Chapter XXIII: Part 23

482 Here “idea” and “notion” seem to be used convertibly. See sect. 142.
Cf. with the argument against _abstract ideas_, unfolded in the
remainder of the Introduction, _Principles_, sect. 97-100, 118-132,
143; _New Theory of Vision_, sect. 122-125; _Alciphron_, Dial. vii.
5-7; _Defence of Free Thinking in Mathematics_, sect. 45-48. Also
_Siris_, sect. 323, 335, &c., where he distinguishes Idea in a
higher meaning from his sensuous ideas. As mentioned in my Preface,
the third edition of _Alciphron_, published in 1752, the year before
Berkeley died, omits the three sections of the Seventh Dialogue
which repeat the following argument against abstract ideas.

483 As in Derodon’s _Logica_, Pt. II. c. 6, 7; _Philosophia Contracta_,
I. i. §§ 7-11; and Gassendi, _Leg. Instit._, I. 8; also Cudworth,
_Eternal and Immutable Morality_, Bk. IV.

484 Omitted in second edition.

485 We must remember that what Berkeley intends by an _idea_ is either a
percept of sense, or a sensuous imagination; and his argument is
that none of _these_ can be an abstraction. We can neither perceive
nor imagine what is not concrete and part of a succession.

486 “abstract notions”—here used convertibly with “abstract ideas.” Cf.
_Principles_, sect. 89 and 142, on the special meaning of _notion_.

487 Supposed by Berkeley to mean, that we can imagine, in abstraction
from all phenomena presented in concrete experience, e.g. imagine
_existence_, in abstraction from all phenomena in which it manifests
itself to us; or _matter_, stripped of all the phenomena in which it
is realised in sense.

488 Omitted in second edition.

489 Locke.

490 Descartes, who regarded brutes as (sentient?) machines.

491 “To this I cannot assent, being of opinion that a word,” &c.—in
first edition.

492 “an idea,” i.e. a concrete mental picture.

493 So that “generality” in an idea is our “consideration” of a
particular idea (e.g. a “particular motion” or a “particular
extension”) not _per se_, but under general relations, which that
particular idea exemplifies, and which, as he shews, may be
signified by a corresponding word. All ideas (in Berkeley’s confined
meaning of “idea”) are particular. We rise above particular ideas by
an intellectual apprehension of their relations; not by forming
_abstract pictures_, which are contradictory absurdities.

494 Locke is surely misconceived. He does not say, as Berkeley seems to
suppose, that in forming “abstract ideas,” we are forming abstract
mental images—pictures in the mind that are not individual pictures.

495 Does Locke intend more than this, although he expresses his meaning
in ambiguous words?

496 It is a particular idea, but considered relatively—a _significant_
particular idea, in other words. We realise our notions in examples,
and these must be concrete.

497 i.e. “ideas” in Locke’s meaning of idea, under which he comprehends,
not only the particular ideas of sense and imagination—Berkeley’s
“ideas”—but these considered relatively, and so seen intellectually,
when Locke calls them abstract, general, or universal. Omniscience
in its all-comprehensive intuition may not require, or even admit,
such general ideas.

498 Here and in what follows, “abstract _notion_,” “universal _notion_,”
instead of abstract _idea_. Notion seems to be here a synonym for
idea, and not taken in the special meaning which he afterwards
attached to the term, when he contrasted it with idea.

499 “notions,” again synonymous with ideas, which are all particular or
concrete, in his meaning of _idea_, when he uses it strictly.

_ 500 idea_, i.e. individual mental picture.

501 In all this he takes no account of the intellectual relations
necessarily embodied in concrete knowledge, and without which
experience could not cohere.

502 “have in view,” i.e. actually realise in imagination.

503 What follows, to the end of this section, was added in the second or
1734 edition.

504 So Bacon in many passages of his _De Augmentis Scientiarium_ and
_Novum Organum_.

505 “wide influence,”—“wide and extended sway”—in first edition.

506 “idea,” i.e. individual datum of sense or of imagination.

507 See Leibniz on Symbolical Knowledge (_Opera Philosophica_, pp. 79,
80, Erdmann), and Stewart in his _Elements_, vol. I. ch. 4, § 1, on
our habit of using language without realising, in individual
examples or ideas, the meanings of the common terms used.

508 “doth”—“does,” here and elsewhere in first edition.

509 “ideas,” i.e. representations in imagination of _any_ of the
individual objects to which the names are applicable. The sound or
sight of a verbal sign may do duty for the concrete idea in which
the notion signified by the word might be exemplified.

510 This sentence is omitted in the second edition.

511 Elsewhere he mentions Aristotle as “certainly a great admirer and
promoter of the doctrine of abstraction,” and quotes his statement
that there is hardly anything so incomprehensible to men as notions
of the utmost universality; for they are the most remote from sense.
_Metaph._, Bk. I. ch. 2.

512 Added in second edition.

513 Omitted in second edition.

514 Omitted in second edition.

515 Omitted in second edition.

516 “my own ideas,” i.e. the concrete phenomena which I can realise as
perceptions of sense, or in imagination.

517 He probably refers to Locke.

518 According to Locke, “that which has most contributed to hinder the
due tracing of our ideas, and finding out their relations, and
agreements or disagreements one with another, has been, I suppose,
the ill use of words. It is impossible that men should ever truly
seek, or certainly discover, the agreement or disagreement of ideas
themselves, whilst their thoughts flutter about, or stick only in
sounds of doubtful and uncertain significations. Mathematicians,
abstracting their thoughts from names, and accustoming themselves to
set before their minds the ideas themselves that they would
consider, and not sounds instead of them, have avoided thereby a
great part of that perplexity, puddering, and confusion which has so
much hindered men’s progress in other parts of knowledge.” _Essay_,
Bk. IV. ch. 3, § 30. See also Bk. III. ch. 10, 11.

519 General names involve in their signification intellectual relations
among ideas or phenomena; but the relations, _per se_, are
unimaginable.

520 The rough draft of the Introduction, prepared two years before the
publication of the _Principles_ (see Appendix, vol. III), should be
compared with the published version. He there tells that “there was
a time when, being bantered and abused by words,” he “did not in the
least doubt” that he was “able to abstract his ideas”; adding that
“after a strict survey of my abilities, I not only discovered my own
deficiency on this point, but also cannot conceive it possible that
such a power should be even in the most perfect and exalted
understanding.” What he thus pronounces “impossible,” is a
_sensuous_ perception or imagination of an intellectual relation, as
to which most thinkers would agree with him. But in so arguing, he
seems apt to discard the intellectual relations themselves that are
necessarily embodied in experience.

David Hume refers thus to Berkeley’s doctrine about “abstract
ideas”:—“A great philosopher has asserted that all general ideas are
nothing but particular ones annexed to a certain term, which gives
them a more extensive signification. I look upon this to be one of
the greatest and most valuable discoveries that has been made of
late years in the republic of letters.” (_Treatise of H. N._ Pt. I,
sect. 7.)

521 This resembles Locke’s account of the ideas with which human
knowledge is concerned. They are all originally presented to the
senses, or got by reflexion upon the passions and acts of the mind;
and the materials contributed in this external and internal
experience are, with the help of memory and imagination, elaborated
by the human understanding in ways innumerable, true and false. See
Locke’s _Essay_, Bk. II, ch. 1, §§ 1-5; ch. 10, 11, 12.

522 The ideas or phenomena of which we are percipient in our five senses
make their appearance, not isolated, but in individual masses,
constituting the things, that occupy their respective places in
perceived ambient space. It is as _qualities_ of _things_ that the
ideas or phenomena of sense arise in human experience.

523 This is an advance upon the language of the _Commonplace Book_, in
which “mind” is spoken of as only a “congeries of perceptions.” Here
it is something “entirely distinct” from ideas or perceptions, in
which they exist and are perceived, and on which they ultimately
depend. Spirit, intelligent and active, presupposed with its
implicates in ideas, thus becomes the basis of Berkeley’s
philosophy. Is this subjective idealism only? Locke appears in sect.
1, Descartes, if not Kant by anticipation, in sect. 2.

524 This sentence expresses Berkeley’s New Principle, which filled his
thoughts in the _Commonplace Book_. Note “in _a_ mind,” not
necessarily in _my_ mind.

525 That is to say, one has only to put concrete meaning into the terms
_existence_ and _reality_, in order to have “an intuitive knowledge”
that matter depends for its real existence on percipient spirit.

526 In other words, the things of sense become real, only in the
concrete experience of living mind, which gives them the only
reality we can conceive or have any sort of concern with. Extinguish
Spirit and the material world necessarily ceases to be real.

527 That _esse_ is _percipi_ is Berkeley’s initial Principle, called
“intuitive” or self-evident.

528 Mark that it is the “natural or real existence” of the material
world, in the absence of all realising Spirit, that Berkeley insists
is impossible—meaningless.

529 “our own”—yet not exclusively _mine_. They depend for their reality
upon _a_ percipient, not on _my_ perception.

530 “this tenet,” i.e. that the concrete material world could still be a
reality after the annihilation of all realising spiritual life in
the universe—divine or other.

531 “existing unperceived,” i.e. existing without being realised in any
living percipient experience—existing in a totally abstract
existence, whatever that can mean.

532 “notions”—a term elsewhere (see sect. 27, 89, 142) restricted, is
here applied to the immediate data of the senses—the ideas of sense.

533 This sentence is omitted in the second edition.

534 In the first edition, instead of this sentence, we have the
following: “To make this appear with all the light and evidence of
an Axiom, it seems sufficient if I can but awaken the reflexion of
the reader, that he may take an impartial view of his own meaning,
and turn his thoughts upon the subject itself; free and disengaged
from all embarras of words and prepossession in favour of received
mistakes.”

535 In other words, active percipient Spirit is at the root of all
intelligible trustworthy experience.

536 ’proof’—“demonstration” in first edition; yet he calls it
“intuitive.”

537 “the ideas themselves,” i.e. the phenomena immediately presented in
sense, and that are thus realised in and through the percipient
experience of living mind, as their factor.

538 As those say who assume that perception is ultimately only
representative of the material reality, the very things themselves
not making their appearance to us at all.

539 He refers especially to Locke, whose account of Matter is
accordingly charged with being incoherent.

540 “inert.” See the _De Motu_.

541 “ideas existing in the mind,” i.e. phenomena of which _some_ mind is
percipient; which are realised in the sentient experience of a
living spirit, human or other.

542 What follows to the end of the section is omitted in the second
edition.

543 “the existence of Matter,” i.e. the existence of the material world,
regarded as a something that does not need to be perceived in order
to be real.

544 Sometimes called _objective_ qualities, because they are supposed to
be realised in an abstract objectivity, which Berkeley insists is
meaningless.

545 See Locke’s _Essay_, Bk. II, ch. 8, §§ 13, 18; ch. 23, § 11; Bk. IV,
ch. 3, § 24-26. Locke suggests this relation between the secondary
and the primary qualities of matter only hypothetically.

546 “in the mind, and nowhere else,” i.e. perceived or conceived, but in
no other manner can they be real or concrete.

547 “without the mind,” i.e. independently of all percipient experience.

548 Extension is thus the distinguishing characteristic of the material
world. Geometrical and physical solidity, as well as motion, imply
extension.

549 “number is the creature of the mind,” i.e. is dependent on being
realised in percipient experience. This dependence is here
illustrated by the relation of concrete number to the point of view
of each mind; as the dependence of the other primary qualities was
illustrated by their dependence on the organisation of the
percipient. In this, the preceding, and the following sections,
Berkeley argues the inconsistency of the abstract reality attributed
to the primary qualities with their acknowledged dependence on the
necessary conditions of sense perception.

550 Cf. _New Theory of Vision_, sect. 109.

551 e.g. Locke, _Essay_, Bk. II, ch. 7, § 7; ch. 16, § 1.

552 “without any alteration in any external object”—“without any
external alteration”—in first edition.

553 These arguments, founded on the mind-dependent nature of _all_ the
qualities of matter, are expanded in the _First Dialogue between
Hylas and Philonous_.

554 “an outward object,” i.e. an object wholly abstract from living
Mind.

555 This sentence is omitted in the second edition.

556 “reason,” i.e. reasoning. It is argued, in this and the next
section, that a reality unrealised in percipient experience cannot
be proved, either by our senses or by reasoning.

557 Omitted in the second edition, and the sentence converted into a
question.

558 But the ideas of which we are cognizant in waking dreams, and dreams
of sleep, differ in important characteristics from the external
ideas of which we are percipient in sense. Cf. sect. 29-33.

559 “external bodies,” i.e. bodies supposed to be real independently of
all percipients in the universe.

560 i.e. they cannot shew how their unintelligible hypothesis of Matter
accounts for the experience we have, or expect to have; or which we
believe other persons have, or to be about to have.

561 “the production,” &c., i.e. the fact that we and others have
percipient experience.

562 Mind-dependent Matter he not only allows to exist, but maintains its
reality to be intuitively evident.

563 i.e. bodies existing in abstraction from living percipient spirit.

564 “Matter,” i.e. abstract Matter, unrealised in sentient intelligence.

565 The appeal here and elsewhere is to consciousness—directly in each
person’s experience, and indirectly in that of others.

566 i.e. otherwise than in the form of an idea or actual appearance
presented to our senses.

567 This implies that the material world may be realised in imagination
as well as in sensuous perception, but in a less degree of reality;
for reality, he assumes, admits of degrees.

568 “to conceive the existence of external bodies,” i.e. to conceive
bodies that are not conceived—that are not ideas at all, but which
exist in abstraction. To suppose what we conceive to be unconceived,
is to suppose a contradiction.

569 This sentence is omitted in the second edition.

570 “The existence of things without mind,” or in the absence of all
spiritual life and perception, is what Berkeley argues against, as
_meaningless_, if not _contradictory_; not the existence of a
material world, when this means the realised order of nature,
regulated independently of individual will, and to which our actions
must conform if we are to avoid physical pain.

571 Here again _notion_ is undistinguished from _idea_.

572 This and the three following sections argue for the essential
impotence of matter, and that, as far as we are concerned, so-called
“natural causes” are only _signs_ which foretell the appearance of
their so-called effects. The material world is presented to our
senses as a procession of orderly, and therefore interpretable, yet
in themselves powerless, ideas or phenomena: motion is always an
effect, never an originating active cause.

573 As Locke suggests.

574 This tacitly presupposes the necessity in reason of the Principle of
Causality, or the ultimate need for an efficient cause of every
change. To determine the sort of Causation that constitutes and
pervades the universe is the aim of his philosophy.

575 In other words, the material world is not only real in and through
percipient spirit, but the changing forms which its phenomena
assume, in the natural evolution, are the issue of the perpetual
activity of in-dwelling Spirit. The argument in this section
requires a deeper criticism of its premisses.

576 In other words, an agent cannot, as such, be perceived or imagined,
though its effects can. The spiritual term _agent_ is not
meaningless; yet we have no _sensuous idea_ of its meaning.

577 Omitted in second edition.

578 This sentence is not contained in the first edition. It is
remarkable for first introducing the term _notion_, to signify
_idealess meaning_, as in the words soul, active power, &c. Here he
says that “the operations of the mind” belong to notions, while, in
sect. 1, he speaks of “_ideas_ perceived by attending to the
‘operations’ of the mind.”

579 “ideas,” i.e. fancies of imagination; as distinguished from the more
real ideas or phenomena that present themselves objectively to our
senses.

580 With Berkeley the world of external ideas is distinguished from
Spirit by its essential passivity. Active power is with him the
essence of Mind, distinguishing me from the changing ideas of which
I am percipient. We must not attribute free agency to phenomena
presented to our senses.

581 In this and the four following sections, Berkeley mentions _marks_
by which the ideas or phenomena that present themselves to the
senses may be distinguished from all other ideas, in consequence of
which they may be termed “external,” while those of feeling and
imagination are wholly subjective or individual.

582 This mark—the superior strength and liveliness of the ideas or
phenomena that are presented to the senses—was afterwards noted by
Hume. See _Inquiry concerning Human Understanding_, sect. II.

583 Berkeley here and always insists on the _arbitrary_ character of
“settled laws” of change in the world, as contrasted with “necessary
connexions” discovered in mathematics. The material world is thus
virtually an interpretable natural language, constituted in what, at
our point of view, is _arbitrariness_ or _contingency_.

584 Under this conception of the universe, “second causes” are _divinely
established signs_ of impending changes, and are only metaphorically
called “causes.”

585 So Schiller, in _Don Carlos_, Act III, where he represents sceptics
as failing to see the God who veils Himself in everlasting laws. But
in truth God is eternal law or order vitalised and moralised.

586 “_sensations_,” with Berkeley, are not mere feelings, but in a sense
external appearances.

587 “_more_ reality.” This implies that reality admits of degrees, and
that the difference between the phenomena presented to the senses
and those which are only imagined is a difference in degree of
reality.

588 In the preceding sections, two relations should be carefully
distinguished—that of the material world to percipient mind, in
which it becomes _real_; and that between changes in the world and
spiritual agency. These are Berkeley’s two leading Principles. The
first conducts to and vindicates the second—inadequately, however,
apart from explication of their root in moral reason. The former
gives a relation _sui generis_. The latter gives our only example of
active causality—the natural order of phenomena being the outcome of
the causal energy of intending Will.

589 Sect. 34-84 contain Berkeley’s answers to supposed _objections_ to
the foregoing Principles concerning Matter and Spirit in their
mutual relations.

590 To be an “idea” is, with Berkeley, to be the imaginable object of a
percipient spirit. But he does not define precisely the relation of
ideas to mind. “Existence in mind” is existence _in this relation_.
His question (which he determines in the negative) is, the
possibility of concrete phenomena, naturally presented to sense,
_yet out of all relation to living mind_.

591 Omitted in second edition.

592 i.e. of imagination. Cf. sect. 28-30.

593 Cf. sect. 29.

594 “more reality.” This again implies that reality admits of degrees.
What is perceived in sense is more real than what is imagined, and
eternal realities are more deeply real than the transitory things of
sense.

595 Cf. sect. 33. “Not fictions,” i.e. they are presentative, and
therefore cannot misrepresent.

596 With Berkeley _substance_ is either (_a_) active reason, i.e.
spirit—substance proper, or (_b_) an aggregate of sense-phenomena,
called a “sensible thing”—substance conventionally and
superficially.

597 And which, because realised in living perception, are called
_ideas_—to remind us that reality is attained in and through
percipient mind.

598 “combined together,” i.e. in the form of “sensible things,”
according to natural laws. Cf. sect. 33.

599 “thinking things”—more appropriately called _persons_.

600 Berkeley uses the word idea to mark the fact, that sensible things
are real only as they manifest themselves in the form of passive
objects, presented to sense-percipient mind; but he does not, as
popularly supposed, regard “sensible things” as created and
regulated by the activity of his own individual mind. They are
perceived, but are neither created nor regulated, by the individual
percipient, and are thus _practically external_ to each person.

601 Cf. sect. 87-91, against the scepticism which originates in alleged
fallacy of sense.

602 Omitted in second edition.

603 It is always to be remembered that with Berkeley ideas or phenomena
presented to sense are _themselves_ the real things, whilst ideas of
imagination are representative (or misrepresentative).

604 Here feelings of pleasure or pain are spoken of, without
qualification, as in like relation to living mind as sensible things
or ideas are.

605 That the ideas of sense should be seen “at a distance of several
miles” seems not inconsistent with their being dependent on a
percipient, if ambient space is _itself_ (as Berkeley asserts)
dependent on percipient experience. Cf. sect. 67.

606 In the preceding year.

_ 607 Essay_, sect. 2.

608 Ibid. sect. 11-15.

609 Ibid. sect. 16-28.

610 Ibid. sect. 51.

611 Ibid. sect. 47-49, 121-141.

612 Ibid. sect. 43.

613 i.e. what we are _immediately_ percipient of in seeing.

614 Touch is here and elsewhere taken in its wide meaning, and includes
our muscular and locomotive experience, all which Berkeley included
in the “tactual” meaning of distance.

615 To explain the condition of sensible things _during the intervals of
our perception of them_, consistently with the belief of all sane
persons regarding the material world, is a challenge which has been
often addressed to the advocates of ideal Realism. According to
Berkeley, there are no intervals in the existence of sensible
things. They are permanently perceivable, under the laws of nature,
though not always perceived by this, that or the other individual
percipient. Moreover they always exist _really_ in the Divine Idea,
and _potentially_, in relation to finite minds, in the Divine Will.

616 Berkeley allows to bodies unperceived by me potential, but (for me)
not real existence. When I say a body exists thus conditionally, I
mean that if, in the light, I open my eyes, I shall see it, and that
if I move my hand, I must feel it.

617 i.e. unperceived material substance.

618 Berkeley remarks, in a letter to the American Samuel Johnson, that
“those who have contended for a material world have yet acknowledged
that _natura naturans_ (to use the language of the Schoolmen) is
God; and that the Divine conservation of things is equipollent to,
and in fact the same thing with, a continued repeated creation;—in a
word, that conservation and creation differ only as the _terminus a
quo_. These are the common opinions of Schoolmen; and Durandus, who
held the world to be a machine, like a clock made up and put in
motion by God, but afterwards continued to go of itself, was therein
particular, and had few followers. The very poets teach a doctrine
not unlike the Schools—_mens agitat molem_ (Virgil, Æneid, VI). The
Stoics and Platonists are everywhere full of the same notion. I am
not therefore singular in this point itself, so much as in my way of
proving it.” Cf. _Alciphron_, Dial. IV. sect. 14; _Vindication of
New Theory of Vision_, sect. 8, 17, &c.; _Siris_, _passim_, but
especially in the latter part. See also _Correspondence between
Clarke and Leibniz_ (1717). Is it not possible that the universe of
things and persons is in continuous natural creation, unbeginning
and unending?

619 Cf. sect. 123-132.

620 He distinguishes “idea” from “mode or attribute.” With Berkeley, the
“substance” of _matter_ (if the term is still to be applied to
sensible things) is the naturally constituted aggregate of phenomena
of which each particular thing consists. Now extension, and the
other qualities of sensible things, are not, Berkeley argues, “in
mind” either (_a_) according to the abstract relation of substance
and attribute of which philosophers speak; nor (_b_) as one idea or
phenomenon is related to another idea or phenomenon, in the natural
aggregation of sense-phenomena which constitute, with him, the
_substance_ of a _material_ thing. Mind and its “ideas” are, on the
contrary, related as percipient to perceived—in whatever “otherness”
that altogether _sui generis_ relation implies.

621 “Matter,” i.e. abstract material Substance, as distinguished from
the concrete things that are realised in living perceptions.

622 “take away natural causes,” i.e. empty the material world of all
originative power, and refer the supposed powers of bodies to the
constant and omnipresent agency of God.

623 Some philosophers have treated the relation of Matter to Mind in
_perception_ as one of cause and effect. This, according to
Berkeley, is an illegitimate analysis, which creates a fictitious
duality. On his New Principles, philosophy is based on a recognition
of the fact, that perception is neither the cause nor the effect of
its object, but in a relation to it that is altogether _sui
generis_.

624 He refers to Descartes, and perhaps Geulinx and Malebranche, who,
while they argued for material _substance_, denied the _causal
efficiency_ of sensible things. Berkeley’s new Principles are
presented as the foundation in reason for this denial, and for the
essential spirituality of all active power in the universe.

625 On the principle, “Entia non sunt multiplicanda præter
necessitatem.”

626 “external things,” i.e. things in the abstract.

627 That the unreflecting part of mankind should have a confused
conception of what should be meant by the _external reality_ of
matter is not wonderful. It is the office of philosophy to improve
their conception, making it deeper and truer, and this was
Berkeley’s preliminary task; as a mean for shewing the impotence of
the things of sense, and conclusive evidence of omnipresent
spiritual activity.

628 Cf. sect. 4, 9, 15, 17, 22, 24.

629 i.e. their _sense-ideas_.—Though sense-ideas, i.e. the appearances
presented to the senses, are independent of the _will_ of the
individual percipient, it does not follow that they are independent
of _all perception_, so that they can be real in the absence of
realising percipient experience. Cf. sect. 29-33.

630 By shewing that what we are percipient of in sense must be _idea_,
or that it is immediately known by us only as sensuous appearance.

631 i.e. “imprinted” by unperceived Matter, which, on this dogma of a
representative sense-perception, was assumed to exist behind the
perceived ideas, and to be the _cause_ of their appearance. Cf.
_Third Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous_.

632 Hence the difficulty men have in recognising that Divine Reason and
Will, and Law in Nature, are coincident. But the advance of
scientific discovery of the laws which express Divine Will in
nature, instead of narrowing, extends our knowledge of God. And
_divine_ or _absolutely reasonable_ “arbitrariness” is not caprice.

633 “ideas,” i.e. ideas of _sense_. This “experience” implied an
association of sensuous ideas, according to the divine or reasonable
order of nature.

634 Cf. sect. 25-33, and other passages in Berkeley’s writings in which
he insists upon the _arbitrariness_—divine or reasonable—of the
natural laws and sense-symbolism.

635 Cf. sect. 3, 4, 6, 22-24, 26, in which he proceeds upon the
intuitive certainty of his two leading Principles, concerning
_Reality_ and _Causation_.

636 In short, what is virtually the language of universal natural order
is the divine way of revealing omnipresent Intelligence; nor can we
conceive how this revelation could be made through a capricious or
chaotic succession of changes.

637 He here touches on moral purpose in miraculous phenomena, but
without discussing their relation to the divine, or perfectly
reasonable, order of the universe. Relatively to a fine knowledge of
nature, they seem anomalous—exceptions from general rules, which
nevertheless express, immediately and constantly, perfect active
Reason.

638 “ideas,” i.e. the phenomena presented to the senses.

639 “imaginable”—in first edition.

640 “the connexion of ideas,” i.e. the presence of law or reasonable
uniformity in the coexistence and succession of the phenomena of
sense; which makes them interpretable signs.

641 According to Berkeley, it is by an abuse of language that the term
“power” is applied to those ideas which are invariable antecedents
of other ideas—the prior forms of their existence, as it were.

642 Berkeley, in meeting this objection, thus implies Universal Natural
Symbolism as the essential character of the sensible world, in its
relation to man.

643 See Locke’s _Essay_, Bk. IV, ch. 3, § 25-28, &c., in which he
suggests that the secondary qualities of bodies may be the natural
issue of the different relations and modifications of their primary
qualities.

644 With Berkeley, _material substance_ is merely the natural
combination of sense-presented phenomena, which, under a _divine_ or
_reasonable_ “arbitrariness,” constitute a concrete thing. Divine
Will, or Active Reason, is the constantly sustaining cause of this
combination or substantiation.

645 i.e. that it is not realised in a living percipient experience.

646 For “place” is realised only as perceived—percipient experience
being its concrete existence. Living perception is, with Berkeley,
the condition of the possibility of concrete locality.

647 So in the Cartesian theory of occasional causes.

648 So Geulinx and Malebranche.

649 As known in Divine intelligence, they are accordingly _Divine
Ideas_. And, if this means that the sensible system is the
expression of Divine Ideas, which are its ultimate archetype—that
the Ideas of God are symbolised to our senses, and then interpreted
(or misinterpreted) by human minds, this allies itself with Platonic
Idealism.

650 “It seems to me,” Hume says, “that this theory of the universal
energy and operation of the Supreme Being is _too bold_ ever to
carry conviction with it to a mind sufficiently apprised of the
weakness of human reason, and the narrow limits to which it is
confined in all its operations.” But is it not virtually presupposed
in the assumed trustworthiness of our experience of the universe?

651 Accordingly we are led to ask, what the deepest support of their
reality must be. Is it found in living Spirit, i.e. Active Reason,
or in blind Matter?

652 e.g. Descartes, Malebranche, Locke, &c.

653 In short, if we mean by Matter, something unrealised in percipient
experience of sense, what is called its _reality_ is something
unintelligible.

654 And if sensible phenomena are _sufficiently_ externalised, when
regarded as regulated by Divine Reason.

655 Twenty years after the publication of the _Principles_, in a letter
to his American friend Johnson, Berkeley says:—“I have no objection
against calling the Ideas in the mind of God _archetypes_ of ours.
But I object against those archetypes by philosophers supposed to be
real things, and so to have an absolute rational existence distinct
from their being perceived by any mind whatsoever; it being the
opinion of all materialists that an ideal existence in the Divine
Mind is one thing, and the real existence of material things
another.”

656 Berkeley’s philosophy is not inconsistent with Divine Ideas which
receive expression in the laws of nature, and of which human science
is the imperfect interpretation. In this view, assertion of the
existence of Matter is simply an expression of faith that the
phenomenal universe into which we are born is a reasonable and
interpretable universe; and that it would be fully interpreted, if
our notions could be fully harmonised with the Divine Ideas which it
expresses.

657 Cf. sect. 3-24.

658 So that superhuman persons, endowed with a million senses, would be
no nearer this abstract Matter than man is, with his few senses.

659 Matter and physical science is _relative_, so far that we may
suppose in other percipients than men, an indefinite number of
additional senses, affording corresponding varieties of qualities in
things, of course inconceivable by man. Or, we may suppose an
intelligence destitute of _all our_ senses, and so in a material
world wholly different in its appearances from ours.

660 The authority of Holy Scripture, added to our natural tendency to
believe in external reality, are grounds on which Malebranche and
Norris infer a material world. Berkeley’s material world claims no
logical proof of its reality. His is not to prove the reality of the
world, but to shew what we should mean when we affirm its reality,
and the basis of its explicability in science.

661 i.e. existing unrealised in any intelligence—human or Divine.

662 “external things,” i.e. things existing really, yet out of all
relation to active living spirit.

663 Simultaneous perception of the “same” (similar?) _sense_-ideas, _by
different persons_, as distinguished from purely individual
consciousness of feelings and fancies, is here taken as a test of
the _virtually external reality_ of the former.

Berkeley does not ask whether the change of the rod into a serpent,
or of the water into wine, is the issue of divine agency and order,
otherwise than as all natural evolution is divinely providential.

664 Some of the Consequences of adoption of the New Principles, in their
application to the physical sciences and mathematics, and then to
psychology and theology, are unfolded in the remaining sections of
the _Principles_.

665 Berkeley disclaims the supposed _representative_ character of the
ideas given in sensuous perception, and recognises as the real
object only what is ideally presented in consciousness.

666 So Hume, Reid, and Hamilton, who all see in a wholly representative
sense-perception, with its double object, the germ of total
scepticism. Berkeley claims that, under _his_ interpretation of what
the reality of the material world means, immediate knowledge of
mind-dependent matter is given in sense.

667 “scepticism”—“sceptical cant” in the first edition.

668 This sentence is omitted in the second edition.

669 Berkeley’s argument against a _finally representative_ perception so
far resembles that afterwards employed by Reid and Hamilton. They
differ as regards the dependence of the sensible object upon
percipient spirit for its reality.

670 Omitted in second edition.

671 Omitted in second edition.

672 But whilst unthinking things depend on being perceived, do not our
spirits depend on ideas of some sort for their percipient life?

673 The important passage within brackets was added in the second
edition.

674 “reason,” i.e. reasoning.

675 “Notion,” in its stricter meaning, is thus confined by Berkeley to
apprehension of the _Ego_, and intelligence of _relations_. The term
“notion,” in this contrast with _his_ “idea,” becomes important in
his vocabulary, although he sometimes uses it vaguely.

676 Locke uses _idea_ in this wider signification.

677 Inasmuch as they are _real_ in and through living percipient mind.

678 i.e. _unthinking_ archetypes.

679 In this section Berkeley explains what he means by _externality_.
Men cannot act, cannot live, without assuming an external world—in
some meaning of the term “external.” It is the business of the
philosopher to explicate its true meaning.

680 i.e. they are not _substances_ in the truest or deepest meaning of
the word.

681 “Ideas of the corporeal substances.” Berkeley might perhaps
say—Divine Ideas which are _themselves_ our world of sensible things
in its ultimate form.

682 On the scheme of ideal Realism, “creation” of matter is presenting
to finite minds sense-ideas or phenomena, which are, as it were,
letters of the alphabet, in that language of natural order which God
employs for the expression of _His_ Ideas to us.

683 The _independent_ eternity of Matter must be distinguished from an
unbeginning and endless _creation_ of sensible ideas or phenomena,
in percipient spirits, according to divine natural law and order,
with implied immanence of God.

684 Because the question at issue with Atheism is, whether the universe
of things and persons is finally substantiated and evolved in
unthinking Matter or in the perfect Reason of God.

685 Of which Berkeley does _not_ predicate a _numerical_ identity. Cf.
_Third Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous_.

686 “matter,” i.e. matter abstracted from all percipient life and
voluntary activity.

687 “external”—not in Berkeley’s meaning of externality. Cf. sect. 90,
note 2.

_ 688 Si non rogas, intelligo._ Berkeley writes long after this to
Johnson thus:—“A succession of ideas (phenomena) I take to
_constitute_ time, and not to be only the sensible measure thereof,
as Mr. Locke and others think. But in these matters every man is to
think for himself, and speak as he finds. One of my earliest
inquiries was about _time_; which led me into several paradoxes that
I did not think it fit or necessary to publish, particularly into
the notion that the resurrection follows the next moment after
death. We are confounded and perplexed about time—supposing a
succession in God; that we have an abstract idea of time; that time
in one mind is to be measured by succession of ideas in another
mind: not considering the true use of words, which as often
terminate in the will as in the understanding, being employed to
excite and direct action rather than to produce clear and distinct
ideas.” Cf. Introduction, sect. 20.

689 As the _esse_ of unthinking things is _percipi_, according to
Berkeley, so the _esse_ of persons is _percipere_. The real
existence of individual Mind thus depends on having ideas of some
sort: the real existence of matter depends on a percipient.

690 This sentence is omitted in the second edition.

691 Cf. _New Theory of Vision_, sect. 43.

692 “objects of sense,” i.e. sensible things, practically external to
each person. Cf. sect. 1, on the meaning of _thing_, as distinct
from the distinguishable ideas or phenomena that are naturally
aggregated in the form of concrete things.

693 Omitted in second edition.

694 Omitted in second edition.

695 Cf. Introduction, sect. 1-3. With Berkeley, the real essence of
sensible things is given in perception—so far as our perceptions
carry us.

696 e.g. Locke’s _Essay_, Bk. IV. ch. 3.

697 Berkeley advocates a Realism, which eliminates effective causation
from the material world, concentrates it in Mind, and in physical
research seeks among data of sense for their divinely maintained
natural laws.

698 In interpreting the data of sense, we are obliged to assume that
every _new_ phenomenon must have previously existed in some
equivalent form—but not necessarily in this or that particular form,
for a knowledge of which we are indebted to inductive comparisons of
experience.

699 The preceding forms of new phenomena, being finally determined by
Will, are, in that sense, arbitrary; but not capricious, for the
Will is perfect Reason. God is the immanent cause of the natural
order.

700 He probably refers to Bacon.

701 Omitted in second edition.

702 What we are able to discover in the all-comprehensive order may be
subordinate and provisional only. Nature in its deepest meaning
explains itself in the Divine Omniscience.

703 i.e. inductively.

704 i.e. deductively.

705 “seem to consider signs,” i.e. to be grammarians rather than
philosophers: physical sciences deal with the grammar of the divine
language of nature.

706 “A man may be well read in the language of nature without
understanding the grammar of it, or being able to say,” &c.—in first
edition.

707 “extend”—“stretch”—in first edition.

708 Omitted in second edition.

709 In the first edition, the section commences thus: “The best grammar
of the kind we are speaking of will be easily acknowledged to be a
treatise of _Mechanics_, demonstrated and applied to Nature, by a
philosopher of a neighbouring nation, whom all the world admire. I
shall not take upon me to make remarks on the performance of that
extraordinary person: only some things he has advanced so directly
opposite to the doctrine we have hitherto laid down, that we should
be wanting in the regard due to the authority of so great a man did
we not take some notice of them.” He refers, of course, to Newton.
The first edition of Berkeley’s _Principles_ was published in
Ireland—hence “neighbouring nation.” Newton’s _Principia_ appeared
in 1687.

710 “Motion,” in various aspects, is treated specially in the _De Motu_.
An imagination of trinal space presupposes locomotive
experience—unimpeded, in contrast with—impeded locomotion. Cf. sect.
116.

711 Omitted in second edition.

712 Added in second edition.

713 Omitted in second edition.

714 See Locke’s _Essay_, Bk. II. ch. 13, §§ 7-10.

715 “applied to”—“impressed on”—in first edition.

716 “applied to”—“impressed on”—in first edition.

717 “the _force_ causing the change”—which “force,” according to
Berkeley, can only be attributed metaphorically to the so-called
impelling body; inasmuch as _bodies_, or the data of sense, can only
be signs of their consequent events, not efficient causes of change.

718 Added in second edition.

719 What follows to the end of this section is omitted in the second
edition.

720 “seems impossible”—“is above my capacity”—in first edition.

721 In short, empty Space _is_ the sensuous idea of unresisted motion.
This is implied in the _New Theory of Vision_. He minimises Space,
treating it as a datum of sense.

722 He probably refers to Samuel Clarke’s _Demonstration of the Being
and Attributes of God_, which appeared in 1706, and a treatise _De
Spatio Reali_, published in the same year.

723 Sect. 118-132 are accordingly concerned with the New Principles in
their application to Mathematics. The foundation of the mathematical
sciences engaged much of Berkeley’s thought in early life and in his
later years. See his _Analyst_.

724 Numerical relations are _realised_ only in concrete experience.

725 Cf. _New Theory of Vision_, sect. 107, &c.

726 Ibid. sect. 122-125, 149-160.

727 An infinitely divided extension, being unperceived, must be
unreal—if its existence is made real only in and through actual
perception, or at least imagination. The only possible extension is,
accordingly, sensible extension, which could not be infinitely
divided without the supposed parts ceasing to be perceived or real.

728 “converted Gentile”—“pagan convert”—in first edition.

729 Cf. Locke’s _Essay_, Bk. I, ch. 3, § 25.

730 “will perhaps in virtue thereof be brought to admit,” &c.—“will not
stick to affirm,” &c.—in first edition.

731 Omitted in second edition. See the _Analyst_.

732 “we must mean”—“we mean (if we mean anything)”—in first edition.

733 Omitted in the second edition.

734 Does this refer to the intended “Part II” of the _Principles_?

735 “men of great abilities and obstinate application,” &c.—“men of the
greatest abilities and most obstinate application,” &c.—in first
edition.

736 What follows to the end of this section is omitted in the second
edition.

737 “absolute,” i.e. abstract, independent, irrelative existence—as
something of which there can be no sensuous perception or
conception.

738 Matter unrealised in perception—not the material world that is
realised in percipient experience of sense.

739 Omitted in second edition.

740 Sect. 135-156 treat of consequences of the New Principles, in their
application to sciences concerned with our notions of _Spirit_ or
_Mind_; as distinguished from sciences of ideas in external Nature,
and their mathematical relations. Individual mind, with Berkeley,
needs data of sense in order to its realisation in consciousness;
while it is dependent on God, in a relation which he does not define
distinctly.

741 e.g. Locke suggests this.

742 Is this analogy applicable?

743 Omitted in second edition, as he had previously learned to
distinguish _notion_ from _idea_. Cf. sect. 89, 142.

744 Ibid. In the omitted passage it will be seen that he makes _idea_
and _notion_ synonymous.

745 Is the reality of mind as dependent on having ideas (of some sort)
as ideas are on mind; although mind is more deeply and truly real
than its ideas are?

746 Introduced in second edition.

747 We know _other finite persons_ through sense-presented phenomena,
but not as themselves phenomena. Cf. sect. 145. It is a mediate
knowledge that we have of other persons. The question about the
individuality of finite egos, as distinguished from God, Berkeley
has not touched.

748 These sentences are omitted in the second edition.

749 “the soul,” i.e. the individual Ego.

750 Cf. sect. 2; 25-27.

751 This is Berkeley’s application of his new conception of the reality
of matter, to the final human question of the self-conscious
existence of the individual human Ego, after physical death.
Philosophers and theologians were accustomed in his generation to
ground their argument for a future life on the metaphysical
assumption of the physical indivisibility of our self-conscious
spirit, and on our contingent connexion with the body. “Our bodies,”
says Bishop Butler, “are no more _ourselves_, or _part of
ourselves_, than any other matter around us.” This train of thought
is foreign to us at the present day, when men of science remind us
that self-conscious life is found only in correlation with corporeal
organisation, whatever may be the abstract possibility. Hope of
continued life after physical death seems to depend on ethical
considerations more than on metaphysical arguments, and on what is
suggested by faith in the final outcome of personal life in a
_divinely_ constituted universe.

752 Mind and the ideas presented to the senses are at opposite poles of
existence. But he does not say that, thus opposed, they are each
independent of the other.

753 What follows was introduced in the second edition, in which _notion_
is contrasted with _idea_.

754 Here is a germ of Kantism. But Berkeley has not analysed that
activity of mind which constitutes _relation_, nor systematically
unfolded the relations involved in the rational constitution of
experience. There is more disposition to this in _Siris_.

755 As with Locke, for example.

756 Note this condemnation of the tendency to substantiate “powers of
mind.”

757 Omitted in second edition. Berkeley was after all reluctant to
“depart from received modes of speech,” notwithstanding their often
misleading associations.

758 Omitted in second edition.

759 This is one of the notable sections in the _Principles_, as it
suggests the _rationale_ of Berkeley’s rejection of Panegoism or
Solipsism. Is this consistent with his conception of the reality of
the material world? It is objected (e.g. by Reid) that ideal realism
dissolves our faith in the existence of other persons. The
difficulty is to shew how appearances presented to my senses, which
are sensuous and subjective, can be media of communication between
persons. The question carries us back to the theistic presupposition
in the trustworthiness of experience—which is adapted to deceive if
I am the only person existing. With Berkeley a chief function of
ideas of sense is to signify other persons to each person. See
_Alciphron_, Dial. IV; _New Theory of Vision Vindicated_, and
_Siris_.

760 “repugnant”—for it would involve thought in incoherence, by
paralysis of its indispensable causal presupposition.

761 Is not God the indispensable presupposition of trustworthy
experience, rather than an empirical inference?

762 This suggests an explanation of the objective reality and
significance of _ideas of sense_; through which they become media of
social intercourse in the fundamentally divine universe. God so
regulates the sense-given ideas of which human beings are
individually percipient, as that, _while numerically different, as
in each mind_, those ideas are nevertheless a sufficient medium for
social intercourse, if the Power universally at work is morally
trustworthy. Unless our God-given experience is deceiving, Solipsism
is not a necessary result of the fact that no one but myself can be
percipient of my sensuous experience.

763 Omitted in second edition.

764 Malebranche, as understood by Berkeley. See _Recherche_, Liv. III.
p. ii. ch. 6, &c.

765 For all finite persons _somehow_ live, and move, and have their
being “in God.” The existence of _eternal_ living Mind, and the
_present_ existence of other men, are both _inferences_, resting on
the same foundation, according to Berkeley.

766 The theistic trust in which our experience is rooted remaining
latent, or being unintelligent.

767 Cf. sect. 25-28, 51-53, 60-66. His conception of Divine causation in
Nature, as the constant omnipresent agency in all natural law, is
the deepest part of his philosophy. It is pursued in the _De Motu_.

768 Is not the unbeginning and unending natural evolution, an articulate
revelation of Eternal Spirit or Active Reason at the heart of the
whole?

769 Omitted in second edition.

770 So Pascal in the _Pensées_.

771 Divine reason ever active in Nature is the necessary correlate to
reason in man; inasmuch as otherwise the changing universe in which
we live would be unfit to be reasoned about or acted in.

772 The existence of _moral_ evil, or what ought not to exist, is _the_
difficulty which besets faith in the fundamental divinity or
goodness of the universe. Yet that faith is presupposed in
interpretation of nature, which proceeds on the _postulate_ of
universal order; and this implies the moral trustworthiness of the
world which we begin to realise when we begin to be conscious. That
we are living and having our being in omnipotent goodness is thus
not an inference, but the implied basis of all real inferences. I
have expanded this thought in my _Philosophy of Theism_. We cannot
_prove_ God, for we must assume God, as the basis of all proof.
Faith even in the uniformity of nature is virtually faith in
omnipotent goodness immanent in the universe.

773 So Leibniz in his _Theodicée_, which was published in the same year
as Berkeley’s _Principles_.

774 The divine presupposition, latent in all human reasoning and
experience, is hid from the unreflecting, in whom the higher life is
dormant, and the ideal in the universe is accordingly undiscerned.
Unless the universe is assumed to be physically and morally
trustworthy, i.e. unless God is presupposed, even natural science
has no adequate foundation.

775 Our necessarily incomplete knowledge of the Universe in which we
find ourselves is apt to disturb the fundamental faith, that the
phenomena presented to us are significant of God. Yet we _tacitly
assume_ that they are thus significant when we interpret real
experience, physical or moral.

776 Omitted in second edition.

777 For the following extracts from previously unpublished
correspondence of Berkeley and Sir John Percival, I am indebted to
the kindness of his descendant, the late Lord Egmont.

778 What Berkeley seeks to shew is, not that the world of the senses is
unreal, but in what its reality consists. Is it inexplicable chaos,
or explicable expression of ever active Intelligence, more or less
interpreted in natural science?

779 Leibniz: _De modo distinguendi Phenomena Realia ab Imaginariis_
(1707).

780 For some information relative to Gua de Malves, see Querard’s _La
France Littéraire,_ tom. iii. p. 494.

781 The following is the translator’s Prefatory Note, on the objects of
the _Dialogues,_ and in explanation of the three illustrative
vignettes:—

“L’Auteur expose dans le premier Dialogue le sentiment du Vulgaire
et celui des Philosophes, sur les qualités secondaires et premieres,
la nature et l’existence des corps; et il prétend prouver en même
tems l’insuffisance de l’un et de l’autre. La Vignette qu’on voit à
la téte du Dialogue, fait allusion à cet objet. Elle représente un
Philosophe dans son cabinet, lequel est distrait de son travail par
un enfant qu’il appercoit se voyant lui-méme dans un miroir, en
tendant les mains pour embrasser sa propre image. Le Philosophe rit
de l’erreur où il croit que tombe l’enfant; tandis qu’on lui
applique à lui-même ces mots tirés d’Horace:

_Quid rides?....de te_
_ Fabula narratur._

“Le second Dialogue est employé à exposer le sentiment de l’Auteur
sur le même sujet, sçavoir, que les choses corporelles ont une
existence réelle dans les esprits qui les apperçoivent; mais
qu’elles ne sçauroient exister hors de tous les esprits à la fois,
même de l’esprit infini de Dieu; et que par conséquent la Matière,
prise suivant l’acception ordinaire du mot, non seulement n’existe
point, mais seroit même absolument impossible. On a taché de
représenter aux yeux ce sentiment dans la Vignette du Dialogue. Le
mot grec νοῦς qui signifie _âme_, désigne l’àme: les rayons qui en
partent marquent l’attention que l’âme donne à des idées ou objets;
les tableaux qu’on a placés aux seuls endroits où les rayons
aboutissent, et dont les sujets sont tirés de la description des
beautés de la nature, qui se trouve dans le livre, représentent les
idées ou objets que l’âme considère, pas le secours des facultes
qu’elle a reçues de Dieu; et l’action de l’Étre suprème sur l’âme
est figurée par un trait, qui, partant d’un triangle, symbole de la
Divinité, et perçant les nuages dont le triangle est environné.
s’étend jusqu’à l’âme pour la vivifier; enfin, on a fait en sorte de
rendre le même sentiment par ces mots:

_Quæ noscere cumque Deus det,_
_ Esse puta._

“L’objet du troisième Dialogue est de répondre aux difficultés
auxquelles le sentiment qu’on a établi dans les Dialogues précédens,
peut être sujet, de l’éclaircir en cette sorte de plus, d’en
développer toutes les heureuses conséquences, enfin de faire voir,
qu’étant bien entendu, il revient aux notions les plus communes. Et
comme l’Auteur exprime à la fin du livre cette dernière pensée, en
comparant ce qu’il vient de dire, à l’eau que les deux
Interlocuteurs sont supposés voir jaillir d’un jet, et qu’il
remarque que la même force de la gravité fait élever jusqu’à une
certaine hauteur et retomber ensuite dans le bassin d’où elle étoit
d’abord partie; on a pris cet emblême pour le sujet de la Vignette
de ce Dialogue; on a représenté en conséquence dans cette dernière
Vignette les deux Interlocuteurs, se promenant dans le lieu où
l’Auteur les suppose, et s’entretenant là-dessus, et pour donner au
Lecteur l’explication de l’emblême, on a mis au bas le vers suivant:

_Urget aquas vis sursum, eadem flectitque deorsum._”