The Works of George Berkeley Part 81

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 a.s.sumes, 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 const.i.tutes 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 a.s.sume, 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 pa.s.sivity. 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, const.i.tuted 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 G.o.d who veils Himself in everlasting laws. But in truth G.o.d 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 pa.s.sive 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 s.p.a.ce is _itself_ (as Berkeley a.s.serts) dependent on percipient experience. Cf. sect. 67.

606 In the preceding year.

_ 607 Essay_, sect. 2.

608 Ibid. sect. 11-15.