The Works of George Berkeley Part 83

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 dest.i.tute 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 pa.s.sage 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 a.s.suming 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d.

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 G.o.d.

685 Of which Berkeley does _not_ predicate a _numerical_ ident.i.ty. 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 _const.i.tute_ 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 G.o.d; 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 a.s.sume 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. G.o.d 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.