The Works of George Berkeley Part 78

418 "deservedly admired author," in the first edition.

419 "this celebrated author,"-"that great man" in second edition. In a.s.sailing 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_, pa.s.sim.

425 Omitted in author's last edition.

426 He probably has Locke in his eye.

427 On Berkeley's theory, s.p.a.ce without relation to bodies (i.e.

insensible or abstract s.p.a.ce) would not be extended, as not having parts; inasmuch as parts can be a.s.signed to it only with relation to bodies. Berkeley does not distinguish s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce, and _also_ an _a posteriori_ perception of finite, concrete s.p.a.ce.

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 const.i.tutes Berkeley's visible extension; while a plurality of successively experienced _minima_ of resistant points const.i.tutes 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 _a.n.a.lyst_, query 12. On Berkeley's system s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sociated with their thus implied meanings.

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

450 Berkeley, in this section, enunciates the princ.i.p.al conclusion in the _Essay_, which conclusion indeed forms his new theory of Vision.

451 A suggestion thus due to natural laws of a.s.sociation. 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 a.s.sociated with them. So that if, on this account, we are to suppose, with a late ingenious writer, that the ideas of sight const.i.tute 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sage 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, ent.i.tled _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 t.i.tle-page in the second edition, but retained in the body of the work.