Principles Of Human Knowledge - Closing

For after all, what deserves the first place in our studies, is the consideration of God, and our duty ; which to promote, as it was the main drift and design of my labours, so shall I esteem them altogether useless and ineffectual, if by what I have said I cannot inspire my readers with a pious sense of the presence of God : and having shewn the falseness or vanity of those barren speculations, which make the chief employment of learned men, the better dispose them to reverence of learned men, the better dispose them to reverence and embrace the salutary truths of the Gospel, which to know and to practise is the highest performance of human nature.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 143

The best key for the aforesaid analogy, or natural science, will be easily acknowledged to be a certain celebrated treatise of mechanics: in the entrance of which justly admired treatise, time, space and motion, are distinguished into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and vulgar : which distinction, as it is at large explained by the author, doth suppose those quantities to have an existence without the mind : and that they are ordinarily conceived with relation to sensible things, to which nevertheless in their own nature, they bear no relation at all.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 141

But we should proceed warily in such things: for we are apt to lay too great a stress on analogies, and to the prejudice of truth, humour that eagerness of the mind, whereby it is carried to extend its knowledge into general theorems. For example, gravitation, or mutual attraction, because it appears in many instances, some are straightway for pronouncing universal; and that to attract, and be attracted by every other body, is an essential quality inherent in all bodies whatsoever. Whereas it appears the fixed stars have no such tendency towards each other : and so far is that gravitation, from being essential to bodies, that, in some instances a quite contrary principle seems to shew it self : as in the perpendicular growth of plants, and the elasticity of the air. There is nothing necessary or essential in the case, but it depends entirely on the will of the governing spirit, who causes certain bodies to cleave together, or tend towards each other, according to various laws, whilst he keeps others at a fixed distance ; and to some he gives a quite contrary tendency to fly asunder, just as he sees convenient.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 136

For as we have shewn the doctrine of matter or corporeal substance, to have been the main pillar and support of scepticism, so likewise upon the same foundation have been raised all the impious schemes of atheism and irreligion. Nay so great a difficulty hath it been thought, to conceive matter produced out of nothing, that the most celebrated among the ancient philosophers, even of these who maintained the being of a God, have thought matter to be uncreated and coeternal with him. How great a friend material substance hath been to atheists in all ages, were needless to relate. All their monstrous systems have so visible and necessary a dependence on it, that when this corner-stone is once removed the whole fabric cannot choose but fall to the ground ; insomuch that it is no longer worth while, to bestow a particular consideration on the absurdities of every wretched sect of atheists.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 132

Some there are who think, that though the arguments for the real existence of bodies, which are drawn from reason, be allowed not to amount to demonstration, yet the Holy Scriptures are so clear in the point, as will sufficiently convince every good Christian, that bodies do really exist, and are something more than mere ideas ; there being in Holy Writ innumerable facts related, which evidently suppose the reality of timber, and stone, mountains, and rivers, and cities, and human bodies. To which I answer, that no sort of writing whatever, sacred or profane, which use those and the like words in the vulgar acceptation, or so as to have a meaning in them, are in danger of having their truth called in question by our doctrine. That all those things do really exist, that there are bodies, even corporeal substances, when taken in the vulgar sense, has been shown to be agreeable to our principles : and the difference betwixt things and ideas, realities and chimeras, has been distinctly explained. And I do not think, that either what philosophers call matter, or the existence of objects without the mind, is any where mentioned in Scripture.

Principles of Human Knowledge - pg. 129

If we follow the light of reason, we shall, from the constant uniform method of our sensations, collect the goodness and wisdom of the spirit who excites them in our minds. But this is all that I can see reasonably concluded from thence. To me, I say, it is evident that the being of a spirit infinitely wise, good, and powerful is abundantly sufficient to explain all the appearances of Nature. But as for inert senseless matter, nothing that I perceive has any the least connexion with it, or leads to the thoughts of it. And I would fain see any one explain any the meanest phenomenon in probability, that he can have for its existence; or even make any tolerable sense or meaning of that supposition. For as to its being an occasion, we have, I think, evidently shewn that with regard to us it is no occasion : it remains therefore that it must be, if at all, the occasion to God of exciting ideas in us ; and what this amounts to, we have just now seen.

Meditations - pg. 116

So either this substance is a body -- is of corporeal nature-- and contains actually whatever is contained representatively in the ideas; or else it is God, or some creature nobler than bodies, and contains the same reality in a higher form. But since God is not deceitful, it is quite obvious that he neither implants the ideas in me by his own direct action, nor yet by means of some creature that contains the representative reality of the ideas not precisely as they represent it, but only in some higher form. For God has given me no faculty at all to discern their origin; on the other hand, he has given me a strong inclination to believe that these ideas proceed from corporeal objects must exist. It may be that not all bodies are such as my senses apprehend them, for this sensory apprehension is in many ways obscure and confused; but at any rate their nature must comprise whatever I clearly and distinctly understand -- that is, whatever, generally considered, falls within the subject-matter of pure mathematics.


NOTES: fundamentally different from Berkeley

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 127

Hence it is evident, that those things which under the notion of a cause co-operating or concurring to the production of effects, are altogether inexplicable, and run us into great absurdities, may be very naturally explained, and have a proper and obvious use assigned them, when they are considered only as marks or signs for our information. And it is the searching after, and endeavouring to understand those signs instituted by the Author of Nature, that ought to be employment of the natural philosopher, and not the pretending to explaing things by corporeal causes ; which doctrine seems to have too much estranged the minds of men from that active principle, that supreme and wise spirit, in whom we live, move, and have our being.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 209

Berkeley's favourite quotation, from ACTS 17:28. Strangely, it is also the last senstence in Malebranche's Recherche 3. 2. 6 -- the section expounding Malebranche;s view that 'we see all things in God'.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 114

The ideas imprinted on the sense by the Author of Nature are called real things : and those exsited in the imagination being less regular, vivid, and constant, are more properly termed ideas, or images of things, which they copy and represent. But then out sensations, be they never so vivid and distinct, are nevertheless ideas, that is, they exist in the mind, or are perceieved by it, as truly as the ideas of its own framing. The ideas of sense are allowed to have more reality in them, that is, to be more strong, orderly, and coherent than the creatures of the mind ; but this is no argument that they exist without the mind. They are also less dependent on the spirit, or thinking substance which perceives them, in that they are excited by the will of another and more powerful spirit : yet still they are ideas, and certainly no idea, whether faint or strong, can exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving it.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 113

But whatever power I may have over my own thoughts, I find the ideas actually perceieved by sense have not a like dependence on my will. When in broad day-light 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 will or spirit that produces them.

The ideas of sense are more strong, lively, and distinct that those of the imagination ; they have likewise a streadiness, order, and coherence, and are not excited at random, as those which are the effects of human wills often are, but in a regular train or series, the admirable connexion whereof sufficiently testifies the wisdom and benevolence of its Author. Now 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, which teaches us that such and such ideas are attended with such and such other ideas, in the ordinary course of things.
This gives us a sort of a foresight, which enables us to regulate our actions for the benefit of life. And without this we should be eternally at a loss : we coild not know how to act any thing that might procure us the least pleasure, or remove the least pain of sense. That food nourishes, sleep refreshes, and fire warms us ; that to sow in the seed-time is the way to reap in the harvest, and, in general, that to obtain such or such ends, such or such means are conducive, all this we know, not by discovering any necessary connexion between our ideas, but only by the observation of the settled laws of Nature, without which we should be all in uncertainty and confusion, and a grown man no more know how to manage himself in the affairs of life, than an infant just born.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 109

But though it were possible that solid, figured, moveable substances may exist without the mind, corresponding to the ideas we have of bodies, yet how is it possible for us to know this? Either we must know it by sense, or by reason. As for our sense, by them we have the knowledge only of our sensations, ideas, or those thing that are immediately perceived by sense, call them what you will : but they do not inform us that things exist without the mind, or unperceived, like to those which are perceieved. This the materialists themselves acknowledge. It remains therefore that if we have any knowledge at all of external things, it must be by reason, inferring their existence from what is immediately perceived by sense. But what reason can induce us to believe the existence of bodies without the mind, from what we perceive, since the very patrons of matter themselves do not pretend, there is any necessary connexion betwixt them and our ideas? I say it is granted on all hands ( and what happened in dreams, phrensies, and the like, puts it beyond dispute) that it is possible we might be affected with all the ideas we have now, though no bodies existed without resembling them.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 105

Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind, that a man need only his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, to wit, that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a world all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind, that their being is to be perceived or known ; that consequently so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some eternal spirit : it being perfectly unintelligible and involving all the absurdity of abstraction, to attribute to any single part of them an existence independent of a spirit. To be convinced of which, the reader need only reflect and try to separate in his own thoughts the being of a sensible thing from its being perceived.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 104

It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects have an existence natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But with how great an assurance and acquiesence soever this principle may be entertained in the world ; yet whoever shall find in this heart to call it in question, may, if I mistake not, perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction. For what are the forementioned objects but the things we perceive by sense, and what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations ; and is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these or any combination of them should exist unperceived?

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 103

But besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is likewise something which knows or perceives them, and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining, rmemebering about them. This perceiving, active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul or my self. By which words I do not denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, where they are perceieved; for the existence of an idea consists in being perceived.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 101

In vain do we extend our view into the heavens, and pry into the entrails of the earth, in vain do we consult the writings of learned men, and trace the dark footsteps of antiquity ; we need only draw the curtains of words, to behold the fairest tree of knowledge, whose fruit is excellent, and within the reach of our mind.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 101

For so long as men thought abstract ideas were annexed to their words, it doth not seem strange that they should use words for ideas: it being found an impracticable thing to lay aside the word, and retain the abstract idea in the mind, which in it self was perfectly inconceivable.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 66

The clearest trace of the scholastic tradition in Berkeley's work is his view that in perception we share ideas with God. This is a later version of St Augustine's doctrine of divine illumination, according to which God is the interior light of the human soul. A vision of things as they really are is present in us by virtue of the light that is in us, namely God; it cannot be extracted from sense-experience alone. This view is also clearly related to Malebranche's conception of seeing all things in God. Similarly, in my view Berkeley wants to retain a sense that there is natural necessity in the world. He cannot do it in Locke's mechanistic way, as we say, and he is worried (as Dun Scotus was) by the thought that nothing can be necessary if God could have ordained things otherwise -- or, to put it the other way round, that if there were natural necessities, they would consitute a constraint on the power of God.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 59

The overall story, as I see it, of how Berkeley stands in relation to the work of these four men is roughly as follows. Malebranche represents an intellectual tradition that stretches back to the scholastics and eventually to St Augustine. Descartes and Locke represents a distinctive philosophical position, informed by the new science. Newton was the new science personified. Berkeley was deeply impressed by Newton's work, and wanted to give it pride of place in his philosophical picture. But he wanted to overtun much of the philosophy of Locke and Descartes, and return as (always still informed by the new science) more nearly to the ways of Malebranche and his tradition.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 55

The first story is interesting. Berkeley supposes that minds are active principles or beings which operate on ideas. How does such a being come to have a conception of itself? The official answer, the best account of which is given in a passage added to the Dialogues, is that the mind, an active being, as such reflects itself to itself. 'The being of myself, that is, my own soul, mind or thinking principle, I evidently know by reflexion' (p. 233). We would do well, of course, to enquire carefully what sort of reflection this might be, and indeed how a mind might be thought capable of reflecting itself to itself (are we supposed to think of a mirror here?). And we should also be interested in the idea that what is reflected is an agent, and that it is in acting that one creates a reflection for oneself. But however all this might be, it is important first to notice the difference between Berkeley's approach here and that of Descartes. For Descartes, I know my own existence because it is impossible for me to doubt it; the proof is an intellectual proof of an intellectual being. For Berkeley, the proof lies not in thought but in agency.