rational constitution of 
 objectivity, in the localising of our sensations, nor shows, on the other 
 hand, that the merely phenomenal data of sense can be ' objects,' in any 
 proper meaning of objectivity. 
 
 ^ He does not show what is involved in our being intellectually 
 obliged to refer phenomena to unphenomenal power ; nor trhy (which 
 is a very different thing) we connect them, through sense suggestions, 
 as sign and thing signified, i. e. under laws of nature. Mere sense 
 cannot give universality, nor indeed more than the present, but 
 transient, phenomenon. Of suggestion he only says that it is based 
 on ' arbitrary institution,' and he implies that reason involves ' necessary 
 connexion.'
 
 286 The Theory of Visual Layiguacje 
 
 doubted principle among mathematicians and philosophers 
 that there were certain ideas common to both senses : whence 
 arose the distinction of primary and secondary qualities. But, 
 I think it hath been demonstrated that there is no such 
 thing as a common object — as an idea, or kind of idea, per- 
 ceived both by sight and touch. 
 
 1 6. In order to treat with due exactness on the nature of 
 Vision, it is necessary in the first place accurately to consider 
 our own ideas ; to distinguish where there is a difference ; 
 to call things by their right names ; to define terms, and 
 not confound ourselves and others by their ambiguous use ; 
 the want or neglect whereof hath so often produced mistakes. 
 Hence it is that men talk as if one idea was the efficient 
 cause of another ; hence they mistake inferences of reason for 
 2)erce2)tions of sense ; hence they confound tJie 2)ower residing 
 in somewhat external ^ with the j^foper object of sense — which 
 is in truth no more than our own idea. 
 
 17. When we have well understood and considered the 
 nature of Vision, we may, by reasoning from thence, be better 
 able to collect some knowledge of the external unseen cause 
 of our ideas ; — whether it be one or many, intelligent or 
 unintelligent^ active or inert, body or spirit. But, in order 
 to understand and comprehend this theory '^j and discover the 
 true principles thereof, we should consider the likeliest way 
 is not to attend to unknown substances, external causes, 
 agents, or powers ; nor to reason or infer anything about or 
 from things obscure, unperceived, and altogether unknown^. 
 
 18. As in this inquiry we are concerned with what objects 
 we perceive, or our own ideas, so, upon them our reasonings 
 must proceed. To treat of things utterly unknown as if we 
 knew them, and so lay our beginning in obscurity, would not 
 
 ^ This 'power' is, with Berkeley, Mind or Spirit — not perceived by 
 sense, but found by ' inference. ' 
 
 ^ i.e. the theory of our power of interpreting the meaning of visual 
 phenomena. 
 
 * ' Unknown ' — so far as mere sense is concerned.
 
 Vindicated and Explained. 287 
 
 surely seem the properest means for the discovering of trutli. 
 Hence it follows, that it would be wrong if one about to 
 treat of the nature of Vision should, instead of attending to 
 visible ideas, define the object of sight to be that obscure 
 cause, tliat invisible power or agent, which produced visible 
 ideas in our minds. Certainly such cause or power does not 
 seem to be the object either of the sense or the science of 
 Vision, inasmuch as what we know thereby we know only of 
 the effects ^. 
 
 * The foregoing sections confine the present question to the ohjecis 
 we are immediately percipient of — namely, 'sensations,' 'real ideas,' 
 the ' phenomena ' present to our senses — and their suggested connexion 
 with one another. The power that presents phenomena to our senses in 
 a rational and interpretable order, being a power ' external ' and ' un- 
 seen,' cannot itgelf be an 'object' of sense: it is rationally inferred 
 from the phenomena. This inference he miglit justify on the ground 
 that we distinguish what 2ve can produce from visible and tangible 
 phenomena which ire cannot produce, and which therefore we find 
 ourselves in reason obliged to refer to a cause ' distinct from them and 
 us' (sect. 13). Causality, as the fundamental principle of Reason, is 
 thus, as it were, proposed here for philosophical analysis to any student 
 who is so inclined. 
 
 The causal principle has been often used by philosophers as a premiss 
 in reasonings for the existence of impercipient Matter. The pheno- 
 mena of sense, they argue, must be caused : I am not their cause 
 (although they are perceived by me) : they must therefore be effects of 
 an extended and solid substance ; or at least of an ' unknown Some- 
 thing,' called Matter. — Unable to accept this abstraction, Berkeley had 
 asked, Must not the power of which the phenomena presented to our 
 senses are effects — at least if the word 'power' is to have a meaning — 
 be Mind or Spirit — like our own in kind, but not necessarily in degree 
 — and therefore not a mere abstraction like unphenomenal Matter ? — 
 Others, Reid and Hamilton for instance, deny that Matter is inferred. 
 Body and mind, in their view, exist as it were face to face in percep- 
 tion — in the sui generis relation of percipient act and perceived object — 
 each equally known to the perceiving mind as phenomenal subject and 
 object, in the irreducible act; neither known as absolute and inde- 
 pendent being. — Berkeley argues that we may infer that another active 
 Spirit is the cause of our 'sensations,' although we cannot infer that 
 abstract or unphenomenal Matter is. And his implied reason seems 
 to be, that we have had experience of what power means — in the free 
 personal acts of which we recognise ourselves the responsible causes — 
 while we cannot connect any meaning with the term when applied to 
 'matter': there is meaning in spiritual power ; power in matter is a 
 meaningless ab.straction. 
 
 A representative perception (after a sort) of sensible things is implied 
 in Berkeley's ' suggestion,' or developed perception, in which ' things '
 
 288 The Theory of Visual Language 
 
 Having premised thus much, I now proceed to consider 
 the principles laid down in your Letter, which I shall take in 
 order as they lie. 
 
 19. In yoxxY first faragrafh or section, you say that 'what- 
 ever it is without which is the cause of any idea within, you 
 call the object of sense ; ' and you tell us soon after this, ' that 
 we cannot possibly have an idea of any object without.' — 
 Hence it follows that by an object of sense you mean some- 
 thing that we can have no manner of idea of. This making 
 the objects of sense to be things utterly insensible seems to 
 me contrary to common sense and the use of language. That 
 there is nothing in the reason of things to justify such a 
 definition is, I think, plain from what has been premised. 
 And that it is contrary to received custom and opinion, 
 I appeal to the expei'ience of the first man you meet, who 
 I suppose will tell you that by an ' object of sense ' he means 
 that which is perceived by sense, and not a thing utterly un- 
 perceivable and unknown. The beings, substances, powers 
 which exist without, may indeed concern a treatise on some 
 other science, and may there become a proper subject of 
 inquiry. But why they should be considered as objects of the 
 visive faculty, in a treatise of Optics \ I do not comprehend. 
 
 20. The real ' objects of sight ' we see ; and what we see we 
 know. And these true objects of sense and knowledge — to 
 wit, our oum ideas'^ — are to be considered, compared, distin- 
 guished, in order to understand the true Theory of Vision. 
 — As to the outward cause of these ideas, whether it be one 
 and the same, or various and manifold, whether it be thinking 
 or unthinking, spirit or body, or whatever else we conceive 
 or determine about it, the visible appearances do not alter 
 
 consist of phenomena that are significant of (nnd that thus represent) 
 other plienoniena, by natural law, which means by Divine appointment. 
 
 ' 'Optics' liere includes introspective psycliology of the sensations 
 proper to the optic nerve, and of visual perceptiim. Cf. sect. 37. 
 
 ''' ' Our own ideas,' i.e. the phenomena of which we are conscious in 
 the five senses.
 
 Vindicated and Explained. 289 
 
 their nature — our ideas are still the same. Though I may 
 have an erroneous notion of the cause, or though I may be 
 utterly ignorant of its nature, yet this does not hinder my 
 making true and certain judgments about my ideas : — my 
 knowing which are the same, and which different; wherein 
 they agree, and wherein they disagree ; which are connected 
 together, and whei'ein this connexion consists ; whether it be 
 founded in a likeness of nature, in a geometrical necessity, or 
 merely in experience and custom ^. 
 
 21. In your second section, you say ' that if we had but one 
 sense, we might be apt to conclude there were no objects at 
 all without us ; but that, since the same object is the cause of 
 ideas by diflferent senses, tlience we infer its existence.' — Now, 
 in the first place, I observe, that I am at a loss concerning 
 the point which is here assumed, and would fain be informed 
 how we come to know that the same object causeth ideas by 
 different senses. In the next place, I must observe that, if 
 I had only one sense, I should nevertheless infer and conclude 
 there was some cause without me (which you, it seems, define 
 to be an object), producing the sensations or ideas perceived 
 by that sense. For, if I am conscious that / do not cause 
 them, and know that they are not the cause of themselves — 
 both which points seem very clear — it plainly follows that there 
 must be some other third cause distinct from me and them ^ 
 
 2 2. In your third section, you acknowledge with me 'that 
 
 ' Berkeley and his critic are at cross purposes about the word ' object.' 
 With the former it is confined to the transitory phenomena of which we 
 are conscious or immediately percipient, or which are suggested in de- 
 veloped perception ; with the latter it is applied to their (supposed) 
 external cause, which the critic seems to take for granted is ' abstract * 
 or unphenomenal Matter. — Berkeley does not ask whether, by a merely 
 empirical compai'ison of phenomena, we can form judgments about their 
 actual relations to one another. 
 
 ^ Berkeley proceeds everywhere upon the assumption, that we are 
 intellectually obliged to refer what we perceive by our senses to a 
 spiritual or intending agent, as their proper determining cause, but he 
 does not pause to explain the universality and necessity of this in- 
 tellectual obligatiun.
 
 290 The Theory of Visual Language 
 
 the connexion between ideas of different senses ariseth only 
 from experience.' — Herein we are agreed^. 
 
 In your fourth section you say ' that a word denoting an 
 external object is the representative of no manner of idea. 
 Neither can we possibly have an idea of what is solely with- 
 out us.' — What is here said of an external unknown object 
 hath been already considered (sect. 19). 
 
 23. In the following section of your Letter, you declare 
 ' that our ideas have only an arbitrary connexion with out- 
 Avard objects, that they are nothing like the outward objects, 
 and that a variation in our ideas dotli not imply or infer a 
 change in the objects, which may still remain the same.'- — 
 Now, to say nothing about the confused use of the wox-d 
 * object,' which hath been more than once already observed, I 
 shall only remark that the points asserted in this section do 
 not seem to consist with some others that follow. 
 
 24. For, in the sixth section, you say 'that in the present 
 situation of things, there is an infallible certain connexion 
 between the idea and the object.' — But how can we perceive 
 this connexion, since, according to you, we never perceive such 
 object, nor can have any idea of it 1 or, not perceiving it, how 
 can we know this connexion to be infallibly certain ? 
 
 25. In the seventh section, it is said 'that we may, from 
 our infallible experience, argue from our idea of one sense to 
 that of another.' — But, I think it is plain that our experience 
 of the connexion between ideas of sight and touch is not 
 infallible ; since, if it were, there could be no deceptio visus, 
 neither in painting, perspective, dioptrics, nor any otherwise. 
 
 26. In the last section, you affirm 'that experience 
 plainly teaches us that a just proportion is observed in the 
 alteration of the ideas of each sense, from the alteration of 
 
 ^ ' Experience ' — elsewhere ' custom ' or ' suggestion ' — by which he 
 throughout (so far) explains our tendency to make actual data of sense 
 tiigns or evidence of other data of sense, not actual but expected. In 
 Hume's ' explanation ' of our belief in ' necessary connexion ' in nature, 
 this hint is worked out. (See Hume's Inquixy, ch. vii.)
 
 Vindicated and Explained, 291 
 
 the object.' — Now, I cannot possibly reconcile this section 
 with the fifth, or comprehend how experience should shew us 
 that the alteration of the project produceth a proportionable 
 alteration in the ideas of different senses ; or how indeed it 
 should shew us anything at all either from or about the 
 alteration of an object utterly unknown, of which we neither 
 have nor can have any manner of idea. What I do not per- 
 ceive or know, how can I perceive or know to be altered ? 
 And, knowing nothing of its alterations, how can I compute 
 anything by them, deduce anything from them, or be said to 
 have any experience about them ^ 1 
 
 27. From the observations you have premised, rightly 
 undei-stood and considered, you say it follows ' that my New 
 Theory of Vision must in great measure fall to the ground ; 
 and the laws of Optics will be fovmd to stand upon the old 
 unshaken bottom.' — But, though I have considered and en- 
 deavoured to understand your remarks, yet I do not in the 
 least comprehend how this conclusion can be inferred from 
 them. The reason you assign for such inference is, ' because, 
 although our ideas in one sense are entirely different from 
 our ideas in another, yet we may justly argue from one to 
 the other, as they have one common cause without ; of which, 
 you say, we cannot possibly have even the faintest idea.' — 
 Now, my theory nowhere supposeth that we may not justly 
 argue from the ideas of one sense to those of another, by 
 analogy and by experience ^ ; on the contrary, this very point 
 
 ^ In the preceding sections Berkeley may be said to be arguing 
 against the possibility of even a mediate perception of the supposed 
 abstract Cause of the phenomena presented in sense — the ' external 
 object' of his critic. We can think and draw inferences, he implies, 
 either about that whose esse is percipi, or about that whose esse is 
 percipere ; but not about that which must be meaningless. — Here and 
 elsewhere he, in his own way, presses objections like those of Hamilton 
 and Mansel to the possibility of a represeidalive knowledge of what is 
 absolutely foreign to all our previous prestntative experience. 
 
 ^ ' By analogy and by experience/ i.e. inductively; for the expectant 
 judgment which emerges from ' suggestion ' is virtually an inductive 
 generalisation, the presence of which, involving as it does reason latent 
 in sense suggestion, Berkeley fails to explain. 
 
 U 2
 
 292 The Theory of Visual Language 
 
 is affirmed, proved, or supported tlirou^out. {Essay on 
 Vision, §§ 38 and 78.) 
 
 28. Indeed I do not see how the inferences which we make 
 from visible to tangible ideas include any consideration of 
 one common unknown external cause, or depend thereon, but 
 only on mere custom or habit. The experience which I have 
 had that certain ideas of one sense are ' attended or connected 
 with certain ideas of a different sense is, I think, a sufficient 
 reason why the one may suggest the other. 
 
 29. In the next place, you affirm 'that something without, 
 which is the cause of all the variety of ideas within in one 
 sense, is the caiise also of the variety in another : and, as they 
 have a necessary connexion with it, we very justly demon- 
 strate, from our ideas of feeling of the same object, what will 
 be our ideas of seeing.' — As to which, give me leave to 
 remark that to inquire whether that unknoivn something be 
 the same in both cases, or difFei'ent, is a point foreign to 
 Optics; inasmuch as our perceptions by the visive faculty 
 will be the very same, however we determine that point. 
 Perhaps I think that the same Being which causeth our ideas 
 of sight doth cause not only our ideas of touch likewise, but 
 also all our ideas of all the other senses, with all the varieties 
 thereof. But this, I say, is foreign to the purpose ^. 
 
 30. As to what you advance, that our ideas have a neces- 
 sary connexion with such cause, it seems to me gratis dictum : 
 no reason is produced for this assertion ; and I cannot assent 
 
 ' ' Are ' — rather have been. On what frinciple do we translate the 
 past into the future ? He does not pause to ask this ; nor to show the 
 rationality of the translation, though he says it involves ' sufficient 
 reason.' 
 
 ^ The present ' purpose ' is to explain (by ' suggestion ') the trans- 
 formation of phenomena of sense into external tilings, and thus to 
 explain perception and induction. — Does ' perhaps,' in the preceding 
 sentence, hint any hesitation on Berkeley's part as to the distinctive 
 , metaphysical principle of his earlier works — the substantial and causal 
 existence of the whole material world in God and finite spirits, in con- 
 trast to the ontology which supposes also ' abstract ' material substance 
 and power, ' out of Mind ' ?
 
 Vindicated and Explained. 293 
 
 to it without a reason. The ideas or effects I grant are evi- 
 dently perceived : but the cause you say is utterly unknown. 
 How then can you tell whether such unknown cause acts 
 arbitrarily or necessarily ? I see the effects or appearances : 
 and I know that effects must have a cause : but I neither see 
 nor know that their connexion with that cause is necessary^. 
 Whatever there may be, I am sure I see no such necessary 
 connexion, nor, consequently, can demonstrate by means 
 thereof from ideas of one sense to those of another ^. 
 
 31. You add that although to talk of seeing by tangible 
 angles and lines be direct nonsense, yet, to demonstrate from 
 angles and line's in feeling to the ideas in seeing that arise 
 from the same common object is very good sense. If by this 
 no more is meant than that men might argue and comi^ute 
 geometrically by lines and angles in Optics, it is so far from 
 carrying in it any opposition to my Theory that I have ex- 
 pressly declared the same thing. {Essay on Vision, sect. 78.) 
 This doctrine, as admitted by me, is indeed subject to certain 
 limitations ; there being divers cases wherein the writers on 
 Optics thought we judged by lines and angles, or by a sort of 
 natural geometry, with regard to which 1 think they were mis- 
 taken, and I ha-ve given my reasons for it. And those reasons, 
 as they are untouched in your letter, retain their foxxe with me. 
 
 32. I have now gone through your reflexions, which the 
 
 * Does this mean that, for aught we can tell, apart from our experi- 
 ence, 'anything may be the cause of any thing'? So Hume in his 
 doctrine of 'Necessary Connexion.' — With Berkeley, however, it is 
 merely equivalent to saying that any sense-phenomenon might be made 
 the si(jn of any other, the establishment and maintenance of its sifjni- 
 ficance {i. e. the establishment and maintenance of late in nature) being 
 the issue of the rational will of the Supreme Mind; and in sul)ordina- 
 tion, it might be added, to ' laws ' still more comprehensive than those 
 of the visible world — the physical symbolism of sense being causally 
 subordinate to the laws of the spiritual world. 
 
 '■^ He here disclaims the abstract necessity and universality of merely 
 physical law. Thus even a complete knowledge of external nature and 
 its physical laws, apart from the facts and laws of moral government, 
 would still leave the ultimate problem raised by philosophy unsolved.
 
 294 The Theory of Visual Language 
 
 conclusion intimates to have been written in baste, and, 
 having considered them with all the attention I am master of, 
 must now leave it to the thinking reader to judge whether 
 they contain anything that should oblige me to depart from 
 what I have advanced in my Theory of Vision. For my own 
 part, if I were ever so willing, it is not on this occasion in 
 my power to indulge myself in the honest satisfaction it 
 would be frankly to give uj) a known error ; a thing so much 
 more right and reputable to denounce than to defend. On the 
 contrary, it should seem that the Theory will stand secure ; — 
 since you agree with me that men do not see by lines and 
 angles ; since I, on the other hand, agree with you that we 
 may nevertheless compute in Optics by lines and angles, as I 
 have expressly shewed ; since all that is said in your Letter 
 about the 'object,' the 'same' object, the 'alteration' of the 
 object, is quite foreign to the theory, which considereth our 
 ideas as the object of sense, and hath nothing to do with that 
 unknown, unperceived, unintelligible thing which you signify 
 by the word object. Certainly the laws of Optics will not 
 stand on the old, unshaken bottom, if it be allowed that we 
 do not see by geometry ; if it be evident that explications of 
 phenomena given by the received theories in Optics are in- 
 sufficient and faulty; if other principles are found necessary for 
 explaining the nature of vision ; if there be no idea, nor kind 
 of idea, common to both senses, contrary to the old received 
 universal supposition of optic writers. 
 
 33. We not only impose on others but often on ourselves, 
 by the unsteady or ambiguous use of terms. One would 
 imagine that an object should be joerceived ^. I must own, 
 when that word is employed in a different sense, that I am 
 at a loss for its meaning, and consequently cannot comprehend 
 
 ' Berkeley's suggested ' objects of sense ' consist of actual and ex- 
 pected phenomena of sense ; the former signs of the latter, and the 
 latter not actually perceived. ^Cf. sect. 39.) He regards what is 
 suggested as (mediately) perceived, and so resolves developed or ac- 
 quired perception into what he calls suggestion.
 
 Vindicated and Explained. 295 
 
 any arguments oi* conclusions about it. And I am not sure 
 that, on my own i)art, some inaccuracy of expression, as 
 well as the peculiar nature of the subject, not always easy 
 either to explain or conceive, may not have rendered my 
 Treatise concerning Vision difficult to a cursory reader. 
 But, to one of due attention, and who makes my words an 
 occasion of his own thinking, I conceive the wliole to be very 
 intelligible : and, when it is rightly understood, I scarce 
 doubt but it will be assented to. One thing at least I can 
 affirm, that, if I am mistaken, I can plead neither haste nor 
 inattention, having taken true pains and much thought 
 about it. 
 
 34. And had you. Sir, thought it worth while to have 
 dwelt more particularly on the subject, to have pointed out 
 distinct passages in my Treatise, to have answered any of 
 my objections to the received notions, refuted any of my 
 arguments in behalf of mine, or made a particular application 
 of your own ; I might without doubt have profited by your 
 reflexions. But it seems to me we have been considering, 
 either different things, or else the same things in such different 
 views as the one can cast no light on the other. I shall, 
 nevertheless, take this opportunity to make a review of my 
 Theory, in order to render it more easy and clear ; and the 
 rather because, as I had applied myself betimes to this sub- 
 ject, it became familiar — and in treating of things familiar to 
 ourselves, we are too apt to think them so to others. ■ 
 
 35 ^. It seemed proper, if not unavoidable, to begin in the 
 
 ' Sect. 35-47 contain a restatement of the Theory that developed 
 visual perception is the power we acquire of interpreting the divinely 
 ordered phenomena of which we are originally conscious in sight. It 
 was given less fully in the Essay on Vision, sect. 147, 148, and there 
 gathered inductively from a previous survey of what we are conscioua 
 of in visual ' perception ' of the distances, sizes, and places of things. 
 This Theory is now assumed provisionally, in order to be applied de- 
 ductively, in sect. 48-70, to explain our developed visual perceptions of 
 real places, sizes, and distances. — The reverse but correlative method.s 
 of the Essay and the Vindication illustcivte to the student the conti-ast
 
 296 The Theory of Visual Language 
 
 accustomed style of optic writers — admitting divers things 
 as true, wliicli, in a rigoi'ous sense, are not such, but only 
 received by the vulgar and admitted as such. There hath 
 been a long and close connexion in our minds between the 
 ideas of sight and touch. Hence they are considered as one 
 thing — which prejudice suiteth well enough with the purpose 
 of life ; and language is suited to this prejudice. The work 
 of science and speculation is to unravel our prejudices and 
 mistakes, untwisting the closest connexions, distinguishing 
 things that are different ; instead of confused or perplexed, 
 giving us distinct views ; gradually correcting our judgment, 
 and reducing it to a philosophical exactness. And, as this 
 work is the work of time, and done by degrees, it is extremely 
 difficult, if at all possible, to escape the snares of popular 
 language, and the being betrayed thereby to say things 
 strictly speaking neither true nor consistent. This makes 
 thought and candour more especially necessary in the reader. 
 For, language being accommodated to the prgenotions of men 
 and use '6f life, it is difficult to express therein the precise 
 truth of things, which is so distant from their use, and so 
 contrary to our preenotions. 
 
 36. In the contrivance of Vision, as that of other things, 
 the wisdom of Providence seemeth to have consulted the 
 operation rather than the theory of man : to the former 
 things are admirably fitted, but, by that very means, the 
 latter is often perplexed. For, as useful as these immediate 
 suggestions and constant connexions are to direct our actions ; 
 so is our distinguishing between things confounded and as it 
 were blended together no less necessary to the speculation 
 and knowledge of truth. 
 
 37. The knowledge of these connexions, relations, and dif- 
 
 yet connexion of analytical and synthetical procedure. In the Easay 
 Berkeley advances analytically towards his Theory : in the Vindication 
 he first (hypothetically) assumes the Theory, and then proceeds to 
 verify it, by showing how it accounts for our visual knowledge of 
 eituations, sizes, and distances.
 
 Vindicated and Explained. 297 
 
 fercnces of things visible and tangible, their nature, force, and 
 significancy hath not been duly considered by former writers 
 on Optics, and seems to have been the great desideratum in 
 that science, which for want thereof Avas confused and im- 
 perfect. A Treatise, therefore, of this 2)f''iloso2)hical kind', for 
 the understanding of Vision, is at least as necessary as the 
 physical consideration of the eye, nerve, coats, humours, 
 refractions, bodily nature, and motion of light ; or the 
 geometrical application of lines and angles for 2^f«'^is or 
 theory, in dioptric glasses and mirrors, for comiiuting and 
 reducing to some I'ule and measure our judgments, so far as 
 they are proportional to the objects of geometry. In these 
 three lights Vision should be considered, in order to a com- 
 plete Theory of Optics. 
 
 38. It is to be noted that, in considering the Theory of 
 Vision, I observed^ a certain known method wherein, from 
 false and popular sup^^ositions, men do often arrive at truth. 
 "Whereas in the synthetical method of delivering science or 
 truth already found, we proceed in an inverted order, the 
 conclusions in the analysis being assumed as principles in the 
 synthesis. I shall therefore now begin with that conclusion — 
 27i at Vision is the Language of the Author of N ature; from 
 thence deducing theorems and solutions of phenomena, and 
 explaining the nature of visible things and the visive 
 faculty. 
 
 39. Ideas which are observed to be connected with other 
 ideas come to be considered as signs ^, by means whereof 
 things not actually perceived by sense are signified or suggested 
 
 ' Founded, that is, on a philosophical and not on a merely scientific 
 and physiological analysis of developed or acquired perception. 
 
 ^ The Essay on Vision proceeds from particular tacts to the general 
 principle which they exemplify. 
 
 ^ How do they so ' come to be considered ' ? Berkeley says through 
 ' experience ' or ' custom.' The customs of external nature presuppose, he 
 thinks, an 'arbitrary (not capricious) institution' of them (sect. 14) by 
 God.
 
 298 The Theory of Visual Language 
 
 to the iniaglnation ; whose objects they are, and which alone 
 perceives them. And, as sounds suggest other things, so 
 characters suggest other sounds ; and, in general, all signs 
 suggest the things signified, there being no idea which may 
 not offer to the mind another idea which hath been fre- 
 quently joined with it. In certain cases a sign may suggest 
 its correlate as an image, in others as an effect, in others as 
 a cause ^. But, where there is no such relation of similitude 
 or causality, nor any necessary connexion whatsoever, two 
 things, by their mere co-existence, or two ideas, merely by 
 being perceived together, may suggest or signify one the 
 other — their connexion being all the while arbitrary ; for it 
 is the connexion only, as such, that causeth this effect ^. 
 
 40. A great number of arbitrary signs, various and oppo- 
 site, do constitute a Language. If such arbitrary connexion 
 be instituted by men, it is an artificial Language ; if by the 
 Author of Nature, it is a Natural Language. Infinitely 
 various are the modifications of light and sound, whence they 
 are each capable of supplying an endless variety of signs, and, 
 accordingly, have been each employed to form languages ; the 
 one by the arbitrary appointment of mankind, the other by 
 that of God Himself. A connexion established by the Author 
 of Nature, in the ordinary course of things, may surely be 
 called natural, as that made by men will be named artificial. 
 
 ' Does this iniiily that causes strictly so calleJ — free spiritual causes 
 — may be ' suggested,' instead of being ' inferred by reason '? 
 
 '"' Mental association seems here taken as the explanation of our belief 
 in objective order in nature ; and not oidy of that, but of our trans- 
 lation of the transitory phenomena of the senses into perceptions of 
 extended objects. This might be compared with Kant's tlieory of 
 perception, according to which sensations, received in the rationally 
 necessary forms of space, are made intelligible by tlie categories of 
 understanding. The modern philosopher has to determine between the 
 two explanations. Berkeley assumes that each human being begins his 
 conscious life with perception of phenomena presented to his senses and 
 recognised by him as his personal experience; he then tries to accoimt, 
 by ' suggestion ' — which here seems to mean little more than invariable 
 association — for the externality of this experience, and for inductive 
 science.
 
 Vindicated and Explained. 299 
 
 And yet this doth not hinder but the one may he as arbitrary 
 as the otlior. And, in fiict, there is no more likeness to ex- 
 hibit, or necessity to infer, things tangible from the modifi- 
 cations of light, than there is in language to collect the 
 meaning from the sound. {Essai/ on Vision, sect. 144, 147-) 
 But, such as the connexion is of the various tones and articu- 
 lations of voice with their several meanings, the same is it 
 between the various modes of light and their respective 
 correlates, or, in other words, between the ideas of sight 
 and touch. 
 
 41. As to light, and its several modes or colours, all 
 thinking men are agreed that they are ideas peculiar only to 
 sight ; neither common to the touch, nor of the same kind 
 with any that are perceived by that sense. But herein lies 
 the mistake, that, beside these, there are supposed other ideas 
 common to both senses, being equally perceived by sight and 
 touch — such as Extension, Size, Figure, and Motion. But 
 that there are in reality no such common ideas, and that the 
 objects of sight, marked by these words, are entirely different 
 and heterogeneous from whatever is the object of feeling, 
 marked by the same names, hath been proved in the Theory 
 (Essay on Vision, sect. 127), and seems by you admitted; 
 though I cannot conceive how you should in reason admit 
 this, and at the same time contend for the received theories, 
 which are so much ruined as mine is established by this main 
 part and pillar thereof. 
 
 42. To 2>erceive is one thing: to judge is another. So 
 likewise, to be suggested is one thing, and to be inferred 
 another. Things are suggested and perceived by Sense. 
 "We make judgments and inferences by the Understanding. 
 "What we immediately and properly perceive by sight is its 
 primary object — light and colours. "What is suggested, or 
 perceived by mediation thereof, ai'e tangible ideas — which 
 may be considered as secondary and improper objects of 
 sight. "We infer causes from effects, effects from causes,
 
 300 The Theory of Visual Language 
 
 and propei'ties one from another, where the connexion Is 
 necessary ^. 
 
 But, how comes it to pass that we apprehend by the ideas 
 of sight certain other ideas, which neither resemble them, nor 
 cause them, nor are caused by them, nor have any necessary 
 connexion with them % The solution of this Problem, in its 
 full extent, doth comprehend the whole Theory of Vision. 
 This stating of the matter placeth it on a new foot, and in a 
 different light from all preceding theories. 
 
 43. To explain how the mind or soul of man simply sees 
 is one thing, and belongs to Philosophy ^ To consider parti- 
 cles as moving in certain lines, rays of light as refracted or 
 reflected, or crossing, or including angles, is quite another 
 thing, and appertaineth to Geometry. To account for the 
 sense of vision by the mechanism of the eye is a third thing, 
 which appertaineth to Anatomy and experiments. These 
 two latter speculations are of use in practice, to assist the 
 defects and remedy the distempers of sight, agreeably to the 
 natural laws contained in this mundane system. But the 
 former Theory is that which makes us understand the true 
 nature of Vision considered as a faculty of the soul. Which 
 Theory, as I have already observed, may be reduced to this 
 simple question, to wit. How comes it to pass that a set of 
 ideas, altogether different from tangible ideas, should never- 
 
 ^ According to Berkeley, the explanation of our ability to read into 
 what we see more than is originally seen (especially to read into it the 
 data of touch — the fundamental sense) implies two faculties — (a) imme- 
 diate perceiition of phenomena, and (6) suggestion in imagination, 
 under associative laws, of phenomena previously perceived. Judgment 
 and inference, on the other hand, involve rational understanding, con- 
 versant with necessary relations — in particular that of causation, which 
 with him is the necessary connexion of phenomena, not with other 
 phenomena, but with active and intending mind. What does Berkeley 
 here and elsewhere mean by necessity of connexion, and how, on his 
 theory of knowledge, does he account for the ' necessity ' 1 Withal 
 he finds 'judgments' rising out of our suggestions {Essay on Vision, 
 sect. 3), but he does not ask why they do so. One again regrets the 
 indistinctness of his account of knowledge. 
 
 '■^ Philosophy is here equivalent to psychology.
 
 Vindicated and Ex_plained, 301 
 
 theless suggest them to us — there being no necessary con- 
 nexion between them 1 To which the proper answer is — 
 That this is done in virtue of an arbitrary connexion, insti- 
 tuted by the Author of Nature^. 
 
 44. The proper, immediate object of vision is light, in all 
 its modes and variations, various colours in kind, in degree, 
 in quantity ; some lively, others faint ; more of some and less 
 of others ; various in their bounds or limits ; various in their 
 order and situation. A blind man, when first made to see, 
 might perceive these objects, in which there is an endless 
 variety; but he would neither perceive nor imagine any 
 resemblance or connexion between these visible objects and 
 those perceived by feeling '-. Lights, shades, and colours would 
 suggest nothing to him about bodies, hard or soft, rough or 
 smooth : nor would their quantities, limits, or order suggest 
 to him geometrical figures, or extension, or situation — which 
 they must do upon the received supposition, that these objects 
 are common to sight and touch. 
 
 45. All the various sorts, combinations, quantities, degrees, 
 and dispositions of light and colours, would, upon the first 
 perception thereof, be considered in themselves only as a new 
 set of sensations and ideas. As they are wholly new and un- 
 known, a man born blind would not, at first sight, give them 
 the names of things formerly known and perceived by his 
 touch. But, after some experience, he would perceive their 
 connexion with tangible things, and would, therefore, con- 
 sider them as signs, and give them (as is usual in other cases) 
 the same names with the things signified. 
 
 * The philosophical inquirer still asks on what ultimate ground of 
 evidence we in any case proceed from the known to the unknown — 
 from t\\e perceived sign to the suggested thing signified. More than the 
 merely empirical data of sense is needed to explain this ; and especially 
 to explain that assumption of a steady order among the changes of the 
 phenomena of sense which is involved in suggested expectation and 
 inductive inference. 
 
 ^ ' Feeling,' i.e. touch, inclusive of muscular sense and locomotive 
 conscious energy.
 
 303 The Theory of Visual Language 
 
 46. More and less, greater and smaller, extent, proportion, 
 interval are all found in Time as in Space ; but it will not 
 therefore follow that these are homogeneous quantities. No 
 more will it follow, fi'om the attribution of common names, 
 that visible ideas are homogeneous with those of feeling. It 
 is true that te,rms denoting tangible extension, figure, loca- 
 tion, motion, and the like, are also applied to denote the 
 quantity, relation, and order of the proper visible objects, or 
 ideas of sight. But this proceeds only from experience and 
 analogy. There is a Mglier and lower in the notes of music ; 
 men speak in a high or a low key. And this, it is plain, is 
 no more than metaphor or analogy. So, likewise, to express 
 the order of visible ideas, the words situation, high and low, 
 iq) and down, are made use of; and their sense, when so 
 applied, is analogical. 
 
 47. But, in the case of Vision we do not rest in a supposed 
 
 analogy between diffe]"ent and heterogeneous natures. We 
 
 suppose an identity of nature, or one and the same object 
 
 common to both senses. And this mistake we are led into ; 
 
 forasmuch as the various motions of the head, upward and 
 
 downward, to the right and to the left, being attended with 
 
 a diversity in the visible ideas, it cometh to pass that those 
 
 motions and situations of the head, which in truth are 
 
 tangible, do confer their own attributes and appellations on 
 
 visible ideas wherewith they are connected, and which by that 
 
 means come to be termed high and low, right and left, and to 
 
 be marked by other names betokening the modes of position ; 
 
 which, antecedently to such experienced connexion, would 
 
 not have been attributed to them, at least not in the primary 
 
 and literal sense ^. 
 
 * Sect. 48-53 treat of the visual 'suggestion' or developed percep- 
 tion, of the Situations of sensible things, and may be compared with 
 sect. 88-119 in the Essay on Vision ; sect. 54-61 of the 'suggestion' of 
 Magnitudes, and may be compared with sect. 52-87 of the Essay ; and 
 sect. 62-69 ^^ t^^^ 'suggestion' of Distances, and may be compared 
 with sect. 2-51 of the Essay. Tliey are here omitted, and the reader 
 is referred to Berkeley's Works, vol. I. pp. 391-399.
 
 Vindicated and Explained. 303 
 
 ****** 
 70. What I have here written may serve as a commentary 
 on my Essay tovjards a New Theory of Vision; and, I 
 believe, will make it plain to thinking men ^. In an age 
 wherein we hear so much of thinking and reasoning, it may 
 seem needless to observe how useful and necessary it is to 
 think, in order to obtain just and accurate notions, to dis- 
 tinguish things that are different, to speak consistently, to 
 know even our own meaning. And yet, for want of this, 
 we may see many, even in these days, run into perpetual 
 blunders and paralogisms. No friend, therefore, to truth and 
 knowledge would lay any restraint or discouragement on 
 thinking. Thei'e are, it must be owned, certain general 
 maxims, the result of ages, and the collected sense of thinking 
 persons, which serve instead of thinking, for a guide or rule 
 to the multitude, who, not caring to think for themselves, it 
 is fit they should be conducted by the thoughts of others. 
 But those who set up for themselves, those who depart from 
 the public rule, or those who would reduce them to it, if they 
 
 * Objections to the conclusion, that the optic nerve is originally 
 sentient only to light, and that we do not originally see Distance, were 
 offered in Mr. Bailey's Review of Berkeley s 2'heory of Vision (1842). 
 This work was the subject of two interesting critical essays — one by 
 Mr. J. S. Mill, in the Westminstci' Beview, republished in his JJiscussions ; 
 and another by Prof. Ferrier, in BlackwoocVs Magazine, republished in 
 his Remains. These led to some further controversy at the time. — 
 Other objections have since been proposed by Mr. Abbott, of Tnnity 
 College, Dublin. His Sight and Touch (1S64), criticised by me in the 
 North British Review, August, 1864, to which he has issued a rejoinder 
 in Hermathena, No. 5, Dublin, 1877, is a professed attempt to disprove 
 the ' received (or Berkeleian) Tlieory of Vision.' Mr. Abbott may have 
 improved our knowledge of what the suggesting signs are, in his proof 
 that certain visual sensations of convergence and adjustment in the eye, 
 for instance, are connected with the perception of distance, rather than 
 those enlarged upon by Berkeley. This, however, is only substituting 
 one set of organic sig-ns for another, not disproving the theory that 
 educated vision, as we are now conscious of it, is interpretation of arbi- 
 trary signs — an interpretation that may be either instinctive {i. e. inex- 
 plicable) or (as Berkeley holds) suggested by experience. At the same 
 time, Berkeley's 'explanation' may be regarded as inadequate to ac- 
 count for the judgments of which we are necessarily conscious when 
 we contemplate the mathematical relations, sublime boundlessness, and 
 uufathoniable mystery of space.
 
 304 The Theory of Visual Language 
 
 do not thiuk, what will men think of them 1 As I pretend 
 not to make any discoveries which another might not as well 
 have made, who should have thought it worth his pains : so 
 I must needs say that without pains and thought no man will 
 ever understand the true nature of Vision, or comprehend 
 what I have wrote concerning it. 
 
 71. Before I conclude, it may not be amiss to add the 
 following extract from the Philosophical Transactions (No. 
 400), relating to a person blind from his infancy, and long 
 after made to see : ' When he first saw, he was so far from 
 making any judgment about distances that he thought all 
 objects whatever touched his eyes (as he expressed it) as what 
 he felt did his skin, and thought no objects so agreeable as 
 those which were smooth and regular, though he could form 
 no judgment of their shape, or guess what it was in any 
 object that was pleasing to him. He knew not the shape of 
 anything, nor any one thing from another, however different 
 in shape or magnitude : but upon being told what things 
 were, whose form he before knew from Feeling, he would 
 carefully observe them that he might know them again ; but 
 having too many objects to learn at once, he forgot many of 
 them ; and (as he said) at first he learned to know, and again 
 forgot, a thousand things in a day. Several weeks after he 
 was couched, being deceived by pictures, he asked which was 
 the lying sense — Feeling or Seeing ] He was never able to 
 imagine any lines beyond the bounds he saw. The room he 
 was in, he said, he knew to be part of the house, yet he could 
 not conceive that the whole house could look bigger. He 
 said every new object was a new delight, and the pleasure 
 was so great that he wanted ways to express it \' — Thus, by 
 
 • Berkeley here quotes the famous experiment of Cheselden, recorded 
 in the rjiiloifophical Transactions for 1728. It is offered as evidence 
 that our power of interpreting visual aigns is neither (a) an instinct nor 
 (6) a necessary inference,, but (c) an expectation suggested by custom 
 or ' experience.' — Cheseklen's is among the first of several examples of
 
 Vindicated and Explained. 305 
 
 fact and experiment, those points of the theory which seem 
 the most remote from common apprehension were not a little 
 confirmed, many years after I had been led into the discovery 
 of them by reasoning. 
 
 persons born blind who have been made to see, whose mental experience, 
 immediately consequent upon the change, has been (more or less, 
 accurately) recorded. (See lierkelet/s Woi-hs, vol. I. Appendix C, 
 pp. 444-448, where other cases are mentioned. See also Dr. Franz's 
 case in Philos. Trans, for 1841, pt. I.) Berkeley's comparative in-' 
 difference to experiments of the sort, and to the relative physiology of 
 the senses, is not difficult to understand. His introspective appeal to 
 consciousness, to shew that we cannot touch what is visible nor see what 
 is tangible, along with the evidence he offers that our tendency to unite 
 visible and tangible phenomena, as 'qualities' of the same 'substance,' 
 may be explained by the constant association of the latter with the 
 former — the issue of all this seemed to him to make other evidence 
 xmnecessary. The results hitherto of experiments like Cheselden's, as 
 tests of our original visual perception, illustrate the remark of Diderot, 
 that an adequate cross-examination of persons born blind would be em- 
 ployment enough for the combined powers of Newton, Descartes, Locke, 
 and Leibnitz.
 
 III. 
 
 The Vniverse and the Universal Mind. 
 
 EXTRACTS 
 
 PROM 
 
 SIEIS: 
 A CHAIN OF PHILOSOPHICAL REFLEXIONS. 
 
 Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet. — Virgil. 
 1h airb vow t( kuI uyai. — Parmenides. 
 
 X 2
 
 PREFATOEY NOTE. 
 
 Siris (cTfipa, a chain) appeared when Berkeley was about 
 sixty, and contains the metaphysics of his later life. Eising 
 from certain supposed medicinal virtues of tar-water, we are 
 here invited to follow the ascending links of a chain, which 
 connects these and all other qualities of sensible things with 
 one another, in and through supreme and j^ervading Causal 
 Intelligence. In Siris too we are brought into connexion 
 with the metaphysics of antiquity: on this historical basis 
 Berkeley here revels in his favourite thought of the whole 
 world of transitory sense-phenomena sustaining its intel- 
 ligently ordered combinations and sequences in necessary 
 dependence on active Mind. 
 
 English metaphysical literature in the eighteenth century 
 contains no work more curiously abundant in seeds of thought 
 than Siris. Its immediate practical and benevolent purpose 
 was to confirm the conjecture that tar yields a 'water of 
 health' for the relief of diseases, from which the whole animal 
 creation might draw fresh supplies of the vital essence. It is 
 a series of aphorisms, connected by quaint and subtle associ- 
 ations, the thoughts of ancient and medieval philosophers 
 being interwoven, and the whole forming a study in medical 
 science and in metaphysical philosophy. The work breathes 
 the spirit of Plato and the Neoplatonists, and that in the 
 least Platonic generation in England since the rise of modern 
 philosophy, while it draws this Platonic spirit with the 
 unexpectedness of genius from a thing of sense so common- 
 place as tar.
 
 310 Prefatonj Note. 
 
 More than half of the 368 sections which compose Siris 
 are occupied \vith physical facts and conjectures. The others 
 are adapted to deepen our thought of the dependence of the 
 universe of experience upon Mind, and to enlighten as well as 
 satisfy the philosophical desire for ultimate rational unity. 
 The Selections which follow comprehend the most important 
 of the metaphysical aphorisms. They may be studied apart 
 from Berkeley's medicinal hypothesis about tar-water, and 
 read simply as meditations upon the material world viewed 
 under its constitutive relations to Supreme Intelligence. The 
 conception of passive Nature pervaded by spiritual power 
 is expressed in Siris in many ways, and then defended and 
 further unfolded by help of the ancient sages. 
 
 Thus in this curious work medicine passes into metaphysics. 
 Doubt regarding the author's hypothesis as to the medicinal 
 virtues of tar-water need not disturb our enjoyment of its 
 philosophical speculations about the rational concatenation of 
 the universe. The medical aphorisms may misinterpret the 
 meaning that is latent in tar ; this need not hinder us from 
 learning through Siris to see, in an unsubstantial and im- 
 potent material world, the constant manifestation of Divine 
 power. The metaphysical aphorisms may be used as aids to 
 reflection upon the interpretability of nature — space and 
 time — free-will and necessity — matter and form — the soul or 
 essence of things — the absolute pei'sonality and ineffable 
 mystery of God. 
 
 When we compare Siris with the Princij)les we find im- 
 portant differences between Berkeley's philosophy when he 
 was sixty and when he was twenty-five. The universals of 
 Reason here overshadow the perishable phenomena of Sense 
 and its Suggestions. Sensible things are looked at as adum- 
 brations of a reality above and beyond Nature, which philo- 
 sophy helps us to find. The objects of perception arc hei'e 
 called j)henomena, instead of 'ideas' or 'sensations;' while 
 Ideas (not in Locke's meaning, and in Berkeley's early
 
 'Prefatory Note. 311 
 
 meaning of the term idea, but in Plato's) are recognised in 
 the ultimate explanation of things. 
 
 An increase of intellectual tolerance and of eclecticism 
 appear in Siris, with less disposition to insist upon the de- 
 pendence of the sensible world on sentient mind as a final 
 settlement of all difficulties. That esse is 2)erci])i, in the 
 sensuous reference of the latter term, is felt more to be the 
 beginning than the completion of a philosophical solution of 
 metaphysical problems. Recluse meditation, with a wider 
 study of the meditation of the past, have given Berkeley a 
 more mystical conception of the universe, and a feeling that 
 it is neither so easily nor so perfectly intelligible under his 
 old formula as it seemed in his ardent and less considerate 
 youth. His awe of its mysteriousness is increased, and also 
 his readiness to allow different ages and countries, each in 
 its own philosophical form, to recognise Reason rather than 
 the phenomena of Sense as the fixed element in existence, — 
 with irreducible data too in the incomplete explanation thus 
 offered. He now welcomes an acknowledgment of God in 
 any intellectual form of faith that consists with this supre- 
 macy of Reason in the universe. His last work in philosophy 
 more than any of his former ones breathes and helps to edu- 
 cate the philosophic spirit, which, as it begins in wonder and 
 the sense of mystery, is found at the end to issue in the same, 
 deepened and enlightened by reflexion. Some of its con- 
 cluding sentences express, with exquisite litei-ary grace, his 
 own spiritual growth in later life. We find him intellectually 
 broader, more modest, and more liberal ; more ready to accept 
 with reverence the ' broken' philosophy to wliich deep and 
 patient insight, with its sense of mystery, seems at last to con- 
 duct us all ; more aware that in this mortal state, under the 
 present limitations of sense, we must be satisfied to make the 
 best of any openings which occur ; yet not without hope — 
 there being ' no subject so obscure but we may discern some 
 glimpse of truth by long poring on it,' if we cultivate love
 
 313 Prefatory Note. 
 
 for ' truth, the cry of all,' while it is really ' the game of 
 a few.' 
 
 A philosophical analysis of human knowledge naturally 
 begins with Sense and ends with causality and the consti- 
 tution of Reason. Reason is latent in any knowledge, even 
 through the senses, of the external world ; the phenomena 
 of the external world find their ultimate explanation in the 
 reason which gives them intelligibility. Perception involves 
 the contrast between the conscious spirit and the unconscious 
 world, with the unfathomable mysteries of Space and Time 
 which both disclose ; Reason involves the ultimate meaning of 
 what in Sense is phenomenally revealed in antithesis, under the 
 mysterious conditions of co-existence and, succession. Here 
 are the three great objects of meditative thought — Self — in 
 contrast to the world, of Nature — both mutually related in 
 and through God. The antithesis of Self and the phenomena 
 present in Sense is prominent in Berkeley's Principles of 
 Human Knowledge; the ultimate unity in Reason is promi- 
 nent in Siris. 
 
 A, C. F.
 
 EXTRACTS FROM 
 
 SIEIS: 
 
 A CHAIN OF PHILOSOPHICAL REFLEXIONS. 
 
 For Introduction to the following piece, I assure the 
 reader that nothing could, in my present situation, have 
 induced me to be at the pains of writing it, but a firm belief 
 that it would prove a valuable present to the public. "What 
 entertainment soever the reasoning or notional part may 
 afford the Mind, I will venture to say, the other part seemeth 
 so surely calculated to do good to the Body that both must 
 be gainers. For, if the lute be not well tuned, the musician 
 fails of his harmony. And, in our present state, the opera- 
 tions of the mind so far depend on the right tone or good 
 condition of its instrument, that anything which gi-eatly con- 
 tributes to preserve or recover the health of the Body is well 
 worth the attention of the Milld^ These considerations have 
 moved me to communicate to the public the salutary virtues 
 of Tar-water; to which I thought myself indispensably 
 obliged by the duty every man owes to mankind. And, as 
 effects ai*e linked with their causes, my thoughts on this low 
 but useful theme led to farther inquiries, and those on to 
 others, remote perhaps and speculative, but I hope not alto- 
 gether useless or unentertaining ^. 
 
 ****** 
 
 * Berkeley in all this recognises more than in his early writings that 
 we are embodied spirits, althoujih his philosophy has become less em- 
 pirical. He recognises the established interdependence in us of organic 
 and conscious life, but always with the reserve that reason is at last 
 the cause of organisation, not organisation the cause of reason. 
 
 ^ What relates to Tar-water and its supposed medicinal effects may 
 be studied in Siris ( Works, vol. II.) by those fond of experimenting on 
 the connexion of our organism with animal and mental health.
 
 314 Siris : a Chain of Philosoj)Mcal Reflexions. 
 
 154. ^The order and course of things, and the experiments 
 we daily make, shew there is a Mind that governs and actuates 
 this mundane system, as the proper real agent and cause. 
 * * * We have no proof, either from experiment or 
 reason, of any other agent or efficient cause than Mind or 
 Spirit. When, therefore, we speak of corporeal agents or 
 corporeal causes, this is to be understood in a different, sub- 
 ordinate, and improper sense. 
 
 155. The 2)rinci2)les whereof a thing is compounded, the 
 instrument used in its production, and the end for which it 
 was intended, are all in vulgar use termed ' causes,' — though 
 none of them be, strictly speaking, agent or efficient. There 
 is not any proof that an extended corporeal or mechanical 
 cause doth really and projoerly act — even motion itself being 
 in truth a passion. * * * They are, nevertheless, sometimes 
 termed ' agents ' and ' causes,' although they are by no means 
 active in a strict and proper signification. When therefore 
 force, power, virtue, or action is mentioned as subsisting in 
 an extended and corporeal or mechanical being, this is not to 
 be taken in a true, genuine, and real, but only in a gross and 
 popular sense, which sticks in appearances, and doth not 
 analyse things to their first principles^. In compliance with 
 established language and the use of the Avorld, we must 
 employ the popular current phrase. But then in regard to 
 truth we ought to distinguish its meaning. 
 
 160. The mind of man acts by an instrument necessarily^. 
 
 * The following sections express Berkeley's later thoughts about 
 active Reason as the Supreme Power in the universe ; also as to the 
 insufficiency of the atomic hypothesis as the ultimate explanation of 
 things. The implied premiss is, that every change must have a sufficient 
 cause, and that the only sufficient uncaused cause must be Mind ; but 
 that in nature, a priori, anything may be the sign, i.e. physical cause, of 
 a change. 
 
 * This view is urged and illustrated in Dr. Thomas Brown's Inquiry 
 into the Jlelation of Cause and Effect. See especially Part I. 
 
 ^ This is in the spirit of the opening aphorisms of the Novum Organum, 
 which teach that, in order to be able to produce ^jhenomenal changes,
 
 Natural Science itself needs to he explained. 315 
 
 Tlie TO TjyenoviKuv, or j\Iiud presiding in the world, acts by an 
 instrument freely ^ Without instrumental and second causes, 
 there could be no regular course of nature. And without a 
 regular course, nature could never be understood ; mankind 
 must always be at a loss, not knowing what to expect, or 
 how to govern themselves, or direct their actions for the 
 obtaining of any end. Therefore in the government of the 
 world physical agents — improperly so called — or mechanical 
 or second causes, or natural causes or instruments, are neces- 
 sary to assist, not the governor, but the governed^. 
 ****** 
 
 231. The laws of attraction and repulsion are to be re- 
 garded as laws of motion ; and these only as rules or methods 
 observed in the productions of natural effects, — the efficient 
 and final causes whereof are not of mechanical consideration. 
 Certainly, if the exjylaining a phaenomenon be to assign its 
 proper efficient and final cause, it should seem that Mechanical 
 Philosophers never explained any thing; their province being 
 only to discover the laws of nature, that is, the general rules 
 and methods of motion, and to account for particular phee- 
 nomena by reducing them under, or shewing their conformity 
 to, such geneial rules. 
 
 232. Some corpuscularian philosophers of the last age have 
 
 indeed attempted to explain the formation of this world 
 
 and its phsenomena by a few simple laws of mechanism. 
 
 But, if we consider the various productions of nature, in the 
 
 mineral, vegetable, and animal parts of the creation, I believe 
 
 we shall see cause to affirm, that not any one of them has 
 
 man must observe and understand the established connexions, or sense 
 significance, in nature. 
 
 ^ The ' laws of nature,' in obedience to which man must conform his 
 overt actions, are here assumed to be the issue of the free will of God, 
 and ccmstantly dependent on this as their uncaused cause — so that 
 nature is essentially supernatural. 
 
 ^ Cf. Priitriplcs, sect. 60-66, in which Berkeley reconciles the utility 
 to man of an order in nature, and of the interpretation of that order in 
 science, with his theory of the ultimate dependence of phenomena and 
 their changes upon a percipient, and therefore upon reason and will.
 
 316 Sh'is : a Chain of PhilosopJiical Reflexions, 
 
 hitherto been, or can be, accounted for on principles merely 
 mechanical; and that nothing could be more vain and 
 imaginary than to suppose with Descartes, that merely from 
 a circular motion's being impressed by the supreme Agent on 
 the particles of extended substance, tlie whole world, with 
 all its several parts, appurtenances, and phaenomena, might 
 be produced, by a necessary consequence, from the laws of 
 motion ^ 
 
 233. Others suppose that God did more at the beginning, 
 having then made the seeds of all vegetables and animals, 
 containing their solid organical parts in miniature, the gradual 
 filling and evolution of wliich, by the influx of proper juices, 
 doth constitute the generation and growth of a living body. 
 So that the artificial structure of plants and animals daily 
 generated requires no present exercise of art to produce it, 
 having been already framed at the origin of the woidd, which 
 with all its parts hath ever since subsisted ; — going like a 
 clock or machine by itself, according to the laws of nature, 
 without the immediate hand of the artist '^. But how can this 
 hypothesis explain the blended features of different species in 
 
 ^ This is part of the scientific cosmogony of Descartes, and inade- 
 quately represents his philosophy. He explained the stars and planetary 
 hodies as the issue of vortical motions, in an originally chaotic material 
 mass coextensive with space. But all this must be taken in connexion 
 with what he taught about the apparent interaction of mind and body 
 being really the constant efficient agency of God. This notion of con- 
 stant Divine agency was brought out further by Geulinx, Malebranche, 
 and other Cartesians, in their theory of ' occasional ' causes which cul- 
 minated iu Spinozism. 
 
 '^ This is the theory of Leibnitz, already referred to, according to 
 which the force or energy originally infused into the universe remains 
 the same, only passing through phenomenal transformations, agreeably 
 to the laws of nature, in a harmony between ihoughta and motionti that 
 has been pre-established by God. Mind and body in man thus agree 
 in a conscious automatism, like two clocks, originally in harmony and 
 moving in concert ever after. And thus the whole material world, 
 without immediate Divine agency, is always in harmony with the moral 
 or spiritual world. — With Cartesians and with Leibnitz, matter is 
 neither that of which we are actually conscious in perception, nor is it 
 the efficient cause of our being percipient : it is made known by present 
 (Cartesians) or previous (Leibnitziaus) agency of God.
 
 Zaio in Nature prempposes Intellect. 317 
 
 mules and other mongrels ? or the parts added or changed, 
 and sometimes whole limbs lost, by marking in the womb % 
 or how can it account for the resurrection of a tree from its 
 stump, or the vegetative power in its cuttings % in which 
 cases we must necessarily conceive something more than the 
 mere evolution of a seed *. 
 
 234. JNIechanical laws of nature or motion direct us how 
 to act, and teach us what to expect. AVhere Intellect pre- 
 sides there will be method and order, and therefore rules, 
 which if not stated and constant, would cease to be rules. 
 There is therefore a constancy in things, which is styled the 
 Course of Nature'^. All the phsenomena in nature are pro- 
 duced by motion. There appears an uniform working in 
 things great and small, by attracting and repelling forces. 
 But the particular laws of atti-action and repulsion are various. 
 Nor are we concerned at all about the forces, neither can we 
 know or measure them otherwise than by their effects, that 
 is to say, the motions; which motions only, and not the forces, 
 are indeed in the bodies. Bodies are moved to or from each 
 other, and this is performed according to different laws. 
 The natural or mechanic philosopher endeavours to discover 
 those laws by experiment and reasoning. But what is said 
 of forces residing in bodies, whether attracting or repelling, 
 is to be regarded only as a mathematical hypothesis, and not 
 as any thing really existing in nature '. 
 
 235. "We ai-e not therefore seriously to suppose, with cer- 
 tain mechanic philosophers, that the minute particles of 
 
 ' We cannot, he argues, find the observed effects in the merely 
 phenomenal data of sense, so that there must be more than an evolution 
 of these data to explain the issue. The issue presupposes the constant 
 orderly agency of evolving Mind. 
 
 ^ The rational presumption of the ultimate supremacy of Mind in the 
 universe is given as the explanation of our inductive assumption of 
 physical law, and of ideals in nature. 
 
 ^ That is to say, even if all changes in natural phenomena could be 
 resolved by the laws of motion, motions would be themselves only pheno- 
 menal effects, not really efficient or uncaused causes.
 
 318 Siris: a Chain of PhilosopJiical Reflexions. 
 
 bodies have real forces or powers, hy which they act on each 
 other, to produce the various phenomena in nature. The 
 minute corpuscles are impelled and directed, that is to say, 
 moved to and from each other, according to various rules 
 or laws of motion. The laws of gravity, magnetism, and 
 electricity are divers. And it is not known what other 
 different rules or laws of motion might be established by 
 the Author of Nature ^. 
 
 ****** 
 237. These and numberless other effects seem inexplicable 
 on mechanical principles ; or otherwise than by recourse to 
 a Mind or Spiritual Agent. Nor will it suffice from present 
 pha3nomena and effects, through a chain of natural causes 
 and subordinate blind agents, to trace a Divine Intellect as 
 the remote original cause, that first created the world, and 
 then set it a going. "We cannot make even one single 
 step in accounting for the phsenomena, without admitting 
 the immediate presence and immediate action of an incor- 
 poreal Agent, who connects, moves, and disposes all things, 
 according to such rules, and for such purposes, as seem 
 good to Him^ 
 
 ****** 
 
 240. The words attraction and repulsion may, in com- 
 pliance with custom, be used where, accurately speaking, 
 motion alone is meant. And in that sense it may be said 
 that peculiar attractions or repulsions in the parts are at- 
 
 * The arbitrariness of tlie existing constitution of nature, meaning by 
 that the dependence of the actual laws of nature on reasonable will. 
 The dependence of tlie government of the physical world on the still 
 higher laws of the moral world is suggested by this. 
 
 ^ In sliort, there are not even secondary causes in the material world, 
 if by that be meant bodily agents. There is simply the agency of 
 Supreme Mind ; which Berkeley, like Descartes, asserts must be con- 
 stant, and not, as with Leibnitz, remote. But perhaps the .alternative 
 here is one which we cannot settle ; nor the involved question of time 
 and succession in relation to Divine Mind. He cannot mean to exclude 
 human volitions as efficient cau.ses, though he leaves in obscurity their 
 idtimate relation to the supreme volition.
 
 Laws are not Agents, hut Methods of Acting. 319 
 
 tended with sj^ecific properties in the whole. The particles 
 of light are vehemently moved to or from, retained, or re- 
 jected by, objects : which is the same thing as to say, 
 with Sir Isaac Newton, that the particles of acids are 
 endued with great attractive force, wherein their activity 
 consists ; whence fennentation and dissolution ; and that 
 the most repellent are, upon contact, the most attracting 
 particles. 
 
 241. Gravity and fermentation are received for two most 
 extensive principles. From fermentation are derived the 
 motion and warmth of the heart and blood in animals, sub- 
 terraneous heat, fires, and earthquakes, meteors, and changes 
 in the atmosphere. And that attracting and repelling forces 
 operate in the nutrition and dissolution of animal and 
 vegetable bodies is the doctrine both of Hippocrates and Sir 
 Isaac Newton. The former of these celebrated authors, 
 in his Treatise concerning Diet or Regimen, observes that 
 in the nourishment of man, one part repels and another 
 attracts. And again in the same Treatise, two carpenters, 
 saith he, saw a piece of timber : one draws, the other 
 pushes : these two actions tend to one and the same end, 
 though in a contrary direction, one up, the other down : 
 this imitates the nature of man : Trvevfxa to fiep eXfcei t6 fie 
 
 udeet. 
 
 242. It is the general maxim of Hippocrates, that the 
 manner wherein nature acts consisteth in attracting what 
 is meet and good, and in repelling what is disagreeable or 
 hurtful. He makes the whole of the animal economy to be 
 administered by the faculties or powers of nature. Nature 
 alone, saith he, sufficeth for all things to animals. She knows 
 of herself what is necessary for them. Whence it is plain he 
 means a conscious intelligent nature. And though he declares 
 all things are accomplished on man by necessity, yet it is not 
 a blind fate or chain of mere corporeal causes, but a Divine 
 Necessity, as he himself expressly calls it. And what is this
 
 320 Siris : a Chain of Philosophical Eejlexions. 
 
 but an overruling intelligent power that disposeth of all 
 things ^ 1 
 
 243. Attraction cannot produce, and in that sense account 
 for, the phsenomena — being itself one of the phsenomena 
 produced and to be accounted for. Attraction is performed 
 by different laws, and cannot therefore in all cases be the 
 effect of the elasticity of one uniform medium. The phseno- 
 mena of electrical bodies, the laws and variations of mag- 
 netism, and, not to mention other kinds, even gravity, are 
 not ex])la{ned by elasticity — a pheenomenon not less obscure 
 than itself^. But then, although it shew not the agent, yet it 
 sheweth a 7'ule and analogy in nature, to say, that the solid 
 parts of animals are endued with attractive powers' whereby 
 from contiguous fluids they draw like to like; and that glands 
 have peculiar powers ^ attractive of peculiar juices. Nature 
 seems better known and explained by attractions and repul- 
 sions, than by those other mechanical principles of size, figure, 
 and the like ; that is, by Sir Isaac Newton, than Descartes. 
 And natural philosophers excel, as they are more or less 
 acquainted with the laws and methods observed by the 
 Author of Nature. 
 
 247. Though it be supposed the chief business of a natural 
 philosopher to trace out causes from the effects, yet this is to 
 be understood not of agents, but of principles ; — that is, of 
 component parts, in one sense, or of laws or rules, in another. 
 
 ^ This notion of a Divine necessity {ava-fKri Bt'ia), distincfnislied from 
 blind naaterialistic fate, was common among' the Greeks. The contem- 
 plative spirit found repose in a necessity which resolved into God, and in 
 which man was, therefore, not the sport of a cruel and purposeless force 
 that might at any time convert the universe into physical and moral 
 chaos, our conscious lives too, for aught we can predict, being pro- 
 longed without end in this chaos. 
 
 ^ He means to say that j)henomenal changes cannot be really caused 
 by what is merely phenomenal — as all that is present in the senses per 
 se must be. 
 
 ^ The term ' power ' is used by him metaphorically when applied to 
 the ' solid parts ' and ' glands,' because regarded as really inherent only 
 in Mind.
 
 Torce necessarily Incorporeal. 321 
 
 In strict truth, all agents are incorporeal, and as such are not 
 properly of })hysical consideration. The astronomei*, there- 
 fore, the mechanic, or the chemist, not as such, but by acci- 
 dent only, treat of real causes, agents, or efficients. Neither 
 doth it seem, as is supposed by the greatest of mechanical 
 philosophers, that the true way of proceeding in their science 
 is, from known notions in nature to investigate the moving 
 forces. Forasmuch as force is neither corporeal, nor be- 
 longs to any corporeal thing ; nor yet to be discovered by 
 experiments or mathematical reasonings, which reach no 
 farther than discernible effects, and motions in things passive 
 and moved. 
 
 248. Vis or force is to the soul what extension is to the 
 body, saith St. Augustin, in his tract concerning the Quan- 
 tity of the Soul ; and without force there is nothing done or 
 made, and consequently there can be no agent. Authority is 
 not to decide in this case. Let any one consult his own 
 notions and reason, as well as experience, concerning the 
 origin of motion, and the respective natures, properties, and 
 differences of soul and body, and he will, if I mistake not, 
 evidently perceive, that there is nothing active in the latter. 
 Nor are they natural agents or corporeal forces which make 
 the particles of bodies to cohere. Nor is it the business of 
 experimental philosophers to find them out. 
 
 249. The mechanical philosopher, as hath been already 
 observed, inquires properly concerning the rules and modes 
 of operation alone, and not concerning the cause ; forasmuch 
 as nothing mechanical is or really can be a cause. And 
 although a mechanical or mathematical philosopher may 
 speak of absolute space, absolute motion, and of force, as ex- 
 isting in bodies, causing such motion and proportional thereto; 
 yet ivhat these ' forces ' are, which are supposed to be lodged 
 in bodies, to be impressed on bodies, to be multiplied, divided, 
 and communicated from one body to another, and which seem 
 to animate l)odies like abstract spii-its, or souls, hath been 
 
 Y
 
 322 Siris: a Chain of ThilosopJncal Reflexions. 
 
 found very difficult, not to say impossible, for thinking men 
 to conceive and explain. 
 
 250. Nor, if we consider the proclivity of mankind to 
 realise their notions \ will it seem strange that mechanic 
 philosophers and geometricians should, like other men, be 
 misled by prejudice, and take mathematical hypotheses for 
 real beings existing in bodies, so far as even to make it 
 the very aim and end of their science to compute or measure 
 those phantoms ; whereas it is very certain that nothing in 
 truth can be measured or computed, besides the very effects 
 or motions themselves. Sir Isaac Newton asks, Have not 
 the minute particles of bodies certain forces or powers by 
 which they act on one another, as well as on the particles of 
 light, for producing most of the phrenomena in nature ? But, 
 in reality, those minute particles are only agitated, according 
 to certain laws of nature, h^j some other agent, wherein the 
 force exists, and not in them, which have only the motion ; 
 which motion in the body moved, the Peripatetics rightly 
 judge to be a mere passion, but in the mover to be fvtpyeia 
 or act ^. 
 
 251. It pas?eth with many, I know not how, that mecha- 
 nical jDrinciples give a clear solution of the phsenomena. The 
 Democritic hypothesis, saith Dr. Cudworth, doth much more 
 handsomely and intelligibly solve the phsenomena, than that 
 of Aristotle and Plato ^. But, things rightly considered, per- 
 
 ' ' Realise their notions,' by assuming for instance that abstractions 
 fif natural philosophy such as ' force ' or • power,' stand for something 
 which may he phenomenalised. 
 
 ■•^ The relation of motion (a visible phenomenon) to power or force (a 
 ' notion ' to which no phenomenon coiTcsponds) is the subject of 
 Berkeley's tract De Motn {Works, vol. III. pp. 75-100). 
 
 '■' The passage in Cudworth (1619-1688) is as follows : — 'Tlie whole 
 Aristotelical system of philosophy is infinitely to be preferred before 
 the whcile Democritical ; though the former hath been so much dis- 
 paraged, and the other cried up of late amongst us. Because, though it 
 cannot be denied but tliat the Democritic hypothesis doth much more 
 handsomely and intelligibly solve the corporeal phasnomcna, yet in all 
 other thin(j/< which are of far the greater mow.ent, it is rather a madness 
 tlian a Philosophy,' — Intellectual System, b. I. ch. i. sect. 45. Tlie
 
 Nafiire tnterprefable tJirougJi Analogy. 323 
 
 haps it will be found not to solve any pbaenomenon at all : 
 for all plKenomena are, to speak truly, ajrpearances in tJie 
 soul or mind^ ; and it hath never been explained, nor can it 
 be explained, how external bodies, figures, and motions, should 
 produce an appearance in the mind. These jirinciples, there- 
 fore, do not solve — if by solving is meant assigning the real, 
 either efficient or final, cause of appearances — but only reduce 
 them to general rules. 
 
 252. '^ There is a certain analogy, constancy, and uni- 
 formity in the phgenomena or appearances of nature, which 
 are a foundation for general rules : and these are a Grammar 
 for the understanding of Nature, or that series of effects in 
 the Visible Woiid whereby we are enabled to foresee what 
 will come to pass in the natural course of things. Plotinus 
 observes, in his third Ennead, that the art of presaging is in 
 some sort the reading of natural letters denoting order, and 
 that so far forth as analogy obtains in the universe, there 
 may be vaticination. And in reality, he that foretels the 
 motions of the planets, or the effects of medicines, or the 
 results of chemical or mechanical experiments, may be said 
 to do it by natural vaticination ^ 
 
 philosophies of Plato (b.c. 427-347) and Aristotle (B.C. 384-322), in 
 contrast to the atomism of Democritus (B.C. 460-370), occupy many of 
 the sections which follow. Bacon and others in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury had extolled Democritus and the pre-Sjcratics, in comparison with 
 Socrates and his school. 
 
 * ' Phenomena,' I may say again, here corresponds to the ' sensations ' 
 or ' ideas of sense ' of Berkeley's earlier works. Their actual existence 
 depends upon being perceived. In order to become objects a mind 
 must be percipient of them, but they do not depend on any one indi- 
 vidual mind. 
 
 ^ The following sections place in some new lights Berkeley's concep- 
 tion of the interpretable and prophetic Language of Nature, that con- 
 stant expression of Reason and Will, i.e. of the Supernatural. 
 
 ^ This remarkable passage in Plotinus (a.d. 204-270) in a manner 
 anticipates the modern conception of a scientific prtvision. Plotinus 
 refers to perception in sense as the obscure thought of that Intelligible 
 World, which discloses itself when we emerge ft-om our struggles to in- 
 terpret phenomena only dimly intelligible in sense, and reach the rational 
 understanding of things. 
 
 Y 2
 
 324 Siris : a Chain of PldlosopJiical Reflexions. 
 
 253. AVe know a thing when we understand it; and we 
 understand it when we can interpret or tell what it signifies. 
 Strictly, the Sense knows nothing. We perceive indeed 
 sounds by hearing, and characters by sight. But we are not 
 therefore said to understand them. After the same manner, 
 the phfenomena of nature are alike visible to all : but all have 
 not alike learned the connexion of natural things, or under- 
 stand what they signify, or know how to vaticinate by them, 
 — There is no question, saith Socrates in Theceteto, concerning 
 that which is agreeable to each person ; but concerning what 
 will in time to come be agreeable, of which all men are not 
 equally judges. He who foreknoweth what will he in every 
 kind is the wisest. According to Socrates, you and the cook 
 may judge of a dish on the table equally well; but while the 
 dish is making, the cook can better foretel what will ensue 
 from this or that manner of composing it. Nor is this 
 manner of reasoning confined only to morals or politics ; 
 but extends also to natural science ^. 
 
 254. As the natural connexion of signs with the things 
 signified is regular and constant, it forms a sort of Rational 
 Discourse, and is therefore the immediate effect of an intelli- 
 gent Cause. This is agreeable to the j)hilosophy of Plato, 
 and other ancients. Plotinus indeed saith, that which acts 
 naturally is not intellection, but a certain power of moving 
 matter, Avhich doth not know but only do. — And it must be 
 owned that, as faculties are multiplied by philosophers ac- 
 cording to their operations, the will ranj be distinguished 
 from the intellect. But it will not therefore follow that the 
 Will which oj)e]ates in the course of nature is not conducted 
 and applied by intellect^, although it be granted that neither 
 
 ^ We see in these examples the distinction between the particular and 
 the universal — between fediny, which is siibjective or private, and 
 Iciimohdye, which is objective or universal. Tlie discovery of a sequence 
 in physical causation is as it were the thinking of a portion of the 
 creative thought on which the unity and intelligibility of nature con- 
 tinually depends. 
 
 ^ It is not a capricious Will.
 
 Significant Nature essenflalli/ Supernatural. 325 
 
 will understands, nor intellect wills. Therefore, the pha-no- 
 nieua of nature, which strike on the senses and are under- 
 stood by the mind, do form not only a magnificent spectacle, 
 but also a most coherent, entertaining, and instructive Dis- 
 course ; and to effect this, they are conducted, adjusted, and 
 ranged by the greatest wisdom. This Language or Discourse 
 is studied with different attention, and interpreted with dif- 
 ferent degrees of skill. But so far as men have studied and 
 remarked its rules, and can interpret right, so far they may 
 be said to be knowing in nature. A beast is like a man who 
 hears a strange tongue but understands nothing^. 
 
 255. Nature, saith the learned Doctor Cudworth, is not 
 master of art or wisdom : nature is ratio mersa et confusa — 
 reason immersed and plunged into matter, and as it were 
 fuddled in it and confounded with it. But the formation of 
 ]»lants and animals, the motions of natural bodies, their 
 various properties, appearances, and vicissitudes, in a word, 
 the whole series of things in this visible world, wliich we 
 call the Course of Nature, is so wisely managed and carried 
 on that the most improved human reason cannot thoroughly 
 ci^mprehend even the least particle thereof; — so far is it 
 from seeming to be produced by fuddled or confounded 
 reason ^. 
 
 256. Natural productions, it is true, are not all equally 
 perfect. But neither doth it suit with the order of things, 
 the structure of the universe, or the ends of Providence, that 
 they should be so. General rules are necessary to make the 
 world intelligible : and from the constant observations of 
 such rules, natural evils will sometimes unavoidably ensue : 
 
 ' This section applies to external nature generally the theory that what 
 we see is to all intents a Language. Bacon's favourite conception of the 
 ifiterpreialnliftf of Nature is in harmony with this. Physical science is 
 the discoveiy by the human mind of thoughts tliat are objective in sen- 
 sible things, anil unconsciously presupposed even in our sense-perceptions. 
 
 ^ If we cannot know any one thing 'thoroughly' without knowing 
 all its relations to all other things, the only knowledge proper is 
 Omniscience.
 
 326 Siris : a Chain of Vldlosoplilcal Bejlexlons, 
 
 things will be produced in a slow length of time, and arrive 
 at different degrees of perfection, 
 
 257. It must be owned, we are not conscious of the systole 
 and diastole of the heart, or the motion of the diaphragm. 
 It may not nevertheless be thence inferred, that unknowing 
 nature can act regularly, as well as ourselves. The true 
 inference is — that the self-thinking individual, or human 
 person, is not the real author of those natural motions. And, 
 in fact, no man blames himself if they are wrong, or values 
 himself if they are right \ — The same may be said of the 
 fingers of a musician, which some object to be moved by 
 habit which understands not ; it being evident that what is 
 done by rule must proceed from something that understands 
 the rule ; therefore, if not from the musician himself, from 
 some other active Intelligence, the same perhaps which 
 governs bees and spiders, and moves the limbs of those who 
 walk in their sleep ^ 
 
 258. Instruments, occasions, and signs (sect. 160) occur in, 
 or rather make up, the whole visible Course of Nature. 
 These, being no agents themselves, are under the dii'ection of 
 One Agent concerting all for one end, the supreme good. 
 All those motions, whether in animal bodies, or in other parts 
 
 ^ The moral judgment is here taken as the test for distinguishing un- 
 caused causality from the merely physical lasvs that have been divinely 
 established in nature. Conscience points to tiie only known power in the 
 universe in poiutiug to the free agency of a person — a moral or immoral 
 agent. M' re phenomena can only be established signs of other pheno- 
 mena, and a 2'>i'iori any phenomenon mii^ht have been made the sign 
 ^phy.sical cause or eti'ect) of any other by the supreme moral power. 
 
 ^ So Cudworth {Intellectual System, h. I. chap. 3. sect. 12-14). -A- 
 vein of speculation .somcwliat similar appears in Aristotle's Physics. 
 The facts referred to, with many others analogous, have given rise 
 to modern hypotheses of ' unconscious mental agency,' ' unconscious 
 cerebral agency,' and 'automatic activity.' That our habits and in- 
 stincts involve thought 0/ ichich the suJiject of the habits or instincts 
 is unconscious, is not, however, to be taken as evidence that thought 
 issues from what is inferior to itself. It rather show.s that our (un- 
 consciously) rational instincts and habits are an expression of the 
 Supreme Reason. An artist need not previously know consciously the 
 ideal that determines the work he instrumentally produces.
 
 Natural Science necessarily Incomplete. 3.27 
 
 of the system of nature, which are not effects of particular 
 wills, seem to spring from the same general cause with the 
 vegetation of plants — an sethcreal spirit actuated by a Mind ^ 
 
 259. Tlic first poets and thcologei's of Greece and the East 
 considered the generation of things as ascribed rather to a 
 Divine Cause, but the physici to natural causes, subordinate 
 to and directed still ])y a Divine ; except some corpoi-ealists 
 and mechanics, who vainly pretended to make a world with- 
 out a God. The hidden force that unites, adjusts, and causeth 
 all things to hang together, and move in harmony — which 
 Orpheus and Emj^edocles styled Love — this principle of 
 union is no blind principle, but acts with intellect. This 
 Divine Love and Intellect are not themselves obvious to our 
 view, or otherwise discerned than in their effects. Litellect 
 enlightens, Love connects, and the Sovereign Good attracts 
 all things. 
 
 260. All things are made for the Supreme Good, all things 
 tend to that end : and we may be said to account for a thing, 
 when we shew that it is so best. In the Phsedon, Socrates 
 declares it to be his oijinion that he who supposed all things 
 to have been disposed and ordered by a Mind should not 
 pretend to assign any other cause of them. He blames 
 physiologers for attempting to account for phsenomena, par- 
 ticularly for gravity and cohesion, by vortexes and a?t]ier ; 
 overlooking the t6 ayaOov and ro 8euv, the strongest bond and 
 cement which holds together in all parts of the universe, 
 and not discerning the Cause itself from those things which 
 only attend it ^. 
 
 ' In short, acts for which moral agents are responsible are the onJi/ 
 effects in the universe which are not to be referred to the Supreme 
 Mind ; persons are the only secondary causes. 
 
 ^ In t>erkeley's philosophy, as one cannot be too often reminded, the 
 merely phj'sical inquirer has to do only with powerless phenomena, and 
 with the laws or rules which they are made to follow in their meta- 
 niorplioses. Phenomena {i.e. the data of the senses — 'ideas' of sense) 
 are in all cases effects, not causes — in which Divine thought and Will 
 are expressed to human minds : physical ' causation ' is the divinely
 
 328 Siris : a Chain of PJiilosopJucal Beflexions. 
 
 261. As in the microcosm, the constant regular tenor of 
 the motions of the viscera and contained juices doth not 
 hinder particuhir vohintary motions to be impressed by the 
 mind on the animal spirit ; even so, in the mundane system, 
 the steady observance of certain laws of nature, in the grosser 
 masses and more conspicuous motions, doth not hinder but 
 a Voluntary Agent may sometimes communicate particular 
 impressions to the fine sethereal medium, which in the world 
 answers the animal spirit in man. Which two (if they are 
 two), although invisible and inconceivably small, yet seem 
 the real latent springs whereby all the parts of this visible 
 world are moved — albeit they are not to be regarded as a 
 true cause, but only as an instrument of motion ; and the 
 instrument not as a help to the Creator, but only as a sign 
 to the creature \ 
 
 262. Plotinus supposeth that the soul of the universe is 
 not the original cause or author of the species, but receives 
 them from Intellect — the true principle of order and distinc- 
 tion, the source and giver of forms. Others consider the 
 vegetative soul only as some lower faculty of a higher soul 
 which animates the fiery tethereal spirit (sect. 178). As for 
 the blots and defects which appear in the course of this 
 world — which some have thought to proceed from a fatality 
 or necessity in nature, and others from an evil principle — 
 that same philosopher observes, that it may be the governing 
 Reason produceth and ordaineth all those things ; and, not 
 intending that all parts should be equally good, maketh some 
 worse than others by design ; as all parts in an animal are 
 not eyes ; and in a city, comedy, or picture, all ranks, 
 characters, and colours are not equal or alike; even so ex- 
 cesses, defects, and contrary qualities conspire to the beauty 
 and hai'mony of the world. 
 
 caused, constant although arbitrary, connexion of sensible signs with 
 the phenomena of sense which they signify. 
 ' Cf. Principles, sect. 60-66.
 
 Reason in Correlation with Sense. 329 
 
 263. It cannot be denied that, with respect to the universe 
 of things, we in this mortal state are like men educated in 
 Plato's cave, looking on shadows with our backs turned to 
 the light. But though our light be dim, and our situation 
 bad, yet if the best use be made of both, perhaps something 
 may be seen\ — Proclus, in his Commentary on the Theology 
 of Plato, observes there are two sorts of philosophers. The 
 one placed Body first in the order of beings, and made the 
 faculty of thinking depend thereupon, supposing that the 
 principles of all things are corporeal : that Body most really 
 or principally exists, and all other things in a secondary sense, 
 and by virtue of that. Others, making all corporeal things 
 to be dependent upon Soul or Mind, think this to exist in 
 the first place and primary sense, and the being of Bodies 
 to be altogether derived from and presuppose that of the 
 Mind \ 
 
 264. Sense and Experience acquaint us with the course and 
 analogy of appearances or natural effects. Thought, Reason, 
 Intellect introduce us into the knowledge of their causes. 
 Sensible appearances, though of a flowing, unstable, and un- 
 certain nature, yet having first occupied the mind, they do 
 by an early prevention render the aftertask of thought more 
 difficult ; and, as they amuse the eyes and ears, and are more 
 Euited to vulgar uses and the mechanic arts of life, they easily 
 obtain a preference, in the opinion of most men, to those 
 superior princijiles, which are the later growth of the human 
 mind, arrived to maturity and perfection, but, not affecting 
 the corporeal sense, are thought to be so far deficient in 
 point of solidity and reality — sensible and real, to common 
 
 ^ The tone in this and other parts of Siris may be compaied vvitlj 
 that in the first five sections of the Introduction to the Principles, in 
 which Berkeley attributes the difficulties of philoso]ihy, not to myste- 
 rious facts in human experience, but to 'our having fii'st raised a dust, 
 and theri complaining that we cannot see.' 
 
 ^ This well expresses the o})position between mere Materialism and 
 Immaterialism. Proclus, the Neoplatonist, lived in the fifth century 
 after Christ,
 
 330 Siris : a Chain of PhilosopJucal Reflexions. 
 
 apprehensions, being the same thing. Althongli it be certain 
 that the principles of science are neither objects of Sense nor 
 Imagination ; and that Intellect and Keasou are alone the 
 sure guides to truth \ 
 
 265. ^The successful curiosity of the present age, in arts, 
 and experiments, and new systems, is apt to elate men, and 
 make them overlook the Ancients. But, notwithstanding 
 that the encouragement and purse of princes, and the united 
 endeavoui's of great societies in these later ages, have extended 
 experimental and mechanical knowledge very far, yet it must 
 be owned that the Ancients too were not ignorant of many 
 things, as well in Physics as Metaphysics, which peihaps 
 are more generally, though not first, known in these modern 
 times. 
 
 266. The Pythagoreans and Platonists had a notion of 
 the true System of the "World. They allowed of mechanical 
 j)rinciples, but actuated by soul or mind : they distinguished 
 the primary qualities in bodies from the secoudai'y, making 
 the former to be physical causes, and they understood physical 
 causes in a right sense : they saw that a mind infinite in 
 power, unextended, invisible, immortal, governed, connected, 
 and contained all things : they saw there was no such thing 
 
 ' This section is 0110 of the best expressions of Berkeley's Liter philo- 
 sopliy, with its recognition of the Common Reason (vovs) as the highest 
 faculty in the consLiLution of our knowledge — distiuguishable from 
 mere 'sense,' and also from the ' sujxge.stions ' to which sense experience 
 or custom gives rise, while it is unconsciously involved in these suggestions. 
 It may be contiasted with the attack on abstractions, in the Intro- 
 duction to the Principles, and with the account of the elements involved 
 in human knowledye in the Principles, sect, i, 2. Siris, animated by 
 the Platonic spirit, finds the essence of reality in 'principles' — universal 
 relations of Reason — which are apprehended in perception and in sug- 
 gestion only in a dim and a confused way. In the Principles (sect. 
 28-3.-!, 36, 89), and in his other early works, Berkeley speaks as if 
 scepticism consisted in doubting the i-eaiity of sensible things. Here he 
 speaks lightly of that sort of reality. Can these views be reconciled ? 
 
 ^ The two following sections are preparatory to thoue in which Ancient 
 Idealism is used as a means for educating rational insight.
 
 Ahsolule S])ace a Phantom of Mathematicians. 331 
 
 as real absolute space: that mind, soul, or spirit truly and 
 really exists : that bodies exist only iu a secondary and de- 
 pendent sense: that the soul is the place of forms: that the 
 sensible qualities are to be regarded as acts only in the 
 cause, and as passions iu us : they accurately considered 
 the differences of intellect, rational soul, and sensitive soul, 
 with their distinct acts of intellection, reasoning, and sensa- 
 tion : points wherein the Cartesians and their followers, who 
 consider sensation as a mode of thinking, seem to have failed. 
 They knew there was a subtle aether pervading the whole 
 mass of corporeal beings, and which was itself actually moved 
 and directed by a mind : and that physical causes were only 
 instruments, or rather marks and signs '. 
 
 ********* 
 270. ^ The doctrine of real, absolute, external Space induced 
 some modern philosophers ^ to conclude it was a part or 
 attribute of God, or that God himself was space ; inasmuch 
 as incommunicable attributes of the Deity appeared to agree 
 thereto, such as infinity, immutability, indivisibility, incor- 
 poreity, being uncreated, impassive, without beginning or 
 ending — not considering that all these negative properties 
 may belong to nothing. For, nothing hath no limits, cannot 
 be moved, or changed, or divided, is neither created nor 
 destroyed. — A different way of thinking appears in the Her- 
 maic as well as other writings of the ancients. With regard 
 to absolute space, it is observed iu the Asclepian Dialogue, 
 that the word space or j^^o^ce hath by itself no meaning ; and 
 again, that it is impossible to understand what space alone 
 
 ^ This section deserves study both as showing what Bei-keley had 
 come to consider ' the true system of the world,' and also as a text for 
 comparing, in the light of historical criticism, speculations about the 
 universe among the ancient Platonists with those of the moderns, in 
 the Cartesian period of philosophy in which Berkeley was educated. 
 
 ^ The dogmas of Space and Matter as independent entities, and of 
 blind Fate or Chance, are contrasted in the following sections with the 
 ancient and more spiritual conception of Anima Mundi and all-regulating 
 Mind — especially as in the Platonists and Aristotle. 
 
 ^ See Life of Berkeley, p. 177.
 
 332 Siris : a Chain of Philosophical Befexions. 
 
 or pure space is. And Plotinus acknowledgeth no place but 
 soul or mind, expressly affirming that the soul is not in the 
 world, but the world in the soul. And farther, the place of 
 the soul, saith he, is not body, but soul is in mind, and body 
 in the soul. 
 
 271. Concerning absolute sjyace, that phantom of the 
 mechanic and geometrical philosophers, it may suffice to 
 observe that it is neither perceived by any sense, nor proved 
 by any reason, and was accordingly treated by the greatest 
 of the ancients as a thing merely visionary'. 
 
 From the notion of absolute sjjace springs that of absolute 
 motion ; and in these are ultimately founded the notions of 
 externa}, existence, indejKiidence., necessity, an(\. fate. 
 
 "Which fate, the idol of many moderns, was by old philo- 
 sophers differently understood, and in such a sense as not 
 to destroy the avTf^ova-iov of God or man. Parmeuides, who 
 thought all things to be made by necessity or fate, understood 
 justice and Providence to be the same with fate ; which, how 
 fixed and cogent soever with i-espect to man, may yet be 
 voluntary with respect to God. Empedocles declared fate to 
 be a cause using principles and elements. Heraclitus. taught 
 
 * With Berkeley Space apart from and independent of plienomena pre- 
 sented in sense is an empty negation. Perceived and suggested sensible 
 extension is the only space he recognises. Any other sort of Space, 
 lilce any other sort of Matter, is for him a meaningless abstraction — ' a 
 thing merely visionary.' The Space against which Berkeley here 
 argues is that of some ancient and modern mechanical philosophers — a 
 huge, infinitely extended, self-subsistent Vacuum, supposed to be some- 
 how an oliject of our knowledge, which so contained within it everything 
 that could exist that spiritual or unextended beings were impossible. 
 This illimitable phantom Berkeley rejects, because it is neither a 
 phenomenon perceived or suggested in sense, nor what he calls a notion. 
 Berkeley's Space is created — not infinitely divisible — a phenomenon 
 revealed in course of the gradual development of .sense perception 
 through associations established between what we see and what we 
 touch. He fails to note tliat, although Space cannot be perceived at 
 all apart from presence of phenomena in sense, neither can sense phe- 
 nomena be perceived as consisting of partes e.ctra partes, and in that 
 sense as external, without the presupposition of Space. Also he fails to 
 appreciate the fathomless mystery of the boundless Space, unperceivable 
 by us, yet forced upon us somehow in our perception of things extended.
 
 Irrational Kecessiti/ and Frovident Mind. 333 
 
 that fate was the general reason that runs through the whole 
 nature of the universe ; which nature he supposed to be an 
 sethereal body, the seed of the generation of all things. 
 Pluto held fate to be the eternal reason or law of nature. 
 Chrysippus supposed tliat fate was a spiritual power which 
 disposed the world in order ; that it was the reason and law 
 of those things which are administered by Providence ^. 
 
 272. All the foregoing notions of fate, as represented by 
 Plutarch, do plainly shew that those ancient philosophers did 
 not mean by Fate, a blind, headlong, unintelligent principle, 
 but an orderly settled course of tilings, conducted by a loise 
 and provident Mind. — And as for the Egyptian doctrine, it is 
 indeed asserted in the Pimander, that all things are produced 
 by fate. — But .Jamblichus, Avho drew his notions from Egypt, 
 affirms that the whole of things is not bound up in fate ; but 
 that there is a principle of the soul higher than nature, 
 whereby we may be raised to a union with the gods, and 
 exempt ourselves from fate. — And in the Asclepian Dia- 
 logue it is expressly said that fate follows the decrees of 
 God, And indeed, as all the motions in nature are evidently 
 the product of reason (sect. 154), it should seem there is no 
 room for necessity — in any other sense than that of a steady 
 regular course ^. 
 
 273. Blind fate and blind chance are at bottom much 
 the same thing, and one no more intelligible than the other. 
 Such is the mutual relation, connexion, motion, and sympathy 
 of the parts of this world, that they seem as it were animated 
 
 ^ The relation of Will to Reason is one of the difficult metaphysical 
 problems. 
 
 ^ The works here referred to are (a) Pamander, the most memorable 
 of the Herraic works, probably Neoplatonic, and of the fourth century 
 after Christ, thouf;;li long ascribed to the Egj'ptian Hermes; (h) the 
 De Fato of Jamblichus, the Neoilatonist (a.d. 278 333) ; and {c^ the 
 dialogue De Natnra Deorum of Asclepius, a reputed disciple of Hermes. 
 
 The one 'necessity' that is absolute, i.e. in the very nature of things, 
 according to the philosophy of Siris, is the necessity for Reason, as the 
 power by which the material world is continually made actual to con- 
 scious spirits.
 
 334 Siris: a Chain of Philosophical deflexions. 
 
 and held together hy one soul : and such is their harmony, 
 order, and regular course, as sheweth the soul to he governed 
 and directed hy a Mind. 
 
 It was an opinion of remote antiquity that the World was 
 an animal. If we may ti"ust the Hermaic writings, the 
 Egyptians thought all things did partake of life. This 
 opinion was also so general and current among the Greeks 
 that Plutarcli asserts all others held the world to be an animal, 
 and governed by Providence, except Leucippus, Democritus, 
 and Epicurus. And although an animal containing all bodies 
 within itself could not be touched or sensibly affected from 
 without, yet it is plain they attributed to it an inward sense 
 and feeling, as well as appetites and aversions ; and that 
 from all the various tones, actions, and passions of the 
 universe, they suppose one symphony, one animal act and 
 life to result. 
 
 274. Jamblichus declares the world to be one animal, in 
 which the parts, however distant each from other, are never- 
 theless related and connected by one common nature. And 
 he teacheth, what is also a received notion of the Pythagoreans 
 and Platonics, that there is no chasm in nature, but a Chain 
 or Scale of beings rising by gentle uninterrupted gradations 
 from the lowest to the highest, each nature being informed 
 and perfected by the participation of a higher^. As air 
 becomes igneous, so the purest fire becomes animal, and the 
 animal soul becomes intellectual : Avhich is to be understood 
 not of the change of one nature into another, bvit of the 
 connexion of different natures; each lower nature being, 
 according to those philosophers, as it were a receptacle or 
 subject for the next above it to reside and act in. 
 
 ' The thought of a Chain {aupa) in nature, connecting the phenomena 
 of the universe with one another, and with immanent Mind, in a 
 Cosmos or Order in which eacli phenomenon is rationally linked with 
 every otlier — this governing thought in SIris, was common in the ancient 
 world. This and the next section may be compared with Milton, Par. 
 Lod, V. 469-490.
 
 The Universal Immanence of Mind. 335 
 
 275. It is also the doctrine of Platonic philosophers, that 
 intellect is the very life of living things, the first principle 
 and exemplar of all, from whence by different degrees are 
 derived the inferior classes of life : first the rational, then the 
 sensitive, after that the vegetal ; but so as in the rational 
 animal there is still somewhat intellectual, again in the sen- 
 sitive there is somewhat rational, and in the vegetal some- 
 what sensitive, and lastly, in mixed bodies, as metals and 
 minei'als, somewliat of vegetation. By which means the 
 whole is thought to be more perfectly connected. Which 
 doctrine implies that all the faculties, instincts, and motions 
 of inferior beings, in their several respective subordinations, 
 are derived from, and depend upon Mind and Intellect. 
 
 276. Both Stoics and Platonics held the world to be alive; 
 though sometimes it be mentioned as a sentient animal, some- 
 times as a plant or vegetable. But in this, notwithstanding 
 what hath been surmised by some learned men, there seems 
 to be no Atheism ^. For, so long as the woi'Id is supposed to 
 be quickened by elementary fire or spirit, which is itself 
 animated by soul, and directed by understanding, it follows 
 that all parts thereof originally depend upon, and may be 
 reduced unto the same indivisible stem or principle, to wit, 
 a Supreme ]\Iind — which is the concurrent doctrine of 
 Pythagoreans, Platonics, and Stoics. 
 
 277. There is, according to those philosophers, a life in- 
 fused throughout all things : the Ttvp voepbv, nvp rexviKov, an 
 intellectual and artificial fire — an inward principle, animal 
 spirit, or natural life, producing and forming within as art 
 doth without ; regulating, moderating, and reconciling the 
 various motions, qualities, and parts of this Mundane System. 
 By virtue of this life the great masses are held together in 
 
 * Faith in the supremacy of mind and moral government is here 
 supposed to be reconcilable with various forms of verbal expression ; 
 and in particular even with that which asserts the immanence of 
 Supreme Mind, in the graduated evolution of vegetable into animal, 
 of animal into rational life, and generally in the order of nature.
 
 336 Sirls : a Cham of Vh'ilosopMcal 'Reflexions. 
 
 tlieii' orderly courses, as well as the minutest particles 
 governed in their natural motions, according to the several 
 laws of attraction, gravity, electricity, magnetism, and the 
 rest. It is this gives instincts \ teaches the spider her web, 
 and the bee her honey. This it is that directs the roots of 
 plants to draw forth juices from the earth, and the leaves and 
 corticle vessels to sepaiate and atti-act such particles of air, 
 and elementary fire, as suit their respective natures. 
 
 278. Nature seems to be not otherwise distinguished from 
 the anima mundi than as life is from soul, and, upon the 
 principles of the oldest philosophers, may not improperly or 
 incongruously be styled the life of the world. Some Pla- 
 tonics, indeed, regard life as the act of nature, in like manner 
 as intellection is of the mind or intellect. As the First In- 
 tellect acts by understanding, so nature according to them 
 acts or generates by living. But life is the act of the soul, 
 and seems to be veiy nature itself, which is not the principle, 
 but the result of another and higher principle, being a life 
 resulting from soul, as cogitation from intellect '. 
 
 279. If nature be the life of the world, animated by one 
 soul, compacted into one frame, and directed or governed in 
 all parts by one mind : this system cannot be accused of 
 Atheism ; though perliaps it may of mistake or improjDriety. 
 And yet, as one presiding mind gives unity to the infinite 
 aggregate of things, by a mutual communion of actions and 
 passions, and an adjustment of parts, causing all to concur in 
 one view to one and the same end — the ultimate and supreme 
 
 • Compare sect. 257, and note on p. 314. 
 
 * 'Soul,' i.e. animating cau.se, as distinguished from its effects or 
 manifestation.?. The effects constitute the visible and tangible world — 
 that world being, by the supposition, animated organism. Soul {if/vxr)) 
 was distinguished from body ((Tap^^, on the one hand, and from reason 
 (vovi), on the other — mediating between them. The ancient notion of 
 the animation of the universe may be found, in one form or another, 
 among physical philosophers of the sixteenth anil seventeenth centuries. 
 It is often difficult to distinguish from Ilylozoism, or the hypothesis 
 that the universe is eternal matter of which conscious life is an attri- 
 bute, under certain conditions of physical organization.
 
 The World is contained in Mind. 337 
 
 good of the whole, it should seem reasonahle to say, witli 
 Ocellus Lucanus the Pythagorean, that as life holds together 
 the bodies of animals, the cause whereof is the soul ; and as 
 a city is held together by concord, tlie cause whereof is law, 
 even so the world is held together by harmony, the cause 
 whereof is God. And in this sense the world or universe 
 may be considered either as one anivial or one city ^. 
 
 284. * * Thus much the schools of Plato and Pythagoras 
 seem agreed in, to wit, that the Soul of the World, whether 
 having a distinct mind of its own, or directed by a superior 
 mind, doth embrace all its parts, connect them by an invisible 
 and indissoluble Chain, and pi-eserve them ever well adjusted 
 and in good order. 
 
 285. Naturalists, whose proper province it is to consider 
 phgenomena, experiments, mechanical organs and motions, 
 principally regard the visible frame of things or corporeal 
 world — supposing soul to be contained in body. And this 
 hypothesis may be tolerated in physics, as it is not necessary 
 in the arts of dialling or navigation to mention the true 
 system or earth's motion. But those who, not content with 
 sensible appearances, would penetrate into the real and true 
 causes (the object of Theology, Metaphysics, or the Philosophia 
 Prima^), will rectify this error, and speak of the world as 
 contained by the soul, and not the soul by the world. 
 
 286. Aristotle hath obsei*ved there were indeed some who 
 thought so grossly as to suppose the universe to be one only 
 corporeal and extended nature : but in the first book of his 
 Metaphysics he justly remarks they were guilty of a great 
 mistake ; forasmuch as they took into their account the ele- 
 ments of corporeal beings alone, whereas there are incorporeal 
 
 * The De Legihus of Ocellus Lucanus is here referred to — now, along 
 with other fragments, rejected as spurious. 
 
 ^ With Aristotle these are one. See Metaph. lib. VI. c. i, and lib. 
 XI. c. 7. This sectidn again contrasts 'sensible appearances,' the plie- 
 nomenal data of sense and saggedion, with true causes, the objects of 
 reason or intellect. (Cf. Vindicatiori, sect. 9-13, and 42.)
 
 338 Siris: a Chain of PhilosojMcal Reflexions. 
 
 beings also in the universe ; and while they attempted to 
 assign the causes of generation and corruption, and account 
 for the nature of all things, they did at the same time destroy 
 the very cause of motion. 
 
 287. It is a doctrine among other speculations contained 
 in the Hermaic writings — that all things are One. And it is 
 not improbahle that Orpheus, Pannenides, and others among 
 the Greeks, might have derived their notion of T6*Ej', the 
 ONE, from Egypt. Though that subtle metaphysician Par- 
 menides, in his doctrine of tv eorwy, seems to have added 
 something of his own. If we suppose that one arid the same 
 Mind is the Universal Principle of order and harmony 
 throughout the world, containing and connecting all its parts, 
 and giving unity to the system, there seems to be nothing 
 atheistical or impious in this supposition. 
 
 288. Number is no object of sense : it is an act of the 
 mind. The same thing in a different conception is one or 
 many. Comprehending God and the creatures in one general 
 notion, we may say that all thijags together make one Universe, 
 or TO nav. But if we should say that all things make one 
 Gcd, this would, indeed, be an erroneous notion of God, but 
 would not amount to Atheism, so long as mind or intellect 
 was admitted to be the t6 r^ye^oviKw, the governing part ^. 
 It is, nevertheless, more respectful, and consequently the 
 truer notion of God, to suppose Him neither made up of 
 parts, nor to be himself a part of any whole whatsoever. 
 
 289. All those who conceived the universe to be a u animal 
 must, in consequence of that notion, suppose all things to be 
 one. But to conceive God to be the sentient soul of an 
 animal is altogether unworthy and absurd. There is no sense 
 
 ' This would be a Theism difficult to reconcile with moral agency 
 in men, and therefore with moral government, unless we exclude 
 moral agents from the ' things.' But his disposition, especially in Siris, 
 is to acknowledge that, even in ignorance of what God is, men m;iy 
 nevertheless struggle to become like God, and be victorious in the 
 struggle.
 
 The Universe depends on Divine Intelligence. 339 
 
 nor sensory, nor any thing like a sense or sensory, in God. 
 Sense implies an inipressicn from some other being, and 
 denotes a dependence in the soul which hath it. Senile is a 
 passion : and passions imply imperfection. God knoweth all 
 things, as pure mind or intellect ; but nothing by sense, nor 
 in nor through a sensory. Therefore to suppose a sensory of 
 any kind — whether space or any other— in God, would be 
 very wrong, and lead us into false conceptions of His nature. 
 The presuming there Avas such a thing as real, absolute, un- 
 created space seems to have occasioned that modern mistake. 
 But this presumption was without grounds '. 
 
 290. Body is opposite to siyirit or mind. We have a 
 notion of spirit from thought and action. "We have a 
 notion of body from resistance. So far forth as there is real 
 power, there is spirit. So far forth as there is resistance, 
 thei'e is inability or want of power : that is, there is a 
 negation of spirit. We are embodied, that is, we are clogged 
 by weight, and hindered by resistance. But in respect of 
 a perfect spirit, there is nothing haid or impenetrable : 
 there is no resistance to the Deity: nor hath he any body: 
 nor is the supreme Being united to the world as the soul 
 of an animal is to its body ; which necessarily implieth 
 defect, both as an instrument, and as a constant weight and 
 impediment -. 
 
 291. * * Nor is this doctrine less philosophical than pious. 
 AVe see all nature alive or in motion. We see water turned 
 
 * Berkeley here rejects the supposition that sensible things exist as 
 phenomena of sense in the Divine Mind. He says that they exist in 
 God intclledually, whatever that implies. And the sublime mystery 
 of infinite uncreated space again repels him. — Note what is said in this 
 section of dependence on power external to ourselves being implied in 
 the passivity of sense. Thus sense, by contrast with our own active 
 consciousness, awakens in us the conviction of our individuality, rounded 
 off by power other than our own. 
 
 ^ He assigns resistance (not extension) as the essential mark of 
 external body. So too in his early philosophical works. Are tactual 
 phenomena more the tests of sensible reality than visible phenomena; 
 and are they in any respect the fundamental experience, into vvhich 
 that of the other senses has to be translated ? 
 
 Z 2
 
 340 Siris : a Chain of Philosophical Reflexions. 
 
 into air, and air rarefied and made elastic by the attraction 
 of another medium, more pure indeed, more subtle, and more 
 volatile, than air. But still, as this is a moveable, extended, 
 and consequently a corporeal being, it cannot be itself the 
 principle of motion, but leads us naturally and necessarily to 
 an incorporeal Spirit or Agent. We are conscious that a 
 Spirit can begin, alter, or determine motion ; but nothing of 
 this appears in body. Nay, the contrary is evident, both to 
 experiment and reflexion \ 
 
 292. Natural phajuomena are only natural appearances. 
 They are, therefoi-e, such as we see and perceive them. Their 
 real and objective ^ natures are, therefore, the same ; passive 
 without anything active, fluent and changing without any- 
 thing permanent in them. However, as these make the first 
 impressions, and the mind takes her first flight and spring, as 
 it were, by resting her foot on these objects, they are not only 
 first considered by all men, but most considered by most men. 
 They and the phantoms that result from those appearances, 
 the children of imagination grafted upon sense — such for 
 example as pure space — are thought by many the very first 
 in existence and stability, and to embrace and comprehend 
 all other beings. 
 
 293. Now, although such phantoms as corporeal forces, 
 absolute motions, and real spaces do pass in physics for causes 
 and principles, yet are they in truth but hypotheses ; nor can 
 they be the objects of real science. They pass nevertheless 
 in physics, conversant about things of sense, and confined to 
 experiments and mechanics. But when we enter the province 
 of the 2'Jti^^osophia prima, we discover another order of beings 
 — miiid and its acts — permanent being — not dependent on 
 
 * Here he finds power in spirit tlirough his own spiritual ' conscious- 
 ness' but without the reference to conscience implied in sect. ■257. He 
 grounds his allegation of the impotence of body on our not having any 
 corresponding perception of power in unconscious things. 
 
 ^ 'Objective' — liere equivalent to phenomenal. Contrast its recent 
 applications, either to something extended and independent of transitory 
 pheTloinena, or to relations that are universal and necessary.
 
 The ascent from Sense to Intellect. 341 
 
 corporeal things, nor resulting, nor connected, nor contained ; 
 but containing, connecting, enlivening the whole frame ; and 
 imparting those motions, forms, qualities, and that order and 
 symmetry, to all those transient phsenomena, which we term 
 the Course of Nature. 
 
 294. It is with our faculties as with our affections : what 
 first seizes holds fast. It is a vulgar theme, that man is a 
 compound of contrarieties, which breed a restless struggle in 
 his nature, between flesh and spirit, the beast and the angel, 
 earth and heaven, ever weighed down and ever bearing up. 
 During which conflict the character fluctuates : when either 
 side prevails, it is then fixed for vice or virtue. And life 
 from different principles takes a different issue. — It is the 
 same in regard to our faculties. Sense at first besets and over- 
 bears the mind. The sensible ajipearances are all in all : our 
 reasonings are employed about them : our desires terminate 
 in them : we look no farther for realities or causes ; till intel- 
 lect begins to dawn, and cast a ray on this shadowy scene. 
 We then jierceive the true principle of unity, identity, and 
 existence. Those things that before seemed to constitute 
 the whole of Being, upon taking an intellectual view of things, 
 prove to be but fleeting phantoms. 
 
 295. From the outward form of gross masses which occupy 
 the vulgar, a curious inquirer proceeds to examine the inward 
 structure and minute parts, and, from observing the motions 
 in nature, to discover the laws of those motions. By the 
 way, he frames his hypothesis and suits his language to this 
 natural philosophy. And these fit the occasion and answer 
 the end of a maker of experiments or mechanic, who means 
 only to apply the powers of nature, and reduce tlie phseno- 
 mena to rules. But if, proceeding still in his analysis and 
 inquiry, he ascends from the sensible into the intellectual 
 world, and beholds things in a new light and a new order, 
 he will then change his system, and perceive that what he 
 took for substances and causes are but fleeting shadows : that
 
 342 Siris : a C/iaiu of Vhllosophcal Beflexions. 
 
 the mind contains nil, and acts all, and is to all created beings 
 the source of unity and identity, harnaony and order, exist- 
 ence and stability \ 
 
 296. It is neither acid, nor salt, nor sulphur, nor air, nor 
 fether, nor visible corporeal fire — nuich less the phantom fate 
 or necessity — that is the real agent, but, by a certain analysis, 
 a regular connexion and climax, we ascend through all those 
 mediums to a glimpse of the First Mover, invisible, incorpo- 
 real, unextended, intellectual source of life and being. There 
 is, it must be owned, a mixture of obscurity and prejudice in 
 human speech and reasonings. This is unavoidable, since the 
 veils of prejudice and error are slowly and singly taken off 
 one by one. But, if there are many links in the Chain which 
 connects the two extremes of what is (jrossly sensible and 
 purely intelligible, and it seem a tedious work, by the slow 
 heljis of memory, imagination, and reason '^ — oppi'essed and 
 overwhelmed, as we are, by the senses, through erroneous 
 principles, and long ambages of words and notions — to 
 struggle upwards into the light of truth, yet, as this gradu- 
 ally dawns, fiu'ther discoveries still correct the style and clear 
 up the notions. 
 
 297. The Mind, her acts and faculties, furnish a new and 
 distinct class of objects, from the contemplation whereof arise 
 certain other notions, principles, and verities, so remote from, 
 and even so repugnant to, the first prejudices which surprise 
 
 ' In this and the foregoing section thought or reason, with its con- 
 stitutive power in the f'oi ination of knowledge, is recognised, in contrast 
 with sense and its suggestions. We do not find this in Berkeley's earlier 
 writings. In his Cvmniuiiplace Hook especially, 'mind' is little more 
 than sense, and the common reason is not distinctly acknowledged as an 
 element in the constitution of knowledge. ' Pure intellect I understand 
 not' {Commonplace Bool;, p. 460). 'We must with the mob place 
 certainty in the senses' (p. 454). 'If it were not for the senses mind 
 could have no knowledge, no thought, at all' (p. 434). 'Mind is a 
 congeries of perceptions. Take away perceptions and you take away 
 the mind. Put the perceptions and you j)ut the mind' (p. 438). 
 ' Sensual pleasure is the summurn bonum. Tliis the great principle of 
 morality' (p. 4^'j). 
 
 ^ ' reason ' is here used for reasoning, as in Locke and others.
 
 Is God distinct from or immanent in Nature ? 343 
 
 the sense of mankind that they may well be excluded from 
 vulgar speech and books, as abstract from sensil)le matters ^, 
 and more fit for the speculation of trutli, the labour and aim 
 of a few, tlian for the practice of the world, or the subjects 
 of experimental or mechanical inquiry. * * * 
 
 298. There are traces of profound thought as well as 
 primeval tradition in the Platonic, Pythagorean, Egyptian, 
 and Chaldaic philosophy. Men in those early days were not 
 overlaid with languages and literature. Their minds seem 
 to have been more exercised, and less burdened, than in later 
 ages ; and, as so much nearer the beginning of the world, to 
 have had the advantage of patriarchal lights handed down 
 through a few hands. * * "' 
 
 300. Plato and Aristotle considered God as abstracted or 
 distinct from the natural world*. But the Egyptians con- 
 sidered God and Nature as making one whole, or all things 
 together as making one Universe. In doing which they did 
 not exclude the intelligent mind, but considered it as con- 
 taining all things. Therefore, whatever was wrong in their 
 way of thinking, it doth not, nevertheless, imply or lead to 
 Atheism '. 
 
 301. The human mind is so much clogged and borne down- 
 ward by the strong and early impressions of sense, that it is 
 wonderful how the ancients should have made even such a 
 
 * The ' abstract ' is here contrasted with the ' sensible * — in a tone 
 foreign to that of the Principles. 
 
 ^ This is confirmed by passages in Plato. As regards Aristotle the 
 case is not so clear. He seems to distinguish Deity {Actus Funis) 
 from nature, but not to regard God as a self-conscious person : nature 
 with him is eternal — an endless succession of phenomenal changes, 
 developed according to their several forms or essences. Berkeley 
 reverts to Divine personality and unity in sect. 345-346. 
 
 ' As in the Principles Berkeley expressly raised the question of what 
 should be meant when we use the word Matter, so here and elsewhere in 
 Siris (as previously in the Vindication) he raises the deeper question of 
 what should be meant when we use the word God, and what Atheism 
 essentially consists in. He says less here than in his writings on Visual 
 Language about verifying; faith in God by sense and its suggestions, and 
 more about trying to find him in the constitution of reason, if not in the 
 heart and conscience.
 
 344 Siris: a Chain of FhilosopJiical Bejlexlons. 
 
 progi'ess, and seen so far into intellectual matters, without 
 some glimmering of a divine tradition. Whoever considers 
 a parcel of rude savages left to themselves, how they are sunk 
 and swallowed up in sense and prejudice, and how unquali- 
 fied by their natural force to emerge from this state, will be 
 apt to think that the first spark of philosophy was derived 
 from heaven, 
 
 302. The lapsed state of human kind is a thing to which 
 the ancient philosophers were not strangers. The Xvo-tr, the 
 <^vyif, the irdkiyyevefria, shew that the Egyptians and Pytha- 
 goreans, the Platonists and Stoics, had all some notion of 
 this doctrine, the outlines of which seem to have been sketched 
 out in those tenets. — Theology and philosophy gently unbind 
 the ligaments that chain the soul down to the earth, and 
 assist her flight towards the sovereign Good. There is an 
 instinct or tendency of the mind upwards, which sheweth 
 a natural endeavour to recover and raise ourselves from our 
 present sensual and low condition, into a state of light, order, 
 and purity \ 
 
 303. The Perceptions of Sense are gross : but even in 
 the senses there is a difierence. Though harmony and pro- 
 portion are not objects of sense, yet the eye and the ear are 
 organs which off"er to the mind such materials by means 
 whereof she may apprehend both the one and the other. By 
 experiments of sense we become acquainted with the lower 
 faculties of the soul ; and from them, whether by a gradual 
 evolution or ascent, we aiTive at the highest. — Sense supplies 
 images to memory. These become subjects for Fancy to work 
 upon. — Reason considers and judges of the imaginations. 
 And these acts of reason become new objects to the Undex'- 
 standing. — In this scale, each lower faculty is a step that 
 
 ' Evil, as Plato represents, is due to apostasy from an original Good. 
 To this Good pliilosopliy and religion struggle to return ; the former in 
 s])eculative thouglit, and the latter in the spiritual experience through 
 which we become like, and thus learn to know, the Good which is God.
 
 Evolut'w7i of the Intellectual Faculties. 345 
 
 leads to one above it. And the uppermost naturally leads 
 to the Deity; which is rather the object of intellectual know- 
 ledge than even of the discursive faculty, not to mention 
 the sensitive ^ — There runs a Chain throughout the whole 
 system of beings. In this Chain one link drags another. 
 The meanest things are connected with the highest. The 
 calamity therefore is neither strange nor much to be com- 
 plained of, if a low sensual reader shall, from mere love of 
 the animal life, find himself drawn on, surprised and betrayed, 
 into some curiosity concerning the intellectual. 
 
 304. There is, according to Plato, properly no hnoivledge, 
 but only opinion concerning things sensible and perishing ; 
 not because tliey are naturally abstruse and involved in dark- 
 ness, but because their nature and existence are uncertain, 
 ever fleeting and changing. Or rather, because they do not 
 in strict truth exist at all, being always generating or in fieri, 
 that is, in a perpetual flux, without any thing stable or per- 
 manent in them to constitute an object of real science. The 
 Pythagoreans and Platonics distinguish between to yiyvoyavov 
 and TO ov, that which ever generated and that w^hich exists. 
 Sensible things and corporeal forms are perpetually producing 
 and perishing, appearing and disappearing, never resting in 
 one state, but always in motion and change ; and therefore, 
 in effect, not one being but a succession of beings : while to 
 ov is understood to be somewhat of an abstract or spiritual 
 nature, and the proper object of intellectual knowleilge. 
 Therefore, as there can be no knowledge of things flowing 
 and unstable, the opinion of Protagoras and Thesetetus, that 
 
 ^ This important passage contains hints of the interdependent gradation 
 of faculties that is involved in our intellectual power. In proportion as 
 those faculties or elements which are higiier in the scale become more 
 developed in the individual, the universe becomes more and more in- 
 telligible and real. The ascent is from (o) present phenomena of sense 
 to (ft) mental representations through suggestion, which provide material 
 for (c) discursive inferences, all culminating in {d) ' intellectual know- 
 ledge ' or rational insight.
 
 346 Siris: a Chain of Philosophical Bcfexions. 
 
 sense waf; science, is absurcP. And indeed, nothing is more 
 evident than tliat the a])2)arent sizes and shapes, for instance, 
 of things are in a constant flnx, ever differing as they are 
 viewed at different distances, or with ghmces more or less 
 accurate. As for tliose absolute magnitudes and figures, 
 which certain Cartesians and other moderns suppose to be in 
 things ; that must seem a vain supposition, to whoever con- 
 siders it is supported by no argument of reason, and no 
 experiment of sense ^. 
 
 305. As understanding perceiveth not, that is, doth not 
 hear, or see, or feel, so sense knoweth not : and although the 
 mind may use both sense and fancy, as means whereby to arrive 
 at knowledge, yet sense or soul, so far forth as sensitive, 
 knoweth nothing. For, as it is rightly observed in the T/iece- 
 tetus of Plato, science consists not in the passive perceptions, 
 but in the reasoning upon tl)em— tw irtp't eKelvav (rvWoyta-fiu". 
 
 306. In the ancient philosophy of Plato and Pytliagoras, 
 we find distinguished three sorts of objects: — In the first place, 
 a form or species that is neither generated nor destroyed, 
 unchangeable, invisible, and altogether imperceiitible to 
 sense, being only understood by the Intellect. A second 
 
 ' The reference is to the homo menxiira of Protagoras argued against 
 in the Thra-tdns by Plato — with whom God, not man, least of all each 
 individual man, is the criterion of truth. 
 
 ^ If there can be no ' knowledge ' of what is ' flowing and unstable,' 
 how do transitory sensations become knowledge in perception ? Also, on 
 the hypothesis of Empiricism, how can 'sequences' of jihenomcna be- 
 come known as invariable? These questions hardly rise in Berkeley. 
 
 Here, as in his earlier writings, what he teaches is in harmony with 
 arbitrariness in the creation of natural law. Throughout lie resists the 
 hypothesis that the law in nature is eternally necessary and independent 
 of Divine Will, or that there is any tiling thus necessary even in the 
 space relations of things. To those who argue that in knowing nature 
 at all we must conceive that the laws of its phenomena are uniform, 
 and that the op[)osite conception is meaningless because irreconcilable 
 ■with our having any phy.sical experience — to such he might answer 
 that, in this meaning of ' knowledge,' ' we Jiavc no knowledge or ex- 
 perience ' of things sensiide. 
 
 ■■' Does this imply that phenomena of sense, in themselves, are unin- 
 telligible, and that we cannot, strictly speaking, be even conscious 
 of them— unless by ' consciousness ' is meant mere sensuous feeling ?
 
 Innate ideas or phenomena and ' notions! 347 
 
 sort there is, ever fluent and changing (sect. 292, 293), 
 generating and perishing, appearing and vanishing : this is 
 comprehended hy Sense and 0])inion. The third kind is 
 matter, which, as Plato teacheth, heing neither an object of 
 understanding nor of sense, is hardly to be made out by 
 a certain spurious way of reasoning — Xoyto-yuw rtw v6da /idyts 
 TTifTTov ^ The same doctrine is contained in the Pythagoric 
 treatise De Anima Mundi, which, distinguishing Ideas, sen- 
 sible things, and Matter, maketh the first to be apprehended 
 by Intellect, the second ])y Sense, and the last, to wit. Matter, 
 Xoyto-juw v(j6(o. Whereof Theraistius the Peripatetic assigns 
 the reason. For, saith he, that act is to be esteemed spu- 
 rious, whose object hath nothing positive, being only a mere 
 privation, as silence or darkness. And such he accounteth 
 Matter I 
 
 307. Aristotle maketh a threefold distinction of objects, 
 according to the three speculative sciences. Physics he sup- 
 poseth to be conversant about such things as have a principle 
 of motion in themselves ; Mathematics about things perma- 
 nent but not abstracted ; and Theology about Being abstracted 
 and immoveable. Which distinction may be seen in the 
 ninth book of his Metaphysics, where by abstracted, x«pK'"'"o«', 
 he understands separable from corporeal beings and sensible 
 qualities. 
 
 308. That philosopher held that the mind of man was a 
 tabula rasa, and that there were no innate ideas. Plato, on 
 the contrary, held original ideas in the mind ; that is, notions 
 which never were or can be in the sense, such as being, 
 
 ■■ As in the Timceus, where he distinijui.shes iudeterminate mnferia 
 prima from self-existent external Forms or Ideas, and also from the 
 Cosmos of sensible things. 
 
 ^ The difference between positive and negative thinking — thinking 
 that is concerned with what is realisable in ima'^nation, and thinking 
 that is not so realisable — with applications of the latter to solve pro- 
 blems of kno\vled;.'-e, have engaged some moilern i)sych()logists, especially 
 since Kant. The phenomenon of ' negative thought ' plays an important 
 part in Sir W. Hamilton's philosophy, along with the cogniite question 
 of the mutual relations of belief and knowledge.
 
 348 Siris : a Chain of Tidlosopldcal Beflexions. 
 
 beauty, goodness, likeness, parity. Some, perhaps, may think 
 the truth to be this : — that there are properly no ideas, or 
 passive objects, in the mind but what were derived from 
 sense : but that thci'e are also besides these her own acts or 
 operations ; such as notions ^. 
 
 309. It is a maxim of the Platonic philosophy, that the 
 soul of man was originally furnished with native inbred 
 notions, and stands in need of sensible occasions, not abso- 
 lutel)'' for producing them, but only for awakening, rousing, 
 or exciting into act what was already pr. -existent, dormant, 
 and latent in the soul ; as things are said to be laid up in 
 the memory, though not actually perceived until they happen 
 to be called forth and brought into view by other objects. 
 This notion seemeth somewhat different fiom that of innate 
 ideas, as understood by those moderns who have attempted 
 to explode them ^ To understand and to he are, according 
 to Parmenides, the same thing. And Plato in his .seventh 
 Letter makes no difference between vovs and eTnaTrnxr], mind 
 and knowledge. Whence it folloAvs that mind, knowledge, 
 and notions, either in habit or in act, always go together. 
 
 310. And albeit Ai'istotle considered the soul in its original 
 state as a blank paper, yet he held it to be the projier place 
 of forms — Trjv "^vxhv iivai tottov e't'Swi^ — which doctrine, first 
 maintained by others, he admits, under this restriction, that 
 it is not to be understood of the whole soul, but only of the 
 
 ' In this iin|)ort,int sentence we appro.acli the contrast j-et correlation 
 of Sense and Reason. Berkeley's 'ideas (plienomena) or passive objects' 
 represent the former ; his ' notions ' are connected with the latter. Wliat 
 lie says here is in curious contrast to what he says in his Commonplace 
 Hook (p. 457), where he expressly accepts the sensationMlist answer — 
 ' Nihil est in iutellectu quod non prius fuit in sensu,' adding that if the 
 schoolmen had stuck to this, 'it had never taiiglit them the doctinne of 
 abstract ideas.' Here, in Siris, he virtually accepts the famous addition 
 of Leibnitz — ' Nihil est in iutellectu quod non piius fuit in sensu 7iisi 
 intellectiis i])sc ;' in which tlie activity of rational intelligence is recog- 
 nised as a necessary element constitutive of knowledge. The tabula 
 rasa of Aristotle is not inconsistent with the jmlcntial existence of pure 
 reason. Cf. sect. 310. 
 
 ^ He probably refers to Locke's Essay, b. I.
 
 Matter as conceived hy Plato and Aristotle. 349 
 
 vorjTiKT] ; as is to be seen in his third book Ve Aninia '. 
 "Whence, according to Themestius in his commentary on that 
 treatise, it may be inferred that all beings are in the soul. 
 For, saith he, the forms are the beings. By the form every 
 thing is what it is. And he adds, it is the soul that im- 
 
 parteth forms to matter ; ttjv vKrjv jxopcpaa-a ttoikiXms jxopc^aii. 
 
 Therefore they ai'e first in the soul. He farther adds that 
 the mind is all things, taking the forms of all things it 
 becomes all things by intellect and sense, Alexander Aphro- 
 disa3us saith as much, affirming the mind to be all things, 
 Kara Te to vofiv Ka\ to aladaveaBai. And this in fact is Aristotle's 
 own doctrine, in his third book Be Anima, where he also 
 asserts, with Plato, that actual knowledge and the thing 
 
 known are all one. To 8' avro iaTiv f] kut ivepyeiav eTTKTTriiJLT] 
 
 Tw npayfiaTi. Whence it follows, that the things are where 
 the knowledge is, that is to say, in the mind. Or, as it is 
 othei'wise expressed, that the soul is all things. More might be 
 said to explain Aristotle's notion, but it would lead too far^. 
 
 31 1 ^ As to an absolute actual existence of Sensible or 
 Corporeal Things (sect. 264, 293, 294), it doth not seem to 
 
 ' ' Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all 
 character, without any ideas — how comes it to be furnished V (Locke's 
 Essay, b. II. ch. i. § 2.) Locke in answering this question does not 
 refer to the Aristotelian distinction of potential and actual ideas and 
 knowledge. In the passage referred to, Aristotle identifies the aiaOrj- 
 TiKov with the aiaOrjTov, and the imarrjixoviKuv with the iinaTrfTov, 
 through their forms (ei'S?;') — the potential intellect being with him, as 
 with Plato, the place of forms — tottos i'lSajv. 
 
 ^ The passage in Aristotle that is referred to is one of several, in the 
 J)e Anima and elsewhere, in which he seems to identify knowledge 
 and existence, or at least to hold that until a thing is an object of 
 knowledge it can have only a potential, not an actual, existence. A 
 virtually creative activity of understanding is thus implied. 
 
 ^ In sect. 31 1-3 1 9, Berkeley, in contemplating the transitoriness of 
 phenomena, and the implied ' notion ' of ' mind ' on which they all 
 depend, returns (but in a more meditative and It-ss argumentative 
 spirit) to the favourite speculation of his youth — the meaning of the 
 term reality, vrhen asserted of sensible things, as well as of visible and 
 tangible space. He summons Plato and Aristotle as witnesses, that their 
 actual (not potential) existence is dependent upon a percipient ; that 
 unperceived Matter and Space are mere negations. (' Sensible things*
 
 350 Slris : a Chain of Philosophical Bejlexions. 
 
 have been admitted cither by Phxto or Aristotle. In the 
 Thecetetus we are told that if any one saith a thing is, or is 
 made, he must withal say, for what, or of what, or in respect 
 of what, it is, or is made ; for, that any thing should exist in 
 itself or absolutely is absurd. Agreeably to which doctrine 
 it is also farther affirmed by Plato, that it is impossible 
 a thing should be sweet and sweet to nobody. It must, 
 nevertheless, be owned with regard to Aristotle, that even in 
 his Metcvpliysics there are some expressions which seem to 
 favour the absolute existence of corporeal things. For 
 instance, in the eleventh book, speaking of corporeal sensible 
 things, what wonder, saith he, if they never appear to us the 
 same, no more than to sick men, since we are always changing 
 and never remain the same ourselves % And again, he saith, 
 sensible things, although they receive no change in them- 
 selves, do nevertheless in sick persons produce different ^nsa- 
 tions and not the same. These passages would seem to imply 
 a distinct and absolute existence of the objects of sense*. 
 
 312. But it must be observed, that Aristotle distinguisheth 
 a twofold existence — 2)otential and actual. It will not there- 
 fore follow that, according to Aristotle, because a thing is, it 
 must actually exist. This is evident from the eighth book 
 of his 3fetaj)hysics, where he animadverts on the Megaric 
 philosophers, as not admitting a possible existence distinct 
 from the actual : from whence, suith he, it must follow, that 
 there is nothing cold, or hot, or sweet, or any sensible thing 
 at all, where there is no perception. He adds that, in conse- 
 quence of that Megaric doctrine, we can have no sense but 
 
 are of course not to be confounded with the dirtipov of Plato, or the 
 v\r] of Aristotle.) 
 
 ^ See b. X. (XI.) ch. 6, where Aristotle argues against Protagor.ia, 
 and in behalf of permanence in sensible things. He does not thei'eby 
 contradict the doctrine of the De Anima. as to the creative activity of 
 reason, and the share contributed by sense to the constitution of things. 
 Only he implies that things are, potentially at least, more than the 
 individual thoughts — more, a fortiori, than the individual sensations of 
 a sentient thinker.
 
 Existence as Polotlial and as Actual. 351 
 
 while we actually exert it : we are blind vvlieu we do not see, 
 and therefore both blind and deaf several times a day^. 
 
 313. The ivT(\i)^(ua wpoyrai of the Peripatetics, that is, the 
 sciences, arts, and habits, were by them distinguished from the 
 acts or eVreXe'xeKu dfVTfpai, and supposed to exist in the mind, 
 though not exerted or put into act". This seems to illustrate 
 the mannei' in which Socrates, Plato, and their followers, 
 conceive innate notions to be in the soul of man (sect. 309). 
 It was the Platonic doctrine, that human souls or minds 
 descended from above, and were sowed in generation ; that 
 they were stunned, stupefied, and intoxicated by this descent 
 and immersion into animal nature ; and that the soul, in this 
 oveipw^is or slumber, forgets her original notions, which are 
 smothered and oppressed by many false tenets and prejudices 
 of sense. Insomuch that Proclus compares the soul in her 
 descent, invested with growing prejudices, to Glaucus diving 
 to the bottom of the sea, and there contracting divers coats 
 of seaweed, coral, and shells, which stick close to him, and 
 conceal his true shape ^. 
 
 314. Hence, according to this philosophy, the mind of man 
 
 * This distinction of potential and actual, already referred to, is 
 amongst the most fruitful in Aristotle, and one might reconsider 
 Berkeley's theory of what is meant by the reality of the material world 
 in the light of it. In this passage, potential {(v Swa/xa) is contrasted 
 with actual existence {tv eyepyfia, or eu evrekfXf'ta) ; and the Megaric 
 theory, limiting 'existence' to the latter, is identified with the sceptical 
 subjectivity of Protagoras. Berkeley, on the other hand, may be supposed 
 to imply that, as far as human percipients and agents are concerned, the 
 things of sense always exist in iv Svvafxet, inasmuch as, when unperceived 
 by thou, they exist for them potentially in the Divine Reason and 
 Will. — But what is to be understood by this sort of ' potential ' exi.'it- 
 euce? What is God? Is an 'object' in divine knowledge analogous 
 to an 'object' in human knowledge? Is something impercipient a 
 necessary datum, or is it voluntarily created by God ? Berkeley hardly 
 recognises these difficulties, but he rejects the su|)position that the 
 material world has a ■••entietit existence in God, i.e. that it exists in the 
 form of divine sensations. 
 
 ' The acqui.'tition of a hal)it implies previous potentiality, as well as 
 the exertion of the habit. Hence the first and second energies of the 
 Peripatetics. 
 
 ' Commentaiia of the Neoplatonist Proclus (a.d. 412-485).
 
 352 Shis: a Cham of PhilosopJiical Reflexions. 
 
 is so restless to shake off that shimber, to disengage and 
 emancipate herself from those prejudices and false opinions 
 that so straitly beset and cling to her, to rub off those covers 
 that disguise her original form, and to regain her primeval 
 state and first notions : hence that perpetual struggle to 
 recover the lost region of light, that ardent thirst and 
 endeavour after truth and intellectual ideas, which she would 
 neither seek to attain, nor rejoice in, nor know when attained, 
 except she had some prenotion or anticipation of them, and 
 they had lain innate and doi'mant, like habits and sciences in 
 the mind, or things laid up, which are called out and roused 
 by recollection or reminiscence. So that learning seemeth in 
 effect reminiscence ^. 
 
 315. The Peripatetics themselves distinguish between re- 
 miniscence and mere memory. Themistius observes that the 
 best memories commonly go with the worst parts ; but that 
 reminiscence is most perfect in the most ingenious minds. 
 And, notwithstanding the tabula rasa of Aristotle, yet some 
 of his followers have undertaken to make him speak Plato's 
 sense. Thus Plutarch the Peripatetic teacheth, as agreeable 
 to his mastei''s doctrine, that learning is reminiscence, and 
 that the vuvi Kaff e^iv is in children. Siniplicius also, in his 
 commentary on the third book of Aristotle, irfpi yf/^vxTJs, 
 speaketh of a certain interior reason in the soul, acting of 
 itself, and originally full of its own pi-oj)er notions, nXrjprjs dcj)' 
 
 eavrov twv oiKficov yvaxxeuiv ^. 
 
 * There is blind and passive suggestion, by association, of what has 
 coexisted in past personal experience. It is to be distinguished from 
 active 'reminiscence' of Ideas, i.e. development of necessary and uni- 
 versal til ought. 
 
 * Tliemistius, the first-named of these Peripatetics, lived in the fourth 
 century. To Siniplicius, a Neoplatonist of the sixth century, we owe 
 valuable expositions of Aristotle, especially the Dc Anima. He 
 attempted to reconcile Aristotle with Plato. ' Plutarch the Peri- 
 patetic' seems to be Plutarch son of Nestorius, the Neoplatonist, who 
 is said to have written a commentary, now lost, on the De Anima. With 
 Aristotle, reminiscence {dvdixvrjafs) implies perhaps rational volition, but 
 not all that Plato meant by pre-existing and latent ideals, evolved with 
 a growing clearness through much reflective exercise in the individual.
 
 What Plato and Aristotle meant hij Matter. 353 
 
 316. And as the Platonic pliilosophy supposed intellectual 
 notions to be originally inexistent, or innate in the soul, so 
 likewise it supposed sensible qualities to exist (though not 
 originally) in the soul and there only^. Soci'ates saith to 
 Thetetetus, You must not think the white colour that you 
 see is in any thing without your eyes, or in your eyes, or in 
 any place at all. And in the Timceus, Plato teacheth that 
 the figure and motion of the particles of fire dividing the 
 parts of our bodies produce that painful sensation we call 
 heat. And Plotinus, in the sixth book of his second Ennead, 
 observes that heat and other qualities are not qualities in the 
 things themselves, but acts : that heat is not a quality, but 
 act in the fire : that fire is not really what we perceive in the 
 qualities, light, heat, and colour. From all which it is plain 
 that whatever real things they suppose to exist independent 
 of the soul, those were neither sensible things nor clothed 
 with sensible qualities. 
 
 317. Neither Plato nor Aristotle by Matter, likr], understood 
 corjporeal substance, whatever the moderns may understand 
 by that word. To them certainly it signified no positive 
 actual being. Aristotle describes it as made up of negatives, 
 having neither quantity, nor quality, nor essence ^. And not 
 only the Platonists and Pythagoreans, but also the Peripa- 
 tetics themselves declare it to be known, neither by sense, 
 nor by any direct and just reasoning, but only by some 
 spurious or adulterine method, as hath been observed before. 
 Simon Portius, a famous Peripatetic of the sixteenth century, 
 
 * ' There ' does not imply locality — spacial relation. The relations 
 which are essential to the constitution of knowledge (whatever these 
 may be found to be) are unconsciouslj' involved in sense-perception. 
 
 ^ The d-rrapov, or 'inpov of Plato — according to Hegel, a necessitated 
 ' otherness.' ' Matter,' as actually given in sense-phenomena, must not 
 be confounded with the formless potential Matter of Aristotle. This 
 is that dark, undefinable, presupposed condition of the actuality of 
 sensible things, for which Berkeley substitutes God and constant 
 creation, or divinely established order of sense-phenomena, which, as 
 phenomena, are relative to a conscious mind, and, because orderly, are 
 significant and interpretable. 
 
 A a
 
 354 Siris: a Chain of Tldlosopliical Reflexions. 
 
 denies it to be any substance at all, for, saith he, Nequit per 
 se subsistere, quia sequeretur, id quod non est in actu esse in 
 actu^. If Jamblichus may be credited, the Egyjitians sup- 
 posed Matter so far from including aught of substance or 
 essence, that, according to them, God produced it by a 
 separation from all substance, essence, or being, diro ovo-iottjtos 
 dTToxiardeia-Tjs v\6t>]tos. That Matter is actually nothing, but 
 potentially all things, is the doctrine of Aristotle, Theo- 
 phrastus, and all the ancient Peripatetics. 
 
 318. According to those philosophers, Matter is only a 
 pura potentia, a mere possibility. But Anaximander, suc- 
 cessor to Thales, is represented as having thought the suj)rerae 
 Deity to be infinite Matter. Nevertheless, though Plutarch 
 calleth it Matter, yet it was simply t6 aneipov, which means no 
 more than infinite or indefinite. — And although the moderns 
 teach that Space is real and iufinitely extended, yet, if we 
 consider that it is no intellectual notion, nor yet 2)erceived by 
 any of our senses, Ave shall perhaps be inclined to think with 
 Plato in his Timctus, that this also is the result of Xoyia-fxus 
 vodos, or spurious reasoning, and a kind of waking dream. 
 Plato observes that we dream, as it were, when we think of 
 place, and believe it necessary that whatever exists should 
 exist in some place. Which place or space, he also observes, 
 is fifT dvai(T6T](TLas c'tnTov, that is, to be felt as darkness is seen, 
 or silence heard, being a mere privation ^. 
 
 ^ Simon Porta or Fortius — a Neapolitan Professor of Philosophy at 
 Pisa, and the most famous of the pupils of Pomponatius. 
 
 - Space, in abstraction from all experience in sense, is neither a 
 'notion' nor an 'idea' (according to Berkeley's use of these terms). 
 We find we cannot when we try imagine space emptied of sense. On 
 the other hand, sense cannot be conceived as outivard apart from space, 
 which is necessarily blended with the phenomena that we are conscious 
 of when we perceive, giving them outwardness, making them capable 
 of being conceived as outward, iuid connecting them with that bound- 
 lessness or spacial infinity which may well be considered one of the 
 ultimate mysteries. 
 
 Berkeley finds in phenomena of serine and notions the two elements 
 of knowledge. In his early pliilosophy he concerned himself chiefly 
 with the former; in Siris rather with the latter. Abstract space.
 
 Antithesis of God and Matter. 355 
 
 319. If any one should think to infer the reality or actual 
 being of Matter from the modern tenet — that gravity is 
 always proportionable to the quantity of matter, let him but 
 narrowly scan the modern demonstration of that tenet, and 
 he will find it to be a vain circle, concluding in truth no 
 more than this — that gravity is proportionable to weight, 
 that is, to itself. Since Matter is conceived only as defect 
 and mere possibility ; and since God is absolute perfection 
 and act ; it follows there is the greatest distance and oppo- 
 sition imaginable between God and Matter. Insomuch that 
 a material God would be altogether inconsistent. 
 
 320. The force that pi-oduces, the intellect that orders, the 
 goodness that perfects all things is the Supreme Being. Evil, 
 defect, negation, is not the object of God's creative power. 
 From motion the Peripatetics trace out a first immoveable 
 Mover. The Platonics make God author of all good, author 
 of no evil, and unchangeable. According to Anaxagoras, 
 there was a confused mass of all things in one chaos ; but 
 mind supervening, i-rrfkOcov, distinguished and divided them. 
 Anaxagoras, it seems, ascribed the motive faculty to mind, 
 vovs ; which mind some subsequent philosophers have accu- 
 rately discriminated from soul and life, ascribing to it the 
 sole faculty of intellection. 
 
 321. But still God was supposed the first Agent, the source 
 and original of all things ; which he produceth, not occasion- 
 ally or instrumentally, but with actual and real efficacy ^. 
 
 being neither a notion nor a phenomenon, must, he concluded, 
 be an illusion. He did not contemplate space as a condition in- 
 dispensable to the constitution of our experience of an external 
 world. 
 
 Sect. 320-329, in accumulating authorities favourable to the depend- 
 ence of all phenomena ultimately on Mind, approach the question of 
 ichat God is. That He is, and that our true life is the struggle to 
 realise Him in ourselves, is assumed. 
 
 ^ 'Not occasionally or instrumentally, i.e. not under the relation of 
 phenomenal sign and phenomenal event signified, as in the scientific 
 conception of causality, but with the productive power of an uncaused 
 cause. 
 
 A a 2
 
 3j6 Siris: a Chain of Tliilosophical Heflexions. 
 
 326. Now, whether the vovs be abstracted from the sen- 
 sible world, and considered by itself, as distinct from, and 
 presiding over, the created system ; or whether the whole 
 Universe, including mind together with the mundane body, 
 is conceived to be God, and the creatures to be partial 
 manifestations of the Divine essence — there is no Atheism in 
 either case, whatever misconceptions there may be ; so long 
 as Mind or Intellect is understood to preside over, govern, and 
 conduct, the Avhole frame of things ^. And this was the general 
 prevailing opinion among the philosophers. 
 
 327. Nor if any one, with Aristotle in his Metaphysics, 
 should deny that God knows anything without himself — 
 seeing that God comprehends all things — could this be justly 
 pronounced an atheistical opinion. Nor even was the follow- 
 ing notion of the same author to be accounted Atheism, to 
 wit that there are some things beneath the knowledge of 
 God, as too mean, base, and vile ; however wrong this notion 
 may be, and unworthy of the Divine perfection. 
 
 328. Might Ave not conceive that God may be said to be 
 All in divers senses ; — as he is the cause and origin of all 
 beings ; as the vovs is the vo-qra, a doctrine both of Platonics 
 and Peripatetics ; as the vovs is the place of all forms ; and 
 as it is the same which comj^rehends and orders and sustains 
 the whole mundane system 1 Aristotle declares that the 
 Divine force or influence permeates the entire universe, and 
 that what the pilot is in a ship, the driver in a chariot, 
 the precentor in a choir, the law in a city, the general in an 
 army, the same God is in the world. This he am})ly sets 
 forth in his book De Mundo ; a ti'eatise which, having been 
 anciently ascribed to him, ought not to be set aside from the 
 difference of style ; which (as Patricius rightly observes), 
 
 ^ He seems satisfied to accept either the conception of God as ex- 
 ternal to the dependent universe of things and persons, or that otlier 
 conception in which Deity is regarded as immanent in the world of nature 
 and spirit — provided only that we practically acknowledge physical and 
 moral government in the universe, and our own personal relation to this.
 
 May it he said that the Universe is God? 357 
 
 being in a letter to a king, might well be supposed to differ 
 from the other dry and crabbed parts of his writings^. 
 
 329. And although there are some expressions to be met 
 with in the philosophers, even of the Platonic and Aristotelic 
 sects, which speak of God as mixing with, or pervading all 
 nature and all the elements ; yet this must be explained by 
 force and not by extension, which was never attributed to 
 the mind, either by Aristotle or Plato. This they always 
 affirmed to be incorporeal : and, as Plotinus remarks, in- 
 corporeal things are distant each from other not by place, 
 but (to use his expression) by alterity. 
 
 330. -These disquisitions will probably seem dry and useless 
 to such readers as are accustomed to consider only sensible 
 objects. The employment of the mind on things purely 
 intellectual is to most men ii'ksome ; Avhereas the sensitive 
 powers, by constant use, acquire strength. Hence, the objects 
 of sense more forcibly affect us, and ai'e too often counted the 
 chief good. For these things men fight, cheat, and scramble. 
 Therefore, in order to tame mankind, and introduce a sense 
 of virtue, the best human means is to exercise their under- 
 standing, to give them a glimpse of another world, superior 
 to the sensible, and, while they take pains to cherish and 
 maintain the animal life, to teach them not to neglect the 
 iiTtellectual ^. 
 
 331. Prevailing studies are of no small consequence to 
 a state, the religion, manners, and civil government of 
 a countiT' ever taking some bias from its philosophy, which 
 
 ^ The De Munch is not now accepted as genuine. 
 
 ^ The eloquent protest on behalf of Plato and Spiritual Philosophy, 
 as against Materialism, in the sections which follow, is the prelude to 
 abstruse speculation as to the Personality and Trinity of God, which is 
 omitted. 
 
 ^ This is Berkeley's way of recognising the divine reality presupposed 
 in the material or phenomenal woi-ld. Is the world ' above sense ' sup- 
 posed by him to be possibly phenomenal though unrealisable, as colour 
 to the born-blind, in our imagination ?
 
 358 Slris: a Chain of PJiiloso2)hical Reflexions. 
 
 affects not only the minds of its professors and students, but 
 also the opinions of all the better sort, and the practice of 
 the whole people, remotely and consequentially indeed, though 
 not inconsiderably. Have not the polemic and scholastic 
 philosophy been observed to produce controversies in law and 
 religion % And have not Fatalism and Sadducism gained 
 ground, during the general passion for the corpuscularian 
 and mechanical philosophy, which hath prevailed for about 
 a century ? This, indeed, might usefully enough have em- 
 ployed some share of the leisure and curiosity of inquisitive 
 persons. But when it entered the seminaries of learning as 
 a necessary accomplishment, and most important part of 
 education, by engrossing men's thoughts, and fixing their 
 minds so much on corporeal objects, and the laws of motion, 
 it hath, however undesignedly, indirectly, and by accident, 
 yet not a little indisposed them for spiritual, moral, and in- 
 tellectual matters. Certainly had the philosophy of Socrates 
 and Pythagoras prevailed in this age, among those who think 
 themselves too wise to receive the dictates of the Gospel, we 
 should not have seen interest take so general and fast hold 
 on the minds of men, nor public spirit reputed to be yewaiav 
 (vr)6eiav, a generous folly, among those who are reckoned to 
 be the most knowing as well as the most getting part of 
 mankind. 
 
 332. It might very well be thought serious trifling to tell 
 my readers that the greatest men had ever a high esteem for 
 Plato; whose writings are the touchstone of a hasty and 
 shallow mind ; whose philosophy has been the admiration of 
 ages ; which supplied patriots, magistrates, and lawgivers to 
 the most flourishing states, as well as fathers to the Church, 
 and doctors to the schools. Albeit in these days the depths 
 of that old learning are rarely fathomed ; and yet it were 
 happy for these lands if our young nobility and gentry, in- 
 stead of modei'n maxims, would imbibe the notions of the 
 great men of antiquity. But, in these freethiuking times,
 
 God as the Universal Order. 359 
 
 many an empty head is shook at Ari&totle and Plato, as well 
 as at the Holy Scriptures. And the writings of those cele- 
 brated ancients are by most men treated on a foot with the 
 dry and barbarous lucubrations of the schoolmen. It may 
 be modestly presumed there are not many among us, even 
 of those who are called the better sort, who have more 
 sense, virtue, and love of their country than Cicero, who in a 
 Letter to Atticus could not forbear exclaiming, Socrates et 
 Socratici viri ! nunquam vohis gratiain referam. Would to 
 God many of our countrymen had the same obligations to 
 those Socratic writers ! Certainly, where the people are well 
 educated, the art of piloting a state is best learned from the 
 writings of Plato. But among bad men, void of discipline 
 and education, Plato, Pythagoras, and Aristotle themselves, 
 were they living, could do but little good. 
 
 334. Socrates in the First Alcibiades teacheth that the 
 contemplation of God is the jjroper means to know or under- 
 stand our own soul. As the eye, saith he, looking steadfastly 
 at the visive part or pupil of another eye, beholds itself, 
 even so the soul beholds and understands herself, while 
 she contemplates the Deity, which is wisdom and virtue, or 
 like thereunto. In the Phsedon, Socrates speaks of God as 
 being to ayaSov and to 8eov ; Plotinus represents God as order ; 
 Aristotle as law ^ 
 
 335. It may seem, perhaps, to those who have been taught 
 
 to discourse about substratums, more reasonable and pious 
 
 to attribute to the Deity a more substantial being than the 
 
 notional entities* of wisdom, order, law, virtue, or goodness, 
 
 which being only complex ideas, framed and j)ut together by 
 
 the understanding, are its own creatures, and have nothing 
 
 substantial, real, or independent in them. But it must be 
 
 considered that, in the Platonic system, order, virtue, law, 
 
 These doctrines harmonise rather with the view of God as the Ideal 
 towards which moral agents are bound to struggle, in order to the 
 realisation of their chief end, than witb that in which God is thought 
 of as a Person.
 
 360 Siris : a Chain of PJiilosopJiical Reflexions. 
 
 goodness, and wisdom are not creatures of the soul of man, 
 but innate and originally existent therein, not as an accident 
 in a substance, but as light to enlighten, and as a guide to 
 govern. In Plato's style, the term Idea doth not merely 
 signify an inert inactive object of the understanding, but is 
 used as synonymous with dinov and apxr), cause and principle. 
 According to that philosopher, goodness, beauty, virtue, and 
 such like are not figments of the mind, nor mere mixed 
 modes, nor yet abstract ideas in the modern sense, but the 
 most real beings, intellectual and unchangeable : and there- 
 fore more real than the fleeting, transient objects of sense, 
 which, wanting stability, cannot be subjects of science, much 
 less of intellectual knowledge \ 
 
 336. By Parmenides, Timeeus, and Plato a distinction was 
 made, as hath been observed already, betAveen genitum and 
 ens. The former sort is always generating or in fieri, but 
 never exists ; because it never continues the same, being in a 
 constant change, ever perishing and producing. By entia 
 they understand things remote from sense, invisible and in- 
 tellectual, which never changing are still the same, and may 
 therefore be said truly to exist : ovaia, which is generally 
 translated substance, but more properly essence, was not 
 thought to belong to things sensible and corporeal, which 
 have no stability; but rather to intellectual Ideas, though 
 
 ■* Mark the contrast between 'ideas of sense,' and 'abstract ideas' as 
 understood in Berkeley's early writings, on the one hand ; and, on the 
 other, what he here and in the next sections appreciates in the Ideas 
 of Plato. Without Ideas, according to Plato, the material universe 
 could not exist actually ; by participation in them the relations of 
 sensible things are constituted ; in discovery of them, as principles, 
 philosophy finds its satisfaction. Inductive i-esearch is an incipient en- 
 deavour to resolve phenomenal things according to their implied reason. 
 Its imperfect and tentative but useful generalisations, limited by the 
 yiresented data of our experience, are far short of the all-embracing 
 Thought from which the phenomenal world issues, and which the 
 Idealist systems of philosopjjy have hitherto vainlj' tried to grasp and 
 comprehend. Our physical inferences of the events of time and sense 
 involve trustful 'leaps in the dark,' so that even this ' knowledge ' of 
 nature is rooted in faith.
 
 Tlnio and the Divine Ideas. 361 
 
 discerned with more difficult}', and making less impression on 
 a mind stupified and immersed in animal life, than gross 
 objects that continually beset and solicit our senses. 
 
 337. The most refined human intellect, exerted to its 
 utmost reach, can only seize some imjDcrfect glimpses of the 
 Divine Ideas — abstracted from all things corporeal, sensible, 
 and imaginable. Therefore Pythagoras and Plato treated 
 them in a mysterious manner, concealing rather than ex- 
 posing them to vulgar eyes; so fiir were they from thinking 
 that those abstract things, although the most real, were the 
 fittest to influence common minds, or become principles of 
 knowledge, not to say duty and virtue, to the generality of 
 mankind. 
 
 338. Aristotle and his followers have made a monstrous 
 representation of the Platonic ideas ; and some of Plato's own 
 school have said very odd things concerning them. But if 
 that philosopher himself was not read only, but studied also 
 with care, and made his own interpreter, I believe the preju- 
 dice that now lies against him would soon wear off, or be 
 even converted into a high esteem for those exalted notions 
 and fine hints that sparkle and shine throughout his writings ; 
 which seem to contain not only the most valuable leaniing of 
 Athens and Greece, but also a treasure of the most remote 
 ti'atlitions and early science of the East. 
 
 339. In the Timoeus of Plato mention is made of ancient 
 persons, authors of traditions, and the offspring of the gods. 
 It is very remarkable that, in the account of the creation 
 contained in the same piece, it is said that God was pleased 
 with his work, and that the night is placed before the day. 
 Tlie more we think, the more difficult shall we find it to con- 
 ceive, how mere man, grown up in the vulgar habits of life, 
 and weighed down by sensuality, should ever be able to arrive 
 at science, without some tradition or teaching, which might 
 either sow the seeds of knowledge, or call forth and excite 
 those latent seeds that were originally sown in the soul.
 
 362 Sir/s : a Chain of PJiilosophical Beflexions. 
 
 340. Human souls in this low situation, Loi'dering on mere 
 animal life, bear the weight and see through the dusk of a 
 gross atmosphere, gathered from wrong judgments daily 
 passed, false opinions daily learned, and early habits of an 
 older date than either judgment or opinion. Through such a 
 medium the sharpest eye cannot see clearly. And if by some 
 extraordinary effoi-t the mind should surmount this dusky 
 region, and snatch a glimpse of pure light, she is soon drawn 
 backwards, and depressed by the heaviness of the animal 
 nature to Avhich she is chained. And if again she chanceth, 
 amidst the agitation of wild fancies and sti'ong affections, to 
 spring upwards, a second relapse speedily succeeds into this 
 region of darkness and dreams. 
 
 341. Nevertheless, as the mind gathers strength by re- 
 peated acts, we should not despond, but continue to exert the 
 prime and flower of our faculties, still recovering, and reach- 
 ing on, and struggling, into the upper region, whereby our 
 natural weakness and blindness may be in some degree 
 remedied, and a taste attained of truth and intellectual life ^ 
 
 ^ ^ ^ 3i: 3^ 
 
 350. The displeasure of some readei's may perhaps be 
 incurred, by surprising them into certain reflexions and 
 inquiries for which they have no curiosity. But perhaps 
 some others may be pleased to find a dry subject varied by 
 digressions, traced through remote inferences, and carried 
 into ancient times, whose hoary maxims, scattei'ed in this 
 Essay, are not proposed as principles, but barely as hints 
 to awaken and exercise the inquisitive reader, on points not 
 beneath the attention, of the ablest men. Those great men, 
 Pythagoi'as, Plato, and Aristotle, the most consummate in 
 
 ' Tlie abstruse speculation which follows is omitted. Advanced 
 students may refer to the Works, especially sections 342-349, which 
 refer to the personality of the Universal JNlind and Spirit. These may 
 be compared with the ' notion ' of mind, spirit, self, or eyo (not an 
 ' idea' or 'phenomenon'), with which Berkeley starts in the Frincijdes 
 (sect. 2).
 
 Individual jmrdcipation in Divine Ideas. 363 
 
 politics, who founded states, or instructed princes, or wrote 
 most accurately on public government, were at the same time 
 most acute at all abstracted and sublime speculations; the 
 clearest liglit being ever necesi^ary to guide the most im- 
 portant actions. And, whatever the woi'ld thinks, he who 
 hath not much meditated upon God, the human mind, and 
 the summum bonum, may possibly make a thriving earth- 
 worm, but will most indubitably make a sorry patriot and a 
 sorry statesman. 
 
 367. As for the perfect intuition of divine things, tJiat Plato 
 supposeth to be the lot of pure souls, beholding by a pure 
 light, initiated, happy, free and unstained from those bodies, 
 wherein we are now imprisoned like oysters. But, in this 
 mortal state, we must be satisfied to make the best of those 
 glimpses within our reach. It is Plato's remark, in his 
 Thecetetus, that while we sit still we are never the wiser, but 
 going into the river, and moving up and down, is the way to 
 discover its depths and shallows. If we exercise and bestir 
 ourselves, we may even here discover something. 
 
 368. The eye by long use comes to see even in the darkest 
 cavern : and there is no subject so obscure but we may 
 discern some glimpse of truth by long poring on it. Truth 
 is the cry of all, but the game of a few. Certainly, where it 
 is the chief passion, it doth not give way to vulgar cares and 
 views ; nor is it contented with a little ardour in the early 
 time of life ; active, perhaps, to pursue, but not so fit to weigh 
 and revise. He that would make a real progress in know- 
 ledge must dedicate his age as well as youth, the later growth 
 as well as first fruits, at the altar of Truth ^. 
 
 * Siris concludes with sentences which suggest that neither our f;iith 
 in God, nor our faith in the divinely established order, and therefore 
 significance, of the phenomena successively present in sense, can be con- 
 verted by man into perfect science, with the faith entirely eliminated ; 
 that we know enough to know that our experience in time, as interpreted 
 in the highest attainable science, cannot be identical with Omniscience :
 
 364 Siris : a Clia'm of PJdlosopJdcal Beflexions. 
 
 that our philosophy cannot reduce or solve all the questions to which 
 physical and moral experience gives birth, but that, in its furthest 
 advance, there must stiil be an ever extending horizon of faith. More- 
 over, the full speculative solution of the ultimate questions, — although 
 by ' exercise,' if we ' bestir ourselves,' we may ' discover something,' — 
 is happily not indispensable to our living wisely and religiously. 'Agony 
 of thought ' is not the only way for separating the gold from the dross 
 in this transitory life, which may be a life of reasonable faith, even if it 
 must be one of enlarging but ever unfinished knowledge.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Qualifying words in Italics are to be continued to each entry until the 
 next similarly marked words occur. ** 
 
 Abstraction, ordinary but unintelli- 
 gible uses of word, 15-25, 97-100 ; 
 various sorts of ideas said to be 
 framed by, 1 5 ; the power of, said 
 to distinguish man from brutes, 
 IQ ; a cause of confusion in meta- 
 physics, 135 ; the only intelligible 
 sort of, 17, 25, 37, 123 ; Locke on, 
 19; Schoolmen on, 26; Stewart 
 on, 29 n. 
 
 Accidents, 'unthinking matter the 
 support of,' an unintelligible ex- 
 pression, 47, 87. 
 
 Activity, unconscious mental, 326 w. 
 
 Acts of the mind, are not ideas, 135 ; 
 cannot be abstracted from mind, i6. 
 
 Esthetic, Kant's, 207 h. 
 
 'AyaOou to, with Socrates the 
 strongest bond of the universe, 
 
 327- 
 
 Agent, an idea is not an, 54, 284 ; 
 notion of, 56 ; is always in- 
 corporeal, 319 ; moral, the only 
 real, 321. 
 
 Agnosticism, 261 «., 27571. 
 
 Alexander of Aphrodisias, 349. 
 
 Algebra, verbal signs like, 29. 
 
 Analogy, what, 268 ; the laws of 
 nature founded on, 108, 323; does 
 not lead to universal conclusions, 
 no; the doctrine that we know 
 God's attributes only by, criticised, 
 268 — defended by Bp. Browne and 
 Abp. King, 270 «.; Butler's use 
 of term, 108 «., 270 n., 273 «. 
 
 Anaxagoras, on vovs, 263, 355. 
 
 Anaximander, on matter, 354. 
 
 Angles, the supposed method of 
 judging near distance by, 159, 182, 
 244. 
 
 Anima mmidi, 336. 
 
 Animal, the world an, 334, 338. — 
 Animals, the lower, are imcon- 
 scious organisms with Cartesians, 
 
 Annihilation of things of sense every 
 moment, alleged to follow from 
 Berkeley's principles, 67. 
 
 Antinomies, Kant's, i2^n. 
 
 A priori and a 'posteriori, reasoning, 
 distinguished, 51 n. 
 
 Aquinas, Thomas, on the Divine 
 attributes, 267. 
 
 Arbitrariness, 77 n. ; of visual signs, 
 158-73, 243-49 ! of those of magni- 
 tude, i'Js~1'l^ — ^'I'i of situation, 
 196; rational not capi'icious, 
 167 n., 324; of artificial lan- 
 guages, 242. 
 
 Archet3'pes of ideas, cannot exist 
 independent of mind, 43, G6, 95 ; 
 must be in some other mind, 104. 
 
 Arguments, Berkeley's, against ab- 
 stract matter, classified, 94 n. 
 
 Aristotle, his materia prima, 45 ; 
 his four causes, 56 «. ; on form or 
 essence, io6?(,. ; on nature, 139;;.; 
 on the association of ideas, l6t\n.; 
 on the universe, 337; on God, 
 343,353; his threefold distinction 
 of objects, 347 ; no innate ideas, 
 347-48 ; actual existence of sen- 
 sible things, 350 ; their potential 
 existence, ih. ; on nature, 340 ; 
 on matter, 349-55. 
 
 Asclepian Dialogue, 333.
 
 366 
 
 Index. 
 
 Association, the siihjective tendency, 
 recognised by Berkeley, 164 ».; 
 does not, decid e whether knowledge 
 is to be resolved into, 1 35 n. ; 
 objective, or divinely established, 
 also recognised by Berkeley, 
 77 w. 
 
 Atheism, founded on the doctrine 
 of abstract matter, 61, 100, 116; 
 disproof of, 127 ; meaning of, 356. 
 
 Atomic philosophy, 315. 
 
 Attraction, a mechanical principle, 
 106, 318; does not explain phie- 
 nomena, 315, — not being an effi- 
 cient cause, merely a rule or 
 method followed in nature, 107, 
 317, — and itself to be accounted 
 for, 320-23 ; Hippocrates and 
 Newton on, 319. 
 
 Augustine, St., on force, 321. 
 
 B. 
 
 Bacon, xiv. i r n., 55 n., 83 ??., 323 n. 
 
 Bailey, Mr. S., on Vision, 303 «. 
 
 Bain, Dr., on the relation of colour 
 and extension, 225 n. 
 
 Being, comprehends ideas and spirits, 
 98 ; of sensible things, to be per- 
 ceived \_percipi], 38 ; of God, va- 
 rious sorts of arguments for, 231. 
 
 Berkeley, why a good introduction 
 to psychology and metaphysics, 
 vii ; outline of his life, viii-x; his 
 precursors, xi-xxii ; materialism, 
 xxii ; his new question, xxiii ; 
 outline of his system, xxiv-xxxv ; 
 his reply to Hume by anticipation, 
 xxxviii ; his nominalism, 3 ; his 
 underlying principle, ib. ; recog- 
 nises a moral duality, 1 1 «. ; aim 
 of his sj^eculations to reconcile 
 philosophy and common sense, 
 12M. ; his 'ideas,' xixw., 14?!.; 
 his 'notions,' 14^.; outline of 
 his early psycliology, 34 71 , — 
 which is to be compared with 
 Locke's, Hume's, and Kant's, 
 ib.; Ueberweg charges him with 
 begging the question, 3S n. ; his 
 theory of law in nature, 51 n., 
 Sin.; on causality, 54 w. ; his 
 Egoism, 57 n. ; on the permanence 
 and identity of sensible things,6Sw., 
 
 93 w. ; on the ideas of God, S6n.; 
 on number, 1 1 8 n. ; on the relation 
 of free finite spirits to the divine, 
 131 «. ; on death, 132 «. ; germ 
 of Kantism in, 134 «.; on our 
 connnunication with other spirits, 
 136 >t.; on necessary connexion 
 in mathematics, 156)1., 1577?.; 
 on suggestion, 160 r*.; on unex- 
 tended colour, 225 w.; does not 
 contemplate the possibility of 
 philosophical nescience, 27571.; 
 alteration of his views in Hiris, 
 310; his ' phenomena ' there equi- 
 valent to his earlier ' ideas,' xixn., 
 3 low. ; grounds his philosophy on 
 moral facts, 326 «.; on space, 
 3.^2 ?2., 354 w.; ideas of sense ex- 
 isting in the Divine Mind. 339 n. 
 
 Biran, Maine de, on cause, 55 n. 
 
 Blind, men bom, have no idea of 
 distance, 166, 249, 301, — for they 
 do not at first connect ideas of 
 sight and touch, 183, 212 ; cases 
 of restoration of sight to, 304. 
 
 Body, perceived in sense of resist- 
 ance, 115, 339; connexion of soul 
 and, 131 ; difficulty regarding the 
 resurrection of the, loi. 
 
 Brown, Dr. Thomas, on causality, 
 55 n. ; on colour and extension, 
 225n. 
 
 Browne, Bp. Peter, analogical know- 
 ledge of the Divine Attributes, 
 270 H. 
 
 Brutes, cannot, according to Locke, 
 attain to abstraction, are machines 
 with Cartesians, 19. 
 
 Butler, Bp., on death, 133 w.; on 
 conscience, 138?*.; on the imper- 
 fection of our knowledge, 142 n. ; 
 his use of term analogj', 108 n., 
 270 «., 273??,.; held probability 
 to be the guide of life, 1 79 n. 
 
 C. 
 
 Caprice, not Berkeley's 'arbitrari- 
 ness,' xxxix, 77 11. 
 
 Categories, Kant's, referred to, 37w. 
 
 Causality, three views regarding, 
 xl?/. ; Berkeley on, 54-57; Aris- 
 totle, Locke, Hume, Kant, &c. on, 
 54 M. ; assumption of materialism
 
 Index. 
 
 367 
 
 regarding, 72 n. ; efficient the 
 only proper, 314 et j^nssini ; er- 
 roneous uses of the term, 74- — 
 Spirits the only proper causes, 
 5474., 108, 315; ideas are not, 54, 
 75 ; natural philosophers do not 
 reach a knowledge of, 108, 319; 
 no idea, but a notion of, 56 h. ; 
 are not objects of sense, 284 ; but 
 areobjects of reason,329. — Causes, 
 physical or corporeal, may be 
 granted popularly, 73 ; but have 
 no real efficiency, 54, 74, 315-20 ; 
 are merely established signs analo- 
 gous to a language, 58, 83. — 
 Causes, occasional, doctrine of, 
 referred to, 85. 
 
 Chain, in nature, 334; in life, ih.; 
 in mind, 342. 
 
 Cheselden's case, 304. 
 
 Chimeras, difference between real 
 things of sense and, 59. 
 
 Christianity, does not teach the 
 doctrine of abstract matter, 92 ; 
 that doctrine has caused difficulties 
 in, 100. 
 
 Clarke, Dr. S., his theory, xxxiii ; 
 on God and space, 116 /i.; and 
 Leibnitz, 256?}. 
 
 Coleridge, quoted, 257 n. 
 
 Colour, idea of, abstracted from ex- 
 tension, 16 ; and superficial ex- 
 tension, 225 ; abstract general 
 idea of, 17; proper object of sight, 
 167, 210, 248; admitted not to 
 exist without a mind, 43. 
 
 Common sense, aim of Berkeley to 
 reconcile philosophy and, 12 n.; 
 Eeid's argument from, xlii. 
 
 Comte, on causality, 54 m. 
 
 Conception, as a criterion of objective 
 possibility, 51. 
 
 Concepts, 2011., 2371. 
 
 Contingency and science, 77 n. 
 
 Contradiction involved in abstract 
 matter, 48 ?i., 52-4; and human 
 finitude, 46 ?i., 51 n. 
 
 Copies of sensible things cannot exist 
 without mind, 42 n. 
 
 Cosmos, are human spirits part of 
 the? 131 n.; Aristotle on, I3C)«. ; 
 the objective, the correlate of our 
 personal reason, 141 n. 
 
 Creation, objection that Berkeley's 
 conception of matter involves con- 
 tinual creation, 67 ; Schoolmen 
 on, 68 ; and miracles, 81 n. ; and 
 a pre-established harmony, 256. 
 
 Cudworth, on Democritus, 322 ; 
 nature is ratio mersa, 325 ; on 
 unconscious mental agency, 326n. 
 
 Custom, explains faith in causal 
 connexion ; according to Hume, 
 xliii, 55 n. ; is the tie between 
 visible and tangible ideas, 17S — 
 so Hume, 1 79 /;. ; Pascal and 
 V/ords worth on, 250?;. 
 
 D. 
 
 Death, Berkeley and Butler on, 1 3 2 k. 
 
 Definition, and essence, 71 n., 10611. ; 
 of a general term, does not imply 
 an abstract idea, 26 n.; nor any 
 single idea, 27. 
 
 Demociitus, Cudworth on, 322. 
 
 Demonstration, nature of, by Berke- 
 ley unexplained, 9 n. ; the uni- 
 versality involved in, 24. 
 
 De Mot II , referred to, 113 ; object of 
 the treatise, 322 n. 
 
 Descartes, xi, xii ; what he means 
 by ' ideas,' xix n., 168 n., 1 70 71. ; 
 his mechanical explanation of 
 nature, 316 n. 
 
 Dialectic. Kant's, 128 n. 
 
 Dialogues hetwe-n Hylas and Phl- 
 lonous referred to, — Second, 87 m., 
 92/4. ; Third, 70 n., 76 ?i., 98 m., 
 102 «., 131 /(. 
 
 Diderot, remark of, on vision, 305 n. 
 
 Dionj'sius the Areopagite, the writ- 
 ings on the Divine attributes 
 ascribed to, 265 n. 
 
 Distance, is either in the line of vision 
 (i. e. outness) or lateral, 1 56 n., 
 166; or outness, admitted by all 
 that it is not a direct object of 
 vision, 156; also that remote dis- 
 tance is suggested by experience 
 of signs which are arbitrarj^ 156 ; 
 but near distance is said to be in- 
 ferred necessarily, 157 ; this re- 
 jected. 158-9 ; the signs by which 
 near distance is suggested, 160-65, 
 — their arbitrariness, 156, 160-65, 
 245, — analogous to a language,
 
 368 
 
 Index. 
 
 242 ; which is rational, 161 n., 325; 
 man born blind has no idea of out- 
 ness, 166, 249, 303 ; lateral, is it 
 an original object of sight with 
 Berkeley? 22571. 
 
 Distrust of the senses by philoso- 
 phers, 96. 
 
 Divisibility of matter, 68 ; of ex- 
 tension, 120; Hume on, 12611. 
 
 Dreams, 49 ; and reality, 5 1 «.., 64. 
 
 Duality in existence — Manichjeism, 
 143 n. 
 
 Duration of a finite spirit, what, 
 103. 
 
 E. 
 
 Effect, the world a singular, Hume, 
 143 «. 
 
 Effort, voluntary, and the percep- 
 tion of distance, 169. 
 
 Egoism, 57 11. 
 
 Egyptian philosophers considered 
 God and nature as making one 
 Universe, 343. 
 
 Empedocles, 327, 332. 
 
 Entity, an incomprehensible abstrac- 
 tion, 91. 
 
 Epicureans, loi, 260. 
 
 Esse, is peo-cipi, in things of sense, 
 38; of spirits is percipere, 104);. 
 
 Eternity, of matter, 100 ; of space, 
 and God, 116. 
 
 Evil, physical, no objection to God's 
 existence, 140 ; not without its 
 use, 328 ; moral, and the being of 
 God,_233, 272. 
 
 Evolution, in psychology, 135 n. 
 
 Existence, includes spirits and ideas, 
 97 ; abstract idea of, incompre- 
 hensible, 91 ; of sensible things, 
 supposed to be twofold, 97 ; but 
 it truly consists in being per- 
 ceived, 38, et passim, — that is, by 
 some mind, 69 ; absolute, unin- 
 telligible, 52 ; potential, what, 
 70/;., 88 ?i. ; ordinary view of, a 
 cause of scepticism, 96; of siiirit, 
 dependent on consciousness, 103 ; 
 our own, comprehended by re- 
 flection, 36, 98 ; of other finite 
 intelligences, known liy inference, 
 98, 136, 239; of God, known by 
 sijuilar inference, 136, 255. 
 
 Expectation, acquired perception is, 
 xxviii, 58 M., 160. 
 
 Experience, teaches us the laws of 
 nature, that is, the significance of 
 sense ideas, 57, 290, — e.g. the 
 signs of distance, 65, and of 
 magnitude, 1 76 ; but the inferences 
 of geometry do not depend on, 
 157 ; nor does the knowledge of 
 causes, 329 ; is not infallible, 
 290. 
 
 Extension, exists only in a mind 
 perceiving, 44 ; so exists by way 
 of idea not of mode, 70, 1 74 «. ; 
 infinite divisibility of finite, 1 20 ; 
 depth of, not an inmiediate object 
 of vision, 157, — is superficial? 
 1^611., 225 w.; no extension com- 
 mon to sight and touch, 208, — 
 and no necessary connexion be- 
 tween visible and tangible, 1 79 ; 
 abstract idea of unintelligible, 15, 
 206. 
 
 Externality, i. e. independence of 
 mind, denied of visible objects in 
 the Essay, 167, 200; and of all 
 sensible things in the Principles, 
 38, 166 n. ; real meaning of, 97. 
 
 F. 
 
 Facidties, human, their finitude and 
 scepticism, 12; are not ideas, 135; 
 cannot be abstracted from mind, 
 ih. ; gradation of, 344-45. 
 
 Faith, is at the root of science, 
 xlvi ; cannot be converted into 
 science, 363 «. 
 
 Fate, vai'ious ancient views of, 
 332. 
 
 Ferrier, Prof., on Vision, 303 n. 
 
 Fichte, xxxiin., 9971. 
 
 Figure : see Extension. 
 
 Finitude of human knowledge, an 
 alleged cause of scepticism, 12 ; 
 and apparently contradictory pro- 
 positions, 48 n., 53 «. 
 
 Force is spirit, 55 n. ; conservation 
 of, 72 9K, now., 139 J(. ; is not in 
 bodies, 317, 321. 
 
 Fore-knowledge, Divine, 261. 
 
 Form, of Aristotle, 5691., 106 »». 
 
 Four Causes, Aristotle's, 56 n.
 
 Index 
 
 369 
 
 G. 
 
 General, how words become, 25. 
 
 Geometry, its object is extension, 
 but not abstract extension, 120, 
 206, and tangible, not visible, ex- 
 tension, 221; the necessity in, 
 
 Geulinx, denied the efficiency of 
 sensible things, xiii, 74 «. 
 
 God, existence of, known by rational 
 inference fiom sensible signs, with 
 more certainty than that of any 
 finite spirit, 137, 255; laws of 
 nature depend on the Will of, 58, 
 loS, 138, — and are His language, 
 65, 83. 250-5S, 323-25 ; explain 
 the permanence of sensible things, 
 67 ; the theory that matter is the 
 occasion for Him to excite ideas 
 in us, 84 ; His ideas the arche- 
 types of ours, 89 ; supposed co- 
 eternality of matter with, 100; 
 and space, 116, 331 ; His infinity, 
 what, 1 2 7 w. ; the relation of free 
 finite spirits to, 131 n. ; objection 
 from physical evil to the goodness 
 of, 140; from moral evil, 234, 
 271 ; the difficulty as to what is 
 to be understood by the word 
 'God,' 261 ; theory that we have 
 only an analogical knowledge of, 
 268. 
 
 Grammar of Nature, 323. 
 
 Gravitation, not an efficient cause, 
 merely a rule in nature, 107, 319; 
 not a necessai-y rule, 107. 
 
 H. 
 
 Hamilton, Sir W., on the objects of 
 perception, 41 n. ; on representa- 
 tive perception and scepticism, 
 97*1.; on space, I24«., I94n. ; 
 on superficial extension, 226 ?i.; 
 on our knowledge of matter, 
 287 H. ; liis objections to a repre- 
 sentative sense-perception partly 
 anticipated by Berkeley, 291 n. 
 
 Harmony, pre-established, Leibnitz, 
 256, 316. 
 
 Hegelians, on man's relation to God, 
 131 w. 
 
 Helmholtz, signs of distance, 165, 
 
 Heraclitus, on fate, 332. 
 
 Hermaic writings, on space, 331 ; 
 all things are One, 33S. 
 
 Hippocrates on attraction and re- 
 pulsion, 319. 
 
 Hobbes, xvi, 260. 
 
 Hume, his philosophy in relation to 
 Berkeley's, xxxv-xli ; on ab- 
 stract idtas, 15 n. ; his impres- 
 sions, 35 «.., 60 n. ; his p.sychology 
 and Berkeley's to be compared, 
 37 n.; on substance, 48 n. ; on 
 causality, 55 w. ; on Berkeley's 
 argument against matter, 94W., 
 100 «., 131 «.; on repi'esentative 
 perception, 97 n. ; his philosophical 
 nescience, 100 «., 275 h. ; on space 
 and infinity, 1 26 n. ; the world a 
 singular effect, 143 n.; makes 
 custom the physical cause of 
 knowledge, 160 «., I'jgn. 
 
 Idealism, Berkeley's, 95 w. 
 
 Ideas, include phenomena of which 
 we are conscious in sense, 35, 284 ; 
 either (a) sense-impressions, or 
 (b) passions and operations of the 
 mind, or (c) recollections and 
 imaginations, 35 ; nature of, ex- 
 plained, 14?;., iSn., 33 «., 95; 
 sometimes restricted to imagi- 
 nations, 60; cannot exist in abso- 
 lute independence of mind, passm ; 
 can be like nothing but other 
 ideas, 41, 99 ; are sometimes used 
 as equivalent to 'notions,' 18, 24; 
 but properly to be contrasted with 
 them, 14 M., 98, 130; and there- 
 fore not the only objects of know- 
 ledge, 98, 134; for spirits are 
 not ideas, 36, 98, 130, 134; nor 
 are i-elations, 98, 134; distin- 
 guished from * modes,' 70 ; power 
 to form, the test of truth, 32 n. 
 Ideas uf sense, their actual esse is 
 percipi, passim, — potential, esse, 
 in God, 40, 84 ; do not imply ab- 
 stract substance. 48 ; imply spi- 
 ritual substance, 100 j are not 
 
 Bb
 
 370 
 
 Index. 
 
 causes, 54, lofj, 284 ; but are 
 signs, f 8, 8 2 ; are real things in con- 
 tradistinction to imaginations, 57, 
 64, 96; in Sins, called phenomena, 
 xix «., 323. Ideas, abstract, where 
 discussed by Berkeley, 14 «. ; 
 doctrine of, a cause of confusion 
 in philosophy, 14-31, 122; tenet 
 that sensible things exist abso- 
 lutely depends on doctrine of, 
 39. Ideas, general, not denied, 
 21, 123. Ideas, and lawjuage, 
 27-34. Ideas, Plato on, 15 ?t., 
 346, 360 ; Descartes on, 1 70 n. ; 
 Locke on, 15 n., 18, 37 n., i7on.; 
 Hume on, 15 «., 37«., 60 m.; 
 J. S. Mill on, i5«. 
 Identity, of sensible things, 53 n., 
 67, 94 11., 102 ; of the object of 
 different senses, 289. 
 Idomenians, Reid's, 223 w. 
 Ignorance, man's ultimate, 142 11 . 
 Images on the retina inverted and 
 
 perception of situation, 187. 
 Imaginations, one class of ideas, 35 ; 
 contrasted with sense-perception, 
 c; 7-64 ; is no proof that sensible 
 things can exist unperceived, 52; 
 Locke, Leibnitz, and Hume on, 
 59 n.; are representations of 
 sensible things, 283. 
 Immaterialist, in what sense Ber- 
 keley an, 95 n. 
 Immortality of the human soul, the 
 natural, what and how proved, 
 131 ; Butler on, 133 n. 
 Impressions, Hume's, 35 n., 60 n. 
 Individuality, human, 131 n. 
 Induction, latent in acquired per- 
 ception, xix n., 160, 323. 
 Inference, contrasted with sugges- 
 tion, 298 «., 299 n. ; is midway 
 between sense and omniscience, 
 186 n. 
 Infinite, man's apprehension of the, 
 
 127 n. 
 Infinity of things, the supposed, a 
 cause of contradiction, 12, 124; 
 of space, 116; Hume, Kant, 
 Hamilton and Mansel on, 124 n.; 
 of God, 127 91. 
 Interpretability of nature, 323-25; 
 Bacon on, 55 n. 
 
 Invisibility of distance assumed, 
 
 155- 
 
 J. 
 
 Jamblichus, 333, 334. 354. 
 
 Jones, case of William, bom blind, 
 
 227 n. 
 Judgment, used as in Locke, for 
 
 presumption of probability, 1 56 n., 
 
 176 }?,. ; judgments, ontological 
 
 import of, 71 '>^- 
 
 K. 
 
 Kant,xliii-xliv, 36 w. ; on cause, 55 «., 
 70 n., 84 M. ; on twofold existence 
 of objects of sense, 95 n. ; on 
 physical and mathematical science, 
 105 n. ; on space, 124 n., 206 n., 
 207 n. ; on knowledge of self, 
 13051., 131 w. ; on the origin of 
 knowledge, 134 n., 135 «. ; on 
 the moral proof of the Divine 
 existence, 138 n.; on the consti- 
 tutive principle of knowledge, 
 160 n.; his ultimate nescience, 
 275 n. 
 
 King, Abp., on the knowledge of 
 God merely analogical, 270 n. 
 
 Knowledge, human, objects of, 35; 
 not given by sense, 345 ; does 
 not require abstract ideas, 24 ; 
 ideal, what, 102 ; real, what, 
 27 w. ; origin of, 135 n.; im- 
 perfection of, 363 ; and custom, 
 250 ; intuitive and discursive, 
 267?*.; symbolical, Leibnitz, 29?!.; 
 and opinion, Plato, 345. 
 
 L. 
 
 Language, consists of arbitrary signs, 
 298; nature and abuse of, 14, 31; 
 does not require abstract general 
 ideas, 19; the universality in, 
 25 ; ends of, 29 ; abuse of, how 
 to be remedied, 31 ; of vision, 
 65, 83, 222, 249, 323; its arbi- 
 trariness, 220, 249; but it is 
 reasonable, 161 n., 323; how it 
 differs from otlier languages, 251. 
 
 Law, God is, Aristotle, 356; in 
 nature, the rules in accordance 
 with which God presents phe- 
 nomena of sense to us, 58.
 
 Index. 
 
 371 
 
 Leibnitz, after Spinoza, xiv ; sym- 
 bolical knowledge of, 29 h. ; on 
 imagination and reality, 60 71. ; 
 our ignorance of nature, 142 «. ; 
 on vision, 213 «. ; pre-established 
 harmony of, xiv, 256 n., 316 «,. 
 
 Locke, xv-xxi ; on tlie primary 
 and secondary qualities of matter, 
 xvii, 42, 67 H. ; on substance, xviii, 
 xix, 48 n. ; on cause, 55 n. ; his 
 ideas, xix n., 1 70 n. ; his abstract 
 ideas, xviii, 18, 22; his explanation 
 of the perplexities of philosophy, 
 12 n.; holds that the power of 
 abstraction distinguishes man 
 from the brutes, 19 ; physical 
 science probable, not demon- 
 strable, with him, 44 n. ; his use 
 of the term judgment, 156 n. ; on 
 defects of memory, 1 86 n. ; on 
 sight and touch, 212; on innate 
 ideas, 348 n. 
 
 Lotze, signs of distance, 165. 
 
 Love, as the binding principle of 
 things, 327. 
 
 M. 
 
 Machines, Cartesians held brutes to 
 
 be, 19. 
 Malebranche, xiii, 74 n., 138 11., 
 
 255 "•' 316 11. 
 Manichseism, 143. 
 Mansel, Dean, 20 n., 124 n., 
 
 291 71. 
 
 Materia prima, Aristotle's, 45 n. 
 
 Materialism, xlvi, 71 n., 72 n. 
 
 Mathematics, and abstract ideas, 
 116; and space, 207 w. ; Kant on, 
 105 n. 
 
 Matter, cannot exist unperceived, 
 38 et passim ; ordinary but un- 
 intelligible definition of, 43 ; ab- 
 stract, what, 43, 67 ; is not the 
 support of accidents, 47 ; cannot 
 be known, 48 ; is useless, 49, 73, 
 85 ; is either contradictory or un- 
 intelligible, 48*1., 53 n.; impo- 
 tence of matter, 54-8 ; abstract 
 matter a support to impiety and 
 empty disputation, 61 ; not needed 
 in Natural Philosophy, 71 ; origin 
 of the belief in, 75 ; not the 
 unknown occasion of our ideas, 
 
 Bb 
 
 84 ; nor the unknown support of 
 unknown qualities, 90 ; nor is it 
 an unknown somewhat, neither 
 substance nor accident, 91 ; is the 
 root of scepticism, 97 ; and of 
 irreligion, 100; Scripture on, loi ; 
 Plato, Aristotle, and other an- 
 cients on, 349-56. 
 
 Memory, Locke on, 186 11. 
 
 Metaphysics, abstract ideas the 
 sui)posed object of, 14. 
 
 Mill, J. S., on abstract ideas, 15 n. ; 
 on causality, 55 n. ; on external 
 world, 58 11.; his Manichoeism, 
 140 ; on extension and colour, 
 225 n. 
 
 Mind : see Spirit. 
 
 Miracles, 81 h.; do not involve 
 abstract matter, 93. 
 
 Mirandula, Picus of, on God, 266. 
 
 Molyneux, on inverted images, 189; 
 his problem, 212. 
 
 Monism, its two extremes, xlvi. 
 
 Moral proof of God's existence, 
 248 11., 273 n., 274 7t. 
 
 Motion, a so-called primary quality, 
 43 ; cannot be the cause of our 
 sensations, 54 ; abstract idea of, 
 unintelligible or contradictory, 1 5, 
 104; Newton on, 114; does it 
 imply space' 226 Vi. 
 
 Mystery of the universe, 143 n. 
 
 N. 
 
 Nature, laws of, what, 58 — and 
 Divine Will, 109,140; course of, 
 317; defects of, no disproof of 
 God's existence, 140 ; its uni- 
 versal language, 220, 323; re- 
 marks on Berkeley's conception 
 of, 48 n., 50 n., 53 11., 68 n., 74 n., 
 77 n., 81 71., 93 11., 108 n., 109 n. 
 
 Necessity, in physical causality, 
 108 w. , 109 H.; in mathematics, 
 157; no necessity of connexion 
 between visible and tangible signs, 
 ih. ; Divine necessity, Hippocra- 
 tes, 319 ; ancients on, 332-34. 
 
 Nescience, 275 w.; Hume's, xxxv-xli, 
 100 n. 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, on motion, time, 
 and space, m ; on gravitation, 
 319- 
 
 2
 
 372 
 
 Index. 
 
 Nominalism, Berkeley's, 3. 
 Notion, 14 w., 18, 56, 57 n., 62 n., 
 
 98, 134, 348 n., 349 n., 354 n., 
 
 362 n. 
 Number, 45, 117; is no object of 
 
 sense, 338. 
 
 0. 
 
 Occasional causes, xiii, 74 n., 
 
 316 n. 
 Omniscience, 186 n., 3637;. 
 Order in nature, does it presup]iose 
 
 independent material substance ? 
 
 78-84, 94 m. 
 Organisation in nature and the 
 
 direct efficacy of Spirit, 78. 
 Organism, the human, and mind, 
 
 72 w. 
 Ovaia, 71 n., 106 n. 
 Outness : see Distance. 
 
 Parmenides, 332, 338, 360. 
 
 Pascal, 248 n., 250 71. 
 
 Passivity, of ideas or phenomena. 
 
 Perception, immediate, is, with 
 Berkeley, consciousness of phe- 
 nomena — mental or material, 
 xix n. ; mediate, acqidred, sug- 
 gested, what. 15S, 171, 283-S7; 
 distinguished from imagination, 
 57-59; in the 'chain of faculties,' 
 344; representative, 41, 97 «■» 
 291 n. ; said to be of primary 
 qualities only, 42 n. ; the great 
 difficulty of, 95 n., 97 11. 
 
 Phenomenon, in Sirls, analogous to 
 idea of sense in Berlveley's earlier 
 works, xix n., 323. 
 
 Philosophy, modern history of, 
 xi-xlvii ; what, ii?;., 1^11.; scep- 
 tical tendency of, 12; Berkeley's 
 aim to reconcile common sense 
 and, 12 n.; contradictions in, 
 1 3 ; abstract ideas, the supposed 
 object of, 14; Natural, does not 
 imply abstract matter, 71 ; can- 
 not reach efficient causes, 108, 
 
 315-27- 
 Pimander, on fate, 333. 
 Platner, on knowledge of space, 
 
 I94«. 
 
 Plato, Ideas of, xix n., 15 «, 361 ; 
 cave of, 329 ; on the personality 
 of God, 343 ; on knowledge and 
 opinion, 345 ; on matter, 349 ; 
 on innate notions, 347 ; on sen- 
 sible qualities, 353 ; on space, 
 
 354- 
 
 Plotinus, 323, 324, 332, 353, 359. 
 
 Plutarch, 333, 334, 352. 
 
 Portius, Simon, 353. 
 
 Positivism and Berkeley, 100 n, ; 
 his philosophy a spiritual, 106 n. 
 
 Power, is moral and spiritual only, 
 55 n. ; ideas are destitute of, 54, 
 284 ; no idea of, 56 ; but a notion 
 of, 54, 62 n. Powers of mind are 
 abstractions, 134. 
 
 Proclus, 329, 351. 
 
 Psychology, Berkeley's early, 36 11. ; 
 the ideas or phenomena with 
 which it is concerned, 35-37 ; 
 rational, Kant on, 130; abstrac- 
 tion, a cause of confusion in, 135. 
 
 Pythagoreans, 117 n., 330. 
 
 Qualities of sensible things, primary 
 and secondar}'', 42-47, 67 )*. ; are 
 all dependent on being perceived, 
 87. See Ideas. 
 
 R. 
 
 Reason, cause an inference of, 284 ; 
 and necessary connexion, 287 «.; 
 and sense, 329. 
 
 Reasoning, a priori and posteriori, 
 what, 51 n. 
 
 Reid, xlii ; on cause, 55 v.; on 
 Common Sense, 74 n. ; on per- 
 ception, 97 11.; on suggestion, 
 160 7!.; on geometry of visibles, 
 223 m.; the existence of God the 
 only real fact that is necessary in 
 reason, 236 n. ; on matter, 287 n. 
 
 Relations, we have 'notions' not 
 ideas of, 98, 134 ; presupi)Osed in 
 knowledge, 51 n., 113 w., ii8n., 
 13; n., 208 n. 
 
 Reminiscence, Platonic, 339. 
 
 Responsibility, the measiu'e of really 
 originative agency, 326. 
 
 Resurrection of human body and 
 abstract matter, 94 n., 10 1.
 
 Index. 
 
 373 
 
 s. 
 
 Sameness of sensible things, 70 n., 
 102 n. 
 
 Scepticism, xxxv-xli ; its causes, 
 12, 97 ; how to be escaped, 127; 
 modern, 64 n. ; 248 n. 
 
 Schoolmen, and abstraction, 25 ; 
 argued for a continual creation, 
 67, 70 n. 
 
 Science, the ideal of, no; and pro- 
 bability, 77 ». ; Plato on, 345 ; 
 the special sciences and philoso- 
 phy, 1 1 7 H. 
 
 Self : see Spirit. 
 
 Sensationism, 95 n. 
 
 Sensations, 37 ; called phenomena 
 in Siris, 287 n. ; can exist only 
 in a mind perceiving them, 37 ; 
 and objects are one, 37, 49; 
 cannot be causes, 54 ; not due to 
 the motion of corpuscules, ih. ; 
 space a succession of, 66 n. ; are 
 significant through God, 94 n. ; 
 contain nothing but what is per- 
 ceived, 96 ; all sensible qualities 
 are, 104; knowledge of an un- 
 related sensation assumed by 
 Berkeley to be possible, 160 n., 
 285 n. 
 
 Sense, the primai-y qualities are 
 relative to the organs of, 43 ; 
 why the presentations of are called 
 ideas, 62 ; abstract matter is not 
 an object of, 48 ; nor spirit, i 29 ; 
 its trustworthiness, 168 w.; knows 
 nothing, 324; and reason, con- 
 trasted, 286, 329 ; ideas of are 
 real things, 59 ; distinguished 
 from imaginations, 59, 64; need 
 a substance, which is spirit, 99. 
 
 Sight, objects of, are not without the 
 mind, 167, 181, 200; only colour, 
 167, 210 — superficial extension, 
 225 ; and touch, are signs, the 
 one of the other, 66 ; their ideas 
 or phenomena are absolutely he- 
 terogeneous, 209. 
 
 Signs, the material world a system 
 of, 55 »., 94 w. ; physical causes 
 are really, 82, 29S ; of other 
 spirits, ideas or phenomena of 
 sense are, 138. 
 
 Socrates, 324, 327. 
 
 Soli<lity, a reputed primary quality, 
 43 ; but exists only in the mind, 
 44; perceived by touch, 169. 
 
 Solipsism, 57 7i. 
 
 Soul : see Spirit. 
 
 Sj)ace, what, 66 «., 115, ii6n.; no 
 absolute, 115; are the relations 
 of space necessary? 115M., 118 n.; 
 its eternity, 1 16, 331 ; is not an 
 immediate object of sight, 170, 
 225; Clarke on, 116; Kant on, 
 124 n., 20771.; Hamilton on, 
 1 24 H. ; Mansel on, 1 24 ?i. ; Hume 
 on, 126 n. 
 
 Spencer, Mr. H., on the origin of 
 knowledge, 135 v. 
 
 Spinoza, xiv ; on God, 260, 274?). 
 
 Spirit, what, 36, 56, 128-34; ^^^ 
 only substance, 41, 54M., 99, 
 128; the only efficient cause^ 
 54 «., 108; thinks always, 41 w., 
 103 ; we have a notion, not an 
 idea of, 56, 130, 134; existence 
 of ideas dependent on, passim ; is 
 a thing, 63 ; why men suppose 
 matter rather than spirit as the 
 cause of what we are conscious 
 of in sense, 75 ; the Supreme, 
 how known, 58, 76, 235-42 ; other 
 finite spirits, how known, 36, 
 57 ?( , 94 7!., 1^611., 237. 
 
 Stewart, Dugald, on abstraction, 
 29; on cause, 55 «.; on sugges- 
 tion, 160 n. ' 
 
 Suarez, 267. 
 
 Subject of sensible qualities, an un- 
 intelligible expression, 71 ; and 
 object, Kant on, 1^,011. 
 
 Substance, spirit the only, 41, 56, 
 100, 129; material, is unintel- 
 ligible, 43, 48. See Spirit and 
 Matter. 
 
 Suggestion, 65, 160, 283 ; con- 
 trasted with inference, 180, 299. 
 
 Tangibile minimum, 179; no ab- 
 solute, 184 n. 
 
 Tiiemistius, 349, 352 n. 
 
 Thing, properly includes both spirits 
 and ideas, 63, 97, but is also used 
 to distinguish the real objects of
 
 374 
 
 Index. 
 
 sense from the ideas of imagina- 
 tion, 59. See Existence, Being, 
 Matter, Spirit. 
 
 Time, considered, 100, 111 ; Locke 
 on, 103 ??., 107 ; Hume on, 126 n,.; 
 according to Platner serves for 
 space to the born blind, 94. 
 
 Toland's Christianity not mysterious, 
 270 «. 
 
 Touch, includes muscular and loco- 
 motive senses, 66 n., 169 n.; 
 ideas of, do not exist without the 
 mind, 66, 166 n. ; its objects as- 
 sumed to be more steady, 177; 
 arbitrariness of the connexion 
 between the ideas of sight and, 
 179 — their heterogeneity, 209; 
 extension of, is the object of 
 geometry, 221-26. 
 
 Transubstantiation, and Berkeley's 
 , conception of matter, 94 71. 
 
 Truth, the test of, 32 ; the cry of 
 all but the game of few, 363. 
 
 U. 
 
 Ueberweg, Prof, charges Berkeley 
 with begging the question, 38 n. ; 
 on our knowledge of other spirits, 
 57 w. ; on the permanence of 
 sensible things, 70 n. ; on law in 
 nature, 81 71.; on miracles, 93 n. 
 
 Unity, the aim if not the result of 
 philosophy, 11 n., 1371.; and of 
 science, 186 n.; of self-conscious- 
 ness, Kant on, 130 71. 
 
 Universality, in language, what, 25 ; 
 of mathematics, 94W. 
 
 V. 
 
 Visilile miTiimum, 174; no absolute, 
 
 184 n. 
 Vision : see Sight. 
 
 W. 
 
 Will, 55 ; no idea of, 56 ; Divine, 
 and the reality of sense-ideas, 58, 
 66, 78-80; and natural law, 108; 
 and intellect, in nature, 161 n., 
 .S23-27. 326 n. 
 
 Wolff referred to, xHi. 
 
 Words, general, are the signs not of 
 abstract but of several particular 
 ideas, 19; do not always stand 
 for ideas, 29. See Language. 
 
 Wordsworth, quoted, 250 ». 
 
 World, the material, a system of 
 signs, 55 «. ; is constantly de- 
 pendent on rational will, 66-70, 
 325; system of the, 331 w.; an 
 animal, 334. 
 
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