The Works of George Berkeley Part 85

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 a.n.a.lysed that activity of mind which const.i.tutes _relation_, nor systematically unfolded the relations involved in the rational const.i.tution 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 a.s.sociations.

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 G.o.d 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. G.o.d 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 G.o.d-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 G.o.d." 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 _Pensees_.

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_ G.o.d, for we must a.s.sume G.o.d, 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 _Theodicee_, 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 a.s.sumed to be physically and morally trustworthy, i.e. unless G.o.d 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 G.o.d. Yet we _tacitly a.s.sume_ 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 Litteraire,_ 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 ill.u.s.trative vignettes:-

"L'Auteur expose dans le premier Dialogue le sentiment du Vulgaire et celui des Philosophes, sur les qualites secondaires et premieres, la nature et l'existence des corps; et il pretend prouver en meme tems l'insuffisance de l'un et de l'autre. La Vignette qu'on voit a la tete du Dialogue, fait allusion a cet objet. Elle represente un Philosophe dans son cabinet, lequel est distrait de son travail par un enfant qu'il appercoit se voyant lui-meme dans un miroir, en tendant les mains pour embra.s.ser sa propre image. Le Philosophe rit de l'erreur ou il croit que tombe l'enfant; tandis qu'on lui applique a lui-meme ces mots tires d'Horace:

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

"Le second Dialogue est employe a exposer le sentiment de l'Auteur sur le meme sujet, scavoir, que les choses corporelles ont une existence reelle dans les esprits qui les appercoivent; mais qu'elles ne scauroient exister hors de tous les esprits a la fois, meme de l'esprit infini de Dieu; et que par consequent la Matiere, prise suivant l'acception ordinaire du mot, non seulement n'existe point, mais seroit meme absolument impossible. On a tache de representer aux yeux ce sentiment dans la Vignette du Dialogue. Le mot grec ???? qui signifie _ame_, designe l'ame: les rayons qui en partent marquent l'attention que l'ame donne a des idees ou objets; les tableaux qu'on a places aux seuls endroits ou les rayons aboutissent, et dont les sujets sont tires de la description des beautes de la nature, qui se trouve dans le livre, representent les idees ou objets que l'ame considere, pas le secours des facultes qu'elle a recues de Dieu; et l'action de l'etre supreme sur l'ame est figuree par un trait, qui, partant d'un triangle, symbole de la Divinite, et percant les nuages dont le triangle est environne.

s'etend jusqu'a l'ame pour la vivifier; enfin, on a fait en sorte de rendre le meme sentiment par ces mots:

_Quae noscere c.u.mque Deus det,_ _ Esse puta._

"L'objet du troisieme Dialogue est de repondre aux difficultes auxquelles le sentiment qu'on a etabli dans les Dialogues precedens, peut etre sujet, de l'eclaircir en cette sorte de plus, d'en developper toutes les heureuses consequences, enfin de faire voir, qu'etant bien entendu, il revient aux notions les plus communes. Et comme l'Auteur exprime a la fin du livre cette derniere pensee, en comparant ce qu'il vient de dire, a l'eau que les deux Interlocuteurs sont supposes voir jaillir d'un jet, et qu'il remarque que la meme force de la gravite fait elever jusqu'a une certaine hauteur et retomber ensuite dans le ba.s.sin d'ou elle etoit d'abord partie; on a pris cet embleme pour le sujet de la Vignette de ce Dialogue; on a represente en consequence dans cette derniere Vignette les deux Interlocuteurs, se promenant dans le lieu ou l'Auteur les suppose, et s'entretenant la-dessus, et pour donner au Lecteur l'explication de l'embleme, on a mis au bas le vers suivant:

_Urget aquas vis sursum, eadem flect.i.tque deorsum._"

782 Collier never came fairly in sight of the philosophical public of last century. He is referred to in Germany by Bilfinger, in his _Dilucidationes Philosophicae_ (1746), and also in the _Ada Eruditorum_, Suppl. VI. 244, &c., and in England by Corry in his _Reflections on Liberty and Necessity_ (1761), as well as in the _Remarks_ on the Reflections, and _Answers_ to the Remarks, pp. 7, 8 (1763), where he is described as "a weak reasoner, and a very dull writer also." Collier was dragged from his obscurity by Dr. Reid, in his _Essays on the Intellectual Powers_, Essay II. ch. 10. He was a subject of correspondence between Sir James Mackintosh, then at Bombay, and Dr. Parr, and an object of curiosity to Dugald Stewart.

A beautiful reprint of the _Clavis_ (of the original edition of which only seven copies were then known to exist) appeared in Edinburgh in 1836; and in the following year it was included in a collection of _Metaphysical Tracts by English Philosophers of the Eighteenth Century_, prepared for the press by Dr. Parr.

783 William, fourth Lord Berkeley of Stratton, born about 1663, succeeded his brother in 1697, and died in 1741 at Bruton in Somersets.h.i.+re. The Berkeleys of Stratton were descended from a younger son of Maurice, Lord Berkeley of Berkeley Castle, who died in 1326. His descendant, Sir John Berkeley of Bruton, a zealous Royalist, was created first Lord Berkeley of Stratton in 1658, and in 1669 became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, an office which he held till 1672, when he was succeeded by the Earl of Ess.e.x (see Burke's _Extinct Peerages_). It is said that Bishop Berkeley's father was related to him. The Bishop himself was introduced by Dean Swift, in 1713, to the Lord Berkeley of Stratton, to whom the _Dialogues_ are dedicated, as "a cousin of his Lords.h.i.+p." The t.i.tle of Berkeley of Stratton became extinct on the death of the fifth Lord in 1773.

784 This interesting Preface is omitted in his last edition of the _Dialogues_.

785 The Second Part of the _Principles_ was never published, and only in part written. See Editor's Preface to the _Principles_.

_ 786 Principles_, Introduction, sect. 1.

787 Berkeley's philosophy is professedly a "revolt" from abstract ideas to an enlightened sense of concrete realities. In these Dialogues _Philonous_ personates the revolt, and represents Berkeley. _Hylas_ vindicates the uncritical conception of independent Matter.

788 Berkeley's zeal against Matter in the abstract, and all abstract ideas of concrete things, is therefore not necessarily directed against "universal intellectual notions"-"the principles and theorems of sciences."

789 Here "reason" means reasoning or inference. Cf. _Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 42, including the distinction between "suggestion" and "inference."

790 "figure" as well as colour, is here included among the original data of sight.

791 "without the mind," i.e. unrealised by any percipient mind.

792 Cf. _Principles_, sect. 14.

793 Cf. _Principles_, sect. 14, 15.