The Works of George Berkeley Part 88

890 i.e. abstract Matter.

891 Cf. _New Theory of Vision_, sect. 49; and _New Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 9, 10, 15, &c.

892 Cf. _New Theory of Vision_, sect. 84-86.

893 "the connexion of ideas," i.e. the order providentially maintained in nature.

894 Cf. _Principles_, Introduction, sect. 23-25.

895 Cf. _Principles_, sect. 8-10, 86, 87.

896 This difficulty is thus pressed by Reid:-"The ideas in my mind cannot be the same with the ideas in any other mind; therefore, if the objects I perceive be only ideas, it is impossible that two or more such minds can perceive the same thing. Thus there is one unconfutable consequence of Berkeley's system, which he seems not to have attended to, and from which it will be found difficult, if at all possible, to guard it. The consequence I mean is this-that, although it leaves us sufficient evidence of a Supreme Mind, it seems to take away all the evidence we have of other intelligent beings like ourselves. What I call a father, or a brother, or a friend, is only a parcel of ideas in my own mind ; they cannot possibly have that relation to another mind which they have to mine, any more than the pain felt by me can be the _individual pain_ felt by another. I am thus left alone as the only creature of G.o.d in the universe" (Hamilton's _Reid_, pp. 284-285). Implied Solipsism or Panegoism is thus charged against Berkeley, unless his conception of the material world is further guarded.

897 Reid and Hamilton argue in like manner against a fundamentally representative sense-perception.

898 Cf. _Principles_, sect. 6.

899 Cf. Ibid., sect. 87-90.

900 Cf. Ibid., sect. 18.

901 Cf. _Principles_, sect. 24.

902 "unknown," i.e. unrealised in percipient life.

903 Cf. _Principles_, sect. 28-33.

904 See also Collier's _Clavis Universalis_, p. 6: "Two or more persons who are present at a concert of music may indeed in some measure be said to hear the _same_ notes; yet the sound which the one hears is _not the very same_ with the sound which another hears, _because the souls or persons are supposed to be different_."

905 Berkeley seems to hold that in _things_ there is no ident.i.ty other than perfect similarity-only in _persons_. And even as to personal ident.i.ty he is obscure. Cf. _Siris_, sect. 347, &c.

906 But the question is, whether the very ideas or phenomena that are perceived by me _can_ be also perceived by other persons; and if not, how I can discover that "other persons" exist, or that any finite person except myself is cognizant of the ideal cosmos-if the sort of _sameness_ that Berkeley advocates is all that can be predicated of concrete ideas; which are thus only _similar_, or generically the same. Unless the ideas are _numerically_ the same, can different persons make signs to one another through them?

907 Omitted in author's last edition.

908 This seems to imply that intercourse between finite persons is maintained through ideas or phenomena presented to the senses, under a tacit faith in divinely guaranteed correspondence between the phenomena of which I am conscious, and the phenomena of which my neighbour is conscious; so that they are _practically_ "the same."

If we are living in a fundamentally divine, and therefore absolutely trustworthy, universe, the phenomena presented to my senses, which I attribute to the agency of another person, are so attributed rightly. For if not, the so-called cosmos is adapted to mislead me.

909 This explanation is often overlooked by Berkeley's critics.

910 Cf. _Principles_, sect. 82-84.

911 i.e. if you take the term _idea_ in its wholly subjective and popular meaning.

912 i.e. if you take the term _idea_ in its objective meaning.

913 "philosophic," i.e. _pseudo_-philosophic, against which he argues.

914 Had this their relative existence-this realisation of the material world through finite percipient and volitional life-any beginning?

May not G.o.d have been eternally presenting phenomena to the senses of percipient beings in cosmical order, if not on this planet yet elsewhere, perhaps under other conditions? Has there been any beginning in the succession of finite persons?

915 In the first and second editions only.

916 Is "creation" by us distinguishable from continuous evolution, unbeginning and unending, in divinely const.i.tuted order; and is there a distinction between creation or evolution of _things_ and creation or evolution of _persons_?

917 Cf. _Siris_, sect. 347-349.

918 "Matter," i.e. Matter in this pseudo-philosophical meaning of the word.

919 Thus Origen in the early Church. That "Matter" is co-eternal with G.o.d would mean that G.o.d is eternally making things real in the percipient experience of persons.

920 Cf. _Principles_, sect. 85-156, in which the religious and scientific advantages of the new conception of matter and the material cosmos are ill.u.s.trated, when it is rightly understood and applied.

921 "substance and accident"-"subjects and adjuncts,"-in the first and the second edition.

922 Cf. _Principles_, sect. 28-42. In _Siris_, sect. 294-297, 300-318, 335, 359-365, we have glimpses of thought more allied to Platonism, if not to Hegelianism.

923 "Matter," i.e. matter unrealised in any mind, finite or Divine.

924 These two propositions are a summary of Berkeley's conception of the material world. With him, the _immediate_ objects of sense, realise in _perception_, are independent of the _will_ of the percipient, and are thus external to his proper personality. Berkeley's "material world" of enlightened Common Sense, resulting from two factors, Divine and human, is independent of each finite mind; but not independent of all living Mind.

925 "voces male intellectae." Cf. _Principles of Human Knowledge_, "Introduction," sect. 6, 23-25, on the abuse of language, especially by abstraction.

926 "veterum philosophorum." The history of ancient speculations about motion, from the paradoxes of Zeno downwards, is, in some sort, a history of ancient metaphysics. It involves s.p.a.ce, Time, and the material world, with the ultimate causal relation of Nature to Spirit.

927 "hujus aevi philosophos." As in Bacon on motion, and in the questions raised by Newton, Borelli, Leibniz, and others, discussed in the following sections.

928 Sect. 3-42 are concerned with the principle of Causality, exemplified in the motion, or change of place and state, that is continually going on in the material world, and which was supposed by some to explain all the phenomena of the universe.

929 "vis." The a.s.sumption that _active power_ is an immediate datum of sense is the example here offered of the abase of abstract words. He proceeds to dissolve the a.s.sumption by shewing that it is meaningless.

930 "principio"-the ultimate explanation or originating cause. Cf. sect.

36. Metaphors, or indeed empty words, are accepted for explanations, it is argued, when _bodily_ power or force, in any form, e.g.

gravitation, is taken as the real cause of motion. To call these "occult causes" is to say nothing that is intelligible. The perceived sensible effects and their customary sequences are all we know. Physicists are still deluded by words and metaphors.

931 Cf. sect. 53, where _sense_, _imagination_, and _intelligence_ are distinguished.

932 Cf. _Principles_, Introd. 16, 20, 21; also _Alciphron_, Dial. VII.

sect. 8, 17.

933 [La Materia altro non e che un vaso di Circe incantato, il quale serve per ricettacolo della forza et de' momenti dell' impeto. La forzae l'impeti sono astratti tanto sottili, sono quintessenze tanto spiritose, che in altre ampolle non si possono racchiudere, fuor che nell' intima corpulenza de' solidi naturali, Vide _Lezioni Accademiche_.]-AUTHOR. Torricelli (1608-47), the eminent Italian physicist, and professor of mathematics at Florence, who invented the barometer.

934 Borelli (1608-79), Italian professor of mathematics at Pisa, and then of medicine at Florence; see his _De Vi Percussionis_, cap.

XXIV. prop. 88, and cap. XXVII.

935 "per effectum," i.e. by its sensible effects-real power or active force not being a datum of the senses, but found in the spiritual efficacy, of which we have an example in our personal agency.

936 "vim mortuam." The only power we can find is the living power of Mind. Reason is perpetually active in the universe, imperceptible through the senses, and revealed to _them_ only in its sensible effects. "Power," e.g. "gravitation," in things, _per se_, is distinguished from perceived "motion" only through illusion due to misleading abstraction. There is no _physical_ power, intermediate between spiritual agency, on the one hand, and the sensible changes we see, on the other. Cf. sect. 11.