Chapter XXII: Part 22

151 Locke explains “substance” as “an uncertain supposition of we know
not what.” _Essay_, Bk. I. ch. 4. § 18.

M199 E. M200 I. M201 Mo. M202 Mo.

152 Locke makes certainty consist in the agreement of “our ideas with
the reality of things.” See _Essay_, Bk. IV. ch. 4. § 18. Here the
sceptical difficulty arises, which Berkeley meets under his
Principle. If we have no perception of reality, we cannot compare
our ideas with it, and so cannot have any criterion of reality.

M203 Mo. M204 Mo.

153 [This seems wrong. Certainty, real certainty, is of sensible ideas.
I may be certain without affirmation or negation.—AUTHOR.] This
needs further explanation.

M205 Mo. M206 Mo. M207 Mo. M208 I.

154 This entry and the preceding tends to resolve all judgments which
are not what Kant calls analytical into contingent.

M209 I. M210 I. M211 E. M212 N. Mo.

155 See Locke’s _Essay_, Bk. IV. ch. 1, §§ 3-7, and ch. 3. §§ 7-21. The
stress Berkeley lays on “co-existence” is significant.

M213 P.

156 i.e. we must not doubt the reality of the immediate data of sense
but accept it, as “the mob” do.

M214 I. M215 S. M216 S.

157 But is imagination different from actual perception only in _degree_
of reality?

M217 S. M218 E.

158 Cf. _Principles_, sect. 13, 120; also Locke’s _Essay_, Bk. II. ch.
7. sect. 7.

M219 I.

159 Cf. _Principles_, Introduction, sect. 1.

M220 I.

160 Berkeley’s aim evidently is to deliver men from empty abstractions,
by a return to more reasonably interpreted common-sense.

M221 S.

161 The sort of _external_ world that is intelligible to us is that of
which _another person_ is percipient, and which is _objective_ to
me, in a percipient experience foreign to mine.

M222 S. M223 Mo. M224 S.

162 Cf. Berkeley’s _Arithmetica_ and _Miscellanea Mathematica_,
published while he was making his entries in this _Commonplace
Book_.

163 Minima sensibilia?

M225 Mo. M226 E. M227 Mo. M228 Mo.

164 Pleasures, _quâ_ pleasures, are natural causes of correlative
desires, as pains or uneasinesses are of correlative aversions. This
is implied in the very nature of pleasure and pain.

M229 I. M230 I.

165 Here we have his explanation of _idea_.

M231 M. S.

166 Absent things.

167 Here, as elsewhere, he resolves geometry, as strictly demonstrable,
into a reasoned system of analytical or verbal propositions.

M232 I. M.

168 Compare this with note 3, p. 34; also with the contrast between
Sense and Reason, in _Siris_. Is the statement consistent with
implied assumptions even in the _Principles_, apart from which they
could not cohere?

M233 S. G. M234 E. M235 G.

169 To have an _idea_ of God—as Berkeley uses idea—would imply that God
is an immediately perceptible, or at least an imaginable object.

M236 M. E.

170 Cf. _Principles_, sect. 89.

M237 I. M238 M. S. M239 S. M240 Mo. M241 S. M242 M.

171 Ch. 11. § 5.

M243 S. M244 E.

172 Why add—“or perception”?

M245 Mo. M246 M.

173 Here we have Berkeley’s favourite thought of the divine
arbitrariness of the constitution of Nature, and of its laws of
change.

M247 M. S. M248 S. M249 S.

174 This suggests the puzzle, that the cause of every volition must be a
preceding volition, and so on _ad infinitum_.

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

_ 175 Recherche_, I. 19.

M253 P.

176 i.e. of his own individual mind.

M254 M. P.

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

178 Cf. the _Arithmetica_.

M255 M. N. M256 G. M257 S.

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

M258 M.

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

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

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

M262 G. S.

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

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

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

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

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

M276 I. E. M277 G.

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

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

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

M282 P. M283 S.

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

M284 G. M285 M.

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

M286 S. M287 E. S.

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

M288 M. M289 P. M290 G.

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

M291 S.

191 Cf. _Principles_, sect. 2.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

M323 N.

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

M324 M. S. M325 S.

197 Gerard De Vries, the Cartesian.

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

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

M335 N.

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

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

200 Time being relative to the capacity of the percipient.

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

M344 M.

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

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

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

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

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

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

M351 M. M352 M. M353 M.

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

M354 M.

208 Locke’s _Essay_, Bk. IV. ch. 11.

209 What does he mean by “unknown substratum”?

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

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

M359 T.

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

M360 S. M361 M.

212 Cf. _Essay on Vision_, sect. 149-59, where he concludes that
“neither abstract nor visible extension makes the object of
geometry.”

213 By the adult, who has learned to interpret its visual signs.

214 Inasmuch as no physical consequences _follow_ the volition; which
however is still self-originated.

M362 G.

215 “A succession of ideas I take to _constitute_ time, and not to be
only the sensible measure thereof, as Mr. Locke and others think.”
(Berkeley’s letter to Johnson.)

M363 P. M364 M. M365 T. M366 S.

216 Cf. _Essay_, Bk. II. ch. 16, sect. 8.

217 Cf. _Essay on Vision_, sect. 67-77.

218 Cf. _Essay on Vision_, sect. 88-120.

M367 T. M368 M. M369 M.

219 This is of the essence of Berkeley’s philosophy.

M370 M. M371 M. M372 Mo. S. M373 S. M374 S. M375 S.

220 But in moral freedom originates in the agent, instead of being
“consecutive” to his voluntary acts or found only in their
consequences.

M376 M.

221 “Strigose” (strigosus)—meagre.

M377 S. Mo. M378 N. M379 I. S. M380 S.

222 As he afterwards expresses it, we have intelligible _notions_, but
not _ideas_—sensuous pictures—of the states or acts of our minds.

223 [“Omnes reales rerum proprietates continentur in Deo.” What means Le
Clerc &c. by this? Log. I. ch. 8.]—AUTHOR, on margin.

M381 G.

224 “Si non rogas intelligo.”

M382 M. M383 P.N. M384 M. P.

225 This way of winning others to his own opinions is very
characteristic of Berkeley. See p. 92 and note.

M385 M. P.

226 See _Third Dialogue_, on _sameness_ in things and _sameness_ in
persons, which it puzzles him to reconcile with his New Principles.

M386 N. M387 S.

227 Cf. _Essay on Vision_, sect. 52-61.

228 Cf. _Principles_, sect. 101-134.

229 “distance”—on opposite page in the MS. Cf. _Essay on Vision_, sect.
140.

230 Direct perception of phenomena is adequate to the perceived
phenomena; indirect or scientific perception is inadequate, leaving
room for faith and trust.

M388 M. P.

231 Cf. _Essay on Vision_, sect. 107-8.

M389 M. M390 S.

232 The Divine Ideas of Malebranche and the sensuous ideas of Berkeley
differ.

M391 N.

233 Cf. _Essay on Vision_, sect. 71.

234 Cf. Malebranche, _Recherche_, Bk. I. c. 6. That and the following
chapters seem to have been in Berkeley’s mind.

235 He here assumes that extension (visible) is implied in the visible
idea we call colour.

236 This strikingly illustrates Berkeley’s use of “idea,” and what he
intends when he argues against “abstract” ideas.

M392 M. P.

237 An interesting autobiographical fact. From childhood he was
indisposed to take things on trust.

M393 M. P. M394 M. M395 M.

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

M396 M. M397 M. M398 M. M399 M. M400 P. M401 M. P. M402 M. M403 M. M404 I. M405 M.

239 “thoughts,” i.e. ideas of sense?

240 This, in a crude way, is the distinction of δύναμις and ἐνέργεια. It
helps to explain Berkeley’s meaning, when he occasionally speaks of
the ideas or phenomena that appear in the sense experience of
different persons as if they were absolutely independent entities.

M406 M. M407 M.

241 To be “in an unperceiving thing,” i.e. to be real, yet unperceived.
Whatever is perceived is, because realised only through a percipient
act, an _idea_—in Berkeley’s use of the word.

M408 I.

242 This as to the “Platonic strain” is not in the tone of _Siris_.

M409 M. M410 M. M411 M.

243 John Keill (1671-1721), an eminent mathematician, educated at the
University of Edinburgh; in 1710 Savilian Professor of Astronomy at
Oxford, and the first to teach the Newtonian philosophy in that
University. In 1708 he was engaged in a controversy in support of
Newton’s claims to the discovery of the method of fluxions.

M412 M. P. M413 M.

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

M414 M. M415 N.

245 Newton became Sir Isaac on April 16, 1705. Was this written before
that date?

246 These may be _considered_ separately, but not _pictured_ as such.

M416 P. M417 M.

247 In as far as they have not been sensibly realised in finite
percipient mind.

248 [Or rather that invisible length does exist.]—AUTHOR, on margin.

249 Bonaventura Cavalieri (1598-1647), the Italian mathematician. His
_Geometry of Indivisibles_ (1635) prepared the way for the Calculus.

M418 M. M419 P. G.

250 [By “the excuse” is meant the finiteness of our mind—making it
possible for contradictions to appear true to us.]—AUTHOR, on
margin.

251 He allows elsewhere that words with meanings not realisable in
imagination, i.e. in the form of idea, may discharge a useful
office. See _Principles_, Introduction, sect. 20.

M420 M. P.

252 We do not perceive unperceived matter, but only matter realised in
living perception—the percipient act being the factor of its
reality.

M421 M. M422 P.

253 The secondary qualities of things.

M423 M. P.

254 Because, while dependent on percipient sense, they are independent
of _my_ personal will, being determined to appear under natural law,
by Divine agency.

M424 P. M425 M.

255 Keill’s _Introductio ad veram Physicam_ (Oxon. 1702)—Lectio 5—a
curious work, dedicated to the Earl of Pembroke.

256 [Extension without breadth—i. e. insensible, intangible length—is
not conceivable. ’Tis a mistake we are led into by the doctrine of
abstraction.]—AUTHOR, on margin of MS.

257 Here “Sir Isaac.” Hence written after April, 1705.

M426 M.

_ 258 Essay_, Bk. IV. ch. iv. sect. 18; ch. v. sect. 3, &c.

259 He applies _thing_ to self-conscious persons as well as to passive
objects of sense.

_ 260 Scaligerana Secunda_, p. 270.

261 [These arguments must be proposed shorter and more separate in the
Treatise.]—AUTHOR, on margin.

262 “Idea” here used in its wider meaning—for “operations of mind,” as
well as for sense presented phenomena that are independent of
individual will. Cf. _Principles_, sect. 1.

263 “sensations,” i.e. objective phenomena presented in sense.

264 See _Principles_, sect. 1.

265 See _Principles_, sect. 2.

266 An “unperceiving thing” cannot be the factor of material reality.

267 [To the utmost accuracy, wanting nothing of perfection. _Their_
solutions of problems, themselves must own to fall infinitely short
of perfection.]—AUTHOR, on margin.

M427 P.

268 Jean de Billy and René de Billy, French mathematicians—the former
author of _Nova Geometriæ Clavis_ and other mathematical works.

M428 T.

269 According to Baronius, in the fifth volume of his “Annals,” Ficinus
appeared after death to Michael Mercatus—agreeably to a promise he
made when he was alive—to assure him of the life of the human spirit
after the death of the body.

M429 M.

270 So far as we are factors of their reality, in sense and in science,
or can be any practical way concerned with them.

271 Cf. _Principles_, sect. 101-34.

M430 P.

272 “something,” i.e. _abstract_ something.

273 Lord Pembroke (?)—to whom the _Principles_ were dedicated, and to
whom Locke dedicated his _Essay_.

274 This is an interesting example of a feature that is conspicuous in
Berkeley—the art of “humoring an opponent in his own way of
thinking,” which it seems was an early habit. It is thus that he
insinuates his New Principles in the _Essay on Vision_, and so
prepares to unfold and defend them in the book of _Principles_ and
the three _Dialogues_—straining language to reconcile them with
ordinary modes of speech.

275 In Diderot’s _Lettre sur les aveugles, à l’usage de ceux qui
voient_, where Berkeley, Molyneux, Condillac, and others are
mentioned. Cf. also Appendix, pp. 111, 112; and _Theory of Vision
Vindicated_, sect. 71, with the note, in which some recorded
experiments are alluded to.

_ 276 De Anima_, II. 6, III. 1, &c. Aristotle assigns a pre-eminent
intellectual value to the sense of sight. See, for instance, his
_Metaphysics_, I. 1.

277 Sir A. Grant, (_Ethics of Aristotle_, vol. II. p. 172) remarks, as
to the doctrine that the Common Sensibles are apprehended
concomitantly by the senses, that: “this is surely the true view; we
see in the apprehension of number, figure, and the like, not an
operation of sense, but the mind putting its own forms and
categories, i.e. itself, on the external object. It would follow
then that the senses cannot really be separated from the mind; the
senses and the mind each contribute an element to every knowledge.
Aristotle’s doctrine of κοινὴ αἴσθησις would go far, if carried out,
to modify his doctrine of the simple and innate character of the
senses, e.g. sight (cf. _Eth._ II. 1, 4), and would prevent its
collision with Berkeley’s _Theory of Vision_.”—See also Sir W.
Hamilton, _Reid’s Works_, pp. 828-830.

Dugald Stewart (_Collected Works_, vol. I. p. 341, note) quotes
Aristotle’s _Ethics_, II. 1, as evidence that Berkeley’s doctrine,
“with respect to the acquired perceptions of sight, was quite
unknown to the best metaphysicians of antiquity.”

278 A work resembling Berkeley’s in its title, but in little else,
appeared more than twenty years before the _Essay_—the _Nova
Visionis Theoria_ of Dr. Briggs, published in 1685.

279 See _Treatise on the Eye_, vol. II. pp. 299, &c.

280 See Reid’s _Inquiry_, ch. v. §§ 3, 5, 6, 7; ch. vi. § 24, and
_Essays on the Intellectual Powers_, II. ch. 10 and 19.

281 While Sir W. Hamilton (_Lectures on Metaphysics_, lxxviii)
acknowledges the scientific validity of Berkeley’s conclusions, as
to the way we judge of distances, he complains, in the same lecture,
that “the whole question is thrown into doubt by the analogy of the
lower animals,” i.e. by their probable _visual instinct_ of
distances; and elsewhere (Reid’s _Works_, p. 137, note) he seems to
hesitate about Locke’s Solution of Molyneux’s Problem, at least in
its application to Cheselden’s case. Cf. Leibniz, _Nouveaux Essais_,
Liv. II. ch. 9, in connexion with this last.

282 An almost solitary exception in Britain to this unusual uniformity
on a subtle question in psychology is found in Samuel Bailey’s
_Review of Berkeley’s Theory of Vision, designed to show the
unsoundness of that celebrated Speculation_, which appeared in 1842.
It was the subject of two interesting rejoinders—a well-weighed
criticism, in the _Westminster Review_, by J.S. Mill, since
republished in his _Discussions_; and an ingenious Essay by
Professor Ferrier, in _Blackwood’s Magazine_, republished in his
_Philosophical Remains_. The controversy ended on that occasion with
Bailey’s _Letter to a Philosopher in reply to some recent attempts
to vindicate Berkeley’s Theory of Vision, and in further elucidation
of its unsoundness_, and a reply to it by each of his critics. It
was revived in 1864 by Mr. Abbott of Trinity College, Dublin, whose
essay on _Sight and Touch_ is “an attempt to disprove the received
(or Berkeleian) Theory of Vision.”

283 Afterwards (in 1733) Earl of Egmont. Born about 1683, he succeeded
to the baronetcy in 1691, and, after sitting for a few years in the
Irish House of Commons, was in 1715 created Baron Percival, in the
Irish peerage. In 1732 he obtained a charter to colonise the
province of Georgia in North America. His name appears in the list
of subscribers to Berkeley’s Bermuda Scheme in 1726. He died in
1748. He corresponded frequently with Berkeley from 1709 onwards.

284 Similar terms are applied to the sense of seeing by writers with
whom Berkeley was familiar. Thus Locke (_Essay_, II. ix. 9) refers
to sight as “the most comprehensive of all our senses.” Descartes
opens his _Dioptrique_ by designating it as “le plus universal et le
plus noble de nos sens;” and he alludes to it elsewhere (_Princip._
IV. 195) as “le plus subtil de tous les sens.” Malebranche begins
his analysis of sight (_Recherche_, I. 6) by describing it as “le
premier, le plus noble, et le plus étendu de tous les sens.” The
high place assigned to this sense by Aristotle has been already
alluded to. Its office, as the chief organ through which a
conception of the material universe as placed in ambient space is
given to us, is recognised by a multitude of psychologists and
metaphysicians.

285 On Berkeley’s originality in his Theory of Vision see the Editor’s
Preface.

286 In the first edition alone this sentence followed:—“In treating of
all which, it seems to me, the writers of Optics have proceeded on
wrong principles.”

287 Sect. 2-51 explain the way in which we learn in seeing to judge of
Distance or Outness, and of objects as existing remote from our
organism, viz. by their association with what we see, and with
certain muscular and other sensations in the eye which accompany
vision. Sect. 2 assumes, as granted, the invisibility of distance in
the line of sight. Cf. sect. 11 and 88—_First Dialogue between Hylas
and Philonous—Alciphron_, IV. 8—_Theory of Vision Vindicated and
Explained_, sect. 62-69.

288 i.e. outness, or distance outward from the point of vision—distance
in the line of sight—the third dimension of space. Visible distance
is visible space or interval between two points (see sect. 112). We
can be sensibly percipient of it only when _both_ points are seen.

289 This section is adduced by some of Berkeley’s critics as if it were
the evidence discovered by him for his _Theory_, instead of being,
as it is, a passing reference to the scientific ground of the
already acknowledged invisibility of outness, or distance in the
line of sight. See, for example, Bailey’s _Review of Berkeley’s
Theory of Vision_, pp. 38-43, also his _Theory of Reasoning_, p. 179
and pp. 200-7—Mill’s _Discussions_, vol. II. p. 95—Abbott’s _Sight
and Touch_, p. 10, where this sentence is presented as “the sole
positive argument advanced by Berkeley.” The invisibility of outness
is not Berkeley’s discovery, but the way we learn to interpret its
visual signs, and what these are.

290 i.e. aerial and linear perspective are acknowledged signs of remote
distances. But the question, in this and the thirty-six following
sections, concerns the visibility of _near_ distances only—a few
yards in front of us. It was “agreed by all” that beyond this limit
distances are suggested by our experience of their signs.

291 Cf. this and the four following sections with the quotations in the
Editor’s Preface, from Molyneux’s _Treatise of Dioptrics_.

292 In the author’s last edition we have this annotation: “See what Des
Cartes and others have written upon the subject.”

293 In the first edition this section opens thus: “I have here set down
the common current accounts that are given of our perceiving near
distances by sight, which, though they are unquestionably received
for true by mathematicians, and accordingly made use of by them in
determining the apparent places of objects, do nevertheless,” &c.

294 Omitted in the author’s last edition.

295 i.e. although immediately invisible, it is mediately seen. Mark,
here and elsewhere, the ambiguity of the term _perception_, which
now signifies the act of being conscious of sensuous phenomena, and
again the act of inferring phenomena of which we are at the time
insentient; while it is also applied to the object perceived instead
of to the percipient act; and sometimes to imagination, and the
higher acts of intelligence.

296 “Some men”—“mathematicians,” in first edition.

297 i.e. the _mediate_ perception.

298 “any man”—“all the mathematicians in the world,” in first edition.

299 Omitted in the author’s last edition.

300 Omitted in the author’s last edition.

301 Sect. 3, 9.

302 Observe the first introduction by Berkeley of the term _suggestion_,
used by him to express a leading factor in his account of the
visible world, and again in his more comprehensive account of our
knowledge of the material universe in the _Principles_. It had been
employed occasionally, among others, by Hobbes and Locke. There are
three ways in which the objects we have an immediate perception of
in sight may be supposed to conduct us to what we do not immediately
perceive: (1) Instinct, or what Reid calls “_original suggestion_”
(_Inquiry_, ch. VI. sect. 20-24); (2) Custom; (3) Reasoning from
accepted premisses. Berkeley’s “suggestion” corresponds to the
second. (Cf. _Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 42.)

303 In the _Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 66, it is added that
this “sensation” belongs properly to the sense of touch. Cf. also
sect. 145 of this _Essay_.

304 Here “natural”=“necessary”: elsewhere=divinely arbitrary connexion.

305 That our _mediate_ vision of outness and of objects as thus
external, is due to media which have a contingent or arbitrary,
instead of a necessary, connexion with the distances which they
enable us to see, or of which they are the signs, is a cardinal part
of his argument.

306 Sect. 2.

307 Here, as generally in the _Essay_, the appeal is to our inward
experience, not to phenomena observed by our senses in the organism.

308 See sect. 35 for the difference between confused and faint vision.
Cf. sect. 32-38 with this section. Also _Theory of Vision
Vindicated_, sect. 68.

309 See sect. 6.

310 These sections presuppose previous contiguity as an associative law
of mental phenomena.

311 See Reid’s _Inquiry_, ch. vi. sect. 22.

312 Sect. 16-27.—For the signs of remote distances, see sect. 3.

313 These are muscular sensations felt in the organ, and degrees of
confusion in a visible idea. Berkeley’s “arbitrary” signs of
distance, near and remote, are either (_a_) invisible states of the
visual organ, or (_b_) visible appearances.

314 In Molyneux’s _Treatise of Dioptrics_, Pt. I. prop. 31, sect. 9,
Barrow’s difficulty is stated. Cf. sect. 40 below.

315 Christopher Scheiner, a German astronomer, and opponent of the
Copernican system, born 1575, died 1650.

316 Andrea Tacquet, a mathematician, born at Antwerp in 1611, and
referred to by Molyneux as “the ingenious Jesuit.” He published a
number of scientific treatises, most of which appeared after his
death, in a collected form, at Antwerp in 1669.

317 In what follows Berkeley tries to explain by his visual theory
seeming contradictions which puzzled the mathematicians.

318 This is offered as a verification of the theory that near distances
are suggested, according to the order of nature, by non-resembling
visual signs, contingently connected with real distance.

319 Cf. sect. 78; also _New Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 31.

320 Berkeley here passes from his proof of visual “suggestion” of all
outward distances—i.e. intervals between extremes in the line of
sight—by means of arbitrary signs, and considers the nature of
visible externality. See note in Hamilton’s _Reid_, p. 177, on the
distinction between perception of the external world and perception
of distance through the eye.

321 See Descartes, _Dioptrique_, VI—Malebranche, _Recherche_, Liv. I.
ch. 9, 3—Reid’s _Inquiry_, VI. 11.

322 Berkeley here begins to found, on the experienced connexion between
extension and colour, and between visible and tangible extension, a
proof that _outness_ is invisible. From Aristotle onwards it has
been assumed that colour is the only phenomenon of which we are
immediately percipient in seeing. Visible extension, visible figure,
and visible motion are accordingly taken to be dependent on the
sensation of colour.

323 In connexion with this and the next illustration, Berkeley seems to
argue that we are not only unable to see distance in the line of
sight, but also that we do not see a distant object in its _real
visible_ magnitude. But elsewhere he affirms that only _tangible_
magnitude is entitled to be called _real_. Cf. sect. 55, 59, 61.

324 The sceptical objections to the trustworthiness of the senses,
proposed by the Eleatics and others, referred to by Descartes in his
_Meditations_, and by Malebranche in the First Book of his
_Recherche_, may have suggested the illustrations in this section.
Cf. also Hume’s Essay _On the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy_.
The sceptical difficulty is founded on the assumption that the
object seen at different distances is the _same visible object_: it
is really different, and so the difficulty vanishes.

325 Here Berkeley expressly introduces “touch”—a term which with him
includes, not merely organic sense of contact, but also muscular and
locomotive sense-experience. After this he begins to unfold the
antithesis of visual and tactual phenomena, whose subsequent
synthesis it is the aim of the _New Theory_ to explain. Cf.
_Principles of Human Knowledge_, sect. 43—_Theory of Vision
Vindicated_, sect. 22 and 25. Note here Berkeley’s reticence of his
idealization of Matter—tangible as well as visible. Cf.
_Principles_, sect. 44.

326 This connexion of our knowledge of distance with our locomotive
experience points to a theory which ultimately resolves space into
experience of unimpeded locomotion.

327 Locke (_Essay_, Introduction, § 8) takes _idea_ vaguely as “the term
which serves best to stand whatsoever is the object of the
understanding when a man thinks.” Oversight of what Berkeley intends
the term idea has made his whole conception of nature and the
material universe a riddle to many, of which afterwards.

328 The expressive term “outness,” favoured by Berkeley, is here first
used.

329 “We get the idea of Space,” says Locke, “both by our sight and
touch” (_Essay_, II. 13. § 2). Locke did not contemplate Berkeley’s
antithesis of visible and tangible extension, and the consequent
ambiguity of the term extension; which sometimes signifies
_coloured_, and at others _resistant_ experience in sense.

330 For an explanation of this difficulty, see sect. 144.

331 “object”—“thing,” in the earlier editions.

332 This is the issue of the analytical portion of the _Essay_.

333 Cf. sect. 139-40.

334 Here the question of externality, signifying independence of all
percipient life, is again mixed up with that of the invisibility of
distance outwards in the line of sight.

335 Omitted in author’s last edition.

336 i.e. including muscular and locomotive experience as well as sense
of contact. But what are the _tangibilia_ themselves? Are they also
significant, like _visibilia_, of a still ulterior reality? This is
the problem of the _Principles of Human Knowledge_.

337 In this section the conception of a natural Visual Language, makes
its appearance, with its implication that Nature is (for us)
virtually Spirit. Cf. sect. 140, 147—_Principles_, sect.
44—_Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous_—_Alciphron_, IV. 8, 11—and
_Theory of Vision Vindicated_, passim.

338 Sect. 52-87 treat of the invisibility of real, i.e. tactual,
Magnitude. Cf. _Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 54-61.

339 Sect. 8-15.

340 Sect. 41, &c.

341 See Molyneux’s _Treatise on Dioptrics_, B. I. prop. 28.

342 See sect. 122-126.

343 In short there is a point at which, with our limited sense, we cease
to be percipient of colour, in seeing; and of resistance, in
locomotion. Though Berkeley regards all visible extensions as
sensible, and therefore dependent for their reality on being
realised by sentient mind, he does not mean that mind or
consciousness is extended. With him, extension, though it exists
only in mind,—i.e. as an idea seen, in the case of visible
extension, and as an idea touched, in the case of tangible
extension,—is yet no _property_ of mind. Mind can exist without
being percipient of extension, although extension cannot be realised
without mind.

344 But this is true, though less obviously, of tangible as well as of
visible objects.

345 Sect. 49.

346 Cf. sect. 139, 140, &c.

347 “situation”—not in the earlier editions.

348 Sect. 55.

349 Omitted in the author’s last edition.

350 Ordinary sight is virtually foresight. Cf. sect. 85.—See also
Malebranche on the external senses, as given primarily for the
urgent needs of embodied life, not to immediately convey scientific
knowledge, _Recherche_, Liv. I. ch. 5, 6, 9, &c.

351 Sect. 44.—See also sect. 55, and note.

352 This supposes “settled” _tangibilia_, but not “settled” _visibilia_.
Yet the sensible extension given in touch and locomotive experience
is also relative—an object being _felt_ as larger or smaller
according to the state of the organism, and the other conditions of
our embodied perception.

353 What follows, to end of sect. 63, added in the author’s last
edition.

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

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

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

357 Cf. sect. 10.

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

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

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

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

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

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

364 See _Dioptrique_, VI.

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

366 The paper in the Transactions is by Molyneux.

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

368 Sect. 2-51.

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

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

371 i.e. tangible.

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

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

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

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

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

377 Sect. 59.

378 Sect. 80-82.

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

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

381 This illustration is taken from Descartes. See Appendix.

382 Sect. 10 and 19.

383 Sect. 2-51.

384 Omitted in author’s last edition.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

392 i.e. tangible.

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

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

395 i.e. real or tangible head.

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

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

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

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

400 Cf. sect. 131.

401 Sect. 2, 88, 116, 118.

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

403 i.e. tangible.

404 Sect. 41-44.

405 i.e. tangible things.

406 i.e. visible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

415 Sect. 105.

416 “Endeavours” in first edition.

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

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

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

420 Omitted in the author’s last edition.

421 Omitted in last edition.

422 Omitted in last edition.

423 Omitted in last edition.

424 See _Principles_, passim.

425 Omitted in author’s last edition.

426 He probably has Locke in his eye.

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

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

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

430 Omitted in last edition.

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

432 Omitted in last edition.

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

434 Omitted in last edition.

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

436 Added in second edition.

437 Omitted in last edition.

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

439 Omitted in last edition.

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

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

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

443 Cf. sect. 122-125.

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

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

446 Cf. sect. 16, 27, 97.

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

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

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

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

451 A suggestion thus due to natural laws of association. The
explanation of the fact that we apprehend, by those ideas or
phenomena which are objects of sight, certain other ideas, which
neither resemble them, nor efficiently cause them, nor are so caused
by them, nor have any necessary connexion with them, comprehends,
according to Berkeley, the whole Theory of Vision. “The imagination
of every thinking person,” remarks Adam Smith, “will supply him with
instances to prove that the ideas received by any one of the senses
do readily excite such other ideas, either of the same sense or of
any other, as have habitually been associated with them. So that if,
on this account, we are to suppose, with a late ingenious writer,
that the ideas of sight constitute a Visual Language, because they
readily suggest the corresponding ideas of touch—as the terms of a
language excite the ideas answering to them—I see not but we may,
for the same reason, allow of a tangible, audible, gustatory, and
olefactory language; though doubtless the Visual Language will be
abundantly more copious than the rest.” Smith’s _Optics_.—_Remarks_,
p. 29.—And into this conception of a universal sense symbolism,
Berkeley’s theory of Vision ultimately rises.

452 Cf. _Alciphron_, Dialogue IV. sect. 11-15.

453 Sect. 122-125.

454 Sect. 127-138.

455 Some modern metaphysicians would say, that neither tangible nor
visible extension is the object geometry, but abstract extension;
and others that space is a necessary implicate of sense-experience,
rather than, _per se_, an object of any single sense. Cf. Kant’s
explanation of the origin of our mathematical knowledge, _Kritik der
reinen Vernunft_. Elementarlehre, I.

456 Cf. sect. 51-66, 144.

457 This is a conjecture, not as to the probable ideas of one born
blind, but as to the ideas of an “unbodied” intelligence, whose
_only_ sense was that of seeing. See Reid’s speculation (_Inquiry_,
VI. 9) on the “Geometry of Visibles,” and the mental experience of
Idomenians, or imaginary beings supposed to have no ideas of the
material world except those got by seeing.

458 Cf. sect. 130, and _New Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 57. Does
Berkeley, in this and the two preceding sections, mean to hint that
the only proper object of sight is _unextended_ colour; and that,
apart from muscular movement in the eye or other locomotion,
_visibilia_ resolve into unextended mathematical points? This
question has not escaped more recent British psychologists,
including Stewart, Brown, Mill, and Bain, who seem to hold that
unextended colour is perceivable and imaginable.

459 The bracketed sentence is not retained in the author’s last edition,
in which the first sentence of sect. 160 is the concluding one of
sect. 159, and of the _Essay_.

460 This passage is contained in the _Dioptrices_ of Descartes, VI. 13;
see also VI. 11.

461 The arbitrariness or contingency—as far as our knowledge carries
us—of the connexion between the visual phenomena, as signs, on the
one hand, and actual distance, as perceived through this means, on
the other.

462 Cf. sect. 80-83.

463 The reference here seems to be to the case described in the _Tatler_
(No. 55) of August 16, 1709, in which William Jones, born blind, had
received sight after a surgical operation, at the age of twenty, on
the 29th of June preceding. A medical narrative of this case
appeared, entitled _A full and true account of a miraculous cure of
a Young Man in Newington, who was born blind, and was in five
minutes brought to perfect sight, by Mr. Roger Grant, oculist_.
London, 1709.

464 Cf. _New Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 71, with the relative
note.

465 Omitted on the title-page in the second edition, but retained in the
body of the work.

466 Beardsley’s _Life and Correspondence of Samuel Johnson, D.D., First
President of King’s College, New York_, p. 72 (1874).

467 Beardsley’s _Life of Johnson_, pp. 71, 72.

468 Chandler’s _Life of Johnson_, Appendix, p. 161.

_ 469 Commonplace Book._

470 Moreover, even if the outness or distance of things _were_ visible,
it would not follow that either they or their distances could be
real if unperceived. On the contrary, Berkeley implies that they
_are_ perceived _visually_.

471 It is also to be remembered that sensible things exist “in mind,”
without being exclusively _mine_, as creatures of _my will_. In one
sense, that only is mine in which my will exerts itself. But, in
another view, my involuntary states of feeling and imagination are
_mine_, because their existence depends on my consciousness of them;
and even sensible things are so far _mine_, because, though present
in many minds in common, they are, for me, dependent on _my_
percipient mind.

472 Thomas Herbert, eighth Earl of Pembroke and fifth Earl of
Montgomery, was the correspondent and friend of Locke—who dedicated
his famous _Essay_ to him, as a work “having some little
correspondence with some parts of that nobler and vast system of the
sciences your lordship has made so new, exact, and instructive a
draft of.” He represents a family renowned in English political and
literary history. He was born in 1656; was a nobleman of Christ
Church, Oxford, in 1672; succeeded to his titles in 1683; was sworn
of the Privy Council in 1689; and made a Knight of the Garter in
1700. He filled some of the highest offices in the state, in the
reigns of William and Mary, and of Anne. He was Lord Lieutenant of
Ireland in 1707, having previously been one of the Commissioners by
whom the union between England and Scotland was negotiated. He died
in January 1733.

473 Trinity College, Dublin.

474 In his _Commonplace Book_ Berkeley seems to refer his speculations
to his boyhood. The conception of the material world propounded in
the following Treatise was in his view before the publication of the
_New Theory of Vision_, which was intended to prepare the way for
it.

475 Cf. Locke, in the “Epistle Dedicatory” of his _Essay_.
Notwithstanding the “novelty” of the New Principles, viz. _negation_
of abstract or unperceived Matter, Space, Time, Substance, and
Power; and _affirmation_ of Mind, as the Synthesis, Substance, and
Cause of all—much in best preceding philosophy, ancient and modern,
was a dim anticipation of it.

476 Cf. sect. 6, 22, 24, &c., in illustration of the demonstrative claim
of Berkeley’s initial doctrine.

477 Berkeley entreats his reader, here and throughout, to take pains to
understand his meaning, and especially to avoid confounding the
ordered ideas or phenomena, objectively presented to our senses,
with capricious chimeras of imagination.

478 “Philosophy is nothing but the true knowledge of things.” Locke.

479 The purpose of those early essays of Berkeley was to reconcile
philosophy with common sense, by employing reflection to make
_latent_ common sense, or common reason, reveal itself in its
genuine integrity. Cf. the closing sentences in the _Third Dialogue
between Hylas and Philonous_.

480 Cf. Locke’s _Essay_, Introduction, sect. 4-7; Bk. II. ch. 23, § 12,
&c. Locke (who is probably here in Berkeley’s eye) attributes the
perplexities of philosophy to our narrow faculties, which are meant
to regulate our lives, not to remove all mysteries. See also
Descartes, _Principia_, I. 26, 27, &c.; Malebranche, _Recherche_,
III. 2.

481 His most significant forerunners were Descartes in his _Principia_,
and Locke in his _Essay_.