The Works of George Berkeley Part 80

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 p.r.o.nounces "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 a.s.serted 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 pa.s.sions 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 ma.s.ses, const.i.tuting the things, that occupy their respective places in perceived ambient s.p.a.ce. 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 antic.i.p.ation, 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 a.s.sume 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 ill.u.s.trated by the relation of concrete number to the point of view of each mind; as the dependence of the other primary qualities was ill.u.s.trated 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.