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George Berkeley
Bishop of Blogue

Engraved by S. Freeman from an original painting

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In the latter year he first appeared as an author, in the little tract entitled, 'Arithmetica absque Algebra aut Euclide demonstrata,' which he seems to have written before he was twenty years old, but in which the natural bent of his mind towards the demonstrative and metaphysi cal sciences already appears. In 1709 he published his Theory of Vision,' which was the first attempt ever made in this country to distinguish the immediate and natural objects of sight, and the operations of the senses, from the conclusions we have been accustomed from infancy habitually to deduce from our sensations.' A ray of light, proceeding as all rays do in a straight line, must, however great its length, affect the eye, retina, and optic nerve, as if it were a single point. From this obvious fact Berkeley asserted that a man born blind, who should be suddenly made to see, would at first perceive nothing without him, would distinguish neither the distance, size, figure, nor situation of external objects; in such a case, he said, the individual would only see in his eyes themselves, or to speak more properly, would only experience new modifications in his mind, until joining touch to sight, he formed an actual communication with the external world, and learned by the simultaneous exercises of the two senses that natural language in which the visible is the sign of the tangible. This truth-which Berkeley arrived at merely by contemplating the nature of sensation in his own mind, and the known laws of optics-after having been laughed at for more than twenty years, as one of the dreams of a visionary genius, was completely confirmed by the famous case in which Cheselden successfully couched a young man who had been born blind.2

The year following this successful effort, he published a work entitled 'The Principles of Human Knowledge,' in which he attempts to prove the non-existence of that solid, extended, and inert substance called matter, and to demonstrate that what we consider the qualities of external substances, are not external to but exist in the mind, being in fact nothing more than sensations. Considerable misrepresentations have been given of this theory. For example, when the author of the Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth' represents Berkeley as affirming that "independent of us and our faculties, the earth, the sun, and the starry heavens, have no existence at all; that a lighted candle hath not one of those qualities which it appears to have,—that it is not white, nor luminous, nor round, nor divisible, nor extended, but that, for any thing we know or can ever know to the contrary, it may be an Egyptian pyramid, the king of Prussia, a mad dog, the island of Madagascar, Saturn's ring, one of the Pleiades, or nothing at all;" when such a representation is given of Berkeley's doctrines, we think he is totally and grossly misrepresented. Both in his 'Principles,' and in his Dialogues,' in defence of his system, published in 1713, he distinctly declares his belief that the universe has a real existence in the mind of the infinite God, in whom we all "live, and move, and have our being;" that, so far from being deceived by our senses, we are never deceived by them; and that all our mistakes concerning matter and its qualities, are the result of false inferences from true sensations. "I am of a vulgar cast," he says: "simple enough to believe my senses, and leave things as I find them. It is my opinion that the real things are

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those very things I see, and feel, and perceive, by my senses. thing should really be perceived by my senses, and at the same time not really exist, is to me a plain contradiction. When I deny sensible things an existence out of the mind, I do not mean my mind in particular, but all minds. Now it is plain they have an existence exterior to my mind, since I find them by experience to be independent of it. There is, therefore, some other mind wherein they exist during the intervals between the times of my perceiving them; as likewise they did before my birth, and would also after my annihilation. And as the same is true with regard to all other finite created spirits, it necessarily follows there is an omnipotent Eternal Mind, which knows and comprehends all things, and exhibits them to our view in such a manner, and according to such rules, as He himself hath ordained, and which are by us termed 'the laws of Nature.'" Again he says: "When in broad daylight I open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose whether I shall see or no, or to determine what particular objects shall present themselves to my view; and so likewise as to the hearing and other senses, the ideas imprinted on them are not creatures of my will; there is, therefore, some other spirit or will that produces them. The question between the materialists and me is not, whether things have a real existence out of the mind of this or that person; but, whether they have an absolute existence distinct from being perceived by God, and exterior to all minds. I assert, as well as they, that since we are affected from without, we must allow powers to be without in a being distinct from ourselves. So far we are agreed. But then we differ as to the kind of this powerful being: I will have it to be spirit,-they, matter, or I know not what third nature. Thus I prove it to be spirit: From the effects I see produced, I conclude there are actions; and because actions, volitions, for I have no notion of any action distinct from volition; and because there are volitions, there must be a will. Again, the things I perceive must have an existence,-they, or their archetypes,-out of my mind; but being ideas, neither they nor their archetypes can exist otherwise than in an understanding; there is therefore an understanding. But will and understanding constitute in the strictest sense a mind or spirit; the powerful cause therefore of my ideas is, in strict propriety of speech, a spirit." Thus then Berkeley conceives that matter cannot be the pattern or archetype of ideas, because an idea can resemble nothing but another idea, or the sensation of which it is a relict. Matter, he thinks, cannot be the cause of ideas; for every cause must be active, and matter is defined to be inert and incapable of action. He therefore infers that all our sensations, of what we call the qualities of external substances, are produced by the immediate agency of Deity upon our minds; and that corporeal substances have no existence, or at least that we have no indisputable evidence of their existence. Now that such may possibly be the origin of our sensations, no man will deny who reflects on the infinite power and wisdom of the agent from whom they are said to proceed.3 Dr Reid himself, the ablest of all Dr Berkeley's opponents, frankly acknowledges that no man "can show, by any good argument, that all our sensations might not have been as they are, though no body or quality of body had ever existed."

'See Duncan's Essay.

Dr Beattie indeed affirms that Berkeley's theory is utterly monstrous, and that "in less than a month after the non-existence of matter should be universally admitted, he is certain there could not, without a miraele, be one human creature alive on the face of the earth." But this assertion is evidently made in consequence of mistaking Berkeley's nonexistence of matter, for the non-existence of sensible objects. "We are sure," says the bishop, "that we really see, hear, feel; in a word, that we are affected with sensible impressions; and how are we concerned any further? I see this cherry; I feel it; I taste it; and I am sure nothing cannot be seen, or felt, or tasted; it is therefore real. Take away the sensations of softness, moisture, redness, tartness, and you take away the cherry." All this is equally true, and equally conceivable, whether the combined sensations which indicate to us the existence of the cherry, be the effect of the immediate agency of God, or of the impulse of matter upon our minds; and to the lives of men there is no greater danger in adopting the former than the latter opinion. The good bishop should have stopped here, and not endeavoured to prove that matter cannot possibly exist. But this he also attempted to do; and, as we think, completely failed.

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We do not know that the question raised by Berkeley has been more satisfactorily disposed of, than in an article on Drummond's Academical Questions,' in the 7th volume of the Edinburgh Review,' from which the following is an extract:-"We think that the existence of external objects is not necessarily implied in the phenomena of perception; but we think that there is no complete proof of their non-existence, and that philosophy, instead of being benefited, would be subjected to needless embarrassments by the assumption of the ideal theory. The reality of external existences is not necessarily implied in the phenomena of perception; because we can easily imagine that our impressions and conceptions might have been exactly as they are, although matter had never been created. Belief, we know, to be no infallible criterion of actual existence; and it is impossible to doubt, that we might have been so framed as to receive all the impressions which we now ascribe to the agency of external objects, from the mechanism of our own minds, or the particular volition of the Deity. The phenomena of dreaming, and of some species of madness, seem to afford experimental proofs of the possibility we have now stated, and demonstrate, in our apprehension, that perception, as we have defined it, (i. e. an apprehension and belief of external existences,) does not necessarily imply the independent reality of its objects. It is absurd to say that we have the same evidence for the existence of external objects, that we have for the existence of our own sensations. It is quite plain, that our belief in the former is founded altogether on our consciousness of the latter; and that the evidence of this belief is consequently of a secondary nature. We cannot doubt of the existence of our sensations, without being guilty of the grossest contradiction; but we may doubt of the existence of the material world, without any contradiction at all. If we annihilate our sensations, we annihilate ourselves; and, of course, leave no being to doubt or to reason. If we annihilate the external world, we still leave entire all those sensations and perceptions which a different hypothesis would refer to its mysterious agency on our minds. On the other hand, it is certainly going too far to assert, that the non

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