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The Relation of Berkeley's Later
to His Earlier Idealism

BY

CARL V. TOWER, A.M., Ph.D.,

INSTRUCTOR IN PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.

PRESENTED TO THE

FACULTY OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY FOR THE DEGREE

OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY.

ANN ARBOR:
1899.

The Relation of Berkeley's Later
to His Earlier Idealism

BY

CARL V. TOWER, A.M., Ph.D.,

INSTRUCTOR IN PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.

PRESENTED TO THE

FACULTY OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY FOR THE DEGREE

OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY.

ANN ARBOR
1899.

•

TH

E INLAND PRESS, ANN ARBOR, MICH.

ps\

ERRATA.

Page 7. Note 1, read p. 176.

Page 12. Note 5, read note 3, p. 47.

Page 13. Note 1, read note 3, page 47.

Page 20. Line 10, read muscle instead of muscular.

Page 55. Line 29, read mists instead of midst.

Page 66. Line 24, read Humian instead of human.

CHAPTER I.

THE

UNIVERSIT

ORNJJ

CONTENTS.

1. Introduction.

2. Abstract Ideas.

(a) Abstract Images.

(b) Universals.

CHAPTER II.

Ideas and Things.

1. Idea as Mere Sensation.

2. Idea as Percept.

3. Spirit, Phenomenon and Idea.

CHAPTER III. Constitution of Experience.

1. Relations.

(a) Arbitrary Connection.

(b) Necessary Connection.

2. Notions and Their Objects.

(a) Notion of Relations.

(b) Notion of Spirit.

CHAPTER IV. Conclusion.

179916

CHAPTER I.

§ I. INTRODUCTION.

On one of the pages of Berkeley's Commonplace Book, the
author notes that ''nothing can be a proof against one side of a
contradiction that bears equally hard upon the other." One might
be inclined to admit that a just estimate of the Berkeleian philos-
ophy resolves itself into this reflection, if it were not that historical
evidence decidedly favors a more positive interpretation. Unfor-
tunately, the true appreciation of the attitude adopted toward
Reality by a philosopher who, like Berkeley, is not a system-maker
— scarcely a systematizer of philosophic conceptions — is often
partially obscured by the fact that the positive construction placed
upon his work by subsequent thinking sometimes emphasizes the
negative element of his philosophy, and so isolates it from the
course of later philosophical development. This is a truism,
but its explanation simply is that the spirit of philosophy respects
the system by which its course of development is for a time
apparently arrested. When theory succeeds theory in rapid suc-
cession, the progress of thought is in single file. A feature, an
aspect, is sufficient to constitute a farther step in advance. The
value of the theory is merely extensive, while that of the system is
also intensive. The system serves always to recall the personality
of the system maker, the theory is merged in its later outgrowths,
apart from which it is abstract and featureless.

Berkeley was not the creator of a system. Rather was he a
man with a theory of life, of morals, of Reality. Thus it is not
surprising if, in his philosophy, the many definite tendencies in the
direction of Empiricism have come to be regarded as almost the
only positive elements in his conception of the world.1 The his-
tory of philosophy makes evident the value of Berkeley as a link
in the empirical succession from Locke to Mill, though with
regard to his philosophy as a whole, it may likewise be said that
Empiricism forms a negative rather than a positive element. The
lines of thought followed by him in his earlier metaphysical under-
taking are undoubtedly those which make most clearly and defi-
nitely toward the empirical views adopted by his successors. It

1 " In its best known form, as a factor in the history of philosophy, only an
empirical idealism." Burt: "A History of Modern Philosophy M ( 1S92).

— 6 —

was, perhaps, unfortunate for the later acceptance of the Berke-
leian theory of immaterialism, in a form more acceptable to its
originator, that the ' new doctrine ' found so ready an acceptance
as to what have since been regarded as its essential features: The
Cartesian dualism of thought and existence, so haltingly maintained
by Locke1 in his doctrine of substance, added to Berkeley's own
nominalistic tendency and further sustained by his religious ' re-
pugnance ' to an atheistical, unthinking ' matter', were the forces
at work in the life of Berkeley, which early culminated in his view
that, upon the existence or non-existence of abstract matter, there
lay at stake the consistency of human reason with itself, and our
only warrant for the objectivity of the ideals which human reason
sets for itself. It may indeed be objected that these ideals, being
so apparently of a theological cast, were the rocks and stubble
which prevented the successful spading up of false notions und pre-
judices so vigorously begun. But as Berkeley does not lay claim
to a philosophy without presuppositions, so neither does he regard
the prepossessions of his opponents as in themselves obstacles to
truth, provided only the motives underlying them be not inherently
self -contradictory.

Whatever may have been the motive which determined Berke-
ley to become the promulgator of immaterialism, the discoverer
himself seemed scarcely aware that the world was already ripe for
his views. In the enthusiasm which formed the necessary accom-
paniment of the awakening consciousness of his mission in the
world of philosophy, Berkeley was in part led to misconstrue
the task which he had set for himself. Aware that he was to inau-
gurate a revolution in the current modes of metaphysical thinking,
and mindful of the "mighty sect of men" which was to oppose
him, the single problem of the existence or non-existence of mat-
ter assumed for him a size disproportionate to its true significance,
in view of the other questions which an idealistic philosophy is
called upon to solve. Immaterialism2 is far removed from idealism
in any positive and definite sense, though the former meant for
Berkeley the latter, and accordingly upon the doctrine of the im-
materiality of matter — the first step in the idealistic progression
which ensued, his early efforts are chiefly directed. The success
which he attained in the clear and forcible series of arguments em-
bodied in the Principles of Human Knowledge, was at the time
grudgingly attested in comments, which, however, may best be ex-
pressed in the words of the more favorably disposed critic, Hume:

i Cf. T. H. Webb: "Veil of Isis," p. 12.

2 "It is the negative side of his philosophy to which— unfortunately, but
naturally — he was led in his early works to give the greatest relative considera-
tion." Morris: "British Thought and Thinkers", p. 221.

Berkeley's arguments says he, "admit of no answer and produce
no conviction."1

" But the lessons in scepticism which Hume drew from them
were foreign, not only to the spirit and intention of Berkeley, but
in not a few instances, even in his earlier philosophy seemed directly
opposed to the mould in which it was cast. Berkeley certainly over-
shot his mark in his too vigorous insistence upon the sensuous
character of all that we know; and in consequence the objectivity
of thought relations, which any idealism of value must in some
sense lay claim to discover, appear, indeed, in his philosophy as
a background, but highly colored with theological notions. His
idealism, being a theory rather than a system, the various aspects
which it assumes are external to one another; yet one form of ideal-
ism drops out of sight, rather than is premeditatedly abandoned
for another. He runs the whole gamut of idealisms from phe-
nomenalism to what is in the end very like Platonic Realism.
There is something kaleidescopic about this progression, one can-
not say that there is any true line of demarcation between the
earlier and the later, although the fundamental difference is appa-
rent. Berkeley never deepens his conceptions to the extent of
fully ascertaining if they are in agreement or non-agreement with
the propositions which form the starting point of his early posi-
tion.2 Thus there results a number of seemingly heterogeneous
lines of thought which are, in great part, rather suggestions and
beginnings in thought than steps in a course of logical development.
If, then, our interpretation shall endeavor to determine the resultant
of these lines of thought it ought to effect this, not by a process of
subjectively balancing the evidence for or against the earlier or the
later theory as representative of Berkeley, but by taking such ex-
plicit utterances as he offers us in his general attitude toward phil-
osophy other than his own. Berkeley has most frequently been
regarded as an extreme Nominalist, and upon this basis largely
rests the claim of Empiricism upon him as its representative. This
Nominalism, whether of an extreme or, as some would have it, of
a modified type, is best set forth in his discussion of Abstract

1 Works; Hume IV, p. 181.

'* ''We may be "inclined to wonder," says Balfour in his biographical introduc-
tion to Berkeley's works, that a man who had done so much before he was thirty, had
not done much more by the time he was sixty. * * * That he produced so
little in his maturer years is doubtless due in part to temperament, and to the dis-
traction of an unsettled and wandering life, but it must also be largely attributed
to the almost total absence of intelligent criticism, either from friends or foes, under
which Berkeley suffered throughout the whole period during which criticism might
have aroused him to make some serious effort to develop or to defend the work of
his youth." "The Works of George Berkeley,'' edited by George Sampson,
1808.

— 8 —

Ideas, which constitutes his Introduction to the Principles of Hu
man Knowledge, and it is accordingly with this work as a basis
that we shall introduce the first of the topics in this discussion.

§ 2. ABSTRACT IDEAS.

(a) Abstract Images.

The philosophical discussions and-dialogues of Berkeley every-
where abound in figures, and the effect of his metaphors is sometimes
to make one think that the Platonism of his later years was indeed the
undercurrent of his life, for a time obscured by the new discovery
which attracted him in his youth. The predominating figure which,
in his early philosophy, serves to clothe his conception of the
world is that of the analogy of human language to a divine lan-
guage, which forms the interpretable system of nature. Our fail-
ure to interpret correctly this divine nature-language is in a large
measure owing to our lack of appreciation of the true function of
human language.

Now Philosophers have generally regarded the paradoxes and
inconsistencies that reason is wont to encounter in its search for
metaphysical truth as due to the inherent weakness of our faculties
which, being finite, are unable to "penetrate into the inward
essence and constitution of things"1 in themselves infinite. But
"it is a hard thing to suppose right deductions from true princi-
ples should ever end in consequences which cannot be maintained
or made consistent."2 Human reason, we should think, ought, if
unhindered, to yield more satisfactory conclusions to the problems
which it has it self raised, and "we should believe that God has
dealt more bountifully with the sons of men than to give them a
strong desire for that knowledge which he had placed quite out of
their reach."3

The errors to which the untrammelled exercise of reason has
given rise have been attributed solely to the finitude of reason as
such, and it has not yet been sufficiently pointed out that the most
fruitful source of them is language. The flexibility of language,
which adapts it to ordinary intercourse and the common business
of life, becomes its chief difficulty when it is of necessity em-
ployed in the nicer discriminations of metaphysics. Here as
everywhere the word is our master, or is likely to become so, if the
relations which it bears to our reasoning be not definitely under-
stood.

1 Introduction to the Principles of Human Knowledge, § 2.

2 Ibid. § 3.

3 Ibid.

— 9 —

Usually the word may be said to signify a conscious process;
frequently, also, it does not. In the former case a conscious con-
tent is the equivalent of the word, in the latter merely a cerebral
process. "Fear, love, hatred, admiration, and disdain, and the
like, arise immediately in the mind upon the perception of certain
words, without any ideas coming between " ' — or, on the other hand
the word may arouse as its equivalent a more or less definite idea.
Language has thus other uses than that of arousing conscious pro-
cesses by coupling a word with a particular definitely recognized
conscious content or idea, since the word may arouse to action or
passion without the intervention of the idea. Thus we see that a
word may stand for no idea at all. or it may stand for other par-
ticular ideas than that of which it serves as the sign in any particu-
lar instance.

But the adaptability of language to the demands made upon it
by ordinary life render it impossible for a word, by means of a fixed
definition, to correspond in every case to the same definite con-
scious content. The definition indeed serves to govern and
restrict the corresponding idea to relation^ among other ideas to
which the definition is also applicable; but it is not true that the
word stands always for the same idea. The mistaken notion that
every name has "one only precise and settled signification" 2 has
occasioned the belief in abstract ideas or abstract notions from
which has sprung much confusion in metaphysical thinking.
Thus men have come to regard the concepts of qualities, or of
beings, which include several coexistent qualities, as abstract ideas.

We are now in a position to see a little way into the difficulty
which Berkeley finds with the 'abstract idea' of his opponents.
Without attempiing in this place to establish a rigid definition of
the Berkeleyian idea, it may be noted that is is oftenest synonymous
with the above acceptation of a particular, definite, recognizable
content of consciousness. The freedom which Locke allowed
himself in the definition of idea as, "whatever is the object of the
understanding when a man thinks "3 is a liberty which Berkeley
does nothing to restrict. The two conditions which it seems are
everywhere necessary to the idea are that it shall be (a) a content
of consciousness, (b) recognized as a definite content of conscious-
ness, i. e., perceived.

Now the abstract idea appears in Berkeley's eyes to be in the
following anomalous position. As idea, it must be recognizable as
a definite content of consciousness, but, as abstract, it must — so
it is claimed — be different in kind from the particulars, out of which,

1 Principles of Human Knowledge; § 20 of Introduction.

2 Ibid. § 18.

3 " Essay concerning Human Understanding." Introduction, § 8

— 10 —

by observation of their common likenesses, the abstract idea has
been formed. What Berkeley seems to say to his opponents in his
polemic against abstract ideas is in effect this: 'You tell me that
there are such things as abstract ideas — that besides the ideas of
sense, the ideas of imagination, the ideas "perceived by attending
to the passions and operations of the mind,"1 the ideas of mem-
ory, ete., etc., you have also ideas from which all particulars are
excluded, and which, though relating to the particular ideas that
may be subsumed under them, are not themselves particular. But
if these ideas for which you contend are anything at al/, they are
recognizable by you as definite conscious contents, and are thus
particular, and, in so far, like the other particular ideas which you
have. You can accordingly describe them, and, having recourse
to introspection, you must surely discover that all you have are
particular ideas. By some of these ideas you may indeed denote
numbers of other particular ideas — but nowhere will you find the
thing you call abstract idea.'

If the foregoing is a correct interpretation of Berkeley's
thought about abstract ideas, it is easy to see that his difficulty
with them lay in the unimaginableness of such things. An abstract
image is, as Fraser says, manifestly absurd.2 Taken in this sense
it is doubtful if Locke — whom Berkeley seems to have chiefly in
mind — ever seriously contended for such a thing.3 On the other
hand, if Berkeley be not understood to have thus misconceived the
doctrine of his opponent as grossly as ever Locke misconstrued
Descartes' 'innate ideas,' the distinction between his own view
and that of the upholder of abstract ideas is far less than is often
supposed. For Berkeley by no means denies the possibility of
there being general ideas. All he denies is that there are general
ideas or general notions taken in the above sense of abstract
images. Let us see if Locke's own description of abstract ideas
may serve further to explain Berkeley's difficulties.

Locke says: " The use of words then being to stand as out-
ward marks of our internal ideas, and those ideas being taken
from particular things, if every particular idea that we take in
should have a distinct name, names must be endless. To prevent
this, the mind makes particular ideas received from particular
objects to become general; which is done by considering them as
they are in the mind such appearances — separate from other exist-
ences, and the circumstances of real existence, as time, place, or

1 " Principles," § i.

2 Selections, p 19, note.

3 Like Berkeley, "Locke has everywhere a sober dread of abstraction, and
clings to the particular and concrete with a sense of the risk of losing the real in
the emptiness of the universal." Locke's 'Essay'; Fraser's ed., vol. II, p. 101,
note 2.

— 11 —

any other concomitant ideas. This is called abstraction, whereby
ideas taken from particular beings become general representatives
of all of the same kind; and their names general names, applicable
to whatever exists conformable to such abstract ideas. Such pre-
cise naked appearances in the mind'" — -which Beckeley takes to mean
images — " without considering how, whence, or with what others
they come there, the understanding lays up (with names commonly
annexed to them) as the standards to rank real existences into sorts,
as they agree with these patterns, and to denominate them accord-
ingly."1

Now this passage in which the doctrine of abstraction is ex-
plicitly set forth, does not of itself particularly favor Berkeley's
interpretation of Locke, but the subsequent use which the latter
makes of abstractions in which e. g. the idea of extension is treated
as something which we possess apart from the idea of that which
is extended, and the idea of hardness apart from that which is felt
— these, coupled with the passage immediately following the one
we have just quoted, in which it is said that "the having of gen-
eral ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and
brute," induce Berkeley to think that the having of abstract ideas
means the possession of a faculty the existence of which man is
not able to verify by direct introspection of himself or by observa-
tion of the way in which objects come to be recognized in consci-
ousness of a lower order than his own. In one of the dialogues
there is to be found this passage: " I understand that the several
parts of the world became gradually preceivable to finite spirits,
endowed with proper faculties."2 If this maybe accepted as a
hint toward an indeal evolution or spiritual unfolding of nature,3
it may be seen that Berkley would naturally rebel against the claim
that man possesses a faculty so different in kind4 from that belong-
ing to animals of a lower order than himself, and so undesirable as
an element of his own consciousness. The abstract idea, in the
sense of abstract image — that indescribable something which is
neither this nor that definite and particular thing, but which is set
over against the other definite and imaginable contents of consci-
ousness— an idea of this sort Berkeley claims it is impossible to/
frame.

(b) Universals.

It would be in a great measure to anticipate a discussion of
the notion and its objects if we were at this point to dwell at length
upon Berkeley's positive conception of universals. Yet a few

1 Locke's Essay, Bk. II, Ch. XI, 9.

2 " Philonous", 3d dialogue.

3Cf. also, " Siris," note 2 of Fraser's "Selection's," p. 343.
4Intro. to "Principles," § n.

— 12 —

words may be sufficient to show that with the abstract idea, in any-
other sense than that of abstract image, he finds no very great
difficulty. He regards the abstract image as an absurdity because,
although a content of consciousness different in kind from particu
lars, it, however, always reduces itself to particulars which it pro-
fesses not to be. "But," says he, "it is to be noted that I do not
deny absolutely there are general ideas, but only that there are any
abstract general ideas; for, in the passage we have quoted wherein
there is mention of general ideas, it is always supposed that they
are formed by abstraction after the manner set forth in sections 8
and 9,"1 which last '-'I do not think a whit more needful for the
enlargement of knowledge than for communication."2 "It is, I
know, a point much insisted on that all knowledge and demonstra-
tion are about universal notions, to which I fully agree; but then it
does not appear to me that those notions are formed by abstrac-
tion in the manner premised — universality, so far as I can com-
prehend, not consisting in the absolute, positive3 nature or concep-
tion of anything, but in the relation it bears to the particulars
signified or represented by it; by virtue whereof it is that things,
names, or notions, being in their own nature particular, are ren-
dered universal."4

Thus it is not the claim that we are able to generalize experi-
ence by means of "universal notions" to which Berkeley takes
exception, but rather the claim, which rightly or wrongly he reads
into Locke, "that those notions are formed by abstraction in the
manner premised." And it is not so much the process of abstrac-
tion that he objects to as the hypostatization of the abstraction
thus formed; for, thus hypostatized, it is the abstract image to
which every element of particularity is denied. The abstract
universal, in fulfilling its claim to be idea in consciousness, must
have its sensuous aspect, and so must submit itself to the condition
of being particular,5 though a particular with a universal reference;
but this necessary element of particularity is denied it by its
claimants; hence the falsity and uselessness of such an idea. But
it might be objected to Berkeley, this abstract universal has indeed
a sensuous side, though the particularity of the idea does not neces-
sarily follow from this, and consequently it is not what you claim
it to be — an abstract image. Thus it is surely possible to form the
idea of man in general which, in the meaning that it has for me, is

1 Introduction to Principles of Human Knowledge, § 12.
1 Ibid. § 15

si. e. As an inflexible quasi-entity in the form of abstract image, having no
relation to the particular to which it is presumably applicable.
* Introduction to Principles of Human Knowledge, § 15.
J v. note 2, p. 131 of this essay.

— 13 —

different from the particular fleeting images which accompany this
abstract idea; and, as the latter has for me this universal meaning,
it is in consciousness a something distinct from the particular. To
this we might, in behalf of Berkeley, ask in reply: Why then is it
not the case that, granted the same premises, we march straight to
the same conclusions? If we differ in our reasonings, is it not
because we differ in our experiences, and because, in consequence,
the sensuous images, which are only the obverse of the universals
we employ, necessarily have something to do with our conclusions?
In the Commonplace Book, Berkeley instructs an imaginary reader
as follows: "Let him not regard my words any otherwise than as
occasions of bringing into his mind determined significations . . .
I desire and warn him not to expect to find truth in any book or
anywhere but in his own mind." Our assurance of truth, he seems
to imply, is in the correspondence of the experiences of finite
beings; and hence, if we would have truth we must not neglect the
particular sensuous aspect of our experience, nor yet regard it as a
hinderance to the universal which it bears within it. Not that we
could ever attain truth by means of particulars which have no uni-
versal aspect, though every idea is indeed particular. "If we will
annex a meaning to our words and speak only of what we can con-
ceive, I believe we shall acknowledge that an idea, which, consid-
ered in itself, is particular, becomes general by being made to
represent or stand for all other particular ideas of the same sort."
The idea, then, which is in itself definite and particular, the
image, and the conglomerate of particular experiences, has never-
theless a representative character in which may be seen the
evaluation by the rational consciousness of the particulars which
the image is taken to represent. That is, we are confined to par-
ticulars, Berkeley says; but particulars, at least some of them, have
a universal reference, this universal reference consisting in simply
recognizing that the general idea has no peculiarity which marks it
off as the special property of any particular idea.1 Thus the idea
of a triangle is a general idea or notion, not "as if I could frame
the idea of a triangle which is neither equilateral, nor scalenon, nor
equicrural; but only that the particular triangle which I consider,
whether of this or of that sort it matters not, doth equally stand
for and represent all rectilinear triangles whatsoever, and is in that
sense universal."'2 •

As a conclusion of the matter we may, I think, fairly interpret
Berkeley as follows: In our thinking we are confined to particu-
lars i. e., there are not in our consciousness universals existing as
quasi-entities over against a number of particulars different from

1 Cf . later discussions of the notion; also note 2, p. — of this essay.
* Introduction to the "Principles," § 15.

— 14 —

them in kind. The human mind is of the nature of a republic
rather than of a monarchical system. . On the other hand, the par-
ticularity of the idea is not its only aspect; for the universality of
certain of our ideas at least is as true and immediately recogniz-
able as the particularity which belongs to them all. If this is a
fair interpretation of Berkeley, as we read this doctrine in the
Introduction to the Principles of Human Knowledge, I see noth-
ing that can justify the belief that he assigns a prior right to the
particular as against the universal. Rather does it seem to be a
plea for the equal rights of the universal and the particular, as dis-
tinguishable features of the idea.

But the importance of Berkeley's defense of the particular, as
against the asserted existence of a featureless abstraction, must
not, on that account, be minimized. He is here as elsewhere more
often the champion of the particular than of the universal; and the
impetuosity of his attack upon the territory usurped by his oppon-
ent doubtless prevented him from seeing that his own defenses
were hastily constructed, sufficient for the occasion only, but not
of a character to withstand the carefully planned attacks of later
thought. Thus it comes about that "his defective views on this
subject perplex his whole philosophy." Dr. James McCosh, no
very friendly critic, says: "he rejects, as I believe he ought,
abstract ideas, in the sense of Locke, that is, in the sense of im-
ages of qualities; and he claims it is his merit that he gets rid of

grand abstractions but, while he has exposed the errors

of Locke, he has not established the positive truth Had

he taken as much pains in unfolding what is contained in ' consid-
ering ' a figure as triangular, and Peter as man, without consider-
ing other qualities, and what is involved in forming general propo-
sitions and reasoning about qualities, as he has taken to expel
abstract ideas in the sense of phantasms, he would have saved his
own philosophy, and philosophy generally from his day to this,
from an immense conglomeration of confusion."1 This is no
doubt true; but it is not impossible that where, as in the case of
Berkeley's philosophy, it is admitted on all sides that "an immense
conglomeration of confusion " exists, a part of the confusion may
be due to the neglect of certain strongly marked lines of thought
in favor of others less prominent in his philosophy as a whole, but
more clearly developed at certain stages of its progress. As Profes-
sor Wenley says: "Like Kant, Berkeley is not to be regarded in one
aspect of his work only, and the same materials which viewed in a
certain aspect, constitute in a large measure his value for philos-
ophy should perhaps be viewed in another light, if we are to be
true to the thought of the founder of idealism himself."2

'McCosh: ''Locke's Theory of Knowledge with a notice of Berkeley " in
■Criteria of Truth, p. 57.

2 "British Thought and Modern Speculation," in Scottish Review, Vol. 19.

CHAPTER II.

THINGS AND IDEAS.

In the beginning which we have thus made in our attempted
determination of the general Berkeleian conception of the world,
his view of abstract ideas has been given the first place as the
epistemological moti£ of that idealistic attitude toward Reality
which Berkeley Inaugurated. Partly on account of the natural
limitations attaching to human language, partly because of the
negligence of metaphysicians, who do not always verify the cor-
respondence between the terms which they employ, and definite
concrete thoughts, without which words are mere stumbling blocks
in the way of logical thinking — it has come about that a kind of
spurious currency was brought into circulation, which has not
been without its effect upon the metaphysics of the past. It is
Berkeley's professed task to recall men to a more adequate appre-
ciation of the meanings that underlie the terms by which they
designate supposed existences. "Nothing," says he, "seems of
more importance toward erecting a firm system of sound and real
knowledge, which may be proof against the assaults of scepticism
than to lay the beginning in a distinct explication of what is meant
by thing, reality, existence, for in vain shall we dispute concern-
ing the ' real existence ' of things, or pretend to any knowledge
thereof, so long as we have not fixed the meaning of those words."1

In this enquiry with which Berkeley sets out there may be
found at least some feeble anticipation of that later " voyage of
discovery " which was to tax the energies of a mightier intellect
than his own. "'Tis on the meaning and import of existence that
I chiefly insist." The metaphysical question: what is Reality?
Berkeley is the first to raise explicitly in the form, what is the
meaning of Reality or rather, we may say, what assignable mean-
ing can we give to that which we call Reality, i. e. by what ideas
can we designate the Real ? The solution of this problem is partly
foreshadowed in the very manner of stating the question itself.
The Real must at least fulfill the negative condition of not being
that which cannot be expressed or in some way verified in ideas.
But then what are ideas ?

For answer Berkeley unquestioningly sets out from the Car-
tesian separation of thought and existence, idea and thing. Re-
ality was virtually comprehended under these two categories, and

1 Principles of Human Knowledge § S9.

— 1(5 —

as the Lockian psychological theory of knowledge progressed it
became more and more evident that these two heterogeneous quid-
dities would never fulfill the requirement of explaining one another,
which had been implied in the assertion of their mutual relation.
There was needed a bold stroke which would at once destroy the
independence of thought or substance. The violent disruption of
these two existents effected by Decartes must be succeeded by the
summary relegation of one or the other to the rank of dependent
existence. And there was no question as to which should ulti-
mately yield precedence to the other. The unknown must ever
derive its explanation from the known. Knowledge had been de-
fined by Locke as the preception of the connexion and agreement
or disagreement and repugnancy between our ideas. It only
remained to discover whether or not ideas alone, and the knowl-
edge we have by means of them, are in harmony with the ordinary
preceptions of life and that partially organized system of truth of
which we are made aware in the knowledge of the several sciences.
An affirmative answer to this question would mean that ideas,
hitherto conceived as subjective merely, and thus in separation
from an unknown substance, must declare their adequacy to fulfill
all the conditions of objectivity required by the scientific and
ordinary naive consciousness. The objectivity of the idea once
established, as idea it would yet retain its essential relatedness t-j
the percipient and cognitive consciousness, and thus maintain its
position as an element in a system of conscious experiences. Carte-
sian substance could thus be banished to the limbo of useless
metaphysical abstractions.

The obstacles in the way of the desired consummation which
presented themselves to Berkeley were, in the first place, the preju-
dices of mankind, and second, the semblance of agreement between
substance and ideas, which still remained in the Lockian epistem-
ology as the formal assertion of a correspondence between ideas,
and the primary qualities of things.

With regard to the first difficulty, the long established prepos-
sessions of men in favor of unthinking substance would naturally
render them unfavorably disposed toward an abrupt reversal of
their customary ways of thinking. Thus, until they could be
brought to see that true objectivity does not necessarily imply the
existence of an unknown or unknowable substance, and that ideas
do not of necessity mean floating fancies and mere subjective crea-
tions of the mind, prejudice must be overcome by a review of the
practical benefits conferred upon mankind by the Berkeleian "new
discovery." Now, the extreme materialism of Hobbes and Gas-
sendi, and the tendency towards the complete mechanical inter-
pretation of everything, prevalent at the time of Berkeley, which,
as b£ declares, is. foreign t& his nature, together with his own pious.

— 17 —

inclinations, brought it about that practical benefits were for him,
in large part, synonymous with theological benefits. The result was
that Berkeley fought the battle of Immaterialism with the Essay of
Locke in one hand and the weapons of adeistic theology in the other.

But, in the second place, as we have said, Locke's emphasis
upon the ideal character of existence ill served to maintain a union
between the primary qualities of substance and their ideal counter-
parts in the mind. The 'secondary qualities' had already taken
their places in the ideal, which was also the knowable, system of
experiences. Color, sound, heat, etc., many of the 'ideas'
which go to make up the world of which we have actual experience,
had already been declared subjective. The 'primary qualities,'
five in number, extension, motion or rest, figure and number,
together with impenetrability or solidity, were also 'ideas;'
although supposedly the conscious effects of unknown coexistent
causes. The only inlets into the "dark chamber of the under-
standing" were the senses; yet so far as concerned real knowledge
of the world beyond consciousness, the senses were closed doors.
The charge of subjective idealism would have been preferred
against Locke had not Berkeley's own doctrine been at hand.1

The only egress from subjectivity lay in the recognition that
all ideas of sense may, in one aspect, be viewed as subjective;
while, in another aspect, it is equally true that they may be
regarded as objective; and it is only in this way that objectivity of
system, that is, rational knowledge, can declare itself. Thus we
may, I think, understand Berkeley to say: If you have regard to
an unthinking 'matter' or 'substance,' unknown or unknowable,
independent of mind, I maintain that, in such a reference, ideas
are subjective, mind-related things beyond which you cannot pass
to supposed existences different from conscious facts. But if by
'objective' you mean the system of factual experience which we
term the objective world, it is in that case the objectivity of the
idea for which I contend; and furthermore, "I make extension,
color, etc., to exist really in bodies independent of our mind."
"You mistake me," he says in his third dialogue between Hylas
and Philonous, "I am not for changing things into ideas, but
rather ideas into things."

Primary qualities are then to he deposed from the position xif
independent existences and are tfl rank now with secondary quali-
ties. But how effect this? They are useless assumptions, for,
just as. sound and color (subjective appearances) seem .to b^ essen-

1For Locke's own approach to an idealistic position, Cf. e. g. T. H. Webb;
Veil of Isis, passage above quoted, pp. 12-13. Also Locke's Essay: Bk. IV., Ch.
II., 14; Bk. IV., Ch. XL, 1; Bk. IV., Ch. XL, 3; IV., XI.,8(Cit. in " Veil of Isis").

— 18 —

tially coexistent with the other objective aspects of our world of
experience, so do the ideal counterparts of the primary qualities
equally well fill up the manifold of objective experiences. Only
the bare assertion remains that, corresponding to these ideal quali-
ties, are their originals, presumably more real than they; the
former being, as it were, photographs of the latter, shot into the
mind, and preserving in some miraculous fashion the pristine
beauty and truth belonging to the originals. But wherein lies the
difference between these and the secondary; and why are not these
latter also supposed to inhere in an unknown something beyond
consciousness?

Now the primary qualities in their ideational character are
referred to powers, secondary qualities to combinations of powers
in an unknown substance. Accordingly the latter, although
denominated by Locke 'simple ideas,' or simple elements of
knowledge, are nevertheless, with reference to their origin in
unknown combinations of 'powers,' complex; and it is because
of their complexity that this class of ideas possess that distinctively
ideal character which seems to belong- to them and not to the
' primary qualities.' But how do we attain a knowledge of their
complexity? By the introspection of conscious contents, of course,
together with observation of the conditions under which we intro-
spect; from which it appears e. g. that what is hot to one hand is
cold to the other, or what is sweet to one palate may be bitter to
another — requisite conditions being given. Thus you may refer
secondary qualities to unknown combinations of powers, resident
in one unknown substance if you will; but the real complexity of
so-called mental elements is your test, and the condition under
which your judgment is made, is relativity of the idea to the per-
cipient organism. The complexity of the experienced mental contents
is then the equivalent of their condemnation to rank also as inde-
pendent entities by means of objective counterparts; and conversely,
simplicity means the guarantee of their right so to exist. We have
thus a sufficient criterion by which to judge of the validity of
Locke's claim in behalf of primary qualities; and it is this task
which Berkeley sets for himself in the Theory of Vision, though by
no means attempting an exhaustive analysis of this class of ideas.

I. — IDEA AS MERE SENSATION.

Berkeley now proposes to turn the tables, and subject primary
qualities also to the test of experience which, as we shall see,
involves a reference of primary to secondary qualities. He wishes
to test the less definitely known by the more completely known,
rather than, with Locke, to refer the more definitely known to the
more hypothetical. In the Theory of Vision the analysis of that
class of ideas which have hitherto been regarded as simple elements

— 19 —

of consciousness is undertaken with reference to Sight and Touch
only, although the essay undoubtedly implies far more than that
which is explicitly set forth as the design of the author, which is:
" to show the manner wherein we perceive by sight the Distance,
Magnitude and Situation of objects; also to consider the difference
there is betwixt the ideas of Sight and Touch and whether there be
any idea common to both senses."1

In the second book of the essay, Locke had shown that "we
get the idea of space, both by our sight and touch," which, says
he, "is so evident, that it would be as needless to go to prove that
men perceive, by their sight, a distance between bodies of different
colors, or between the parts of the same body, as that they see
colors themselves."2 "This space, considered barely in length
between any two beings, without considering anything else between
them is called distance."3 Now it was the current theory, to which
Locke gave countenance, that the spatial determination, distance
is perceivable by the sense or sight regardless of the way in which
it is perceived by touch, against which the first argument in the
Theory of Vision was raised. The initial assumption underlying
the series Of arguments with respect to distance, is the common
agreement that "Distance of itself, and immediately, cannot be
see_n.~ Distance not being immediately perceivable by sight and
yet being perceived, it follows that it is "brought into view by
means of some other idea, that is itself immediately perceived in
the act of vision."4 These other ideas are then merely 'signs' or
suggestions by which distance is introduced into the mind as a
conscious percept or idea. Against the view that the mind by a
kind of natural geometry immediately perceives distance by the
mathematical judgment of lines and angles; and also against
another opinion held by writers on optics to the effect that the eye
judges distance by the greater or less divergence of the_ra^s_trans-
mitted from the object, Berkeley urges objections which may be
briefly stated as follows: (i) There are no such mathematical per-
ceptions, for introspection does not reveal a process of computa-
tion or comparison of lines and angles. (2) Lines and angles,
being merely mathematical hypotheses, are not objectively existent.
(3) If the foregoing mathematical judgments were involved in our
preception of distance, they would yet be insufficient of themselves
to explain the phenomena we are considering. For the idea of
distance being mediated by other ideas we must necessarily have

1 Theory of Vision, Jj 31.

2 Locke's Essay; Bk. H, Ch. xiii, § 2.
3Ibid. § 3.

* Theory of Vision § 2.
5Ibid. § n.

— 20 —

some regard to the latter in determining the composition of our
perception of distance. Thus introspection will show us that ideas,
or sensations as we might now call them, produced by the muscu-
lar movement of the eyeball, accompany the accommodation of
the eye for nearer or more remote vision.

Again with regard to the phenomena of accommodation,
Berkeley tells us that the perception of distance is aided by the
"strain sensations " with which we correct the confused appear-
ance of objects brought too near the eye. But besides these mus-
cia sensations or 'visual ideas' or 'signs' accompanying the
employment of the ' visive faculty,' there are also visible signs,
such as the particular number, size, kind, etc , of the things seen;
and all these are of use to us in the determination of distance.
From the foregoing we may conclude, that a man born blind would,
if he were subsequently enabled to see, receive an entirely new set
of sensations, which would be mere mind-related symbols, but
meaningless, until their significance was learned by means of asso'
ciating them with those sensations earlier formed in his experience.
Now color, Berkeley is ready to assume, is the proper and imme-
diate object of sight, and this, being a secondary quality, is not
without the mind; whereas 'outness' or independence of the
mind is ascribed to extension, figure, and motion. But extension is
inseparable from color, and where extension is there too is figure
and also motion. In proof of this, we have the experience that
the appearance of an object alters with its proximity to or distance
from the observer, this difference displaying itself in the degree of
faintness of color and outline.

The conclusion now is that the strictly visual sensations, col-
ors, refer us to tactual sensations, sensations of muscular effort
experienced in the resistance which bodies offer to us, sensations
of bodily movement and of the movement of bodily organs, and
lastly, sensations of muscular effort experienced in going to the
distant object. •' Ideas of space, outness, and things placed at a
distance are not, strictly speaking, the objects of the sight; they are
no otherwise perceived by the eye than by the ear."1 But it has
come about in our experience that ideas of hearing are more easily
separable from ideas of touch than are those of sight. We hear
the footfall of a man walking upon the street and we readily recog-
nize the ideal character of the experienced sound; but it is a more
difficult matter to realize that the man whom we see arouses a
totally different class of sensations from the man whom we touch.
Yet it is nevertheless true that, just as familiar words immediately
arouse in our minds meanings far different from the sounds which
are also conveyed, but of which we are scarcely aware, "so like-

1 Theory of Vision § 46.

— 21 —

wise the secondary objects, or those which are only suggested by
sight, do often more strongly affect us, and are more regarded,
than the proper objects of that sense." '

As in the case of Distance, we find that Magnitude also is not
immediate but suggested. The 'lines and angles' argument is
reasserted to prove the immediacy of our preception of magnitude
by Sight independently of the sense of Touch; but, again, recourse
to introspection declares the experiential nature of judgments of
this kind. The magnitude of the visible object constantly changes
with change of distance between the real object and the observer;
therefore, when we speak of the magnitude or size of a thing, it
must be that we have reference to a more stable, tangible, magni-
tude.2 Again with regard to the Measurement of Magnitudes, the
essentially relative and inconstant nature of visible Magnitude at
once declares its utility as a standard. It is not the merely visible
foot or visible yard that we adopt as the unit of linear measure-
ment for these appear of different lengths according to their dis-
tance from the eye; but it is rather a constant and invariable, tan-
gible, magnitude to which we appeal. In further support of Berke-
ley's contention that Magnitude is perceived in the same manner
as Distance, we are reminded that "what we immediately and
properly see are only lights and colors in sundry situations and
shades, and degrees of faintness and clearness, confusion and dis-
tinctness."3

The heterogeniety of the ideas of Sight and Touch is further
shown by an analysis of what is contained in the ideas of Position
or Situation. Experience teaches us that certain ideas of touch
go with certain other ideas of 'visible' things, and that, on the
occasion of the latter, an instantaneous and true estimate of the
situation of outward tangible objects is made. These two classes
of ideas are two entirely different kinds of experience. "That
which I see is only variety of light and colors. That which I feel
is hard or soft, hot or cold, rough or smooth. What similitude,
what connexion, have those ideas with these ? " But some have
nevertheless asserted the imposibility of thus divorcing visible and
tangible ideas, urging as a reason the numerical identity of the
objects of these senses and the equality of the number as given
immediately in the visual idea. To this Berkeley replies that

Ubid, §51.

2 Note: Throughout the essay, tangible magnitude, tangible idea, tangible
object, etc.. mean for Berkeley real magnitude, real idea, real object. At this
juncture Berkeley enlightens us somewhat vviih regard to his apparent use of
" tangible ideas" as the ultimate sense data. The reason here given is the evi-
dent utility of such sensations for the perservation of the bodily organism, "they
are adapted to benefit or injure our bodies, and thereby produce in our minds the
sensations of pleasure or pain." Cf. § on Suggestion,

3 "Theory of Vision," § 77,

— 22 —

number also is a "creature. of the mind"1 nothing fixed and set-
tled, really existing in things themselves; whatever the mind
chooses to regard as one is a unit, and the same thing from another
point of view may be a manifold. "We must learn the applicability
of number to visible as well as to tangible ideas. The confusion
between these two kinds of ideas has led to the above mentioned
difficulty about objects being painted inverted upon the retina yet
seen upright; for, relatively to the visible earth, the position of
the retinal object is correctly depicted, and relatively to the tan-
gible earth, that with which we are concerned is only the outward
tangible object.

The conclusion with regard to Distance, Magnitude and SituV"
ation, warrants us in affirming the following proposition: "The
extension, figures, and motions perceived by sight are specifically
distinct from the idea of touch, called by the same name; nor is
there any such thing as one idea, or kind of idea, common to both
senses."2 There is no idea common to both these senses, because
ideas of light and color, being the only immediate objects of sight,
are specifically distinct from ideas of touch, and in consequence,
Space, Distance, Magnitude, Extension and Motion3 are suggested
mediate ideas.

But if Sight and Touch yield us two entirely different sets of
ideas, why do we denote by the same name these groupings of dif-
ferent ideas ? Furthermore, why are these ideas so mingled to-
gether in our experience as to seem inseparable ? The answer to
both these questionsjs: In the course of our experience it has
come about that Visible and Tangible ideas have been constantly
associated together so that one has become the mark or sign of
the other. Thus a visible square suggests a tangible square
because, having learned the applicability of number to both sets of
ideas, we see that one resembles the other in having a correspond-
ing number of parts or marks. But this 'sign language' whereby
visible ideas suggest tangible ideas, has been learned early in our
experience; and there has thus resulted the constant confusion
between them. The perception of an external world is apparently
immediate, experience having brought about such facility in the
interpretation of signs; but because of this, we are led to the
wrong inference that this immediateness is due to the sense of
sight alone, whereas by that sense we are made aware of colors
only, in 'varying degrees of light and shade.

It is now time to enquire more particularly into the nature of

1 " Principles," § 12.
^-2"Theory of Vision," § 127.

3 Not?.: That visible and tangible motion have nothing in common follows
as a corollary from the difference between visible and tangible extension — vide §
137. " Theory of Vision."

a

— 23 —

the Berkelian idea as set forth in the preceding sections of the
Theory of Vision. On the way to this we may note the definition
that occurs in § 45 of the Essay in which it is said: "I take the
word idea for any immediate object of sense or understanding
— in which large signification it is commonly used by the mod-
erns." This statement, however, is made with reference to "tang-
ible ideas " only. In its scope it is equivalent to the Lockian idea
and also to Berkeley's ordinary use of the term. As so extended,
it has not properly been the object of our consideration. It is
true that the above definition is inclusive of the narrower meaning,
in which the word 'idea' has been used throughout the Theory of
Vision, but it is with this restricted use that we are here concerned.

And I think it cannot fail to be readily understood from the
foregoing brief consideration of the essay that 'idea 'is throughout
used in the narrower meaning of mere sensation. The proper
objects of sight are colors, just as the proper objects of hearing
are sounds, but in the perception of any external object there is
more involved than the mere sense-presentation of color. The
object presented in perception possesses 'outness,' extension and
figure, is, in short, externalized in space in a way that cannot be
accounted for by reference to the mere data of sight alone. The
true object of perception is therefore mediately constituted by
means of these visual data, which serve as signs or suggestions of
tactual and muscular sensations, to which the last appeal is made.
On the other hand, the true object of sight is a mere mind-depend-
ent sensation, colors — our sole visual data — being admittedly only
in the mind. Extension, figure and motion, three of Locke's pri-
mary qualities, are so far as concerns their reference to the visual
faculty, reduced to a condition of mind-dependency — a result
which Berkeley practically achieves here in the Theory of Vision.
Number, another of Locke's primary qualities, has also been de-
clared a creature of the mind. With the disposal of figure, exten-
sion and distance in space, the perception of solidity, by means of
the visual faculty alone, is declared impossible. But the primary
qualities nevertheless reappear in another form, for tangible exten-
sion, magnitude, figure, etc., yet remain. It is true they are de-
nominated "tangible ideas"; and are regarded as subjective, sen-
sations, as in the case of "visual ideas"; but for all that they are
looked upon as ultimate data, beyond which we cannot pass. The;
externality of the world remains for us an irreducible fact, as far
as the Theory of Vision is concerned; and visual ideas are related)
to tangible ideas as signs to the thing signified.

But though we may as yet determine nothing further with
regard to tangible ideas, it is possible that additional light may be
thrown upon the Berkelian conception of visual ideas. We have
seen that, throughout the essay, idea isjsynonymous with sensa-

— 24 —

tion; but in what acceptation shall we take this equivalent term —
sensation ? Is it a recognized conscious content; or is it an unre-
cognized and subconscious datum ? Although here as elsewhere
Berkeley's theory of knowledge is undeveloped and fragmentary,
we may, I think, find a justification for holding to the latter of the
two constructions indicated as possible. For, in the first place,
idea, we have been told, may have another function than that of
arousing its precise equivalent in consciousness. Thus, the sen-
sation of color may suggest other sensations; though color may
not be consciously recognized as present in the percept. Again,
our visual sensations have, in the upbuilding of our conscious ex-
perience, become so inextrically interwoven with their suggested
tangible sensations, that it is only by attention to the physiologi-
cal processes underlying the phenomena of vision that we can ob-
tain a just estimate of what may be attributed to the functioning
of that 'faculty' alone. But we never perceive mere colors, i. e. ,
mere visual sensations; or 'ideas'; for what in our perception we
are actually conscious of are colors extended, figured, etc. Visual
sensations, then, although necessary to the explanation of the
growth of our experience by means of their association with other
sensations, are strictly not perceived. This is the conclusion
reached in the Vindication of Theory of Vision1 in which we are
told that the colored point " projected in the fund" of the eye is
unperceived. It is "tangible and apprehended only by imagina-
tion " i. e., it is a sign or 'suggestion' of other ideas with which
our knowledge of the outer world seems more intimately con-
cerned.

II IDEA AS PERCEPT.

The Theory of Vision to which we have referred in order to
obtain Berkeley's earliest acceptation of 'idea' was, as Fraser
says, the "opening wedge " which served to introduce the doc-
trine of Immaterialism as set forth in the Principles of Human
Knowledge. Little fault has been found with Berkeley for having
left so much of the work of associational psychology to be per-
formed by his successors; yet during the year which elapsed be-
tween the publication of the Theory of Vision and the appearance
of the Principles, we must assume that the work of associational
psychology had considerably advanced. So far as concerned the
Essay, we were left with the literal fact of tangible sensations, as
ultimate sense criteria of objectivity. But the notion that tangi-
ble sensations are really more ultimate than any other we must now
suppose to be a 'vulgar error,' which it was not Berkeley's pur-

1 "Theory of Vision Further Indicated and Explained,'' § 50; Fraser's note
to § 3, "Theory of Vision," p. 168 of "Selections."

— 25 —

pose to examine and refute in a discourse concerning Vision. The
latter is merely an experiment, pursued a little way for the purpose
of satisfying himself with his new conception of objective exist-
ence, and further investigation along that line is no longer of para-
mount interest to him.

We are accordingly invited to take a fresh start with sensa-
tions, as it were*, all on the same level. Analysis of the meaning
of supposed objective, mind-independent qualities (so far as we
were concerned with them in the Theory of Vision) has every-
where revealed their essentially composite character, and each one
of those units into which they resolve themselves declares itself in
consciousness as mind-dependent, a sensation. In short, when we
look to the meaning of objective existence in any of its particular
qualities, a sensation, in conjunction with some other sensation,
offers itself to us as the readiest and most complete explanation of
the quality. It seems we must conclude that all we have are these
ideas or sensations. In sensation, we have apparently come in
touch with Reality. We have now a fairly complete psychological
theory of knowledge; and we wish to discover the extent of its use-
fulness in metaphysic. We are no longer concerned with the
question of whether qualities of the object may be explained in
terms of sensation, but whether the object itself, in all the ways in J
which it appeals to our sense-perception and cognitive conscious-
ness, may be accounted for by means of the same sensations.

Now, with regard to the object, there is the commonly ac-
cepted opinion that by it we denote an existent which has a pecu-
liar reality of its own, distinct from its being perceived. But if we
attempt to describe any natural object apart from its relation to
others, we can only describe it as it affects us; i. e. , each special
determination of the object is seen to be some one or other of
the special revelations of sense. " The table I write on I say
exists, that is, I see and feel it; furthermore if I were out of my
study I should say it existed — meaning thereby that if I was in my
study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does
perceive it." What more can be said of the existence of an object
than this ? The object is a mere plexus of sensations, "and as
several of these are observed to accompany each other, they come;
to be marked by one name and so to be reputed as one Thing."
These clusters of sensations give to us all the meaning that is con-
tained in the 'existence' of the Thing. Beyond the Thing, as so
constituted, there is nothing. Some indeed, on the basis of a
distinction between the above mentioned primary and secondary
qualities, assert the existence of an object independent of sense
perceptions; but this can be no longer maintained, if, as will be
seen by reference to the Theory of Vision, primary maybe equated
with secondary qualities. And after all, "it is but looking into

— 26 —

your own thoughts, and so trying whether you can conceive it pos-
sible for a sound, or figure, or motion, or color, to exist without
the mind or unperceived."1 Ideas cannot then be taken in any
sense as copies of external things, for the external thing and the
idea would of necessity be identical. If the orginals are perceived
they are ideas; if unperceived, then that which is perceived is identi-
cal with that which is unperceived — a manifest contradiction.

Thus far with regard to the ordinary common sense distinc-
tion between thing and idea, as also the further distinction between
object and percipient consciousness by means of supposed quali-
ties inherent in the former. But in addition to the foregoing ways
of conceiving the object, philosophers have asserted the existence
of 'matter' variously regarded as 'substratum,' 'occasion,'
'substance,' to which the knowledge of our ideas and their rela-
tions to them, admittedly ideal, is ultimately to be referred. Now,
aside from the uselessness of such a conception for purposes of
explaining our experience, matter in this sense is in itself contra-
dictory; for either it is something out of all relation to ideas, in
which case it is unknowable and even its existence cannot be
asserted, or else it is the things which we see and touch and handle,
and thus a complex of sensations. If we are careful always to use
words in their proper significations, that is, if we admit no term
for which we cannot discover a definite mental equivalent, it is
plain that we must reject the materialistic hypothesis of an "inert,
senseless, unthinking substance," as self-contradictory because
lending itself to no idea that we can frame of its existence But,
if on the other hand, by matter is meant merely the things present
to us in external preception, Berkeley says that he finds no great
difficulty with the term. "I do not argue against the existence of
any one thing that we can apprehend either by sense or reflection.
That the things I see with my eyes and touch with my hands do
exist, I make not the least question. The only thing whose exist-
ence we deny is that which Philosophers call Matter or corpoajal
substance."2

Our knowledge seems then only in a sense to be confined to
existences which are merely subjective. We are, indeed, Berkeley
tells us, confined to ideas or phenomena, and "to explain the
phenomena, is all one as to show why, upon such and such occa-
sions, we are affected with such and such ideas."3 But, on the
other hand, the distinction between ideas as things, and ideas as
mere creations of the mind, appears for Berkeley to keep its full

1 Principles of Human Knowledge § 22.

2 Principles § 35; repeated frequently in the dialogues between Hylas and
Philonous.

'Principles of Human Knowledge § 50.

-27 —

significance. "There is a rerum natura and the distinction be-
tween realities and chimeras retains its full force."1 For after all
we have been considering the object in one of its aspects merely.
The object has been shown to be resolvable into a complex of sen-
sations, and is thus a percept or idea. But these sensations are
for Berkeley only the hypothetical conscious elements into which
the percept is ideally resolvable, and its existential nature is by no
means exhausted. The object of perception has been called idea
" because," as Berkeley tells us in the third dialogue between Hylas
and Philonous "a necessary relation to the mind is understood to
be implied by that term." But this does not of necessity mean
that it is not likewise dependent for its existence upon something
beyond the individual consciousness in which it is held.

Now Locke has found that in order to determine the nature
of certain of our ideas, viz., those complexes of sensation, or per-
cepts which we have been considering, we must take into account
the causal origin or source of these simple ideas of which the per-
cept (as we shall now call it) is made up. The percept in other
words has a reference beyond itself, it can only be defined by
something that is in a certain sense not itself; to understand its
complete nature, we must recognize that its being is not wholly
subjective, but dependent also upon something objective. We
have seen that powers residing in an unknown ' corporeal sub-
stance ' were supposed by Locke to fulfil the condition of supply-
ing this need for something objective by reference to which ideas
of sense could be explained. But these powers being conceived
as objective counterparts of ideas, no distinction remained between
ideas and their counterparts. This Berkley has pointed out with
the conclusion that, as "an. idea can be like nothing but an idea,"2
a mind dependent thing like nothing but a mind-dependent thing;
so all things that we know involve a reference to percipient con-
sciousness. Thus, that objective something has been wrongly con-
ceived, for true objectivity means, not objectivity of mind to some-
thing which is ex hypothesi different from it, but objectivity of
mind, by means of the double reference of the percept, to mind and
to objective Being — as also Mind.

Nor is it apparent — to dwell somewhat at length upon this
point — that the Berkelian percept or thing is, in its total character,
entirely comprehended in the psychological description of the
bundle of sensations which compose it; and that the causal refer-
ence ~"ut the percept to objective existence is a mere artifice by
which to escape solipsism. It is not as though, by defining the

1 Principles of Human Knowledge ^ 34.

2 Vid. Ueberweg's discussion of this point (Annotations to "Berkeley's Prin-
cipien," trans, in Krauth's "Principles of Human Knowledge," p. 343.

— 28 —

object in terms of sensation, one were thereby precluded from the
recognition that objects involve a reference beyond the individual
consciousness, any more than, in regarding the object as through-
out constituted by thought-relations, one would be taken to imply
the categories which he as an individual finds it convenient to em-
ploy in thinking of the object. What Berkley means is rather the
universal character which attaches to the percipient as well as to
the cognitive consciousness — the universality of sense-perception
as an element not to be neglected in our explanation of experience.
Again, it is not as though a mass of sensations were thrust into the
mind, and the door closed upon all objective existence; but we
first define the object as having a necessary reference to percipi-
ency, and then, from the dual character of mind-related existents,
as objects of sense and objects of imagination or memory, etc.,
arrive at the distinction of mind and mind. The objective char-
acter which necessarily belongs to the peculiar nature of the thing
or percept cannot consistently be conceived as matter; it must
then be conceived in analogy with that to which the percept has
been shown to have a necessary reference, i. e. mind. How well
Berkeley succeeds in thus substituting objective mind for objective
matter is another question. All that we are here concerned to set
forth is his insistence upon a fundamental distinction between
ideas; and that the understanding of idea as percept involves a con-
sideration of its reference to other than the individual percepient
mind. Accordingly we shall now briefly discuss the Berkelian
idea in connection with a second class of Things which he denom-
inates mind or spirit.

3 SPIRIT, PHENOMENA AND IDEA.

Tn section 89 of the Principles we are told that our knowledge
is not entirely confined to ideas, that "the term idea would be im-
properly extended to signify everything we know or have any notion
of." For, "besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of
knowledge there is likewise something that knows or perceives
them."1 This perceiving, active being is what I call Mind, Spirit,
Soul or Myself" — "that which I denote by the term I — which is
neither an idea, nor like an idea, but that which perceives and
wills, and reasons about them."2 It is to this active perceiving
principle that all the objects of sense must ultimately be referred
for their explanation since, as Berkeley has told us, the reason for
using the term idea rather than object is that there is thereby im-
plied a necessary relation to the mind. Accordingly, if there are
recognizable differences in the ideas which the mind possesses, it

1 Principles of Human Knowledge § 2.

2 Principles of Human Knowledge § 139,

— 29 —

may be possible to discover wherein this consists, not by the refer-
ence of ideas to a material substance, but by the relation which
seems to subsist between them and the active, perceiving mind.

Now all ideas are divided into three classes: "ideas actually
imprinted on the senses; or else such as are perceived by attend-
ing to the passions and operations of the mind; or lastly, ideas
formed by help of memory and imagination — either compounding,
dividing, or barely representing those originally perceived in the
aforesaid ways."1 All ideas, however, regarded as mere objects of
consciousness, are in themselves passive — "there is nothing of
Power or Agency included in them."2 With regard to certain of
these there seems to be involved the creative or combining activ-
ity of mind; for "I find that I can excite ideas in my mind at
pleasure and vary and shift the scene as often as I think fit"3 and
"this making and unmaking of ideas doth properly denominate
the mind active."4 But over another class of ideas, viz., those of
sense, I find that I have no control. These have a strength, a live-
liness and distinctness which do not belong to the ideas of the
imagination. They are chiefly to be distinguished from ideas that
are purely subjective by the fact of their appearing in an orderly
and coherent series, and also because of their entire independence
of the will. However, these ideas like all others are passive and
mind-dependent, they have no being apart from percipient mind.
If, then, the nature of these ideas, in distinction from those of
memory and imagination, is such as to warrant us in affirming
their objective reference — since they are not wholly dependent
upon individual mind — we are led to conclude their dependence
upon other mind. "They are not generated from within by the
mind itself"5 and are therefore imprinted upon it "by a spirit
distinct from that which perceives them6, or "there is some other
Will or Spirit that produces them."7

We may now summarize Berkeley's finding with regard to
idea, so far as it has been considered in the present and preced-
ing sections. It is (i) the mere atomic element of conscious-
ness or sensation; (2) the object of external perception, or
bundle of sensations, or percept, as we have chosen to call it,
of whose being relation to percipient mind is a necessary
condition; (3) this same object of external perception or
percept in the being of which there is also involved a necessary

1 " Principles," § 1.

2 Ibid § 25.
aIbid § 2S.

4 Ibid."

5 Ibid § go.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid § 29.

— 30 —

dependence upon objective mind. . Gradually as the philosophy of
Berkeley progresses, the term phenomenon ' is substituted for idea,
but if, in our interpretation, we discard the latter and adopt the new
term, the two-fold meaning which may be given to the 'phenom-
enon' must be borne in mind. On the one hand 'phenomenon'
implies for Berkeley a reference backward to the elemental con-
scious facts which make up its being, on the other hand there is in
it implied a reference forward to objective consciousness.

In truth, the object and the sensation are the same and can-
not therefore be abstracted from each other."2 This was Berke-
ley's answer to the Cartesian dualistic hypothesis. As the object
and sensation can only be ideally separated, we must interpret one
in terms of the other. Thus, upon the direct evidence of consci-
ous experience, we have partially carried out this programme as
witnessed in the fact that the object is resolvable into sensation.
But it would be a misinterpretation of his principle if we were to
stop at this single and one-sided application; for if the object and
sensation are only ideally separable, it seems not an illegitimate
method of procedure to insist that, as sensational character is
always necessary to the being of an object, so also sensation pos-
sesses a true objective character which cannot rightfully be
denied it.

In order to exhibit these two equally necessary views of the phe-
nomenon, their mutual relation would have to be shown; but this
would involve a discussion of the Berkelian ' relations ' between
ideas, the third of the objects of our knowledge, and this we have re-
served for the succeeding chapter, as also the more complete deter-
mination of his view of the self and objective mind, for upon this
depends in large part the adequacy or inadequacy of the hypo-
thesis which he substitutes for Cartesian "corporeal substance."
All that we are concerned with here is the determination of the
various meanings in which Berkeley uses idea. This we have seen,
in one of its aspects, viz., from the point of view of its objectivity,
involves a reference to Things to which in the present chapter we

1 One of Ueberweg's objections to Collyn's use of ' phenomenon ' rather
than 'idea,' in his interpretation of Berkeley, is that the term phenomenon
denotes a complex of sensations. (Annotations; Krauth's " Principles," p. 331). I
cannot avoid thinking, however, that idea is more often used in the later works
for the composite, the phenomenon, rather than for the object of the special senses.
Another of Ueberweg's objections is that the "word Erscheimmg presupposes a
thing-in-itself of which it is the phenomenon." Now with all Berkeley's zeal in
disclosing to us the 'new doctrine' that the senses report truly an external world,
with all his eagerness in demonstrating the non-existence of ' unknown substance '
this insistence upon the esse-is-percepi should not conceal the fact that for Berke-
ley the being of the phenomenon is grounded upon something other than the indi-
vidual consciousness. The thing-in-itself is, in short, the content of the divine con-
sciousness, an unknown but not an unknowable.

2 "Principles," § 5.

— 31 —

shall attempt to assign no precise signification. For the present
we shall content ourselves with the simple recognition that the
being of the phenomenon is in part dependent upon the Will of a
more powerful Spirit than the finite, viz., God, who is able to pro-
duce in the latter the regular and orderly series of phenomena
which constitute the objective system of Nature.

In the Theory of Vision, we saw that ideas as sensations were
merely the signs which enabled us to become aware of other sen-
sations; and, JiuTther, we saw that sensations always come to us in
groups. It is the extended, colored, tangible thing that we actu-
ally meet with in our experience, rather than the mere sensation.
The latter, as it were, receives its being merely from the fact of its
being one of a manifold. This truth was expressed, in the case of
visual signs, by instituting an analogy of visual signs with those of
human language, colors i. e. mere visual sensations, together with
their variations of light and shade, make up for us a sort of visual
sign-language or "Universal Language of Nature." In the Prin-
ciples, however, in which, it is true, the sensationalistic or empiri-
cal view is brought to a completion and throughout emphasized, it
is also apparent that this "Universal Language of Nature " is of
supersensous or extra human origin. The phenomenal object or
intuited manifold of sensations in turn receives its complete expla-
nation not only in the sensations of which it is made up but by its
objective reference to something other than itself. As sensations
are significant of the object, as by them we are taught to expect
the possible future sensations in the groups constituting the object
of external perception, so on the other hand is the phenomonal
object itself representative of a Divine order of Nature with regard
to which the phenomenon is merely the significant sign. It is this
second meaning of ideas that occasions the frequent use of the
word phenomenon in the dialogues of Berkeley and particularly in
Siris.

Viewed from the standpoint of the Berkelian idea, the altered
meaning which it receives by being regarded as phenomenon is
one of the chief features which distinguish the later philosophy of
Siris from the earlier standpoint of the Theory of Vision and the
Principles. In the latter work phenomenon and Idea, rather than
sensation and percept claim our attention.

In the Principles of Human Knowledge. "Idea" and
"archetype" receive only a brief treatment at Berkeley's hands.
In this work, as we know, his chief insistence was upon the im-
possibility of the existence of abstract matter in any of the signi-
fications in which it had hitherto been maintained by the philoso-
phers. Accordingly, ai_Jthis_„pQint/ having considered various

1 "Principles of Human Knowledge," § 71.

32 —

other meanings of matter, he briefly dismisses the notion of arche-
typal ideas, understood as quasi-material forms, independent of the
Divine mind, and in accordance with which the latter creates the
world.1 The constitution of the world must throughout conform
to that type of reality which, as it enters into our experience, we
variously denote by the terms mind, or self or spirit; and arche-
types of our own ideas, if such be admitted, can exist only in some
other mind.}

But that there are certain unknown Ideas in the Mind of God
— archetypal forms not independent of his will — Berkley does not
deny. Indeed his later philosophy moves almost exclusively in
the region of these Platonic existences. This does not mean how-
ever that the earlier empirical standpoint is now abandoned, but
only that there is a greater insistence upon the objectivity of the
idea which we have before noticed. In this latter aspect, the re-
ality of the thing or phenomenal object is seen to depend not only
upon its relation to percipient mind; its complete reality can only
be understood by reference to universal, creative mind. Accord-
ingly Berkeley is brought to the fuller recognition of an archetypal
system of forms, Ideas, or Divine meanings, of which the phenom-
enal object is merely the significent sign. For "do I not acknowl-
edge " says he in the third dialogue between Hylas and Philonous
"a two-fold state of things — the__ane ectypal or natural, the other
archetypal and eternal? The former was created in time, the lat-
ter existed from everlasting in the mind of God." In Siris the
discovery of this archetypal system by means of interpretable
sense-given phenomena, is regarded as the true end of all human
endeavor.

But the archetypal form or Idea, although certainly indicat-
ing a much closer affiliation to the Platonic philosophy than is dis-
coverable in any of Berkeley's earlier works, cannot be identified
with Idea in the strictly Platonic sense of the word. For it is
with Berkeley equivalent to the "notion," which in our discussion
of the Introduction to the Principles of Human Knowledge we
took to be his recognition of the conceptual character that attaches
to ideas. If we read this later doctrine in the light of his earlier
work, idea does not appear to us as the vague and shadowy rem-
iniscence of an intangible universe of pure forms, from which we
are cut off, save by the negation of sense-reality and the indulgence
of the contemplative and speculative mood. Rather is it the case
that the Berkelian world appears here and now, with the noticeable
difference between the earlier and later construction of it, that the
conceptual is at last accorded the just recognition which was ever

xFraser; "Philosophy of Berkeley," Blackwood series pp. 350-353.
2 " Principles," § 99.

— 33 —

implied in Berkeley's insistence upon the objective nature of the
idea, as of equal importance with its subjective reference. Objec-
tive and subjective are alike aspects of the phenomenon, the thing
present to perception. In this objectivity of the idea we have one
of the elements by which the antithetical poles of Berkeley's phil-
osophy, his earlier empiricism and later Rationalism, are united in
the thought of a spiritual unfolding of Nature in which we pass by
gradual steps from the mere sense-given phenomena to the Ideas
of imminent law and order, goodness and moral government, in
the absence of which imminent Ideas of Reason there would be for
us no world, but chaos.

To treat otherwise than in this brief fashion these objects of
human knowledge which, because of their changed notation, appear
in Siris as new elements foreign to the earlier thought of Berkeley,
would be to run too far afield upon ground which should more
properly be covered in our subsequent enquiries. We have so far
attempted to show, not without the cost of some tedious but neces-
sary repetition, the various meanings which Berkeley assigns to the
word idea. In the interest of clearness, I subjoin the following
summary at the close of this chapter:
J "Vi. Idea is used as object of the special senses, sound, color,
j touch, etc.; but color is never perceived except as something col-
ored and extended; touch is always the feeling of something resist-
I ing and possessing form. Consequently single objects of the special
\ senses are never true objects for us, i. e. perceived. Idea in this
first sense is then 'mere sensation'.

2. Idea as the immediate object or phenomenon of percep- *•>
tion, resolvable into particular sensations and consequently depen-
dent for its being upon percipient mind. Idea as such is the
complex of sensations, marked by one name, and so regarded as a

thing.

3. Idea in the foregoing sense, but distinguished from the
'subjective contents of the individual consciousness, and thus

regarded as dependent upon objective mind.

-Q 4. Idea as archetype, Platonic idea or Notion. Or we may
express it thus:

1. idea = 'mere sensation'.

( a. as complex of sensations.

2. idea = phenomenon -j b. as conceptual, and in this latter

( sense the equivalent of:

3. Idea as Notion.

A concluding word with regard to these three classes in order
to free from ambiguity these various meanings of the word idea, may
be necessary, and may serve to acquaint us in advance with some
of the difficulties we are likely to encounter in our farther review
of Berkeley's interpretation of experience. In the first place, idea

— 34 —

as 'mere sensation' seems grossly at variance with his frequently
repeated assertions that ideas are particular, definite, discoverable
mental contents. I am also of the opinion that idea is most fre-
quently used by Berkeley in the sense of phenomenon, i. e. it implies
more than the sensations which constitute it actually reveal in per-
ception. In fact it is never the -mere sensation' when the idea is
consciously perceived. -jjBut the phenomenon, it was in part Berke-
ley's mission to tell us, is in every case resolvable into those units;
and, as it is only the complex that is perceived, it seems that in his
earlier philosophy Berkeley does have reference to these atomic
elements of consciousness or hypothetical sensations. The phen-
omenon, as a complex of sensations, needs no further notice here;
but to the phenomenon in its objective reference, attach, in one
form or another, most of the difficulties we are likely to encounter
in the following chapters. And, as a tentative step, we take the
philosopher's word for it that in doing away with Locke's 'abstract
material substance', he has merely denied the causal reference of
sense objects to such substance, while, in doing this, by showing
the necessary relation to percipient consciousness of all such ob-
jects, he has not thereby affected the object, or denied to it all
causal reference to objective existence, but has merely substituted
mind for matter.

The question which is thus raised for us is: What is the nature of
the Divine Being which Berkeley thus substitutes for substance?
Is it a deistically conceived contrivance, artificially introduced to
escape subjectivity and support theistic belief, or is his view of the
personality of God and man the rationally grounded consequence
of a new meaning which he gives to 'idea'? Again, is the order,
steadiness and regularity which he ascribes to the ideas of sense,
thereby distinguishing them from subjective fancies, consistently
maintained in a philosophy which seems to destroy the ground on
which it stands by the acknowledgment that all ideas are particular?
And, finally, in the archetypes or Ideas of Reason which occupy
so bold a position in Siris, do we encounter importations foreign
to the life current of Berkeley's thought, or are we here only
brought to a better understanding of less familiar but none the less
important elements in his early theory of knowledge? If the
philosophy of Siris merely represents a platonizing mood into which
Berkeley fell in his declining years, there is no discoverable rela-
tion between his earlier negative and his later positive idealism.
But if the Idea, which seems in Siris the instrument and motive by
which he reaches his final conclusions is affiliated, as we have sug-
gested, to other elements of his earlier works, we may not be forced
to a decision between Empiricism and Rationalism which will be
altogether without evidence in support of the latter and less fre-
quently accepted view.

CHAPTER III.

CONSTITUTION OF EXPERIENCE.

i . Relations,
a. Arbitrary Connection .

A third of the objects of human knowledge are relations. We
have thus far instanced the various meanings in which Berkeley-
used the word idea in the earlier and later phases of his idealism,
and we have now to consider the manner of their connection. In
the first place, we may again note that the point cP appui which
served to introduce Berkeley into his new idealistic universe was
the reduction of Locke's primary qualities to the secondary, there-
by equating all the sensations derived from the special senses.
This constituted his negative disproof of matter. So far as con-
cerned the existence of 'abstract matter', the testimony of the
senses at any rate could not be alleged in its behalf. But matter
had been regarded as the cause, if not primary, at least the causal
agent, and idea the effect. Accordingly in the absence of matter and
the consequent denial of a material cause it results that any phen-
omenal object or any object of the special senses is, in itself, re-
garded as particular, inactive, destitute of power or causal agency.

Now the principle of cause and effect may be for us an orig-
inal, und-erivative revelation of the rational consciousness1; and
this is by no means denied, for in the second dialogue between
Hylas and Philonous the latter is made to say: 'I do by no means
find fault with your reasoning in that you collect a cause from the
phenomenon, but I deny the cause deducible by reason can prop-
erly be termed matter.' But, on the other hand,. if causal agency
can no longer be attributed to the objects of sense, since they are
now phenomena; and since the combining and relating activity, in
so far as that may be attributed to the mere individual conscious-
ness, does not extend to these ideas of sense; we must discover
some other connection, by means of which the presence of the
phenomenon may be accounted for and the nature of the cause
revealed to us.

Now, in the process of introspectively analysing the contents
of consciousness, we found that the ideas obtained by one sense
are translatable into terms of another sense. But we further dis-

1Fraser; "Berkeley," Blackwood Phllos. Classics, p. ig8.

— 36 —

covered that the objects of one sense are, so far as we can see,
totally unlike those of another. True, the very process which
serves to display their heterogeneity exhibits also — because of the
parallel discovery of their interpretability in terms of each other —
the mind-dependence of all objects of consciousness. Yet, intro-
spection stops short of telling us why the objects should be inter-
pretable in terms of others unlike them. There is then, for us, no
discoverable necessary connection between ideas.1 But we can no
longer explain the phenomenal object in terms of matter; and
mind, if it cannot discover to us the why, may at least serve to
exhibit the how of the connection.

This Berkeley proceeds to show by instituting the parallelism
between sense symbols and words, the significant signs of human
speech. In the latter case, words have no similarity to the mean-
ings which they serve to .convey, to the sound waves or the
nerve processes by which the result is brought about. That sounds
should signify meanings at all does not seem necessary; and the
fact that an articulate word is understood to have a definite meaning
shows the arbitrariness of human speech. Thus also the written
word 'distance' is wholly unlike the uttered sound or the visual
colors which also serve to suggest distance, or finally the tactual
or muscular data which likewise introduce the idea of distance into
the mind. Neither is there any necessary connection between col-
ors and tangible magnitude. "Confusion [in the outlines of the
object] or faintness [of color] have no more a necessary connec-
tion with little or great magnitude than they have with little or great
distance."2 "Farther, when one has by experience learned the con-
nection there is between the several ideas of sight and touch, he
will be able, by the perception he has of the situation of visible
things in respect of one .another, to make a sudden and true esti-
mate of the situation of outward, tangible things corresponding to
them. And thus he shall perceive by sight the situation of external
objects, which do not properly fall under that sense.3"

With regard to the nature of this connection, "when, upon
perception of an idea, I range it under this or that sort it is
because it is perceived after the same manner, or because it has a
likeness or conformity with or affects me in the same way as the
ideas of the sort I rank it under"* Thus the experience of a
customary connection between ideas is sufficient to account for
the presence of the phenomenal object, and the manner in which
this connection is brought about is by our perceiving the likeness

1 ' Philosophy of Berkeley ' in "Life, Letters, etc.," pp. 374—375. Fraser;
"Berkeley," Blackwood Series P- 198.
1 "Theory of Vision," § 58.

3 Ibid § 99.

4 Ibid 8 128.

V

— 37 —

or conformity of one idea with another or recognizing that we are
affected by one idea as we are affected by another. The arbi-
trariness of human language is paralleled by this arbitrariness of
the sense symbolism, and in both cases it is experience that
instructs us in the use of these symbols. The externalization of
objects in space Berkeley takes to be accounted for by his sensa-
tionalistic machinery; and Space, in any other sense than as an
empirical product, here falls under the general condemnation of
abstract ideas. 1 So likewise Time is the empirical succession of
sensations, not, as with Locke, a succession taken to denote time,
but a succession constitutive of time.

In § 147 of the Theory of Vision the empirical theory as it
appears to Berkeley is fairly summed up. It is as follows:
"Upon the whole, I think we may fairly conclude that the proper
objects of vision constitute the Universal Language of Nature,
whereby we are instructed how to regulate our actions, in order
to attain those things that are necessary to the preservation and
well being of our bodies, as also to avoid whatever may be hurtful
and destructive of them. It is by this information that we are
principally guided in all the transactions and concerns of life.
And the manner wherein they signify and mark out unto us the
objects which are at a distance is the same with that of languages
and signs of human appointment; which do not suggest the things
signified by any likeness or identity of nature, but only by an
habitual connection that experience has made us to observe
between them."2 This constitutes Berkely's empiricism, " a posi-
tion which was never lost sight of in spite of later rationalistic
developments; for, twenty-three years after the Theory of Vision
was published, its vindication appeared, in which is maintained the
governing principle of that former work, viz. the passivity of
all ideas in so far as they are received as mere particulars, regard-
less of the combining and relating activity" of mind.

But we may ask: does this perceived likeness between ideas
mean merely a way that sensations have of forming themselves
into groups, and so constituting a product utterly unlike the
sensations of which it is composed; or, since sensations are in
themselves heterogeneous, is there implied in the perceived like-
ness a reference to the combining activity of mind? Now Berkeley
makes no enquiry into the presuppositions which render experience
possible; he does not search out principles or categories which
function in a manifold of sense foreign to them by nature.
Unitary mind, as active, synthetic, is the presupposition from
which he starts. His dualism is not between sense and under-

1Fraser; " Berkeley," Blackwood Philos. Classics, p. 136.
2 Theory of Vision, § 147.

— 38 —

standing; it is between mind and mind. By reference to mind as
the conscious unity of a manifold, Locke's primary qualities had
been reduced to their condition of mind-dependence, and in Berke-
ley's empirical explanation of the constitution of the object, sensa-
tions are regarded as significant signs only because of their relation
to mind. This is apparent even in the "Theory of Vision," and, if
one reads his earlier philosophy in the light of his later work, it
seems less necessary to read Berkeley through Hume. That mind
or self was at first conceived by means of crude categories, and
thus justly merited the censure of Hume, it would be idle to dispute;
but the spirit-substance was only a feeble echo of Locke's tabula
rasa and foreign to Berkeley's 'active mind' and to the 'Reason'
of " Siris."

b. Necessary Connection.

We have already noticed that the ideas of sense are distin-
tinguished from those of imagination, first, because of their greater
liveliness and distinctness; second, because of their independence
of the individual mind; finally, from the observed fact of their
appearing in a regular, orderly and coherent series. Itwas reserved
for Hume to give exclusive prominence to the first of these distinc-
tions; but for Berkeley this liveliness and distinctness of the ideas
of sense is merely a characteristic mark observed to accompany
ideas whose special designating feature is the orderliness and regu-
larity of their production.

The phenomenal object having been resolved into its sensa-
tional constituents, no likeness or affinity between these sensations
or objects of the special senses can be discovered. No value at-
taches to them except as they are understood to be signs and so
recognized by the mind by reference to which their meanings are
exhibited in the gradual unfolding of experience. Experience
"teaches us that such and such ideas are attended with such and
such other ideas "' — herein consists the arbitrariness of the connec-
tion— but "the set rules or established methods wherein the Mind
we depend on excites in us the ideas of sense, are called the laws
of nature; and these we learn by experience."2 And "all this we
know, not by discovering any necessary connection between our
ideas, but only by the observation of the settled laws of nature."3
The law of cause and effect does not subsist between ideas, for
these, as mere passive particulars, serve only as signs by which the
mind is enabled to gather rational meanings and understand the
laws imposed upon the finite by a Supreme Mind; for ideas of
sense, being impressed in accordance with "Rules or Laws of

1 "Principles"; § 30.

2 Ibid.
3Ibid §31.

— 39 —

Nature, speak themselves the effects of a mind more powerful and
wise than human spirits."1 Thus no phenomenal object can be a
cause, phenomena are merely effects, and, in the case of an apparent
affinity of one substance for another or the observed attraction of
one body to another, nothing is signified besides the effect itself.

To the objection that for purposes of scientific enquiry secon-
dary causes, at least, must be admitted, Berkeley replies that the
hypothesis of the uniformity and invariability of nature is in no
wise affected upon his principles. "There are certain general
laws that run through the whole chain of natural effects; these are
learned by the observation and study of nature, and are by men
applied . . -to the explaining of the various phenomena — which
explanation consists only in showing the conformity any particular
phenomenon hath to the general laws of nature, or, which is the'
same thing, in discovering the uniformity there is in the production
of natural effects."2 Complete knowledge of the phenomenon we
cannot have, not because it is in its nature alien to mind, but be-
cause the 'efficient cause' which produces it is the 'will of a
spirit'; yet we can obtain "a greater largeness of comprehension,
whereby analogies, harmonies and agreements are discovered in
the works of nature, and the particular effects explained, that is,
reduced to general rules"3 — or categories.

In the Principles of Human Knowledge the objectivity of the
laws, by means of which a world in space and time is made possible,
is seemingly accepted as a fact based upon simple observation of
phenomena, than which there are no more ultimate facts for us.
In the unitariness of the phenomenon we have not only a thing as
a cluster of sensations marked by one name, but a thing which in
its unity is itself an object of consciousness, an idea. Accordingly,
as we have elsewhere said, the character of the phenomenon is not
completely exhausted in the mere discovery of its sensational con-
stituents, for simple observation of it, as it is intuitively appre-
hended in consciousness, reveals it a thing, distinguished from other
things, in spite of psychological analysis and the mere description
of how it has come to be. But not being independent of mind, the
further explication of phenomena must again take place only with
reference to mind; i. e., I must simply observe the relation between
mind and phenomena in this second character. This reveals that
phenomena, as also the relations which apparently subsist between
them, are independent of my mind, i. e., mind in so far as I have
a knowledge of its acts and operations; and this constitutes, in
Berkeley's earlier philosophy, the objectivity of natural phenomena
and the laws by which they are governed.

1 ''Principles"; § 36.
2 Ibid § 62.
3 Ibid § 105.

T

— 40 —

Thus, (i) the 'Principles' endeavors to establish the objec-
tivity of laws upon the the observation of ideas as ultimate facts
of consciousness, which presumably reveals the fact that these
phenomena and their relations are independent of the indiviual
will. (2) Accordingly they are to be referred to a Supreme Mind
here conceived under the catagory of Will. From this there results
a subordination of Reason to Will and the apparent liability of
these objective laws of nature (even granting their objectivity to
have been established by so simple a process) to be subverted by
a capricious Will; — "we may discover the general laws of nature,
and from them deduce the other phenomena; I do not say demon-
state, for all deduction of that kind depends on a supposition that
the Author of Nature always operates uniformily, and in constant
observance of those rules we take for principles — which we cannot
evidently know."1

It is in the 'Principles' that the sufficiency of the Berkeleiansign
language for the explanation of experience seems most apparently
to depend upon the support of a deistic theology, while, in Siris,
Reason rather than Will is looked upon as the supreme category;
and the discovery of the objectivity of law is based upon a deeper
insight into the implications of the phenomenal objects, and a
recognition of the inadequacy of the early empirical position as an
ultimate explanation of the phenomenal universe. "The inner bonds
which weld the perceived universe into a rational whole are now
made subjects of reflection,2 and the issue is the discovery that the
universals of Reasons are immanent in sense. In accordance with
the established connections, no longer referred to the arbitrary
imposition of Divine Will, it is seen that "the mind of man acts
by an instrument necessarily. The to 7]y£p.ovix)n\, or mind presiding
in the world acts by an instrument freely.3 Secondary causes are
now admitted; for "without instrumental and secondary causes, there
could be no regular course of nature. And without a regular course
nature could never be understood."4 Berkeley never dreams ofi
departing from his early belief that mechanical causes cannot be
received as ultimate explanations; but there is a much stronger in-
sistence upon their usefulness and necessity, as mechanical hypoth-
eses. "There is an analogy, constancy and uniformity in the phenom-
ena or appearances of nature, which are a foundation for general
rules; and these are a Grammar for the understanding of Nature"5
and "so far as men have studied and remarked its rules, and can

^bid §107. Works Yol. I.

2Wenley; "British Thought and Modern Speculation"; in Scottish Review,
Jan., 1892, vol. 19, p. 150.
8 " Siris " § 160.
*" Siris" § 160.
5 "Siris" § 252.

— 41 —

interpret right, so far they may be said to be knowing in nature."1
We must now elearly recognize that sense is of itself insufficient to
constitute the phenomenal world of objects as we find it. The phe-
nomena of nature strike on the senses and are understood by the
mind2 i.e., 'Thought, Reason, Intellect, introduce us into the
knowledge of their causes.'3 Again, it is certain that the "princi-
ples of science are neither objects of Sense or imagination;"* "Sci-
ence consists not in the passive perceptions but in the reasoning
upon them."5

Thus we are brought in Siris to the knowledge of a new world
in which "such is the mutual relation, connection, motion and
sympathy of the parts that they seem, as it were, animated and
held together by one soul; and such is their harmony, order, and
regular course, as sheweth the soul to be governed and directed by
a Mind."6

As we are now constrained to interpret Berkeley's Language of
Nature, we find that we must no longer read it as a system of signs,
arbitrarily instituted by capricious Will, but as signs whose sole
value is in their rational significence. In the new universe, with
which we are now made acquainted, the continuity remains unbro-
ken. From the lowest sense given phenomena we ascend in a series
of gradations to the highest products of Reason by means of which
are discovered the inviolable laws immanent in an objective system
of nature. True,' the various steps by which this unfolding of
nature is accomplished are frequently dominated by the hylo-
zoistic and animistic conceptions of the past. Accordingly no
philosophy of nature, worthy the name, is offered us, nor indeed
is such seriously intended by Berkeley in his review of the anti-
quated categories of past philosophies; but the central feature which
serves to differentiate his later from his earlier idealism nevertheless
remains. The world is now to be viewed as an organic whole, whose
several parts are throughout concatenated and sustained by one
Mind. Exeept for the important fact that Mind is now conceived
as Reason immanent in the world rather than as dominant Will,
the new conceptions do not seem so foreign to his former idealism;
yet by this there is apparently introduced a world-wide distinction
between his later and earlier doctrines.

If we attempt to discover the source of these new conceptions
we come upon a nowise unfamiliar assertion that 'the Mind, her
acts and faculties, furnish a new and distinct class of objects,'7 and

1" Siris," § 254.

'Ibid.

3 Ibid § 268.

*Ibid.

5Ibid § 305.

6 Ibid § 273.

7 Ibid § 297.

— 42 —

these 'objects' are what Berkeley variously denominates 'Ideas,' in-
tellectual "ideas," intellectual "notions," and 'notions.' Now the
thorough recognition of the immanence of Reason in the Berkelian
world of phenomena forbids our believing that he has espoused the
cause of Platonism with the ardor of a complete devotee. Siris,
indeed, is thoroughly imbued with the spirit of Plato; but to Plato,
Berkeley has never been a complete stranger, either to his spirit or
in the knowledge of his works. The passages suggestive of Plato,
and in some instances quoted from him, Berkeley turns to account
in showing a 'closer correlation of sense and intellect' than the
former achieves, while at the same time the passivity of the idea
through which Berkeley reached his early empiricism is not aban-
doned.1 The following indicate his more explicit recognition in
"Siris " of the several functions that maybe assigned to mind it its
diverse operations.

In the first place "Sense implies an impression from some
other being, and denotes a dependence in the soul which hath
it,'12 a statement clearly recalling the influence of Locke and in-
deed not unsuggestive of Kant, if one bears in mind that the ding-
an-sich must somehow be conceptualized, or else — an alternative of
course adopted by Fichte and the Hegelians — it declares itself to
be nothing. Again: — "By experiments of sense we become ac-
quainted with the lower faculties of the soul; from them, whether
by a gradual evolution or ascent, we arrive at the highest. Sense
supplies images to memory. These become subjects for fancy to
work upon. Reason considers and judges of the imaginations.
And these acts of reason become new objects of the understand-
ing.'3 Further to illustrate the small part that is played by mere
sense, apart from the active functioning of Reason: — "as under-
standing perceiveth not, that is, doth not hear, or see, or feel" [as

do the special senses], "so sense knoweth not sense or

soul, so far forth as sensitive, knoweth nothing."4 And now if we
would know what this has to do with the phenomenal object, we
may note that "we know a thing when we understand it; and we

understand it when we can interpret or tell what it signifies

We perceive, indeed, sounds by hearing, and characters by sight.
But we are not therefore said to understand them."5 They are

1 Berkeley's 'notions' are Locke's ideas of relation and by them "he pro-
poses to effect a compromise between the tabula rasa of Aristotle and the innate
ideas of Plato and suggests that though "there are properly no ideas or passive
objects but what were derived from Sense," yet there are also, besides these, "her
own acts and operations [acts of the mind], such as notions,' which must be

referable to the understanding, here Berkeley clearly approximates

to Kant." T. H. Webb; "Veil of Isis," p. 27.

2 "Siris," § 286.

3 Ibid § 303.
* Ibid § 305.
5 Ibid § 253.

— 43 —

unintelligible save as they are subjected to the unifying acts of
Reason. In the uncategorized sense impressions there is only
unintelligible sound, unintelligible color, 'perceived' or 'rather
present to sense, but not understood, not truly perceived or apper-
c'eived.- Only the correlate of sensations into which unity is intro-
duced by the mind is truly regarded as an object distinguished from
other objects and related to them. The former individualized per-
cept is now looked at from the point of view of its other implica-
tions, and there is seen to be involved in its being the informing
principle of active, unitary mind.1

We may now ask whether this later Rationalism is at variance
with Berkeley's early idealism, or whether it merely represents the
greater elaboration of elements already contained in the philosophy
of the "Principles of Human Knowledge." Accordingly, let us.
retrace our steps, delaying for a moment at the fourth of the seven
dialogues entitled "Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher." The
series of arguments here put forth are in the nature of rational infer-
ences from the various sensations with which we are affected, pur-
porting to discover to us that the ' Optic Language' we before con-
sidered solely from the point of view of the arbitrariness of signs
regarded in themselves ' 'hath a necessary connexion with knowledge
wisdom and goodness." By rational inferences from the acts, ges-
tures, and speech of our fellowmen we are enabled to conclude the
existence of other selves conceived in analogy with our own. By
parity of reasoning the sign language of Nature viewed in its total-
ity is significant of a Mind upon whom Nature is constantly de-
pendent for its existence, a design argument being supported in
maintenance of a theistic view. Here we are told, in anticipation
of Siris, that every perception of an object involves the work of
rational inference. The mere signs or sensations which, like the
printed words of a page, are, in their own Nature of small
moment, carry the attention onward to the very things signified . .
which in truth and strictness are not seen, but only sug-
gested and apprehended " by means of the proper objects of sight.
We have, again, the doctrine of the Theory of Vision, with a
greater insistance, not only upon the insignificance of sensations
regarded in themselves, but also a more explicit recognition of the
function of mind in apprehending the object. Likewise the cus-

1 ' No sooner does intellect dawn upon the shadowy scene, ' than we perceive
the true principle of unity, identity and existence.' Those things which before
seemed to constitute the whole of being, upon taking an intellectual view of things
[i. e., viewing them as conceptions] prove to be but fleeing phantoms.'

In presence of such declarations, Professor Fraser declares that Berkeley ' not
only was not a sensualist of the school of Condillac, not only not an empiricist of
the school of Hume, but he was a transcendentalist of the highest and purest

school of Kant ' Cf. also Lewis: " The History of Philosophy from

Thales to Comte," vol. II, pp. 304, 305.

— 44 —

tom-induced association between sensations takes on a different
coloring now from that observable in the Theory of Vision, and
we are told that "there must be time and experience, by repeated
acts, to acquire a habit of knowing the connexion between the signs
and the things signified." ' This seems in essential agreement with
a passage in Siris2 which states that "mind, knowledge and notions,
either in habit or in act, always go together." That habit which
is unconsciously rational is the basis of our immediate perceptions
of the phenomenal object, is the view which Berkeley adopts in
" Alciphron " and later urges in his doctrine of the immanence of
Reason in the world of sense.

Here we must pause for the moment, since it is plain that the
negative theory of the "Principles" and the dialogues between Hylas
and Philonous, repeating with slight variations the former doctrine,
can offer but feeble suggestion of the rationalism which creeps into
"Siris" through the dialogue we have briefly noticed. There thus
arises the question of whether "Alciphron" and "Siris" should not be,
together,regarded as representative of Berkeley's later thought, while
the " Theory of Vision, " the "Principles" and the earlier dialogues
remain to vindicate a view of the world between which and the
later idealism there is little or no connection. The lines upon
which we must seek an answer to this question are suggested by
the further inquiry that naturally arises from the preceeding, viz. :
how, in a Philosophy which preached Nominalism at the outset,
have we any right to speak of rational connections and the domi-
nance of mind in a universe in which by hypothesis our knowledge
is confined to particulars. Accordingly we can expect to find
essential agreement between these two seemingly opposed types of
philosophy only in the discovery that the conceptual processes
implied in Berkeley's later theory of the constitution of experience
are not at variance with the earlier. That the mind and its acts
make us aware of an entirely different class of objects from the mere
sense ideas, we are told in " Siris " ; and this is but a repetition of
§ 89 3 of the ' ' Principles " in which we learn that we have a notion of
relations between things or ideas — which relations are distinct from
the ideas or things related, inasmuch as the latter may be perceived
by us without our perceiving the former. In other words, the
mind by its acts conceives the relations between things, while these
latter may be viewed as mere particulars apart from the rational
implications that are throughout contained in the constitution of
the object. Thus from the consideration of relations between
ideas, which has so far in this chapter occupied our attention, we

1 Fraser; "Selections from Berkeley," p. 269.

2 "Siris," § 309.
sCf., p. 13 — note.

— 45 —

must now turn to the ' notion ' by means of which we obtain our
knowledge of relations.

2. THE NOTION AND ITS OBJECTS.

(a). Meaning of 'Notion.'

In the section on abstract ideas we endeavored to set forth
Berkeley's distinction between ideas in the sense of abstract images,
and in that of representative notions. All ideas, which are, in one
aspect, particular, — herein consists his Nominalism — are in another
aspect representative of other particulars, — and in this consists his
Rationalism. They are alike abstractions from the phenomenal
object. In one aspect we see that they are translatable into terms of
mind as percipient, in the other into terms of mind as cognitive.
In any case, the existence of the object involves a reference to
mind, not only as merely perjipient, but as cognitive.

In Berkeley's early idealism we have seen that it is the relation
of the phenomenal object to percipient consciousness that is chiefly
insisted upon. The percept is individualized, resolved into its
constituent factors by means of its discoverable relation to con
sciousness in so far as the latter denotes a passive experience —
percipience. At this stage we note the arbitrariness of the relation
between phenomena thus particularized. Why this particular
atomic element of consciousness should be connected with that
other particular, passive experience, does not appear.1 The reason
of the connection, if any there be, has been lost in the past expe-
rience of the individual or the race, in the course of which such
facility has been gained in interpretation of this Universal Sign
Language that the necessity of its origin and maintenance in Uni-
versal Mind is neglected. '1 he sensations, which have no bond in
themselves, since they serve only as signs, must have a causal
source or ground in which the reason of their connection can be
found, a source that is independent of the individual will, and in
which, as we finally learn in "Siris," we can only participate by
means of the universals of Reason.

In the ' ' Principles of Human Knowledge, " Berkeley recognized
the existence of these universals; for, as Mr. Bradley2 has said, he
knew that " Relation constitutes the universality of ideas." Hence
" his third kind of existence, the knowledge of which is given us by
a notion." But, as the same author further says, Berkeley does not
follow up the 'notion' "because blinded by the ambiguity of the
idea derived from Locke." Abstract ideas Berkeley indeed denies,
— though only, as we have said, in the sense of abstract images —

Berkeley — Fraser (Blackwood Series), p. 198.

*C. W. Bradley; "Berkeley's Idealism," in Journal of Speculative Philos.
1881-82.

— 46 —

for every idea has its particular aspect; but the phenomenal object
likewise retains its conceptual character; it is related to other
things, and is one of an organic whole whose several parts are
interdependent and ultimately imply a rational nexus. That the
unifying bond between phenomena, implied in the recognition of
their causal source, is not suggested in the " Principles " otherwise
than in his brief acknowledgement of 'relations,' is true; but it
would be false to assert that Berkeley had no basis for his future
rationalizing, and that he reached his later philosophy by means
of the abstractions which he had at first denied. Nor is this so
inconsistent with a statement occurring early in the "Principles"
and which seems to curtail our knowledge: " my conceivingor imag-
ining power", he there tells us, " does not extend beyond the possi-
bility of real existence." For, as we have endeavored to show, by
real existence Berkeley never means the mere object of the special
senses, but the percept J1 and the doctrine of "Alciphron, " that
"every perception implies more than it preceptively intimates,"2 is
but the development of a view for which he was already prepared
in the recognition of the representative character belonging to all
perception.

To repeat in brief Berkeley's theory respecting universals, the
percept, or phenomenal object, immediately present to conscious-
ness is, in so far as it can be referred to individual conscious ex-
perience, resolvable into particulars. Accordingly, the percept is
itself particular, and likewise all general notions or concepts are
particular, since by reference to the immediate perceptual charac-
ter of the individual consciousness their composite nature is dis-
covered. " But two things which God has joined together cannot
be put asunder without loss to both," and if we cannot, from the
foregoing, abstract the object from sensation and ascribe to it an
existence independent of conscious experience, neither can we
hypostatize mere sensations and give to them an ultimate reality
which we deny to the objective consciousness involved in the im-
mediate perception of things.

From the third dialogue between Hylas and Philonous it may
be seen that a possible Humian hypostatization of sensations was
present to Berkeley's mind; and he seems there struggling to free
his conception of the self from the crude categories in which it
appears clothed in the Principles, a task which he better achieved
in Siris. But it never appeared to him that he would himself be
regarded as a representative of sensationalism, and that, in exhib-
iting the necessary relation of all objects to the percipient con-

1 Philosophy of Berkeley in " The Life, Letters and Unpublished Writings of
Berkeley," p. 371-372.

2Wer.ley; "British Thought and Modern Speculation," in Scottish Rev.,
Vol. 19, p. 140. -

— 47 —

sciousness, he had debarred himself from any further consideration
of those universals of Reason, upon the assumed existence of which
the whole of his later theory reposes. To hypostatize universals or
notions, in other words, to conceive an 'abstract idea' that cannot
be shown to bear the marks which signify its origination in indi-
vidual experience, is an impossibility. While on the other hand,
to hypostatize sensations, to regard them as having an existence
independent of the relating activity of mind, is again to commit
that fallacy of abstractly conceiving existence to which it was
Berkeley's purpose to call attention. That particular sensations
are of themselves insufficient for the ultimate explanation of our
experience of an objective world, Berkeley acknowledges in the
admission that "all knowledge and demonstration are about uni-
versal notions." Things which, regarded in themselves, and as
mere passive objects of mind, are particular, become universal by
being regarded in their relation to mind from which they cannot
ultimately be separated.

In the second edition of the Principles1 we are told that there
subsist relations between things and that these relations are discov-
erable by means of the 'notion.' The notion, we are also told in
the first edition, is the particular in its representative character, not
as representative of anything beyond and distinct from conscious-
ness, but representative of other particulars whose sole significance
is their relation to conscious mind. Accordingly, the Berkelian no-
tion is a representative image,2 the obverse of the particular whose
constituent elements are discoverable by psychological analysis;
bul this representative or conceptual3 character is as much a given

!The fact that this statement occurs only in the second edition of the
Principles has been cited as proof positive, not only that in the earliest phase of
his idealism Berkeley had but imperfectly conceived the function of the intellec-
tual notion, a fact readily to be conceded; but it has also been held to denote a
more fundamental difference, such that the earlier and later theories could not have
been held together in solution by Berkeley. Such objections do not however suf-
ficiently explain the fact that in the second edition of the Principles, published in
1732, so shortly before the appearance of Siris, the empiricism of the first edition
reappears in substantially the same form that it assumes in the earlier. Cf. McCosh;
"Locke's Theory of Knowledge with a notice of Berkeley" in "Criteria of
Truth."

2 Representative of conscious experience, not of a reality independent of all
consciousness tor, as Lewes says: "Nothing can be more inaccurate than to class
Berkeley among those who maintain ideas to be representative of things: ideas he
says are things. Yet Hamilton commits this inaccuacy." — History of Philo., Vol.
II, p. 313, note.

3i. e., 1'he concept must be individualized. " Yet this rule," says Mansel,
(' Proleg. Logica,' pp. 23, 33, quoted by Fraser in ' Selections,' page 21, note 2),"
individualize your conceps does not mean sensationalize them. With Berkeley,
however, as we have seen, it does mean sensationalize them, although this does not
exclnde the representative character of ihe concept. For: " a blurred picture is
just as much a single mental fact as a sharp picture is; and the use ot either picture

— 48 —

fact of consciousness as the particular image which in one aspect
it is seen to be. The particular only exists with reference to the
universal, while, on the other hand, the universal has no abstract
existence apart from the particular. For this reason Professor
Fraser's contention that Berkeley makes ideas objective, rather than
things subjective, 'seems to be borne out even in the earlier theory,
"lam not for changing things into ideas, bat rather ideas into
things," says Berkeley; "since those immediate objects of percep-
tion, which, according to you, *are only appearances of things, I
take to be the real things themselves "

Judging from his early statements with regard to the notion,
and from the subsequent part which they play in his later idealism,
it does not seem that such statements of the realistic position he
wished to defend should be taken merely as an attempt to square a
subjective idealism with the common sense conviction that there is
an external world which is for its existence independent of the in-
dividual consciousness. For Berkeley, the objectivity of ideas
and relations between ideas was guaranteed, ( i ) by throughout
maintaining that, in showing the subjective reference which any
phenomenon has, he is not thereby destroying the independent

by the mind to symbolize a whole class of individuals is a new mental function,'1''
(James: "Psych.," vol. II, p 49). In other words: the "Mind, her acts and fac-
ulties, furnish a new and distinct class of objects," (cited above, "Siris,'' § 247) or
' notions,' and the notion is just this ' blurred picture,' not in its character as re
solvable into its constituents in the individual consciousness, but in the use which
the mind makes of it. To quote from an article of recent date, (Dr. A.
K. Rogers' " Epistemology and Experience:" Philos. Rev., Sept., 1898). "The
concept has existence only as a tool, a method. It is not any element of expe-
rience as an existence, but simply the way we use that particular element which we
call the image. Accordingly, the concept, the universal as such does not enter
into reality at all except in its functional use. It is quite impossible that anything
should exist in general."

Now I think Berkeley would say, this functional use of the concept in expe-
rience must be justified, and we find its justification in the representative image; for,
in the latter, this functional use of the concept, this reference beyond the mere
particulars of which the representative image is composed is a given fact of expe-
rience. The dynamic representative character of the concept or 'notion,' the ref-
erence forward to other reality than itself, is as much a fact, seized and transfixed,
and thus justified in experience, as its static character — which is its natural history
and the description of its particular, constituent, psychic factors — and experience
cannot be other than it takes itself to be.

The representative 'image or notion' is thus a go-between in two phases of
oar attitude toward reality. As representative it is functionally active as the con-
cept; as static, passive, translatable into terms of the individual consciousness, it is
composite and thus resolvable into particulars. As concept it is ideally predicable
in the judgment but this predication, though ideal, finds its justification in the fact
that the sense datum which forms the subject of judgment is also ideal and in the
unitariness of the representative image are the two made one.

Thus, beneath the surface contradiction which appears in many parts of
Berkeley's philosophy the divergent lines of Siris and the Principles meet in a com-
mon focus — the doctrine of the 'notion.'

— 49 —

character of the object, since objectivity is a given fudamental
fact of consciousness; (2) by the presence in consciousness of
universals or 'notions.' In denying the existence of abstract no-
tions,2 i. e., in the discovery that the notion always involves a re-
lation to sense perception Berkeley had vindicated the reality of
the notion and thus the objectivity of the relations which form its
content by the direct evidence of the perceptual consciousness.
For the content of the notion is, he tell us, relations, relations
which at any rate appear objective, and since the notion is, in its
individual character, as the image, experiential, the objectivity of
relations is directly evinced by consciousness; for — to use Professor
Royce's language experience cannot be other than it takes itself
to be. In other words, Berkeley asserts a common sense realism,'2
resting the existence of universals upon the direct testimony of
consciousness. His realism is not, however, a copy theory, for
there is nothing foreign to consciousness of which the idea can be
the copy, and in this respect it is idealism.

In the third dialogue between Hylas and Phylonous, the notion
in the guise of the archetype plays a more prominent part than in
the "Principles," and likewise the objectivity of ideas is further in-
sisted upon. While in the later work we find Berkeley denying the
existence of abstract matter, for the reason that the existence of a
thing cannot be abstracted from the perception of it, we here find
him using the same argument in' support of the objectivity of
things or ideas to mind, for "that a thing should be really perceived
by my consciousness and at the same time not really exist is to me
a plain contradiction, since I cannot prescind or abstract, even in
thought, the existence of a sensible thing from its being per-
ceived."

In "Siris" we receive further insight into the doctrine of the
objectivity of ideas, which, from his now complete recognition of
the immanence of reason, one would expect to find him regard as
active in their objective aspect. And so it is, for he there says
that sensible qualities are to be regarded as acts only in the cause,
and as passions in us. In Siris also3 Berkeley favors a doctrine of
'innate notions,' although, as he tells us, it is different from that
which is favored by the moderns, doubtless meaning the abstract
idea of Locke as well as the innate idea of Descartes. For the
' innate notion ' Berkeley describes as having a potential existence:

1 It is the emptiness of the abstract universal as well as its unimaginableness
against which Berkeley declaims — the unschematized category. But Berkeley had
no dualism as had Kant — no violent severing of sense-given impressions from the
activity of thought.

2Cf. Wenley — British Thought and Modern Speculation, p. 148 of Scottish
Rev., vol. 19.

3 Siris § 308-309-315.

— 50 —

it is connate rather than innate. The finite mind or self, by par-
ticipation in the Divine Mind, possesses the power of reflection
and of originating its own products, the notions; but since this
reflection is employed upon sense phenomena, which are not by
nature foreign to Mind, the notion amounts to an active synthesis
of this given material, and is thus for Berkeley constitutive, or to
express it more nearly in Berkeley's Platonic language, by means
of the notion we rediscover the universal creative ' form ' of the
Divine Reason immanent in sense.

( b ) Notion of Self and God.

Parallel to Berkeley's theory of a notion of relations there also
develops his 'notion' of the Self and God. With regard to our
knowledge of Self it is again Locke who furnishes a point of
departure for Berkeley's theory. The former, in close imitation of
Descartes, had said1 that "as for our own existence we perceive it
so plainly, that it neither needs nor is capable of any proof. For

nothing can be more evident to us than our own existence

Experience convinces us that we can have an intuitive knowledge
of our own existence, and an internal infallible perception that we
are. In every act of sensation, reasoning, or thinking we are con-
scious to ourselves of our own being; and in this matter come not
short of the highest degree of certainty."

Apparently in entire agreement with this, Berkeley sets out
with a intuitional view of the self. Such passages as the following
appear in considerable profusion throughout his earlier philosophi-
cal works, and demonstrate his inability to free himself from an
apparent necessity of giving to his conception of the self an empir-
ical setting. In the " Principles" he says that "we comprehend
our own existence by inward feeling or reflection, and that of other
spirits by reason."2 Likewise, in the third dialogue between
Hylas and Philonous: "I do nevertheless know that I who am a
spirit or thinking substance, exist as certainly as I know my ideas
exist. Further, I know what I mean by the terms I and myself,
and I know this i?nmediately or intuitively, though I do not perceive
it as I perceive a triangle, a color, or a sound." By such state-
ments Berkeley not only laid himself open to the charge of having
attempted to ground his metaphysic upon a psychological theory
of the self — a view which a consistent application of his own empir-
ical principles would destroy; for, as Hume afterward showed, the
permanence of the I, as given in perception, is not a real perma-
nence— but he apparently sought to reinstate, notwithstanding his

Locke's Essay, Book IV, ch. ix-3.
2 "Principles," § 89.

_ 5 1 —

Nominalism, a 'substance' theory fully as unacceptable as that
of Locke.

Early in the Principles this category of substance appears; yet it
occurs rather as a foil to the Cartesian substance than as a principle
of explanation to which the author attached any positive significance
— a category nearest at hand to envisage the active principle which,
by the extension of its activity, was to supplant passive matter. We
have no mediaeval discussion of faculties, no question is raised as
to the relation of a soul substance to a divine spirit substance, nor
are we told anything about the attributes of this substance. On the
contrary — in speaking of the perception of the qualities of bodies —
he says that these qualities are in the mind only as they are per-
ceived by it — that is, not by way of mode or attribute, but only by
way of 'idea.' Following the passage just quoted, Berkeley pro-
ceeds to draw the conclusion that the soul does not possess 'quali-
ties.' Subject, mode, and attribute, of the philosophers are discarded
as unintelligible terms; and this he illustrates in the case of a
material object.1

The paralogism involved in the attempt to explain the self by
means of the materialistic category of substance certainly appeared
to Berkeley. In the first place they would, of necessity, occur to
him in the distinction which he set up between spirits and ideas.
The latter, as merely passive existences, have nothing in common
with spirit but the general name Being. This distinction is intro-
duced among the reflections of the Commonplace Book: "Things
are two fold," he tells us — "active or inactive." The existence of
active things is to act, of inactive to be 'perceived.' There being
nothing in common between these two heterogeneous kinds of exis-
tences, the former, the active relational principle, mind or spirit, can-
not be adequately expressed in terms of passive ideas. Accordingly,
in spite of a seemingly bold assertion that 'we assuredly have an
idea of substance,' we read its qualification in the statements which
follow: "The substance of body we know. The substance of Spirit
we do not know — it not being knowable, it being a purus actus."
Now by the 'substance of body,' Berkeley, as we have seen,
means nothing else than the sensible object, involving indeed
thought-relations if we read him aright, but never abstract sub-
stance. Likewise any knowledge of spirit as substance is here
denied.

In the Principles and in the earlier dialogues, the category of
substance occurs in connection with his various other characteri-
zations of mind or spirit. In the third of these dialogues,2 after
speaking of the 'I as a spirit' or 'thinking substance,' he goes on

1 " Principles," §49.

z " Philonous" 3d dialogue, §5.

V-

— 52 —

to say: "The Mind, Spirit or Soul, is that indivisible, unextended
thing which thinks, acts, and perceives. I say indivisable, because
unextended; and unextended because extended, figured, moveable
things are ideas;" and that which perceives ideas, which thinks and
wills, is plainly itself no idea, nor like an idea .... I do not
therefore say my soul is an idea, or like an idea." These state-
ments do not seem to be a return to scholastic discussions as to
the possible existence of a spirit substance, stripped of all the rela-
tions by which substance or matter is perceptively known to us.
They appear rather to indicate the predominant thought in Berke-
ley's mind, that neither the sense qualities nor substance which
exists only in presence of these qualities can be adduced in sup-
port of a kind of existence which is, in itself, unknowable. Only
a negative signification is assigned to substance; ' and Berkeley,
whenever he is driven to an explanation of the self or the objective
Spirit which for him takes the place of matter, has recourse to the
'active, thinking principle,' a knowledge of which is had by means
of the notion.

After denying the possibility of our having an idea either of
the self or of God, he proceeds to give a reason for his insistence
that we have, if not an idea, at least some knowledge, of Spirit.
In reply to Hylas' objection that even if abstract matter be disal-
lowed, there may yet be "some third nature distinct from Matter
and Spirit" — "for what reason is there why you should call it
Spirit"? — Berkeley in effect says that there can be no via mediabe-
tween matter and spirit, no unica substantia'2 for as "I have a mind
to have some notion of meaning in what I say . . . when I speak
of an active being, I am obliged to mean spirit." Activity can be
ascribed only to that which has ideas and possesses the power of
' combining and relating ' those ideas, or to that which creates ideas.

If L may be allowed to quote farther, at considerable length,
from the dialogue we have been considering, the following may be
taken as illustrative of the position at which Berkeley has thus far
arrived with regard to a knowledge of the self and God. Though
we have no idea of spirit, yet "taking the word idea in a large
sense, my soul may be said to furnish me with an «idea [notion],
that is, an image or likeness of God— though indeed extremely in-
adequate. For all the notion I have of God is obtained by reflect-
ing on my own soul, heightening its powers, and removing its im-
perfection."3 in this we seem to obtain some hint of Berkeley's

1 Lewis, in his History of Philosophy (Berkeley) holds to the extreme of
this substance-interpretation ol Berkeley. He tells us that his '-idealism is at
bottom the much decried system of Spinoza, who taught that there was but one
essence in the universe, and that one Substance."

2cf. Fraser; Berkeley, Blackwood Philos. Classics, p. 201.

3 Third dialogue between Hylas and Philonous. Wales — Vol.

— 53 —

later doctrine of Personality, God appearing to be for him the
completion of the finite self. He further describes this sort of
knowledge in the following terms: "I have, therefore, though not
an inactive idea, yet in myself some sort of an active thinking
image of the Deity. And though I perceive Him not by sense,
yet I have a notion of him, or know him by reflection and reason-
ing. " l

To this statement of Philonous, Hylas, the materialist, objects.
"You say," he remarks, '"'your own soul supplies you with some sort
of an idea or image of God. But, at the same time, you acknowl-
edge you have, properly speaking, no idea of your own soul. . . .
To act consistently, you must either admit Matter or reject Spirit."
"Philonous thus replies, "I say, in the first place, that I do not
deny the existence of material substance, merely because I have
no notion of it, but because the notion of it is inconsistent; or, in
other words, because it is repugnant that there should be a notion
of it. Many things, for ought I know, may exist, whereof neither
I nor any other man hath or can have any idea or notion whatso-
ever. But then those things must be possible, that is, nothing in-
consistent must be included in their definition. I say, secondly,
that although we believe things to exist which we do not perceive,
yet we may not believe that any particular thing exists, without
some reason for such belief; but I have no reason for believing the
existence of matter. I have no immediate intuition thereof: neither
can I immediately from my sensations, ideas, notions, actions, or
passions, infer an unthinking, unperceiving, inactive Substance —
either by probable deduction or necessary consequence. 'Whereas
the being of my Self, that is, my own soul, mind, or thinking prin-
ciple, I evidently know by reflection It is granted we have

neither an immediate evidence nor a demonstrative knowledge of
the existence of other finite spirits; but it will not thence follow
that such spirits are on a foot with material substances: if to sup-
pose the one be inconsistent, and it be not inconsistent to suppose
the other; if the one can be inferred by no argument, and there is
a probability for the other. ... I say, lastly, that I have a notion
of Spirit, though I have not, strictly speaking, an idea of it. I do
not perceive it as an idea, or by means of an idea, but know it by
reflection. "

In the above we have not only Berkeley's second and positive
disproof of abstract matter — the first and negative disproof being
grounded on the fact that its existence is not supported by the evi-
dence of immediate perception — but, what is here to our purpose,
his reasons for substituting spirit for abstract matter.

We may put the case briefly thus: We can have no idea of

1 "Third Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous."

— 54 —

spirit, but only a notion or conception of it. We have neither an
idea of abstract matter nor can we conceive its existence. The
notion of matter is self-contradictory because, being conceived as
passive, we may demand that the notion of it shall be realized in
the form of passive existence, or ideas, and this demand it cannot
fulfill — or if it does, it at once becomes idea, and then Berkeley
asks: why reduplicate existence and attempt to think matter other-
wise than as it is revealed to us in the percipient consciousness ?
The notion of matter is thus inadequate to its objective existence.
If it be replied that matter is active, produces, brings about effects,
Berkeley would say that the notion of activity is indentical with
the notion of spirit; for as soon as you attempt to conceive it as
matter, you make it passive, i. e., idea, and thus destroy activity.
If then you attempt to conceive matter in itself, as an absolute ex-
istence apart from spirit, you must admit that it must stand on its
own merit, i. e., as passivity, and thus, again, it is idea.

The notion of spirit, however, though ' inadequate ' in so far
as we attempt to characterize it by conceptions borrowed from
passive ideas, is not inconsistent; for the conception of spirit does
not demand that it shall be, in its absolute nature, expressed in
terms of ideas, but that these shall only signify or represent spirit-
ual activity, which is by hypothesis different from ideas. Thus we
must, from the very notion of matter, demand a complete knowl-
edge of what it is, and it is thus inadequate to the form of repre-
sentation which its conception requires; while, on the other hand,
the notion of spirit is less inadequate inasmuch as it only requires
a medium for the expression of itself, viz, notions or representa-
tions. We may accordingly be forced to content ourselves with a
relative knowledge of mind or spirit, a ' probability,' as Berkeley
expresses it, but of matter we can have no knowledge, except as a
mind-dependent existence.

The passages which I have transcribed from Berkeley's dia-
logue do not seem to me to indicate a sole reliance upon the em-
pirical self in support of his idealistic hypothesis. In the self or
' thinking principle ' which ' I evidently know by reflection ' there
is implied the thought of an activity of relation of which we are
made aware not only by its empirical manifestations but, also by
the universals of reason or 'notions.' Berkeley, as we have before
said, does not think of instituting a Kantian inquiry into the prin-
ciples which must be presupposed in the constitution of experience
in order to render it possible. Before Kant's question could arise
there was needed Hume's misinterpretation of Berkeley's 'spirit
substance ' and the subsequent disintegration of the self into ab-
stract sensations. By Kant the self was to be rediscovered,
although the foreign ' Somewhat ' against which Berkeley so vigor-
ously contended reappeared in the guise of a ding-an-sich, thus oc-

— 55 —

casioning the transformation of the self from an ontological into
an epistemological unity. Berkeley, on the other hand, who by
his less critical and easier method, had seized upon Locke's com-
bining activity of mind, by extending the scope of its activity
from the small sphere to which the latter had confined it, viz., ideas
of reflection, gradually transforms it into the self, which, by par-
ticipation in the Infinite Self, or God, is constitutive of the rela-
tions that are througout implied in all phenomenal objects.

" At the first thought it seems altogether incongruous and un-
seemly to connect Kant or his speculation with Berkeley and his
philosophy and yet the two are more nearly con-
nected than at first sight would seem to be possible, not merely by
their historic connection through Hume under the law of action
and reaction, but by the problem with which both grappled so
earnestly, although their solutions vary so widely. We find them
in certain particulars nearer than we should at first have suspected.
The matter which Berkeley so passionately rejects while he retains
the sensations which are all we know, is, as he conceives it, not
greatly unlike the Ding-an-sich which Kant so pertinaciously
ignores, while he accepts the phenomena, which somehow he holds
to be its representation. The time and space which Kant acknowl-
edges as the forms and only as the forms of our direct knowledge
affirmed or presumed — of sense experiences by an a priori neces-
sity, are accepted by Berkeley as a priori relations, because neces-
sarily involved in the continued activity of God. Kant's catego-
ries of our generalized thinking are matched by Berkeley's original
notions of relations between ideas which are discerned and
affirmed directly by the mind. The ideas, however, which Kant
beheld as shivering ghosts through the midst of his timid scepti-
cism, and which he was forced to recognize as real by a faith which
he could only say was a make-believe — of God, the soul, and the
cosmos, — these were to Berkeley the pillars and foundation of his
philosophic faith. While Kant finds in conscience the command
to believe in God, because God is needed as a chief of police for
the moral universe, Berkeley finds in God the personal foundation
and enforcer of duty, because duty is the voice of reason and
goodness, which are but other names for the thoughts and actings
of God."

We have endeavored to show that the self of Berkeley is but
poorly understood if one fastens upon the category of substance
as indicative of his deeper thought or last word about the matter.
His unwillingness to apply the category of ' substance,' and his
recognition that • being' is an inadequate concept by which to ex-
press the self, appear in a few passages in his Commonplace Book.
There he says, with regard to the objective source of ideas of
sense: "there is a being which wills these perceptions in us," to

— 56 —

which he adds: " It should be said, nothing but a Will — a being
which wills being unintelligible."1 Likewise he seems to disallow
the hypostalization of Will or Understanding, either as modes of
a substance, or as faculties in abstraction from the self of which
they are different forms of manifestation: "I must not say that
will or understanding is all one, but that they are both abstract
ideas, i. e. , none at all — they not being even ratione different from
the spirit, qua faculties, or active."2 Again: Thought itself, or
thinking, is no idea. "'Tis an act, i. e., volition, as contradistin-
guished to effects — the Will."3 Further in his account of the per-
ception of objects, Berkeley says, in a passage already noted in
another connection: "when I speak of objects as existing in the
mind, or imprinted on the senses, I would not be understood in
the gross literal sense — as when bodies are said to exist in a place,
or a seal to make an impression on wax. My meaning is only that
the minds comprehends or perceives them." 4

On the whole it does not seem that he has much thought of
pressing the analogy of material substance upon his ' active prin-
ciple.' Although ideas, in so far as they are regarded apart from
the relating mind, are passive, and although as coming from a
source foreign to the finite mind, the latter is receptive with regard
to them; yet ideas in themselves, having no connexion or identity
with one another, have a meaning for the finite mind only in so far
as the latter possesses the relating activity which is necessary for
the interpretation of these significant signs into a rational lan-
guage. Thus the mind is not a mere tabula rasa, a substance-vehi-
cle for conveying into the empirical consciousness a world of
ready made perceptions; on the contrary, in so far as empirical
perception is present, there is implied the work of rational activ-
ity, without which experience would be impossible. The finite
mind can interpret the language of the Author of Nature only so
far as it possesses the capability of interpretation, i. e., as it shares
the rational activity which is at the heart of experience.

With respect to the identity of the finite mind or self, Berke-
ley is eminently unsuccessful, at least in his early philosophy.
The question thus appears to him in the "Commonplace Book":
"Wherein consists the identity of persons? Not in actual con-
sciousness, for then I'm not the same person I was this day twelve-
months but while I think of what I did then. Not in potential,
for then all persons may be the same for aught I know."5 Here

1 "Life Letters and Unpublished Writings of Berkeley," p. 430.
2Fraser; ''Commonplace Book" in "Life, letters, etc.," p. 466.

3 Ibid, p. 460.'

4 " Third Dialogue between Hylas and Philonious."

5Fraser; "Commonplace Book," in "Life, letters, etc.," p. 481.

— 57 —

he seems to rely solely upon memory as the bond of connection
between past and present states of consciousness; and its inade-
quacy as an explanation of any other than empirical identity he
could have seen if he had but applied the principles of associa-
tional psychology which he himself set afoot.

In the third dialogue between Hylas and Philonous he seems
to foresee Hume's subsequent procedure with regard to the self.
Hylas says in reply to the long speech of Philonous which we have
quoted: " Notwithstanding all you have said . . . . and in conse-
quence of your own principles, it should follow that you are only
a system of floating ideas, without any substance to support them.
Words are not to be used without a meaning in spiritual substance
more than in material substance; the one is to be exploded as well
as the other,"1 for "the murder of matter is the suicide of the mind."
This objection, suggestive of his Commonplace Book, in which
Berkeley says that " the very existence of idea constitutes the
Soul " 2 which is a mere 'congeries of perceptions,' is answered as
follows: "I know or am conscious of my own being, and that I
myself am not my ideas, but somewhat else, a thinking, active
principle which perceives, knows, wills and operates about ideas.
I know that I, one and the same self, perceive both colors and
sonnds: that a color cannot perceive a sound, nor a sound a color:
that I am therefore one individual principle, distinct from color
and sound; and for the same reason, from all other sensible things
and inert ideas. But, I am not in like manner conscious of the
existence or essence of Matter."3 Now from this statement that
the self is an individual principle, distinct from ideas, and the pre-
ceding assertion that 'Mind is a congeries of perceptions,' it
seems that Blakeley contemplated a distinction between an empiri-
cal and a rational self, although the distinction is far from being
explicitly pointed out.

In the Commonplace book he regards the person as immortal,
while he denies immortality to the soul, by which he evidently
means the self in its individual or empirical aspect. Berkeley's
theory of personality is a later development of his philosophy, in
the progress of which he has come to place increasing reliance
upon the notion, rather than upon mere intuition. But if, in his
early theory, he fails to distinguish clearly between the empirical
self as a mere congeries of perceptions, and the rational activity
which renders possible an interpretation of the sign language of
Nature, in the later philosophy of Siris there is a tendency to lose
the identity of the self in Universal Mind. He now verges upon

1 "Third dialogue between Hylas and Philonous."

2Fraser; "Commonplace Book," "Life, letters, etc.," p. 43S.

3 "Third dialogue between Hilas and Philonous."

— 58 —

mysticism, and draws largely from Neo-Platonic sources for his
conceptions. Jamblichus, he says, furnishes a doctrine that "there
is a principle of the soul higher than nature, whereby we may be
raised to a union with the gods, and exempt ourselves from fate."1
"According to the Platonic philosophy, ens and unnm are the
same. And consequently our minds participate so far of existence
as they do of unity. But it should seem that personality is the
indivisible center of the soul or mind, which is a monad so far
forth as she is a person. Therefore Person is really that which
exists, inasmuch as it participates in the Divine unity:"2 Again, he
says: " Upon mature reflection, the person or mind, of all created
being, seemeth alone indivisible and to partake most of unity. But
sensible things are rather considered as one than truly so, they
being in a perpetual flux or succession ever differing and various.
Nevertheless, all things together must be considered as one uni-
verse, one by the connexion and order of its parts, which is the
work of mind, whose unit is, by Platonics, supposed a participa-
tion of the first to iv. "3 "Aristotle himself, in his third book
of the Soul, saith it is the mind that maketh each thing to be one.
. . . How this is done Themistius is more particular, observing
that as being conferreth essence, the mind, by virtue of her sim-
plicity, conferreth simplicity upon compound beings. And, indeed,
it seemeth that the mind, so far forth as person, is individual.
Therein resembling the divine one by participation, and imparting
to other things what itself participates from above. This is agree-
able to. the doctrine of the ancients; however the contrary opinion
of supposing number to be an original primary quality in things,
independent of the mind, may obtain among the moderns."4

Here Berkeley in his theory of personality relies upon the
concept of unity not only to exhibit the necessary dependence of
the finite upon the infinite mind, but also to differentiate the former
from the latter. "Number," he now says, in entire agreement
with his earlier philosophy, " is no object of sense :" " it is an act
of the mind. The same thing in a different conception is one or
many."5 Unity he still regards as a creature of the mind, and
not something existing in things independent of the mind; yet it
is no longer as formerly an abstract idea, but a notion. And the
notions, as we have seen, are in Siris identified with the archetpyes
or ideas of Reason, immanent in the phenomena of sense. The
latter, as Berkeley insists, are not to be regarded in one aspect

1 " Siris," § 272.

2 Ibid, § 346.

3 Ibid, § 350.

*Idid, § 356 and 357.
5 Ibid, § 288.

— 59--

alone, for the phenomenon is not merely the complex of sensations
which has been marked by one name, and so reputed as a Thing.
The Thing is, in another aspect, as the presenied object of con-
sciousness, an irreducible fact; it must finally be referred to its
causal source and receive its ultimate explanation in objective
Universal Mind. The identity of the thing is not a mere ficti-
tious identity, for the unity which the mind introduces into sensa-
tions has its counterpart in an objective unity whose source is
Universal Mind. As the finite mind, in its explanation of phe-
nomena, procedes from synthesis to higher synthesis, by the redis-
covery in Time of the archetypal ideas or notions, it becomes
aware of the 'Divine unity ' in which it participates.

But while person is really that which exists, inasmuch as it
participates in the Divine Unity, difference is not lost; for it is
also true that "the mind so far forth as person is individual."
Personality is for Berkeley the most adequate category for the
complete explanation of experience, since the self not only ex-
presses the highest synthesis but, true to the empirical aspect of
things, it also expresses difference, as self distinguished from self.
My experiences, he seems to say, must be referred to a higher
source than myself, and there is a cosmical order independent of
me; yet, in a very real sense also, these experiences are mine, and
I am not the mere theatre for the play of passing phenomena,
since in my abdity to discern the unphenomenal character whirh
attaches to my experiences, in the significance which the arche-
typal ideas have for me, my empirical self becomes, like my other
phenomenal experiences, the symbol of a higher personality.

But there is another reason why Berkeley, in his final account
of the relation of the self to God, rejects a complete identifica-
tion of the self with God. We have seen that in his early philos-
ophy, Berkeley's conception of God seems unmistakably to be of
the deistic cast. The arbitrariness of the divime nature language
is chiefly put forward; God is seemingly regarded as an extraneous
power. working effects in us. But the interpretability of this lan-
guage rests for us upon the presupposition of a necessary unity of
the finite with the Absolute Mind or Reason. "Siris" is the explica-
tion of this, and the universals of Reason which formerly received
such brief recognition are the means whereby we arrive at the
knowledge of an objective order of things, which as the deeper
meaning, is the completion as well as the ground of Berkeley's ear-
lier idealism. With his increasing gnosticism, his growing confi-
dence in the universals of Reason, Berkeley is apparently more
tolerant of views which in strictness cannot be called theistic.
"Whether the wT^c be abstracted from the sensible world, and con-
sidered by itself as distinct from and presiding over the created
system; or whether the whole Universe, including mind, together

— 60 —

with the mundane body, is conceived to be God, and the creatures
to be partial manifestations of the Divine essence — there is no
Atheism in either case, whatever misconception there may be; so
long as Mind or Intellect is understood to preside over, govern
and conduct the whole frame of things."1

As we have elsewhere seen, the immanence of the divine Rea-
son in the world of sense is the view which is now favored by
Berkeley; but it is not maintained to the exclusion of the theistic
view which dominated his early idealism: and in this he avoids
the pantheism towards which he seems tending and the complete
resolution of the self into an Absolute Reason.3 It is true that
his theistic utterances are no longer dogmatic assertions as for-
merly. The limitation of that finite knowledge which would grasp
the infinite is now more clearly recognized. The theistic concep-
tion of God comes as the deeper insight into the ever present cre-
ative Reason which informs and maintains the world. It comes as
a conviction that as man in his rational activity is made aware of
a higher rational self which is the completion of the finite and the
presupposition of our knowledge of a world, so may this higher
self be more completely known by conceiving it in analogy with
the total nature of man. As in Berkeley's idealism, and more
expressly in the later form which it takes in " Siris," Reason is not
to be absolutely divorced from sense, so neither is Will a faculty
distinct from Reason. Not Reason alone, but Reason and Will,
as different expressions of man's spiritual activity, constitute his
inner self.

In the third dialogue between Hylas and Philonous we have
already seen Berkeley's statement that God is to be known only by
reflecting upon the self, "by heightening its powers and removing
its imperfections." In "Alciphron, the Minute Philosopher," the
question of the legitimacy of this process comes up. The inade-
quacy of finite categories is recognized, while predication by
means of them is nevertheless defended by reverting to the schol-
astic argument that they are applied "by way of eminence and
not by way of defect."4

The theistic view, which he thus but poorly maintains as
against pantheism, is perhaps furnished with a more rational basis
if one reads it in connection with his later utterances with respect
to the notion, and the function which we found must be- assigned

1 ' -Siris, ' ' § 326.

-'Cf. " Siris, ' §276, 287.

3 '"La large tolerance de Berkeley n'excommunie pas le pantheism, bien
qu'elle affiime que le funds de l'etre, en Dieu comme en nous, est ('indivisible
unite de la personne." L. Carrau: "La philosophie religieuse en Angleterre; "
Paiis, iSSS, p, 27.

4 "Divine Visual Language," § 19.

— 61 —

to it in the constitution of experience. Viewed in this light, man's
knowledge of God is but the farther extension of his knowledge
of the phenomenal order. In the phenomenal world of Berkeley
we are not cut off from a world of noumenal existence, for in the
sense-material which is subjected to the unifying work of finite
conceptions there is nothing foreign to Reason. In the generali-
zations of science, by means of which is made possible for us an
orderly and connected world of experience, nay even in perception
itself, we are already transcending the merely phenomenal. Finally,
in the highest completed synthesis, the Divine Reason, we have
merely the last step which gives meaning to the whole. Man shares
in the Universal Reason, and it is only by his participation in this
Reason that he is enabled to take cognizance of this Unity, which
is the truest explanation of himself and of the world in which he
lives. But in man Reason and Will are equally fundamental, alike
universal expressions of his experience of himself, and together
they constitute his personality. In his conception of God Berke-
ley refuses to be be content with mere Reason as the final explana-
tion of things. Reason, as so conceived, is scarcely differentiated
from Fate, while the Reason it is Berkeley's purpose to discover is
a purposeful activity, directed toward the Supreme Good; it is, as
he tells us, Will which is "conducted and applied by intellect."
The Divine arbitrariness is still retained; God is Divine Will di-
rected by Divine Reason. Although in that Reason the finite is
now seen to participate, the key to the knowledge of God is not
only the rational, but the moral implication contained in man's
knowledge of himself.

1 Siris, § 254.

CHAPTER IV.

The relations which obtain either by way of agreement or
contrast between the earlier and later phases of Berkeley's ideal-
ism, and which have been exhibited somewhat in detail with respect
to the three objects of human knowledge, — ideas, relations, and
that third class of existences, denominated by Berkeley, spirits,
may now be briefly summarized.

With respect to ideas we distinguished between three classes:
(i) the sensation; (2) the phenomenal object, which is in one
aspect a mere complex of sensations, and which in another aspect
remains an objective datum of consciousness, ultimately explained
only by reference to the objective mind of God; (3) the archetype
or Idea of Reason. The early philosophy of Berkeley exhibits
his insistance upon the subjective character of phenomena, while
in the later philosophy of " Siris," their objective character is
brought to light by means of the immanent universals, ideas, whose
existence had in the "Principles" a tacit recognition in the ad-
mission that there are universal notions.

Turning to the connection of ideas, we found that in the ear-
lier philosophy the principle of Causality is declared to be inope-
rative between ideas, as they are here regarded, in their particular
and subjective aspect. A custom or habit of relating passively
experienced sensations is apparently sufficient to account for the
presence of the external phenomenal object. The theory is in the
first instance differentiated from the subsequent humlan traduction
of it only in the implicit recognition of the fundamental unity which
subsists between the finite and the Divine Mind, in the fact that the
former possesses the capability of rationally interpreting the sensa-
tion symbols which ultimately depend upon the causal activity of
Divine Will. Again, in the "Principles of Human Knowledge" and
in the "Dialogues," Berkeley furnished ample acknowledgment of
the fact that the phenomenal object, for which he prefers the term
'idea' rather than thing, has not a merely subjective existence,
although, he declares it is meaningless if we attempt to conceive it
out of all relation to percipient consciousness. His sufficient ac-
knowledgment of this is, however, in this early phase of his ideal-
ism, unsupported otherwise than by citing the fact that ideas of
sense are apparently independent of human volition, being pro-
duced in a regular, orderly and coherent series.

But, as we approach Berkeley's later realistic position, we find
him evidently aware that the objectivity of phenomena cannot be

—63—

established in so simple a way. Accordingly, in "Alciphron," the
objective implications of the phenomenal object are made more
expressly the subject of study, which results in the discovery that
any perception is not merely the sum of particular sensations, but
that, on the contrary, in order to the recognition of any perceived
object, there is involved the work of unconscious rational infer-
ence.1 A few sensations serve as signs by which we are led to expect
other unperceived sensations, provided certain conditions be ful-
filled. These present sensations are nothing of themselves, but
only as they are signs of relations whose permanence and objectivity
are due to the constitutive universals of Supreme Mind.2 Imme-
diate perception is thus seen to imply mediation; and "faith in
an established, objective order of association between the two kinds
of sense phenomena (visual and tactual) is the basis of the con-
structive activity of intellect in all inductive interpretation of sensi-
ble things."3 Berkeley's association of ideas is, as Fraser points
out,4 not merely subjective but objective, although his position of
objective association is not reached critically; it is, says Fraser, his
"religious faith in the constancy of the divine constitution of the
cosmos." "Objective association originates the notions of sensa-
tions as significant signs, and belief in the invariableness of the
relations of which they are significant." Subjective association, on
the other hand, "helps us to recollect the meaning of each partic-
ular sensation and connect the signs with their significance in our
imagination."5

In the latest phase of his idealism, represented by " Siris," we
have seen that the 'judgment of suggestion' ripens into the explicit
recognition of universals of Reason, or the constitutive notions,
imminent in sense. The legitimacy of Berkeley's final resort to
the notion, of which he makes such important use in establishing a
more consistent foundation for his early idealism, was found in the
fact that his early nominalism was directed merely against the
hypostatization of conceptions in abstract separation from mind as
percipient, while a more concrete universal was admitted by him
even in his early theory, although its function in the constitution
of experience was but imperfectly conceived.

Finally, our consideration of Berkeley's third class of exist-
ences, viz: Spirits, revealed that, corresponding to Berkeley's
growing insight into the nature of the phenomenal object, there

1 Cf . Wenley; "British Thought and Modern Speculation," p. 149 of Scot-
tish Rev., vol. 19.

'' Fraser; " Philosophy of Berkeley."

3Ibid, p. 395.

* Fraser; "Philosophy of Berkeley" in "Life, Letters and Unpublished
Writings," p. 304.

5 Ibid, p. 404.

—(54—

also emerges a theory of the self and God which is more consistent
with the rationalism that is implicitly the basis of his theory of the
world. That the world is to be regarded as my individual repre-
sentation, had never been maintained by Berkeley, as some would
have us believe. Its ultimate dependence upon Divine, rational
will had been affirmed at the outset, the guarantee for its indepen-
dence of me consisting in the very fact of Berkeley's insistence
that perception and conception should not be thought to exist in
absolute separation from one another. The particular is indeed
the conscious datum to which introspective analysis of the pheno-
menal object conducts us; but the conceptual existence of the
latter is as much a basal fact of consciousness as the particulars by
means of which it translates itself into the concrete perceptual ex-
perience of individual minds. Accordingly the early theory, which
tells us that particular sensations are merely the signs by which we
are enabled to interpret the rational language of a supreme Author
of Nature, becomes, by means of the later development of the
notion, the obverse of Berkeley's rationalistic philosophy, in which
we are led to see that the relations which subsist between pheno
mena, in the organic system of human experience, are not mere
subjective fictions, but objective relations, discoverable by us, be-
cause of the essential unity which obtains between the finite and
the Universal Mind, upon which these relations ultimately depend.

Yet, as we have seen, in this unity of the self with God, to
which he finally conducts us in Siris, difference is not merged in
mere identity. The world is also in a sense the representation of
the finite self, not because of the mere fact that man is a percipient
organism, but rather because of that very unity which obtains be-
tween the finite and the infinite in virtue of which man possesses
an 'imperishable personality all his own',1 sharing, as he does, in
the universal constitutive ideas. Through man, by means of these
universals, the world is constituted, and is representative alike of
an eternal or timeless order of things subsisting in the mind of
God, though also of the subjective interpretation which man puts
upon his experience. From this subjectivity, man, by voluntary,
willingness of insight into the eternal order, seeks to free himself,
and thus reconstitute the world in the likeness of God. Thus the
early doctrine that nature is in its totality an interpretable system,
dependent upon a Power that is not ourselves, seems borne out in
Siris by his theory of the personality or 'spiritual individuality ,2
of man.

It must, however, be kept in mind that the separate strands of
Berkeley's philosophy were never united in an organic whole. The

1 Wenley; " British Thought and Modern Speculation; " Scottish Rev., Vol.
19, p. 154.

2Fraser; '' Berkeley," p. 207.

—65—

manifold implications of the new point of view, consequent upon
his disposal of the fiction of abstract matter, were but imperfectly
conceived. The work of establishing an idealistic philosophy
which should take the place of previous materialistic theories was
only partially sketched, never definitely executed. Furthermore,
his philosophy was always in a state of transition, and accordingly
one cannot regard any particular phase of its development as an
adequate expression of Berkeley's complete thought about reality.
Empiricism, which is by far the dominant principle of his early
theorizing, long ago yielded up to more consistent systematizers
material valuable not alone for psychological method but for gen-
eral scientific enquiry. On the other hand, the final idealistic
position which he reached in Siris was presented in too fragmentary
a form to be of abiding service to subsequent philosophy.

"Elle n' etait pas fausse, mais incomplete " Ja Siris n' est qu' un

developpement plein de grandeur de ce que nous ont revele les premieres oeuvres.
Berkeley est arrive au seuil de la vieillesse, il a lutle jusqu' ici contre ce qu'il emit
le mal et 1' erreur; nul polemiste via eie plus ardent, plus soupple, plus inlaligable;
il a poursuivi dans tous ses retrenchments snccessifs la matiere en soi; il a refute
Collins, Mandeville, Shaftesbury, combattu 1' elendue-substance de Descaites, la
monade de Leibniz, 1' attraction newtonienne et jusqu' un principe du calcul
infinitesimal; c' est encore un soldat de la verite qu' il est parti pour les Bermudas.
Le voila dans sa retraite de Cloyne; sa philosophic, comme sa vie, a cesse d'etre
militante, il lit et medite, laisse sa pensee poursuivre son ascension de principe en
principe, jusqu' a 1' Un supreme; peu soucieux des objections et des pteuves,
s' enchantant, sans trop s' interroger sur 1' authenticite des texies, des echos de la
sagesse antique, ou il croit surprtndre comme le souffle affaibli d'une inspiration
sacree. C est ainsi que Platon, parvenu au bout de ses jours et au sommet de son
genie, laisse a de plus jeunes les procedes de refutation, les amies de la dispute,
et, ressuscitant les vieilles doctrines pour leur donner un plus beau sen-, expose
plus qu'il ne demontre dans ses oeuvres magistrales et seveines, le Time, les Lois.
Une critique exigeante peut les traiterde romans philosophiques, comme la Siiis;
nous croyons qu' elle aurait tort. Quand une grande intelligence a pense toute sa
vie ce qu' elle a pense a le fin, en pleine posstssion d' elle-meme, et ce qui doit
nous interesser le plus, et qui dans la mesure que les productions humaines en sont
capables, doit contenir le plus de verite." 1

If, however, Berkeley cannot be regarded as a thorough-going
empiricist, nor yet as a consistent rationalist, the suggestiveness of
his theory as a whole should not on that account be minimized.
His early theory, in which it is claimed that the existence of sen-
sible objects always involves a reference to percipient conscious-
ness, " denotes a faithfulness to experience " a that is not without
its value, when corrected by the subsequent view that mere com-
plexes of sensations, actually present in the individual mind, do not
of themselves constitute the substantiality of the object, which is
also a conceptual unity.

But Berkeley's close identification of perception and concep-
tion has, because of the imperfect manner in which he explicates

1 L. carrau; La philosophic religieuse, pp. iS, 20.

2 Green; Philosophical Works, Vol. I, Intro. § 173.

—60—

the rationalistic elements of his philosophy, been the occasion of
not a little misunderstanding with regard to his true attitude toward
the phenomenal object, which he substitutes for the thing, inde-
pendent of consciousness. Thus Green, while admitting that
"Berkeley knew that pure theism (which he wished to establish)
has no foundation unless it can be shown that there is nothing real
apart from thought," says that "he failed to distinguish this true
proposition — 'there is nothing real apart from thought' — from this
false one, its virtual contradictory — ' there is nothing other than
feeling;'" and in substituting simply 'idea' for Locke's 'idea of a
thing,' Berkeley failed, Green further tells us, to take "the truer
view of thought and its object, as together in essential correlation
constituting the real," and "merged both thing and idea in the
indifference of simple feeling."1

Of course upon this view that Berkeley has reduced thought
and its world to simple feeling, objectivity is done away with; and
bodies and things, suggested by feeling, are not real, since present
sensations are the only reality. But thus "to isolate the phrase,
esse is percipi, more particularly if the pcrcipi be held to imply ex-
clusively the perception of a single individual through the medium
of his senses only [as Green in the above passages seems to insist]
is to eviscerate Berkeley. "2 For "he does not declare
that we can possess a knowledge only of states of our own conscious-
ness,"3 since mere feeling present in any individual subjective con-
sciousness, apart from the objective conditions which render feeling
interpretable is, on Berkeley's theory, an abstraction no less absurd
than abstract matter.4 The esse of things indeed implies pereipi, yet
not alone this but coneipi or intelligi. Therefore to isolate the
former phrase is not only to neglect the later realistic development
of Berkeley's theory, but to substitute an imagined abstraction in
place of Berkeley's concrete particular. The substantiality of the
world of external existence, as distinct from the images and fancies
of the subjective consciousness, is for Berkeley a fact not to be
doubted. The mere Being6 and substantiality of things is the least
that can be said about them, and the true question of idealism is
not, does matter exist? since the materiality of the world cannot
be doubted; but rather what do we mean by saying that there is a
material world, i. e., what is the truth about matter?

The answer is, that from our thought of the existence of the

1 Green; Philosophical Work?, Vol. I, Intro.

'2Wenley; British Thought and Modern Speculation, p. 145.

3 Ibid, p. 154.

4Fraser; "Philosophy of Berkeley," in Life, Letters, etc., of Berkeley,

P- 371-

5 It is not uninteresting at this point to compare Berkeley's idea of being with
that of Hegel. The former says: "The general idea of Being appeareth to me
the most abstract and incomprehensible of all other." — cf. Principles of Human
Knowledge, § 17.

— 67 —

material object we cannot abstract that very condition which
seems necessary to its being, viz., the condition that it shall be an
object for perceptual consciousness. But this does not mean that
its existence is entirely comprehended in my perception of the
object; that it is nothing apart from me; but only that perception
is a universal and necessary condition of the being of an object.
The two have, as it were, a kind of organic relation, and cannot
be separated. What is not for consciousness, for the passive ex-
perience of perception, no less than what is not constituted by
thought, is a mere abstraction.

The view that the Berkelian idea is equivalent to mere feeling
involves a most ludicrous construction of Berkeley's theory of the
object not immediately present in perception. Does Berkeley
mean that, in turning my back upon the object, I thereby anni-
hilate it? In this respect at least, as Mr. Wenley has said, "he
was not the fool his critics would have had him." For, in the
first place, even if the object has an existence only under the con-
dition, of sense-perception; if that condition be not fulfilled, we
have yet no right to speak of the object being annihilated, for that
would mean that we first take the object apart from perceptual
consciousness, and then conceive its destruction. If the object
has an existence only in relation to some perceptual consciousness,
if it gets its meaning only as it is for a percipient subject, then in
the absence of its being perceived, we cannot say that the object
is destroyed and again flashed back into existence when the condi-
tion of sense-perception is fulfilled; object would simply be mean-
ing/ess apart from sense-perception.

However, this is to lay exclusive emphasis upon the percipi.
Upon Berkeley's principles, Fraser says,1 the thing may be taken
to exist, when we are absent from it, in percisely the same way
that the thing present to sense exists, i. e., in the one case as in
the other, actual sensations signify a conceivable object. The
immediate object being rationally constituted, Berkeley does not
mean that, in merely thinking of the object not present in my per-
ception, I by this means recreate it, but that, in my thought of the
object, I again recognize the universal conditions which now, as
at the time when the object was present to my perception, consti-
tute its independence of me. Does he not mean this in the fol-
lowing? "The trees are in the park, i. e., whether I will or no.
Let me but go thither and open my eyes by day, and I shall not
avoid seeing them."2 Or again, "bodies do exist whether we
think of them or no, they being taken in a two-fold sense; ,(i) Col-
lections of thoughts, (2) Collections of powers to cause these
thoughts. These latter exist, though perhaps a parti rei it may be

1 Fraser; " Philosophy of Berkeley in Life Letters and Unpublished Writings,"
p. 382.

" Commonplace Book, p. 474.

— 68—

one simple perfect power"1 — which, as we afterward learn, is
Supreme Mind.

Green, however, in considering the philosophical idealism of
Berkeley in its bearing upon science, says that "if physical truths
imply permanent relations Berkeley's theory properly excludes
them."2 Quoting section 58 of the Principles, he explains that
this passage meant for Berkeley that the motion of the earth would
begin as soon as we were there to see it; while for us it means that
it is now going on as an established law of nature which may be
collected from the phenomena. This seems, however, to lay too
exclusive emphasis upon the accident of sense-perception. What
Berkeley means appears rather to be that the 'established rules of
nature' are certain permanent conditions of existence which the
mind in its conceptual activity is enabled to discover. Our belief
in these primary conditions is ultimately grounded upon our belief
in Supreme Rational Will, of which these laws or conditions are
the expression. Once discovered, I know that the phenomena,
which may be subsumed under these laws, actually occur in ac-
cordance with them. The earth moves whether I perceive it or
not, for in my thought of the motion of the earth, I recognize that
the accident of my individual perception is not involved in the ob-
jective conditions underlying my presumption that the earth moves.

Still the universal condition, under which the mind arrives at
a knowledge of the laws which subsist between . phenomena, is that
of sense-perception. Conception is only an abstraction from the
concrete life of mind or spirit; we have only a relative universal as
likewise a relative particular; therefore mere relations or abstract
conditions of existence are not to be hypostatized and taken in
absolute separation from perceptual consciousness. This is the
logic of Berkeley's polemic against 'abstract ideas.' Accordingly
the motion of the earth, as also any phenomenal object not present
to my perception, must be regarded as being in a certain sense per-
ceived. Nor does this imply for Berkeley the idea of God as a
percipient being in a human and anthropomorphic sense, for
'God,' it is said in "Siris," 'has no sensory.'3 Perception is finally
translated into a system of rational relations which are intuited
rather than perceived. The world is ultimately a rationally con-
stituted cosmos, whose intelligible relations are at once the crea-
tion and the object of Supreme Rational Will or Person. What-
ever difficulties attach to this view, — and they are doubtless many,
it at least avoids the extreme of the rationalistic view by refusing
to regard the ultimate unity, to which experience must be sub-
jected, as a mere system of relations apart from the concrete life of
conscious personality.

1 " Commonplace Book" in " Life, Letters," etc., p. 486.
* Green; Philosophical Works, Vol. I, Introduction.
3 "Siris; " § 289.

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}

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Note. — For detailed reference to Berkeley's commentators v.
Krauth's " Principles of Human Knowledge," through which
much of the above bibliography has been obtained. ( c*^~^

}

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