The Bloomsbury Companion To Berkeley

The Bloomsbury Companion
to Berkeley
i
Other volumes in the series of Bloomsbury Companions:
Aesthetics, edited by Anna Christina Ribeiro

Analytic Philosophy, edited by Barry Dainton and Howard Robinson
Continental Philosophy, edited by John Ó Maoilearca and Beth Lord
Epistemology, edited by Andrew Cullison
Ethics, edited by Christian Miller
Existentialism, edited by Felicity Joseph, Jack Reynolds and Ashley Woodward
Hegel, edited by Allegra de Laurentiis and Jeffrey Edwards
Hume, edited by Alan Bailey and Dan O’Brien
Hobbes, edited by S.A. Lloyd
Kant, edited by Gary Banham, Dennis Schulting and Nigel Hems
Leibniz, edited by Brandan C. Look
Locke, edited by S.-J. Savonius-Wroth, Paul Schuurman and Jonathan Walmsley
Marx, edited by Jeff Diamanti, Andrew Pendakis and Imre Szeman
Metaphysics, edited by Robert W. Barnard and Neil A. Manson
Philosophical Logic, edited by Leon Horston and Richard Pettigrew
Philosophy of Language, edited by Manuel Garcia-Carpintero and Max Kolbel
Philosophy of Mind, edited by James Garvey
Philosophy of Science, edited by Steven French and Juha Saatsi
Plato, edited by Gerald A. Press
Political Philosophy, edited by Andrew Fiala
Pragmatism, edited by Sami Pihlström
Socrates, edited by John Bussanich and Nicholas D. Smith
Spinoza, edited by Wiep van Bunge, Henri Krop,
Piet Steenbakkers and Jeroen van de Ven
ii
The Bloomsbury Companion
to Berkeley
Edited by
Bertil Belfrage and Richard Brook
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY
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iv
Contents
Abbreviations vii
List of Contributors viii
Introduction by Bertil Belfrage and Richard Brook 1
Part 1 Berkeley’s Life and Importance
1 George Berkeley’s Biography Tom Jones 5

2 Berkeley’s Bermuda Project in Context Nancy Kendrick 21
3 Berkeley’s Correspondence Marc A. Hight 49
4 Berkeley and Twentieth-Century Realist-Anti-Realist
Controversies Howard Robinson 63
Part 2 Berkeley’s Major Works
5 Atomism in Berkeley’s Theory of Vision Bertil Belfrage 85

6 Berkeley’s Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human
Knowledge Samuel C. Rickless 99
7 Three Dialogues between Hylas, Philonous and the Sceptic
Tom Stoneham 121
8 The Mystery of Goodness in Berkeley’s Passive Obedience
Bertil Belfrage 141
9 De Motu: Berkeley’s Philosophy of Science Richard Brook 158
10 Alciphron; or the Minute Philosopher: Berkeley’s Redefinition
of Free-Thinking Adam Grzeliński 174
11 Berkeley’s Querist: ‘Hints . . . What Is to be Done in this Critical
State of Our Affairs’ or Proposals for a Hyperborean Eutopia?
Patrick Kelly 196
12 Berkeley’s Siris, an Interpretation Timo Airaksinen 216
Part 3 Berkeley in Context
13 Berkeley and Descartes Charles J. McCracken 247

14 Berkeley and Leibniz Laurence Carlin 254
v
vi Contents
15 Berkeley’s Critique of Locke’s Theory of Perception Georges Dicker 268

16 Berkeley and Malebranche Charles J. McCracken 288
17 Reid’s Opposition to Berkeley James Van Cleve 299
18 Berkeley and Hume on the Imagination Keota Fields 314
19 The Reception of Berkeley in Eighteenth-Century France
Sébastien Charles 334
Part 4 Main Themes in Berkeley’s Philosophy
20 Immaterialism and Common Sense S. Seth Bordner 343

21 Immediate and Mediate Perception in Berkeley Richard Glauser 355
22 Berkeley on Ordinary Objects Jeff McDonough 385
23 Berkeley’s Philosophy of Mind Talia Mae Bettcher 397
24 Berkeley on the Philosophy of Language John Russell Roberts 421
25 Berkeley’s Philosophy of Mathematics Wolfgang Breidert 435
26 Berkeley’s Philosophy of Religion Kenneth L. Pearce 458
Bibliography 484
Index 514
Abbreviations
Alc Alciphron; or, the Minute Philosopher (1732)
Analyst The Analyst; or, a Discourse Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician

(1734)
DM De Motu; sive, De Motus Principio & Natura, & de Causa

Communicationis Motuum (1721)
NB Two notebooks (A and B) published as Philosophical Commentaries.
P A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. Part I

(1710)
PI Published Introduction to the Principles.
MI Manuscript Introduction to the Principles.
TV An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (1709)
TVV The Theory of Vision . . . Vindicated and Explained (1732)
3D Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1712)
Siris Siris: A Chain of Philosophical Reflexions . . . (1744)
Q The Querist, Containing Several Queries, Proposed to the

Consideration of the Public (1735–1737, 1750)
Works The Works of George Berkeley, 9 Vols, A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop (eds),
London, Nelson (1948–1957).
vii
Contributors
Timo Airaksinen is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Helsinki,

Finland.
Bertil Belfrage became Assistant Professor (universitetslektor) in Theoretical

Philosophy at Lund University, Sweden in 1970, and Research Fellow in the
History of Ideas and Sciences in 1993. He was Senior Editor of Berkeley Studies
in 2005–2007, is editing a new scholarly edition of Berkeley's works and has
published numerous papers on different aspects of Berkeley's philosophy.
Talia Bettcher is Professor and Department Chair of Philosophy, College of Arts

and Letters, California State University, USA .
Seth Bordner is Assistant Professor Philosophy at the University of Alabama,

USA .
Wolfgang Breidert was formerly professor of philosophy at the University of

Karlsruhe. He has translated most of Berkeley’s writings into German (1980–96).
He is the author of George Berkeley: 1685–1753 (1989); Philosophen im Gedicht
(2012); Philosophie in Gedichten (2013); and essays on history of mathematics,
among others on Berkeley and mathematics.
Richard Brook is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Bloomsburg University,

USA .
Laurence Carlin is Associate Professor of Philosophy and a member of the

University Honors Faculty at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, USA .
Sébastien Charles is a Professor and Dean of Research at the University of

Quebec in Trois-Rivières, Canada.
James Van Cleve is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern

California, USA .
Georges Dicker is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the College of

Brockport, State University of New York, USA .
viii
Contributors ix
Keota Fields is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts,

USA .
Richard Glauser is a Professor at the Institute of Philosophy, University of

Neuchatel, Switzerland.
Adam Grzeliński is the Director of the Institute of Philosophy at Nicholas

Copernicus University, Poland.
Marc Hight is Eliot Professor of Philosophy at Hampden-Sydney College,

Australia.
Tom Jones is a Reader in English, University of St. Andrews, UK .
Patrick Kelly is Professor and Fellow Emeritus of History at Trinity College,

Dublin, Ireland.
Nancy Kendrick is a Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College, USA .
Charles McCracken is Professor Emeritus Philosophy at Michigan State

University, USA .
Jeff McDonough is Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University, USA .
Kenneth Pearce is Ussher Assistant Professor in Berkeley Studies in the

Department of Philosophy, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland and Lilly Postdoctoral
Fellow at Valparaiso University, USA .
Samuel Rickless is a Professor in the Philosophy Department of the University

of California, San Diego, USA .
John Roberts is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Florida

State University, USA .
Howard Robinson is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Central

European University, Budapest, Hungary.
Tom Stoneham is a Graduate Research Professor of Philosophy at the University

of York, UK .
x
Introduction
Bertil Belfrage and Richard Brook
George Berkeley’s most famous works today are the Principles (1710) and the
Three Dialogues (1713), known for his idealism and his challenging denial of
‘matter’. Ironically enough, these important works were either neglected or
disregarded in Berkeley’s lifetime. When rediscovered about a century after his
death, they attracted a lot of interest from both realists and idealists. Towards
the end of the nineteenth century, the established view was that Berkeley
exclusively contributed to the field of metaphysics. The editors of Berkeley’s
Works (1948–57), A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop, argued in their introductions that
we could, or should, neglect some of those works in which he dealt with other
than metaphysical issues. Thus we read in volume one of the Works that the
Theory of Vision (1709) did not represent ‘Berkeley’s own views at any stage’
(1:147, 149–50, 156), in volume three that Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher
(1732) has been ‘left to students of philosophy – quite wrongly, because’ he did
not express his own view in this work (3:7, 13), in volume four that De Motu
(1721) is ‘a slight and disappointing work . . . apart from the Principles the
De Motu would be nonsense’ (4:3–4), et cetera. The result was that works for
which Berkeley was famous in his lifetime are seldom, if ever, studied in the
Anglophone world today.
Geneviève Brykman took a different approach as general editor of a French
translation of Berkeley’s Œuvres (1985–1996). She excluded recommendations
on how the texts should be interpreted, and stimulated French scholars to make
ground-breaking discoveries in those works that the English editors, Luce and
Jessop, asked us to neglect.
In The Bloomsbury Companion to Berkeley, we do not take sides in arguments
on editing or evaluating particular works; our sole concern is to inform about all
of Berkeley’s works, which include a great variety of subjects: from philosophy to
1
2 Introduction
mathematics, natural philosophy and empirical psychology; from theology to

political economy and monetary policy; from moral philosophy to physiology
and medicine. To cover this broad field, we invited leading experts to write
informative, explanatory, but also critical chapters on all aspects of Berkeley’s
philosophy.
Part One
Berkeley’s Life and Importance
3
4
1
George Berkeley’s Biography

Tom Jones
George Berkeley was born on 12 March 1685. He entered Kilkenny College on

17 July 1696, and progressed to Trinity College Dublin in March 1700. He was
made a fellow in June, 1707, obtaining permission to be absent from the College
from 1713. Berkeley’s important friendship with John Percival, later Earl of Egmont,
began in 1708. He toured France and Italy from October 1713 to August 1714, and
during 1717 to 1720. Once he returned to Ireland he was made Dean of Derry
in 1724 but never lived in the town, concentrating his energies on campaigning for
funds and a charter (which was granted in June 1725) for the foundation of a
college on Bermuda. He married Anne Forster in 1728, and they had seven
children: Henry (1729–?); Lucia (1731–1731); George (1733–1795); John (1735–
1735); William (1736–1751); Julia (October 1738–?); Sarah (1739/1740–1740).
Between January 1729 and October 1731, Berkeley was in America, principally in
Newport, Rhode Island. When eventually it became clear that the funds for the
college would not arrive he returned to London. He was made Bishop of Cloyne in
1734 and remained there for 18 years, rarely travelling even to Dublin. Berkeley
departed Cloyne for Oxford, where his second son, George, was studying at Christ
Church, in August 1752. He died there on 14 January 1753.
Berkeley’s character has been described both as pious and practical and as
one that expressed, through strategy and dissimulation, ‘a greater than usual split
between his appearance and reality.’1 Combining elements of these insights, the
chief characteristic of Berkeley’s life I will emphasize is an interest in the best
strategies by which to practise piety. Berkeley’s diverse activities, the beliefs and
projects often regarded as eccentric, are related to one another by a strong,
pragmatic desire to do good – with pragmatism understood as a focus on
practice, rather than a willingness to give up creative or idiosyncratic solutions
in favour of achievable compromises. Berkeley’s notion of the good is specific,
founded in the spiritual, moral and social project of the Anglican Church. Doing
5
6 The Bloomsbury Companion to Berkeley
good required demonstrating the falsehood of materialistic, atheistic and free-

thinking propositions, and arguing for a mode of life in which religious education
was the basis for political loyalty, productive personal life, and social responsibility.
Berkeley attempted to promote these virtues as an educationalist, man of religion,
friend, father and husband, and believed he was fulfilling his responsibilities as a
member of a philosophical elite in doing so. One pattern according to which his
life and career might be understood is that of the gradual application of the
strategies of argument Berkeley practised from an early stage in metaphysics to
matters of faith and related social issues. Berkeley’s social views were expressed
with stridency in his early work. But over the years he accumulated a wide
experience of life in different parts of the world, and saw different forms of
Christian faith support, or fail to support, the moral and physical well-being of a
population of believers and also the people with whom they lived (slaves,
colonized peoples, people of other sects). This experience induced Berkeley to
alter his approach to argument in the moral, social and religious domains. His
strong sense of Ireland as a colony, in which different faith and language groups
cohabit, his visits to Italy, his sojourn in America, all contribute to a developing
emphasis on inclusion, dialogue, common ground, and on persuasion achieved
by example and by insinuation rather than by the declaration of universal laws
and obligations.
Berkeley’s family came to Ireland from England, probably from Staffordshire,
having, according to Joseph Stock, Berkeley’s early biographer, suffered on
account of loyalty to the Stuarts during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.2 Stock
records that Berkeley was born at Kilcrene, near Thomastown.3 A. A. Luce’s
supposition of a move to Dysart Castle, and the precise location of the Berkeley
home in Dysart, are conjectural, though recent excavations provide evidence of
a late seventeenth-century dwelling on the site, a dwelling referred to as the
Berkeley house.4 Knowledge of Berkeley’s schooling rests on a firmer foundation.
The revised statutes for Kilkenny College of March 1684/5 provided for a ‘Loyall
and Orthodox’ Master, an Usher, and Visitors drawn from the local episcopacy
and Trinity College.5 Students should have arrived at the school knowing their
accidence and ‘fitt to Enter upon Grammar Learning’. The statutes refer to
instruction in ‘Latine Greek and Hebrew Languages as also in oratory and
Poetry’. Dr Edward Hinton, the School’s master, was Berkeley’s tutor. He is said to
have been an outstanding teacher of Greek.6 Students worked for 9 to 10 hours
four days of the week, with Thursday and Sunday afternoons given to recreation.
Kilkenny College would have disciplined Berkeley intellectually and as a member
of a protestant social institution.
George Berkeley’s Biography 7
The statutes of Trinity College Dublin also emphasize the requirement that
officers be loyal protestants, and further that deference for hierarchy be observed
within the College in order to prevent anarchy. Instruction was by lecture
followed by interrogation, and disputation between students. These forms of
instruction were supplemented by Latin commentary on the lectures and
compositions in or translations into Latin. There were also disputations in
mathematics, metaphysics, physics or divinity for the different year groups.
Prayers were scheduled three times a day, and sermons after prayers on Sundays.7
The syllabus and general reading of the students at Trinity College Dublin
reflected the intellectual controversies of the period: traditional scholastic
philosophy was reinforced by modern logic textbooks such as those of Franco
Burgersdijck and Marcin Smiglecki, mixed with René Descartes and Pierre
Gassendi, and of course John Locke, whose Essay was introduced in 1692 under
the supervision of St George Ashe, later a patron of Berkeley. Students worked
through a wide range of Greek and Latin dramatists, orators, poets, historians
and writers of dialogues, and natural science (studied in the third year) included
text books in physics and universal geography.8 A broader intellectual ambiance
is also relevant to Berkeley’s development. The Dublin Philosophical Society, in
which Ashe was a leading figure, helped popularize science as a genteel pursuit,
and contributed to the intellectual culture of the town.9 The Society was largely
in abeyance between the death of William Molyneux in 1698 and a refoundation
by Samuel Molyneux in 1707, in November of which year Berkeley read his
paper ‘Of Infinites’ to the Society. Berkeley’s notebooks record some rules for two
different societies for the study of the new philosophy, which may have been
attempts to revivify the Philosophical Society, either before 1707, or shortly
afterwards when Samuel Molyneux turned his attention towards the theory of
government.10
Berkeley joined the fellowship of Trinity College Dublin as a lecturer in
mathematics on 9 June, 1707, following his first publications in that field, indeed
in any field, receiving his MA on 15 July of the same year. Despite periods of
absence from Trinity during which he visited London and toured Italy (twice),
Berkeley held several College positions. He was librarian from 20 November
1709, and in this role he may have been involved in discussing Marsh’s Library in
Dublin and Wren’s library at Trinity College, Cambridge, as models for the
library that was built between 1712 and 1732, when he was largely absent.11 The
library clearly required attention. Berkeley writes to Molyneux on 26 November
1709 of ‘the snow that was constantly driving at the windows & forcing its
entrance into that wretched mansion’. Entries in the College records also associate
him with the following positions and honours: Junior Dean (20 November 1710
and 1711); Junior Greek Lecturer (20 November 1712); Senior Greek Lecturer
(resigned 21 November 1721); BD and DD degrees (14 November 1721);
Divinity Lecturer and Preacher (20 November 1721); Senior Proctor (20
November 1722 and 1723); Hebrew lecturer (14 June 1723, 20 November
1723).
Berkeley was ordained Deacon on 19 February 1709, and Priest in 1710 by St
George Ashe, then bishop of Clogher, causing a dispute with William King,
Archbishop of Dublin, and author of De origine mali.12 Berkeley writes to King
expressing ‘concern and surprise’ that he has ‘fallen so far into the displeasure of
your grace, as that you should order me to be prosecuted in your Grace’s court’.
Ulterior reasons for the conflict have been suggested. Berkeley’s New Theory of
Vision had been published in 1709 and its second edition included an appendix
that Berkeley said was a response to King’s views.13 King and Berkeley may also
have differed on the use of analogical terms for describing the attributes of God
when Berkeley presented his paper ‘On Infinites’.14 It is also possible that a
political difference, latent until the publication of Berkeley’s Passive Obedience, is
vented here. King presented the Glorious Revolution as a providential exception
to the law against rebellion, whereas Berkeley argued that obedience was a
negative duty, and limited opposition to cases in which the sovereign power was
‘unhinged’ or ‘disputed’ (Passive Obedience 52).15 King speculated that Berkeley
wished to avoid the discourse that preceded ordination, and it is possible that
King’s acknowledged relish for discipline and their philosophical and political
differences encouraged Berkeley to do so.16
In Notebooks Berkeley writes that ‘He that wou’d win another over to his
opinion must seem to harmonize with him at first and humour him in his own
way of talking. From my Childhood I had an unaccountable turn of thought that
way’.17 Berkeley demonstrates aptitude for seeing things from his opponents’
point of view when answering objections in the Principles, as in sections 34–85,
and in the very form of Three Dialogues. (I shall not offer a characterization of
Berkeley’s theory of vision and metaphysics in the period 1709–13 as these
topics demand the fuller treatment given them in other chapters of this
Companion.) In metaphysics, then, it seems Berkeley cultivated dialogue, and
knew the strategic benefits of conceding at least some of an opponent’s position.
He is less inclined to such concessions in his moral, social and religious writings
of this early period. Berkeley published Passive Obedience in 1712, stating that it
drew on three discourses delivered in the college chapel. This treatise develops
an argument for the moral obligation of absolute loyalty to temporal authority,
an argument that has sometimes been associated with rule utilitarianism, but
which primarily asserts the harmony of human laws of conduct with universal
laws of creation, and only secondarily invokes human goods. The text is
sufficiently ambiguous to provide opponents the opportunity of associating him
with extreme Toryism, but any argument for loyalty may at that point in history
have been taken to imply that Britons should have remained loyal to the Stuarts.
Berkeley’s Advice to the Tories who have Taken the Oaths (1715) shares with
Passive Obedience its insistence on the necessity of following laws (specifically
those to which one has sworn an oath), but is explicit in defending the Hanoverian
settlement. Berkeley also writes to Percival suggesting that ‘the most lamentable
evil [of the Jacobite rebels] is the great dishonour they have done to the Church
and religion by public perjury and rebellion’ (26 September 1715). In this early
period, then, Berkeley’s rhetorical strategy for persuading others of their religious
and therefore moral obligations is to emphasize obeying God’s immutable
laws.18
Berkeley was granted leave to move to London in January 1713, and there met
Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope, Richard Steele and Jonathan Swift. He
undertook the anthology The Ladies Library for Steele, selecting and working
together passages from Mary Astell, Locke, John Tillotson, Bertrand de Salignac
de la Mothe Fénelon, the Port-Royal moralists and other works on education
and of piety, extending his educational activities by engaging (speculatively, at
least) with the intellectual needs of women. Nancy Kendrick in this volume
argues that Berkeley was influenced by Mary Astell, whose work suggests
education ‘ought to aim at providing women the opportunity to transcend the
sphere to which custom had assigned them’. Kendrick explores the implications
of this view of education for the Bermuda project. During his time in London
Berkeley also produced essays for The Guardian, several of which attack those
qualities of ‘free-thinking’ that were to remain Berkeley’s targets for the rest of
his life: a focus on minute particularities of texts or arguments; a denial of a
future state of rewards and punishments; the materiality of the soul. Berkeley
also expresses views on supporting local industries and on social bonds that hint
at the themes of his writings of the 1720s onwards.
Berkeley conducted two tours of France and, principally, Italy in the 1710s.
On the first tour, October 1713 to August 1714, Berkeley served as Lord
Peterborough’s chaplain during his diplomatic mission to Sicily. On this tour he
probably met Malebranche in Paris, having written to Percival on 24 November
1713 that he was to be introduced to the philosopher that day. Luce suggests that
Berkeley preached for Basil Kennet, the chaplain at the protestant colony at
Leghorn (Livorno) around Easter 1714, but Kennet left Leghorn in February
1712, and was chaplain to the Bishop of Lincoln by October 1713.19 Writing to
Samuel Johnson on 25 November 1729, Berkeley says, ‘As to the second part of
my treatise concerning the principles of human knowledge, the fact is that I had
made a considerable progress in it, but the manuscript was lost about fourteen
years ago during my travels in Italy; and I never had leisure since to do so
disagreeable a thing as writing twice on the same subject.’ The date Berkeley
gives here corresponds more closely to his first than his second tour of Italy. The
1734 edition of the Principles still refers to the matter following the ‘Introduction’
as ‘Part I’.
Berkeley undertook his second tour as tutor to St George Ashe Jr., 1717–1720.
This was the longest visit to Italy by a British tourist of the period, and Berkeley
made extensive studies of art, architecture and local natural phenomena,
recorded in notebooks now in the British Library. He also recorded the political
and legal organization of the regions through which he passed. Some of his
remarks take the form of comparisons: ‘Italians living in townes makes ’em polite
the contrary observable in ye English.’ Sometimes Berkeley uses the query form
when asking whether a useful practice he has observed is also in use in England.20
He was generally unimpressed by contemporary Italian priesthood, and noted
that ‘Nastiness, ill manners, stupidity, madness &c sanctified in the church of
Rome’.21 This extensive period of (partly comparative) study of the cultural
conditions of a people informs Berkeley’s later expression of views on social life.
Berkeley returned from this tour having written De motu for an essay competition
at the French Academy. Berkeley met John Smibert, the painter who was later to
accompany him to America, on this tour.22
On his return to Ireland, Berkeley demonstrated a greater interest in economic
and social matters, and argued that the role of money and credit (between which
Berkeley wishes to reduce the distinction) should be the promotion of industry.
He wrote on the consequences of the South Sea bubble in An Essay towards
preventing the Ruine of Great Britain (1721), which might be regarded as a
prospectus for his social and economic writings of the coming two decades. This
essay places financial and moral corruption in the context of attacks on religion,
suggesting that public designs to promote atheism ought to be punishable by
death: ‘perhaps it may be no easy matter to assign a good reason why blasphemy
against God should not be inquired into, and punished with the same rigour as
treason against the king.’ The arguments in favour of sumptuary laws also include
threatening modern ladies with the same pestilences of scab, stench and burning
visited upon the ladies of Zion in Isaiah 3:16–24.23 In these points at least the
essay represents a continuation of Berkeley’s earlier attitudes to obedience and

punishment, and his argumentative strategies for expressing them.
In June 1723, to his surprise, Berkeley inherited the estate of Esther Van
Homrigh, Swift’s Vanessa. Complying with the terms of the legacy turned out to
be a large administrative burden. He became Dean of Derry in 1724, never taking
up residence, as his plan to establish the college of St Paul’s on Bermuda had
already become his central focus. He had a Royal Charter for the college by June
1725, engaged in several years of vigorous lobbying for the project and, on the
promise of a grant of £20,000, sailed for America on 6 September 1728. He also
designed a plan for the college.24 Eliza Berkeley, George’s daughter in law, recollects
the ‘American scheme’ as one ‘by which he meant to introduce Episcopacy there’.25
Berkeley mentions the future prospect of Episcopacy being established in America
in his ‘Proposal’ for the scheme, and also makes clear the importance of competing
with Catholic missionary activity on that continent: ‘we fall as far short of our
Neighbours of the Romish Communion in Zeal for propagating Religion, as we
surpass them in the Soundness and Purity of it’.26 Church politics and missionary
and educational zeal are inextricably linked in the Bermuda scheme.
Berkeley had married Anne Forster (21 March 1702–27 May 1786) in 1728,
apparently concealing his intentions from some principal correspondents.27
Anne had spent some time in France, and was a devoted reader of religious
texts.28 The marriage is remembered as an affectionate one by Anne in a letter to
Mrs Grimshaw, 19 February 1765: ‘the Bishop of Cloyne was the most tender and
amiable of Husbands – I remember a misanthropic friend of ours once, railing
against matrimony in our presence – looked with an air of spite, & said you two
are not included in this general hate, for you are lovers’.29 That Anne was happy
in the marriage is corroborated by a letter from Elizabeth Montagu on the
occasion of Berkeley’s death: ‘She had a perfect adoration of the Bishop.’ The
same letter mentions Berkeley’s previous proposal of marriage to Anne
Donnellan, a friend of Swift (later an intimate of Georg Friedrich Handel and
Samuel Richardson), and a descendant (like Berkeley) of Archbishop James
Ussher. Her mother had taken Philip Percival, brother to Berkeley’s friend John,
Earl of Egmont, as her second husband. This proposal is perhaps the source of
the rumours of Berkeley’s marriage to which Prior alludes in 1726, and also the
reason for Berkeley’s later secrecy.30 Montagu is not sure why Donnellan rejected
the offer, but conjectures that ‘perhaps aversion to the cares of a married life, and
apprehensions from some particularities in his temper hinder’d the match;
however their friendship always continued, and I have always heard her give him
for virtues and talents the preference to all mankind’.31 It may be that moving to
Bermuda was part and parcel of Berkeley’s proposal of marriage, and that it
might not have appealed to Donnellan.
Berkeley’s party was forced to stop at Williamsburg, Virginia ‘for want of
Provisions’, where Berkeley was met by William Gooch, the Governor of the
colony and president of the college of William and Mary. In a letter to Edmund
Gibson, Bishop of London, Gooch notes he gave Berkeley a ‘short view of our
Country and Circumstances’.32 Very soon after his arrival in Newport, Rhode
Island, in January, 1729, Berkeley began to consider the possibility of making it,
rather than Bermuda, the location of the college.33 Both William Byrd (see
below) and Gooch note the unsuitability of Bermuda as a location for the college
in correspondence with Berkeley’s colleagues and friends. Berkeley’s letters
during his stay in America record constant uncertainty about the best means of
altering the terms of the charter, and growing despair of the grant ever being
paid at all. In her annotated copy of Joseph Stock’s life of Berkeley, Anne notes
Berkeley’s involvement in local religious life at Newport, preaching every Sunday
and instructing local missionaries twice a year.34
Berkeley was a slave-owner whilst at Newport, which was the centre of the
colony’s trade. The colony saw a disproportionately large increase in its enslaved
population in the second quarter of the eighteenth century.35 But, even if Rhode
Island was, in ‘both relative and absolute terms’, ‘the most important American
carrier of African slaves’, there were fewer than ten slaving voyages per year
during Berkeley’s residence in Newport, as opposed to around fifty at the peak of
the trade at the turn of the nineteenth century.36 Berkeley received a letter from
Benson, an old friend, that refers to a ‘project for the propagation of ye race of
blacks in Europe’.37 He thought slavery and baptism compatible, apparently
baptizing his three slaves Philip, Anthony and Agnes.38 It has recently been
suggested, on the basis of Berkeley’s statement that ‘it seemed a proper Step, if
the Opinion of his Majesty’s Attorney and Solicitor-General could be procured’
on the disputed legal question of whether baptism entailed freedom for slaves,
that he or members of his circle were responsible for commissioning and
publicizing the Yorke-Talbot opinion, a legal opinion that may have secured the
status of slavery.39 Berkeley’s plan to Christianize indigenous Americans at the
Bermudan college would also, according to the Virginia colonist William Byrd,
have required kidnap, and Berkeley admits as much in his own proposal, saying
‘the Children of savage Americans’ to fill the college could be got either by
peaceable means ‘or by taking captive the Children of our Enemies’.40 Berkeley,
then, was prepared to take extreme measures to pursue his educational goals,
and his concern for human goods was more for the future state than this world.
This is not strategy, but having an immoveable conviction of the priority of

spiritual goods over (nonetheless significant) temporal goods. Spiritual good is
sometimes used to justify repugnant practices.
Whilst in Rhode Island, Berkeley wrote Alciphron and made the contacts that
on his return to London enabled him to employ unused funds from the Bermuda
project to donate books and land to American universities. The sermon just cited
that Berkeley preached to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel on his
return emphasized the importance of promoting religion and religious education
at home if there was to be any prospect of promoting the gospel overseas. He
notes the variety of forms of Christianity practised (irregularly) amongst the
colonists, and also the spiritual and physical condition of indigenous Americans
and black slaves. He feels Roman Catholics have made better steps in promoting
their religion than Anglicans:
It must be owned, our reformed Planters, with respect to the Natives and the
Slaves, might learn from those of the Church of Rome, how it is their Interest and
Duty to behave. Both French and Spaniards have intermarried with Indians, to
the great Strength, Security and Increase of their Colonies. They take care to
instruct both them and their Negroes in the Popish Religion, to the Reproach of
those who profess a better. They have also Bishops and Seminaries for Clergy;
and it is not found that their Colonies are worse Subjects, or depend less on their
Mother-Country, on that Account.41
Once he has returned from America, Berkeley begins to think that conversion
should be achieved and education facilitated by integration, rather than kidnap.
He also begins to show concern for the institutional autonomy of the American
Anglican Church: politicians more concerned with enforcing the dependence of
the colonies on Great Britain than with the establishment of Anglican institutions
in America overstated the negative consequences of such autonomy.
Similar concerns for the persuasive rather than enforced cultural integration
of different communities persist in the next period of Berkeley’s life. He was
made Bishop of Cloyne in January 1734. From 1741 Berkeley’s brother Robert
served as rector of Midleton/Middletown in Berkeley’s diocese.42 Berkeley left
Cloyne just once in the next eighteen years, to make a speech at the House of
Lords in Dublin, a speech related to the Discourse Addressed to Magistrates,
which once again shows Berkeley asserting the role of religious values in public,
civil life. Berkeley’s work in the Cloyne period consisted of active church
administration (correspondence with Thomas Secker, Martin Benson and
Gibson revealing a strong sense of the threat to the church), poor relief and
economic improvement, and the education of his children, not least in music.
Berkeley’s interest in the Roman Catholic population of his see and the value of
the Irish language for reaching that community is evident in his Primary
Visitation Charge. Here Berkeley recommends that his clergy be all things to all
men, and work their attempts at attracting and converting Roman Catholics to
Anglicanism into the general course of conversation. His interest in preaching
Anglican services in Irish is discussed with Gibson, and features in The Querist
(Queries 260–65; Queries omitted, 294–5).43 (Interest in Irish for the purposes of
conversion to Protestantism was part of the ethos at Trinity College in the period
immediately prior to Berkeley’s attendance.44) Berkeley’s work was well received
at least by some in the Catholic community. Charles O’Conor, a Catholic
antiquarian who worked to integrate the two communities and who was invited
to join the Dublin Society praised Berkeley: ‘A FEW Berkleys, in every
Communion, would soon restore us to that Spirit, and that Identity, of true
Christianity, which one hath labored, so apostolically, to revive.’45
Economics, and the relation between chemistry, medicine and divine order
were the subjects of Berkeley’s Querist and Siris respectively, his major
publications of this period. The Querist develops Berkeley’s arguments concerning
the nature of money and credit, and places a great emphasis on the duty to
promote domestic industry as a means of supporting an indigent local population.
In this respect Berkeley is comparable to his friend Swift, defending Irish
manufacture and trade from the depredations of the English, and from the
corruption of imported fashions.46 Berkeley’s friendship with Tom Prior, with
whom he had studied at Kilkenny College, and who acted as Berkeley’s agent in
financial and legal matters, is also significant. Prior was greatly concerned with
the flight of money from Ireland, publishing on the subject and drawing up a list
of Church of Ireland absentee clergy.47 In the 1730s Prior organized the Dublin
Society, which sought to address Ireland’s economic difficulties by means of
patronizing advances in agricultural and industrial design and innovation.
Berkeley was a full participant in the movement for Irish economic independence
through encouraging local manufacture and keeping money in the local economy.
Berkeley’s recommendations for drinking tar water, the starting point of Siris,
received a great deal of attention in England and Europe in subsequent decades.
Siris moves from describing methods for the regulation of the animal spirits, the
physical organism, such as drinking tar water, to considerations of the relationship
between nature as the subject of scientific observation and the observing and
acting mind or spirit. Berkeley retains his absolute distinction between nature
(consisting in instruments, occasions and signs) and the active agency that
impels and perceives bodies in nature according to certain laws (section 258).

Though a very different kind of text from the Principles, one might see in Siris a
restatement in different terms of the distinction between the one substance –
spirit – and the various active dispositions of that substance that constitute its
perceiving or knowing anything of the world.
Berkeley helped raise and arm a militia against the Jacobite rebels during
1745–6, and published a letter to the Roman Catholic clergy at the same time,
alerting them to their responsibilities. His brother William was a commander of
Hanoverian forces in Fife, leaving an account of the campaign.48 According to
Eliza Berkeley, William was remembered in Fife when Berkeley’s grandson,
George Monck Berkeley, enrolled at the University in St Andrews in 1781/2.49
Berkeley, then, remained a loyalist, though there are changes in the published
expression of his social and political views. A wide inter-cultural experience, one
that included failure, and being thought of as belonging to a religious minority,
produces changes in the rhetorical mode of Berkeley’s social and moral
philosophy, and its practical objectives. His understanding of the good shifts
from the necessity of maintaining an oath in Advice to the Tories (1715) to the
relief of inter-generational poverty and indigence in A Word to the Wise (1749),
both texts that explicitly seek to demonstrate the usefulness of Christianity in
preserving social order. Berkeley may never have returned to metaphysics with
the intensity of the period 1709–13, but the argumentative skills he developed at
that time were practised over his entire career. From seeming to harmonize with
his opponents in order to demonstrate to them indubitable truths, he may have
come actually to harmonize with them in the production of an episcopal
Protestant government in Ireland that was, at least to some degree, tolerant of
religious difference.
Notes
1 Luce, A. A. (1949/1992), The Life of George Berkeley Bishop of Cloyne (reprint, intro.
by David Berman). London: Thomas Nelson / London: Routledge/Thoemmes,
passim; Berman, D. (1994), George Berkeley: Idealism and the Man. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, passim; and for the quotation Berman, D. (2005a), ‘Berkeley’s life
and works’ in K. P. Winkler (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Berkeley. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, pp. 13–33, p. 24.
2 See Stock, J. (1776), An Account of the Life of George Berkeley, D.D. London: J. Murray,
p. 1. The copy of this book interleaved with notes by Anne Berkeley is preserved as
TCD MS 5936. Opposite p. 1 Anne notes that Salt in Staffordshire was the residence
of the Berkeleys. Salt was in the parish of St Mary, Stafford. Parish records for
1559–1671 survive in the Lichfield Record Office, but contain no record of baptism,
marriage or funeral for a Berkeley. My thanks to Anita Caithness for this
information. In 1747 Berkeley asked Prior to test the legitimacy of the will of a
cousin (see Hight, M. A., ed. 2013, The Correspondence of George Berkeley.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, letters 347, 349, 354). The bill dated 19
October 1747 entered in relation to this case, when giving the names and places of
residence of Berkeley and his brothers, and the preceding two generations of the
family, notes that William and Sarah Berkeley, Berkeley’s grandparents, were resident
in Staffordshire, but leaves a blank space in the document where the name of the
town of residence should be found (see National Archives C 11/1091/9; the same is
true of a further bill dated 27 January 1748, C 11/1093/9).
3 Stock, 1776, p. 2.
4 Luce, 1949/1992, pp. 20–2. See http://www.excavations.ie/Pages/Details.php?Year=&
County=Kilkenny&id=3472. Retrieved 23 October 2013.
5 TCD MS MUN -P-1-518a.
6 Stock, 1776, p. 2 and Luce, 1949/1992, p. 31 citing the TCD entrance book. See
Welch, H. T. (2009), ‘Edward Hinton’, in James McGuire and James Quinn (eds),
Dictionary of Irish Biography (vol. 4). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press/The
Royal Irish Academy, pp. 716–17, p. 716.
7 Bolton, R. (1749), A Translation of the Charter and Statutes of Trinity-College, Dublin.
Dublin: Oli. Nelson for the Translator, pp. 25, 27, 31; pp. 69–78.
8 See Stewart, M. A. (2004), ‘Berkeley, George (1685–1753)’ in Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography (online edn. May 2005). Oxford: Oxford University Press (http://
www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2211, accessed 6 August 2012) for one account of
the curriculum. A letter by John Shadwell of 1708 (MS Rawl[inson] D.842, f. 35,
copied as TCD MS 7971/Misc. Aut. 271) describing some authors read at the
College is mentioned by Luce, 1949/1992, p. 39, and parsed by McDowell, R. B. and
Webb, D. A. (1982), Trinity College Dublin 1592–1952: An Academic History.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 32: ‘philosophical teaching consists of a
farrago of conflicting hypotheses from Aristotle, Descartes, Colbert, Epicurus,
Gassendi, Malebranche and Locke’. The commonplace book of Josias Haydock, who
entered the College in 1677, contains book lists that cite Descartes’ Meditations, and
works by Burgersdijck, Heerebord, Smiglecki, Zabarolla and Didacus (TCD MS
2642/2.3.31, ff. 104–9). Burgersdijck and Smiglecki are still on the syllabus in an
outline that survives from 1736, see TCD MS MUN V/27(1), f. 6r, ‘a List of Books
appointed to be read at Morning Lecture’. Burgersdijck is for junior freshmen,
Smiglecki for senior freshmen. McDowell and Webb, 1982, pp. 45–8, summarize the
syllabus. William Molyneux writes to Locke, 20 December 1692 that ‘I was the First
that recommended and lent to the Reverend Provost of Our University Dr Ashe, a
most Learned and Ingenious Man, Your Essay, with which he was so wonderfully
pleased and satisfyd, that he has Orderd it to be read by the Batchelors in the
Colledge, and strictly examines them in the Progress therein.’ Locke, J. (1979), E. S. de
Beer (ed.), The Correspondence of John Locke (vol. 4). Oxford: Clarendon Press,
pp. 601–2.
9 See TCD MS 888/1/Molyneux I.4.17, f. 32v for Ashe recommending the Society to
Clarendon and emphasizing the useful nature of its pursuits.
10 Hoppen, K. T. (1970), The Common Scientist in the Seventeenth Century: A Study of
the Dublin Philosophical Society, 1683–1708. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
pp. 185–6, 195–7; British Library (BL ) MS Add. 39305, ff. 96–103.
11 Ferguson, 2000, p. 26: Ferguson, L. (2000), ‘Custodes librorum: service, staff and
salaries, 1601–1855’ in V. Kinane and A. Walsh (eds), Essays on the History of Trinity
College Library. Dublin and Portland, OR : Four Courts Press, pp. 25–38; and Grimes,
2000, p. 73: Grimes, B. (2000), ‘The library buildings up to 1970’ in V. Kinane and A.
Walsh (eds), Essays on the History of Trinity College Library. Dublin and Portland,
OR : Four Courts Press, pp. 72–90.
12 Hight, 2013, letter 3, Berkeley to William King, 18 April 1710. The college statutes
suggest the Provost should be ordained, but do not make the same condition for
fellows. Trinity College Dublin, 1735, p. 31: ‘Statuimus igitur, ut Præpositus sit
moribus probus, vitâ integra, & fama inviolata, annos natus ad minimum triginta, &
in sacris ordinibus constitutus.’
13 Hight, 2013, p. 35, letter 12, Trinity College Dublin (1735), Charta, sive literæ
patentes, a serenissimo rege Carolo primo collegio sanctæ & individuæ Trinitatis
juxta Dublin, concessa. Una cum statutis ejusdem Collegii. Dublin: S. Powell for
A. Bradley.
14 Berman, 1994, pp. 14–15.
15 Breuninger, 2010, p. 29.
16 TCD MS 750/11 cited in Berman, D. (1994), Breuninger, Scott (2010), Recovering
Bishop Berkeley: Virtue and Society in the Anglo-Irish Context. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, p. 18; Connolly, S. J. (2008), ‘William King (1650–1729)’, Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography (online edn.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
17 Works, vol. 9, p. 153. BL MS Add. 39304, f. 4r. Berman, 2005a, pp. 21–7 cites this
evidence, and develops a picture of Berkeley that, in my view, overstates the
importance of the deployment of argumentative strategy and dissimulation in the
judgement of Berkeley’s character.
18 Ross, 2005, suggests Berkeley was not a Jacobite, and that the discourses were
misfiring attempts to use the language of Jacobitism to persuade people out of that
position – and therefore a further example of his strategy: Ross, I. C. (2005), ‘Was
Berkeley a Jacobite? Passive Obedience revisited’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland 20, 17–30.
19 Luce, 1949/1992, p. 72, Stock, 1776, pp. 6–7; Cheesman, C. E. A. (2004), ‘Kennett,

Basil (1674–1715)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online edn. May
2005). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
20 Works, vol. 7, pp. 294, 319.
21 BL MS Add 39310, f. 92v.
22 Saunders, 1995, p. 32. Saunders thinks Berkeley stayed in Rome until at least April
1721 and developed Jacobite connections, but on the basis of a confusion between
George Berkeley and George Barclay, the Church of Scotland Chaplain to the
Pretender: Saunders, R. H. (1995), John Smibert: Colonial America’s First Portrait
Painter. New Haven and London: Yale University Press/Barra Foundation. See
Ingamells, 1997, p. 865: Ingamells, J. (1997), A Dictionary of British and Irish
Travellers in Italy, 1701–1800: Compiled from the Brinsley Ford Archive. New Haven:
Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art.
23 Works, vol. 6, pp. 71, 76.
24 Stock, 1776, pp. 71–2.
25 Berkeley, George Monck (1797), Poems by the Late George Monck Berkeley. London:
J. Nichols, pp. ccl–ccli.
26 Works, vol. 7, p. 355.
27 See record DU -CI -BA-90353 at http://churchrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/
churchrecords/details/3a71f80090352 for the record of the baptism. The parish was
St John’s, Dublin, and Anne’s parents’ address Fishamble Street.
28 Hight, 2013, letter 282, Berkeley to James, 7 June 1741; [Berkeley], 1791, vol. 1, p. 84. For
a discussion of this work, its attribution to Anne Berkeley, and the judgement that her
views on free thinking and Christian militancy coincide with those of George
Berkeley, see Storrie, S. G. (2011), ‘Anne Berkeley’s Contrast: A note’, Berkeley Studies
22, 9–14.
29 BL MS Add 39311 f. 168r. On the other hand, Eliza Frinsham/Berkeley adds a later
note to this letter to the effect that Anne was Berkeley’s Xantippe – the wife of
Socrates who is traditionally portrayed as harassing and bullying the philosopher.
30 See Hight, 2013, letter 156. In 1725 a mock petition and reply were published,
ostensibly from a beautiful young lady to Berkeley, and from Berkeley in response, in
which the young lady offers to marry Berkeley and go to Bermuda with him. See
Anon. (1725), The Humble Petition of a Beautiful Young Lady. To the Reverend Doctor
B-rkl-y. Dublin, [N.P.] and Owens, S. (?1726), Remarks on the Young Ladies
PETITION , To the Revnd. Dr B-rk-y. [N.P.: N.P.].
31 Climenson, E. J. (1906), Elizabeth Montagu, The Queen of the Bluestockings: Her
Correspondence from 1720–1761 (2 vols). London: John Murray, vol. 2, p. 26. At vol. 1,
pp.112–14 there is an interesting letter from Anne Donellan offering advice on
behaviour during courtship to Montagu, which may reflect on her attachment to
Berkeley.
32 Harrison, F. and B., and McLaren, G. (1924), ‘The Virginia clergy: Governor Gooch’s
letters to the Bishop of London 1727–1749’, The Virginia Magazine of History and
Biography 32, 3, 209–36, p. 228–9, from a letter of 29 June 1729. The letters are
transcribed from the Fulham Papers of Lambeth Palace Library.
33 Hight, 2013, letter 179, Berkeley to Benson, 11 April 1729.
34 TCD MS 5936, opposite p. 21.
35 Berlin, I. (1998), Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in
North America. Cambridge, MA : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
p. 178.
36 Coughtry, J. (1981), The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade,
1700–1807. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp. 25, 28.
37 Hight, 2013, letter 186, Benson to Berkeley, 23 June 1729.
38 Gaustad, E. S. (1979), George Berkeley in America. New Haven: Yale University Press,
pp. 90–3. There is a suggestion that Berkeley brought slaves back to Ireland with him,
founded on the appearance of servants in two reading cards for children. See Kelly,
Patrick (1995/6), ‘Berkeley’s Servants’, Berkeley Newsletter 14, 13–14.
39 Works vol. 7, p. 122; Glasson, T. (2010), ‘ “Baptism doth not bestow Freedom”:
Missionary Anglicanism, slavery, and the Yorke–Talbot opinion, 1701–30’, William &
Mary Quarterly 67, 279–318, pp. 297, 304.
40 Works vol. 7, p. 346. Rand, B. (1914), Berkeley and Percival: The Correspondence of
George Berkeley and Sir John Percival. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
pp. 244–5, William Byrd to John Percival, 10 June 1729. See also Uzgalis, W. (2005),
‘Berkeley and the westward course of empire: on racism and ethnocentrism’ in
Andrew Valls (ed.), Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, pp. 108–26.
41 Works, vol. 7, p. 122.
42 Luce, 1949/1992, p. 171.
43 Works vol. 7, p. 165; Hight, 2013, letter 254 Gibson to Berkeley, 9 July 1735.
44 For the interests of Narcissus Marsh see O’Connor, T. (2004), ‘Marsh’s Library and
the Catholic tradition’ in Muriel McCarthy and Ann Simmons (eds), The Making of
Marsh’s Library: Learning, Politics and Religion in Ireland, 1650–1750. Dublin: Four
Courts Press, pp. 235–55, p. 235; for those of William Petty and Robert Boyle see
Hunter, M. (2004), ‘Robert Boyle, Narcissus Marsh and the Anglo–Irish intellectual
scene in the late seventeenth century’ in Muriel McCarthy and Ann Simmons (eds),
The Making of Marsh’s Library: Learning, Politics and Religion in Ireland, 1650–1750.
Dublin: Four Courts Press, pp. 51–75, pp. 61, 66–8.
45 O’Conor, C. (1754). Seasonal Thoughts Relating to our Civil and Ecclesiastical
Constitution. Dublin: [N.P.], p. 40; see also McBride, I. (2009), Eighteenth-Century
Ireland: The Isle of Slaves. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, p. 92.
46 McBride, 2009, pp. 149–50 describes the ‘buy Irish’ movement of the 1720s.
47 See Prior, T. (1729a), Observations on Coin in General With Some Proposals for
Regulating the Value of Coin in Ireland. Dublin: A. Rhames for R. Gunne; Hight, 2013,
letter 202, Berkeley to Prior, 7 May 1730.
48 See Luce, 1949/1992, p. 177. The account is cited by Roberts, J. L. (2002), The Jacobite
Wars: Scotland and the Military Campaigns of 1715 and 1745. Edinburgh: Polygon,
p. 187, in relation to campaigns in Arbroath, in Angus, without bibliographic details.
I have not been able to trace the account.
49 Berkeley, 1797, pp. cxxxvii–viii, n.
2
Berkeley’s Bermuda Project in Context

Nancy Kendrick
In September 1728 Berkeley left Greenwich, England and set sail for Newport,
Rhode Island to make preparations for the college he intended to found in
Bermuda. After four months ‘blundering about the ocean’ (Works viii: 190), he
and his wife, Anne Forster Berkeley, landed in Virginia and made their way
north to Newport. Berkeley had spent a good part of the period from 1713
to 1720 travelling in Europe, mostly in Italy, and soon after his return to
Ireland wrote to his friend John Percival about a plan to found a college for
educating British colonists together with Native Americans (Works viii: 127).
He spent much of the next eight years working toward this plan. Though
the Percival letter is the first mention of the scheme, it would be a mistake
to think that Berkeley came up with the plan suddenly, or that his was the
only educational mission in the colonies. On the contrary, the seeds for the
Bermuda Project had been planted over several years, and the project itself was
formed in relation to many other educational endeavors of the early eighteenth
century.1
What made Berkeley’s project special? At the time he was proposing to found
a college in Bermuda, several colleges already existed in the American colonies:
Harvard, Yale and William and Mary. Providing an education for English
settlers was, then, no innovation.2 With respect to the Native populations,
Anglican missionary work had been going on for some time in the Maryland
and Virginia colonies, while Protestant missionaries of other denominations had
been at work for more than a century ‘civilizing’ and converting the Natives in
the New England colonies. What, then, did Berkeley have to offer? His college
was to provide Native Americans with an education of the mind, an initiation
into the intellectual life. In the letter to Percival he explains:
In the same seminary a number of young American savages may be also educated
till they have taken their degree of Master of Arts. And being by that time well
21
instructed in Christian religion, practical mathematics, and other liberal arts

and sciences, and early endued with public spirited principles and inclinations,
they may become the fittest missionaries for spreading religion, morality, and
civil life, among their countrymen.
Works viii: 127
The formal plan, published in 1725 as A Proposal for the better Supplying of
Churches in our Foreign Plantations, And For Converting the Savage Americans,
to Christianity, met with criticism even by those who were also engaged in
missionary work in the American colonies. Thomas Bray, an Anglican clergyman
and well-respected educational reformer who founded the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge (SPCK ) and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
in Foreign Parts (SPG ), criticized Berkeley’s Bermuda plan on numerous points.
He claimed that Berkeley knew nothing about the Native populations and that
his understanding of Bermuda was out-of-date (Gaustad 1979: 435). But his
most serious objection focused on Berkeley’s insistence that the ‘savages’ were to
receive an academic education. Colleges may be useful, Bray wrote, ‘in Countries
already cultivated and in some Measure Polished; yet among Savages, I cannot
conceive, but even a Charity School . . . taught tho’ by old Women, would answer
the Ends better than by Professors of Sciences. And the Mechanicks would be
more usefull taught among such than the Liberal Arts’ (Gaustad 1979: 45–6).
Despite Bray’s and others’ objections, Berkeley proposed not only to educate
‘savages’ into the life of the mind, but that the English government should pay for
this education. He was prepared to contribute much of his own (small) fortune
to the project, and he had raised private subscriptions totaling more than £5,000,
but he realized he needed an endowment for the project to succeed. He received
a charter for the college fairly quickly after publishing the proposal in 1725, and
lobbied for another year for a Parliamentary grant in the amount of £20,000.
When he succeeded in winning a promise for the grant, he wrote to his friend
Tom Prior: ‘I have . . . carried my point . . . in the House of Commons. . . . [T]here
is an end of all their narrow and mercantile views and endeavours, as well as of
the jealousies and suspicions of others . . . who apprehended this College may
produce an independency in America, or at least lessen its dependency upon
England’ (Works viii: 155).
Mercantile interests coupled with fears that education would bring about
colonial independence haunted Berkeley’s project from its inception and
contributed much to its ultimate failure. In proclaiming that one of his aims was
to re-educate English settlers, Berkeley made clear his belief that the colonists
Berkeley’s Bermuda Project in Context 23
were in need of moral and intellectual improvement. He saw them as driven by

commercial concerns and self-interest rather than by concern for the public
good.3 This view won him no friends from among ‘men in stocks [or] trade’ or
from ‘traders to America’ (Works viii: 155).
His plan to educate the Native Americans by training them in ‘Religion and
Morality . . . Eloquence, History, and practical Mathematicks . . . [and providing
them with] some Skill in Physic’ (Works vii: 347–8) also generated some
resentment. By the time of Berkeley’s Proposal, England had long been competing
with France and the Netherlands for resources and territory outside Europe
(Salisbury 1996: 400). Therefore, much of the discourse around the status of the
‘savage’ Americans concerned whether and in what ways ‘civilizing’ them would
contribute to the ends to which the colonies had been settled to begin with: trade
and commercial growth.4 But, as Berkeley saw it, the point of educating the
‘savages’ was not to make them more useful in satisfying the commercial needs
of the English or even to ground their own self-improvement in the development
of skills that would enable them to participate in the growing mercantile
economy. The education of the Native Americans was a matter of their moral,
spiritual and intellectual growth. This, Berkeley believed, was the ‘civilizing’
enterprise that would make the young American culture flourish.
By the mid-1720s, the charter was granted, the endowment promised and a
number of teachers for the college identified, including the painter John Smibert,
who travelled with Berkeley to Newport. Yet despite this evidence of the project’s
feasibility, the Proposal was thought by many to be the work of a dreamy idealist.
Jonathan Swift was perhaps the first to so regard it, as he makes clear in his letter
of 3 September 1724, introducing Berkeley to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
Swift writes:
[Berkeley] is an absolute philosopher with regard to money, titles, and power;

and for three years past hath been struck with a notion of founding an university
at Bermuda. . . . He shewed me a little tract which he designs to publish, and
there your excellency will see his whole scheme of a life academico-philosophical
. . . of a college founded for Indian scholars and missionaries. . . . His heart will
break, if his Deanery be not taken from him. . . . I discourage him by the coldness
of courts and ministers, who will interpret all this as impossible and a vision; but
nothing will do. And therefore I do humbly entreat your excellency . . . to assist
him by your credit to compass his romantic design, which however is very noble
and generous.
Luce 1949: 100–101
Many of Berkeley’s commentators and biographers have also fostered this

image of the project as idealistic and romantic and of Berkeley as blind to the
ways of the world. In his 1776 biography, Joseph Stock presents the Bermuda
Project as a utopian scheme, and A. C. Fraser continued in this vein in the late
nineteenth century, calling the Bermuda Project ‘the romantic episode of Rhode
Island, which warms the heart and affects the imagination more perhaps than
any other incident . . . in Berkeley’s life’ (Fraser [1881]1912: 139). Even recent
discussions of the Bermuda Project see it, for better or worse, as advancing a
utopian vision in which Berkeley planned a romantic retreat where ‘old world
decadence [would be exchanged] for the purity of a world reborn’5 (Fabricant
2003: 267). One exception to this reading is offered by A. A. Luce, who notes that
Berkeley’s disciplined, philosophical mind was not likely to be overcome by
romance in such a crucial matter (Luce 1949: 98–9). Anne Forster Berkeley
provides another exception to this view in her remarks on Stock’s representation
of the Bermuda Project. She defends her husband against the biographer’s claim
that the plan was romantic and naive.6 While I agree with this aspect of both
Luce’s and Anne Berkeley’s assessment of the project, a fuller understanding of
the Bermuda plan demands that it be situated in two important contexts
generally overlooked by commentators. First, the Bermuda school, as Berkeley
conceived of it, was no more of a religious college than any other college in the
American colonies at the time. Harvard and Yale, both Congregationalist,
combined an academic education with training for the clergy, as Berkeley’s
college would have done. Providing students with an education in both ‘divine
and human Learning’ (Works vii: 356), as Berkeley proposed, was not uncommon.
To regard the plan, then, solely as a Christian missionary enterprise – as most
commentators do7 – is to miss what Berkeley thought was its unique aspect:
providing Native Americans with a college education in the liberal arts and
sciences. Berkeley believed such an education would make for a greatly improved
civil society. His plan was not merely to Christianize the Natives, as scores of
missionaries had tried to do before him, but to give them an education equal to
that of any English or Irish gentleman.
Second, though no detailed curriculum for the Bermuda College exists, it is
reasonable to suppose that in receiving a liberal arts education, students would
have learned history, mathematics, philosophy, music, art and languages.
Berkeley may even have modelled the curriculum on the course of study that led
to his own Master of Arts degree from Trinity College. His plan was to educate
the ‘savage’ Americans in the Anglo-European intellectual life. That the Native
Americans may already have had an intellectual life and history did not occur to
Berkeley. On the contrary, he believed that the Natives had been living in a great
‘Darkness’ (Works vii: 359), that ‘their reason, like their fields, [was] quite
uncultivated’8 (Stevens 2004: 44) and that enlightenment would come through
the intellectual and moral development that St. Paul’s College in Bermuda would
provide. If Berkeley believed that Christianity was the means through which the
Natives’ souls could be saved, he also believed that a liberal arts education was
the means through which their minds could be rescued and their earthly
existence made purposeful.
In focusing on the educational aims of the project rather than its Christian
conversion mission, I divide this chapter into two sections: ‘Education, Commerce
and the Public Good’ and ‘The Rhode Island Experience’. In the first section I
consider the plan in relation to several other English educational projects of the
early eighteenth century. I look to three of Berkeley’s early works and explain the
contribution each made to the plan for the Bermuda Project. In the second
section I shift attention to the actual conditions of colonists, Natives and slaves
in Rhode Island and consider the limits of Berkeley’s project with respect to the
different populations from which his students would be drawn. In a brief final
section, I discuss the collapse of the project and offer a few reflections on what it
would have taken for it to succeed.
Education, commerce and the public good
Berkeley’s Bermuda Project was one among many educational schemes

advanced by British intellectuals both at home and in the colonies. It emerged
from a setting in which diverse conceptions of the public good and competing
ideas of the role of commerce were articulated and debated. Three of Berkeley’s
early works – The Ladies Library, Passive Obedience and An Essay Towards
Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain – offer some insight into the positions he
developed over several years on these matters, and thus, they provide a
background for understanding what he believed the Bermuda Project might
achieve.
Though schemes to educate the ‘savage’ Americans were in full force by the
early eighteenth century, many plans also existed aimed at educating even
‘civilized’ Europeans. The discussions in England focused on the sort of education
that would be most useful for different classes and genders, insofar as it
contributed to the public good. Berkeley was aware of many of these discussions,
as he was the compiler and editor of a set of essays on women’s education
published in 1714 as The Ladies Library.9 The collection contained extracts from
more than a dozen works, including François Fénelon’s Instructions for the
Education of a Daughter, Mary Astell’s Serious Proposal to the Ladies and John
Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Though little attention has been
paid to Berkeley’s compilation, it serves to illuminate his thinking with respect
to the Bermuda Project. The Ladies Library provided Berkeley with an
opportunity to consider a spectrum of views regarding the benefits education
could provide to its recipients, and it contributed to the formulation of his own
position about the ends to which ‘savage’ Americans might be educated.
Furthermore, one of the works he included in the collection – Astell’s Serious
Proposal to the Ladies – likely influenced some aspects of the Bermuda Proposal.
The question of women’s education, like the question of ‘savage’ education,
was much discussed in Berkeley’s day; he had a wide array of texts to choose
from in compiling The Ladies Library. Some of these texts concerned women’s
conduct while others concerned women’s intellectual development. This points
to disputes at the time about the benefits education could provide to women and
to society. The texts that focused on improving women’s minds were divided
between those that argued that intellectual achievements would enable women
to excel within their own sphere and make them ‘better Daughters, Wives,
Mothers and Friends’ (Bond 1965, vol. 1: 404) and those that insisted on the
contributions educated women would make to the society by transcending that
sphere, for example, by becoming ‘general Scholars’10 (Bond 1965, vol. 1: 390).
Thrown into the mix as well were claims that women were incapable of
intellectual improvement. For example, in a letter written to the Athenian Oracle,
the author, having read Astell’s Serious Proposal to the Ladies, expresses disbelief
that women’s minds could be improved:
A little tract that I have lately read, very much encourages women to be studious,
and contrary to the general opinion of most men, maintains, that they are
capable of making as great improvement in it as we are. Now I must confess, I am
so far from the author’s opinion, judging by that acquaintance I have had with
the sex, that I believe it impossible [that women’s] natural impertinencies shou’d
ever be converted into a solid reasoning.
Perry 1986: 99–100
Though this position expressed a minority view, it was, nonetheless, a position

to be taken seriously since it raised the question whether women were ‘naturally’
ignorant. This was an issue also raised with respect to the ‘savage’ Americans, and
Berkeley confronted it in the Proposal, as we shall see in a moment.
Richard Steele, who was the publisher of The Ladies Library and asked
Berkeley to make the compilation,11 provided an argument for the view, noted
above, that educating women would improve them within their own sphere. In
an essay written for the Tatler some four years before the publication of The
Ladies Library, Steele deplored the state of women’s education, whereby, he
explained,
some parents imagine their daughters will be accomplished enough, if nothing

interrupts their growth, or their shape. According to this method of education
. . . all the girls hear of . . . is that it is time to rise and to come to dinner, as if they
were so insignificant as to be wholly provided for when they are fed and clothed.
Bond 1987, vol. 3: 267
The result, he continued, is that ‘the female world [is] . . . condemned to a

laziness, which makes life pass away with less relish than in the hardest labor’
(Bond 1987, vol. 3: 267). Steele’s main concern was to show that a proper education
would enable women to be sensible wives and companions for reasonable men.
With this end in mind he proposed a ‘Female Library’, which would include a
collection of books that would ‘tend to advance the value of [women’s] innocence
as virgins, improve their understanding as wives, and regulate their tenderness as
parents’ (Bond 1987, vol. 3: 267). Steele argued – as did many others – that cultivating
women’s minds would allow them to better satisfy their duties in relation to men,
and that men, therefore, need not fear women’s intellectual improvement.12
A year after the Tatler essay, Steele again picked up the topic of a ‘Female
Library’ in the Spectator, printing letters by women hungry for opportunities for
intellectual discourse. Several women wrote asking for ‘the Catalogue of Books
which you have promised to recommend to our Sex’ (Bond 1965, vol. 1: 389),
explaining that ‘if a fervent Desire after Knowledge, and a great Sense of our
present Ignorance may be thought a good presage and earnest of Improvement,
you may look upon your Time you shall bestow in answering this Request not
thrown away to no purpose’ (Bond 1965, vol. 2: 55).
Selections from several works suggested by Steele or Joseph Addison and by
various male and female readers of the Spectator made their way to The Ladies
Library, indicating that Berkeley read with some care the Spectator issues that
addressed the subject of a ‘Female Library’.13
While Steele’s approach to women’s education was fairly conservative, Mary
Astell – whose work Berkeley included in the compilation though it was not
recommended in the Spectator14 – offered a more radical proposal. She argued in
Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part I that education ought to aim at providing
women the opportunity to transcend the sphere to which custom had assigned
them. In Serious Proposal, Part II, she provided a how-to manual for women to
educate themselves in logic, philosophy and religion.15 Berkeley included a long
excerpt from Astell’s work in The Ladies Library and also wrote a short paragraph
introducing the selection, which he entitled ‘Ignorance’. In this opening
paragraph, Berkeley asserts that custom, not nature, keeps women from
intellectual achievements. He writes:
There wou’d be no End of it, if we shou’d go about to give Instances of the great
Improvements Women have made of Education, there being hardly any Science
in which they have not excell’d. ’Tis very plain therefore, that Nature has given
them as good Talents as Men have, and if they are still called the weaker Sex, ’tis
because the other, which assumes the Name of the wiser, hinders them [from]
improving their Minds in useful Knowledge, by accustoming them to the Study
and Practice of Vanity and Trifles.16
Berkeley 1714: 438
The view that ignorance is not a natural failing but an imposition made
through neglect became an important part of the position Berkeley advanced in
the Bermuda Proposal with respect to the ‘savage’ Americans. While the ignorance
of the ‘savages’ did not ‘condemn [them] to laziness’ or ‘accustom [them] to vanity
and trifles’, as Steele and Berkeley had claimed was the case with women, Berkeley
insisted, nonetheless, that the ‘Darkness’ in which they had been languishing was
very much the result of societal neglect and that St. Paul’s College would ‘rescue
[them] from their savage Manners to a Life of Civility’ (Works vii: 348). It would
turn ‘savage’ Americans into ‘Indian Scholars’ (Works vii: 360).
Astell’s work appears to have influenced Berkeley’s Bermuda Proposal in two
important ways. First, in diagnosing the problem of women’s ignorance in
Serious Proposal, Astell argued that if (English) men were as neglected as
(English) women had been with respect to their intellectual and moral
development, and if ‘as little care [had been] taken to cultivate and improve
them’, one could expect that ‘they themselves wou’d sink into the greatest stupidity
and brutality’ (Astell [1694, 1697] 2002: 57). Her point – that intellectual and
moral improvement required cultivation – made a strong impression on
Berkeley. In the Bermuda Proposal, he rejected the view that the ‘savages’ suffered
from ‘a natural Stupidity’ (Works vii: 356) by providing three responses to the
objection that their ignorance could not be overcome by education. First, he
argued that a general incapacity ought not be drawn from the fact that some
Natives appear unable to make improvement. Second, he claimed that his plan
was quite different from previous schemes in that ‘a thorough Education in

Religion and Morality, in divine and human Learning, doth not appear to have
been ever given to any savage American’ (Works vii: 356). Third, he conceded
that if some Natives were ‘found less likely to improve by academical Studies,
[they] may be taught Agriculture, or the most necessary Trades’ (Works vii: 357).
A second influence from Astell emerges in Berkeley’s conception of his college
as providing a retreat where students would receive appropriate training and
return to the world as missionaries and educators. Astell had proposed her
women’s college as a refuge from the negative influences of wealth and luxury,
explaining that it would be ‘not only a Retreat from the World . . . but likewise, an
institution . . . to fit [women] to do the greatest good in it’ (Astell [1694, 1697]
2002: 73). This college, she continued, ‘shall not so cut [women] off from the
world as to hinder [them] from bettering and improving it, but rather qualify
[them] to do it the greatest Good, and be a Seminary to stock the Kingdom with
pious and prudent Ladies; whose good Example . . . will so influence the rest of
their Sex’ (Astell [1694, 1697] 2002: 76). Berkeley expressed similar aims in the
Bermuda Proposal: He chose Bermuda as the site for the college because he
believed it to be relatively free from commercial and other worldly concerns.
Young students ‘would be there less liable to be corrupted in their Morals’, while
the faculty and administrators, he claimed ‘would be . . . better contented with a
small Stipend, and a retired academical Life, in a Corner from whence Avarice
and Luxury are excluded, than they can be supposed to be in the midst of a full
Trade and great Riches, attended with all that high Living and Parade which our
Planters affect’ (Works vii: 353).
Furthermore, like Astell, Berkeley did not intend for his students to remain in
retreat; they would return to the world to serve as models and teachers for others
like themselves. Just as Astell’s women would ‘influence the rest of their Sex’, so
too would Berkeley’s ‘young American savages’ become ‘the fittest missionaries
for spreading religion, morality, and civil life, among their countrymen’ (Works
viii: 127, my emphasis).
To sum up, Berkeley’s work on The Ladies Library identifies an important
motivation he developed for the Bermuda Project. Given his familiarity with
Astell’s Serious Proposal to the Ladies, with Steele’s proposal for a ‘Female Library’
and with the pleas of female letter writers to the Spectator seeking release from
their ‘Ignorance’ and admission into the intellectual life, it would not have been a
great leap for Berkeley to conclude that others who had been consigned to an
even greater‘Darkness’ – like the‘savage’Americans – were eager for enlightenment
as well.
Though virtually all eighteenth-century educational reformers believed that the

primary aim of their missions was the enhancement of the public good, there was
no single, unified view of what the public good consisted in. Berkeley’s sermons on
Passive Obedience (1712) help to shed light on his conception of the public good
and the ways he believed individuals might best bring it about. Although one of the
main themes of the work concerns justifying passive obedience to political
authority, two arguments from Passive Obedience are particularly relevant to
understanding the Bermuda Project. First, Berkeley claimed, one ought not be
guided by one’s passions in advancing schemes for the public good. Although he
recognized that ‘[t]enderness and benevolence of temper are often motives to the
best and greatest actions’, he cautioned against making them ‘the sole rule of our
actions’ (PO §13). Actions aimed at promoting the public good must be grounded
in reason. Second, he argued that no person ought set himself up as an authority
on what the public good consists in: ‘the great end of morality can never be carried
on by leaving each particular person to promote the public good in such a manner
as he shall think most convenient’ (PO §27). We must not, Berkeley claimed, ‘leave
everyone to be guided by his own judgment’ (PO §27).
Berkeley saw a connection between the moral good and the public good,
between moral duties and social duties. In Passive Obedience, he argued against
the idea that an action promotes a moral good merely because it advances the
public good. On the contrary, he explained, actions express a moral good insofar
as they instantiate a moral law, and these laws were designed by God to ensure
the common good of society.17 Therefore, Berkeley reasoned, those who advance
projects for the public good must be guided not by their passions or by their own
judgment, but by ‘certain determinate universal rules’ (PO §27) since these
‘established laws . . . if universally practiced, have, from the nature of things, an
essential fitness to procure the well-being of mankind’ (PO §8). Berkeley
recognized, of course, that many activities might enhance the public good, but he
insisted that if they were not grounded in moral law, they would be subject to the
whims of successive innovators, all of whom would attempt to promote the good
in a way that each thought ‘most convenient’.
With respect to the Bermuda Project, two consequences follow from these
positions. First, Berkeley did not see himself as an innovator, as someone ‘guided
by his own judgment’ (PO §27). Though the project was unusual compared with
other eighteenth-century educational missions in the colonies, Berkeley saw it as
advancing the public good precisely because it was grounded in moral law.
Educating the ‘savage’ Americans by cultivating their reason and virtue was
dictated by moral imperatives connected to the fulfilment of human potential. If
the ‘savages’ were human beings, and Berkeley believed they were, then, he
argued, they must be liberated from the ‘Darkness’ in which they had been living,
and their ‘cruel brutal Manners’ improved. Doing so was a matter not only of
saving their souls but also of ‘procur[ing] a great and lasting Benefit to the
World’18 (Works vii: 359).
A second important point to keep in mind is that the Bermuda Project was
not grounded in the values of political liberalism. It was not offered as a means
of expanding the rights of citizens or of subjects who were not citizens.19 Indeed,
Passive Obedience was directed, in part, against Locke’s conception of individuals,
which served to ground his theory of limited obedience to government.20 This is
not to say that Berkeley wished to withhold political rights from Native
Americans. Rather, the point is that his project for educating them was not
driven by ideals of political equality. Berkeley’s plan was to provide an education
that would ‘instill’ (Works vii: 348) into the minds of colonists and Natives moral
laws, thus enabling them to create together a civil society that instantiated these
laws and that would, consequently, place the common good above private
interest. The young Americans, both Native and transplanted, were to be educated
to the end of developing ‘public spirited principles and inclinations’ (Works viii:
127), not to the end of asserting themselves as political agents.
I shall return to Passive Obedience in the next section, where I consider
Berkeley’s experience with slavery in Rhode Island. Here, I continue examining
Berkeley’s view of the link between education and the public good by comparing
the aims of the Bermuda Project with a different educational endeavor underway
in the 1720s: Thomas Coram’s proposal to create a foundling hospital in London.
By the early 1720s, Thomas Bray and the SPCK had helped to found
approximately one hundred charity schools in and around London.21 The
purpose of these schools was to remove poor, begging children from the streets
by providing them with the education, skills and training that would prepare
them to enter the labor force. Yet despite the relative success of the charity
schools, vast numbers of abandoned children were still living – and dying – on
the streets of London. These were not merely the poor, but also the children of
unmarried women, who out of poverty, desperation and ignorance ‘had no
alternative, save infanticide, [but to] abandon . . . the[ir] child[ren] in a public
place with the desperate hope that some compassionate person would rescue
[them]’ (McClure 1981: 14). Coram witnessed scores of dying children on his
daily walk to London’s center and decided in the spring of 1722 – the same time
as Berkeley’s letter to Percival announcing his Bermuda plan – that something
needed to be done (McClure 1981: 19).
Coram’s plan, which succeeded after seventeen years (though not with
government funding), was to turn illegitimate and unwanted children into
contributing members of society. The Foundling Institute would accept children
no older than two months and would send them to the countryside to be nursed
and raised until they were three or four years old. When the children were
returned to the Institute, they would learn to read though not to write; at the
appropriate time, the boys would be apprenticed to husbandry or to the sea
service and the girls would be indentured as domestics (McClure 1981: 47).
Thomas Bray – who, as noted above, censured Berkeley’s Bermuda Project,
claiming that a ‘Charity School . . . taught . . . by old women’ would suffice for the
education of ‘savages’ – wrote a pamphlet in support of Coram’s plan citing in its
favor both Christian duty and more material considerations. Through Coram’s
charitable school, Bray wrote, the children would be ‘rendered useful and fit for
Services, and Apprenticeships to the meanest Trades, instead of being innured to
Beggary, Pilfering, and Stealing’ (McClure 1981: 35).
Viewed from one perspective, Coram’s proposal (and Bray’s support of it) was
a noble undertaking. Educating abandoned children to become seamen or
domestics was surely preferable to having them die on the streets from starvation.
Further, this rescue mission would provide a public benefit: by entering the labor
force the children would be able to support themselves. From another perspective,
however, the project betrayed the assumption that poor or illegitimate children
were not fit for higher ends. The purpose of Coram’s Institute was not to educate
these children in trades that would put them in competition with the children
of the burgeoning middle class,22 and it certainly was not to provide them with
an education aimed at cultivating their minds. The goal was to make them
serviceable within the growing commercial economy. The improvement of these
children, and consequently, the improvement of society would come by having
the children fulfil their duties within the social and economic spheres to which
they had been assigned. In Coram’s and in many other plans for improving the
lives of the impoverished, commerce was seen as the panacea to social ills. It was
the means through which the poor could survive, the rich could remain rich, and
the public good could best be served.
Berkeley’s Bermuda Proposal presented an unambiguous alternative to this
kind of educational mission. First, it insisted that the path to improved human
life was not through commerce, but through intellectual, moral and spiritual
development; second, it rejected the view that the aim of education was to enable
those receiving it to serve the interests of others. Although Berkeley’s plan
proposed instilling moral laws into the minds of Natives and colonists, it did
express an important element of equality: the ‘savages’ were to be educated not to

satisfy the needs of colonists, but to create with them – albeit, in what might be
considered ‘separate but equal’ fashion – a social order in which all would
flourish, at least in terms of their moral, intellectual and spiritual lives.
Berkeley was not, of course, opposed to commerce, manufacture or trade. He
was, however, suspicious of the idea that commerce alone could improve human
life. Commerce could contribute to the public good, he argued in An Essay
Towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain (1721), but only insofar as it was
nourished by – and in turn nourished – moral, spiritual, intellectual and even
aesthetic aims. In the Essay, Berkeley’s focus was not on the relation between the
public good and the moral good, but on what he perceived as the lack of concern
for the public good by officials and wealthy citizens whose interests were limited
to their own private ends. The collapse of the South Sea Company’s shares in
1720, in which many fortunes were both made and lost, made clear to Berkeley
that an economic system in which the benefits of some are inextricably tied to
the losses of others is problematic: it encourages and rewards self-interest and
discourages and punishes public spiritedness. He feared that the nation’s wealth
was becoming nothing but ‘an instrument to luxury’ (Works vi: 75).
In repudiating the growing emphasis on private gain at the expense of the
public good, Berkeley understood that his view was thought to be extremely naive:
I am well aware that to talk of public spirit, and the means of retrieving it, must,
to narrow sordid minds, be matter of jest and ridicule . . . though one would
think the most selfish men might see it was their interest to encourage a spirit in
others by which they, to be sure, must be gainers. Yet such is the corruption and
folly of the present age that a public spirit is treated like ignorance of the world
and want of sense; and all the respect is paid to cunning men, who bend and
wrest the public interest to their own private ends.
Works vi: 82
Despite the perception that his views were unsophisticated, Berkeley persisted.
Three years after publishing An Essay Towards Preventing the Ruin of Great
Britain, his views on education, commerce and the public good came together in
the Bermuda Proposal.
Berkeley’s motivations for the project were complex. As we have seen, they
were humanistic, aimed at improving the moral, intellectual and spiritual lives of
settlers and Native Americans; they were public spirited, aimed at enhancing the
public good; they were also missionary, aimed at spreading Christianity in new
lands; and they were Protestant, aimed at halting the progress in America of
‘Popery’ made by the French and the Spanish (Works vii: 354–55). In choosing
Bermuda as the location for the college, Berkeley did envision a refuge for both
teachers and students from a world filled with excess. This suggests that he
regarded a physical retreat from the (supposed) decadence of Anglo-European
life as essential to the plan, lending support to the view advanced by many
commentators that his project was romantic, even utopian. But, as noted in the
discussion above of Astell’s Serious Proposal, although Berkeley’s students were
to retreat from the ordinary world, the aim was to have them re-join it. The goal
of the Bermuda Project was not to create a new and perfect community
disconnected from all others. The goal was to transform the existing community
of English settlers and Native Americans to ‘public Spirit and Virtue’ (Works vii:
348). A retreat from a world too much given to luxury and vice was the means
through which students would receive the proper training. But a utopian
community existing in isolation from the rest of the world was not the aim of the
Bermuda Project.
These comparisons of Berkeley’s Bermuda scheme with other English
educational proposals regarding middle-class women, the poor and the
abandoned show it to be neither romantic nor naive. The plan was driven by
legitimate concerns over the powerful role of commerce; it was grounded in
communitarian values; and it expressed a commitment to (non-political)
equality between colonists and Native Americans. Whether these concerns and
commitments would make sense to the proposed recipients of Berkeley’s plan is
the question to which I now turn.
The Rhode Island experience
Berkeley wrote to his friend Percival within a week of his arrival in Newport,
informing him that ‘(were it in my power) I should not demur one moment
about situating our College here’ (Works viii: 190). What did Berkeley find in
Rhode Island that brought about this potential change of plan? By the early
1720s, Newport had experienced a housing boom, with residences, warehouses
and shops multiplying on the main streets (Bridenbaugh 1955: 310, 390). Among
some of the colonists, Berkeley found an emphasis on commercial growth that
rewarded private gain and undervalued public spiritedness, prompting him to
write to Percival, ‘there is a more probable prospect of doing good here than in
any other part of the world’ (Works viii: 190).
* * *
When he gave the anniversary sermon in 1732 to the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel shortly after returning to England, Berkeley made clear just how
much of a ‘Want of spiritual Things’ (Works, vii, p. 359) there was in the Rhode
Island colony. ‘Men of Fashion’ were more concerned with their dress than with
‘virtuous and religious’ matters (Works vii: 123). Many of the colonists, he
reported, ‘seem[ed] to rival some well-bred People of other countries, in a
thorough Indifference for all that is sacred’ (Works vii: 121).
Newport was not, of course, completely without those who were as optimistic
as Berkeley was about the peaceful assimilation of Native Americans into
European intellectual culture. There were some enthusiastic supporters of the
project, including the governor, Joseph Jenckes and the attorney general, Daniel
Updike, who would gladly have seen it actualized in what was known as the
Narragansett country.23 But among many of the town’s traders and merchants
and the country’s farmers and plantation owners, there was some resistance to
Berkeley’s plan. These ‘frontier’ colonists had long been at odds with ‘metropolitan’
Englishmen, who perceived them as ‘land-hungry’ opportunists, determined to
win control of the land from the Native populations (Oberg 1999: 7). These
colonists were resentful of attempts to have English standards of civility imposed
upon them. Furthermore, long-standing religious factionalism in Newport was
responsible for zealousness and bigotry on the one hand and indifference and
hostility toward religion on the other (Skemp 1978: 59–61). ‘[T]oo many of [the
colonists],’ Berkeley reported in his 1732 SPG sermon, ‘have worn off a serious
Sense of all Religion’ (Works vii: 121). In a town where ‘Sunday was treated by
many as an ordinary working day’ (Skemp 1978: 61), Berkeley feared that
material interests had filled the void created by these sectarian disputes.
Given their drive for material wealth, their resentment of the ‘metropolitan’
English, and their internal sectarian quarrels, it is likely that many colonists
would have rejected Berkeley’s view that the public good was in jeopardy and
that educating their sons in the liberal arts and sciences alongside the ‘savages’
would restore it. In short, Berkeley found among the colonists what he had found
at home: both support and disdain for his project.
With respect to the Native population Berkeley had much to learn. His belief
that the ‘savage’ Americans had been languishing in the ‘Darkness’ of ignorance
was false in several respects. First, during the eighty years before Berkeley’s
arrival in Newport, Protestant educational reformers had been at work teaching
the Natives to read and write in English (and, to some extent, in their own
languages). Second, the Native Americans had a vibrant intellectual, creative and
civic life, even if one hundred years with British colonizers had done much to
undermine it.
I consider first the influence of missionary work on the Natives during the
fifty to eighty years prior to Berkeley’s arrival. In southern New England, basic
education had been provided to many Native children between the 1640s and
the 1680s (Szasz 1988: 112). Many colonists and Natives were bilingual speakers,
and a translation of the Bible from English into the Massachusett language (a
dialect of the Algonquian People) was published in 1663. This Indian Bible was
the result of a joint effort between John Eliot, a New England missionary, and
several Native translators. Prior to the publication of the Eliot Bible, no written
form of the Massachusett language existed (Wyss 2000: 1). During this period,
missionary Protestants made great strides introducing English language literacy
to portions of the Native population. Though most of this education was directed
toward Christian conversion – missionaries believed that since God’s truths
were contained in the Bible, literacy was the means through which God could be
understood – some of it focused on more secular learning (Wyss 2000: 9). Some
forty Native students received a grammar school education in Boston or
surrounding cities between 1656 and 1672, an education that prepared them for
admission to Harvard College. And a handful of Algonquians even attended
(Szasz 1988: 126). Such opportunities were short-lived though. By 1680, the
Boston area grammar schools no longer admitted Natives (Szasz 1988: 127), and
by the time of Berkeley’s arrival in Rhode Island, there existed very few conduits
for preparing Native students to enter St. Paul’s College.
When Berkeley arrived in Newport, the Native Americans had been living
with English colonizers for more than one hundred years, and they were capable
of assessing the advantages and disadvantages Christian conversion and literacy
had brought them. Experience Mayhew, an educational reformer and missionary
from Boston, reported in his diary as early as 1714 – the same year as the
publication in England of The Ladies Library – the rebukes of the Native sachems
or political leaders with respect to the religious conversion mission. Ninigret II ,
a Narragansett leader, noted, for example, the lack of moral integrity on the part
of some colonists, demanding of Mayhew ‘that he make the English good in the
first place, for . . . many of them were still bad’ (Szasz 1988: 182). He also pointed
to the many sectarian disputes in Christianity, something Berkeley found
troubling as well,24 claiming that this factionalism made it difficult for ‘ye Indians
[to] tell what religion to be of, if they had a mind to be Christians’ (Szasz 1988:
182). Mayhew also reported that Mohegan leaders rejected the moral claims of
Christianity, arguing that ‘men were [n]ever the better for being Christians, for
the English that were Christians would cheat the Indians of their land and
otherwise wrong them’25 (Szasz 1988: 182). Other Native leaders questioned the
coherence of Christianity. If the Christian God was omni-benevolent and if

Christ had died for the salvation of all, then it was difficult to understand how ‘all
the world of Indians are gone to hell to be tormented for ever, until now a few
may goe to Heaven and be saved’ (Stevens 2004: 122).
As for literacy, which signalled for Berkeley the means to the Anglo-European
intellectual life, this too, was viewed by the Natives with a sceptical eye. Some
sachems claimed that literacy made the English more wicked, since ‘their
knowledge of books made them the more Cunning to Cheat others & so did
more hurt than good’ (Szasz 1988: 182). Much more important, though, was the
fact that the literacy brought by British educational reformers, including
Berkeley, entailed a profound shift in Native cultural practices.26 Because written
forms of Native languages either did not exist or were just being created, literacy
training was not simply a matter of learning to read and write in a second
language, akin to an English child learning French. It was a matter of learning an
entirely different way to record, transmit, and understand a culture’s historical
achievements. Learning to read and write in English was intimidating enough
given its connection to Christian conversion and the consequent abandonment
of traditional spirituality (Wyss 2000: 58). But insisting on the importance of
literacy, even in the Natives’ own languages, pointed to the belief held by most
educational reformers that the ‘savage’ Americans simply lacked a culture worthy
of recognition. Experience Mayhew made this point in Indian Converts: ‘The
Indians of whom I am to speak . . . must be considered as a People in a great
measure destitute of those advantages of Literature, which the English and many
other Nations enjoy. They have at present no scholars among them . . . [N]othing
may at present be expected of them27 (Wyss 2000: 63–4).
Mayhew’s claim makes clear that the oral-based culture of Native Americans
was dismissed both by missionaries who saw it as inadequate for a true
understanding of Christianity (Wyss 2000: 8) and by educational reformers who
failed to acknowledge in oral traditions a storehouse of genuine intellectual,
creative, aesthetic, political and social life. In the absence of institutions in which
Europeans expected to find cultural riches – universities, libraries, seminaries,
monasteries and convents – most educational reformers concluded that the
Native Americans simply lacked a sophisticated cultural life.
For the Native Americans, however, knowledge relating to religion, agriculture,
family ties, political relations, etc., was preserved in oral storytelling and oratory,
not in treatises. The performative aspect of their oral/aural culture, one in which
ideational contents – that is, ‘words’ – were enacted rather than written was the
means through which their ‘texts’ were recorded, remembered and revised (Irwin
2002: 104). It was through ‘communities of memory’ that Native societies

‘conserve[d] tradition while possessing the creative capacity to reinterpret
tradition and practices’ (Moses 2002: 195). Even wampum beads, which the
Narragansett Indians cut and shaped from shells along the coast of New England
beaches, were understood by the British to be merely trinkets or baubles to be
used as a means of trade. But for the Narragansetts, wampum beads woven into
belts were also ‘words’ used to record agreements, express peace or condolence,
and to record their history (Kidwell 2002: 89; Salisbury 1996: 404).
Stories, performances and rituals were not much appreciated by colonizers as
legitimate ways to transmit knowledge; furthermore, the Natives were viewed as
unsophisticated in their understanding of the natural world. Because they
viewed both themselves and natural forces as wilful agents, Natives looked to
dreams, ceremonies and visions as providing the means to understand their
interactions with the world (Kidwell 2002: 88–9). They conceived of humans as
one among many spiritual or wilful agents in the universe, and this ‘broad
understanding of the relatedness of animals, plants, and landscapes’ (Miller,
2002: 139) made their social, political and intellectual practices quite inscrutable
to colonizers and educational reformers.
Given their stated reasons for resisting conversion to Christianity as well as
the richness of their own cultural life, it is reasonable to think that many Native
Americans would have resisted Berkeley’s educational enterprise, not because
they were so blinded by the ‘Darkness’ of ignorance that they foolishly wished to
remain in it, but because they did not believe themselves to be in the darkness at
all. In failing to recognize the cultural life of the ‘savage’ Americans, Berkeley’s
Proposal never considered that their social practices and political structures may
have already evinced ‘public spirited principles and inclinations’ (Works viii:
127).
In fact, Berkeley saw very little of the Native Americans while he was in Rhode
Island, and what he did see likely confirmed his commitment to building St.
Paul’s College. He visited James MacSparran, a missionary of the SPG serving as
rector of St. Paul’s church near Newport in the Narragansett country, with the
aim of ‘examin[ing] the condition and character of the Indians’ (Lapan n.d.: 14;
Fabricant 2003: 274) and in his report on America presented in the 1732 SPG
sermon, he indicated that he found them much reduced in number, body, mind
and spirit:
The native Indians, who are said to have been formerly many Thousands . . . do
not at present amount to one Thousand, including every Age and Sex. And these
are either all Servants or Labourers for the English, who have contributed more
to destroy their Bodies by the Use of strong Liquors, than by any means to
improve their Minds or save their Souls.
Works vii: 121
Wars, enslavement and diseases had taken their toll on the New England
Native population.28 Seeing the extent to which the Natives’ lives, minds and
morals had been not merely neglected but positively harmed indicated to
Berkeley how much there was to be done. This, too, may explain his comment to
Percival that ‘there is a more probable prospect of doing good here than in any
other part of the world’ (Works viii: 190). That Berkeley still understood himself
to be on a rescue mission seems clear. But it was the colonists from whom the
Natives needed release.
In Newport, Berkeley became familiar with slavery and perhaps even with the
slave trade, as Rhode Island in the early 1730s was carving out a place for itself as
a supplier of slaves to the rest of the colonies (Coughtry 1981). Though Berkeley
included the ‘Negroes of our Plantations’29 (Works vii: 346) in the second and
third editions of the Bermuda Proposal,30 his concern was limited to Christian
conversion; slaves would not attend St. Paul’s College. His main worry was that
Christian baptism had been withheld by colonists who believed (incorrectly)
that baptism bestowed freedom. In the Proposal, Berkeley blamed incompetent
clergy in the colonies for the ‘small Care that hath been taken to convert the
Negroes of our Plantations, who, to the Infamy of England, and the Scandal of
the World, continue Heathen under Christian Masters, and in Christian
Countries’ (Works vii: 346). While he was in Newport, Berkeley worked to
convince planters and other settlers that baptizing slaves did not liberate them.
In the 1732 SPG sermon he delivered in England, Berkeley reported that the
obstacles to the conversion of ‘these poor People’ were twofold: first, an ‘irrational’
belief on the part of early colonists that Blacks were ‘Creatures of another Species,
who had no Right to be instructed or admitted to the Sacraments’; and second,
an ‘erroneous’ belief that ‘being baptized is inconsistent with a State of Slavery’
(Works vii: 122). With respect to the latter, Berkeley explained to his SPG
audience that ‘the Opinion of his Majesty’s Attorney and Solicitor-General’ was
sought in order to ‘undeceive [colonists] in this Particular’ (Works vii: 122).
This opinion, issued in 1729 by Attorney General Philip Yorke and Solicitor
General Charles Talbot, asserted that ‘[b]aptism doth not bestow Freedom on [a
slave] nor make any alteration in his temporal Condition in these Kingdoms’
(Glasson 2010: 279). Recent scholarship suggests that the Yorke-Talbot opinion
had been solicited not by slave owners and traders taking a proslavery stance –
as had long been assumed – but by Berkeley and other Anglican churchmen in
America who were trying to facilitate the baptism of slaves (Glasson 2010: 297–
304; Gaustad 1979: 91). Berkeley’s mentioning the opinion in the SPG sermon
supports this position. Although it is generally recognized that the Anglican aim
was not grounded in a proslavery position; historians of the period note
nonetheless that by the middle of the eighteenth century, the Yorke-Talbot
opinion had become ‘the most assertively and clearly proslavery interpretation
of English law’ (Glasson 2010: 292). While he was in Rhode Island, Berkeley
owned three slaves – Philip, Anthony and Agnes – and he baptized them in June
1731 (Gaustad 1979: 94).
Berkeley’s interest in slaves lay in converting them, not in welcoming them to
St. Paul’s College and the intellectual life. In arguing in the Proposal that ‘Slaves
would only become better Slaves by being Christians’ (Works vii: 346), Berkeley
was trying to ease the fears of slaveholders who worried that admitting enslaved
people into the Christian life would make them independent and thus keep
them from satisfying their masters’ needs. His argument mirrors the position
Steele had advanced in the Tatler essay, in which he assured his fearful readers
that cultivating women’s minds would not keep them from satisfying men’s
needs, that women would not ‘go out of character in their enquiries, but their
knowledge appear only a cultivated innocence’ (Bond 1987, vol. 3: 268).
Furthermore, Berkeley’s position with respect to converting slaves echoes the
more conservative approaches to education taken by reformers like Bray and
Coram, who saw education as providing a means for its beneficiaries to serve its
benefactors. In the case of converting slaves, Berkeley reasoned that baptizing
them and admitting them into the Christian community would enable them to
better perform their duties in relation to masters (Works vii: 346). With respect
to Native Americans the Bermuda plan was more radical. Natives were to be
educated not to satisfy the needs and interests of the English, but to create with
the English a better (European) civil society.
Some commentators have confronted Berkeley’s acceptance of slavery by
connecting it to his arguments in Passive Obedience. For example, Travis Glasson
– who treats Berkeley’s conception of passive obedience as roughly equivalent to
blind obedience – argues that Berkeley’s endorsement of passive obedience
allowed him to think of the enslaved as ‘compliant sufferers’ who would be
rewarded by God in the next life31 (Glasson 2010: 306–7). I suggest instead that
the connection between Passive Obedience and Berkeley’s acceptance of slavery
may be better explained by noting that he rejected a certain conception of selves
or individuals, rather than that he regarded earthly bondage as a small price to

pay for eternal salvation.
To make this point clear, let’s return to the arguments in Passive Obedience
that were directed against Locke’s claims for political rebellion in The Second
Treatise of Government. It is not that Berkeley accepted Locke’s conception of
political individuals but thought some individuals (for example, slaves) did not
deserve rights. On the contrary, Berkeley rejected altogether Locke’s conception
of individuals as the locus of political rights. In Passive Obedience, he repudiated
completely the language of self-preservation so essential to Locke’s conception of
political individuals, who are ‘obliged by nature . . . to resist the cruel attempts of
tyrants’ (PO §33). Arguing against Locke’s view that ‘the law of self-preservation
is prior to all other engagements, being the very first and fundamental law of
nature’ (PO §33), Berkeley insisted that ‘there is no particular law which obliges
any man to prefer his own temporal good, not even life itself, to that of another
man, much less to the observation of any one moral duty’ (PO §34). Berkeley
simply rejected the conception of a subject as a political individual that could
serve to ground arguments for civil liberation.32 Therefore, if Passive Obedience
helps shed light on Berkeley’s acceptance of slavery, it does so by showing that he
understood a self or individual to be the locus of moral law, not the grounding
of political agency. In baptizing slaves and admitting them into the Christian
world, the sufficient means to act in accordance with moral law and to preserve
themselves against evil would have been available.33
This consideration of Berkeley’s Bermuda Project from the perspective of its
intended beneficiaries indicates that the plan failed to confront the needs and
desires of each. This is not to say that Bray was correct in his view that ‘the
Mechanicks’ would be more useful to ‘savages’ than the liberal arts and sciences.
Rather, the point is that the issues and concerns that motivated the project did
not correspond to the concrete conditions faced by colonists, Natives and slaves
in America.
The collapse of the Bermuda Project
During the nearly three years that he stayed in Rhode Island, Berkeley remained
committed to carrying out his plan for a college for Natives and colonists. The
English Treasury, however, did not. Even before he sailed for Newport in the
autumn of 1728, Berkeley was beginning to fear that interest in his project was
waning. By the summer of 1730, it was clear that the scheme was losing support
in England and probably would not be funded. He wrote to Percival: ‘I wait here
with all the anxiety that attends suspense till I know what I can depend upon or
what course I am to take’ (Works viii: 205). Percival and other friends indicated
that Berkeley’s choice of Bermuda was thought by political leaders to be the
main stumbling block. William Byrd, a wealthy Virginia planter and politician,
wrote to Percival that Berkeley’s plan was ‘no better than a religious frenzy’,
claiming that it was a ‘wild undertaking to build a college in a country where
there is no bread, nor anything fit for the sustenance of man, but onions and
cabbage’ (Rand 1914: 244).
Berkeley was willing to change locations and informed his SPCK associate
Henry Newman that he had written ‘some friends in England to take the proper
steps for procuring a translation of the College from Bermuda to Rhode Island’
(Rand 1914: 252). Becoming fearful, however, that this change might undermine
support for the project, he soon asked Newman and Percival to inform those
who mattered that he remained resolved to set sail for Bermuda as soon as the
money was paid (Works viii: 206). But in the spring of 1731, Berkeley wrote to
Percival: ‘I have received such accounts on all hands both from England and
Ireland that I now give up all hopes of executing the design which brought me
into these parts. I am fairly given to understand that the money will never be
paid’ (Works viii: 212). Expressing regret over what he perceived to be the
persistence of fear around Berkeley’s project, Percival wrote to his friend:
I do not wonder the disappointment you so long have met with in the settlement
of your College . . . should sensibly affect you; but the design seems too great and
good to be accomplished in an age when men love darkness better than the light,
and nothing is considered but with a political view. A very great Lord asked me
whether I thought the Indians would not be saved as well as we . . . and if I
considered that learning tended to make the Plantations independent of their
Mother Country . . . adding that the ignorance of the Indians, and the variety of
sects in our Plantations was England’s security. He was even sorry that we had an
University in Dublin. And yet [this] Lord is the ornament of the nobility for
learning and sobriety.
Rand 1914: 269
Percival shared with Berkeley the view that the Bermuda Proposal was
grounded in a beneficent concern for both the Native Americans and the
colonists and that it was undone by politicking, fear and free thinking.34 There
can be no doubt that Berkeley’s aims and intentions in the Bermuda Project were
noble. He meant to provide Native Americans with something he believed to be
of great value: entry into the Anglo-European intellectual life. Compared with
the other educational proposals of his day – Bray’s ‘Charity School’ for ‘savages’,
Coram’s Institute for abandoned children and even a ‘Female Library’ as Steele
had conceived of it – Berkeley’s Proposal displayed important principles of
equality. The aim of educating ‘savages’ was not to enable them to better satisfy
the needs of others, but to stand on equal footing with the English colonists in
creating an improved civil society. Furthermore, in rejecting the view that ‘riches
alone are sufficient to make a nation flourishing and happy’ (Works iii: 80),
Berkeley believed – contrary to many of his British contemporaries – that a
society was improved not merely through commercial development but through
intellectual and moral progress.
Still, Berkeley’s notion of equality was surely marred by one-sidedness. He was
and remained unaware of the rich and abundant cultural life of Native Americans
and therefore insisted that the means to the Natives’ and colonists’ intellectual
and moral improvement would come solely from European ideals. Furthermore,
he rejected the worry that education might bring with it independence for
colonists and ‘savages’ not by arguing that intellectual independence would, in
fact, be a good thing, but by assuming that the moral laws ‘instilled’ into his
students’ minds would necessarily create a well-functioning social order.
Had the Bermuda Project been funded, Berkeley would have had to face two
gravely serious matters: first, that the Natives were not blank slates awaiting
European enlightenment; second, that slavery, though not inconsistent with
Christian baptism, was inconsistent with human well-being. In Passive Obedience,
Berkeley wrote: ‘It is not . . . the private good of this or that man, nation, or age,
but the general well-being of all men, of all nations, of all ages of the world,
which . . . should be procured by the concurring actions of each individual’
(PO §7).
For the Bermuda Project to live up to this standard would have required not only
deep reflection on Berkeley’s part and substantially more time in the colonies, but
also a history of Native American, African, and English relations – prior to
Berkeley’s arrival in Newport – vastly different from what, in fact, it actually was.35
Notes
1 Berkeley explained his reason for travelling first to Rhode Island rather than directly
to Bermuda in a letter to Edmund Gibson just before setting sail for Newport:
‘Rhode Island . . . is a place abounding in provisions where I design to purchase a

piece of land . . . in order to supply our college with such necessaries as are not the
product of Bermuda, which will in good measure remove one principal objection to
the success of our design’ (Berman, D., 2005b, Berkeley and Irish Philosophy. London:
Continuum: 211–12). I am grateful to Bertil Belfrage for informing me of David
Berman’s discovery of this letter. Another reason Berkeley may have had for settling
first in Newport is suggested by the postscript to the Bermuda Proposal. It notes that
the terms of the patent required him to give up his Deanery in Derry one and a half
years after his arrival in Bermuda. Thus, Berkeley could wait in Newport for the
promised funding while making the necessary preparations for the College without
risking the loss of his Deanery before the plan came to fruition (Works vii: 360).
2 Harvard and Yale, however, had no affiliation with the Church of England. They were
dissenting institutions founded by Congregationalists. Given the slight Anglican
presence in the colonies, some commentators suggest that one of Berkeley’s aims was
to gain a stronger foothold for Anglicanism. See Gaustad, E. S. (1979), George
Berkeley in America. New Haven: Yale University Press: 6–9.
3 Gaustad (1979: 172) notes that Berkeley was an early critic of mercantilism.
4 There was also concern that Protestant Christianity keep up with (and surpass) the
Catholic conversions by the Spanish and the French. See Works vii: 354, and Stevens,
L. M. (2004), The Poor Indians: British Missionaries, Native Americans, and Colonial
Sensibility. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press: 5–6, 48.
5 For additional recent work on the utopian theme, see Bradatan, C. (2006), The Other
Bishop Berkeley: An Exercise in Reenchantment. New York: Fordham University Press:
chapter 6; Berman, D. (1994), George Berkeley: Idealism and the Man. Oxford:
Clarendon Press: chapter 5; and Breuninger, S. (2010b), ‘Planting an asylum for
religion: Berkeley’s Bermuda scheme and the transmission of virtue in the
eighteenth-century Atlantic world’, Journal of Religious History 34, 4, 414–29.
6 See Berman, D. (1977), ‘Mrs. Berkeley’s annotations in her interleaved copy of An
account of the life of George Berkeley (1776)’. Hermathena 22, 15–28.
7 See, for example, Luce, A. A. (1949/1992), The Life of George Berkeley Bishop of
Cloyne (reprint, intro. by David Berman). London: Thomas Nelson / London:
Routledge/Thoemmes; Berman 1994; Breuninger 2010b; Bradaton 2006; and for a
post-colonial perspective, Fabricant, C. (2003), ‘George Berkeley the islander: some
reflections on utopia, race, and tar-water’, in F. Nussbaum (ed), The Global Eighteenth
Century. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 263–78.
Gaustad 1979: 66–7 gives some attention to the educational aspects of the project.
8 From George Muir’s sermon to the Society in Scotland for the Propagation of
Christian Knowledge (SSPCK ).
9 The Ladies Library was a popular text for nearly sixty years. The eighth (and final)
edition was published in 1772. Berkeley’s connection to this work was discovered
relatively recently, in 1980. A contract between Richard Steele, who published the
work, and the printer makes clear that Berkeley was the compiler of the extracts (See
Parks, S. (1980), ‘George Berkeley, Sir Richard Steele and The Ladies Library’,
Scriblerian, 13, 1, 1–2: 2). For a detailed listing of the texts Berkeley included, see
Furlong, E. J. and Berman, D. (1980), ‘George Berkeley and The Ladies Library’,
Berkeley Newsletter 4, 4–13: 6–7; Hollingshead, G. (1989–90), ‘Sources for the
Ladies’ Library’, Berkeley Newsletter 11, 1–9: 1–2, and Aitken, G. A. (1968), The Life of
Richard Steele, Volume 2. New York: Haskell House (originally published 1889):
40–41.
10 Richard Steele reported in the Spectator that Jacob Tonson Junior, the bookseller/
printer ‘is of Opinion, that Bayle’s Dictionary might be of very great Use to the
Ladies, in order to make them general Scholars’. Tonson would print The Ladies
Library in 1714.
11 Steele also wrote a preface to the work. It is likely that he asked Berkeley to compile
the extracts in 1713, when Berkeley had gone to England for the first time and met
Steele and other literary Londoners. During this period Berkeley wrote, also at
Steele’s invitation, several essays for the Guardian.
12 Berkeley advanced a similar argument against those who feared baptizing slaves
would liberate them. I discuss this below.
13 Some of these include Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Living, Lord Halifax’s Advice to a
Daughter, and Richard Allestree’s The Ladies Calling. Steele notes in the Preface to
The Ladies Library the ‘frequent mention’ in the Spectator of a ‘Female Library’.
Among the books Berkeley donated to Yale upon his departure from Rhode Island
was an eight-volume collection of the Spectator. See The Yale University Library
Gazette 1933: 25.
14 Astell’s Serious Proposal to the Ladies was lampooned by Steele or Jonathan Swift in
several issues of the Tatler. See Bond, D. F. (1987), The Tatler, 3 Volumes. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, vol. 1: 238; Bond 1987, vol. 1: 438–40; and Bond 1987, vol. 3:
284–87.
15 Mary Astell, Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their True and
Greatest Interest (1694); A Serious Proposal, Part II (1697). See the modern edition:
Astell, M. (2002), A Serious Proposal to the Ladies. P. Springborg, ed. Peterborough:
Broadview Press. The Ladies Library includes selections from both Parts I and II .
Astell’s work was quite popular. It was also praised by several Anglican scholars,
including George Hickes, who recommended her work in his 1707 translation of
Fénelon’s Instructions for the Education of a Daughter, another text Berkeley included
in The Ladies Library. Hickes also gave at least one sermon advocating the creation
of women’s universities. See Perry, R. (1986), The Celebrated Mary Astell. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press: 119.
16 Hollingshead (1989–90: 6) attributes this passage to Berkeley.
17 The question whether Berkeley subscribed to a utilitarian moral theory is beyond

the scope of this chapter. If utilitarianism is the view that the morally good acts are
good because they tend to promote the greatest good for the greatest number, it is
clear that Berkeley is not a utilitarian. He thinks that the morally good acts are good
because they instantiate a moral law. For more on this topic, see Leary, D. (1977),
‘Berkeley’s social theory: context and development’, Journal of the History of Ideas 38,
635–49; Breuninger, S. (2008), ‘Rationality and revolution: rereading Berkeley’s
sermons on Passive Obedience’, New Hibernia Review 12, 2, 63–86; and Olscamp, P. J.
(1970b), The Moral Philosophy of George Berkeley. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
18 Berkeley likely felt a special duty as a clergyman to bring ‘divine and human
Learning’ to the Natives. In 1715, George Ashe, Bishop of Clogher, suggested in an
SPG sermon that ‘every one [ought] to put his hand some way to this good work’
and that the clergy could do so ‘by preaching, writing, and personal labors’ (Stevens
2004: 105). Berkeley served as tutor to Ashe’s son on a four-year tour of Italy
(1716–1720) (Luce 1949: 75–6).
19 Most Natives ‘declined to be referred to in treaties as “subjects” of the crown’ (Jacobs,
W. R. (1969), ‘British-colonial attitudes and policies toward the Indian in the
American colonies’, in H. Peckham and C. Gibson (eds), Attitudes of Colonial Powers
Toward the American Indian. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, pp. 81–106: 94).
20 See PO §§29–34; Breuninger 2008: 81; and Leary 1977: 269.
21 For more on the SPCK ’s charity schools, see Perry 1986: 233–42.
22 As the governing board noted, these children ‘should not be educated in such a
manner as may put them upon a level with the Children of Parents who have the
Humanity and Virtue to preserve them, and the Industry to Support them’ (McClure,
R. K. (1981), Coram’s Children: The London Foundling Hospital in the Eighteenth
Century. New Haven and London: Yale University Press: 47–8).
23 Berkeley and Updike were among the founding members of The Society for the
Promotion of Knowledge and Virtue by Free Conversation in 1730, which later
became the Redwood Library and Athenaeum (Lapan, M. T., (n.d.), ‘George
Berkeley: friends and experiences in the Narragansett country in Rhode Island’.
Unpublished manuscript in Whitehall Study Center, Middletown, Rhode Island: 5).
24 Berkeley at first perceived the diversity of Christian sects in Newport as ‘a strange
medley of different persuasions’ (Works viii: 192) but soon saw this sectarianism as
generating a problematic factionalism. See Skemp, S. (1978), ‘George Berkeley’s
Newport experience’, Rhode Island History 37, 2, 52–63: 59–61.
25 The colonists’ practice of cheating the Natives in land transactions and trade is well
documented. See Jacobs 1969: 92, and Salisbury, N. (1996), ‘Native people and
European settlers in Eastern North America, 1600–1783’, in B. G. Trigger and
W. E. Washburn (eds), The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas,
Volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 399–460: 420.
26 Wyss claims ‘the most significant single shift in cultural practice for the [Natives]
was the adoption of a written language’ (Wyss, H. E. (2000), Writing Indians: Literacy,
Christianity, and Native Community in Early America. Amherst and Boston:
University of Massachusetts Press: 8).
27 Mayhew’s Indian Converts was published by the SPG in 1727, two years before
Berkeley left for Newport.
28 King Philip’s War (1675–6) alone resulted in the death of approximately 5,000 New
England Algonquians; 2,500 English also lost their lives (Wyss 2000: 30). The war
also resulted in the sale of Natives into slavery, including hundreds of women and
children (Johansen, B. E. (2002), The Native Peoples of North America: A History.
Westport and London: Praeger: 133). The enslavement of Natives continued well into
the eighteenth century: ‘Throughout the colonial period [New England] held more
Indians in slavery than any of the other colonies except South Carolina’ (Forbes, J. D.
(1964), The Indian in America’s Past. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall: 89).
29 It is unclear whether Berkeley was aware that Natives had also been enslaved. He
mentions only ‘Negroes’.
30 The second and third editions are nearly identical. The latter appeared in the
Miscellany of 1752. See Works vii: 338.
31 Berman (1994: 130–33) also has this reading of Berkeley.
32 Despite the fact that Locke’s theory supported an anti-slavery position, he upheld its
practice in the colonies. For a helpful discussion of this point, see Grant, R. W.
(1987), John Locke’s Liberalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 67–9.
33 Mary Astell also defended passive obedience in The Christian Religion, As Profess’d by
a Daughter of the Church of England (1705, 1717) by arguing against Locke’s view of
self-preservation. She writes: ‘What then is self-preservation, that fundamental law of
nature, as some call it . . .? [I]t does not consist in the preservation of the person or
composite [mind and body], but in preserving the mind from evil, the mind which is
truly the self. . . . It is this self-preservation and no other, that is a fundamental sacred
and unalterable law’ (Goldie, M. (2007), ‘Mary Astell and John Locke’, in W. Kolbrener
and M. Michelson (eds), Mary Astell: Reason, Gender, Faith. Surrey and Burlington:
Ashgate, pp. 65–85: 80).
34 Berkeley wrote to Percival: ‘what they foolishly call free thinking seems to me the
principal root or source not only of opposition to our College but of most other evils
in this age’ (Works viii: 212).
35 I am grateful to the Hay Library of Brown University for access to the 1714 edition
of The Ladies Library, to Trinity College Dublin for access to Anne Forster Berkeley’s
interleaved commentary in Stock’s Account of the Life of George Berkeley, to the
Redwood Library and Athenaeum, Newport for access to early Rhode Island
historical texts, and to Whitehall Museum House, Berkeley’s home in Rhode Island
for access to its study centre. I benefited from audience comments and questions at
the following conferences at which I presented this chapter or parts of it: the New
England Colloquium in Early Modern Philosophy (Harvard University), the
International Berkeley Conference (Université de Sherbrooke, Longueuil) and the
Irish Philosophical Society (National University of Ireland – Maynooth). A
discussion of the penultimate draft of this chapter with Bertil Belfrage helped me
clarify several points. I owe a debt of gratitude to my colleagues Lisa Lebduska, Dana
Polanichka and Tanya Rodrigue for their helpful comments on several drafts of this
chapter, and to Jaime Jarvis for stylistic and editing advice. Susan Dearing and Hyun
Kim assisted me, as usual, in all the best ways.
3
Berkeley’s Correspondence
Marc A. Hight
In-depth knowledge of an early modern luminary – perhaps especially

philosophers – requires familiarity with their correspondence as well as their
published works. Letter writing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was
often considered almost a form of art, and many letters were written with the
intention that they someday be published or made available to intellectual circles.
This truism applies to Berkeley as well. Although much of his correspondence
has not survived and we do not have as rich a philosophical and personal set of
correspondences as we have, for instance, with Descartes, Locke or Leibniz, what
remains is considerable and worthy of study nonetheless. In this chapter my
intent is purely descriptive: to give the reader an overview of the nature, extent
and rough content of Berkeley’s correspondence. I make no arguments or
judgments of a philosophical nature about the letters or their content, leaving
that for other venues.
The correspondence of a philosopher is particularly important as it promises
to provide a context for the philosophy that interests us and deepen our historical
understanding as well. Who did Berkeley have in mind when writing a particular
argument? What is going on in his life that might impact his work? How might
his letters reveal or confirm some insight into his era? Sometimes these questions
are not answerable, but occasionally the correspondence can provide clues to
larger philosophical questions about his system. This chapter is an attempt to
provide a guide for scholars and the otherwise interested reader to Berkeley’s
correspondence. I divide my task in this descriptive overview as follows. I first
list and provide an overview of the sources of Berkeley’s correspondence,
including collections of his letters and the provenance (as best is known). I then
turn to discuss his correspondents and the general content of those exchanges,
including a discussion of what letters are now lost to us.
49
Berkeley’s correspondence
Until recently1 there has been no successful attempt to provide a complete

collection of Berkeley’s extant and known correspondence. A. C. Fraser published
many letters in his Life and Letters, but he excluded most of the correspondence
written to Berkeley. Benjamin Rand presented most of the correspondence
between Berkeley and John Percival in his now aging work Berkeley and Percival
(published in 1914), but he missed a number of letters in the archives and was
unaware of several others that have since come to light. A. A. Luce hoped to
compile a complete edition of Berkeley’s letters (see Life, vi), but he too made the
decision to not publish the vast majority of the letters addressed to Berkeley.
Luce’s collection of correspondence in The Works of George Berkeley (volume
VIII ) is also increasingly incomplete with the discovery of several additional
letters since its publication in the mid-twentieth century.
In 2012 I published The Correspondence of George Berkeley (Cambridge
University Press). The volume includes letters both authored by and addressed to
Berkeley, but it is necessarily defective on at least two accounts. First, there is
reason to believe that some extant letters were not included (especially a few
likely held by private collectors to which I could not get access) and second, we
have evidence of many letters that have since presumably been lost or destroyed.
As of this writing, it is the most complete collection of Berkeley’s known
and extant correspondence. That said, a single known piece was inadvertently
omitted from the collection, a letter from Berkeley to Thomas McDonnell dated
7 May 1752. The letter, fortunately, has already been published with some
commentary by David Berman in Berkeley and Irish Philosophy (Continuum,
2005), p. 223. The letter is brief and I refer readers to Berman’s monograph for
details. I reproduce the letter here in conformance to the organization of the
volume for the sake of completeness.
388b Berkeley to McDonnell
MS unknown. Thomas McDonnell, A Short Vindication of the passages in the

Essay towards an answer . . . (Dublin 1754)
7 May 1752
**Sir,
The Weakness and Presumption of the Book stiled an Essay on Spirit, render it
undeserving of any serious Answer. I find there are some anonymous persons
who have treated it in a ludicrous Manner. But if you are minded to confute it
Berkeley’s Correspondence 51
seriously, I make no Doubt of your being singly an Over-match for such an

Adversary. I shall therefore leave him to yourself, and wishing you good success
remain,
Sir,
Your Faithful,
Humble Servant,
G. Cloyne
Cloyne, May 7, 1752
** The Original lies in the bookseller’s hands for the satisfaction of those who
may desire to see it.
Description of main manuscript repositories

Bodleian Library, Rhodes House, Oxford University
The archives of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts
(SPG ), now the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign
Parts, are held at the Rhodes House in Oxford. Catalogues of SPG correspondence,
letterbook copies of official correspondence, and some original autographed
letters are available, although one letter has unfortunately gone missing when the
materials were rebound. SPG catalogue, C/AM 9, A24. Ser. B vol. 15 (letter 191
missing), 191a, 249.
British Library, London

The Berkeley Manuscripts are bound volumes containing notes, reflections
and other materials by Berkeley and others in his family. BL Add. Ms 39304,
39305, 39306, and 39311 include a number of letters and drafts of letters, many
in Berkeley’s hand. Also present are the Egmont Papers. These records were
formerly housed at the Public Records Office in London but have since been
moved to the British Library. They include John Percival’s records and letterbooks
that contain copies (typically in a secretary’s hand) of much of his correspondence
with Berkeley along with some correspondence between Percival’s son (also
named John) and Berkeley. The volumes in the Egmont Collection (BL Add. Ms
46964–47213) with letters to or from Berkeley include BL Add. Mss 46986,
46997, 46998, 47000, 47012B, 47013B, 47014A, 47025, 47026, 47027, 47028,
47029, 47030, 47031, 47032 and 47033. Berkeley’s letter to Sloane comes from the
Sloane Manuscripts (BL Sloane Ms 4040) and two other volumes contain letters
as well: BL Add. Ms 32710 and 46688.
Beinecke Library, Yale University

MS Vault File Berkeley and the Johnson Family Papers (Ms 305) both have loose
autographed letters of Berkeley along with other miscellaneous Berkeleiana.
Two additional letters are present in the Osborn Files ‘B’ folders 1118 and
1184.
Butler Library, Columbia University

The Johnson Papers are held here, which contain a number of letters and
copies of letters between the American Samuel Johnson and Berkeley. The
collection includes three bound volumes and a box of loose materials. The library
also has two autograph collections with one Berkeley letter each, the Edwin
Seligman Special Collection and the David Eugene Smith Special Collection.
Cambridge University Library, Cambridge, UK

The letterbooks of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK ) are
now housed at Cambridge University Library. Copies of letters to and from
Berkeley (Henry Newman is the principal correspondent) are present in
bound volumes: Ms D4/23, Ms D4/24, Ms D4/28, MS D4/29, Ms D4/41, and
Ms D4/42.
Chatsworth, Derbyshire
The Devonshire Collection Ref. 364.0 contains a single autographed letter to
Dorothy Boyle.
Christchurch College Library, Oxford

The library holds most of the correspondence of Archbishop William Wake,
including one autographed letter written by Berkeley.
Harvard University Library, Cambridge, MA

In the Orrery Papers one bound volume has a copy of a letter to John Boyle.
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Several autographed letter collections here contain Berkeley correspondence,
specifically the Ferdinand Dreer Collection in the English and American Clergy
Series, and the Simon Gratz Collection in the British Authors Series.
Lambeth Palace Library, London

The Fulham Papers at Lambeth hold a single letter from Berkeley to then Bishop
of London Edmund Gibson (see Letter 210) and a second autographed letter in
their manuscript collection to Henry Clarke.
National Library of Ireland, Dublin

Only a few letters are held at the National Library. Ms 2979 contains a single
letter to Isaac Gervais and Ms 987 is a bound volume with a letter from Dorothea
Annesley and a reply from then Bishop Berkeley. Microfilm copies of letters held
elsewhere are usefully present as well (Microfilm 2510 and 2761).
Redwood Library, Newport, RI

The Roderick Terry Jr. Autograph Collection contains a single autographed letter
by Berkeley to Isaac Gervais.
Representative Church Body of the Church of Ireland Library, Dublin

D6/150/6: a single autographed letter by Berkeley to Archbishop Hoadly.
Rhode Island Historical Society Library, Providence, RI

Ms 294 in the Gabriel Bernon papers is a ‘scrapbook’ with two letters in French
from Berkeley to Bernon.
Southampton Civic Centre, Southampton, United Kingdom

D/M1/2 contains a letterbook of Samuel Molyneux with copies of four letters
from Berkeley. The letterbook also holds copies of other letters received by
Molyneux.
Trinity College Library, Dublin

In addition to other Berkeleiana, including multiple drafts of his letter about the
cave of Dunmore, several original letters are preserved in bound volumes: TCD
Ms 1186, 2167, and 4309.
University of Amsterdam Library, Amsterdam

J3b: Two original letters, loose but well preserved, from Berkeley to Jean LeClerc.
Description of non-manuscript sources

As many of the original letters are lost, often our best sources for the letters are
copies preserved in other ways, frequently as copies in previously published
works. The following is a list of the known non-original manuscript sources
(organized by title).
Authentic Narrative, by Thomas Prior (London: 1746)
Berkeley Studies (formerly Berkeley Newsletter)

One letter that was auctioned in 1979 and now in (unknown) private hands was
transcribed and published by David Berman in the Berkeley Newsletter
immediately before its sale. Although the addressee is not certain, the letter is
most likely to Edmund Gibson.
Correspondence of Sir Thomas Hanmer, Bart. by Sir Henry Bunbury

(London: Edward Moxon, 1838)
One letter to Hanmer from Berkeley appears in the text. The location of the
original is unknown.
L’Adamo, ovvero il Mondo Creato, by Tommaso Campailla (Rome:

Rossi, 1728)
In the preface Campailla reproduces two letters sent to him by Berkeley.
Life and Correspondence of Samuel Johnson by E. Edwards Beardsley

(New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1874)
Beardsley reproduces a number of letters to and from Johnson for which we
have originals and generally does so accurately. At least one of the originals,
however, has been lost and this volume is now our only source.
Life and Letters of George Berkeley, D.D., by A.C. Fraser (Oxford:

Clarendon, 1871)
Some of the letters Fraser published in this volume are no longer extant, making
his book the best source that remains to us (especially several exchanges with
Johnson). Fraser’s transcriptions are the only records that remain for five letters
(four to Samuel Johnson and one to Evans). The work is also valuable for
checking the accuracy of letters lost but published elsewhere.
The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley by L. Tyerman (London:
Hodder & Stoughton, 1880), 5th edition
Tyerman reproduces extracts of letters from then Bishop Berkeley to Lloyd, one
of his parish priests, concerning the preaching of John Wesley in Berkeley’s
bishopric.
Literary Relics: Containing Original Letters . . . by George Monck

Berkeley (London: T. Kay, 1789, reprinted in a corrected second
edition 1792)
Many of the letters to Thomas Prior are originally preserved only in this volume.
In the preface the younger Berkeley (the grandson) says he received the Berkeley
letters from Mr Archdale, but there is no hint as to where the originals might be
located at the present, if they survive.
Memoirs of George Berkeley: Late Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland by Joseph

Stock (London: J. Murray, 1784) and Stock’s preface to the Works of
George Berkeley (London, 1784)
Both works contain extracts of letters penned by Berkeley, most of which
fortunately overlap with other published collections (such as George Monck
Berkeley’s Literary Relics and Fraser’s Life and Letters of George Berkeley, D.D.).
Poems by the late George Monck Berkeley (London: J. Nichols, 1797)

The preface to this work, a prodigious bit written by Eliza Berkeley, reproduces
one letter to Martin Benson.
Siris: Gründliche Historische Nachricht vom Theer-Wasser by

D. W. Linden (Amsterdam and Leipzig, Peter Mortier, 1745)
In the preface to the work Linden reproduces his letter to Berkeley.
Siris. Recherches sur les Vertus de l’eau de Goudron, ou l’on a Joint des
Réfléxions Philosophiques sur Divers Autres Sujets (Amsterdam: Pierre
Mortier, 1745)
A French translation of Berkeley’s Siris, it contains the earliest appearance I
could find of Berkeley’s response to D. W. Linden’s letter in an appendix.
Lastly, I refer readers to the following period journals in which letters penned by
Berkeley have appeared: Daily Gazetteer, Dublin Journal, Gentleman’s Magazine,
Guardian, Newcastle Journal and Philosophical Transactions.
Berkeley’s correspondents
Berkeley maintained correspondences with a variety of people and the content

ranges from strictly professional to deeply personal. I here first provide an
overview of the major exchanges and some of the themes present in those letters,
arranged roughly in chronological order. Readers are advised to consult the
complete correspondence.
John Percival (1683–1748), later Earl of Egmont (1733),

and his son (also named John, 1711–70)
Lifelong friend and confidant, Berkeley exchanged letters with John Percival for
most of his adult life. Many of the earliest letters were written on Berkeley’s
continental tours and discuss a wide range of topics from current affairs to
advice on reading and selecting a suitable mate. Most of Berkeley’s significant life
events are recorded in this correspondence, including references to his own
marriage to Anne Forster and his efforts at establishing St. Paul’s College in
Bermuda. Of philosophical and historical note, Berkeley used Percival as a
means to disseminate his early metaphysical works, especially the Principles
of Human Knowledge. Berkeley’s frustration with the dismissive attitudes of the
intelligentsia and educated audience of the day are well recorded in these
exchanges. Percival kindly sought to get Berkeley’s book read in influential
circles, only to find failure and ridicule, often issuing from individuals who did
not actually read or engage Berkeley’s work.
While in Rhode Island awaiting funding for his Bermuda project, Berkeley
also sought the aid of Percival with certain business affairs. A few of these letters
survive, detailing directives and counter-directives for the sale or purchase of
stocks. Berkeley inherited South Sea Company stocks (after the infamous bubble
had already burst) and had Percival both sell and then re-purchase shares whilst
he was in Rhode Island. Later, after having returned to Ireland as bishop, Berkeley
lent Percival 3,000 Irish pounds. Percival repaid the debt with interest, and those
details are available to us in the letters as well.
The letters also have a personal side, as they reveal that Berkeley was quite
close not only to Percival but many of his friends and extended family as well.
Berkeley consistently asks after Catherine, Percival’s wife, their children, and a
variety of mutual friends. In one letter Berkeley even scolds Percival for not
being a quality parent. Despite the reproof, they were clearly fast friends. Both
Percival and his wife intervened on Berkeley’s behalf at court and with several of
the Lord Lieutenants of Ireland (most notably the Duke of Grafton), speeding
his preferment in the Church. The evidence also suggests that Berkeley had a
close relationship with Percival’s eldest son John, and some letters between
Berkeley and the son from after the death of Percival survive.
Thomas Prior (1681–1751)

Thomas Prior was Berkeley’s lifelong friend; they met at school in Kilkenny
when Berkeley was only eleven or twelve years of age. He served as Berkeley’s
agent in Ireland for a variety of matters and his letters to Prior are our primary
source of information about Berkeley’s administration of Hester Van Homrigh’s
estate. Unfortunately, no letters from Prior to Berkeley have survived. Although
there are some personal touches in the letters to Prior, especially those letters
sent from the continent when Berkeley was touring Italy, they mostly concern
business affairs. They do provide, however, insight into the times and Berkeley’s
thinking. Berkeley charges Prior, for instance, with the task of finding out the
ratio of papists to protestants in Ireland.
Prior had his own lively intellectual life. He was a passionate advocate for the
Irish people and its economy. In 1729 he published his List of the Absentees of
Ireland, which contained details of estates and incomes from rents. He claimed
that upwards of £600,000 went overseas in remitted rents (the figure is now
disputed), an implicit indictment against said absentees. Berkeley was listed in
one edition (he was in Rhode Island while holding the deanery of Derry), a fact
that did not diminish their friendship. In 1731 Prior and twelve others established
the Dublin Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Manufactures, Arts and
Sciences. In 1749 it received a grant of £500 per annum from parliament and
subsequently became the Royal Dublin Society. Prior was also an ardent advocate
of tar water, publishing the flattering Authentic Narrative of the Success of Tar-
Water in Curing a Great Number and Variety of Distempers in 1746.
Samuel Johnson (1696–1772)

When Berkeley travelled to Rhode Island as a part of his scheme to found a
college on the island of Bermuda, he met Samuel Johnson, an American divine
who converted to Anglicanism. Johnson was also interested in philosophy and
education (and would later become the first president of King’s College, modern
day Columbia University). Their common interests and distance from one
another (Johnson resided in Connecticut) yielded a lively philosophical exchange.
In a series of letters Johnson asks Berkeley a variety of questions about his

immaterialist metaphysic and it upshots. Johnson would go on to be a ‘convert’ to
Berkeley’s system, later publishing his own works explaining and espousing
immaterialism.
After Berkeley’s return to Europe they continued to correspond. Johnson
helped arrange Berkeley’s donation of books and land to Yale as well as the
founding of scholarships there. Johnson periodically sent reports to Berkeley
about the status of learning in New England and specifically at the ‘College in
New Haven’ (i.e. Yale). He even sought practical advice from Berkeley about how
to organize and set up King’s College.
Henry Newman (1670–1743)

Not well known as a correspondent of Berkeley’s, Henry Newman was an
administrator for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. In that role
he corresponded regularly with Berkeley during his time in Rhode Island and
afterwards they maintained some connection based on their mutual interests in
promoting Christianity in the colonies. Some fourteen letters are known to still
exist and mostly concern the affairs of the society and arrangements for
donations Berkeley made to various institutions in the colonies.
Martin Benson (1689–1752)

A clerical colleague of Berkeley’s, Benson initially met Berkeley in Italy when
both were on continental tours. This meeting started a lifelong friendship that is
reflected in their letters. In addition to their personal affinity, both men held
similar views on a variety of subjects, ranging from high Tory politics to their
mutual disapproval of the licentiousness of the times. Benson supported the
Bermuda project and even acted as Berkeley’s lieutenant in England after Robert
Clayton relinquished the role upon being made a bishop. The letters reveal a
comfortable friendship and discuss mostly political and clerical issues.
Isaac Gervais (1680–1756)

Born in Montpelier, France, Gervais was brought to Ireland as a child after the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He entered the Anglican Church in Ireland,
ultimately being named the dean of Tuam in 1744. Many letters survive between
the two, and almost all of them are intimate, personal letters that reveal a close
friendship between the two that started sometime after Berkeley was appointed
bishop of Cloyne. The letters are typically short and concern matters that range
from music to politics; most of them involve Berkeley urging Gervais to visit
him repeatedly in Cloyne. Gervais was also an advocate of tar water. A testimony
of his is included in Thomas Prior’s Authentic Narrative.
Minor correspondences and letters lost
In addition to the above mentioned letters, several other correspondences are

worthy of mention. I label these ‘minor’ only because there are relatively few
letters extant (often only one or two, or excerpts from the same). We know that
Berkeley wrote Hans Sloane (1660–1753) of the Royal Society a learned letter (in
Latin) about topics in natural philosophy. While a young man still at Trinity
College, Dublin, Berkeley exchanged letters with Samuel Molyneux (1689–1728),
son of the famed William Molyneux, discussing mundane matters from the
college, but also some philosophy related to his recently published Essay Toward
a New Theory of Vision. In 1711 Berkeley penned two letters to Jean LeClerc,
trying to correct errors reported in the Bibliothèque Choisie about his New
Theory of Vision and then also to gain a wider audience for his Principles of
Human Knowledge.
Although his association with English literary luminaries such as Richard
Steele (1672–1729), Joseph Addison (1672–1719), John Arbuthnot (1667–1735)
and Alexander Pope (1688–1744) is well known, we have virtually nothing
remaining to us in the form of letters between them. A few letters (mostly
excerpts) between Pope and Berkeley remain. It is likely that Berkeley would
have had occasion to exchange notes with them, and one letter to Arbuthnot
survives, but no others do. Another notable absence in the correspondence
is Jonathan Swift. Berkeley became acquainted in London with Swift, who
then formed a favourable impression of the young philosopher. It is possible
that much of the correspondence between them was purposefully destroyed
after the Van Homrigh affair (she was Swift’s poetical Vanessa, and as her
letters to Swift were ‘warm’ and amorous it is not unreasonable to suppose that
Swift asked Berkeley to destroy any mention of them in their own exchanges),
where Berkeley was surprisingly named as one of the executors of the young
woman’s estate after her death in 1723. Luce reports the existence of letters
to and from Swift as late as 1910, but by 1946 no trace could be found of any
of them.2
Two letters to Tommaso Campailla remain, published by Campailla in the

preface to his L’Adamo, ovvero il Mondo Creato (1728). Berkeley met the scholar
during his travels in Italy and promised to introduce the Italian’s work to the
scientific circles in England. It is possible that other letters of a similar nature
might have existed, but it is not likely given Berkeley’s generally negative opinion
of the state of learning in Italy at the time.
By the mid-1720s Berkeley’s attention turned fully towards his plan to
establish a college in the Bermuda Islands. His letters to Prior and Percival are
replete with references to the project and its progress. There were, no doubt,
many letters penned by Berkeley to a variety of individuals concerning the
projected St. Paul’s College, but few remain. One letter in 1725 to William Wake
(1657–1737) remains, notifying the archbishop of the status of his plan to use
funds from the sale of crown lands in the St. Christopher Islands for the Bermuda
project. Another letter, to Brian Fairfax (1676–1749), discusses the details for
shipping books to the American colonies via London. One additional letter, most
likely to Edmund Gibson (the addressee is not certain), provides an update as
Berkeley is leaving for Rhode Island. At this point his correspondences with
Newman, Prior and Percival are filled with the business of the Bermuda project.
In America Berkeley was perceived by some as a local authority, since at the
time he was still technically Dean of Derry. Gabriel Bernon (1644–1736) wrote
to Berkeley in Rhode Island, appealing for help with problems in the local
church. Since there were no bishoprics in the colonies and travel to England was
long and dangerous, any Anglican figure in the colonies was likely to attract the
attention of the few Church of England members there. One of those was, of
course, Samuel Johnson, whose correspondence is mentioned above. A copy of a
letter from Berkeley to David Humphreys (1690–1740), secretary of the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel, survives concerning matters of the society
and the local Anglican clergymen.
When it became clear that the Bermuda project was doomed to fail, Berkeley
arranged to donate his considerable library (arguably one of the largest libraries in
New England at the time), his land and additional resources to local causes in the
colonies. Letters remain between Berkeley and Elisha Williams (1694–1755), the
rector (later president) of Yale, Benjamin Wadsworth (1670–1737), the president
of Harvard, and later Thomas Clap (1703–67), another president of Yale.
Berkeley made many friends during his time in America, but few letters
remain. One letter to John Smibert (1688–1751) remains that suggests many
others were written. Of the friends he made en route to America, namely John
James (?–1741) and Richard Dalton (c. 1695–1769), again little remains. One
letter to Dalton has survived, congratulating him on his third marriage. Two
letters to James are known to us, both because they were published. One is a
short letter penned in 1736 and the other a long public letter to James. The latter
was written on the occasion of James announcing his intention to convert
to Catholicism. Berkeley published the letter in 1741. These letters and others
suggest that Berkeley kept up a lively personal correspondence with a number
of people.
In thinking about his personal letters, however, there is one glaring lacuna: his
family. Not a single letter to or from a relative remains. In the case of his wife and
children this is not surprising since they were rarely apart. But Berkeley makes
mention often of his brother Robert (‘Robin’) in other letters, his other siblings
being mentioned less often. No word of a correspondence with his parents or
other relations is made. He makes one disparaging comment about his brother
Thomas, who was condemned for bigamy in 1726, but otherwise the corpus that
remains to us is bereft of letters to or from family members.
In 1734 Berkeley was made bishop of Cloyne, a relatively poor diocese in
southern Ireland. Here again we find a very few letters that nonetheless suggest
much more voluminous exchanges. Berkeley apparently regularly corresponded
with fellow divines who were friends, as evidenced by letters to Thomas Secker
(1693–1768), Martin Benson (1689–1752) and his wife’s uncle Nicholas Forster
(1672–1743). These letters primarily discuss the political and ecclesiastical
events of the day. He maintained official correspondences as well, including with
his superior archbishop John Hoadly (1678–1746) and officials at Trinity College,
Dublin, but few are extant. In his role as bishop he also corresponded with his
own clergy, and copies of letters to one of his parish priests survive, reproving
him for contributing to riots after allowing John Wesley to preach in his church.
Yet he was also apparently a shepherd to his flock. In a letter to Berkeley near the
end of his life, Dorothea (née Annesley) Dubois (1728–74) asks for personal
advice concerning her marriage. In his reply (both originals have survived)
Berkeley provides supportive but cautious advice.
By the 1740s, however, one finds most of Berkeley’s letter writing consumed
by his advocacy of tar water. Tar water is a mixture of pine tar and water that has
a constipating effect. As such it was used to treat a variety of ailments associated
with diarrhoea, although it quickly became endorsed as a general panacea. After
publicly endorsing tar water as a medicine Berkeley became nothing short of a
minor celebrity. The evidence suggests that many people wrote to him asking for
medical and related advice. We know that he corresponded with nobility (letters
to Pellham-Holles [1693–1768], the Duke of Newcastle and later prime minister,
and Sir Thomas Hanmer [1677–1746] have survived) as well as with others from
all walks of life across Great Britain. Letters to Berkeley were published by
Thomas Prior in his Authentic Narrative and in newspapers (including, most
notably, a series of letters from ‘Ward’ published in the Newcastle Journal). His
fame extended to the continent as well. His unusual work Siris, which among
other things discusses and advocates the use of tar water, was translated into
French and German. He answered questions about the substance in letters to
D. W. Linden (?–1768), a German doctor renowned for his study of medicinal
(i.e. spa) waters.
I have neglected to mention in this descriptive narrative a few scattered
letters, but I wish to draw some attention to the letters published by Berkeley. He
published a number of letters under pseudonyms, for instance in the Guardian,
and did so on and off throughout his life. As these letters were published and
are already generally known to scholars (not accounting for disputes about
authorship for some of them), I have not discussed them here.
Notes
1 The Correspondence of George Berkeley, edited by Marc A. Hight. Cambridge

University Press, 2012.
2 See A. A. Luce, ‘A New Berkeley Letter and the Endorsement,’ Proceedings of the Royal
Irish Academy vol. 51, sec. C (1945–46): 85.
4
Berkeley and Twentieth-Century

Realist–Anti-Realist Controversies
Howard Robinson
Section I: Background and plan
Idealism was probably the dominant school in British philosophy from the 1860s
until the 1920s, but this was a Hegelian idealism and that makes its relation to
Berkeley very ambiguous. Berkeley was an empiricist and hence an experiential
atomist, whereas the Hegelians were rationalists and holists. Mander says of these
idealists ‘we find a vital point of unity; a common affiliation – not to Berkeley but
to Plato, Kant, Hegel’ (2011, 5). Nevertheless, in A. C. Ewing’s words, ‘repudiate
him as the later idealists may, they still use his arguments that to conceive
anything is to bring it into relation to mind, that physical things are inseparable
from experience, that objects are relative to a subject; and on such arguments the
whole character of their philosophy depends’ (1934, 384). It would be fair to say
that they take for granted Berkeley’s major arguments against the possibility of a
mind-independent world – especially the argument that one cannot conceive the
unthought-of – then move on in an entirely different direction.
Berkeley, of course, gets more explicit credit from twentieth-century
empiricists, but not for his idealism, rather for paving the way, via Hume, for
modern phenomenalism and verificationism. An example of this recognition is
Karl Popper’s (1953) essay ‘A Note on Berkeley as precursor of Mach and Einstein’.
Although Hume was, overall, more in tune with twentieth-century empiricism
than was Berkeley, it is not irrelevant that Berkeley’s involvement with the worlds
of mathematics and science was greater than Hume’s. There is nothing in Hume
like the Theory of Vision, the De Motu or the Analyst.
Despite the fact that it is Berkeley’s influence on modern empiricism that is
most noted amongst analytical philosophers, the more rationalist strains that
influenced the British Hegelians also have echoes in contemporary analytic
63
controversies. I hope to bring out this intertwining of what might be called

empiricist and rationalist themes derived from Berkeley in the sections that
follow.
In sections II to VII shall discuss Berkelian themes under the headings of five
claims, starting with the ‘full strength’ claim made by Berkeley, followed by four
more that have some serious affinity with his idealism, or the arguments for it,
but fall in various ways short of it or differ significantly in strategy. In section VII
I will discuss two contemporary philosophers who are very close to Berkeley’s
position (one of them with some embarrassment, the other with enthusiasm),
namely Michael Dummett and John Foster. Finally I shall try to assess the
current state of the realism–anti-realism debate in the light of these Berkelian
influences.
The five claims are the following.
(1) We cannot conceive of the world except as being in, or dependent on, our
minds or experience.
(2) We cannot conceive of the world except under thought-forms or concepts
which are particular to humans: there is no sense to conceiving of it ‘as it is
in itself ’.
(3) We cannot conceive of the world independently of qualitative concepts
that are essentially experiential.
These themes are fairly strongly idealist or phenomenalist. (1) is Berkeley’s

own position and is not much, if at all, copied in twentieth-century philosophy
after the Hegelians, but is a starting point for (2), which is found in contemporary
analytical work. (2) is Kantian conceptualist and, as we shall see, is a common
contemporary theme. (3) lies at the heart of phenomenalism in the empiricist
tradition. There are two other contemporary lines of thought that explicitly
acknowledge a debt to Berkeley but which deny that they are idealist.
(4) We can only perceive, and therefore, only imagine, the world as it is from
a subjective, first personal perspective.
This falls short of idealism because it denies the dependence of what we
can conceive upon what we can perceive and imagine.
(5) We cannot form a conception of the world except as we perceive it
directly.
This is the view of the relationists’ version of naive realism. It claims to
share with Berkeley the idea that we can make no sense of a world beyond
a ‘veil of perception’, as required by representational theories, so what we
20th-Century Realist–Anti-Realist Controversies 65
are in direct contact with must count as the real world. But they are naive
realists, not idealists.
Section II: Berkeley’s ‘master argument’
This I take to be the argument for (1), above.
(1) We cannot conceive of the world except as being in, or

dependent on, our minds or experience
In a famous passage Berkeley argued as follows.
But say you, surely there is nothing easier than to imagine trees, for instance, in
a park, or books existing in a closet, and nobody to perceive them. I answer, you
may so, there is no difficulty in it: but what is all this, I beseech you, more than
framing in your mind certain ideas which you call books and trees, and at the
same time omitting to frame the idea of anyone that may perceive them? But do
you not yourself perceive or think of them all the while? This, therefore is
nothing to the purpose: it only shows you have the power of imagining or
forming ideas in your mind; but it doth not shew that you can conceive it
possible, the objects of your thought may exist without the mind: to make this
out, it is necessary that you conceive them existing unconceived or unthought of,
which is a manifest repugnancy.
Principles, #23
Much ink has been spilled on interpreting this passage, but the interpretation
in which I am interested at the moment is very straightforward – initially, at
least. It can be interpreted as making a straightforward howler, arguing that
because whenever you think of something it is being thought of and anything
being thought of is, ipso facto, ‘in the mind’ then you cannot think of something
that is not in the mind. According to Russell, this was a keystone for idealism and
it involves a simple mistake.
Berkeley’s view . . . seems to depend for its plausibility upon confusing the thing
apprehended with the act of apprehension. Either of these might be called
an ‘idea’; probably either would have been called an idea by Berkeley. The act is
undoubtedly in the mind; hence, when we are thinking of the act, we readily
assent to the view that ideas must be in the mind. Then, forgetting that this
was only true when ideas were taken as acts of apprehension, we transfer the
proposition that ‘ideas are in the mind’ to ideas in the other sense, i.e. to the things
apprehended by our acts of apprehension. Thus, by an unconscious equivocation,
we arrive at the conclusion that whatever we apprehend must be in our minds.
1912/1967, 22
Russell’s criticism is in line with Moore’s famous ‘The Refutation of Idealism’

(1903), where he argues that if one recognizes the act–object distinction within
conscious states, one can see that the object is independent of the act. This
‘discovery’, together with the development of a formal logic for relations, was the
cornerstone of the rejection of ‘British idealism’. If objects can be conceived of as
independent of conscious thought, and if it is consistent to think of them as in
actually related to each other, the mentalistic holism that was contemporary
idealism is demolished.
Contemporary philosophers have not tried to revive the argument of
Principles #23.
Berkeley’s argument is more complex than either Moore or Russell allow, but
no less disastrous. Berkeley’s imagistic theory of thought and attack on abstract
ideas leaves him without a plausible account of how thoughts represent things
beyond themselves – that is, without an adequate account of intentionality. (He
tries to use resemblance as the basis for this, but it will not serve his purpose. See
Robinson, 1996.) This approach to thought is disastrous because one cannot
form an image instantiating many essential features of our conceptual scheme,
for example, instantiating the property of being yesterday, or being someone
other than oneself.
The situation is a delicate one. On the one hand, Berkeley’s claim that we can
conceive only what we can image is disastrously wrong. On the other hand,
idealism is not refuted, as Moore thought, simply by pointing out the act–object
distinction in experience: pains are objects of awareness, but they cannot exist
unperceived. It was the attempt to explain this latter fact that led Ducasse (1942)
to develop the adverbial account of experience in response to Moore. Most of
what follows in this chapter can be seen as attempts to tease out from Berkeley’s
bulldozer of an argument various possible insights and intuitions.
Section III: The Kantian-conceptualist route to idealism
There is, however, a weaker claim, somewhat like (1), in that it shares with
Berkeley’s imagism the idea that we cannot break out of our own subjectively
constituted modes of thought. This is (2).
(2) We cannot conceive of the world except under thought-forms

or concepts which are particular to humans: there is no sense to
conceiving of it ‘as it is in itself ’
This is not so straightforwardly disastrous as Berkeley’s imagism and is followed
by philosophers in a Kantian-cum-nominalist (or conceptualist) tradition. Kant
was not an imagist, making a firm distinction between percepts and concepts,
but the nature of those concepts is radically anthropocentric. The fundamental
idea is that we can only think using our concepts and that it is a kind of category
mistake to think of the world as itself instantiating anything like a concept. This
is a denial of property realism, or of the Aristotelian idea that essentially the
same kind of thing – in his terms, form – could be the common feature of both
concepts and features of the world. According to the conceptualist, anything that
is intelligible must belong to the mind and cannot be thought of as existing in a
non-mental reality, just as a pain cannot exist outside a mind. On the one hand,
this is meant as a way of rejecting idealism, because it rests on the nominalist
instinct that realism mentalizes the world by infusing it with intelligibility. On
the other hand, this approach has idealist consequences, for it means that the-
world-as-we-understand-it is a creation of essentially mind-dependent entities,
namely the concepts that are the forms of our own thought, which cannot be
understood as in any way directly mirroring reality. This situation parallels
Berkeley’s argument in #23 by claiming that it makes no sense to try to break out
of our own mental structures. It is obvious that modern Kantians are prone to
this tendency, but so, it is often argued, are certain philosophers influenced by
Wittgenstein: one cannot ‘break out of language’ and it is sometimes suspected
that this leads, in the case of John McDowell or Richard Rorty, for example, to a
kind of linguistic idealism. Whether these philosophers are committed to such a
view is, of course, controversial, but it seems that anyone who refuses to give an
account of the fundamenta in re that justify (by and large) our application of
general concepts is going to find it difficult to deny that our practices are the sole
source of the organization in nature, as we experience it. Thus a realist about
universals, a trope theorist or a resemblance theorist all have an account of this
fundamentum, but anyone who insists that we are not in a position to contrast,
compare or check our linguistic or conceptual practices with the world itself, is
liable to the charge of conceptual or linguistic idealism.
In addition to this full-blown conceptualist route to what some judge to be
idealism, there is another concept-based path, derived from Berkeley, but sharing
features with the Kantian tradition, which may be undergoing a revival.
Berkeley said, almost as an aside, that ‘all relations [are] including an act of the
mind’ (P 142). In this he seems only to be following Locke (Essay, II , XXV ) who
talks as if all relations involve acts of comparison. Indeed, most philosophers
from Aristotle to Russell claimed that there was a subjective element in relations,
because there is always comparative judgement, which presupposes mind, in the
attribution of relations (see Weinberg 1965). This aspect of relations was drawn
on from Leibniz to Bradley as a ground for idealism: if objects cannot be related
except by an act of mind, they cannot be individuated and so exist as entities
apart from such an act.1 The normal, modern verdict on subjective theories
of relations is that they are rooted in the ontology of Aristotle’s metaphysics,
as expressed in Categories. Aristotle divides the world into substances and
their accidents, and accidents cannot be shared between substances. Relations,
therefore, must have their truthmakers in the monadic properties of objects,
which are compared in judgements. Because the limitations of Aristotelian logic
are seen as the cause of the view that relations are dependent on judgement and
therefore on the mind, the conclusion is drawn that the incorporation of relations
in Russell’s predicate logic is enough to establish their objectivity. There is a
slippage of argument here, however. It is true that Aristotle’s logic, being of
subject-predicate form, reflects the ontology of Categories, but revision of logic
does not necessarily remove all the philosophical reasons behind the ontology. In
Timothy Sprigge’s words
The point is that there is no distinguishable portion or piece of reality which is

where the relation is exemplified as there is in the case of a property. . . . There is
not, so to speak, some sub-division of the totality of particular reality which
actualises the relation to the exclusion of its contraries as in the case of properties.
1983: 164
Sprigge’s remarks on relations spread, perhaps in surprising ways, to other

concepts. David Armstrong (1997) follows in the tracks of Wittgenstein’s dictum
that ‘the world is the totality of facts not things’, by regarding the world as the
totality of states of affairs. He also believes that everything, including states of
affairs, are spatio-temporal entities. But, in addition to all the obvious states of
affairs, in order to signal that these are all there is, not just a part of some larger
world, there is the ‘totality state of affairs’, the final state of affairs that says ‘that
is all there is’ (1997, 196ff ). It is hard to see how this can be spatio-temporal,
or, in Sprigge’s phrase, ‘a distinguishable portion or piece of reality’. But, more
significantly, it looks as if this particular state of affairs is not so much a part of
the world as a recognition that the list is complete; it, like relations, involves a
judgement. This suggests that, in addition to what one might call baldly descriptive
facts there are also factual assessments, which are also essential to an account of
what there is (see Robinson 2009). These latter seem clearly to be mind-
dependent. It may be that negative truths are in the same category: what there is
‘out there’ in my room includes only its positive contents, but these provide the
grounds for a negative judgement that there are no elephants in the room.
In order to justify his rationalist ethics, Derek Parfit (2011, 475ff ) needs
a class of facts that constitute the reasons behind moral judgements, and
he classifies these facts amongst the things that constitute non-metaphysical
cognitivism. The epithet ‘non-metaphysical’ means that there is nothing external
to the processes of reasoning that constitutes their truth conditions, – no Platonic
entities are required – yet they are completely objective. One might wonder how
this can be the case – how rational processes can be objectively required without
something that stands independent of them as their ground – and how other
forms of factual assessment can be possible, if they run beyond the ordinary
truthmakers. It is hard to see what other explanation there could be other than
that there is an objective Intellect that is an integral part and precondition of the
existence of an objective world. This was the conclusion that Aristotle and,
following him, the Neo-platonists, drew from his criticisms of Platonism: not
that objective cognitivism was free of metaphysics, but that the metaphysics it
involved made the world essentially dependent on an active intellect.
So one may not need a Kantian conceptualism to see that the objective world
essentially depends on the understanding intellect.
Section IV: The empiricist inheritance
There is a rationalist tincture to the argument so far, because the foundation of

the arguments is how thought must be. The empiricist foundation for idealism,
however, rests more on what experience can and cannot tell us about the nature
of the physical world. This gives us (3).
(3) We cannot conceive of the world independently of qualitative

concepts that are essentially experiential
This empiricist idea can be broken down into two or three components,
as follows. (i) The only non-formal or non-mathematical components in our
conception of the physical world depend upon the sensible qualities that are the
core of our ‘manifest image’ or common-sense conception of the world. (ii) In

Berkeley’s words, ‘nothing can be like an idea but an idea’: that is to say, the
sensible qualities we experience are essentially experiential. (iii) Probably, this is
true of qualities in general. That is, the whole idea of a non-formal component in
our conception of the world is essentially experiential.
(i) is the least controversial of these points, but it also has a strong and a weak
interpretation. The strong interpretation is akin to the positivist claim that all
statements about the physical world can be translated into statements about
sense-data. The weaker version requires only that, in John Foster’s words (2008,
1ff ), our interpretation of the world as containing physical objects is constituted
and logically necessitated by the qualitative states that we experience. This latter
is a thesis that even a representative realist of a Lockean kind could accept,
provided that he could attribute to the mind-independent world some or all of
the qualities that manifest themselves in experience. That this could be so is what
(ii) denies. That there is nothing in the external world to match the secondary
qualities in the form we experience them, has been a common view since the
seventeenth century: whether the same applies to primary qualities, considered
as qualities and not just as formal (for example, geometrical) properties,
abstracted from the manner of their manifestation, has been controversial ever
since the same time. Molyneux’s Problem, which focuses on the question of
whether shapes as seen and as felt can be seen as present themselves as truly
similar, raises this issue. This Problem is still much discussed but some recent
empirical work has been taken as showing that they cannot be simply recognized
as similar (Bakalar, 2011). If this is so, then it is not possible to attribute to the
external world the qualitative nature of the primary properties, as revealed in
experience. If the external world is to have anything more than formal and
abstract qualities, therefore, it must possess a qualitative nature different from
any of the qualities revealed in experience. The plausibility of this is what
(iii) rejects. Thinking of the qualitative as what provides the categorical, as
opposed to relational or purely structural, features of the world, Blackburn
remarks that ‘[c]ategoricity in fact comes with the subjective view’ (1990, 65).
And, as we shall see, Dummett claims that we can have no conception of what
anything is ‘like in itself ’ independently of how it figures in the experience of a
creature of some sort. How one might actually prove (iii) is difficult to see,
but the association of the qualitative with qualia – with the felt nature of
experience – looks pretty convincing. In order to make a clear distinction
between qualities and subjective experience, one must affirm that that there is a
fundamental divide between quality and affect, where the latter is plainly
subjective. That this is even apparently so holds only in the case of vision – all
non-visual qualities present themselves as ways of our being affected, and thus
it is not implausible to conclude that the appearances in vision of objectivity
may itself be misleading, particularly given that there are other reasons than
simple phenomenology for thinking that visual phenomena – colour and visual
shape – are subjective.
This link between the qualitative and the experiential was taken up by the
logical positivists. I have already referred to Popper’s (1953) description of Berkeley
as the precursor of Mach and Einstein. Popper claims that physics since Mach
shares twenty-one theses with Berkeley. He sums up what they share as follows:
Berkeley and Mach are both convinced that there is no physical world
(of primary qualities, or of atoms; cf. Pr 50; S 232, 235) behind the world of
physical appearances. Both believed in a form of the doctrine nowadays called
phenomenalism – the view that physical things are bundles, or complexes, or
constructs of phenomenal qualities, of particular experienced colours, noises,
etc. Mach calls them ‘complexes of elements’. The difference is that for Berkeley,
these are directly caused by God. For Mach, they are just there. While Berkeley
says that there can be nothing physical behind the physical phenomena, Mach
suggests that there is nothing at all behind them.
1953, 34
Popper includes, amongst the things they agree on, the denial of absolute
space and time, and absolute motion (giving the connection also with Einstein),
and the existence of real forces in nature: explanations are formal and
mathematical.
It is striking, too, how much discussion of Berkeley is to be found in Ayer’s
Language, Truth and Logic. He opens his Preface by saying: ‘The views that are
put forward in this treatise derive from the doctrines of Bertrand Russell and
Wittgenstein, which are themselves the logical outcome of the empiricism of
Berkeley and Hume’ (1936, 11).
Although Mach’s and the positivists’ systems have more in common with
Hume than with Berkeley, because of the rejection of theism and mind that
Popper points out, both Popper and Ayer credit Berkeley with being the
originator of the radical empiricist tradition, which Hume merely developed.
Ayer says: ‘What Berkeley discovered was that material objects must be definable
in terms of sense-contents’ (54). He even assimilates Berkeley to his own
positivism with regard to metaphysics, by saying ‘Nor is it fair to regard Berkeley
as a metaphysician. For he did not deny the reality of material things, as we are
still too commonly told. What he denied was the adequacy of Locke’s analysis of
the notion of a material thing. . . . And in this he was right’ (53).
Ayer was as much a British empiricist as a logical positivist and he probably
devotes more time to Berkeley by name than do most of the continental positivists.
Nevertheless, though they all reject his views on God, the self, and his explicit
mentalism, he is referred to with a respect that other classes of metaphysical
idealists do not receive, and this is because they regard him as the originator of
the principles that they themselves have taken to what they believe to be their
logical conclusion.
The positivist attempt to analyse physical object statements in sense-datum
terms did not, of course, fare well, but it was not the only source of the idea that
the qualitative must be subjective.
The idea that the qualitative is, in some way, subjective was also used by Russell
to develop neutral monism (Russell, 1927). According to this theory the qualitative,
which is the content of consciousness, is also the intrinsic nature of all matter. We
are aware of its presence in matter only in the case of our own brain. Science reveals
only the behavioural properties of matter, but its true qualitative nature is the
foundation of both the mental and the physical – hence the theory is monistic
because everything is made of qualities and these qualities are neutral between
being physical and being mental. Russell described his theory as follows.
On the question of the materials out of which the physical world is constructed,
the views advocated in this volume have, perhaps, more affinity with idealism
than with materialism . . . what is in our heads is the mind . . . rather than what
the physiologist sees through his microscope. It is true that we have not suggested
that all reality is mental. The positive arguments in favour of such a view, whether
Berkeleyan or German, appear to me to be fallacious. The sceptical of the
phenomenalists, that, whatever else there may be, we cannot know it, are
argument much more worthy of respect.
1927, 387–8
While, on the question of the stuff of the world, the theory of the foregoing pages
has certain affinities with idealism – namely, that mental events are part of that
stuff, and that the rest of the stuff resembles them more than it resembles
traditional billiard balls – the position advocated as regards scientific laws has
more affinity with materialism than with idealism.
388
Until quite recently, it would have hardly been worth pointing out these views
of Russell’s as an idealist influence on twentieth-century philosophy, for Russell’s
theory was regarded as absurd. Thanks to the influence of Maxwell (1978),

Lockwood (1989), Strawson (2006), and Chalmers (2010), however, it has returned
to the forefront of the debate in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind.
Russell’s theory has more in common with Leibniz’s rather than with
Berkeley’s style of idealism, but for those who are unconvinced by the panpsychist
turn, a more Berkelian route has remained open.
Berkeley, followed by Hume, denied that we could have any idea of physical
force. This has serious consequences for our conception of matter, because
impenetrability is a force-concept and it, together with spatial properties, is the
defining feature of atomist matter. Hume (1978: I iv 4, 229) objected to the idea
that material bodies were volumes of impenetrability on the grounds that this
left us with the concept of a body as something that resists penetration by other
bodies, and that this is circular because the concept one is trying to define appears
in the definition. There is, to put it at its weakest, a primacy of the qualitative
properties of matter over the dispositional, force or power properties – which
might be generically classified as the causal properties. But if seventeenth-
century science relied on the dispositional property of impenetrability, from the
era of Boscovitch on to modern science, the concepts of force, energy and power
have come to have an even greater monopoly. As Russell pointed out, the ontology
of science is a powers or dispositional ontology. Modern philosophers of an
idealist persuasion (e.g. Foster 1982, 1993; Robinson 1982, 2009) have picked
on this predicament, argued that this conception is incoherent and drawn the
conclusion that there is no adequate scientific realist notion of matter. The
incoherence consists in the vicious regress that is said to follow if one tries to give
an account of matter or bodies as mere powers or energies. Something would
simply be the power to affect a power to affect a power to affect . . .: nothing
categorical – nothing not defined in terms of something further – would ever
emerge. (See Robinson 2009 for a recent statement of this argument, with
response to criticisms. Also Martin (1997), Mumford (1998), Molnar (2003) Bird
(2007)). If this argument is correct, then matter is unintelligible without a
qualitative component. At the least, this escapes the compass of science, and,
if one accepts that the qualitative is essentially experiential, it leads one to
phenomenalism.
Section V: The primacy of the first-person perspective
Christopher Peacocke (1985) argues for our fourth proposition.

(4) We can only perceive, and therefore, only imagine,

the world as it is ‘from the inside’, that is, from a subjective,
first personal perspective
The Berkelian import of this is that, however it may be that we can conceive of
unperceived physical objects, this is not because we can imagine – in the strict
sense of form an image of – unperceived things. This is because all imaging is a
recreation of how objects would appear to one under the given circumstances.
One way of putting this claim, I think, would be to borrow Nagel’s language and
say that one cannot image an object ‘as it is in itself ’, when this latter expression
is associated with how it is in the scientific view – the ‘view from nowhere’. All
imaging is perspectival. So if one thinks that the object unperceived is equivalent
to the object as it is in itself, then imagery is no help in conceiving of this.
One might reply to this that certain perspectives – for example, a direct, head-
on view of something – do reveal the object almost exactly as it is in itself. A
corresponding image, therefore, does the same. Even if one is impressed by this
response, I think Berkeley’s argument about the relativity of perception between
a man and a mite might be invoked. Even if one can cancel out the spatial
perspectives, there still remain the perspectives associated with being different
kinds of observers. Robinson (2011) argues that the ‘mite’ argument shows that
nothing experiential can possibly give content to a notion of objective size,
which physical realism requires.
Section VI: The impossibility of indirect realism
Some of that modern school of naive or direct realists who are known as
relationists claim to be following Berkeley in accepting (5).
(5) We cannot form a conception of the world except as we

perceive it directly.
John Campbell, for example, starts from what he calls ‘Berkeley’s puzzle’, which is
‘How can experience of an object explain our grasp on the possibility of existence
unperceived?’ (2002, 129). His response is that we can acquire a notion of a
mind-independent world only if direct realism is true: ‘We cannot extract the
conception of a mind-independent world from a mind-dependent image. . . . It
seems as though it ought to be possible, though, to extract the conception of a
mind-independent world from an experience which has a mind-independent

object as a constituent’ (135). Bill Brewer (2011), too, sees the problem facing
modern realists as the same as that which Berkeley faced in Locke. His argument
is organized around an inconsistent triad, namely:
(I) Physical objects are mind-independent.

(II) Physical objects are the direct objects of perception.
(III) The direct objects of perception are mind-dependent.
Brewer wishes, like most contemporaries, to deny (III ), but he thinks that the
way most modern representationalists, or intentionalists, deny it does not put
one in direct contact with the physical objects at all, and it falls foul of similar
objections to those that Berkeley made against Locke. So Campbell and Brewer
draw inspiration from Berkeley’s frustration at the way representationalism cuts
us off from the world: Berkeley had spotted the fatal flaw in the ‘scientific’ causal
account of perception; but whereas Berkeley agreed that realism could not avoid
this conclusion and so adopted idealism, the relationists attempt to re-establish
naive realism.
Section VII: Two modern Berkelians
Michael Dummett
Michael Dummett is one of the two major recent analytic philosophers who
adopts a broadly Berkelian picture of the world. The other is John Foster, whom
I shall discuss in the next section.
Dummett’s affinity with Berkeley can be seen in the following quotations.
The world, in so far as we apprehend it and are capable of coming to apprehend

it, is the world we inhabit; of what we are incapable of apprehending we cannot
meaningfully speak. In asking after the character of reality, we are asking
after that of the world we inhabit; to speak of a world transcending ours and, as
it were, encasing it, is merely to employ a form of words devoid of any clear
sense.
2006, 23
This could be a defence of a simple naive realism, denying that the world
transcends how we experience it, as either a Lockean or a Kantian might
have that it does. But that the sense is not realist is made very plain later in the
book.
The conception of ‘the world as it is in itself ’ collapsed because, of our own

resources, we can give no substance to the expression ‘like’ as it occurs in the
question ‘What is the world like in itself?’ . . . But to express our goal in this
search by means of a word such as ‘like’ that calls for an account of experience,
asking in effect how we should experience the world if we experienced it as it
really is, and not in any particular way, is unintelligible: the question needs to be
replaced by ‘How is the world to be described as it is in itself?’ . . .
That is why our search for a conception of the world as it is in itself ended
with barren mathematical models of which it is senseless to think ‘This is what
there really is’, still less ‘That is all there really is’. We set out with a robust version
of ‘scientific realism’ as our understanding of what science aims at: its task is, on
this view, to uncover how things really are in themselves. We finished by lapsing
into a purely instrumentalist interpretation.
98–9
This is a very Berkeleian line of argument. We cannot conceive of what the

world is ‘like’ independently of experience; what is left is only abstract description
or mathematics. That ‘likeness’ is confined to experience is pretty much the claim
that nothing but an idea can be like an idea – there are no non-experienced
qualities. The unsatisfactory nature of this abstract instrumentalist conception
of the world ‘in itself ’ forces Dummett to a Berkelian theism.
Since it makes no sense to speak of a world, or the world, independently of how

it is apprehended, this one world must be the world as it is apprehended by some
mind, yet not in any particular way, or from any one perspective rather than any
other, but simply as it is: it constitutes the world as it is in itself. We saw that how
God apprehends things as being must be how they are in themselves. But now
we must say the converse: how things are in themselves consists in the way God
apprehends them . . .
This does not imply that God understands what it is for the material world to
exist independently of there being within it any sentient creature to perceive
it . . . God’s knowledge of the material universe consists in the grasp of an
immensely complex structure determining what will be observed by the various
kinds of sentient creatures . . . and what will be discovered by the various rational
creatures when they attempt to find out what things are in themselves.
101–3
How does Dummett get from his rejection of the world that ‘transcends’ or
‘encases’ the world of experience to this idealism? How does he avoid naive
realism? He approaches idealism via formal semantics and the theory of
meaning. Immediately after the passage I quoted in which he rejects the Lockean
or Kantian world he says: ‘Reality is constituted by what facts there are, and the
notion of a fact is one that we have framed. The only facts of which we can
conceive are those that render our beliefs, and other beliefs that we may come to
form, true or false’ (23). So the world is the totality of facts, ‘fact’ is a human
notion, and the only facts that are intelligible to us are those that have a function
as the truth conditions of our beliefs: so facts are mind-dependent truth
conditions.
Dummett’s starting point is Frege’s truth conditional theory of meaning, but
he thinks that a pure truth conditional theory is viciously circular. One might say
that one knows the meaning of a sentence – say, ‘snow is white’ – by knowing
its truth conditions. But what kind of knowledge is this? If it is purely
propositional knowledge, and if (as Dummett believes) the only route to the
content of propositions is through the sentences that express them, then the
attempt to understand the sentence this way presupposes that one already
understands it. One therefore needs a less theoretical notion of the knowledge in
question – something more in line with the Wittgensteinian idea that knowing
the meaning is knowing how to use the expression. Dummett puts it thus: ‘On a
non-circular account of understanding, the grasp of the sense of a predicate
could be taken to consist in an ability to arrive at a correct decision, for any given
object, whether to accept or reject a statement applying that predicate to that
object’ (57).
Dummett calls this a justificationist theory of meaning and it clearly closely
related to verificationism, for ‘arriving at a correct decision’ is obviously verifying,
or more or less. Like verificationism, the justificationist approach immediately
throws one into problems with, for example, statements about the past: it is clear
how one might justify the use of the sentence ‘snow is white’, but it is far from
clear how one could justify the use of ‘snow was white five million years ago’. The
more nominalist one is, the greater this problem becomes. A realist about
meanings, properties or universals (which, in the Aristotelian tradition, are, for
good reason, all classified under the same concept, namely that concept form)
can hope to draw some general conclusions from reflecting on the nature of
these universals, but anyone who is a nominalist or a particularist has to construct
generality from the use of or relations between particular tokens. Berkeley was
certainly a nominalist and particularist of this sort in the introduction to the
Principles and Wittgenstein (at least as interpreted by Kripke, 1982) was in his
understanding of linguistic practice. It is annoying in Dummett that he never
clearly places himself on this issue (see Green, 2001, 108–11). But he makes it
clear that thoughts and propositions can be understood only via language, which
suggests that language and experience do not enable us to come to grips with
universals on which we can then also build. If one believed that experience
and thought-through-language made universals available, then I think that
Dummett’s particular version of anti-realism, by means of the denial of bivalence,
would not become so pressing. Indeed, it is plain, I think, that Dummett’s attempt
to put the whole weight on language cannot be right. His own justificationist
theory appears to lead to the conclusions that, as evidence for past events’ decay,
gaps open up in the past (74). He says of this view: ‘It cannot strictly speaking be
convicted of incoherence; but no-one could possibly regard it as a credible
conception of the world’ (74).
But why could they not? There is much in the world that does change, why
not the past? It cannot be because of the nature of our language about the past:
this is not just a ‘grammatical’ truth. We must have some grip on the nature and
phenomenology of time, which, though no doubt refined and articulated with
the help of language, does not simply rest on language. Language is not, therefore,
the sole route to metaphysical truth.
Dummett himself seems to provide a counterexample to his view of the route
to metaphysics, for his argument that we can have no conception of what
anything is ‘like in itself ’ independently of how it figures in the experience of a
creature of some sort does not seem to be dependent on the justificationist
theory of meaning or the denial of bivalence. It comes from reflection on, both,
the historical fact that science dispenses with secondary qualities and reflection
on phenomenology that suggests that even primary qualities vary with the sense
to which they are presented. None of this has language as its source. Indeed this
line of thought is more common to a more traditional empiricist approach.
John Foster
Foster’s route to idealism is more conventional than Dummett’s. He starts from
the refutation of direct realism. In his later work he bases this on a version of the
argument from illusion, treating the causal-hallucinatory argument he had
originally favoured as question-begging. It does not matter strategically, however,
which argument is preferred, as long as one believes that at least one of them is
effective.
Once it is agreed that we do not perceive the supposed physical world
directly, the question arises of which of its properties we can actually know. The
abandonment of direct realism, together with the scientific picture of the world,
relieves the mind-independent world of secondary qualities. It is plausible to
think that Molyneux’s Problem shows that visual shape and tactile shape have
only a formal similarity. Russell carried this idea forward for time as well: the
sense of time passing is experiential: time itself is just an aspect of structure.
Beyond structure, the actual or qualitative nature of the physical world is wholly
inscrutable.
This idea – that the essential nature of matter, beyond the formal or
mathematical, is inscrutable to us – is the next move in Foster’s argument.
Nevertheless, he concedes that one might hold that anything that copied the
formal spatial structure of empirical space could count as the physical world. He
tries to show that we would have no reason to think that a mind-independent
world that lay behind the empirical world would classify as the physical world.
The argument for this is his ‘deviant space’ argument.
Our ordinary or empirical conception of space is based on experience: we
locate things where they seem, on the basis of experience as a whole, to be. But,
argues Foster, if the ‘real’ space is something that lies beyond experience, as a
representative realist must allow, then it could be that the topology of that real
space could be quite different from the topology of empirical space. It could be
the case, for example, that in that transcendental space, Oxford is really where
Cambridge seems to be and Cambridge is really where Oxford seems to be: it is
just that the laws of nature have a ‘kink’ in them that makes things to appear as
they do. These laws determine that things in the transcendental world ‘jump’
from a ‘just outside Oxford’ location to a ‘just inside Cambridge’ location (and
vice versa) as they pass the crucial boundary. Foster claims that such a deviant
space would not be the real, physical space, which must have the topology that
experience and the resultant physical science (which could never uncover such
deviance) give it.
One response to this argument is that it is merely a sceptical hypothesis: it is
not reasonable to think that the transcendental world is deviant in this way. The
response to this is that, even if it is not, it could become deviant and this
possibility alone is enough to show that it is not the physical world, for any such
identity would have to be necessary.
The real problem with Foster’s argument is, I think, that it seems to treat the
identity of spatial position in the mind-independent world as independent of
the behaviour of objects in it; but if space is simply a dimension of the physical
system that is a function of the interrelation of the matter in it, it is not so clear
that deviance makes sense.
Nevertheless, the intuition behind Foster’s argument is not as counterintuitive
as it might seem. The core of the argument is that the nomological structure of
experience is sufficient to guarantee the existence of the physical world:

the nature of the cause that lies behind it is irrelevant, apart from its role
in guaranteeing the nomological structure of the empirical world. There are
interesting parallels to this line of thought in van Fraassen and Chalmers. Van
Fraassen (1980) propounds the theory of ‘constructive empiricism’, according to
which the aim of science is to explain the phenomena, not to match some
external reality. Chalmers (2010) thinks that a world such as the supposedly
virtual reality of the Matrix counts as physically real, essentially because the
precise nature of what sustains that empirical reality is indifferent to the reality
of what is sustained. He disagrees with Foster, I think, in that he thinks that the
semantics of our concepts is ‘two dimensional’ in the sense that a term such as
‘space’ refers both to what is presented empirically as space and to whatever it is
that underlies the empirical facts. But this two dimensionality differs essentially
from that of natural kinds of terms such as ‘water’, because the second dimension
of such terms refers to a scientifically discoverable real essence, not to some
transcendent reality that is, in principle, inaccessible to science. It seems to me
that there is no reason to bring the latter into the meaning of our physical
concepts at all. One might adopt instead the principle advocated in Robinson
(1985), namely that the physical world is that towards which an accurate physics
approximates. Some wholly different foundation is noumenal, not physical.
One might be tempted to draw tentatively from this position the conclusion
that, once one has decided that there is no reason to think that the empirical
world’s cause resembles the empirical world itself in a more than nomological
way, then to take the external reality to be a divine mind seems no more strange
than any other theory. If one thinks, for example that the fine tuning of the world
requires a Designer, and that a mind-independent reality is something of which
we can know nothing beyond the nomology that the Designer plans, Berkeley’s
claim that postulating some unknowable ‘material’ world as a mere instrument
looks redundant might seem to become plausible.
Section VIII: Conclusion
Taking the modern period as a whole, Berkelian idealism has not been a popular
world view amongst philosophers, although various of the hares that Berkeley
started running have continued to be pursued and hunted. In the last few years,
however, there have been developments that move the heart of Berkeley’s system
closer to modern trends. The confidence in scientific realism and naturalism,
which seemed so dominant in the 1970s and 1980s has begun to erode. On the
one hand, the attempt to accommodate human consciousness and even thought
into the scientific world view has come to seem more and more hopeless. On
the other, our conception of the physical world has become more and more
attenuated, with intuitive understandings of space and time having only a
formal connection to any physical reality, and matter itself lacking non-abstract
content independent of its manifestation in the qualitative nature of experience.
Perhaps we are not so far away from a view of our world that constructs it from
experience, grounded on nothing more than a nomic structure which itself
manifests design and intelligence. Perhaps Berkeley’s thought that this is the
picture which can accommodate both the theoretical achievements of natural
science and the foundational reality of human experience and thought is not so
far from the truth.
Note
1 This way of putting the connection between the subjectivity of relations and
idealism fits with Bradley and Hegelianism better than it does with Leibniz. Leibniz’s
monads are really different from each other, but there are no real relations between
them, beyond what is expressed in the monadic properties of the individuals.
82
Part Two
Berkeley’s Major Works
83
84
5
Atomism in Berkeley’s Theory of Vision

Bertil Belfrage
Introduction
George Berkeley published An Essay towards A New Theory of Vision in 1709,

when he was twenty-four years old. A second edition followed in 1710, and three
further editions were appended to editions of the Alciphron in 1732. During
Berkeley’s lifetime – when the Principles (1710) and the Three Dialogues (1713)
were neglected or disregarded – the Theory of Vision was studied in its own right,
known for laying the foundations of atomistic psychology. It was widely regarded,
for more than a century, as the book on ‘the Science of Man’ (David Hume’s term
that John Stuart Mill used for the Theory of Vision).1
Samuel Bailey, a metaphysician of the realist school, criticized however the
Theory of Vision in 1842. He thought the thesis, that perceptions are end products
of mental processes, drew a veil over ‘reality’ thus leading to scepticism and, to
him, unacceptable idealism. Thus, in opposition to Mill, who defended ‘the
received [Berkeleian] modes of studying mental phenomena’, Bailey saw it as a
covert defence of idealism. From Berkeley’s assertion that the Theory of Vision
had a strong influence on his metaphysical works,2 Bailey concluded that the
Theory of Vision itself was a contribution to metaphysics.3 He introduced a
polemical approach to the Theory of Vision that was followed by Thomas Abbott
in 1864 and David Armstrong in 1960. They saw nothing in it but unsound
sophisms in support of idealism. The latest book on the Theory of Vision,
published in 1990 by Margaret Atherton, is free from polemical overtones, and
completed the tradition from Bailey by the thesis that the Theory of Vision
expresses a complete ‘idealistic immaterialism’.4
Berkeley saw this as a serious misrepresentation of his work. He knew
the underlying assumptions very well, because an anonymous critic published
them in the London Daily Post-Boy of 9 September 1732. The answer to this
85
critic (and indirectly even to his most recent critics) was published in The
Theory of Vision Vindicated (1733). I open with an account of this reply. In
the next section, I present what was referred to in Berkeley’s lifetime as his
‘atomistic psychology’, thus following his analysis of how bits of information
from different senses are combined, step by step, to compose more complex
units. In the final section, I observe how the complexity of visual perceptions
required explanations beyond descriptive atomism but, confining this chapter
to the Theory of Vision, I will not discuss how he approached these difficulties
in later works.
Berkeley’s reply to his critics
In the 170-year-old tradition of Bailey many things appeared self-evident: that

the Theory of Vision was a metaphysical work in defence of immaterialism, that
Berkeley was hostile to science in general and to geometry in particular, that he
intended ‘to break down’ physiological research, et cetera. We can see that this
tradition does misrepresent his work by considering the four questions discussed
below.
(1) Is the Theory of Vision a contribution to

ontological metaphysics?
One of the main assumptions in the tradition after Bailey is, in Atherton’s terms,
that ‘the beliefs Berkeley is particularly interested in [are] beliefs about external
bodies’ (1990, 20; emphasis in original). Even in Berkeley’s days, commentators
insisted on mixing problems on vision with ontological speculation. The
anonymous critic, for instance, who made him write The Theory of Vision
Vindicated, opened his ‘Letter’ defining ‘the object of sense’ as an object ‘without
us’, which causes sensations or ‘ideas within’. But Berkeley declined his opponent’s
invitation to discuss ‘external objects’. In the science of vision, he said: ‘The term
‘sensible Object is . . . not applied to signify the absolutely existing outward Cause
or Power, but the Ideas themselves produced thereby’ (TVV 12). Thus he meant
that we are talking about very different kinds of objects, when we are ‘about to
treat of the Nature of Vision’ than when we are dealing with ontological issues
(TVV 18, cp. 14).5 If we nonetheless insist that ‘what is of primary importance to
Berkeley’s account is his theory of visual representation rather than . . . his theory
of visual experience’ (Atherton 1990: 15), his answer is:
Atomism in Berkeley’s Theory of Vision 87
The Beings, Substances, Powers which exist without, may indeed concern a
Treatise on some other Science, and may there become a proper Subject of
Inquiry. But, why they should be considered as Objects of the visive Faculty in a
Treatise of Optics, I do not comprehend.
TVV 19, my emphasis
To the absolute Nature, therefore, of outward Causes or Powers, we have nothing

to say.
TVV 12, my emphasis
(2) Did Berkeley intend ‘to discredit the geometric theory’?

Already in 1709, William King accused Berkeley of turning his back on geometry,
the science of sciences in those days.6 Atherton agrees: ‘Berkeley contrasted his
approach to vision with another, which he called the geometric.’ He ‘thought a
geometrical approach to space perception is peculiarly conductive to the belief
that what we see are bodies existing in external space’, and ‘presents his project as
opposed to the theories we have been discussing to the extent these theories
rely on geometric principles’ (1990: 3, 16, 54). His ‘motivation’ for writing the
Theory of Vision (‘Berkeley’s Revolution in Vision’) was to eliminate geometric
optics from enquiries about perception.7
Berkeley answered: The opinion ‘that Men might argue and compute
geometrically by Lines and Angles in Optics . . . is so far from carrying in it any
Opposition to my Theory, that I have expresly declared the same thing’ (TVV
31), for example when he defined ‘confused’ and ‘distinct’ vision by reference to
the angle at which light rays fall on the retina (TV 34–35). It is true, he admits,
that he criticized one point in contemporary optics but, he says, this is not to
criticize the entire science.8 His point of criticism was that the psychology of
perception is an empirical, not a deductive (’mathematical’) science (TV 24).
When he mentions those ‘three Lights [in which] Vision should be considered’ to
form a complete theory, moreover, one of these ‘Lights’ is ‘the Geometrical
Application of Lines and Angles’ (TVV 37).
(3) Did Berkeley intend ‘to break down’ physiological research?

Atherton mentions Descartes and Malebranche, who were convinced that ‘sensory
operations such as seeing . . . depend on a sequence of organic changes in the sense
organs’. Hence, ‘what we see is dependent on our sense organs’, according to these
philosophers. But, Atherton argues, ‘These theories are committed to a distinction
between a visual world that is the result of the operations of our sense organs and
an external corporeal world. This is the distinction Berkeley is determined to
break down.’ ‘Berkeley’s point is there is no way to account physiologically for
visual perception of distance,’ according to Atherton (1990, 53–54; 2005, 108).
This is a reasonable conclusion from the assumption that Berkeley accepted
no other than efficient causes (which is true of Berkeleian metaphysics), but the
term ‘cause’ is never used in this sense in the Theory of Vision. In this context, he
did not deny that ‘what we see is dependent on our sense organs’. On the contrary,
he referred to ‘the Physical Consideration of the Eye, Nerve, Coats, Humours,
Refractions, bodily Nature, and Motion of Light’ as one of the ‘three Lights [in
which] Vision should be considered, in order to [form] a compleat Theory of
Optics’ (TVV 37). And he does mention what Atherton referred to as ‘organic
changes in the sense organs’ several times in connection with ‘visual perception
of distance’, not only when he defines ‘distinct’ and ‘confused’ vision, but also
when he referred to how visual perceptions appear ‘vigorous’ or ‘faint’ in
proportion to how many light rays the object sends to the eye (TV 68).
(4) Did Berkeley deny ‘supplementary processes’ in vision?

The anonymous critic agreed with Berkeley that sensations of different senses
were ‘intirely different’, but added that Berkeley mistakenly denied ‘we may justly
argue from one to the other’ (Letter, 8). Similarly, Berkeley held, according to
Atherton, that ‘Ideas of sight are entirely unrelated to ideas of touch’ (2005, 98–
100): ‘Berkeley’s solution to the problem how it is possible to perceive distance by
sight doesn’t incorporate any supplementary processes into the visual system at
all, over and above what we immediately perceive. Seeing is seeing’ (1990: 103).
Berkeley answered: ‘Now my Theory no where supposeth, that we may not
justly argue, from the Ideas of one Sense to those of another, by Analogy and by
Experience: On the contrary, this very Point is affirmed, proved, or supposed
throughout’ (TVV 27). In the final section, moreover, I will comment on
Berkeley’s three examples of a conditioning process between sensation and
perception.
The atomistic approach
From this outline of Berkeley’s reply to those critics, who saw the Theory of
Vision as a metaphysical defence of idealism, I proceed to read Berkeley’s text
from scratch in an attempt at reconstructing his so-called ‘atomistic psychology’.

By Berkeley’s ‘Atomistic Principle’ I mean the line of reasoning from the decision
to ‘confine [his] thoughts and enquirys to the naked Scene of [his] own Particular
Ideas’ (MI 50, 48, 61, PI 24), combined with the semantic test, directing one ‘to
take the mask [off ] Words, and obtain a naked view of [his] own Particular Ideas’
(MI 50a). Terms that do not denote ‘particular ideas’ fail the test and should be
rejected as nonsensical.
A regular-sequence approach to causal explanation

The difference between the descriptive approach in the Theory of Vision and the
metaphysical approach in the Principles (1710) and the Three Dialogues (1713), is
reflected in significant, possibly confusing, differences in vocabulary between
these works. In descriptive science it is an important task, according to Berkeley’s
philosophy of science, to observe ‘regularities between sensible things’ to establish
‘what precedes as cause, and what follows as effect’ (DM 71). This is the approach
he follows in the Theory of Vision, when enquiring into perceptual processes –
contrary to his metaphysical doctrine in which he accepted no other than
efficient causes.
Thus, he asked in the Theory of Vision: What kind of response is likely to
follow a given stimulus (TV 29, 36–37, 39)? What kind of data do we take in by
our different senses (TV 46, 129, 130)? How to measure and describe the raw
data, on which we build our conception of the surroundings (TV 54, 67, 77, 78)?
What is given, when we look at ‘one thing’ from different perspectives (TV 60–
61)? The within/without relation, moreover, lacks the metaphysical sense it has
in his immaterialist doctrine, for instance when we read about causal chains of
events, sometimes ‘within’, sometimes ‘without’ the mind, or about external
causes of external events (TV 36, 68), external stimuli causing internal responses
(TV 38, 72), internal judgements caused by external stimuli (TV 68), or ideas
causing ideas (TV 73).9
Raw data in microcosm

At the most basic level of his analysis, Berkeley often speaks about ‘objects’ in a
sense very different from what we refer to as ‘objects’ in everyday life. He mentions
isolated sounds, tastes, and smells; ‘diversity of colours’ without any distinct size
and form; he mentions visual sensations that appear distinct or confused, clear
or faint; tactile sensations of gravitating downwards, of moving one’s limbs, etc.
As isolated ‘objects’ they belong to a micro level, or a pre-perceptive stage, that we

seldom mention or pay much attention to, and that are irrelevant to questions
about the nature of, or our ‘beliefs about external objects’.
How did Berkeley define the ‘objects’ he analysed in the Theory of Vision?
Could he measure or describe them in a scientific manner?
The Law of Specific Sense Responses

If I say, for example, while holding an apple, ‘I smell the same thing as I touch,’
then this is a mistake at the most basic level of analysis, although Berkeley admits
that ‘common Speech wou’d incline one to think, I heard, saw, and touch’d the
same Thing’. According to the physiological Law of Specific Sense Responses
(a law Berkeley took to be ‘allow’d by all’), raw data, or ‘Ideas intromitted by each
Sense are widely different and distinct from each other’. It is in this basic sense of
‘immediate’ or ‘proper’ objects of sight that ‘there is no other immediate Object of
Sight besides Light and Colours’, so ‘All that is properly perceiv’d by the Visive
Faculty, amounts to no more than Colours with their Variations, and different
Proportions of Light and Shade’ (TV 46, 129, 156 et passim).
Consequently, at this basic level, ‘That which I see is only variety of Light and
Colours. That which I feel, is Hard or Soft, Hot or Cold, Rough or Smooth’ (TV 103,
77 3rd ed., 129, 130, my emphasis). Although isolated raw data do not give any useful
information in themselves, they are the elements on which Berkeley started to build
his construction of the perceived world. When he speaks about ‘homogeneous’
sensations, he refers to raw data in the microcosm of what we take in by one sense
only (‘heterogeneity’ is the relation between data from different senses).
Instruments for describing visual appearances

The raw data of Berkeley’s psychology are ‘atomic’ in the sense of being the most
basic elements of human knowledge. He distinguishes between them by means
of the Law of Specific Sense Responses. The defining property of these data is the
peculiar kind of minima sensibilia by which they can be uniquely described. This
provided him with methods of measuring and otherwise describing these raw
data in an objective manner. With regard to visual data, Berkeley used the
received method of establishing a person’s minimum visibile by observing what
the smallest angle is at which rays of light cause a response in the receptors of the
eye and will, via the visual nerve etc., eventually result in a visual sensation. So
established, a person’s minimum visibile can be used to measure ‘apparent
magnitudes’.10
In microcosm, ‘distance’ is a relation between homogeneous ‘atoms’: ‘the

Distance between’ two visible points ‘is mark’d out, by the Number of the
interjacent Visible Points’, so in microcosm (before raw data have been connected
into heterogeneous units) visual distance is strictly confined to the visual sphere,
but if the points ‘are Tangible, the Distance between them is a Line consisting of
Tangible Points’ (TV 112).11
Basic micro relations

To proceed from isolated colours, sounds, etc. to more complex sensations,
Berkeley needed to establish correlations between heterogeneous factors, or (in
Berkeley’s terms) to show they are ‘proportionate to’ each other.12
Descriptive and operative elements

Long before Gestalt psychology and related doctrines, and without workable
insights into neurology, tactile sensations were given a leading role by Berkeley.
We can describe an object by means of such tactile sensations as ‘Hard or Soft,
Hot or Cold, Rough or Smooth’ (TV 103). But there are also three other kinds of
sensations, which Berkeley classified as tactile. I refer to them as ‘operative
elements’, because they play an important part in structuring sensations of
light and colour. These data are sensations of pleasure and pain, of gravitating
downwards, and of moving a part of one’s body.
Instruments for structuring visual data

To make sense of isolated raw data we need, in the first place, to distinguish useful
information from useless. Given our instinct to approach pleasure and avoid pain
(P 146), sensations of pleasure and pain function as choice-making data. ‘We
regard the Objects that environ us, in proportion as they are adapted to . . . produce
in our Minds the Sensations of Pleasure, or Pain’ (TV 59, 109, 147), which in turn
makes us focus on one part of the visual field and regard it as a unit. What we
regard as ‘one’,‘two’, or ‘several things’ is therefore ‘intirely the Creature of the Mind’:
Number (however some may reckon it amongst the Primary Qualities) is nothing
fix’d, and settled, really existing in things themselves. It is intirely the Creature of
the Mind . . . According as the Mind variously Combines it’s Ideas, the Unite
varies . . . and [is] done by the Mind in such sort, as Experience shews it to be
most convenient. Without which, our Ideas had never been collected into such
sundry, distinct Combinations as they now are.
TV 109
Once we have learnt to focus on one thing in the visual field, neglecting others,
we should be able to describe this ‘one thing’ which, in turn, requires ability to
relate its constituent parts in an ordered manner above or below each other, to
the right or to the left. We describe what appears in the visual field by means of
the basic coordinating datum of gravitating downwards, according to Berkeley,
which provides us with the coordinates up/down, left/right (TV 93, 95, 98).
Kinaesthetic experiences of moving a part of one’s body, finally, are space-
building data by which we learn about three-dimensional space (TV 16, 45, 94):
‘Which Foresight, how necessary it is to the preservation of an Animal, every
ones Experience can inform him’ (TV 59, 148). The sensation of three-
dimensional space is a function of a kinaesthetic sensation of moving one’s limbs
and not feeling something hard resisting one’s movements. The sensation of
‘solidity’ or of ‘body’ is, on the other hand, the sensation of trying in vain to
move, but feeling something hard preventing the motion. This resistance is a
sensation of ‘solidity’ or of ‘body’ (P 116, with reference to TV ).
The theory of how visual data are being structured by means of tactual
information supported Berkeley’s opinion that ‘Visible Extensions in themselves
. . . have no settled determinate Greatness’ (TV 151).
Basic relations in macrocosm
The Association Thesis

The tool we use, according to Berkeley, for connecting different sensations into
intelligible perceptions is expressed in the Association Thesis. ‘The Cause why
one Idea may suggest another’ is, according to this thesis, ‘that they have been
observ’d to go together’ (TV 25). Thus, if a number of things are observed to
follow each other regularly, we regard them as links of a causal chain. Thereby we
take early links in a chain as causes which ‘suggest’ that a later link is about to
appear. Later links of such a chain are then explained as effects of an earlier link,
or of earlier links, in this causal chain.
Finding connections between sensations of different senses

The major task of vision is ‘to regulate our Actions, in order to attain those things,
that are necessary to the Preservation and Well-being of our Bodies’ (TV 147)
which, primarily, depends ‘altogether on the Tangible, and not at all on the
Visible, Qualities of any Object’ (TV 59). Convinced that ‘Men measure
altogether, by the Application of Tangible Extension to Tangible Extension’ (TV
151, 61), Berkeley argued that seeing an object at a distance means ‘that if I
advance forward so many Paces, Miles, &c. I shall be affected with such, and such
Ideas of Touch’ (TV 45). This implies that we can establish the ‘proportionality’
(to use his term) between sensations of different senses.
One example of the activity of connecting visual and tactile data is Berkeley’s
thesis about how we relate the location of an appearance in the visual field to the
location of tactile data in three-dimensional space. To illustrate his thesis, he
asked us to ‘suppose a diaphanous Plain erected near the Eye, . . . divided into
small equal Squares’.8 The size of visual appearances can then be measured by
how many hypothetical squares it covers. ‘Those that occupy most Squares have
a greater visible Extension’ (TVV 55), he says. Not only its (visual) size, but also
its location (in the visual field) is important: if an appearance covers a small
number of points close to the horizontal line, then it suggests a bigger (tactile)
size, than is suggested by an appearance that covers more squares but at a lower
part of the plane (TVV 55–56).
As Berkeley’s analysis proceeded, however, the complexity of visual perception
led him beyond the atomistic approach.
Beyond atomism
Berkeley’s physiological study of perceptual processes opened new perspectives.

He observed how stimuli, described or controlled by opticians, cause (or are
‘proportionate to’) certain responses, and how these responses, in turn, become
links in a causal chain that eventually ends in perception. To illustrate how his
explanations led to assumptions of conditioning processes beyond the scope of
his atomistic framework, I will give three examples: his analysis of the Barrovian
Case, of the Moon Illusion, and the perception of ‘one thing’ from different
perspectives.
Conditioning processes in perceptual acts

Some opticians suggested that we base our judgments of distance on the angle at
which the rays of light fall on the retina. They observed that, when objects are
close, the light rays diverge towards the object, and speculated that, if the rays
were made to converge, the object should appear to be at a remote distance, but
the hypothesis failed. In an experiment named after Isaac Barrow the subject saw
the object as very close (TV 29).
To explain the failure, Berkeley first defined the terms ‘distinct’ and ‘confused’
vision. If light rays focus on the retina, the object will appear ‘distinct’; if not, it
appears ‘confused’ (TV 34–35, 77). As the rays did not focus on the retina in the
experiment, the object looked ‘confused’ (TV 38). Another observation was that
if we bring an object very close to the eyes of a person with normal eyesight, it
looks ‘confused’. So normal-sighted persons are used to taking ‘confusedness’ as
a sign of near distance. That explains why the experiment failed. But Berkeley
added that distant objects look ‘confused’ to near-sighted persons (TV 36, 37,
39). In Barrow’s laboratory, therefore, it could happen that a normal-sighted
person said, ‘It is near,’ but a near-sighted person said, ‘It is not near’ (TV 29, 37).
Due to the difference in background knowledge, the one actually saw a close-by
object in this case, the other a faraway object.
I will use the term ‘sensation’ for what both of them saw (a ‘confused’ object),
and ‘perception’ for what they saw, when the one said ‘I see a nearby object’ and
the other ‘I see a faraway object’. Instead of sensation Berkeley uses the term
‘Immediate Objects of Sight’ and instead of perception he speaks about ‘Mediate’
objects of sight. As two subjects saw different things from exactly the same
position in the laboratory, it follows that two persons with the same sensations (a
‘confused’ object) can have different perceptions (the one perceiving a nearby, the
other a faraway object). This is an observation of far-reaching consequences,
because it entails a conditioning process between sensation and perception, but
Berkeley leaves it as a loose end.
The failure of introspection

My second example concerns the Moon Illusion. Berkeley observes that the
moon is at a greater distance from the observer when seen on the horizon than
at the zenith. The projection on the retina (the stimulus) is therefore slightly less
in the illusion and, as the response is ‘proportional to’ the stimulus, the sensation
(or ‘the proper and immediate Object of Vision’), measured in terms of how many
minima visibilia it covers in the visual field, ‘is no greater’ in the illusion (TV 74).
To explain the illusion Berkeley introduces the term ‘faint’. If ‘by reason of the
Distance of the Object, or grossness of the interjacent Medium, few Rays arrive
from the Object to the Eye,’ then the object will appear ‘faint’, in contrast to
‘vigorous’ (TV 35). He first observes that, in the Moon Illusion, ‘the Particles of
the intermediate Air and Vapours, which are themselves unperceivable, do
interrupt the Rays of Light, and thereby render the Appearance less Strong and
Vivid’. Then he refers to our background knowledge that ‘Faintness of Appearance
caused in this Sort, hath been experienced to coexist with great Magnitude’ (TV
72). His explanation of the illusion is, finally, that the ‘faintness’ acts as an
operative element, like ‘confusedness’ in the Barrovian Case, whereby the small
sensation (if measured by minima visibilia) is conditioned by its ‘faintness’ to
make us perceive a big horizontal Moon.14
Here, introspection fails, because Berkeley cannot have an idea of the small
sensation of the moon (the ‘immediate Object of Vision’), only of the ‘mediate
object’, the perception of a big horizontal moon. Thus even this explanation
entails a conditioning process between sensation and perception (the ‘faintness’
of a small sensation conditions the perceiver to see a big moon), but Berkeley
leaves it, again, as a loose end.
To see ‘one thing’ from different perspectives

‘It is thought a great Absurdity to imagine that one, and the same thing, shou’d
have any more than one Extension, and one Figure,’ Berkeley said. ‘But if we take
a close and accurate View of the Matter,’ he continued, this is a correct description
of what we see when observing a thing from different perspectives, because
visual appearances continuously change, when we move (TV 48–50). As ‘No
Reason can be assign’d, why we shou’d pitch on one, more than another’ of these
endless series of continuously changing impressions (TV 60–61), we do not see
‘the same thing’, strictly speaking, from different perspectives (TV 55, 61, 156).
The conception of ‘one thing’ (including all these appearances of different size
and form) is of a higher logical category than things in the naked scene of his
own particular ideas. In accordance with the Atomistic Principle he therefore
rejected such a concept of ‘one thing’ in the Three Dialogues as an ‘abstracted Idea
of Identity’ (3D, 247–249).
The Association Thesis illustrates the difficulty. It teaches that we connect
different observations, because ‘they have been observ’d to go together’. So, if we
have not observed b to follow a, then a will not ‘suggest’ the appearance of b (TV
25). Yet we are able to predict fairly well how an object will look even from a
perspective we never tried. How?
Berkeley’s first answer – outside the field of psychology – was presented
towards the end of the Theory of Vision. From the theological assumption that
‘the proper Objects of Vision constitute an Universal Language of the Author of
Nature, whereby we are instructed how to regulate our Actions’ (TV 147, 3rd
ed.), he developed a metaphysical doctrine of perception in the Principles and
the Three Dialogues on the theme of seeing things in God’s mind (P 66). A
question for further studies is, if Berkeley developed a second answer – within
the field of psychology?
The question – far beyond the limited scope of the present chapter – is, if
Berkeley could explain the conditioning processes between sensations and
perceptions in The Theory of Vision Vindicated (1733), once he, in De Motu
(1721), completed his atomistic approach with an abstract or theoretical part of
science, in which he accepted abstract notions of theoretical (‘mathematical’)
laws (notiones abstractæ mathematicorum, DM 71)?15
Notes
1 Hume, D. (1978), A Treatise of Human Nature, L. A. Selby-Bigge (ed), 2nd ed.,

Oxford: Clarendon Press. Introduction, paragraph 4. Mill, J. S. (1842), ‘Bailey on
Berkeley’s theory of vision’, reprinted in Dissertations and Discussions. London:
Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1867, vol. 2, pp. 84–91, 84–5.
2 In Principles 42, Berkeley considered the objection to his immaterialism ‘that we see
things actually without or at a distance from us, and which consequently do not
Exist in the Mind’, and answered that, ‘The Consideration of this Difficulty [how it is
that we perceive Distance and Things placed at a Distance by Sight] it was that gave
birth to my Essay towards a new Theory of Vision’. He added that the merit of this
book was to show, ‘That the proper Objects of Sight neither Exist without the
Mind, nor are the Images of External Things’ with the conclusion that ‘the Ideas of
Sight . . . do not Suggest or mark out to us Things actually Existing at a Distance’
(P 42–44, cp. 116). Already before the Principles was published, Berkeley wrote, in a
letter to Percival, dated 1 March 1710, that ‘the usefulness’ of the Theory of Vision
would be proved ‘in a treatise I have now in the press’. And twenty years later, he said
in a letter to Samuel Johnson (to which he enclosed copies of the Theory of Vision,
the Principles, and the Three Dialogues): ‘I could wish that all the things I have
published on these philosophical subjects were read in the order wherein I published
them . . . to take in the design and connexion of them’ (Works 8:31 and 2:294).
3 Bailey, S. (1842), A Review of Berkeley’s Theory of Vision, Designed to Show the
Unsoundness of that Celebrated Speculation. London: James Ridsway,
Piccadilly, p. 5ff.
4 Atherton distinguishes between ‘idealism’ and ‘immaterialism’. ‘Idealism’ means that
sensing or perceiving is identified with the object sensed or perceived (Atherton, M.
(1990), Berkeley’s Revolution in Vision. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press,
232–4). Charles McCracken objected that this definition of ‘idealism’ leaves out the
crucial question of ‘what is seen or what is felt’, as distinct from ‘the seeing it or
feeling it’ (McCracken, C. J. (1995), ‘Godless immaterialism: On Atherton’s Berkeley’
in R. G. Muehlmann (ed), Berkeley’s Metaphysics. Structural, Interpretive, and

Critical Essays. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, pp. 249–60, 252).
‘Immaterialism’ is defined as ‘a theory about what ideas represent . . . it claims
that ideas represent only other ideas’, visual ideas representing tactual ideas
(Atherton 1990: 9, 233 et passim). McCracken objected that, if ‘immaterialism’ is so
defined, it is not about ‘the nature of the sensory object’. ‘So the problem of the
status of the object perceived is unresolved’ (McCracken 1995, 254). Atherton
concluded that the Theory of Vision expresses a complete ‘idealistic immaterialism’
without any theological assumptions (Atherton, M. (1995), ‘Berkeley without
God’ in R. G. Muehlmann (ed), Berkeley’s Metaphysics. Structural, Interpretive, and
Critical Essays. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, pp. 231–48).
McCracken asked rhetorically what difference would there be between Berkeley’s
immaterialism ‘without God’ and ‘a purely phenomenalistic theory like Mill’s’?
(McCracken 1995, 254–7).
5 For the sense of ‘sensible object’ in this context, see the section on ‘The atomistic
approach’.
6 We do not know exactly how King formulated his criticism, but Berkeley says in a
letter to Percival, dated in March 1710 that he ‘endeavoured to answer the objections
of the Archbishop of Dublin’ (William King, in the appendix to the second edition of
the Theory of Vision (Works 8:31)).
7 Atherton, 1990: 3, 15–16, 20, 54–6, 86–8, 202.
8 See the Appendix to the 2nd edition of the Theory of Vision.
9 It is an interesting task to follow the development from the uncontroversial
statements in the Theory of Vision that visual sensations are ‘not without the Mind’
(TV 43, 81, 95, 117–18), to the controversial immaterialist thesis in the Principles
and the Three Dialogues, but that is a task far outside the scope of the present
chapter.
10 John Locke, for instance, defines ‘a sensible point’ as ‘the least Particle of Matter or
Space we can discern, which is ordinarily about a Minute, and to the sharpest eyes
seldom less than thirty Seconds of a Circle, whereof the Eye is the centre’ (Locke, J.
([1689]1975), An Essay concerning Human Understanding. P. H. Nidditch (ed).
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd ed., 2.15.9).
11 When Berkeley speaks about the ‘Situation of Objects’ (TV 1), he is talking about
pure visuals situated or located in the visual sphere, or pure tactile sensations
situated in the tactile sphere.
12 For different aspects of the Proportionality Relation, see TV 35, 59, 68, 72, 73, 77, 78,
111, 131, 156.
13 I have chosen the elegant explanation in TVV 55–56 instead of the more
complicated account in the Theory of Vision.
14 This is the one-factor explanation Berkeley offered in the first edition of the Theory
of Vision. For the difference between the first and later editions on this point, see
Berman D. (1985), ‘Berkeley and the moon illusions’, Revue internationale de

philosophie, 154, 215–22.
15 I wish to express my gratitude to Georges Dicker and Richard Brook for helpful
comments on an earlier version of this chapter. I am grateful to the Hultengrens
Fond, Lund University, for a grant that made it possible to finish this chapter.
6
Berkeley’s Treatise Concerning the Principles of

Human Knowledge
Samuel C. Rickless
Berkeley’s Principles, published in 1710 when he was twenty-five years old and
revised in 1734, is a wonderful, engaging and sometimes frustrating work that
articulates and defends a thesis that has been widely reviled at least in part
because it has been widely misunderstood; namely, the claim (call it ‘idealism’)
that sensible objects (tables and chairs, apples and pears) are no more than
collections of ideas that can exist only in the minds that perceive them, and,
more generally, the claim that the only things that exist in the universe are minds
and their ideas. Berkeley originally intended the work to have two parts, with
Part I devoted to his theory of mind and body and Part II devoted to the
application of the principles announced in Part I to theology and morality
(among other matters). Unfortunately for us, Berkeley lost the manuscript of
Part II during his travels in Italy in 1716, and much later (in 1729) pithily wrote
to his friend, the American philosopher Samuel Johnson, that he ‘never had
leisure since to do so disagreeable a thing as writing twice on the same subject’
(Works 2: 282). Those who are interested in what Berkeley might have included
in Part II should consult Alciphron (1732) and Siris (1744).
The Principles consists of an Introduction, followed by 156 numbered
sections that Berkeley himself indicates should be divided into three parts, with
P 1–33 devoted to metaphysics (the theory of what exists) and epistemology (the
theory of what is and can be known about what exists), P 34–84 (aside from an
extended digression at P 67–81) devoted to answering objections to his theory,
and P 85–156 devoted to drawing out the consequences and advantages of
his theory.
99
Introduction: Against the ‘Doctrine of Abstraction’
Among Berkeley’s predecessors, sceptics such as Michel de Montaigne

(1533–1592) and Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), picking up on the work of Sextus
Empiricus (ca. 160–210), had argued that there are good reasons for us not to
trust our senses, and John Locke (1632–1704) had claimed in An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding (1689) that we should ‘sit down in a quiet
Ignorance of those Things, which, upon Examination, are found to be beyond
the reach of our Capacities’ (I.i.4), including the nature or essence of physical
things. In the ‘Published Introduction’ to the Principles (itself divided into 25
sections), Berkeley claims that we have a strong desire for knowledge, that surely
God (assuming he exists) would not have given us such a strong desire if he had
made it impossible or very difficult for us to know much of anything about the
world, and that ‘the high-road of plain, common sense’ is right to suppose that we
should believe the evidence of our senses (PI 1–3). Berkeley spends much of the
rest of the Introduction attacking the one doctrine that he finds ‘to have
occasioned innumerable errors and difficulties in almost all parts of knowledge’,
namely, that ‘the mind hath a power of framing abstract ideas or notions of
things’ (PI 6). If we rid ourselves of the Doctrine of Abstraction, says Berkeley,
we will be better able to understand what the world is really like and what can be
known about it.
The Doctrine of Abstraction is the view that among ideas, i.e. those entities
immediately perceived by means of the senses or the imagination, some are by
their very nature general, applying, when they do, to many things at once. By
contrast, Berkeley insists that all existing entities, including ideas, are intrinsically
particular. As Berkeley sees it, his predecessors (notably Locke) take themselves
to have discovered two ways of forming abstract ideas: what we might call
‘singling’ abstraction and ‘generalizing’ abstraction. By singling abstraction, we
mentally separate one idea from others with which it is united in our experience.
This is supposed to happen, for example, when we mentally separate colour from
extension. By generalizing abstraction, we mentally separate one idea from its
particular determinations, as when we think of a colour but no particular colour.
Berkeley’s main argument against ideas formed by singling abstraction is that it
is impossible to ‘conceive separately those qualities which it is impossible should
exist so separated’: for example, if no sensible object can exist unperceived, then
it is impossible to mentally separate the idea of a sensible object from the idea of
its being perceived. His main argument against ideas formed by generalizing
abstraction (but also against some ideas formed by singling abstraction, as when
Berkeley’s Principles 101
colour is supposedly mentally separated from extension) is that he ‘cannot by

any effort of thought conceive’ them: for example, ‘whatever hand or eye I
imagine, it must have some particular shape and colour’ (PI 10). Exactly how
Berkeley supposes the Doctrine of Abstraction to be responsible for errors that
have driven philosophers to scepticism is something that he discusses here and
there in the main text of the Principles, and is something we will come back to.
Main text
P 1–33 divides naturally into four parts. In P 1–7, Berkeley argues that all sensible
objects (such as tables and chairs, as well as their sensible qualities, such as colour
and shape) are ideas or collections of ideas, and that the only things in the worlds
are minds and ideas. In P 8–21, Berkeley argues that materialism, the thesis that
the world contains material substances, is necessarily false because the very
concept of material substance is incoherent, that the Doctrine of Abstraction is
at fault for making materialism seem philosophically palatable, and that
materialism leads naturally to scepticism, as well as ‘numberless controversies
and disputes’ in both philosophy (including natural philosophy, i.e. science) and
religion. In P 22–23, Berkeley attempts what appears (erroneously, I believe) to
be a self-standing argument (often called the ‘Master Argument’) for idealism.
And, following a paragraph (P 24) summarizing the result of his anti-materialist
arguments, Berkeley devotes P 25–33 to an argument for the existence of God.
Sections 1–7: The proof of idealism

Berkeley tries three ways of establishing idealism in P 1–7. In P 1, he claims that
sensible things (such as apples) are combinations or collections of sensible
qualities (such as colour, taste, smell, shape and texture) and, presupposing that
such qualities are just ideas, concludes that all the ‘objects of human knowledge
are . . . ideas’. In P 3, he argues that idealism follows from the proper understanding
of the meaning of the word ‘exists’. For, he argues, to say that a table exists when
one is in its presence is to say that one perceives it (by sight or touch), and to say
that a table exists when one is not in its presence is to say either that if one were
in its presence one might perceive it or that some other mind perceives it (even
while one is not oneself perceiving it). He concludes that the esse (or being) of
sensible things (such as tables) is percipi (to be perceived), and hence that
sensible things must be ideas. In P 4, he argues that sensible things (by definition)
are ‘the things we perceive by sense’, that we do not perceive anything ‘besides
our own ideas or sensations’, and hence that sensible things are no more than
ideas or sensations.
Each of these arguments is problematic, in ways that Berkeley almost certainly
came to recognize. (It is worth remembering that Berkeley wrote the Principles
when still a very young man.) Concerning the first argument, it is far from
obvious that apples, say, are just collections of qualities. Berkeley’s opponents
(including the followers of Aristotle (384–322 BCE ), René Descartes (1596–
1650) or Locke) would have said that apples are substances, things that have
qualities, things in which qualities inhere. In addition, it is far from obvious that
sensible qualities themselves (colour, shape and so on) are nothing but ideas, that
they cannot exist unperceived. Interestingly, in the first of his Three Dialogues
Between Hylas and Philonous (1713), published three years after the Principles
and designed to ‘treat more clearly and fully of certain principles laid down in
[the Principles], and to place them in a new light’ (3D: 167–68), Berkeley tries to
solve this problem by providing explicit arguments for both of the premises of
the argument in P 1, arguments that also underpin acceptance of the premises of
the argument in P 4. As for the argument from P 3, Berkeley drops it and never
once returns to it.
Berkeley recognizes, of course, that hardly any of his predecessors accepts
idealism. But he diagnoses this philosophical mistake as the product of
unjustified adherence to the Doctrine of Abstraction (P 5). Acceptance of the
possibility of singling abstraction suggests the possibility of mentally separating
the idea of the existence of a sensible object from the idea of its being perceived.
But Berkeley accepts that if the idea of X can be mentally separated from the idea
of Y, then X and Y can exist apart in reality. So if the idea of a sensible object’s
existing were mentally separable from the idea of its being perceived, then it
would be possible in reality for a sensible object to exist unperceived, and hence
idealism would be false. But if, as Berkeley has already argued in the Introduction,
the Doctrine of Abstraction is false, then it can provide no reason for thinking
that idealism is false.
In P 2, Berkeley argues that the existence of ideas entails the existence of
‘something which knows or perceives them’, namely minds (spirits, souls, selves).
He also takes himself to have shown the following by P 4: (i) that the entire
sensible world is a world of ideas, (ii) that minds are substances (things that can
exist independently of anything else, except perhaps for God), (iii) that ideas are
not substances (because they depend for their existence on minds) and (iv) that
the only possible substances must be either minds or among the things that
minds perceive by sense. It then follows directly from (i)–(iv) that ‘there is not
any other substance than spirit, or that which perceives’ (P 7). (This is a kind of
substance-monism, the view that there is only one kind of substance. This view
should be contrasted with Descartes’s substance-dualism, according to which
there are two fundamentally different kinds of substances, immaterial minds
and material bodies.) And if, for Berkeley, the only existing things are minds,
ideas, and the things perceived by minds, it follows from idealism (the thesis that
the things perceived by minds are ideas) that the only existing things are minds
and ideas.
Sections 8–21: Against materialism

In P 8–21, Berkeley criticizes the claim that the world contains material
substances distinct from minds and their ideas. Berkeley’s targets are philosophers
such as Locke, who hold that primary qualities, such as shape, size and motion,
which resemble our ideas of them, exist in or are supported by an unthinking
(material) substance, as well as philosophers such as Galileo Galilei (1564–1642),
who hold in addition that secondary qualities (such as colour, sound, taste, odor,
cold and hot) are themselves ideas existing only in minds. Against the former,
Berkeley insists on what has come to be known as the Likeness Principle, the
claim that ‘an idea can be like nothing but an idea’ (P 8). It follows from this
principle that if ideas of primary qualities resemble the qualities they represent,
then those qualities must themselves be ideas, and hence cannot exist in an
unthinking substance. Against the latter, Berkeley wields his denial of the
Doctrine of Abstraction, holding that primary qualities are mentally inseparable
from secondary qualities (so that, for example, it is impossible to conceive shape
without colour). Given that the mental inseparability of qualities entails their
inseparability in reality, Berkeley concludes that if secondary qualities exist only
in minds, then primary qualities must exist only in minds too; thus, there is no
reason to suppose that there is any unthinking substance external to the mind
serving as a support to sensible qualities (P 10 and P 14–15).
Besides, argues Berkeley, the very concept of material substance is self-
contradictory. For a material substance, by definition, is supposed to be an
unthinking support of sensible qualities. But from the truth of idealism, which
Berkeley takes himself to have already established in P 1–4, it follows that
sensible qualities are ideas. And the only kind of thing capable of supporting an
idea is a mind, or thinking thing. Hence, if material substances were unthinking
supports of sensible qualities, it would follow that material substances are both
unthinking and thinking (P 9). In addition, even leaving aside the truth of
idealism, the claim that a material substance supports sensible qualities cannot
be taken literally (’as when we say that pillars support a building’, P 16), and yet
the non-literal way in which matter is supposed to serve as a support to sensible
qualities is left unexplained. And if, as Locke suggests, the idea of material
substance contains ‘the idea of being in general’ (in addition to the idea of
supporting sensible qualities), then the idea of matter is abstract, and hence, as
Berkeley has already argued in the Introduction, incomprehensible, indeed
impossible (P 17).
Furthermore, argues Berkeley, even if the idea of material substance were
coherent and even if there actually were mind-independent material substances,
it would be impossible for us to know of their existence. For knowledge must be
grounded in either sense or reason. But the information sensation provides is
limited to the entities immediately perceived by sense, namely ideas and their
various combinations; hence, sensation on its own cannot provide us with any
information about supposed material substances. And given that there is no
necessary connection between ideas and material substances, that for all we
know it would be possible for us (as in the case of a comprehensive hallucination)
to have all the ideas we have now in the absence of any material substances, it
follows that reason does not entitle us to infer the existence of material substance
from the existence of the ideas we experience in sensation. Given that all
knowledge is grounded in either sense or reason, it follows that we cannot know
that material substances exist even if they do. Materialism, then, even if coherent,
unavoidably leads to scepticism about the sensible world (P 18–20). By contrast,
of course, if sensible objects are nothing but immediately perceived collections
of ideas of sense, then, given that we can and do know (and indeed, know the
very nature of) the objects of immediate perception, it follows from idealism
that knowledge of the sensible world and of its nature is not only possible, but
also actual. Idealism, then, unlike materialism, endorses the deliverances of
common sense (for example, that there really is a hand in front of me as I type)
and avoids the scourge of scepticism.
Sections 22–24: The master argument

The master argument of P 22–23 is a response to a challenge to idealism that
Berkeley imagines materialists might use in their own defence. The challenge is
that it seems possible (indeed, easy) ‘to imagine trees, for instance, in a park, or
books existing in a closet, and no body by to perceive them’ (P 23). But if this is
possible, then given that what is conceivable is possible, it follows that it is

possible for trees in a park and closeted books to exist unperceived. Yet, if
idealism were true, then such trees and books would be ideas, and since the very
esse of an idea is percipi (P 3), they could not exist unperceived. Berkeley attempts
to meet the challenge by arguing that, despite appearances, it is actually impossible
to imagine any physical object (such as a tree or a book) existing unperceived.
Different scholars have offered different reconstructions of Berkeley’s argument
here, the vast majority of the opinion that it is grossly fallacious. My own view is
that it is a mistake to treat the argument as invalid, and that this mistake derives
from the (understandable, but also mistaken) view (rashly suggested by Berkeley’s
comment that he is ‘content to put the whole upon this issue’ (P 22)) that the
argument is meant to be free-standing and independent of the argument for
idealism in P 1 and P 4. Once it is recognized that the Master Argument assumes
the truth of one of the premises used to establish idealism in these sections
(namely, the assumption that everything conceived by the mind is an idea), it can
be seen as valid, but also secondary in importance to the arguments of P 1–4, if
only because it is not (as is widely assumed) an argument for idealism at all.
Sections 25–33: The proof of God’s existence

Berkeley’s argument for God’s existence in the Principles starts from the
assumption, based on mere introspection of our ideas as purely passive and
inert, that ‘all our ideas . . . are visibly inactive, . . . so that one idea . . . cannot
produce, or make any alteration in another’ (P 25). It follows that extension,
shape and (most importantly) motion, having been shown in P 1–4 to be ideas
themselves, cannot be the cause of anything, and hence cannot be the cause
of our ideas. Yet where there is change, there must be a cause of change. Given
that our ideas are constantly changing, it follows that something must be the
cause of our ideas and of the changes they undergo (P 26). That cause cannot
itself be an idea. But since there are in the world only substances and ideas, it
follows that the cause of our ideas must be a substance. And since there can be
no such thing as material substance, the cause of our ideas (and of the changes
they undergo) must be ‘an incorporeal active substance or spirit’ (P 26). However,
although I am able to imagine new ideas (such as the idea of a centaur) at will,
ideas of sense, unlike ideas of imagination, are not subject to my will: if my eyes
are open and in working order, I cannot help but see hands on the keyboard in
front of me even if I will not to perceive them. Thus, although my mind may be
the cause of my ideas of imagination, some other mind must be the cause of my
ideas of sensation (P 28–29). But my ideas of sensation exhibit a remarkable

‘steadiness, order, and coherence’, as well as admirability. Given that only a
mind of infinite power, wisdom and goodness could cause an immense set of
interconnected beautiful ideas of such remarkable coherence and complexity, it
follows that our ideas of sense are caused by such a mind, that is, it follows that
our ideas of sense are caused by God (P 30–33; see also P 146). This argument for
God’s existence is therefore a version of the standard teleological argument, with
a serious idealist twist.
Sections 34–84: Objections and replies

In P 34–84, Berkeley anticipates and responds to a significant number of
objections to his idealist metaphysics and epistemology. Berkeley numbers these
objections (with the same objection often taking up several consecutive sections),
but sometimes includes two separate objections under the same number, and
sometimes counts as an objection something that is not. The numbered list below
reflects the logic of Berkeley’s argumentation, rather than his explicit numbering.
The first objection Berkeley considers is that idealism entails the unpalatable
consequence that physical objects, being nothing but collections of ideas, are not
real but rather just ‘so many chimeras and illusions’ (P 34). By contrast, it might
be alleged, materialism can make sense of the distinction between reality and
illusion by treating reality as mind-independence while treating illusoriness as
mind-dependence. Berkeley’s answer is that there is a very simple way of
distinguishing between real and chimerical objects within his idealist metaphysics:
an idea or collection of ideas counts as real inasmuch as it is ‘affecting, orderly,
and distinct’, while an idea or collection of ideas counts as chimerical inasmuch
as it is ‘faint, weak, and unsteady’ (P 36). This account of the distinction, as
Berkeley emphasizes, preserves the commonsense belief that sensible objects
(such as the sun, and in general ‘each part of the mundane system’) are real, while
all imagined objects (such as centaurs and fictional characters) are chimerical.
A second objection charges that ‘it sounds very harsh to say’, as Berkeley’s
idealism avers, that ‘we eat and drink ideas, and are clothed with ideas’ (P 38). In
response, Berkeley acknowledges the point, but attributes the harshness to the fact
that the word ‘idea’ is not commonly used to refer to combinations of sensible
qualities. Once it is recognized, as the arguments of P 1–4 presuppose, that sensible
qualities are nothing but ideas and that sensible objects such as food, drink and
clothing are nothing but combinations of sensible qualities, the truth, even if not
the propriety, of the claim that ‘we eat and drink ideas, and are clothed with ideas’
becomes manifest. Moreover, Berkeley maintains, the word ‘idea’ as he uses it

means no more than ‘immediate object of (sense) perception’. So on this usage of
the word ‘idea’, to say that we eat and drink ideas is to say no more than that we eat
and drink things that are immediately perceived (by sense). And this is hardly a
harsh statement that is grating to the common or philosophical ear (P 38).
It should be noted that while the first point (relying on the distinction between
the truth and the propriety of assertoric speech) is reasonable, the second is one
that seems inconsistent with Berkeley’s approach to the establishment of idealism
in the first of the Three Dialogues. For in the first Dialogue, Berkeley’s spokesman,
Philonous, argues for idealism on the strength of four assumptions: (i) that
sensible objects are perceived by sense, (ii) that everything that is perceived by
sense is immediately perceived, (iii) that everything that is immediately perceived
by sense is a sensible quality or collection of sensible qualities, and (iv) that all
sensible qualities are ideas. But if the word ‘idea’, as Berkeley suggests at P 38, is
just synonymous with the phrase ‘immediate object of (sense) perception’, then
idealism would follow directly from (i) and (ii), and both (iii) and (iv) would be
otiose. Given that the first Dialogue treats both (iii) and (iv) as critical premises
in the argument for idealism, Berkeley must be assuming there that the claim
that the immediate objects of sense perception are ideas is a substantive, rather
than a tautological, proposition.
A third objection to idealism is that whereas ideas, being in our minds, are
‘near to us’, many sensible things (such as houses and trees) are seen as being ‘at
a distance from us’. In response, Berkeley makes two points. The first, very
reasonable observation is that ‘in a dream we do oft perceive things as existing at
a great distance off, and yet for all that, those things are acknowledged to have
their existence only in the mind’ (P 42). Berkeley here notices that the proposition
that sensible things are seen as being at a distance does not entail the proposition
that sensible things are at a distance. The second point relies on arguments
Berkeley had just published in An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (1709),
and to which he refers the reader. There he argues that seeing something as being
at a distance is a matter of learning from experience which ‘ideas of touch will be
imprinted in our minds’ after the perception of completely heterogeneous ideas
of sight and the excitation of ‘this or that motion in our own bodies’ (P 44). For
example, as Berkeley might say, to see a computer screen as being at some
distance from me is to know that I will perceive ideas of tangible flatness and
uniform resistance when I experience the kinaesthetic sensation of extending
my hand in a particular direction. In support of this hypothesis, Berkeley notes
that ‘a man born blind, and afterwards made to see, would not, at first sight, think
the things he saw, to be without his mind, or at any distance from him’ (P 43). If
Berkeley is right about what seeing something as being at a distance amounts to
(namely, predicting which ideas of touch will follow upon which ideas of sight
under such-and-such conditions), then seeing a tree, say, as being at some
distance from me is perfectly compatible with the tree’s being no more than a
collection of ideas in my mind.
A fourth objection is that idealism entails the unacceptable consequence that
sensible things ‘are every moment annihilated and created anew’. For if sensible
things (such as the laptop screen I see) are nothing but collections of ideas, then
they cease to exist when they are not perceived. And this means that ‘upon
shutting my eyes [the screen] is reduced to nothing, and barely upon opening
them it is again created’ (P 45). After some ad hominem attacks (in P 46–47) on
some of his intellectual opponents for being forced to accept the same result as
applied to some sensible things (such as light and colors), Berkeley answers the
objection straightforwardly. The fact that I do not perceive the laptop screen
when my eyes are closed does not entail that the screen has ceased to be, for it
might well be that the screen is being perceived by another mind (P 48). Indeed,
if, as Berkeley argues in the second of the Three Dialogues, all sensible things are
perceived by God, then there is no doubt that the screen continues to exist even
when it is unperceived by any finite mind.
A fifth objection, which relies on Scholastic metaphysical assumptions, is that
‘if [as idealists aver] extension and figure [i.e. shape] exist only in the mind, it
follows that the mind is extended and figured’. But, as Berkeley himself accepts, it
is absurd to suppose that the mind is extended or figured. Hence, it is absurd to
suppose that extension and figure are nothing but ideas in the mind. The Scholastics
(and also Cartesians) argue for the first premise of this objection as follows:
(i) extension is an attribute (roughly, a way for a substance to be that is essential to
it) and shape is a mode (roughly, a way for a substance to be that is not essential
to it), (ii) whenever an attribute or mode exists in a substance, it is predicated of
that substance, (iii) to predicate F-ness of X is to say that X is F (e.g. to predicate
strength of Socrates is to say that Socrates is strong); therefore (iv) if extension and
figure exist in the mind, then the mind is extended and figured (P 49).
In response, Berkeley attacks premises (i) and (ii), urging that ‘what
philosophers say of subject and mode . . . seems very groundless and unintelligible’.
Extension and shape are not ways for a body to be; rather, they are constituents
of, or compose, bodies. For, as P 1–4 have already established, a body is no more
than a collection of ideas such as extension and shape. Extension and shape,
therefore, are parts or constituents of bodies, rather than modes or attributes of
bodies. Moreover, extension and shape are not ways for a mind to be, and so
predicable of it even when they exist in it. For extension and shape are ideas,
ideas exist in minds only by being perceived by those minds, and the mere fact
that X perceives Y does not entail that Y is predicable of X.
A sixth objection is that ‘whatever advances have been made . . . in the study of
Nature, do all proceed on the supposition, that . . . matter doth really exist’ (P 50). So
if, as idealists claim, there is and can be no such thing as matter or material substance,
then they must abjure the remarkably explanatorily successful corpuscularian
mechanism at the heart of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century.
Berkeley’s response to this objection is clear and straightforward: whatever
phenomena can be explained on the supposition of corpuscularian mechanism
can just as easily be explained on the basis of an idealist metaphysics. For scientific
explanation, Berkeley claims, is no more than showing ‘why upon such and such
occasions we are affected with such and such ideas’. For example, it might be argued
that it is a law of nature that a heated gas expands. To Berkeley, this simply means
that perception of the idea of heat and, say, the idea of a balloon filled with gas is
invariably attended with perception of the balloon’s expansion. As long as every
corpuscularian mechanistic explanation can be replaced by an equally successful
explanation based on the generalization of an ideational sequence (i.e. on the
instantiation of a law of nature), idealists do no worse than materialists in accounting
for the results of scientific observation and experiment.
A seventh objection is that idealism subverts our ordinary suppositions about
causation. For example, we ordinarily say that ‘fire heats’ and ‘water cools’. But,
strictly speaking, if idealism is true, then fire is one collection of ideas, and water
another. Given that ideas, being inert and passive, are incapable of causing
anything (P 25), it follows that fire cannot be the cause of heat and water cannot
be the cause of cold. If spirits are the only active beings, then we must say instead
that ‘a spirit heats, and so forth’. These results seem absurd on their face: surely it
is the fire (not a mind) that does the heating and the water (not a mind) that does
the cooling (P 51).
Berkeley’s famous response is that ‘in such things [i.e. talk of what causes
what] we ought to think with the learned, and speak with the vulgar [i.e. with the
common folk]’ (P 51). Just as there is no harm in saying that the sun rises even
though (on the Copernican hypothesis) it does not actually rise, so there is no
harm in saying that fire heats or water cools even though it is acknowledged that,
strictly speaking, only a spirit can heat or cool anything. The use of language is
best suited to the ends of life, so if it advances our ends to speak as if sensible
objects are causes, then such talk is appropriate even if it is false (P 52). Besides,
argues Berkeley, idealism is superior to alternative occasionalist materialist

systems, such as the theory of Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715), which agree
with idealism in robbing sensible objects of causal power; for occasionalist
materialism must suppose that God has created a number of material substances
to no purpose, given that it would have been just as easy for him to have produced
directly what those material substances are held to occasion (P 53).
An eighth objection is that the existence of matter is almost universally
accepted, and it seems wrongheaded to suppose that so many people could be so
wrong about this. In response, Berkeley makes two points. First, he argues that
this would not be the only time that a vast number of people had accepted
something that, properly considered, is meaningless or self-contradictory (P 54):
witness the almost universal acceptance of the metaphysics of subject, mode and
attribute for hundreds of years in the Schools. Second, he points out, quite
reasonably, that universal acceptance of a proposition ‘is but a weak argument of
its truth’, especially given the ‘vast number of prejudices and false opinions . . .
every where embraced with the utmost tenaciousness’, both ‘by the unreflecting
(which are the far greater) part of mankind’ and by ‘men of learning’. For example,
the proposition that the Earth is at rest has been accepted by almost everyone who
ever considered the matter, and yet the proposition is almost surely false (P 55).
Berkeley goes on to explain how it might have come about that philosophers take
the world to contain material substances. Philosophers, avoiding the ‘vulgar’ error
of thinking that ideas can exist outside the mind, recognize, rightly, that their
ideas of sense must be caused by something outside their minds. They then infer,
wrongly, that the cause of their ideas must be material things that resemble their
ideas, in part because their experience is so uniform that it does not lead them to
think that their ideas are caused by someone’s will, and in part because the real
cause of their ideas (namely, God) is not singled out in their experience ‘by any
particular finite collection of sensible ideas’ (P 56–57).
A ninth objection is that idealism is incompatible with the truths of science
and mathematics. For idealism entails that whatever is not perceived does not
exist; so, for example, if the motion of the Earth is not perceived, then the Earth
does not move; and hence, given that we do not perceive the Earth to move, it
follows that the Earth is at rest. But this result contradicts the best astronomical
theory. Berkeley claims in reply that to say that the Earth moves is to assert a
counterfactual conditional of the following sort: ‘if we were placed in such-and-
such circumstances, we would perceive the Earth to move’. And the truth of this
counterfactual conditional is perfectly consistent with the result of conjoining
idealism with the fact that we do not perceive the Earth’s motion.
A tenth objection is that if, as Berkeley holds, God is the cause of all motion
and other natural effects in the universe, what reason could he have had to create
‘an innumerable multitude of bodies and machines framed with the most
exquisite art, which . . . serve to explain abundance of phenomena’, when he could
have produced the same effects directly (P 60)? If no such reason can be found,
then idealism entails that God acts without a purpose, a result that contradicts
God’s providence. In reply, Berkeley insists (at P 62) that the vast and intricate
assemblage of interconnected natural machinery is needed to produce effects in
accordance with the laws of nature (rules that specify which ideas are regularly
followed by which other ideas – P 30), laws that themselves make it possible for
us ‘to regulate our actions for the benefit of life’ (P 31). There is therefore a
relatively straightforward connection between God’s providence and his decision
to create such a ‘wonderfully fine and subtle’ ‘clockwork of Nature’ (P 60).
At this point in the Principles, Berkeley engages in an extended digression (P
67–81) on the question of whether there might not be a way to save materialism
from the objections leveled at the doctrine at P 8–21. Berkeley imagines the
materialist retreating, first to the claim that matter is an ‘inert senseless substance,
that exists without the mind, or unperceived, which is the occasion of our ideas,
or at the presence whereof God is pleased to excite ideas in us’ (P 67), and second
to the claim that matter is ‘an unknown somewhat, neither substance nor accident,
spirit nor idea, inert, thoughtless, indivisible, immoveable, unextended, existing
in no place’ (P 80), but still something describable as a ‘quiddity, entity, or
existence’ (P 81; original emphasis). In response, Berkeley provides further
criticisms of the occasionalism presupposed by the first line of retreat, and
ridicules the second line of retreat as involving the reduction of the idea of
matter to the idea of nothingness, given that the positive ideas of quiddity, entity
and existence (in general) are purportedly abstract ideas that are, in actual fact,
inconceivable and impossible (see PI ). (In the first of the Three Dialogues,
Berkeley collects the objections to materialism that exist separately at P 8–21 and
P 67–81 into a single, sustained anti-materialist argument.)
The eleventh and final objection Berkeley considers is that idealism is
incompatible with Scriptural reports that real sensible objects exist and that
miracles (such as the changing of water into wine) have taken place (P 82).
Berkeley makes short work of this objection, pointing out that idealism is fully
compatible with (indeed, entails) the claim that real sensible objects exist, and
with the claim that Jesus transformed water into wine. After all, idealism entails
that sensible objects are collections of ideas and, given that these ideas exist, it
follows that sensible objects exist. And, according to idealism, to say that Jesus
changed water into wine is to say that Jesus replaced one collection of ideas with
another collection of ideas. Moreover, the water that Jesus changed, as well as the
wine into which Jesus changed it, were both very real, inasmuch as the ideas of
which they were composed were affecting, orderly and distinct (see P 34–36).
The rest of the Principles is devoted to discussion of the advantages and
consequences of idealism, considered relative to its major opponent, materialism.
Berkeley divides his discussion into two main parts, each devoted to one of the two
kinds of beings he takes to exist: ideas (P 85–134) and spirits (P 135–156). He
begins the first part by pointing out two general advantages of idealism over
materialism, one philosophical and the other theological: (i) that the former is
inconsistent with, while the latter naturally leads to, scepticism about the existence
and nature of sensible objects (P 85–91), and (ii) that the former avoids the atheism,
idolatry and Christian heresies that are natural outgrowths of the latter (P 92–96).
He then moves on to the advantages of idealism over materialism with respect to
the theory of ideas and sensible objects in the realms of science (P 97–99, 101–
117), morals (P 100), arithmetic (P 118–122) and geometry (P 123–132), followed
by a brief summary (P 133–134) of the main points argued for in P 85–132. In the
second part (P 135–156) Berkeley also divides his discussion in two, first focusing
on knowledge of the existence of finite spirits (P 135–145), and then addressing
knowledge of the existence of the only infinite spirit, namely, God (P 146–156).
Sections 85–91: Philosophical advantages, and restatement,

of idealism
Materialism, as Berkeley reminds us, is beset with problems for which its
adherents struggled to find solutions: ‘Whether corporeal substance can think?
Whether matter be infinitely divisible? And how it operates on spirit?’ (P 85).
Locke answers the first question positively, while Descartes answers it negatively.
Descartes answers the second question positively, while Epicureans (such as
Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655)) answer it negatively. And while materialist monists
(such as Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and staunch Epicureans) explain the
operation of body on spirit (and vice versa) as involving the transfer of motion
from one material substance to another, materialist dualists (including Descartes
and Locke) throw up their hands when asked (as Descartes was asked by Princess
Elisabeth of Bohemia (1630–1714)) to explain how an immaterial substance and
a material substance are supposed to causally interact. As Berkeley emphasizes,
idealism avoids all of these disturbing questions and debates inasmuch as it
entails the non-existence, indeed, the impossibility, of matter (P 85 – see P 9).
In the next few sections (P 86–88), Berkeley repeats the arguments of P 18–20
that materialism leads to scepticism. If material objects existing outside our
minds can stay the same while our ideas of them vary, if it is possible for us to
have ideas of material objects (as in dreams and hallucinations) that are not
really there to be perceived, then it is possible for our senses to mislead us and,
beyond that, it becomes impossible for us to know whether our ideas really
conform to an external reality or even whether there is an external reality for our
ideas to conform to (P 86–87). Besides, common sense teaches us to place total
faith in our senses; and materialism, which leads us to distrust common sense,
thereby ‘makes philosophy ridiculous in the eyes of the world’ (P 88). By contrast,
of course, idealism, which teaches that sensible things are nothing more than
ideas or collections thereof, entails that sensible things, like all ideas in our minds,
are perfectly known, both as to their existence and as to their intrinsic properties.
Berkeley then ends his discussion of the philosophical advantages of idealism
over materialism by restating the main tenets of idealism (P 89–91): that there
are two distinct kinds of things or beings, namely, spirits and ideas (see P 1–2);
that the former are active, enduring, indivisible and independent beings (see
P 27), while the latter are inert, fleeting, divisible and dependent beings (see
P 25); that there are, in addition to things, relations and actions; that we know of
our own existence ‘by inward feeling or reflexion’ and of the existence of other
spirits ‘by reason’, i.e. by inferring their existence from the signs of their operations
or from the ideas they produce in our minds (see P 145); that ‘an idea can be like
nothing but an idea’ (see P 8), and hence that our ideas cannot resemble anything
existing outside of all minds; that our ideas of sense are produced in us by another
spirit in which they themselves exist (namely, God – see P 29–31), and in this way
may be called ‘external’; and that even though sensible things are ideas or
collections thereof, the fact that they depend on minds for their existence does
not derogate from their reality (P 33–36).
Sections 92–96: Theological advantages of idealism

In these sections, Berkeley argues that materialism, unlike idealism, conduces to
atheism. For first, some materialists think that because nothing comes from
nothing, God could not have created matter from nothing, and therefore matter
must be ‘uncreated and coeternal with him’ (P 92). This contradicts the idea that
God created the universe and that he is the only eternal, necessary being. Second,
monistic materialists hold that because spirits are material and all material
substances are divisible, spirits themselves must be divisible, and therefore
‘subject to corruption as the body’, i.e. naturally mortal. Third, materialists (such
as ‘Epicureans, Hobbists, and the like’) who take matter (a ‘self-existent, stupid,
unthinking substance’) to be at the origin of life must deny the existence of any
sort of providence or ‘inspection of a superior mind over the affairs of the world’
(P 93). By contrast, Berkeley holds, idealism does not conflict with the basic
tenets of Christian theology. For idealists are not plagued by any worry about
how matter could have been created, given that they deny the existence and
possibility of matter; they hold that the mind is immaterial and indivisible, and
thus incorruptible and naturally immortal (P 141); and the argument for God’s
existence (at P 25–33) entails that God supervises the created universe with
wisdom and benevolence.
Berkeley also notes that materialism provides support for idolatry, i.e. the
worship of sensible beings (such as ‘the sun, moon, and stars’), particularly if
these things are thought to be the source or support of human life. By contrast,
idealism tells us that sensible beings are nothing but collections of ideas in our
minds created in us by God. Given that ideas are fleeting, dependent beings and
that there is no pre-existing disposition to worship beings of this kind, idealism
does not conduce to idolatry, but conduces rather to the worship of the cause of
such a wondrous system of ideas, namely, God (P 94).
Finally, Berkeley argues that materialism is difficult to reconcile with the
Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body after death, and also (in ways
that Berkeley does not explain) conduces to Socinianism (a system of Christian
heresies, including the denial of Christ’s full divinity, the denial of natural
immortality, and the denial of the Trinity – three persons in one substance). For,
in particular, if the human body is a material substance composed of matter that
is scattered after death, possibly entering other human bodies, then it is difficult
to understand how all of the matter composing a human body immediately
before death could be collected to reshape it after death. By contrast, if, as
idealism holds, the human body is nothing but a collection of ideas, then it
becomes easy to understand how the very same body that existed in the mind of
God before death could exist in the mind of God after death (P 95).
Sections 97–117: Advantages of idealism in science and morals

Berkeley begins this part of the Principles by outlining the felicitous consequences
of his denial of the Doctrine of Abstraction. He charges that this doctrine is
responsible for numerous ‘difficulties’ (P 98) and ‘great extravagancies’ (P 99). In
particular, Berkeley argues, the attempt to abstract the idea of time from the idea
of a succession of ideas in our minds (something impossible, because what time

is is the succession of ideas in our minds) leads to the natural but wrongheaded
thought, famously articulated by Augustine of Hippo (354–430), that the nature
of time is inexplicable (P 97). Other difficulties ensue if it is held, as many
proponents of abstraction do, that time, extension, and motion are infinitely
divisible (P 98–99). (We may presume here that Berkeley is thinking of Zeno’s
paradoxes.) As for morality, Berkeley claims that the misguided attempt to form
and analyse abstract ideas of happiness, goodness, justice and virtue (as in the
work of Aristotle, Hobbes, and Locke) has made it more difficult to inculcate
morality and has resulted in the befuddling of moralists, who, we may presume,
would be better served studying concrete examples of moral behaviour, such as
Christ’s actions as described in the New Testament (P 100).
Berkeley now turns to more particular difficulties faced by materialists
who want to make room for science. In his Essay, Locke writes that humans are
incapable of scientific knowledge, in large part because the real internal
constitution of any material substance (i.e. the primary qualities of the substance’s
insensible parts that account for all of its observable properties) is beyond the
ken of human beings. Berkeley picks up on this, noting that for the Lockean
materialist ‘the internal qualities, and constitution of every the meanest object, is
hid from our view’ (P 101). But whereas materialism cannot in fact make room
for scientific knowledge, idealism can: for idealist science tells us that sensible
things are all ideas, things that are in their very nature transparent to the human
mind, and that the laws of nature are no more than the rules in accordance with
which God excites ideas in our minds, rules that can be discovered by observation
and experiment. Berkeley goes on to say that while mechanist materialists in
particular struggle to explain how the motion of (insensible) matter causes the
observable properties of sensible things, idealists who claim that motion is an
idea (and hence, inactive) avoid the difficulty altogether (P 102).
Berkeley recognizes that some materialists, such as Isaac Newton (1642–
1727), strive to explain the motion of some bodies (such as the tides and the
fact that unsupported objects fall to Earth), as well as the cohesion of their
parts, by postulating a universal law of attraction or gravitation. But this
hypothesis faces two major problems. The first is that the law of attraction
does not so much explain as simply redescribe the motion of bodies (P 103).
The second is that attraction is not in fact a universal phenomenon: as
counterexamples to the purported law, Berkeley cites three observations: the
immobility of ‘the fixed stars’, ‘the perpendicular growth of plants’, and ‘the
elasticity of the air’ (P 106).
Setting himself against the popular research program of materialist

corpuscularian mechanism, Berkeley insists that science should treat phenomena
as signs, rather than as causes, of other phenomena, signs that God uses to inform
us of what will be beneficial and what will be harmful to us. Properly conceived,
then, science should investigate final causes, that is, the reasons or purposes lying
behind God’s decision to cause the ideas he does, rather than the efficient causes
hypothesized by materialists (P 107–109).
Berkeley then completes his account of the relative advantages of idealism by
outlining (in P 110–117) some of the problems faced by the theory that Newton
had advanced in his Principia, the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy,
published in 1687. The theory of the Principia assumes the existence of absolute
space, absolute place (position in absolute space) and absolute motion (motion
of a body from one absolute place to another), as well as absolute time (already
discussed under the rubric of the abstract idea of time at P 97–98). But, so
Berkeley argues, the ideas of absolute motion and place, if abstracted from ideas
of relative motion and place, are, like all abstract ideas, incomprehensible and
impossible (P 114), as is the idea of absolute space ‘exclusive of all body’ (P 116).
Here, then, is yet another place in which the Doctrine of Abstraction leads even
the most gifted scientific investigators into a conceptual morass from which
their theories cannot be extricated.
Sections 118–134: Advantages of idealism in arithmetic and geometry

Turning now to mathematics, Berkeley explains some of the relative advantages
of idealism over materialism, first in arithmetic, the study of number (P 118–
122), and then in geometry, the study of extension (P 123–132). The main
problems arising in arithmetic derive from the Doctrine of Abstraction, which
leads mathematicians (and philosophers, such as Locke) to believe that it is
possible to abstract the idea of unity from any particular idea or collection of
ideas, and thence form abstract ideas of numbers greater than one by repeating
the idea of unity. But, of course, as Berkeley has already argued (see PI and P 13),
the Doctrine of Abstraction is false and the purported abstract idea of unity
necessarily non-existent (P 119–120). As Berkeley then goes on to argue,
arithmetic is a language composed of names that are used to signify particular
things or groups of things, a language whose usefulness derives from the rules of
computation with numerals and other arithmetical notation that enable us to
derive practical results that ‘direct us how to act with relation to things, and
dispose rightly of them’ (P 121–122).
In the case of geometry, the main problem arises from the Euclidean
supposition that finite extension is infinitely divisible. This supposition, as
Berkeley has already argued in P 98–99, leads to what he here refers to as ‘amusing
geometrical paradoxes, which have such a direct repugnancy to the plain
common sense of mankind’, possibly including the Zenonian argument that it is
impossible for an arrow to cover a finite distance in a finite period of time (P
123). What, then, accounts for the problematic supposition? Berkeley gives a
twofold explanation. First, he charges that those who think they can construct an
abstract, rarified idea of extension ‘may be persuaded’ of a finite extension’s
infinite divisibility. Second, he charges that corpuscularian materialists may ‘be
brought to admit’ that any given finite length has infinitely many parts ‘too small
to be discerned’ (P 125). This provides Berkeley with yet another reason to
characterize the effects of abstractionism and materialism on the seemingly
well-founded discipline of geometry as intellectually pernicious.
Berkeley then offers an interesting account of how those who are tempted by
the Doctrine of Abstraction arrive at the conviction that finite extension is
infinitely divisible. He begins by noting that geometrical reasoning treats
particular finite lengths (such as an inch) as signs or representatives of much
longer finite lengths (such as a mile). He then hypothesizes that abstractionists
fail to distinguish between signifier and signified, and thereby come to see
relatively short finite lengths as containing many more parts than can be
discerned by sense. It is then but a short step to the conclusion that even the
shortest finite length is divisible into infinitely many parts (P 126–128), and
indeed to the even more absurd conclusion that each of the infinitesimally small
parts of a given finite length is itself ‘subdivisible into an infinity of other parts’
(P 130). But, as Berkeley notes, the fact that the purported axiom of infinite
divisibility is logically independent of the other axioms of Euclidean geometry
entails that it ‘may be pared off ’ from the rest of the system ‘without prejudice to
truth’, and without losing ‘whatever is useful in geometry and promotes the
benefit of human life’ (P 131). Moreover, as Berkeley avers (without evidence),
there is no theorem of geometry that requires for its proof the supposition of
extension’s infinite divisibility (P 132).
Sections 135–145: Idealism and the knowledge of finite spirits

Berkeley argues that idealism is superior to materialism in respect of the
possibility of knowledge of one’s own mind. A mind or spirit, so Berkeley has
already argued, is, by its very nature, an ‘active thinking substance’, a substance
that ‘knows or perceives [ideas], and exercises divers operations, as willing,

imagining, remembering about them’ (P 136 and P 2). Indeed, Berkeley adds,
what the word ‘spirit’ means is ‘that which thinks, wills, and perceives’ (P 138);
hence a spirit is something whose very existence consists in ‘perceiving ideas and
thinking’ (P 139 – see also P 98). Most materialists, Berkeley claims, think that
knowledge in general is representational, that knowledge of X is possible only if
one perceives an idea of X. (Locke, for example, claims in Book IV of the Essay
that knowledge of X’s existence involves perception of an agreement between an
idea of X and the idea of existence, while knowledge that X is F involves
perception of an agreement between an idea of X and the idea of F-ness.) Most
materialists, then, are committed to the view that knowledge of a mind (whether
of its existence or of its properties) is possible only when one has an idea that
represents it. But, as Berkeley emphasizes, materialists have struggled to identify
ideas that represent spirits (P 137). This, as it turns out, is no surprise: for, by the
Likeness Principle (P 8), it is impossible for an idea to resemble anything but an
idea; hence, because representation presupposes resemblance, it is impossible for
an idea to represent anything but an idea; and, therefore, since minds are not
ideas, it is impossible for an idea to represent a mind (P 135 – see also P 27 and
P 89). It follows that the materialist is committed to the impossibility of self-
knowledge. By contrast, Berkeley holds that self-knowledge is possible, indeed
actual, for ‘we comprehend our own existence by inward feeling or reflexion’
(P 89).
Berkeley anticipates an objection based on a theory of meaning that had
become standard among materialists, and had been championed by Locke in
particular. This is the theory that the meaning of any categorematic term (i.e. a
term belonging to one of the ten categories of Aristotelian philosophy of
language: substance, quantity, quality, relatives, somewhere, sometime, being in a
position, having, acting and being acted upon) is an idea that represents the
term’s referent. If this ideational theory of meaning is true, then terms referring
to minds are meaningless if, as Berkeley claims, ideas cannot represent minds (P
139). But, of course, as everyone allows, terms referring to minds are meaningful.
Berkeley’s response, admittedly not stated in the clearest terms at P 139–140, but
stated quite clearly and forcefully in the Introduction, is to reject the ideational
theory of meaning, hook, line and sinker. For the ‘chief . . . end of language’,
Berkeley writes, is not ‘the communicating of ideas marked by words’, but rather
‘the raising of some passion, the exciting to, or deterring from an action, [or] the
putting the mind in some particular disposition’. Thus, ‘when a Schoolman tells
me Aristotle hath said it, all I conceive he means by it, is to dispose me to embrace
his opinion with the deference and submission which custom has annexed to
that name’ (PI 20).
But what, then, on Berkeley’s view, is the meaning of the word ‘I’? In the
Principles, Berkeley offers us an answer to this question that might seem initially
unsatisfactory. What he says is that the meaning of ‘I’ is not an idea, but rather a
notion, of my mind (P 142). This seems like trifling with words, a mere matter of
replacing one word (‘idea’) with another (‘notion’), without explanation. But, in
fact, the claim needs to be understood against the background of Berkeley’s
theory of meaning, according to which the meaning of a word such as ‘I’ consists
in the use of the word to elicit passions (‘I’m disappointed in you!’), deter actions
(‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you!’), and so on.
Berkeley emphasizes that knowledge of the existence of other minds is not
acquired in the way that knowledge of the existence of one’s own mind is
acquired: whereas inward feeling or reflexion is sufficient for the latter sort of
knowledge, only reason can provide us with the former sort of knowledge (P 89).
The justification for belief in the existence of other minds (including God)
consists in an inference to the best explanation of ‘several motions, changes, and
combinations of ideas’ in one’s experience (P 145). As Berkeley argues, changes
in our ideas that are produced according to regular, predictable patterns for our
benefit (i.e. the laws of nature) are incontrovertible evidence of the existence of
an infinite mind (P 29–31 – see also P 146). We may reasonably presume, then,
that what Berkeley takes to be sufficient evidence for the existence of other finite
minds consists in changes in our ideas that are irregular, unpredictable, and
sometimes gratuitously harmful.
Sections 146–156: Idealism and knowledge of God

Berkeley ends the Principles, fittingly from his perspective, with a discussion of
the most important piece of knowledge in the idealist system, namely, knowledge
of the existence of God. His aim is twofold: (i) to explain why ‘the existence of
God is far more evidently perceived than the existence of men’ (P 147), and (ii)
to produce the rudiments of a theodicy, an explanation of how it is possible for
God to be the cause of a world that appears full of imperfection and pain.
The first point is straightforward. Berkeley holds that both finite spirits and
God are known through their ‘effects or concomitant signs’ (P 145). But whereas
there are relatively few concomitant signs of finite spirits (namely, ‘the motion of
the limbs’ of the bodies that ‘serve to mark [them] out unto us’ – P 147–148), the
effects produced by God ‘are infinitely more numerous and considerable, than
those ascribed to human agents’ (P 147). For, as Berkeley reminds us, ‘every thing
we see, hear, feel, or any wise perceive by sense [is] a sign or effect of the Power
of God’ (P 148). It follows, then, that ‘nothing can be more evident to any one that
is capable of the least reflexion, than the existence of God’ (P 149).
The second point is that the apparent imperfections and real pain that exist in
the world are not inconsistent with the being and attributes of God. Berkeley
recognizes that the production of natural things is often ‘slow and gradual’, and
that nature is full of ‘monsters, untimely births, fruits blasted in the blossom,
[and] rains falling in desert places’ (P 151). But, he argues, in order to bring about
his perfect providential aims, God has ordained that nature be governed by
simple and general laws with necessary byproducts that give the appearance of
imperfection when narrowly considered (P 151). Moreover, the existence of
some blemishes and defects in nature is required to ‘augment the beauty of the
rest of the creation, as shades in a picture serve to set off the brighter and more
enlightened parts’ (P 152). As for pain, Berkeley argues that ‘in the state we are in
at present [it] is indispensably necessary to our well-being’, and, besides, pain
that may strike us as evil when considered independently of its relation to other
things (as when a leg is amputated – not Berkeley’s example) will come to be
seen as good ‘when considered as linked with the whole system of beings’ (as
when it becomes clear that amputation is necessary to save a human being from
a potentially fatal case of gangrene) (P 153). Berkeley then concludes the
Principles by emphasizing that recognition of God’s existence and the ‘holy fear’
of his power to punish us for transgressing his moral laws serves as ‘the strongest
incentive to virtue’, hopefully thereby achieving his two main aims in writing the
work, promotion of ‘the consideration of God, and our duty’ (P 155–6; original
emphasis).
7
Three Dialogues between Hylas,

Philonous and the Sceptic
Tom Stoneham
I am farthest from scepticism of any man.

Berkeley, NB 563
Nay, I will proceed so far with him, if he still persists to charge me of the want
of this, as to uphold against him that he himself is the man who is guilty of
the scepticism of denying the existence of all visible objects; nay, that he cannot
shew another in the world, besides Mr. Berkeley and myself, who hold the
testimony of sense to be infallible as to this point.
Collier, Letter to Low, 8 March 1713/4
1. It is clear from the most cursory reading of George Berkeley’s works that
throughout his life he took atheism and scepticism to be moral and intellectual
vices with the potential to wreak havoc in civil society. While happy acceptance
of these labels was restricted to those who also identified themselves as ‘free-
thinkers’ – that is as willing to challenge custom and tradition in manners, morals
and metaphysics – both atheism and scepticism are formally just philosophical
theses that may be reached on the basis of better or worse arguments. Hence it
became Berkeley’s philosophical project to provide compelling arguments for a
system that entailed the falsity of both atheism and scepticism.1
The project officially launched with the publication of A Treatise Concerning
the Principles of Human Knowledge in 1710, the subtitle of which is: ‘Wherein the
Chief Causes of Error and Difficulty in the Sciences, with the grounds of
Scepticism, Atheism, and Irreligion, are inquired into’. In that work, however,
scepticism plays a minor role with just one short substantive discussion (P 86–9),
the remainder of the references being largely pejorative and adding little to
121
the argument. But in Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713) the
engagement with the sceptic becomes the over-riding dialectical device, to the
extent that in the third edition of 1734, bound together with a reprinting of the
Principles, the subtitle is reduced to ‘In Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists’.2
Clearly Berkeley thought the label ‘sceptic’ would have just as much
significance for his readership as the label ‘atheist’, that is that they would know
what he was talking about and agree with him that scepticism was a bad thing.
But this bears further investigation, for there is at least one well-known sceptical
author, Michel de Montaigne, whose work was very influential throughout the
late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and would have been owned by many of
the people that Berkeley was expecting to buy his books. Montaigne had seen his
way through scepticism to an apparently orthodox religious position, which was
for some time accepted by the church (at least, many French anti-Calvinists)
(Popkin, 2003, p. 66ff ). Montaigne had realized that the Pyrrhonist aporia meant
that one should just go along with whatever seemed right to one (Sextus, I.19–
21) and, as someone brought up in orthodox Christianity, his scepticism gave
him no grounds for challenging those appearances: ‘we are Christians by the
same title as we are either Perigordians or Germans’ (Montaigne II .12, p. 161).
Similarly, Pierre Gassendi had developed a sceptical position that was intended
to be intellectually respectable and religiously orthodox. Hence there were well-
known examples of sceptical positions that did not appear to threaten morals
and society in the way Berkeley feared. We need to understand exactly what
Berkeley had in mind.
In this chapter I will examine presence of scepticism in the Three Dialogues in
the light of the likely understanding that Berkeley would have had of sceptical
positions and arguments. My project then is almost exactly that undertaken by
Richard Popkin in his famous ‘Berkeley and Pyrrhonism’ (1951), though it will
be both narrower in scope, concentrating on just the one text of Berkeley’s, and
wider in scope, drawing upon more sceptical sources than Popkin’s almost
exclusive focus on Pierre Bayle. We can immediately see the value of this approach
by considering Popkin’s discussion of Berkeley’s ‘definition’ of scepticism:
First of all, what did Berkeley mean by scepticism? This doctrine is defined
either explicitly or implicitly in the Philosophical Commentaries [Notebooks],
the Principles, and the Dialogues. Altogether Berkeley attributes three doctrines
to the sceptics: (1) the sceptic doubts everything; (2) the sceptic doubts the
validity [sic] of sensible things; (3) the sceptic doubts the existence of real objects
like bodies or souls. These three different views constitute the core of the sceptical
Berkeley’s Three Dialogues 123
view for Berkeley. The second and third are corollaries of the first, and were for
Berkeley the most interesting features of the position.
1951, pp. 226–7
Popkin gives sources for (1)–(3) from the Notebooks, the correspondence
with Percival, the Principles and the Three Dialogues.3 But if we concentrate on
the explicit definition in the Three Dialogues, we see that there is something
rather odd about Popkin’s account: he is trying to force on Berkeley a definition
of scepticism which is rather more in line with traditional accounts of scepticism
than the text supports. Hylas actually says:
Hylas . . . I said indeed, that a sceptic was one who doubted of every thing; but I
should have added, or who denies the reality and truth of things.
3D 173
Notice that Hylas has started with Popkin’s (1) but here adds a further
condition, namely a denial, whereas Popkin’s (2) and (3) are further doubts.4 It is
quickly established that the things in question are ‘sensible things’ and that
‘denying the real existence of sensible things is sufficient to denominate a man a
sceptic’ (3D 173). The context for this addition is Philonous pointing out that
with just the doubt-condition for scepticism, neither materialist nor immaterialist
would count as sceptics because ‘He then that denieth any point, can no more be
said to doubt of it, than he who affirmeth it with the same degree of assurance’
(3D 173). Furthermore, denying the existence of anything is certainly not a
corollary of doubting everything, so it is quite clear that Berkeley intends his
definition of scepticism to be broader than merely the traditional characterization
of Pyrrhonism.
We might reasonably wonder why Berkeley thought his readers would accept
this. After all, even a fairly superficial reading of Book I of Sextus’s Hypostases
would reveal that denying the existence of something is dogmatism not
scepticism, and that work was widely available by 1713 in Latin (Stephanus,
1562), Greek (Chouet, 1621) and English (Stanley, 1656/1687). Popkin thinks
that Berkeley is drawing on Bayle, e.g.:
The ‘new’ philosophers . . . have so well understood the bases of suspension of
judgement with regard to sounds, smells, heat, cold, hardness, softness, heaviness
and lightness, tastes, colours, and the like, that they teach that all these qualities
are perceptions of our soul and that they do not exist at all in the objects of our
senses.
Zeno of Elea, Remark G, pp. 364–5
However, Bayle was careful to say, precisely where I have put ellipses in the
above quotation, ‘although they are not sceptics’; so while Bayle may be a source
for some aspects of Berkeley’s thought about scepticism, he is not an authority
for the extension of the definition to denials of existence.
To find that authority and thus an explanation of why Berkeley might have
expected his readers to accept the extended definition, we need to go to an often
overlooked source for early modern understandings of scepticism, namely
Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers. While there is no evidence that
Berkeley had read this by 1713 (though he had by 1745 since he makes two
references in Siris), the work had been widely available in Latin since the late
fifteenth century, was often cited by Montaigne, Thomas Stanley and Bayle, and had
been translated into English in 1688/96 (’by several hands’).5 We can then
reasonably assume that Berkeley knew it himself6 and expected his readers to know
it as well. And in the chapter on Pyrrho we find the following passage, which is
striking in the present context, where Diogenes lists some others who have been
called sceptics: ‘and Zeno [of Elea] because he would destroy motion, saying “A
moving body moves neither where it is nor where it is not”; Democritus because he
rejects qualities, saying, “Opinion says hot or cold, but the reality is atoms and
empty space”’ (p. 485).7 Thus Berkeley is neither focusing exclusively on doubt, as
Popkin claims, but nor is he being idiosyncratic in his extension of the definition to
include denials of existence. Insofar as Berkeley’s readers would have been familiar
with Diogenes Laertius, they would have been familiar with his brand of scepticism.
2. The extended definition of scepticism is crucial to the dialectic of, and provides
most of the drama in, the Three Dialogues. The doctrine makes its first appearance
in the Preface,8 where it is closely allied to ‘paradoxes’:
Upon the common principles of philosophers, we are not assured of the existence
of things from their being perceived. And we are taught to distinguish their real
nature from that which falls under our senses. Hence arise scepticism and
paradoxes. . . . We spend our lives in doubting of those things which other men
evidently know, and believing those things which they laugh at, and despise.
3D 167
Here the sceptic is characterized as claiming we do not know things that we

think we do (either because they are false or because we lack the means of
knowing) whereas the paradox-monger is claiming to know something others
take to be obviously false, hence ‘the affected doubts of some philosophers, and
fantastical conceits of others’ (3D 172). We see the paradoxes come in to play
when Hylas gives a mechanistic explanation of sound and Philonous responds:

‘But can you think it no more than a philosophical paradox, to say that real
sounds are never heard, and that the idea of them is obtained by some other
sense’ (3D 183).
Now, at this point we have the ideal materials for a Pyrrhonist to bring about
epoche: there are two ‘opposing accounts’ of sound, that of ordinary experience and
that of the mechanistic science, and they seem ‘equipollent’ (Sextus I.8). The ‘account’
of sound based on ordinary experience is that the sound of a violin being played in
the next room is part of the real, extra-mental9 world and has its auditory
characteristics essentially. The mechanistic account, in contrast, is that the real,
extra-mental world contains ‘merely a vibrative or undulatory motion in the air’ (3D
182) produced by the playing of the violin. These motions may cause auditory ideas
within the minds of perceivers, but those ideas are not part of extra-mental reality.
Hylas, however, doesn’t seem to find the two accounts equipollent and prefers the
mechanistic account of what is real, even if that means accepting ‘that sounds have
no real being without the mind’ (3D 182). In twentieth-century terms, when his
attempted reductive account is shown to fail, he merely re-categorizes it as
eliminativist. Which is to say, Hylas takes the common sense, experiential account of
sounds to be what they would be like if they were to exist without the mind, and the
mechanistic account to be correct as to what in fact exists (in extra-mental reality).
The mechanistic account of the phenomena, by conflicting with the way the
world is experienced to be, creates a complicated set of options for the philosopher,
which Berkeley is exploring through the dialectical move of rejecting paradoxes. If
both accounts are equipollent, then Pyrrhonian epoche follows. But if they are not
equipollent, then, because each makes a claim both about what exists and what its
nature is (‘after what manner you suppose it to exist, or what you mean by its
existence’ (3D 222), there are several options:
(1) Experience is right about what exists and mechanism is right about its
nature = the paradox that real sounds are not heard but felt, which is
rejected by Hylas as too paradoxical.
(2) Experience is right about the nature of the phenomena (e.g. sound) but
mechanism is right about what really exists without the mind = Hylas’s
eliminativism.
(3) The mechanistic account is right on both counts, i.e. there are no sounds
without the mind, only motions = veil of perception realism (e.g. 3D 192;
cf. 3D Second Dialogue passim).
(4) Experience is right on both counts = Berkeley’s immaterialism.
Thus the unacceptability of the paradoxical position, that real sounds are not
heard, becomes a tool to force the mechanist to choose between denying the
reality of the phenomena (2 and 3) such as sounds and denying the reality of the
material world (4). Despite both alternatives involving the denial of the existence
of something, in the Three Dialogues this choice is not presented in such neutral
terms but as that between scepticism and common sense. The point is not that
common sense must be preserved at all costs, but that it is clearly better than
scepticism or paradox. While Hylas insists that ‘the reality of things cannot be
maintained without supposing the existence of matter’ (3D 224), Philonous is
intent on showing that supposing the existence of matter, even though that
avoids the Pyrrhonian epoche, leads to the unacceptable scepticism. I turn next
to how this is achieved.
3. The book opens with Hylas expressing an opinion that we can imagine Berkeley
heard several times in reaction to the Principles:10 ‘What! Can any thing be more
fantastical, more repugnant to common sense, or a more manifest piece of
scepticism, than to believe there is no such thing as matter?’ (3D 172). Philonous
picks up particularly on the charge of scepticism and sets about clarifying the
terms of the debate, concluding: ‘Shall we therefore examine which of us it is that
denies the reality of sensible things, or professes the greatest ignorance of them;
since, if I take you rightly, he is to be esteemed the greatest sceptic?’ (3D 173).11
The real interest, however, is not the definition but how it is employed. Here
the strategy is to show that the combination of his materialism and a series of
facts about perceptual experiences forces Hylas into a position he must regard as
sceptical by the definition. The first move, as ever, is crucial: Hylas is asked what
he means by the ‘reality of sensible things’ which the sceptic is said to deny, and
insists: ‘I mean a real absolute being, distinct from, and without any relation to
their being perceived’ (3D 175).
We saw this distinction at work when we analysed the paradox of the real
sound not being heard, with the contrast being between ideas in the mind and
the material causes of those ideas. While the early modern materialists Berkeley
is primarily arguing against in the Three Dialogues were certainly committed to
that, all that is actually needed here is the much more general distinction between
appearance and truth that we find in Sextus, who opens the Hypostases with a
tripartite division of philosophies into the Dogmatic, the Academic and the
Sceptical: ‘in the case of philosophical investigations, too, some have said that
they have discovered the truth, some have asserted that it cannot be apprehended,
and others are still investigating [i.e. they have no opinion about the truth]’ (I.2).12
But Sextus is at great pains to point out that this truth, which the Dogmatists
claim to have discovered, the Academics declared inaccessible and the Sceptics
remain silent upon, is distinct from the appearances, with which the Sceptic is
entirely comfortable: ‘in uttering these [sceptical slogans] they say what is
apparent to themselves and report their own feelings without holding opinions,
affirming nothing about external objects’ (I.15; cf. I.19–20, 192–3, 208).13
Thus the Sceptic has the same starting point as the Dogmatist, namely a desire
to find the truth, and the same contrast between such truths about the reality
and nature of external objects, and mere appearances. Where they differ is that
the Sceptic finds the process of enquiry produces not belief or opinion but
puzzlement (aporia) and suspension of judgement (epoche), but only with
respect to truth. The appearances remain untouched or, to be more precise, each
person’s appearances remain untouched for them, because they are neither true
nor false in this sense.
At the start of the second dialogue Hylas admits to being an ‘arrant sceptic’
(3D 210) by the criteria set out for the debate in the first dialogue, namely he has
denied the reality of sensible things. He then proceeds to insist that for all that,
there must be some material world, pushing himself towards the position of the
‘Academic’ who asserts that there are truths we do not apprehend. Philonous
dispatches these attempts to defend a fairly extreme version of the ‘veil of
perception’ realism, resulting in Hylas starting the third dialogue facing a sort of
‘crise pyrrhonienne’ (Popkin, 1951, p. 232):14
Hylas Truly my opinion is, that all our opinions are alike vain and uncertain.
What we approve to-day, we condemn tomorrow. We keep a stir about
knowledge, and spend our lives in the pursuit of it, when, alas! we know
nothing all the while: nor do I think it possible for us ever to know any thing
in this life. Our faculties are too narrow and too few. Nature certainly never
intended us for speculation.
3D 227
Clearly Hylas has not found the tranquility of a Sextus or Montaigne, but
what has gone wrong? One interpretation, championed by Myles Burnyeat (e.g.
1982, p.28), is that in a post-Cartesian context, appearances have been reified
into ideas, and thereby become objects of knowledge in themselves.15 We can see
this in Bayle’s description of how Cartesianism goes beyond Pyrrhonism: ‘Today
the new philosophy speaks more positively. Heats, smells, colours, and the like,
are not in the objects of our senses. They are modifications of my soul. I know
that bodies are not at all as they appear to me’ (Pyrrho, Remark B, p. 197).
Thus Hylas is left in the frustrating position of having knowledge of his mind,
by knowing how things appear, but not of the world – knowledge is in principle
something the human mind can achieve, just not about the external world:
Hylas . . . All you know, is, that you have such a certain idea or appearance in your
own mind. But what is this to the real tree or stone? I tell you, that colour, figure,
and hardness, which you perceive, are not the real natures of those things, or in
the least like them. The same may be said of all other real things or corporeal
substances which compose the world. They have none of them any thing in
themselves, like those sensible qualities by us perceived. We should not therefore
pretend to affirm or know any thing of them as they are in their own nature.
3D 227
There is, of course, some truth in this and it is crucial for Berkeley’s avoidance
of the problems he has dealt to Hylas that the sensible qualities are objects of
knowledge. However, as a diagnosis of what is holding Hylas back from
tranquility it is not quite right and nor is it the one that Berkeley himself offers.16
When Philonous comes to summarize Hylas’s predicament, he says:
Philonous It seems then we are altogether put off with the appearances of

things, and those false ones too. The very meat I eat, and the cloth I wear, have
nothing in them like what I see and feel.
3D 228
The problem is not that the appearances are ideas and thus objects of
knowledge, but that they are – all of them – misleading as to the truth Hylas was
seeking. It is perfectly possible to hold the view that appearances are misleading
without reifying them into ideas and treating them as a separate realm of
knowledge. The key to Pyrrhonian tranquility is to stick with appearances and
have no opinion whether they are misleading or not (for that would entail an
opinion about external reality). This is what Hylas fails to achieve.
Berkeley’s solution, as is well-known, is to change the terms of the enquiry
and deny that real existence – and thus truth – is distinct from appearance: ‘To
be plain, it is my opinion, that the real things are those very things I see and feel,
and perceive by my senses. These I know, and finding they answer all the
necessities and purposes of life, have no reason to be solicitous about any other
unknown beings’ (3D 229).
The esse is percipi principle, which this passage introduces is that the being,
the real existence, of sensible things consists in their being perceived. The power
of this principle, the reason Berkeley thought it so original, is that it not only
undermines dogmatic materialism, but also Hylas’s crise pyrrhonienne and

genuine Pyrrhonism. For if the nature and truth of things consists in appearances,
then the very project of philosophical enquiry that is common to those three
positions, namely the search for truth, both starts and ends with the appearances.
Like the Pyrrhonian, Berkeley is satisfied with just stating the appearances, but
unlike the Pyrrhonian, he thinks this is not a way of leaving the enquiry
unfinished but an actual discovery. The appearances are the truth and reality
of things.
Stanley translates the opening sentence of the Hypostases as: ‘It is likely, that
they who seek, must either find, or deny they have or can find, or persevere in the
enquiry’ (1687, p. 776). Berkeley is pointing out a fourth option: one might
declare the object sought illusory, unseekable, a dangerous fantasy. However,
while this move does cut off both dogmatism and Pyrrhonism, dialectically it is
only effective against someone suffering la crise pyrrhonienne like Hylas. The
dogmatist will, of course, not accept that the discoveries he has made are in fact
illusory. So his dogmatism must first be undermined with sceptical arguments.
But care must be taken not to engender Pyrrhonism, for this sceptic has found
tranquility without finding what is sought, and is thus going to be indifferent to
whether the project of enquiry was a misguided search for the unseekable – it
has had the right effect whether misguided or not and he has no opinions about
such matters. Thus Berkeley’s argument in the Three Dialogues turns upon having
just the right amount and not too much scepticism; he needs to exploit the power
of the sceptical arguments while avoiding the end they were intended to produce.
A medical analogy from Sextus seems appropriate: ‘The chief witness to this
argument is what is observed in the case of medicinal powers: here the accurate
mixing of simple drugs makes the compound beneficial, but sometimes when
the smallest error is made in the weighing it is not only not beneficial but
extremely harmful and often poisonous’ (I.133).17
One of the striking differences between the Principles and the Three Dialogues
is the lengthy discussion of perceptual phenomena in the first dialogue. We can
now see that this is not just a matter of making explicit what Berkeley thought
his readers already accepted. Rather he needs to ensure that their understanding
of these phenomena is precisely balanced to undermine dogmatism without
engendering Pyrrhonism. We now turn to an examination of how Berkeley
achieves this.
4. There is one passage in the first dialogue where it seems certain Berkeley is
drawing directly on Sextus to the point of paraphrase:
For instance, people with jaundice In the jaundice, every one knows
say that what appears white to us is that all things seem yellow. Is it not
yellow, and people with blood- therefore highly probable, those
suffusion in the eye say that such animals in whose eyes we discern a
things are blood-red. Since, then, the very different texture from that of
eyes of some animals are yellow, of ours, and whose bodies abound
others blood-shot or white or some with different humours, do not see
other colour, it is likely, I think, that the same colours in every object
their grasp of colours is different. . . . that we do?
It is surely far more reasonable, 3D 185
given that animals’ eyes contain
mixtures of different humours, that
they should also get different
appearances from existing objects.
I.44/4618
Sextus is clear that the modes (or ‘places’ in Stanley) are not arguments aiming
to bring about acceptance of a proposition, but ways of bringing about suspension
of judgement. These passages are from the first mode, which seemed to have an
extraordinary impact on the early modern imagination,19 where Sextus lists many
differences between animals – how they reproduce, how they perceive and their
preferences and aversions – with the intention of undermining our confidence that
our senses reveal the objects as they really are. He is not trying to persuade us that
we mis-perceive colours and the cat or the rat get it right, but instead to settle with
‘this is how it seems to me’ and have no opinion about what the real colours are.
In contrast, Philonous encourages Hylas to draw a conclusion and a strikingly
different one: ‘From all20 which, should it not seem to follow, that all colours are
equally apparent, and that none of those which we perceive are really inherent
in any outward object?’ (3D 185). [N.B. Berkeley does note perceptual relativity
examples cannot show objects have no one true colour in Principles 15.]
As we saw in the last section, persuading Hylas that he is committed to all
appearances being illusory is crucial to achieving the delicate balance of
undermining dogmatism and avoiding Pyrrhonism. To see how Berkeley
achieves this, we need to go back to the beginning of the discussion of colours.
Here Philonous introduces the example of the clouds at dawn:
Philonous What! are then the beautiful red and purple we see on yonder clouds,
really in them? Or do you imagine they have in themselves any other form,
than that of a dark mist or vapour?
3D 184
Now, to a close reader of Sextus, this might look like an instance of the fifth
mode ‘depending on positions and intervals and places’ (I.118) in which the oar
in water and the pigeon’s neck both appear.21 But instead of treating it like that,
Philonous lets Hylas develop a criterion22 for which perceived colour is the real
colour (those ‘discovered by the most near and exact survey’ (3D 184)), thereby
establishing that the opposing appearances here are sufficient to render one of
the colours unreal and merely apparent. Rather than undermine the criterion,
Philonous uses it to show that the allegedly real member of the apparent-real
opposing pair turns out by the same criterion to be apparent when considered
against a third perception, namely what is seen through a microscope. This is the
clever logical move: he has shown that the criterion is not actually a criterion of
real colour but of apparent colour. Applying the criterion shows that the red and
purple in the clouds is apparent but not that the grey is real, for a further
application might show that to be equally apparent.
At this point we are confronted with two ways this sequence might extend
indefinitely. It might be that microscopes become more and more powerful, so
we have a sequence of opposing pairs of possible experiences between ever
stronger microscopes. But also, when we do look through actual microscopes,
we perceive ‘inconceivably small animals’ (3D 185) whose vision is presumably
tuned to their microscopic environment. This generates a sequence of possible
experiences of ever smaller animals. However, it is not necessary for the argument
to work that the sequence is indefinite, merely that it extends beyond our own
experiences, because then the application of the criterion within our experience
will never establish that a given experience is of the real colour (or size or shape)
of the object, merely that it ‘opposes’ an experience of apparent colour.
5. We can see a different strategy Berkeley has for re-purposing sceptical modes
in his discussion of heat and cold. Having convinced Hylas that intense heat and
cold are both pains and thus not real existences in the external objects, the
discussion moves to moderate degrees of heat and cold. Here Philonous offers
Hylas a criterion of the real for moderate heat, which he accepts:23 ‘Those bodies
therefore, upon whose application to our own, we perceive a moderate degree of
heat, must be concluded to have a moderate degree of heat or warmth in them:
and those, upon whose application we feel a like degree of cold, must be thought
to have cold in them’ (3D 178).
Philonous then proceeds to trap Hylas with the example of the hot and cold
hands in water, a version of two examples in Sextus’s fourth mode:
The same water seems to be boiling when poured on to inflamed places, but to
us to be lukewarm.
I.101
The bathhouse vestibule warms people entering from outside but chills people
leaving if they spend any time there.
I.11024
In this case Berkeley avoids the Pyrrhonist suspension of judgement by

showing that by his criterion the water is both really cold and really warm, which
is taken to be an absurdity by Hylas and thus a reductio of his criterion of the
real. Hylas retorts:
But after all, can any thing be more absurd than to say, there is no heat in the fire?
3D 179
At this point he is teetering on the brink of Pyrrhonism: he has been persuaded

that his way of determining what heat there is in the fire leads to an absurdity,
but to deny that there is heat in the fire is equally absurd. Suspension of judgement
beckons. Philonous blocks this by drawing Hylas’s attention to the analogy
between the way a pin causes pain and a ‘coal burns your finger’ (3D 179). This
looks like an allusion to Locke’s Essay:
After the same manner that the ideas of these original qualities are produced in
us, we may conceive that the ideas of secondary qualities are also produced, viz.
by the operation of insensible particles on our senses. . . . v.g. that a violet, by the
impulse of such insensible particles of matter of peculiar figures and bulks, and
in different degrees and modifications of their motions, causes the ideas of the
blue colour and sweet scent of that flower, to be produced in our minds; it being
no more impossible to conceive that God should annex such ideas to such
motions, with which they have no similitude, than that he should annex the idea
of pain to the motion of a piece of steel dividing our flesh, with which that idea
hath no resemblance.
2.8.13
However, in the example given, there is no need to appeal to the mechanist’s

‘insensible particles’ because Berkeley has carefully chosen an example that,
unlike Locke’s blue violet, mirrors the clearly perceptible process by which the
pain is caused in us by the pin: just as we see the pin causing damage to our
finger, we see the coal causing heat in our finger, so we think that the process
that results in a sensation in each case must be the same. Yet it is no absurdity
to say there is no pain in the pin.25 In fact, it was precisely Hylas’s acceptance
that pain is not in the fire that made the argument that a great heat is a pain
effective.
Again, Philonous has used the sceptical modes to undermine Hylas’s initial
dogmatism, but blocked the move to Pyrrhonism by persuading Hylas that he is
committed to all appearances being illusory.
6. At this point Hylas introduces the distinction between primary and secondary
qualities as ‘an opinion current among philosophers’ (3D 188), with the intention
of restricting his claim that he is not a sceptic and does not deny the reality of
sensible things. So far the discussion has been restricted to secondary qualities,
but Philonous responds: ‘But what if the same arguments which are brought
against secondary qualities, will hold good against these [primary qualities]
also?’ (3D 188).
As Popkin pointed out, Berkeley here seems to be drawing upon Bayle, who
quite explicitly credited the point to Simon Foucher’s Critique de la recherche de
la vérité (Bayle, Pyrrho, Remark B, fn. 11, p. 197).26 But while Bayle is astute to
spot the power of the point and is fully aware of the difference between genuine
Pyrrhonism and this denial of the reality of sensible qualities, he does not have
Berkeley’s concern to use the sceptical arguments to undermine dogmatic
materialism without engendering Pyrrhonism. Consequently his presentation of
the point lacks Berkeley’s care and sophistication, simply noting ‘if the objects of
our senses appear coloured [etc.] and yet they are not so, why can they not
appear extended [etc.] though they are not so?’ (Bayle, p. 197), before discussing
whether this makes God a deceiver.27
Berkeley’s discussion of primary qualities (3D 188–94) has many original
elements. He begins with consideration of extension, or more specifically size,
and follows the Pyrrhonists’ first mode by again comparing human perception
with that of other animals, emphasizing the way we can expect the difference in
size of the animals to result in difference in their perception of size: ‘A mite
therefore must be supposed to see his own foot, and things equal or even less
than it, as bodies of some considerable dimension’ (3D 188). However, Berkeley’s
argument is significantly different from the arguments found in Sextus in two
respects. First, he appeals not just to physical variation but also to teleology.
Second, the appeal to teleology is not applied to secondary qualities, for example,
so he is committed to one difference between primary and secondary qualities:
other animals may see colours differently but must see size differently.
The appeal to teleology is implicitly creationist:
Philonous Answer me, Hylas. Think you the senses were bestowed upon all
animals for their preservation and well-being in life? Or were they given to
men alone for this end?
3D 188
As such this is neither a move the Pyrrhonist could make nor one that is
dialectically appropriate given that the existence of God is yet to be demonstrated.
What Sextus does talk about are ‘parts of the body . . . which are naturally fitted
for deciding and perceiving’ (I.44),28 which is an appeal to biological function
appropriate for a physician to make. And in fact this weaker claim will suffice for
Berkeley’s purposes if we add a further observation that these creatures are
reasonably successful in avoiding harms. For example, contemporary biologists
are inclined to argue that the ability of a housefly to avoid being swatted is
evidence that the motion of our hand, which looks fast to us, looks slow to
the fly.29
What is striking about Berkeley’s teleological move, even when naturalized, is
that he only applies it to the primary qualities. One might expect Berkeley to say
that, for example, the cold of an arctic sea is a pain for any human who swims in
it, but it clearly isn’t for the fish that live there, or that the deer escapes the hunt
by hearing sounds a human cannot, but he doesn’t. Rather, where he does cite
inter-species variation in perception of secondary qualities, he appeals not to the
avoidance of harm but to difference in preferences. For instance, in the discussion
of odours he refers to ‘brute animals’ that eat ‘filth and ordure’ ‘out of choice’ (3D
181): this is not an appeal to teleology but an instance of the appeal to preferences,
which we also find in the first mode (Sextus, I.55).30
So while Berkeley is attacking certain uses of the distinction between primary
and secondary qualities, the way he marshalls the sceptical arguments reveals
that he is committed to some form of the distinction: the perception of both
sorts of quality enables the creature to seek pleasure and avoid pain (‘the never
enough admired laws of pain and pleasure’ (P 146)), but in the case of secondary
qualities the connection between a given quality and pain or pleasure is arbitrary,
whereas in the case of primary qualities it is not. So whether a given taste or
smell or degree of heat causes pleasure or pain may vary between creatures but
is not something we can work out a priori. In contrast, we can work out a priori
that an object that is large, solid and fast-moving relative to the size, hardness
and motion of a given creature, will cause that creature harm.
Furthermore, not only is Berkeley committed to some version of the primary–
secondary quality distinction, he comes close to accepting the Cartesian view that
extension is the principal or fundamental primary quality. While the Cartesian

will say that the other primary qualities are modes of extension, which Berkeley
doesn’t accept, he does say that ‘motion, solidity, and gravity . . . all evidently
suppose extension’ (3D 191). Clearly his thought here is that having either motion
or solidity or gravity entails having some extension, and that seems right. However,
it is not so clear whether Berkeley should also accept the reverse entailment: if
something is extended it also must have some degree of motion, solidity and
gravity. That depends upon whether we regard, for example, not moving as having
a degree of motion (namely zero) or as lacking motion. One might think that
Berkeley is committed to all physical objects having some positive extension,
specifically at least one minimum sensibilium, in order to exist at all, but that is
not the case. For a start, there is no cross-modal property of extension, so at the
very least Berkeley should say that everything must have either visible or tangible
or . . . extension. Since the Berkeleian doctrine is that esse is percipere and not just
videre vel tangere, he is committed to the real existence of merely heard, tasted or
smelled objects, such as echoes and aromas. Now while echoes and aromas may
have approximate locations and may even sometimes move, it is not obvious that
all odours and sounds have extension. (Tastes are different because it may be that
only tangible objects can be tasted.) In which case there would be real existence
without extension, and the correct way of stating that motion etc. ‘supposes
extension’ would be: if – but not only if – anything has a positive degree of motion
etc., it has a positive degree of extension.
Berkeley’s really distinctive contribution, however, is not over the dependency
between these primary qualities, but the claim that the primary qualities depend
upon the secondary. If it is not possible, Berkeley argues, for there to be primary
qualities without secondary, and if the ‘new philosophers’ have persuaded
themselves that the secondary qualities lack real existence, they must conclude
that the primary qualities also lack real existence. Thus the sceptical, but not
Pyrrhonian, denial of the reality of things is reached without having to apply the
sceptical modes to primary qualities. Instead there is just an appeal to a fairly
plausible general principle about conception and possibility:
Philonous And can you think it possible, that should really exist in Nature,
which implies a repugnancy in its conception?
Hylas By no means.
3D 194
Note that this principle does not entail that what is conceivable is possible nor
even that what is possible is conceivable. Rather it simply states that if, in
attempting to conceive something you run into a contradiction, then that thing
is not possible. Hylas doesn’t take much persuading that attempting to conceive
of primary qualities without secondary leads to a contradiction, but considering
an example makes it clear how the inference is meant to go. Try to conceive of
some specific sensible extension, say a visible circle of 1m diameter, without
conceiving of it as having some (chromatic or non-chromatic) colour. To
conceive of the circle we must conceive of its edge, but to conceive of an edge is
to conceive of a boundary marked by some change in qualities, and given that it
is a visible circle we are trying to conceive, this must be a visible change. What
could this be apart from a colour difference between the circle and its background
or a line marking the edge in a colour different from the circle and background?
Another primary quality such as motion will not suffice: a rotating circle against
a static background would only be visible in virtue of its motion if the motion
were visible, and the motion would only be visible if something visible moved.
That cannot be the circle itself since we are using the motion to discriminate the
circle, so we must be able to discriminate some part of the circle, and all the same
issues recur. The only way to conceive of a visible circle involves conceiving of
colours, and thus the attempt to conceive of the circle without colour is self-
defeating.
Hylas immediately realizes that the only way to avoid the full-blown denial of
the reality of sensible things now is to re-evaluate the arguments that led him to
la crise pyrrhonienne about secondary qualities in the first place, and consequently
he immediately moves into proposing an act-object model of perception.
Berkeley makes no further use of sceptical arguments, instead engaging with the
theology, metaphysics and philosophy of science of his contemporaries in order
to defend immaterialism as a way out of ‘that phrensy of the ancient and modern
sceptics’ (3D 258).
7. Our close look at the presence of scepticism in the Three Dialogues has revealed
Berkeley’s sophisticated strategy of using the sceptical arguments to force the
materialist into a crisis where immaterialism presents the only acceptable way
out. He is fully aware that a genuine Pyrrhonist would no more want to accept
immaterialism than materialism for he has found tranquility in suspension of
judgement. This is why Berkeley quickly moves the discussion of scepticism
away from doubt to denial of the reality of things. His readers would have been
well aware that he was drawing upon sceptical sources for his arguments, though
they might not have noticed the care and subtly with which he did so, and thus
his eventual escape from scepticism through immaterialism was all the more
powerful. The literary effect is very similar to René Descartes’ Meditations,

though the escape from scepticism is much simpler. Where Descartes’ challenges
concern the effectiveness of his arguments for his self, for God and for bodies in
Meditation II – VI , Berkeley’s challenges come from the direct objections to the
adequacy of his positive view. When Hylas insists in the second dialogue that ‘the
reality of things cannot be maintained without supposing the existence of matter’
(3D 224), he is expressing the thought that whatever may be achieved by
immaterialism by way of response to the sceptic, it leaves us with less of a real
world than we wanted. Scepticism has receded and the focus in now on the
adequacy of Berkeley’s system. The third dialogue is a sustained attempt to
answer that criticism and show that everything we really cared about remains in
place. Few have been convinced.31
Notes
1 ‘As it was my intention to convince sceptics and infidels by reason, so it has been my
endeavour strictly to observe the most rigid laws of reasoning’ (3D 168).
2 In the 1713 and 1725 editions, the full subtitle was: ‘The design of which is plainly to
demonstrate the reality and perfection of human knowledge, the incorporeal nature
of the soul, and the immediate providence of a Deity: in opposition to Sceptics and
Atheists. Also to open a method for rendering the Sciences more easy, useful, and
compendious.’
3 Interestingly, he doesn’t look at the later works, omitting the discussions of
scepticism and freethinking in Alciphron (1732).
4 To be fair, Popkin might be using ‘doubt’ in the loose, vernacular sense, which
includes denial, but Berkeley makes a clear distinction between doubt and denial in
the Three Dialogues and the sceptical epoche clearly excludes denial.
5 The article on Pyrrho only appears in the extended 1696 edition.
6 A fact that suggests Berkeley knew the text well is that the names ‘Euphranor’ and
‘Lysicles’ (the two freethinkers in Alciphron) both make brief appearances in
Diogenes Laertius though neither is the subject of an article. The 1688–96
translation in fact mis-transliterates ‘Lysicles’ as ‘Lysiclides’.
7 One might also suspect that Bayle’s decision to reintroduce discussion of the
sceptical modes in Remark G of the article on Zeno of Elea was prompted by this
passage.
8 The Preface was omitted from the 1734 edition, perhaps because literary fashions
had changed, or perhaps because Berkeley no longer felt the same need to publically
justify publishing a book.
9 Berkeley’s phrase ‘without the mind’ is deliberately ambiguous between ‘outside the
mind’ and ‘independent of the mind’. While Hylas takes ideas to be within, and thus
dependent upon, the mind, Philonous will go on to separate the two and claim that
ideas are outside the mind that perceives them even if they only exist when
perceived: ‘I am not for changing things into ideas, but rather ideas into things’
(3D 244).
10 For a record of perhaps the first such reaction and Berkeley’s response, see the
correspondence with Percival in August and September 1710 (Hight, M. A., ed.
(2013), The Correspondence of George Berkeley. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, Letters 17 and 18). Here Berkeley notes that he was afraid of being charged
with scepticism.
11 It is worth observing that Philonous is not endorsing Hylas’s extension of the
definition of scepticism here – though, as I argued above, Berkeley might expect his
readers to accept it. This is presumably because he knows that it is not consistent
with Pyrrhonism.
12 While I am quoting from the best modern translation of Sextus (Sextus Empiricus
(2000), Outlines of Scepticism. J. Annas and J. Barnes (ed) Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press), it is worth checking against the best English translation that would
have been available to Berkeley and his readers, namely that in Thomas Stanley’s The
History of Philosophy (1656, 2nd edition 1687: Stanley, T. (1687), The History of
Philosophy. [Online]. [Accessed 17 October 2015]. Available from: http://eebo.
chadwyck.com): ‘Hence (it may be) some of those who profess Philosophy,
declare, they have found the Truth; others hold it impossible to be found; others still
enquire’ (1687, p. 776).
13 Stanley: ‘Moreover, in these Expressions he speaketh that which appreareth so to
him, and declareth how he is affected without engaging his Opinion, (or Judgment)
but ascertaining nothing concerning external objects’ (1687, p. 777).
14 It is important to remember that la crise pyrrhonienne is not the state of mind of a
sceptic but of one who reaches aporia in the face of sceptical arguments while
lacking the appropriate disposition to respond with epoche and ultimately ataraxia
(Sextus, I.25–30).
15 Burnyeat in fact traces this to Augustine, but its impact philosophically is mediated
by Descartes.
16 A very different diagnosis of why la crise pyrrhonienne does not lead to tranquility is
offered by Pascal: ‘We perceive an image of the truth and possess nothing but
falsehood, being equally incapable of absolute ignorance and certain knowledge; so
obvious is it that we once enjoyed a degree of perfection from which we have
unhappily fallen’ (L.131). Berkeley quotes La Vie de M. Pascal (by his sister Gilberte)
in Passive Obedience (1712) so had at least that much awareness of Pascal’s thought.
Whether he had read Pascal’s analysis of scepticism we do not know.
17 Stanley: ‘This is most evident in Medicine; a just measure in their Composition is

beneficial; but sometimes, to put in ever so little more or less, is not only not
beneficial, but destructive, and often deadly’ (1687, p. 784).
18 Stanley: ‘Those things which to us seem White, they who have the Yellow Jaundice
affirm to be Yellow, and they who have a Hyphosphagme in their Eyes, Red. As
therefore, of living Creatures, some have Eyes Bloud red, others Whitish, others of
other Colours, it is likely they perceive Colours after different manners. . . . Much
more likely is it, that the humours, mixed in the Eyes of living Creatures,
being different, they have different Phantasies, from the same Object’ (1687,
p. 779).
19 For instance, the claim about jaundice is false but consistently repeated as fact by
authors across the period, including, we have seen, Berkeley.
20 The jaundice example is preceded by a discussion of ‘inconceivably small animals
perceived by glasses’ who are presumed to see things differently and especially things
too small for us to see. This is an updating of Sextus’s ‘dogs, fish, lions, humans and
locusts do not see the same things as equal in size or similar in shape’ (I.49).
21 Berkeley mentions both those examples at 3D 258 as instances of arguments against
‘the reality of corporeal things’ based on the supposition that ‘reality consist[s] in an
external absolute existence’.
22 Sextus anticipates this move but gives a very weak regress argument in response
(I.121–3). Assuming Berkeley was familiar with Sextus helps us understand why he
argues as he does at this point.
23 Hylas accepts the same criterion of the real for extension at 3D 188 and the
argument follows the same pattern, ingeniously creating a version of the two hands
in water example by imagining looking down a microscope with one eye while
keeping the other open.
24 Stanley: ‘Again, the same water poured upon any Part that is Inflamed seems
scalding, to us, lukewarm: . . . The Parastas of a Bath warms those that go in, cools
those who go out, if they have stay’d any while in it’ (1687, pp. 782–3).
25 This needs some careful handling by Berkeley because when he rejects the
materialist’s criterion of real existence for sensible qualities, he is going to have to say
the intense heat I feel when my hand is in the fire exists in the fire, and it is identical
to the pain I feel. Thus pain exists in the fire. Of course, for Berkeley that doesn’t
mean it inheres in the fire, but it looks like it has to be a sensible quality in the
collection that constitutes the fire. So, while fires don’t cause pain or feel pain, they
do have pain, in the same sense that they have heat and colour.
26 It has been suggested that Bayle’s memory of Foucher’s views was not all that good
(Lennon, T. M. and Hickson, M. (2014), ‘Pierre Bayle’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy. [Online]. [Accessed 17 October 2015]. E. N. Zalta (ed) Available from:
http://plato.stanford.edu, §6). However, he may just be misremembering his source,
which could be Foucher’s Nouvelle Dissertation (see Foucher, S. (1679), Nouvelle

dissertation sur la ‘Recherche de la vérité’. [Online]. [Accessed 17 October 2015].
Available from: http://archive.org, pp. 78–9).
27 It is worth noting that Hylas’s only appeal to a non-deceiving God is a form of the
‘consent of nations’ argument but applied to matter: ‘Do you imagine, he would have
induced the whole world to believe the being of matter, if there was no such thing?’
(3D 243). Like Descartes, Berkeley is very careful to note the point at which God is
introduced into his philosophy, but while Descartes introduces God before the
substantive metaphysics, Berkeley does it on the back of his immaterialism. Hence,
dialectically, neither he nor his opponents can appeal to a non-deceiving God. The
badness of scepticism has to be independent of that.
28 Stanley: ‘those which Nature made for Judgment and Sense’ (1687, p. 779).
29 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/small-animals-live-in-a-slow-motion-
world/
30 The specific example of eating ordure is not found in Sextus but is in Diogenes
Laertius and is mentioned several times by Montaigne.
31 Many thanks to John Blechl for help with preparing the final text.
8
The Mystery of Goodness in Berkeley’s

Passive Obedience
Bertil Belfrage
Introduction
The first edition of George Berkeley’s Passive Obedience was published in Dublin
in 1712. Two London editions followed the same year, the first as ‘The Second
Edition’ (perhaps with the Dublin edition in mind), and the second as ‘The Third
Edition, Corrected and Enlarged’. Its full title is Passive Obedience, or the Christian
Doctrine of not Resisting the Supreme Power, Proved and Vindicated upon the
Principles of the Law of Nature.
Pamphlets about ‘Passive Obedience’ were frequent at this period of time,
often criticizing the Glorious Revolution that forced James II to abdicate in
1689.1 If rebellion in any form is a sinful act, as Berkeley argues in Passive
Obedience, then the present government held office as a result of an immoral
action. This was the typical Jacobite and Tory position.
In the first four sections of the work, the ‘Doctrine Of not Resisting the
Supreme Power’ is presented as the main, if not as the, thesis of the work. It
occupies three quarters of the entire text. However, in June 1730, Berkeley not
only omitted the four introductory sections, he omitted the entire theme of our
duty to passively obey the civil power. This revised version is entitled ‘The Sense
of Dean Berkeley upon the Foundations of Moral Good, extracted from his
Discourse of Passive Obedience’. It exists in one handwritten copy, included in
Samuel Johnson’s copy of De Motu.2 The only surviving sections of the original
work are 5–15, except the end of 15,3 and 27–28.
Why did Berkeley revise his Passive Obedience, and why did he not include it
in A Miscellany 1752? My conjecture is that he observed an inconsistency in the
original work.
141
If it is our duty to pay ‘a Blind implicit Submission’ to civil laws (provided they
do not violate the moral law), and the prince changes his mind or is succeeded
by a ruler of a different mind, what is right at one time could be wrong at another.
And, as Berkeley extended this duty to obeying even masters at a lower level in
his Proposal for building a college in Bermuda,4 one act could be good, according
to one authority, but at the same time be regarded as bad, according to another
authority. This would lead to a normative relativism that he rejected, when he
criticized utility as the criterion for moral goodness. It would lead to ‘the most
horrible confusion of Vice and Virtue, Sin and Duty, that can possibly be
imagined’ (PO 9–10), he said, because different persons, and even one and the
same person in different situations, could judge the same action sometimes as
good, sometimes as bad. This would contradict his ethical objectivism based on
his belief in a god-given eternal, unchangeable law of morality.
If aware of this inconsistency, it is understandable that Berkeley omitted this
theme in 1730, and decided not to republish it in 1752.5 In an attempt at
presenting a coherent account of Passive Obedience, Berkeley’s first attempt at a
moral philosophy, I will focus on the sense of ‘Moral Good’ rather than on the
duty to obey the civil power.
In the first part of this chapter, I will give an overview of the historical
background, focusing on how Berkeley followed the tradition I refer to as
‘Theological Positivism’ – in opposition to non-theological positivists. In the
second part, I will investigate Berkeley’s approach to moral issues in the light of
Locke’s metaethical account of a deductive moral science. Finally, I will interpret
Berkeley’s view ‘upon the Foundations of Moral Good’, as presented in Passive
Obedience.
Historical background (1707–1708)
In 1700, when George Berkeley entered Trinity College in Dublin (TCD ), John
Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding was well established at
TCD. It appeared in 1690, but already in 1692 St. George Ashe, then Provost of
Trinity College in Dublin, had ordered the Essay to be read by the students. He
even examined them ‘strictly . . . in their progress therein’.6
There is, however, in Locke’s philosophy a tension between empiricist criteria of
meaning and truth on the one hand, and religious faith in matters above human
understanding on the other. This tension became obvious when followers of Locke,
such as John Toland, Thomas Emlyn and Anthony Collins, applied empiricist
The Mystery of Goodness in Passive Obedience 143
criteria of meaning to religious mysteries and rejected them as mere nonsense.

This tension is the main theme of this section on the historical background.
Theological positivism
The current metaphysical doctrine in Dublin, when Berkeley entered TCD, was
what I will refer to as ‘Theological Positivism’. Locke formulated its positivistic
aspect as follows: ‘Men have Reason to be well satisfied with what God hath
thought fit for them, since he has given them [. . .] Whatsoever is necessary for
the Conveniences of Life, and Information of Vertue.’
But there is also a restrictive aspect of this doctrine. There are, as Locke
expresses it, ‘some Things that are set out of the reach’ of human knowledge,
but we should confine ourselves to knowable things, because those who extend
‘their Enquiries beyond their Capacities’ are doomed to end up ‘in perfect
Scepticism’.7
Theological Positivism with its two aspects can be summarized as follows:
(1) In statements about knowable things, the variable x in propositions about ‘all
x’ does not range over everything there is, but is restricted to things God placed
within the scope and limits of human knowledge.
The result was a distinction between a cognitive field of knowable things and
a non-cognitive field of unknowable things which do exist but are above our
understanding.
The positivistic aspect

In Notebook A, we can follow Berkeley’s consecutive reading of Book IV of
Locke’s Essay from the first chapter to the last. The first note in the series is ‘All
knowle[d]ge onely about ideas. Locke B.4 c.1.’ (NB 522).8 The reference is to the
opening of Book IV:
Since the Mind, in all its Thoughts and Reasonings, hath no other immediate
Object but its own Ideas, which it alone does or can contemplate, it is evident,
that our Knowledge is only conversant about them.
4.1.1
Berkeley reformulated it: ‘all our knowle[d]ge & contemplation is confin’d

barely to our own Ideas’ (NB 606), and accepted the following semantic principles
as ‘axioms’: ‘No word to be used without an idea’, ‘No reasoning about things
whereof we have no ideas’ (NB 421, 422). In cognitive discourse, he found it
‘absurd to talk or make propositions about’ unimaginable things that we have no

ideas of (NB 417).9
He presents his view on meaning and truth in what he styled ‘my Doctrine of
Certainty’.10 His example is, ‘The Horse is White’. The sentence is meaningful, if
we can form a ‘mental proposition’ or an image picture of a white horse (if we
cannot, it is meaningless). The sentence is not true or false in itself. If we take the
attitude of ‘affirmation or negation’ to the proposition (that which is expressed by
the sentence), thus forming a statement, then it can be either true or false. The
simple way to check if the horse is white, is to go and have a look, because ‘real
certainty is of sensible Ideas pro hic & nunc’. The attitude of assenting to a
statement is often referred to as having an ‘explicit belief ’ in it.
Berkeley’s other example is ‘a Blue Horse’. We can imagine such a thing,
although there is no such animal. So statements about blue horses are meaningful
but false. But if we cannot form a ‘mental proposition’, or have an ‘idea’ or an
image-picture of something, then we are not justified in claiming to believe that
it is either true or false.
Here Berkeley accepts a Lockean doctrine of ‘meaning’ and ‘truth’. The predicates
‘is true’ and ‘is false’ are defined in terms of the agreement and disagreement of a
proposition with ‘sensible ideas pro hic & nunc’.11 Statements that are neither true
nor false are meaningless according to this doctrine. But, again, this concerns
cognitive discourse. In this context, we are not justified believing, affirming or
denying anything about x, unless we have an ‘idea’ of x, or can imagine a ‘mental
proposition’ about x.
To sum up. At this stage, Berkeley accepted no other than descriptive
statements in cognitive discourse, and ‘ideas’ were ‘suppos’d to be the Copies &
Images’ of things (MI 20). That is to say,
(2) If a person truly believes – in cognitive discourse – that a proposition, say p,

is true or that x exists, then it is required that this person has an idea of x or of
what p is about, and gives assent to this explicit belief or mental proposition.12
Within the positivistic aspect of Theological Positivism, the emphasis is on

knowable things, identified as things that are perceivable by sense. But, again,
there is also a restrictive aspect of Theological Positivism regarding our attitude
to those unknowable things we read about in revealed theology.
The restrictive aspect

Locke said he wrote his Essay to discover how far our intellectual powers reach.
His advice was ‘to sit down in a quiet Ignorance of those Things, which [. . . are]
beyond the reach of our Capacities’.13 ‘Holy mysteries’ in revealed theology are
among those things which are ‘beyond the reach of our Capacities’. Berkeley
defines them as follows:
(3) [Expressions for] ‘holy mysteries’ =def. ‘propositions about things [. . .] that are
altogether above our knowle[d]ge out of our reach’.14
As these mysteries are ‘altogether above our knowledge’, we cannot form any
‘mental proposition’ about them. According to (1) and (2), therefore, we cannot
form – in cognitive discourse – meaningful propositions about mysteries
mentioned in (3).
When we nonetheless assent to expressions for mysteries, this is,
psychologically, a different attitude of assenting from when we affirm beliefs in
knowable things. Thus,
(4) Assenting to expressions for holy mysteries is a non-propositional attitude

towards something beyond explicit belief, described as ‘an Humble Implicit faith’.
NB 584, 720
The attention we can pay to expressions for mysteries, Berkeley says, is ‘such
as a popish peasant gives to propositions he hears at Mass in Latin’ (NB 720). The
Mass in Latin is to him expressed in a language without semantics. We cannot use
such terms as ‘is true’ or ‘is false’ in non-cognitive discourse, therefore, in the
sense Berkeley used them in cognitive discourse.
This illustrates the significant difference between empiricist criteria of
meaning and truth on the one hand and religious faith in unknowable mysteries
on the other.
Non-theological positivism
It follows from Berkeley’s belief in two incommensurable aspects of the world,
that it is not possible to use the same criteria of meaning and truth, which are
designed for the one aspect, when approaching the other aspect of the world. In
Berkeley’s terms: ‘When I say I will reject all Propositions wherein I know not
fully & adæquately & clearly the Thing meant thereby This is not to be extended
to propositions in the Scripture’ (NB 720, my italics).
John Toland’s challenge

John Toland challenged Theological Positivism, when he insisted, contrary to
Berkeley, that the same criteria of meaning and truth should be used in all
contexts. ‘Nor is there any different Rule to be follow’d in the Interpretation of

Scripture from what is common to all other Books’, he said.15 The result was an
unrestricted or absolute positivism saying:
(1ʹ) In meaningful statements about ‘all x’, the variable x ranges over everything
in the universe.
Although he rejected the restrictions of classical Theological Positivism, he

accepted its positivistic aspect, which he expanded accordingly to everything
there is. Thus,
(2ʹ) A person is justified assenting to a proposition, p, about x – no matter in

what context – only if this person knows what x is or what p is about, and gives
assent to an explicit belief or a ‘mental proposition’ about it.
Toland took two further steps. Assenting to expressions for holy mysteries, he
said, (using the nonsense word ‘Blictri’) is as absurd as claiming ‘infallible
Assurance that something call’d Blictri had a Being in Nature’ (81–82). This is a
step into ontological metaphysics: if we cannot have an idea of x, or if it cannot
be part of a ‘mental proposition’, then x does not exist or have ‘a Being in Nature’.
From his conviction that the world consists of nothing but pictorial ‘facts’ he
concluded that,
(3ʹ) Holy mysteries do not have ‘a Being in Nature’.
In a second step, he found it psychologically impossible to believe in

imperceptible matters: ‘all Faith or Perswasion must necessarily consist of two
Parts, Knowledg and Assent’ (italics original), he said, where ‘faith’ meant ‘explicit
belief ’. As explicit belief entails awareness of a pictorial ‘mental proposition,’ we
cannot have faith in unperceivable things. In short,
(4ʹ) Those who claim to believe in mysteries above our knowledge do, in fact,
believe in nothing at all.
In this form of non-theological positivism, ‘non-cognitive’ means ‘nonsensical’

or ‘non-existent’.
Berkeley’s counter-argument
As Berkeley emphasized the difference between knowable and unknowable
aspects of the world, he meant that expressions for unknowable things had to be
strictly isolated from a discourse on knowable things. Empirical criteria of
meaning and truth are ‘not to be extended to propositions in the Scripture’ about
revealed mysteries, he argued, because, again, these mysteries are ‘altogether

above our knowledge’ (NB 720, my emphasis).
If we say, therefore – in cognitive discourse – ‘X is so-and-so’ or ‘X is not so-and-
so’, but X does not refer to a knowable thing, then we are talking nonsense. It does
not make sense to include expressions about unknowable things, such as ‘Holy
Trinity’, in cognitive discourse. So, when Toland rejected holy mysteries on empirical
grounds, or maintained, ‘Holy Trinity does not have “a Being in Nature”’, he was
himself talking nonsense according to Berkeley, who defended the principle that,
(5) to pretend to demonstrate or reason any thing [in cognitive discourse] about
[holy mysteries] is absurd here an implicit Faith becomes us.
NB 584, 41716
The strength of this argument is that holy mysteries cannot be criticized in

cognitive discourse. The weakness is that neither could an implicit belief in holy
mysteries be defended in cognitive discourse. The pressing question is, how
could he formulate a moral philosophy based on non-cognitive doctrines –
without violating the principle he formulated in (5)?
Berkeley’s approach to moral issues 1707–1712
Berkeley expressed a view that was generally accepted in those days, when he
said (in no. 16 of his early ‘Notes on Moral Philosophy’), there could be ‘no solid
morality without religion’.17 If those actions are morally good, which are in
conformity with the moral law as we know it from the Scripture, how did he
analyse moral judgements such as ‘This action is morally good’? In particular, do
moral judgements belong to the cognitive or the non-cognitive domain?
Berkeley discussed semantic issues in a series of notebook entries marked
‘Mo’ for ‘Moral Philosophy’, often commenting on passages in Locke’s Essay. ‘We
have no Ideas of Vertues & Vices, no Ideas of Moral Actions’ he said in NB 669,
thus indicating that moral judgements are not about matters of fact (or about
‘real ideas’ to use Locke’s term).18 This can be formulated,
(6) The logical form of moral judgments is not captured in the formula ‘X is
good,’ where X is an action and ‘good’ is a monadic, one-place predicate
observable in X.
If value statements are not about matters of fact, it follows from Berkeley’s
‘Doctrine of Certainty’, or Locke’s correspondence theory of truth, that value
statements are not true or false – in the sense that descriptive statements, such as
‘This horse is white’, are true or false.19 Following Edward Synge Senior (who was
chancellor of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin when Berkeley wrote his
notebooks), Berkeley meant that, in everyday language, moral judgements, and
even expressions for mysteries, can be used for persuasive purposes without
communicating any descriptive information at all (MI 36, 36a, 41, 41b first
stratum).20 He used this as a counter-example against ‘Those Philosophers [. . .]
Who think it nonsense for a Man to assent to any Proposition each term whereof
doth not bring into his Mind a clear and distinct Idea’ (MI 44).21
But what is the logical form of a value statement, if it is not simply ‘X is good’?
And on what grounds are we justified in assenting to a moral judgement?
Suppose we ask whether a murder is a good or a bad action (to take Locke’s
example). We can describe perfectly well what we mean by ‘murder’, but the
quality of being ‘Good, Bad, or Indifferent’ does not appear in this description,
according to Locke, ‘it being their Conformity to, or Disagreement with some
Rule that makes them to be regular or irregular, Good or Bad’ (2.28.13–16).22
In short,
(7) ‘X is good’ is an abbreviation for ‘X is good – according to a law L’.
The quality ‘is good’ is therefore an empty term if not completed ‘is good-
according-to-L’. This is part of Locke’s thesis that ‘Morality is capable of
Demonstration, as well as mathematics’ (4.12.8), which is reflected in Berkeley’s
statement about ‘Demonstrations used even in Divinity’:
There may be Demonstrations used even in Divinity. I mean in reveal’d Theology,

as contradistinguish’d from natural. for tho the Principles may be founded in
Faith yet this hinders not but that legitimate Demonstrations might be built
thereon. Provided still that we define the words we use & never go beyond our
Ideas. . . . But to pretend to demonstrate or reason any thing about the Trinity is
absurd here an implicit Faith becomes us.
NB 584
A moral judgement on X, given the moral law L, would then be correct, if it

follows logically – by the same kind of logic as when the court passes judgement
– from the prescriptive definitions of L (such as ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’)
that X is, or is not, good-according-to-L. That is to say,
(8) A moral judgment is an analytical statement which is valid if, and only if, it
follows logically from prescriptive definitions of the moral law on which it is
based, invalid if not.
Once Berkeley regarded moral judgements as analytical statements based on

prescriptive definitions and first principles quoted from the Scripture, the
important question is, What ‘Principles . . . founded in Faith’ form the basis for
morality?
Theological fundamentalism (1712)
Berkeley emphasizes the deductive approach in the opening argument of the

Passive Obedience. ‘I intend not to build on the Authority of Holy Scripture, but
altogether on the Principles of Reason’, he says (PO 2, my emphasis). But already
in section six he draws the conclusion that ‘a Conformity to [God’s] Will . . . is the
sole Rule whereby every Man who acts up to the Principles of Reason, must
Govern and Square his Actions’ (PO 6) – which means that we do have ‘to build
on the Authority of Holy Scripture’ (PO 2).
The crucial premise of this argument is that, on the one hand, we have an
inborn tendency to approach pleasure and avoid pain (our search for ‘natural
goodness’) and, on the other hand, a belief in the mystery of the afterlife,
according to which God prepared unimaginable pleasures in Paradise to those
who followed his will, but awful, eternal pain to those who broke God’s law.
Those, who strive for maximizing pleasure should, on these premises, follow ‘the
Authority of Holy Scripture’ – if they act ‘up to the Principles of Reason’.
So far, his reasoning concerns our motivation for performing moral actions.
Convinced there could be ‘no solid morality without religion’, he went to the
Bible in search of moral principles. The result is a theological doctrine of the
relation between God and man rather than the relation between living people in
this world. The problem is, how to reach Paradise by pleasing God rather than
how to make other people happy or ease their pain.
I start with Berkeley’s account of ‘natural goodness’ and of the mystery of
‘divine goodness’, and end with what follows concerning ‘moral goodness’.
Natural goodness
In Principles 146, we read about the tendency to approach pleasure and
avoid pain as ‘the never enough admir’d Laws of Pain and Pleasure, and the
Instincts or natural Inclinations, Appetites, and Passions of Animals’. Berkeley
refers to this instinctive striving for ‘natural goodness’ as the Principle of Self-
love (PO 5):
(9) With ‘natural goodness’ as the criterion, pleasure is intrinsically good and pain
intrinsically bad (to animals, humans included).
Sensual pleasures, however, like all kinds of pleasures and passions ‘must be
restrain’d and kept under’ (PO 13). Nonetheless – as Berkeley argued in the
opening sections of Passive Obedience (PO 2–6) – natural goodness can motivate
us to perform morally good actions, if we believe in an afterlife.
Morality is, however, subordinate to God’s design for the world, according to
Berkeley.
The mystery of divine goodness

Starting with the mystery of the Creation, Berkeley was convinced that ‘the
general design of Providence with regard to Mankind’ is to establish ‘the general
well-being of all Men’ (PO 7). As part of God’s design for the world, the moral
law was included as one of the laws of nature.
The basic rule in this line of thought was that, (a) ‘if they [the god-given laws,
‘Rules or Precepts’] be all of them, at all times, in all places, and by all Men
observed, [then] they will necessarily promote the well-being of Mankind’ (PO
15, my italics). As the world is, however, it does not reveal ‘general well-being of
all Men’. The reason is that, (b) if we do not follow the god-given ‘Rules and
Precepts’, then the laws of nature (= God’s will) will not ‘promote the well-being
of Mankind’ (PO 13–14, 41). If we combine (a) and (b), we have this general
principle:
(10) The laws of nature (including the moral law) ‘will necessarily promote the
well-being of Mankind’, if, and only if, all persons follow the god-given ‘Rules
and Precepts’ at all time.
PO 13–15, 41
As the moral law is one of the laws of nature, sinful acts create an imbalance
between the moral law and other natural laws, so the latter begin to run
amok thus causing ‘Plagues, Famines, Inundations, Earthquakes with an infinite
variety of Pains and Sorrows’ (PO 14). Berkeley asked, How could we ‘believe
that God hath, in several instances, laid the innocent part of mankind under
an unavoidable necessity, of enduring the greatest Sufferings and Hardships
without any Remedy’ (PO 41)? The answer is – in consequence of (10) – that
‘Sufferings and Hardships’ are ‘particular Evils which arise, necessarily and
properly, from the Transgression of some one or more good Laws’ (ibid., italics
original).
So long as there are sinners in the world, therefore, even those who never
sinned can fall victim to ‘an infinite variety of Pains and Sorrows’. What these
unfortunate people can hope for, who suffer because other persons sinned, is
that God ‘hath appointed a day of retribution in another life’ (PO 42). It follows
that,
(11) The ‘well-being of Mankind’ is unattainable in this world (so long as there
are sinners) – but God ‘hath appointed a Day of Retribution in another Life’.
PO 7, 13–15, 41–4223
The result is a conflict between what is good from a divine and from a human
perspective of the world. With ‘absolute goodness’ as the criterion, all natural
laws are intrinsically good (as part of God’s ‘general design’ for the world), even if
they sometimes cause ‘Pains and Sorrows’, which are intrinsically bad from a
human perspective (with ‘natural goodness’ as the criterion).
Berkeley mentioned ‘foolish Men’ who criticized the god-given laws of nature
on this ground. These ‘foolish Men’ meant ‘that the natural good not only of
private Men, but of intire Cities and Nations, wou’d be better promoted by a
particular Suspension, or Contradiction, than an exact Observation of those
Laws’ (PO 14). Berkeley’s comment is:
Yet for all that Nature still takes its course; nay, it is plain that Plagues, Famines,
Inundations, Earthquakes with an infinite variety of Pains and Sorrows, in a
word all kinds of Calamities publick and private do arise from a uniform steddy
observation of those general Laws, which are once establish’d by the Author of
Nature, and which he will not change or deviate from upon any of those
Accounts, how wise or benevolent soever, it may be thought by foolish Men to
do so.
PO 14
Berkeley argued – again from the principle in (10) – that the lack of well-
being in this world does not indicate any ‘defect of Wisdom or Goodness in
God’s Law, but of Righteousness in Men’ (PO 41).
It is a mistake, Berkeley argues, to compare God’s ‘absolute goodness’ with
‘natural goodness’. To understand this, we should not look at this world from our
own narrow perspective as human beings, but try to widen our perspective by
looking at the world as ‘distant spectators’:
And if we have a mind to take fair Prospect of the Order and general well-being,
which the inflexible Laws of Nature and Morality derive on the World, we must,
if I may so say, go out of it, and imagine our selves to be distant Spectators of all
that is Transacted and Contained in it; otherwise we are sure to be Deceived, by

the too near View of the little present Interests of our Selves, our Friends, or our
Country.
PO 28
Once we have reached this elevated stage, beyond ‘the little present Interests
of our Selves, our Friends, or our Country’, the seeming contradiction disappears
between God’s ‘absolutely good’ laws and what appears evil consequences, if
we judge from ‘natural goodness’. As Berkeley formulated it in the Principles:
what appears to be ‘Defects of Nature’ – such as ‘an infinite variety of Pains and
Sorrows’ (PO 14) – actually increases the beauty of the creation, if we look at the
world from this elevated perspective: ‘But we shou’d further consider, that the
very Blemishes and Defects of Nature are not without their Use, in that they
make an agreeable sort of Variety, and augment the Beauty of the rest of the
Creation, as Shades in a Picture serve to set off the brighter and more enlighten’d
Parts’ (P 152). So, the suffering of some increases ‘the Beauty of the rest of the
Creation, as Shades in a Picture’ – provided, again, that we look at the world from
an elevated perspective.
Moral goodness
If we leave the elevated platform from which all god-given laws appear good,
even when they cause ‘Pains and Sorrows’, and ask from an everyday-life
perspective: Is it not our moral obligation to help the unfortunate? Should we
not follow our conscience and make life less painful for those who suffer?24
In answer to these questions, Berkeley again warns us against those ‘foolish
Men’ who base their moral judgments on emotions and natural goodness rather
than passively obeying the divine laws. He admits, ‘Tenderness and Benevolence
of Temper are often motives to the best and greatest Actions’ but, he adds,
they [Tenderness and Benevolence] are passions rooted in our nature, and like
all other Passions must be restrain’d and kept under, otherwise they may possibly
betray us into as great Enormities, as any other unbridled Lust. Nay, they are
more dangerous than other Passions, inasmuch as they are more plausible, and
apt to dazzle, and corrupt the Mind, with the appearance of Goodness and
Generosity.
PO 13
Why should a person ignore natural goodness, resist the temptation to follow
such emotions and passions as tenderness and benevolence, and passively accept
whatever the laws of nature may cause, ‘tho’ thereby he should bring himself [his
Family, his Friends, his Country] to Poverty, Death, or Disgrace’ (PO 13)?
One reason why we should leave out emotions when deciding about moral
matters, is that knowledge about what is morally good requires that we ‘enquire
what Methods are necessary for the obtaining’ general well-being’ (PO 7, my
emphasis). Probabilities (to which we are confined in our empirical inquiries) are
not sufficient, when dealing with ‘absolute goodness’ because: ‘In Morality the
eternal Rules of Action have the same immutable, universal Truth with Propositions
in Geometry. Neither of them depend on Circumstances or Accidents, being at all
Times, and in all Places, without Limitation or Exception true’ (PO 53, 3rd ed.).
Here, Berkeley uses the term ‘Truth’ in a different sense from how he did in the
Notebooks. It indicates assenting to the mystery of divine goodness, on which
Berkeley bases his ethical objectivism.
As we cannot identify those actions that ‘have a necessary tendency to
promote the Well-being . . . taking in all Nations, and Ages, from the beginning to
the end of the World’ (PO 10–11), we have to follow the general principle in (10),
according to which it is our moral obligation to follow the god-given ‘Rules and
Precepts’ – ‘all of them, at all times, in all places’ (PO 7, 15, my italics).
But as we cannot obey several positive commands at each moment in time,
according to Berkeley, the rules of morality consist exclusively of negative
commands: ‘Thou shalt not forswear thyself,’ ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery,’
etc. (PO 15, 16, 26). So formulated, the moral law does not allow any exceptions:
positive laws could admit ‘Limitations and Exceptions’ that negative commands
‘are on no account liable to’ (PO 40).
As our knowledge in moral matters is confined to negative commands, i.e. to
what actions are not morally good, it follows that,
(12) Our knowledge of ‘moral goodness’ does not include knowledge of

intrinsically good, only of intrinsically bad, actions.
If we could decide if an action is morally good, we would not have to base

morality on religion or on the mystery of divine goodness. But, again, there is ‘no
solid morality without religion’ according to Berkeley, so (12) is a perfectly
coherent remark against this background.
As we lack tools to ‘enquire what Methods are necessary for the obtaining’
general well-being, and our knowledge about moral goodness is confined to
what is intrinsically bad, according to (12), the conclusion should be that,
(13) It is beyond human ability to set up positive laws of morality.

One reason for this is ‘the perverse irregularity of humane Wills’ (PO 8). As
mentioned in the Introduction, we cannot calculate the utility of a particular
action, because one action may appear good on one occasion, and bad on
another, which would lead to ‘the most horrible confusion of Vice and Virtue, Sin
and Duty, that can possibly be imagined’ (PO 9–10). Berkeley mentions with
great indignation a person who suggested that ‘the Publick Good’ should take
priority over ‘Divine Laws’ (PO 48n).25
The early fundamentalism

In Passive Obedience, Berkeley is looking into the heavens with his own salvation
in mind, rather than care for what happens in everyday life, as when he warns us
against being betrayed by ‘passions rooted in our nature’ such as tenderness and
benevolence, which are ‘apt to dazzle, and corrupt the Mind, with the appearance
of Goodness and Generosity’. Or when he asked us to look at the world as ‘distant
Spectators’ to understand how human suffering could increase ‘the Beauty of the
rest of the Creation, as Shades in a Picture’ – or to avoid being distracted or
deceived ‘by the too near View of the little present Interests of our Selves, our
Friends, or our Country’ (PO 13–14, 28, P 152).
What becomes us is to passively obey the negative commands we find in the
Scripture, possibly with one exception.As the freethinkers were guilty of undermining
the ‘great points of the Christian Religion’, Berkeley argued in a pamphlet from
1721,26 ‘it is high time the Legislature put a stop to them’. He meant that ‘the public
Safety requires that the avowed Contemners of all Religion be severely chastised’. As
he could not find ‘a good reason, why Blasphemy against God should not be inquired
into and punished with the same rigour as Treason against the King’, he moved in
effect that free-thinking should be forbidden under penalty of death.
However, Berkeley wrote Passive Obedience when he was 27 years old, and
Alexander Pope’s (slightly exaggerated) ‘To Berkley, ev’ry Virtue under Heav’n’
was a comment on the later Berkeley. To investigate how he as a mature man
defeated the fundamentalism he developed in his youth, is however a story far
outside the scope of the present chapter.27
Notes
1 For an account of the historical context, see Warnock, G. J. (1986), ‘On Passive
Obedience’. History of European Ideas 7, 555–62.
2 This copy is available at the Johnson Memorial Library at Columbia University, New
York, catalogued as BK 100 B4 55. See Belfrage, B. (1981), ‘The Newport extract of
Berkeley’s Passive Obedience’, Berkeley Newsletter 5, 6–9.
3 In the extract he omitted the following passage at the end of PO 15: ‘it follows that
Loyalty is a moral Virtue; and, Thou shalt not Resist the Supreme Power, a Rule or
Law of Nature, the least breach whereof hath the inherent stain of moral Turpitude’.
4 Works 7:346.
5 The traditional view is, however, that Passive Obedience is ‘Berkeley’s main
contribution to moral and political Philosophy’, his ‘most important ethical and
political work’, etc. See, for instance, Olscamp, P. J. (1970b), The Moral Philosophy of
George Berkeley. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff: 56 and Darwall, S. (2005), ‘Berkeley’s
moral and political philosophy’ in K. P. Winkler (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to
Berkeley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 311–38: 323.
6 See a letter from William Molyneux to Locke in De Beer, E. S., ed. (1976–1989), The
Correspondence of John Locke, 8 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, iv, 602.
7 Locke (1689), ‘Epistle to the Reader’ (p. 7) in: Locke, J. ([1689]1975), An Essay
concerning Human Understanding. P. H. Nidditch (ed). Oxford: Clarendon Press,
and 1.1.5, 7.
8 In Luce’s numbering, the first entry in Notebook A is numbered 400.
9 NB 421 and 422 are referred to as ‘axioms’ in NB 380 and 382. In these notes, as well
as in NB 417, he has infinitesimals in mind.
10 See NB 731, 753, 777, 809, 731a. In NB 731a he distinguishes between being certain
(I will use the term ‘believe’) and being really certain (in this case I speak of ‘being
certain’).
11 Compare Locke’s view in the Essay 4.5.2 that the term ‘truth’ signifies ‘nothing but the
joining and separating of Signs, as the Things signified by them, do agree or disagree
one with another’ (italics original). Berkeley frequently refers to Locke in this context.
12 By ‘truly believes’ I mean that the requirement of being aware of a pictorial ‘mental
proposition’ is fulfilled.
13 Locke 1689, 1.1.4.
14 NB 720. I have replaced Berkeley’s ‘i.e’ by ‘=def.’ and, as Berkeley repeats ‘out of our
reach’ twice, I have replaced the first occurrence by ‘[. . .]’. The addition in square
brackets is mine. Thus ‘expressions’ is my term. I use it for any element used in a
system of (attempted) communication.
15 Toland, J. (1696), Christianity not Mysterious: Or, a Treatise Shewing, That There is
Nothing in the Gospel Contrary to Reason, Nor Above it: And that no Christian
Doctrine Can be Properly Call’d a Mystery (2nd ed). London: Sam. Buckley, 44 (page
numbers are to the 1997 edition).
16 I have added ‘in cognitive discourse’ within square brackets, and I have replaced ‘the
Trinity’ with ‘holy mysteries’.
17 Compare Locke’s Essay 1.3.6, 2.28.8, 3.4.10. On Berkeley’s ‘Notes on Moral

Philosophy’, see Belfrage, B. (1978), ‘Notes by Berkeley on moral philosophy’, Berkeley
Newsletter 2, 4–7.
18 Locke meant it is particularly important to define our technical terms in moral
philosophy, because, ‘A Definition is the only way, whereby the precise Meaning of
moral Words can be known’ (3.11.17, italics original). These definitions are (now
using Locke’s own vocabulary) ‘Combinations of Ideas’ – ‘not of Nature’s but Man’s
making’ (3.11.15). As they are ‘Collections of simple Ideas, that the Mind it self puts
together’ (2.31.14), they have ‘no other reality, but what they have in the Minds of
Men’ (2.30.4). Thus we have no ‘real Ideas’ of value predicates, in the sense that they
have ‘a Conformity with the real Being, and Existence of Things’ (2.30.1). (Italics
original.)
19 In Locke’s terms: as ‘the Mind it self puts together’ the ideas referred to in our
definitions of moral terms, they are ‘Archetypes of the Mind’s own making’. Thus,
what ‘moral Words stand for, may be perfectly known’ (3.11.16, 4.4.7), and as a ‘moral
Idea’ represents nothing ‘but it self, [it] can never be capable of a wrong
representation’ (2.31.14, 4.4.5).
20 See Synge, E. (1703), A Gentleman’s Religion. 2nd ed. London: A. and J. Churchill,
p. 219.
21 Commentators, who presume that Berkeley agreed with ‘Those Philosophers’ he
criticizes here (or with Toland’s non-theological positivism), are convinced that – if
Berkeley meant that value statements could be used for persuasive purposes, and if
he agreed with Locke that moral judgements are no descriptions of matters of fact
– then a moral judgement would be ‘a sentence that, in reality, does not have a truth
value’, and thereby Berkeley would, they say (with reference to twentieth-century
philosophers), be ‘forced into emotivism’, thus being a ‘proto-emotivist’ denying an
objective moral order (Williford, K. (2003), ‘Berkeley’s theory of operative language
in the Manuscript Introduction’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 11,
271–301, pp. 295, 297, 299; Jakapi, R. (2002), Berkeley, Mysteries, and Meaning: A
Critique of the Non-cognitivist Interpretation. Tartu: Dissertationes Philosophicae
Universitatis Tartuensis 2, Tartu University Press, p. 50. Repeated in Williford, K. and
Jakapi, R. (2009), ‘Berkeley’s theory of meaning in Alciphron VII ’, British Journal for
the History of Philosophy 17, 99–118).
22 Locke distinguished between ‘The law of God’, civil laws, and ‘The Law of Fashion, or
private Censure’. The common mistake is, he said, that ‘there is often no distinction
made between the positive Idea of the Action, and the reference it has to a rule’
(2.28.13, 16; italics original).
23 ‘Retribution’ in this context includes both punishment and recompense.
24 It is difficult to say what role conscience plays in Passive Obedience. On the one hand,
we read that the moral rules ‘are said to be stamped on the Mind, to be engraven on
the Tables of the Heart, because they are well known to Mankind, and suggested and
inculcated by Conscience’ (PO 12, italics original), and that we should be prepared
to accept penalties for following our conscience (PO 3), suffering ‘for Conscience
sake’ (PO 40). On the other hand, we read that it will lead to ‘great Difficulties’ if we
look for the rules of morality ‘in the natural Inscriptions on the Mind’ (PO 4). And
in PO 13 we read that it would be wrong to follow our conscience to ease sufferings
caused by natural laws. If to follow the voice of ‘conscience’ means to be led by
‘Tenderness and Benevolence’,’ then our conscience misleads us in these cases.
25 Passive Obedience is a theological enquiry. I have not found it fruitful to compare it
to later, secular doctrines such as Utilitarianism.
26 In An Essay towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain (1721). Works 6:70–71.
27 I wish to express my gratitude to Timo Airaksinen, Nancy Kendrick and Marta
Szymanska-Lewoszewska for helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter.
I am grateful to the Hultengrens Fond, Lund University, for a grant that made it
possible to finish this chapter.
9
De Motu: Berkeley’s Philosophy of Science

Richard Brook
Introduction
Berkeley’s De Motu [hence DM ] was first published in 1721 and republished in

1752. Its full title was De Motu: Sive de motus principio & natura et de causa
communicationis motuum (On Motion: Or The Principle and Nature of Motion and
the Cause of the Communication of Motions). The essay was evidently unsuccessfully
submitted for a prize offered by The Royal Academy of Paris in 1720.
Although dismissed by some, DM offers important accounts of Berkeley’s
distinction between religion (metaphysics) and science or natural philosophy
(here mainly mechanics, optics and astronomy), particularly how Berkeley
conceived his work in relation to that of Isaac Newton’s discussion in the
Principia of scientific explanation, for example, the status of forces in astronomy
and mechanics, and the nature of space, and motion (Newton, 1687). These
issues are dealt with in other works, particularly the Philosophical Notebooks, The
Principles of Human Knowledge (1710/1734) and The Siris (1744). However, DM
being more focused on the physical sciences (or natural philosophy) gives a
usefully clear and consistent commentary on these topics. Finally, I consider
some modern views about the significance of DM , in particular Karl Popper’s
claim that Berkeley’s criticism of Newton’s views of space, time and motion
anticipate the late nineteenth-century physicist and philosopher, Ernst Mach
(Popper, 1953, Mach, 1884).
Natural philosophy and metaphysics
The following four passages from DM illustrate Berkeley’s conception of the

contrast between natural philosophy and metaphysics.
158
De Motu: Berkeley’s Philosophy of Science 159
DM §38:
In mechanics also [as with geometry] notions are premised, i.e. definitions and
general statements about motion from which afterwards by mathematical
method conclusions more remote and less general are deduced.
DM §41:
Mechanical principles and universal laws of motions or of nature, happy

discoveries of the last century, treated an applied by aid of geometry, have shown
a remarkable light on philosophy. But metaphysical principles and real efficient
causes of the motion and existence of bodies or of corporeal attributes in no way
belong to mechanics or experiment, nor throw light on them except in so far as
being known beforehand they may serve to define the limits of physics, and in
that way to remove imported difficulties and problems.
DM §42:
the natural philosopher should concern himself entirely with experiments, laws
of motions, mechanical principles, laws of motions, and reasonings thus deduced.
And DM §71:
In physics sense and experience which reach only to apparent effects hold sway;
in mechanics the abstract notions of mathematics are admitted. In first
philosophy or metaphysics we are concerned with incorporeal things, with
causes, truth, and the existence of things.
Incorporeal things are minds, and Berkeley’s well-known view is that only
minds are efficient causes. For Berkeley ‘physics’ deals with qualitative
relationships revealed to sense experience, mechanics makes use of, for example,
the idealizations (or ‘abstractions’) of Euclidean geometry and algebra to
mathematize those relationships, and first philosophy or metaphysics considers
real (efficient) causes identified with the actions of an agent (God, or finite
agents). In P §105 Berkeley – after a discussion of ‘attraction’ as an alleged
mechanism for gravitational effects – remarks:
If therefore we consider the difference there is betwixt natural Philosophers and

other men, with regard to their knowledge of the Phenomena, we shall find it
consists, not in an exacter knowledge of the efficient cause that produces them,
for that can be no other than the will of a spirit, but only in 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 by
mathematics to general rules (my emphasis).1
Berkeley and Newton
In P §104 Berkeley writes:
That bodies should tend towards the center of the earth, is not thought strange,
because it is what we perceive every moment of our lives. But that they should
have a like gravitation towards the center of the moon, may seem odd and un-
accountable to most men, because it is discerned only in the tides. But a
philosopher, whose thought takes in a larger compass of Nature, having observed
a certain similitude of appearances, as well in the heavens as the earth, that argue
innumerable bodies to have a mutual tendency towards each other, which he
denotes by the general name attraction, whatever can be reduced to that, he
thinks justly accounted for (Berkeley’s emphasis).
The philosopher referred to is Newton. By ‘accounted for’ Berkeley means can

be mathematically deduced from general laws such as the law of gravity. Certainly
Newton’s work – with important differences –is the model for Berkeley’s
conception of scientific explanation. Both take general laws to account for or
explain more specific regularities, like planetary orbits or tidal variation. We
have something like what has been called ‘the deductive-nomological model
[DN , or ‘covering law’] model of explanation’.2 From general laws of motion,
including the inverse square law of gravity, more specific regularities, for example,
Kepler’s second law of planetary motion – planets in their orbits around the sun
sweep out equal areas in equal times –are mathematically deduced (Buchdahl
1970).3
The DN model has well-known difficulties. I will focus on one issue,
particularly relevant to Berkeley’s relation to Newton; the role, even if implicit, of
causality in the model. Both explanations and justifications can instantiate the
formal (logical) structure of the DN account. A familiar example of the latter is
that using Euclidean geometry and knowing the length of a flagpole’s shadow,
and the angle light rays make with the pole, I can deduce the pole’s length. I have
not explained why the pole is that long, although I have justified my belief that it
is that long. On the other hand, given the angle of the sun’s rays and the flagpole’s
height, I deduce and thereby explain the shadow’s length, since the pole’s blocking
the rays causes the shadow.4
Certainly there are non-causal explanations, for example, deducing a theorem
in pure mathematics from a sufficiently complex set of premises. For example,
explaining why in a Euclidean triangle the sum of the angles equals two right
angles. The point is simply that meeting the formal requirements of the DN
model is not sufficient for an explanation. Moreover, in what became known as

‘mixed mathematics’, as in mathematically deducing Kepler’s laws, empirical
premises in the explanans suggest at least implicitly a cause of what is to be
explained. In the Preface to the first edition of the Principia (distinguishing
‘manual arts’ from ‘natural philosophy’), Newton writes:
But I consider philosophy rather than arts and write not concerning manual but
natural powers, and consider chiefly those things which relate to gravity, levity,
elastic force, the resistance of fluids, and the like forces whether attractive or
impulsive; and therefore I offer this work as the mathematical principles of
philosophy, for the whole burden of philosophy seems to consist in this – from
the phenomena of motions to investigate the forces of nature, and then from
these forces to demonstrate the other phenomena.
Principia 1729, 1962 xvii, my emphasis
Berkeley agrees with this in general but raises questions about the nature of
forces. He writes in DM §37:
A thing can be said to be explained mechanically then indeed when it is

reduced to those most simple and universal principles, and shown by
accurate reasoning to be in agreement and connection with them. For once
the laws of nature have been found out, then it is the philosopher’s task to show
that each phenomena is in constant conformity with those laws, that is,
necessarily follows from those principles. In that consist the explanation and
solution of phenomena and the assigning their cause, i.e. the reason why they take
place (my emphasis).
The last sentence carefully doesn’t equate cause with efficient cause. And in
that sense the DN structure might appear a useful model of explanation for
Berkeley since no explicit reference is made to causes. Yet without at least an
implicit reference to causality DM §37 doesn’t tell us why ‘a thing’ is explained
rather than merely that the belief the ‘thing’ occurred or will occur is justified.
In any case Newton and Berkeley certainly thought that Kepler’s laws could
be explained from, among other premises, the inverse square law for gravitational
attraction. For Newton – I return to this below – gravitational attraction does
explain, in the sense of strictly causing, orbital motions and tidal variation. There
are, then, important differences between Newton and Berkeley about whether
gravitational attraction counts as a force or strict cause. Two issues at least are
involved: whether forces in general, thought of as efficient causes, are real; and
whether alleged forces, even if assumed to exist, can act unmediated and
instantaneously across empty space. My main interest is the first question,
though I note the question of action at a distance was important for many of
Newton’s contemporaries.5
As for force itself, conceived as an active principle, Berkeley contends bodies
are essentially passive, a position he thinks is supported by Newton’s laws
themselves. In DM §22 he writes:
All that we know to which we have given the name body contains nothing in
itself which could be the principle of motion or its efficient cause; for
impenetrability, extension, and figure neither include or connote any power of
producing motion; nay, on the contrary, if we review singly those qualities of
body, and whatever other qualities there may be, we see that they are all in fact
passive and that there is nothing active in them which can in any way be
understood as the source and principle of motion.
This is a general principle echoing Berkeley’s view that nature contains no

efficient causes. In DM §33 he comments:
But those who attribute a vital [vitale] principle to bodies are imagining an
obscure notion and one ill suited to the facts. For what is meant by being
endowed with the vital principle, except to live? And to live, what is meant but to
move oneself, to stop, and to change one’s state? But the most learned philosophers
of this age lay it down for an indubitable principle that every body persists in its
own state, whether of rest or of uniform movement in a straight line, except in
so far as it is compelled from without to alter that state.6
Berkeley rejects Newton’s view that bodies contain a vis insita, or innate force
of matter . . . a power of resisting by which every body, as much as in it lies,
endeavours to preserve its present state, whether it be of rest or of moving
uniformly forward in a straight line.7 As for gravity, Berkeley evidently shared
with continental critics like Leibniz the view that gravitational force was an
occult quality. In P §23 he writes: ‘The great mechanical principle now in vogue
is attraction. That a stone falls to the earth, or the sea swells toward the moon,
may to some appear sufficiently explained thereby. But how are we enlightened
by being told this is done by attraction?’ (Berkeley’s emphasis). In DM §4 he is
more explicit: ‘But since the cause of the fall of heavy bodies is unseen and
unknown, gravity in that usage, cannot properly be styled a sensible quality. It is,
therefore, an occult quality. But what an occult quality is, or how any quality can
act or do anything, we can scarcely conceive – indeed we cannot conceive’ (my
emphasis). The last sentence connects two clams: (1) gravity, qua occult quality,
doesn’t do anything, and (2) no sensible quality, or collection of sensible qualities,
does anything, since sensible objects are causally inert.8 Newton, as noted (fn 2),
rejected criticism that gravity was an occult quality. He writes In the General
Scholium ending Book III of the Principia:
Hitherto we have explain’d the phaenomena of the heavens and of our sea, by the
power of Gravity, but have not yet assign’d the cause of this power. This is certain,
that it must proceed from a cause that penetrates to the very centers of the Sun
and Planets, without suffering the least diminution of its force; that operates, not
according to the quantity of surfaces of the particles upon which it acts, (as
mechanical causes used to do) but according to the quantity of the solid matter
which they contain, and propagates its virtue on all sides, to immense distances,
decreasing always in the duplicate proportion of the distances. Gravitation
towards the Sun, is made up out of the gravitations towards the several particles
of which the body of the Sun is compos’d; and in receding from the Sun,
decreases accurately in the duplicate proportion of the distances, as far as the orb
of Saturn, as evidently appears from the quiescence of the aphelions of the
Planets;9 nay, and even to the remotest aphelions of the Comets, if those aphelions
are also quiescent. But hitherto I have not been able to discover the cause of
those properties of gravity from phaenomena, and I frame no hypotheses. For
whatever is not deduc’d from the phaenomena, is to be called an hypothesis; and
hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or
mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy
particular propositions are inferr’d from the phaenomena, and afterwards
render’d general by induction. Thus it was that the impenetrability, the mobility,
and the impulsive force of bodies, and the laws of motion and of gravitation,
were discovered. And to us it is enough, that gravity does really exist, and act
according to the laws which we have explained, and abundantly serves to account
for all the motions of the celestial bodies, and of our sea (my emphasis) (Newton,
1713, 546–7).10
Yet Berkeley, interestingly, attributes his own instrumental view of forces to

Newton, writing in DM §17:
Force, gravity, attraction and terms of this sort are useful for reasonings and
reckonings about bodies and bodies in motion, but not for understanding the
simple nature of motion itself or for indicating so many distinct qualities. As for
attraction, it was certainly introduced by Newton, not as a true physical quality,
but only as a mathematical hypothesis (Berkeley’s emphasis).
The passage suggests there is no denotative distinction between the terms

‘force’, ‘gravity’ and ‘attraction’ (though ‘force’ obviously is a more general term)
since none refer. Attributing forces for Berkeley is like positing epicycles in
astronomy; not existing but mathematically useful for explanation.11 Berkeley’s
broader point is that a realist view of forces takes them mistakenly to be efficient
causes.12
Although in the passage Berkeley attributes this view of forces to Newton,13
the section quoted from the General Scholium shows that Newton was a realist
about forces, certainly about gravitational attraction.14 The Principia does have a
passage that apparently offers evidence for Berkeley’s claim that Newton thought
attraction a mathematical hypothesis. Newton contrasts what he calls the
‘mathematical’ and the ‘physical’ treatment of force. After defining various sorts of
motions and forces, Newton writes of the concept of force: ‘For I here design only
to giver a mathematical notion of those forces, without considering their physical
causes and seats’ (Principia, 5). It’s clear, however, that Newton means here by a
mathematical treatment, taking the centres of attracting bodies as mathematical
points (Ibid, 6). In fact Newton has a fourfold distinction: gravitational phenomena
such as tidal changes and planetary orbits, gravitational attraction as the cause of
those changes, the cause of attraction itself, and lastly the law of gravity;15 that the
attractive force is directly proportional to the masses of attracting bodies and
inversely proportional to the square of the intervening distance.
I note in passing that action at a distance should not be a special problem for
Berkeley since he thought natural bodies were causally inert even in contact. So
corpuscularianism would not be attractive to him if it required real contact
forces.16 In sum, although Berkeley was mistaken in thinking that for Newton
gravitational attraction was shorthand for a mathematical hypothesis, he largely
accepted the Principia’s systemization for what Berkeley took to be a non-causal
paradigm for scientific explanation, at least in astronomy, optics and mechanics;
using mathematics to deduce specific regularities from more general laws, where
the deduction constitutes the core of the explanation.17
Absolute motion and absolute space
Berkeley’s specific criticism of the Principia’s distinction between absolute and

relative motion and space is notable for its modern appearance. This criticism,
and his critique in The Analyst (Berkeley, 1734) of Newton and Leibniz’s
formulation of the calculus, perhaps among all Berkeley’s works, had the most
relevance for modern treatments of physics and analysis. Newton famously
offers two thought experiments in the Principia for the existence of absolute
motion and hence absolute space, both dealing with centrifugal effects of
accelerated motion. (1) In a spinning vessel containing water, the water at first
will be in relative motion with the vessel, then gradually whirl at the same speed,
(relatively at rest with the vessel) while the water’s edges creep up the sides of the
container, deforming the surface into a concave shape. For Newton this
centrifugal effect, the rise of the water, demonstrates the vessel is accelerating
absolutely (‘the true and absolute circular motion of the water’) (Newton, 10).
(2) If two globes connected by a cord are ‘whirled around their common center
of gravity’, the ‘tension’ of the cord, a centrifugal effect, implies, without
comparison with other bodies, that the globes are truly in motion (Ibid, 10–12).
Berkeley considered these thought experiments from early on. In his
unpublished Note Books (Berkeley, 1707–1709, Ayers, 1975, NB 456) he writes: ‘I
differ from Newton in that I think the recession ab axe motus is not the effect or
index or measure of motion, but of the vis impressa. It showeth not what is truly
moved but what has the force impressed on it. or rather that which hath an
impressed force.’
The passage is too brief to be very helpful. It is not clear what Berkeley means
here by the impressed force or why he doesn’t think the water’s recession indicates
its absolute motion. The other possibility is that the bucket is whirling with
respect to some other material object(s), a choice Berkeley ultimately endorses.
While considering De Motu’s analysis of these thought experiments, I also look
at some passages from The Principles.
In P §112, after outlining Newton’s distinction between relative and absolute
motion, and therefore relative and absolute space, Berkeley comments:
But not withstanding what has been said [about Newton], it doth not appear to
me, that there can be any other motion than relative: so that to conceive motion,
there must be at least conceived two bodies, whereof the distance or position in
regard to each other is varied. Hence if there was one only body in being, it could
not possibly be moved. This seems evident, in the idea I have of motion doeth
necessarily include relation.
This is a conceptual claim about the nature of motion, (shared by Leibniz)

but, as noted below, it has important consequences. Though by definition
Berkeley takes a perceived A to move only if it changes its position with respect
to some perceived B taken to be at rest, he does suggest a distinction between
relative motion per se, and a sub-class we can call ‘real motion’. Using the example
of walking across the streets, he says in P §113:
[Y]et as relative motion is that which is perceived by sense, and regarded in the
ordinary affairs of life, it should seem that every man of common sense knows
what it is, as well as the best philosopher: now I ask anyone, whether in his sense
of motion as he walks along the streets, the stones he passes over may be said to
move, because they change distance with his feet? To me it seems, that though
motion includes a relation of one thing to another, yet it is not necessary that
each term of the relation be denominated from it [see also P §115].
Real motion has an efficient cause, in this case the person choosing to walk by
moving his legs. Although Berkeley takes this to be a matter of commonsense it
raises the question of how he differs from Newton who in terms of impressed
forces distinguished absolute from merely relative motion.18 The answer, one that
perhaps leads to a difficulty (see below), is that real motion, as any motion for
Berkeley, still requires an observable reference frame, whereas for Newton absolute
motion can exist in absolute space. Discussing ‘place’ in P §114, Berkeley comments:
In the common affairs of life men never go beyond the earth to define the place
of any body: and what is quiescent in respect of that, is accounted absolutely to
be so. But philosophers who have a greater extent of thought, and juster notions
of the system of things, discover even the earth itself to be moved. In order
therefore to fix their notions, they seem to conceive the corporeal world as finite,
and the utmost unmoved walls or shell thereof, to be the place, whereby they
estimate true motions. If we sound our own conceptions, I believe we may find
all the absolute motion we can frame an idea of, to be at bottom no other than
relative motion thus defined.
By the ‘utmost unmoved walls or shell’, Berkeley refers to the fixed stars.
Supporting this gloss are comments in DM §64. After noting that, depending on
the reference frame, a body can be said to be in motion or at rest, he writes:
[T]o determine true motion and true rest, for the removal of ambiguity, and for
the furtherance of the mechanics of these philosophers who take the wider view
of the system of things, it would be enough to bring in, instead of absolute space,
relative space as confined to the heavens of the fixed stars, considered as at rest
(my emphasis).
We can now say the globes ‘truly’ rotate relative to the fixed stars. What of the
tension in the cord? That particular centrifugal effect for Newton is caused by
the absolute rotation of the globes; that is, the rotation with respect to absolute
space. Presumably for Berkeley if the fixed stars suddenly disappeared, there
would be no motion. Would he think, however, the tension in the cord remains?19
Since the passage above does not discuss that particular centrifugal effect, we can
look elsewhere. Berkeley writes in P §114 about centrifugal effects in the bucket
experiment:
As to what is said of the centrifugal force,20 that it doth not at all belong to
circular relative motion; [Newton’s view] I do not see how that this follows from
the experiment which is brought to prove it. See Philosophie Naturalis Principia
Mathematica, in Schol. Def. VIII. For the water in the vessel, at that time wherein
it is said to have the greatest circular motion, hath, I think, no motion at all; as is
plain from the foregoing section (Berkeley’s emphasis).
The water lacks motion, Berkeley believes, since, given his conception of
motion, the water is at rest relative to the bucket. But, as with his discussion of
the globe experiment, Berkeley says nothing in this passage about centrifugal
effects; in this case the deformation of the water’s surface. DM §60, though, has
a more complete discussion of the bucket experiment:
As regards circular motion many think that, as motion truly circular increases,
the body necessarily tends ever more and more away from its axis. The belief
arises from the fact that circular motion can be seen taking its origin, as it were,
at every moment from two directions, one along the radius and the other along
the tangent, and if in this latter direction only the impetus be increased, then the
body in motion will retire from the centre, and its orbit will cease to be circular.
But if the forces be increased equally in both directions the motion will remain
circular though accelerated – which will not argue an increase in the forces in
retirement from the axis, any more than in the forces of approach to it. Therefore
we must say that the water forced round in the bucket rises to the sides of the
vessel, because when new forces are applied in the direction of the tangent to any
particle of water, in the same instant new centripetal forces are not applied. From
which experiment it in no way follows that absolute circular motion is necessarily
recognized by the forces of retirement from the axis of motion. Again, how those
terms corporeal forces and conation are to be understood is more than sufficiently
shown in the foregoing discussion (Berkeley’s emphasis).21
The passage has some problems. First, the deformation of the water does not
result from a new tangential impetus to the bucket. (Unless Berkeley means
relative to when the bucket was still.) Rather, particles of water, less constrained
than the bucket’s structural rim, move along a tangential line as their natural
(inertial) motion, though trapped by the bucket’s sides. Moreover, from Newton’s
viewpoint, the water surface’s deformation does not change the fact that the rim
velocity of the water and bucket are the same. It is the centrifugal effect, the
deformation of the water, that needs explaining. For Newton, again, the
explanation is the bucket’s rotation – thus acceleration – with respect to absolute
space.22 Berkeley perhaps could have simply admitted the presence of centrifugal
effects when the water and the bucket are relatively at rest, but insists on his
earlier point that the fixed stars are an adequate inertial frame with respect to
which the bucket is rotating. This does raise the problem – see notes – of
accounting for the water’s perceived deformation when no frame exists with
respect to which we perceive the bucket’s rotation.
The fact, however, that the earth and the fixed stars can equally serve as an
inertial frame (roughly Newton’s laws come out true in both) raises a possible
puzzle concerning Berkeley’s claim in P §113 where he distinguishes merely
relative motion and what I have called real relative motion, and his claim in DM
64 that ‘true motion and rest’ are revealed relative to the fixed stars as a reference
frame. In principle, if I walk in the opposite direction and with equal speed to the
earth’s rotation, then in one inertial frame [the earth] I am moving, and in the
other [fixed stars] I am stationary.23 Berkeley certainly recognizes this ‘Galilean
relativity’. As mentioned above, in DM §64 he notes: ‘a thing can be said in one
respect to be in motion and in another respect to be at rest’. The phrase ‘true
motion’ in that passage then is perhaps misleading. Or at least real motion and
true motion might need to be distinguished. Winkler (1986) notes the Galilean
relativity point and suggests we can without contradiction say I am truly moving
with respect to the earth and truly at rest relative to the fixed stars. Presumably,
if I were to walk at the speed of the earth and in the same direction as its rotation
I would truly be at rest with respect to the earth, and I would truly move with
respect to the fixed stars. However it is not clear how the term ‘truly’ functions
here. Perhaps we must ultimately rest with a pragmatic point that, at least for
Berkeley, the fixed stars as a reference frame give a simpler physics, particularly
one that does not introduce efficient causes. Again, Berkeley requires some
observable reference frame, in this case an inertial frame like the earth or the
fixed stars, for there to be motion at all. His point is that absolute motion and
absolute space are illegitimate abstractions; since they cannot be perceived they
are literally unconceivable.
Berkeley as anticipating Ernst Mach
Some contemporary philosophers, notably Karl Popper (1953), find Berkeley’s

critique of Newton’s thought experiments historically significant, for its strain of
positivism they think anticipates some contemporary views about space and
time. DM §64 is a fundamental passage for Popper as it claims that the fixed
stars can replace absolute space as a reference frame for the centrifugal effects in
Newton’s examples. Popper writes:
What is perhaps most striking is that Berkeley and Mach, both great admirers of
Newton, criticize the ideas of absolute time, absolute space, and absolute motion
on similar lines. Mach’s criticism, exactly like Berkeley’s, culminates in the
suggestion that Newton’s arguments in favor of his absolute space (Foucault’s
Pendulum, the rotating bucket of water, the effect of centrifugal forces upon the
shape of the earth) fail because these movements are relative to the fixed stars.
1953, 32–33
The significant point for Popper is that both Berkeley and Mach think absolute
motion and absolute space are illegitimate notions. One body can be said to
move only relative to some observable body (or bodies) considered at rest. Mach
writes: ‘the system of the world is only given once to us, and the Ptolemaic or
Copernican view is our interpretation, but both are equally actual. Try to fix
Newton’s bucket and rotate the heaven of fixed stars and then prove the absence
of centrifugal forces’ (Mach 1884, 232). Mach takes the thought experiment to
beg the question in favor of absolute motion. He thinks only the relative motion
of the bucket to the remainder of mass in the universe is functionally related to
the water’s deformation.
Newton’s experiment with the rotating vessel of water simply informs us that
the relative rotation of the water with respect to the sides of the vessel produces
no noticeable centrifugal forces, but that such forces are produced by its relative
rotation with respect to the mass of the earth and the other celestial bodies
(Mach 1884, 232).24
I note in passing that although Berkeley and Mach have a quite similar view
of alleged entities like forces,25 absolute motion and absolute space – they are in
principle unobservable and therefore non-existent – Mach would lack sympathy
for Berkeley’s idealism or religious metaphysics. The historical tie between
Berkeley and Mach, as both Karl Popper (1953) and John Earman (1989)
contend, is that both belong to that positivist tradition in physics and philosophy
of science that rejects appeal to entities that are in principle unobservable.
W.A. Suchting (1967) thinks, however, that whereas Mach had a thoroughly
conventionalist view of what counts as an inertial frame, Berkeley took it as at
least meaningful that the fixed stars could be really at rest.26 However, in DM
§65, Berkeley, using the following reductio, indicates that he has a conventionalist
position about inertial frames.
The laws of motion and the effects, and theorems containing the proportions
and calculations of the same for the different configurations of the paths, likewise
for accelerations and different directions, and for mediums resisting in greater or
less degree: all of these hold without bringing absolute motion into account. As
is plain from this that, since according to the principles of those who introduce
absolute motion we cannot know by any indication whether the whole frame of
things is at rest or is moved uniformly in a direction, clearly we cannot know the
absolute motion of any body.27 And in DM §66 Berkeley notes we should be
content with ‘relative measures’.
I remarked above that in P §113 Berkeley endorses the existence of real
motions, those caused by an impressed force as when I intentionally walk along
the street. This motion is relative, however, to the earth as an inertial frame;
presumably again I might be stationary relative to some other frame, say the
fixed stars. There might be no practical problem here for Berkeley, though so-
called ‘true’ motion, as Winkler (1986) suggests, would for Berkeley be relativized
to a particular reference frame. The problem remains, however, of how to explain
the centrifugal effects of alleged accelerated motion, for example the tides, or the
water’s deformation in the bucket experiment. Here too Berkeley perhaps could
be satisfied I think with a kinematics, dispensing with forces like attraction, and
substituting functional relations between observables suitably idealized. He
might accept with Mach, for example, that force in the Newtonian system simply
means mass times acceleration, and that what is ultimately significant about so-
called gravitational attraction is the mathematical law of gravity.
Berkeley sums up his view of the relation between natural philosophy and
metaphysics in De Motu’s last section (DM §72), and I end with that passage:
Only by meditation and reasoning can truly active causes be rescued from the
surrounding darkness and be to some extent known. To deal with them is the
business of first philosophy or metaphysics. Alot to each science its own province;
assign its bounds; accurately distinguish the principles and objects belonging to
each. Thus it will be possible to treat them with greater ease and clarity.
Notes
1 Eric Schliesser notes how important it was for Berkeley to protect religion from what
he believed to be the possibility that the growing success of science would challenge
the existence of a realm – in this case religion – that is both distinct in its aims from
science, but allowed the existence of science itself. The latter is effected not only by
denying there is any efficient causality in non-minded nature, but also by insisting
that the mere correlations that constitute natural laws in, for example, astronomy
and mechanics, to exist, must be maintained in existence by God (Schliesser, E.
(2005), ‘On the origin of modern naturalism: The significance of Berkeley’s response
to a Newtonian indispensability argument’, Philosophica 76, 45–66).
2 Hempel, C. and Oppenheim, P. (1948), ‘Studies in the logic of explanation’, Philosophy

of Science 15, 2, 133–75.
3 Eric Schliesser claims, mistakenly I believe, that Berkeley ‘limits the aim of the
sciences to predictions alone’ (Schliesser 2005, 46). He correctly notes that for
Berkeley natural science has no authority with respect to metaphysics (religion in
Berkeley’s case), which considers strict causes.
4 A good recent discussion of this case is in Lina Jansson: Jansson, L. (2016),
‘Explanatory asymmetries: Laws of nature rehabilitated’, The Journal of Philosophy
112, 11, 577–99.
5 Leibniz, among others, argued that gravity for Newton was essentially an occult
quality (Leibniz–Clarke Correspondence, 1717, 1956, (ed) H. G. Alexander,
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 66), meaning not only that it was
unobservable, but also had no explanatory power. Berkeley, in the above remarks
about attraction, apparently shares this view. Newton famously rejected action at a
distance for gravitational attraction. In a well-known letter to Richard Bentley, six
years after the Principia’s publication, he writes: ‘It is inconceivable that inanimate
brute matter should, without the mediation of something else which is not material,
operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact’ (cited in Newton, I.
([1687]1729, 1962), Principia. Edited by Florian Cajori, Berkeley: University of
California Press). Yet Newton did believe, however attraction was ultimately
explained, that gravitational attraction was not an occult quality but a cause that
subsumed the planetary orbits and the fall of an apple under the same law (Newton,
I. ([1730]1979), Optics. Edited by E. T. Whittaker. New York: Dover Publications).
6 Uniform motion in a straight line (including rest V = 0) is force-free in the
Newtonian system. Impressed forces are corrrelated with alterations in that
motion.
7 Principia, 2.
8 See also DM §§5, 6.
9 The aphelion is that part of an orbit furthest from the sun.
10 You can find a stout defence of Newton along these lines in Roger Cotes, Preface to
the Principia (2nd edition) trans. Motte/Cajori, xx–xxiii. By ‘phenomena’ in this
context, Newton means laws such as Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.
11 Berkeley uses the example of epicycles in the Siris (S 228). See as well ‘Berkeley’s
Philosophy of Motion’ (Whitrow, G. J. (1953), ‘Berkeley’s philosophy of motion,’
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 4, 13, 37–45).
12 In P §108 Berkeley writes: ‘Those men who frame general rules from phenomena,
and afterwards derive the phenomena from those rules, seem to consider signs
rather than causes.’
13 See DM §32. ‘And Newton everywhere frankly intimates that not only did motion
originate from God, but that still the mundane system is moved by the same actus.’
Berkeley may be referring to passages in Newton’s Optics (1730, 1979, 369–70).
14 Although Max Jammer accepts Berkeley’s comment about Newton and attraction
without criticism, he takes Berkeley to be one of the founders of that tradition which
seeks to eliminate forces – as efficient causes – from physics (Jammer, M. (1957,
1999), Concepts of Force. New York: Dover Publications, 204–208).
15 In his later Optics Newton writes: ‘What I call Attraction may be perform’d by
impulse, or by some other means unknown to me. I use that Word here to signify
only in general any Force by which Bodies tend towards one another, whatsoever be
the cause’ (Optics, 376).
16 Berkeley writes in DM §8, discussing alleged forces of percussion: ‘We generally
suppose that corporeal force is something easy to conceive. Those, however, who
have studied the matter more carefully are of a different opinion, as appears from the
strange obscurity of their language when they try to explain it.’
17 See Machamer, P. McGuire, J. E. and Kochiraas, H. (2012), ‘Newton and the
mechanical philosophy: Gravitation as the balance of the heavens’, The Southern
Journal of Philosophy 50, 3, 370–88, 373. They write: ‘Moreover, what became
important during the seventeenth century was not that the traditional categories of
causes were deemphasized for explanatory purposes (that certainly occurred) but,
rather, that a new stress was placed on the category of law, and on laws of motion, in
particular.’ For Newton’s speculation about corpuscular explanations of chemical
phenomena, see his Optics (Quest. 31), 375.
18 Leibniz endorses this contrast between real (‘true and absolute’) and merely relative
motion, but also thinks for there to be motion it must be possible to observe it. Like
Berkeley, he denies motion exists with respect to something called ‘absolute space’
(Leibniz–Clarke Correspondence, 74).
19 Winkler (Winkler, K. (1986), ‘Berkeley, Newton and the stars’, Studies in the History
and Philosophy of Science 17, 1, 23–42, 40) suggests a strategy Berkeley might use to
account for the continued presence of centrifugal effects when there is no observable
motion – i.e. the reference frame has disappeared. God keeps the tension in the cord,
or the deformation of the water’s surface even when no frame was available for the
bucket or globes to be perceived as rotating. When the stars reappear the rotation
would appear. The supposition did not as far as I know occur to Berkeley.
20 Though Berkeley uses the phrase ‘centrifugal force’, the tendency of water particles to
move tangentially to their curved orbit reflects its natural or unforced motion.
Centrifugal effects are, at least for modern discussions of the Newtonian system, the
result of central (centripetal) forces. Newton does, however, use the phrase
‘centrifugal force’ a number of times referring to matter’s innate tendency (viz.
inertia) when in curved motion to move each moment along the tangent to the
curve (See Newton, I. ([1687]1729, 1999), Principia. Edited with commentary by
I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman. Berkeley: University of California Press,
82–84).
21 Presumably Berkeley, since he permits volitional causes, could allow that someone
twisted the bucket’s rope, thus efficiently causing its motion as it unwinds.
22 In DM §62 Berkeley notes that the bucket’s motion is not truly circular since it is
compounded of other motions, e.g. the earth’s rotation around its axis. It is not clear
that this has bearing on the discussion of the ‘cause’ of centrifugal effects. Lawrence
Sklar (Sklar, L. (1974), Space, Time, and Spacetime. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 193) finds, with some justification I think, Berkeley’s above discussion of the
bucket experiment confused. Sklar does acknowledge Berkeley’s De Motu as an
important precursor of the work of Ernst Mach.
23 Think of swimming upstream against a current. You move with respect to a leaf
carried downstream, but are stationary with respect to the shore.
24 John Earman (Earman, J. (1989), World Enough and Space-time, Cambridge: MIT
Press, 82) takes Mach to simply be recapitulating the critique of Berkeley and others
of Newton’s thought experiments.
25 Mach, reformulating Newton’s laws, considers the second law, F = MA , to be a
definition of force; force then by convention equals the product of mass and
acceleration.
26 Suchting claims that what importantly ties Mach and Berkeley together is not so
much a positivist rejection of what is unobservable, but rather that alleged entities
like gravitational force, absolute space and absolute motion, play no role in physics
(Suchting, W. A. (1967), ‘Berkeley’s criticism of Newton on space and motion’, Isis 58,
2, 186–97, 196–197).
27 Leibniz, also criticizing the notion of absolute space, takes the supposition of moving
the ‘whole frame of things’ to raise not just an epistemological problem but to be in
itself absurd since God would lack a sufficient reason to do that (Leibniz–Clarke
Correspondence, 38–39).
10
Alciphron; or the Minute Philosopher

Berkeley’s Redefinition of Free-Thinking
Adam Grzeliński
The circumstances of the work’s publication
Berkeley worked on his Alciphron; or the Minute Philosopher between 1729 and
1731 during his stay in Rhode Island, where he was planning to lay the
foundations of a college for the next generations of English colonists who would
go on to promote Christianity among the local population.1 This work – being
the most extensive book within the Irish philosopher’s whole output – was
published in London in 1732 just after Berkeley returned from his unsuccessful
trip to America (and by the middle of 1731, it was already clear that the promise
made by the British Parliament to provide a subsidy of twenty thousand pounds
for the foundation of the college was not going to be fulfilled), however, there are
some comments on the surrounding scenery in the second and fifth dialogues
that give us an idea of their location and can be recognized to feature parts of
Rhode Island. The first edition of Berkeley’s work consisted of two volumes and
the second volume included a new release of An Essay towards a New Theory of
Vision. The Alciphron was published anonymously, but since the previous edition
of the Theory of Vision, dated 1709, was signed under Berkeley’s name, those
interested in the matter could easily reveal who the author of this treatise was.
The work was nearly simultaneously released in Dublin in 1732 and the second
London edition appeared in the same year. The fourth edition of the work, which
included some amendments and supplements, is dated 1752 and was published
in London without the Theory of Vision – as Berkeley’s very last published
work – and, similarly to his previous publications, it was anonymous (however,
the posthumous editions were signed in his name and were published in 1755,
1757, 1767 and 1777).
174
Berkeley’s Alciphron 175
The complete title of the work is Alciphron; or the Minute Philosopher. In

Seven Dialogues. Containing an Apology for the Christian Religion, against those
who are called Free-thinkers. The work does not only present certain arguments
having apologetic purposes, but it also provides direct reasoning against the
advocates of irreligiousness, by referring to previous philosophical arguments
and developing them. The Theory of Vision Vindicated published in 1733 was
meant to complete Berkeley’s critique of the ideas of free-thinking and deism in
the Alciphron. In the Theory of Vision Vindicated Berkeley comes to his
metaphysical and religious conclusions based on his theory of vision, the preview
of which may be found in the second dialogue of the Alciphron. What’s more, the
Theory of Vision Vindicated opens with a criticism of Shaftesbury’s philosophy
that relates to the one we can find on numerous pages of the Minute Philosopher.
The beginning of the 1730s was a period of powerful polemics on religious
rationality, religious tolerance and freedom of political debates. After the release
of Anthony Collins’ influential book, A Discourse of Free Thinking, in 1713, the
advocates of this new movement were now named free-thinkers. At the time, in
fact, the first seeds of change had already been sowed by the books that heralded
the withdrawal from revealed religion in favour of rational religion of
philosophers (if not of atheism), and their fruitful outcomes were finally coming
to the forefront in the 1720s and 1730s.
The movement itself was pretty varied. The most renowned works on
‘free-thinking’ and deism were written by the promoters of religion, who
postulated its rationalization, such as John Locke in The Reasonableness of
Christianity (1695), or presented the project of its naturalization as the famous
three-volume Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions and Times (1711) by
Anthony Ashley Cooper Shaftesbury did, or directly ridiculed miracles described
in the Bible, which was the case in John Toland’s Christianity Not Mysterious
(1696). Not long after them, the group was joined by, as already mentioned,
Anthony Collins with A Discourse of Free-thinking and A Discourse of the
Grounds and Reasons of Christian Religion (1724), and by others, to name a few,
such as William Wollaston (The Religion of Nature Delineated, 1722) and Matthew
Tindal (Christianity as Old as the Creation; or, the Gospel a Republication of the
Religion of Nature, 1730).
The above groundwork, in conjunction with the influential works that were
recognized as revolutionizing the common social order, such as the notorious
Fable of the Bees (1714) by Bernard Mandeville, as well as the books by Benedict
Spinoza and Thomas Hobbes (widely acknowledged as atheistic works), has
become the threat for the state with, in Berkeley’s opinion, irreligiousness as its
biggest fear. Previously, in An Essay Towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain
(1721), Berkeley expressed his disappointment in the situation of the country –
the moral decline that, in his view, brought about the famous speculation in the
South See Bubble in the early 1720s. Therefore, he set his hopes and mind to
build a better, decadent-free society in America. No wonder then that his return
to Great Britain must have seemed to him as if he was going back to the land of
decline.
A few years passed, but Berkeley’s other work A Discourse Addressed to
Magistrates and Men in Authority (1738) reveals the same fears: ‘our prospect is
very terrible – says Berkeley there – and the symptoms grow stronger every day’,
for ‘modern schemes of our free-thinkers, who pretend to separate morality
from religion, how rational soever they may seem to their Admirers, are in truth
and effect most irrational and pernicious to civil society’ since ‘nothing truly
great, and good, can enter into the heart of one attached to no principles of
religion, who believes no providence, who neither fears hell, nor hopes for
heaven’ (Works VI , 206–207).
Minute philosophy – redefining the notion of free-thinking
The first dialogue is an introduction and presentation of the location, the time of
the dialogues and their protagonists. The hitherto contemporary scenery being a
‘distant retreat, far beyond the verge of that great whirlpool of business, faction,
and pleasure, which is called the world’ (Alc I, 1) was chosen as the location of
the dispute between Euphranor and Crito, who both appear to express Berkeley’s
point of view2 and Crito’s guests: i.e. Alciphron ‘above forty, and no stranger
either to men or books’ (ibid.) and Lysicles – a junior to Alciphron and relative
of Crito – who ‘after having passed the forms of education and seen little of the
world, fell into an intimacy with men of pleasure and free-thinkers’ (ibid.). The
choice of characters strongly suggests an educational aspect of the dialogues:
Euphranor and Crito are confronted with the pair of Alciphron and Lysicles.
Lysicles is described as a young follower of modern, trendy opinions, whereas
Crito, junior to Euphranor, is a well-educated man who presents far more
detailed argumentations and systematically comes to conclusions that could –
and should – be shared by the reader, since the whole dispute is aimed at winning
the reader over to his viewpoint.
Berkeley presents his dialogue in the traditional way: the statements are
direct, however the dialogue itself is recounted to Teages by Dion. Apart from its
philosophical and theological contents and literary quality, the Alciphron also
has a persuasive bearing: Berkeley does not aim to simply present the standings
of the criticized philosophers (it was not until the 1752 edition, when the detailed
footnotes were published to show a reference to the works by Hobbes, Toland,
Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Collins, Browne and others), but rather to demonstrate
the paradigmatic notions of the diverse intellectual formation of free-thinkers.
Hence he writes in the Advertisement: ‘it must not therefore be imagined
that every one of these characters agrees with every individual free-thinker’,
and a free-thinker is considered an ‘atheist, libertine, fanatic, scorner, critic,
metaphysician, fatalist, and sceptic’ (Alc Advertisement, Works III , 23). Therefore,
the names of the characters that represent certain viewpoints, as was common at
the time, have their origins in ancient times (i.e. Theages refers to Pseudo-Plato’s
work and Alciphron is named after the Greek sophist) or are completely made
up, but have particular meanings like Nicander (‘bringing war’) or Menecles (‘of
perishable glory’). It is worth noting that the name of a free-thinker had no – or
at least did not need to have – negative meaning, so Berkeley in his criticism
prefers to refer to ‘those who are called free-thinkers’ using the ambiguous name
of minute philosophers. The latter is borrowed from Cicero’s De senectute and De
divinatione and means philosophers that are meticulous and at the same time
‘diminishing all the most valuable things’ (Alc I, 10); for Berkeley their minute
scrutiny is no more than empty chattering.3
The first dialogue is also an outline of the viewpoints held in later discussions.
On the one hand, the minute philosophers are antagonistic towards the clergy
and accuse them of plunging society into superstition; they oppose the academic
philosophy and propound the fashionable, however superficial integrity and
‘witty’ education, gained in ‘a drawing room, a coffee house, a chocolate house, at
the tavern, or groom-porter’s’ (Alc I, 11). On the other hand, their opponents
consider them as destroyers of all qualities, and what is proclaimed by some of
them as deism, turns out to be a disguised atheism. The necessity of the gradual
dismissal of traditional superstitions is their only restraint from an open
manifesto of irreligiousness.
Against Mandeville’s naturalism
The starting point of the second dialogue is Euphranor’s thesis claiming that ‘the
general good of mankind [should] be regarded as a rule or measure of moral
truths’ (Alc I, 16) and that there is a necessary relation between religion and the
well-being of mankind (Alc I, 16). It is commonly regarded that the statement

suggests a utilitarian nature to Berkeley’s theory of ethics, however, recently it
has been argued in a pretty conclusive way, that it rather points to its relation
with natural law concepts.4 Lysicles’ thread of arguments is primarily directed
against the existence of the commonly recognized and objective order of values:
if the common moral concepts are illegitimate, then the traditional truths
proclaimed by religion are not legitimate either. Thus, there is nothing left for
religion to argue as it actually becomes a mere superstition.
An example of such inconsistency, within the commonly accepted practical
principles, is the opposition between the public good and private interest; instead
of praising public goals that can conceal the real interest of an individual, one
should rather acknowledge the public good as the satisfaction of all particular
interests of individuals. Hence, the common moral concepts, like virtue and vice,
are nothing but meaningless names because we are able to expose people who
benefit from generally disapproved human behaviour, such as gambling or
drunkenness, so one should then accept that, as Euphranor concludes, ‘vice then
is a fine thing with an ugly name’ (Alc II , 3). This point of view was already
presented in the infamous work by Bernard Mandeville – The Fable of the Bees
and, according to Berkeley, it turns out to be untrue for several reasons. First,
from an economic point of view, it underestimates the costs of the actions since
the loss caused by them is not matched by their potential profit. Second,
considering the necessity to provide the durability of social order, ‘a new
experiment’ would undermine the foundations of the whole existing legal and
customary order. And finally, the third argument shows the contradiction within
Mandeville’s theory itself: deists (who de facto are crypto-atheists, as they stand
against all religious superstitions) seem to hold that the individual interests of
people will be, in some unknown way, harmonized and thus they will contribute
to the overall public good. The latter, however, would require actions of some
kind of Providence that would happen beyond human knowledge and any
religious belief.
The critique of Mandeville’s conception is just an introduction to Berkeley’s
criticism of the whole set of ideas of free-thinkers (or, as we call them nowadays,
the proponents of the Enlightenment): the assumption that a new social order
can be built by negating tradition, through emancipation of individuals, the
postulate presented by Locke about rational behaviour of every human being,5
and Shaftesbury’s dreamy vision of nature as an organic whole, which should be
imitated by men in their social institutions (however, the judgement on this is
grounded only on his enthusiastic, aesthetic vision).6 The intentional behaviour
of a human being, aiming at creating a rational society, requires a conscious

guidance of these actions to the social objective, instead of ill-considered
belief that caring for private interests will ultimately result in the well-being
of the integral society, as Mandeville wanted. The manifestation of such a belief
also demonstrates confidence in the possibility of ruling a natural instinct
(relevant to human beings as well as to animals) that, according to Berkeley, is
equal with waiving the rationality specific only to humanity, i.e. conscious,
purposeful actions. Such a naturalistic vision of a man can be found in the works
of Hobbes, Mandeville and Shaftesbury.7 Yet another mistaken belief of free-
thinkers is the assumption that every man is capable of determining public good
and deciding what actions can bring it forward with a complete certainty.
Berkeley, in opposition to Locke who opted for such a view on man, was
convinced that this project incorporates only factors related to the rationality
of human behaviour but ignores passion, social pressure or fashion.8 Therefore,
according to the Irish philosopher, neither the naturalistic vision of man,
nor supremacy of his rationality truly represents the real state of affairs: ‘I
question – Euphranor says – whether everyone can frame a notion of the public
good, much less judge of the means to promote it’ (Alc II , 9). We can now fully
comprehend the ironic remark made by Crito: ‘instead of thoughts, books, and
study, most free-thinkers are the proselytes of a drinking club. Their principles
are often settled, and decisions on the deepest points made, when they are not fit
to make a bargain’ (Alc II , 19). In other words, according to Berkeley, free-
thought does not turn out to be a well-considered rational concept, but an
aesthetic mirage or trend, thoughtless revolt of the youth lured by ‘old sharpers
in business’ (Alc II , 19).
Such a conclusion has a twofold meaning for this discussion – first, if free-
thinkers’ theses are based on unjustifiable beliefs (hence they are at least as
superstitious as proponents of religious claims are), then the argument
‘against superstitions’ is overruled – Berkeley revisits this question later in the
sixth dialogue, when he defends the mystery of religious faith. Second, we shall
come to the conclusion that the concept of free-thought is grounded on
inaccurate understanding of human freedom, which, being naturalized and
deprived of rationality, must be no more, as Berkeley argues, than irrational self-
will. And thus the free-thinkers, cited after Crito, ‘had pruned and weeded the
notions of their fellow-subjects, and divested them of their prejudices, to strip
them of their clothes, and fill the country with naked followers of nature,
enjoying all the privileges of brutality’ (Alc II , 26). Here we have minute
philosophy in all its glory.
The fallacy of Shaftesbury’s moral sense theory
The third dialogue is devoted first and foremost to the critique of Shaftesbury’s
concept of moral sense, as later developed by Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith
and David Hume, amongst others. According to Shaftesbury, moral sense is
responsible for approval of moral and aesthetic values, and the objective status
of judgements concerning them requires the capability of the sense to
acknowledge them and to appreciate them for what they are in themselves (in a
disinterested way, regardless of future reward or punishment).
Berkeley’s critique aims at proving that Shaftesbury’s conception is: (a)
groundless and as such cannot provide accurate, i.e. unbiased functioning of moral
sense, (b) completely abstract, and finally (c) that the introduction of it is effectively
pointless. The main argument in the overall discussion can be found in the dialogue
between Nicander and Menecles. Here, we have honour as the principle of a
virtuous behaviour of a gentleman, so it is the respect of other people’s judgement
that pushes a man towards moral deeds. However, this honour means ‘paying debts
(. . .) such as are contracted by play’, ‘giving gentleman’s satisfactions’ and finally
resembles ‘honesty among pirates, something confined to themselves’ (Alc III , 2).
However surprising these statements might be for Shaftesbury’s readers, this is not
just a critique of the trendy lifestyle of the aristocracy who exploit the concept of
honour and lead an empty and excessive life. It goes beyond it and examines the
possibility of moral behaviour grounded on Shaftesbury’s principles in general.
And so, in accordance with the postulate of the author of the Characteristics, the
essence of moral behaviour is the respect of moral value itself, as identified with
the public good, and then the further stimulus of exercising the moral actions is
the approval by others, and since it is an emotional reaction it becomes a source of
pleasure. However, Berkeley argues, it would be very difficult to make people feel
obliged to act morally without the acknowledgment of their actions from others.
Therefore, Shaftesbury’s reference to the stoic ideal of independence from opinion
is unsuccessful – his ‘heroic’ virtue can, at most, be the privilege of a few people, the
rest look after their own honour and continue the pursuit of the ever changing
opinions of others. Berkeley also makes an observation about natural affection, a
bond with other people in that it only refers to a limited circle of people and the
opinion given by the moral sense is always, more or less, partial. Hence, Crito does
not only associate honour with ‘honesty among pirates’ but he states with great
conviction, that a man of honour ‘abhors to take the lie, but not to tell it’ (Alc III , 2).
These remarks lead us to the main critique of the inner sense as a power of
understanding beauty and deformity of human actions, which for Berkeley
would be an abstract name of various powers, shaping the moral actions of a

man. The point is that each of them provides different, but always determinate,
grounds of such behaviour, so the moral sense detached from the principles of
reason, and further from the specific custom in a given country, from its religion
and education, turns out to be a je ne sais quoi (as cited by Berkeley from
Shaftesbury). In the end, the supporters of moral sense, the ‘heroic inamoratos of
abstracted beauty’ (Alc III , 12), seem to be looking for philosophical novelties in
the best case scenario and in the worst one – they are exponents of a stoic apathy
and wreckers of the public order.
This novelty is also illustrated by Alciphron, who refers after Shaftesbury, and
who postulates that the existence of an objective order of beauty discovered
through the ‘idea of order, harmony and proportion’ (Alc III , 8) that being
devoid of religious connotation is pertinent to all people. This order is meant to
be a manifestation of natural purposefulness, ‘a certain vital principle of beauty,
order and harmony, diffused throughout the world’ (Alc III , 9) or the purpose of
human artefacts, such as architectural works. Nevertheless, all the attempts to
refer to the aesthetic purposefulness of natural beauty turn out to be incoherent
with the negation of the existence of the objective purpose being grounded on
the actions of Providence,9 and Alciphron’s statement that ‘Truth is the only
divinity that I adore. Wherever truth leads, I shall follow’ must, according to
Berkeley, prove to be false.10
Despite the fact that in his critique of Shaftesbury’s aesthetic concept, Berkeley
does not recognize its significance (mainly in terms of the idea of aesthetic
disinterestedness, which, formulated by British aesthetics in the eighteenth
century led to the conclusions included in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgement
(1790)), his comments related to the abstract character of the concept of moral
sense, as proposed by Shaftesbury, are further supported by its development
within the philosophical thoughts of Adam Smith and David Hume (i.e.
determination of the role of reason in moral judgements and acknowledgment
of the conditions of impartial judgement).11
Religious interpretation of experience
The critique of the selected deistic viewpoints – which according to Berkeley were
essentially atheistic – is being replaced by the arguments in favour of the existence
of God in the fourth dialogue. The starting point of the whole discussion is its
restriction to experience alone, the sphere of ‘matters of fact that can be proved not
by notions, but by facts alone’ (Alc IV, 3). At the beginning, the traditional proofs
are being abolished – i.e. the ontological argument presented by Anselm of
Canterbury of the existence of God based on the notion of the perfect being, as
well as the argument of Plato and Aristotle (which was later brought into general
use by Thomas Aquinas), grounded on the necessity of the assumption of the finite
chain of causes.12 By contrast, restraining the discussion to a given interpretation
of experience and rejection of the other two ways of argumentation – i.e. referral
to the authority of tradition and pragmatic argument according to which the
existence of God is practical for a man – are the results of the development of the
discussion, and are successfully applied in the next two dialogues as secondary
arguments towards the particular interpretation of experience.
It is meant to allow, as reported to Alciphron by Euphranor, the validation of
the thesis of existence of ‘an invisible God, as certainly, and with the same
evidence, at least, as any other signs perceived by sense do suggest to me the
existence of your soul, spirit, or thinking principle’ (Alc IV, 5). To some degree,
the argumentation refers to the resolutions presented earlier, as it is with the
interpretation of the statement that ‘God is not far from every one of us; and that
in Him we live, move, and have our being’ (P 66) or else, with the analysis of the
process of the interpretation of visual phenomena in the Theory of Vision
Vindicated. This reasoning is later expanded upon and the explanation of visual
experience is then applied as theological argument.
However, according to Euphranor, Alciphron’s thesis on common sense
saying that we should relate to facts needs an explanation. Stating a fact requires
an interpretation that goes beyond the data provided by senses. Such an
interpretation is presented, for instance, by physiology where the fact of
experiencing the sensible impressions is explained with bodily processes: early
modern mechanistic physiology – see René Descartes for example – postulated
the existence of animal spirits – being a certain very fine air or wind animating
nervous system. The reason to accept their existence is the coherent mechanistic
interpretation of body functions. And similarly, intelligibility of someone’s
actions and especially their verbal articulation, is established by the existence of
a rational intention of all actions. In both cases, the requirement of intelligibility
of phenomena is possible under the assumption of the existence of their actual
source: in the first instance, it is animal spirits that explain phenomena on the
basis of mechanistic relations, and in the second – an active rational, endowed
with will, soul or spirit capable of acting intentionally.
Thus, the first step in the overall argumentation is to demonstrate the necessity
of an interpretation of sensual phenomena. The next step is to indicate such an
interpretation that may be applied as theological argument. Euphranor points

to an analogy between human language and the entire phenomena of nature that
is treated as the Creator’s language and that enables us to ‘demonstrate an
invisible God, as certainly . . . as . . . the soul, spirit, or thinking principle’. This
argumentation is acquired from the Theory of Vision. A precise analysis of
experience allows us, not only to separate passive sensuality from imagination
that combines various sense data, but also to differentiate data of particular
senses. It means that in the case of touch and sight, the objects of both senses are
different in terms of their quantity and because of that we are not able to claim
that they inform us of – identical to both – the objective size of an object.
Abandoning ‘prejudice . . . and the vulgar error of the ideas common for both
senses’ (Alc IV, 15) allows interpreting the role of senses as not replicating the
objects that are not dependent on reason but as providing data to be interpreted
as follows: a) visual impressions are to announce the experience of touch, and b)
sensible signs need to be treated as a certain way of statement towards the hearer
that can be understood only if we assume the existence of a speaker – another
man (in terms of human speech) and God (on the assumption of semiotic
interpretation of natural phenomena).
Thanks to the above, one can acknowledge visual experience as an orderly
sign system and ultimately as a statement directed by the Creator towards man.
This provides an elaboration of a previous concept on the role of imagination in
constructing the objects of experience, as presented in the Theory of Vision and
emotivism of the experience, as described in the Principles. This time, however,
Berkeley talks about the entire visual experience as being about the Creator’s
language, which is now a new interpretation of the conclusions from his Theory
of Vision and arguably the reason why it was included in the second volume of
the Alciphron. As mentioned before, Berkeley repeats this interpretation in his
Theory of Vision Vindicated published in 1733.13
The refusal of Browne’s negative theology
The validity of such an interpretation is based on the legitimacy of applying the

analogy in the description of a Creator. Berkeley opposes the negative theology
of Peter Browne who argued that the objects of faith go beyond the valid
statements of reason because ‘we may rack our invention, and turn, and wind all
those ideas we have into ten thousand different shapes, and yet never make up
any likeness or similitude, of the real nature of those objects of another world’
and the ‘endeavours to bring down these hidden things to the level of our present
capacities of knowledge is the specious trifling of . . . abstracted metaphysical
brains’.14 Despite the fact that Browne’s argumentation is directed against Toland,
i.e. one of the minute philosophers, it contributes, according to Berkeley, to the
same opinions of free-thinkers that Browne criticizes. The deity, deprived of its
analogy with human finite spirits and their attributes, such as wisdom and
goodness, turns out to be completely unknown and its notion used in the dispute
between deists and atheists – meaningless ‘for this may be fate, or chaos, or
plastic nature, or anything else as well, as God’ (Alc III , 18). On account of that,
we need to recognize the fact that Browne’s negative theology develops into
atheism. Berkeley argues as well that the works considered to give birth to such
a viewpoint, like the Divine Names or the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy by Neo-
Platonist theologian Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and the Disputationes
metaphysicales, by the sixteenth-century Spanish theologian Francisco Suarez,
lead to a conclusion that (contrary to Browne) these authors were inclined to
accept such an analogy between a man and God that emphasizes a proportional
greater perfection of God towards the imperfection of man. This ‘proper’ analogy,
analogia proprie dicta, related to such divine attributes as wisdom and goodness
being separate to the analogy based on metaphor (where it is for example said
about digitus Dei interfering with the world’s history), facilitates the statement
that ‘all sorts of perfection which we can conceive in a finite spirit are in God, but
without any of that alloy which is found in the creatures’ (Alc IV, 21). Then, it
voids Alciphron’s argument about the imperfection of Creation because, as
Euphranor argues, the part that is appreciable by us despite being full of ‘blots
being so large and so black’ (Alc IV, 24) it is only a little part of the whole nature
and when compared to how it could have been seen without the limitations of a
man it resembles ‘a loathsome dungeon or sepulchre’ (ibid.).
This ‘proper analogy’, sustaining the difference between perfection of God
and a finite nature of man, enables the understanding of the specific language of
God. Provided that the adequate application of human language is dialogue and
as far as God’s language is concerned – it is specifically oriented towards man.
Even though in both cases the purpose of language is – in accordance with the
Principles – ‘the raising of some passion, the exciting to, or deterring from an
action’ (PI , 20), the communication within the language of the Creator is one-
sided: the data provided by the senses are to support the adequate management
of one’s actions, whereas the prayers and requests addressed to Him are meant to
bring on the right disposition in people themselves. Therefore, Euphranor’s
deliberation is not evidence for the existence of God in its strict sense, but it
presents a course of arguments that counterbalance the opposite arguments and

compel one to accept the religious thesis.
Social significance of religion
The fifth dialogue is devoted to the presentation of the social function of religion
and deflecting the typical claims directed towards it. Therefore, it refers more to
apologetics and rhetoric and it does not include many strictly philosophical
speculations; however, it is directly dependent on them. The interpretation of
natural phenomena as Creator’s language only opens up a possibility of religious
interpretation of experience and requires further argumentation to demonstrate
the actuality of the positive effects of religious belief.
Euphranor and Crito defend religion in order to show how religious beliefs
positively influence an individual and state; hence the argumentation is a
posteriori and is mainly based upon the interpretation of historical process to
prove the practical value of Christian religion, both natural and the revealed. The
starting point of the dispute is a question about the status of natural religion that
holds a few essential theses on the existence of God or the existence of future life.
However the latter can be proven by the ‘light of reason’ (Alc V, 9) and, yet, the
postulated ‘religion of philosophers’ does not bear a real solution – it proves too
little and does not leave much room for belief, void of evidence; what’s more, as
it is deprived of the notion of revelation, it only becomes a fragile construct that,
at the end, leads to profanity. It is because of, first, the distinction between faith
and reason (to which some men attribute ‘too much [and] other attribute too
little’ (ibid.)), and second, the utopian character of the previously mentioned
project of the authors of the Enlightenment, like Locke and later deists, when
they postulated the rational behaviour of each individual. Therefore, Berkeley
declares that, first of all, human motives cannot be put down just to reason and,
second, as emphasized by Euphranor, ‘precepts and oracles from heaven are
incomparably better suited to popular improvement and the good of society
than the reasonings of philosophers’ (Alc VII , 19).
Berkeley specifies two fundamental tasks of religion: to form customs and to
be a social binder – a statement that he later accentuates in his summary in
Euphranor’s words: ‘religion . . . is concerned no further than that man should be
accountable’ (Alc VII , 19). Religion, if properly comprehended, as ruled by
Aristotle’s golden mean principle, shall constitute a counterbalance for any kind
of enthusiasm – of both libertines and bigots, whereas the constituted Church
belongs just to the institutions indispensable for the functioning of a state. To

support it, we may refer to the tradition argument – since the most distant past,
the functioning of all societies was based on the functioning of religion, while
Christianity was backed up by the whole tradition and the authority of the
English Constitution as it guaranteed the state character of Anglicanism since
the Supremacy Act in 1559, and, if misappropriated, it would mean a reversion
to anarchy. We may find the reference to anarchy in Lysicles’ words: ‘old customs
and laws and national constitutions [are] only words and notions’ (Alc V, 31) and
also in Alciphron’s: ‘but times are changed, and the magistrate may now be afraid
of us’ (Alc V, 35).
If we were to consider the previously mentioned remarks on ethics and the
pragmatic argument supporting the teaching of the Church’s validity, then it
seems that Berkeley’s main concerns15 would be the results of social and political
actions of free-thinkers. In his opinion, they do not offer anything but negative
freedom that exposes people to the variety of passions and would be best put
aside. Berkeley, thereby, revisits the theses incorporated in the Passive Obedience,
where he announces that misappropriation of the highest authority is both a
crime and sin as well as a moral evil.16 Here, however, Berkeley puts much more
emphasis, than in his previous works, on the gradual progress and soothing of
customs by means of religion. This improvement would encompass the complete
society and not just individual people; hence there were always virtuous people
even amongst the ancient stoics like Cicero, a fact that, after all, does not forejudge
the general customs of a given era. These remarks manifest Berkeley’s withdrawal
from rational and religious rigors typical of his Passive Obedience in favour of an
affirmation of the necessity of a gradual progress of the whole society in The
Querist (1737), the work produced to indicate the ways ‘to feed the hungry and
cloathe the naked’ (Q, Advertisement; Works VI , 103), and in the Siris (1744)
where he offers prescriptions to cure the ill.
The defence of the Scripture
The sixth dialogue is related to the credibility of tradition based on biblical

epiphanies and prophecies. It is ingrained in the discussion evoked in the vast
majority of Locke’s comments included in his Essay Concerning Human
Understanding (1690) and The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695),17 which
referred to the relation between reason and faith. This was then used by later
deists as arguments against the literal reading of prophecies from the Bible
(which, according to Collins, is a result of late over-interpretation18) as well as

the denial of a specific revelation experienced by some inspired authors (since,
as Matthew Tindal put it, ‘God, at all times, has given mankind sufficient means
of knowing what he requires of them’19). The sixth dialogue opens in the middle
of this very dispute: if we accept that ‘there is a God, a devil, and a revelation
from heaven to writing many years ago’ (Alc VI , 28) and, unlike the old
revelations there are no revelations at present, or if there are, it would be hard to
prove their divine origins, then the validity of epiphanies is based on the
credibility of tradition. The conviction that the Bible is a work of real revelation,
however, requires verification of the validity of the words of many generations
and its many editions within the biblical hermeneutics. It is evident that Berkeley
follows Locke’s steps in this matter20 but his aim is different, as he is looking to
overthrow the distinction between certainty and the probability of knowledge,
and especially the knowledge of historical facts including Christian ‘prejudices’.21
These discussions are carried out in great detail, on one hand, by Toland,
Shaftesbury, Collins or Tindal and, on the other hand, by the tradition advocates
such as Edward Chandler and William Whiston, who referred to many questions
on the consistency of the message between the Old and New Testament, the
literal or allegorical interpretation of miracles and prophecies, as well as the
question of continuity of tradition, which reassures the accuracy of the message
or precise dating of the biblical chapters, or dating the beginning of the world on
the basis of biblical dating. The latter issue, which has no other than historic
meaning nowadays, in Berkeley’s times engaged both philosophers and
mathematicians of the highest order such as James Ussher, Johannes Kepler and
Isaac Newton. The biblical chronology is meant to stand as an example of
applying reason in explaining miracles: despite the fact that Creation in itself
transcends human reason and ‘is beyond any other miracle whatsoever’ (Alc VI ,
23), it is still possible to determine certain facts about it.
The general objective of Crito’s argumentation is to dissolve reservations
mentioned by Alciphron: ‘I may be willing to follow, so far as common sense and
the light of nature lead; yet the same reason that bids me yield to rational proof
forbids me to admit opinions without proof. This holds in general against all
revelations whatsoever’ (Alc VI , 2). It is presented in a twofold approach: first, it
negates the dichotomous division between (definite) knowledge and (unjustifiable
– and as such meaningless) ‘prejudices’ and, second, it validates the probability of
historical record that then is to guarantee the contents of the Scripture.
It is therefore about showing in an ‘agreeable [way] to the light of reason and
the notions of mankind’ – as Euphranor says (Alc VI , 9) – that there are rational
procedures (such as source examination, chronological findings, the critique of

comments) that allow us to estimate the true content of the historical message
with great plausibility. Human knowledge, ultimately, needs both critique and
trust. This ultimately criticizes Alciphron who ‘would destroy human faith to get
rid of divine’ (Alc VI , 4). The acceptance of probable knowledge as the only one
opens the door widely to argumentation in favour of ‘divine faith’ especially
because the impossibility of getting assurance does not eliminate the burning
questions asked by religion. And the examples of the latter would be the question
of immortality of soul: since the relation between soul and body is unclear –
according to Cartesians – then, as Euphranor says: ‘I can see no reason to be
positive that the one must necessarily be extinguished upon the dissolution of
the other; especially since I find in myself a strong natural desire of immortality’
(Alc VI , 11).
When it comes to the question of understanding miracles, Berkeley favours
their literal interpretation, on the basis that their allegorical genuineness, or to be
more exact – their practical effect on believers, is a premise of their literal
authenticity. Thus, in the case of the Resurrection of Jesus the allegorical truth is
‘a resurrection of Christ’s disciples from weakness to resolution, from fear to
courage, from despair to hope’ that is a premise to acknowledge resurrection as
a literal truth as well (Alc VI , 31). This argument allows the presumption that,
despite Berkeley’s doctrine accepting the existence of miracles – since the laws of
nature are dependent on the Creator’s will after all – then what Berkeley would
consider as a miracle could be mainly grace generating the modifications of
man’s attitudes – from atheist and materialist to religious.22
God’s grace and human freedom
The seventh dialogue begins with the considerations on grace understood as an

‘active, vital, ruling principle, influencing and operating on the mind of man,
distinct from every natural power or motive’ (Alc VII , 4) and the thesis holding
that ‘faith is not an indolent perception, but an operative persuasion of mind,
which ever worketh some suitable action, disposition, or emotion in those who
have it’ (Alc VII , 10), and thus ‘faith without ideas’ is not a weaker form of
knowledge, only a superstition or an inner attitude, as minute philosophers
wanted it to be, but a certain attitude accompanied by the conviction that man is
free and responsible. This draws the attention to the philosophical questions: the
functions of language, personal identity and arguments in favour of the existence
of the soul, or practical premises of the postulate of the existence of human

freedom. The comment on grace is a reaction to Alciphron’s reservations on
Locke’s thesis on adequacy of linguistic signs and the ideas they denote.23 By
referring to the earlier comments from the Principles (PI , 12; P 135), Berkeley
points to the difference between an idea, understood as a specific sensible image
and a linguistic sign, and underlines that when words relate to abstract notions
or relations they do not aim at providing the idea, on the contrary ‘they direct us
in disposition and management of our affairs, and are of such necessary use that
we should not know how to do without them’ (Alc VII , 5). Hence, the referral to
theoretical notions turns out to be a necessity in science (the notion of power),
as well as in morality (the notion of freedom) or religion (the notion of grace),24
whereas the instrumental understanding of physical notions25 is accompanied
by pragmatic understanding of moral and religious notions. Grace given to men
may be discussed on the basis of their virtuous and religious actions and,
similarly, the notion of freedom, even though it does not refer to any idea, is a
necessary notion applied in judgements of people’s responsibility for their
actions.
Euphranor’s statement: ‘I am conscious of my own actions’ (Alc VII , 18)
shifts the attention of debaters towards the question of personal identity. When
he further states that the explanation of the principle of individuation or
answering the objections raised against human identity faces the exact same
problems as the ‘union between the divine and human nature’ (Alc VII , 8), he is
referring to Joseph Butler’s conclusion made at practically the same time in
opposition to Locke. Joseph Butler, in The Analogy of Religion (1736), presented
the insufficiency of founding personal identity on mental data alone, like it was
described by Locke in his Essay26 and later repeated by Alciphron in Berkeley’s
dialogue. For both authors, Butler and Berkeley, it is a premise to assume the
existence of soul, understood as substance that cannot be defined by use of
Locke’s way of ideas, but it can be an object of religious faith. Therefore, despite
the impossibility of proving the existence of human freedom by means of
theoretical analysis of experience, it does not compromise its necessity on
practical moral or religious levels. It does, however, allow us to set aside the
naturalistic concept produced by Alciphron, according to which a man is ‘a sort
of organ played on by outward objects, which, according to the different shape
and texture of the nerves, produce different motions and effects therein’ or a
puppet (Alc VII , 16).
Quite naturally, the seventh dialogue offers a summary of all earlier
discussions. As far as the work’s primary issue on the existence of God is
concerned, on a positive note it comes down to: ‘The being of a God is capable of
clear proof, and a proper object of human reason: whereas the mysteries of His
nature, and indeed whatever there is of mystery in religion, to endeavour to
explain and prove by reason is a vain attempt’ (Alc VII , 21). And on a critical
note, Berkeley is trying to demonstrate the contradiction within the beliefs of
minute philosophers who are ‘men so strong in assertion, and so weak in
argument; advocates for freedom introducing a fatality; patriots trampling on
the laws of their country; and pretenders to virtue destroying the motives of it’
(Alc VII , 21). Their ultimate message is ‘the grand arcanum and ultimate
conclusion’ (Alc VII , 24) for their sect, which basically means bringing any
understanding to the level of opinion and as such falling into sheer scepticism.
The Alciphron and the question of the development of

Berkeley’s philosophy
It was largely due to the polemical character of the Alciphron that it was received
so widely, and it triggered numerous publications of more or less comprehensive
works or pamphlets by the authors, whose concepts were mainly criticized in it:
Mandeville, Browne, Hutcheson and others.27 With the benefit of hindsight, we
should give credit to the Alciphron, not only for its literary merits, but for its
meaning in the interpretation of Berkeley’s philosophical output.
Berkeley applied the form of dialogue in his earlier work, but this time in the
Alciphron he aspires to put it in a more artful shape – the debaters are located in
specific scenery and he introduces several characters bestowed with individual
features. The element of satire adds a distinctive novelty to the Alciphron in
general. Berkeley parodied Shaftesbury’s hymnic style and Mandeville’s
poignancy and introduced impatient Lycisles who on occasions tries to persuade
others to leave behind the serious discussions and move on to the ‘trendiest’
conversations. The introduction of these techniques together with the broad part
of the seventh dialogue, where Euphranor calls upon creation of a Dianoetic
Academy, where all free-thinkers could be confined or when he mentions ‘honest
Demea’ who bans his son from reading Euclid’s Elements, bring smiles to readers’
faces. Some of his characters may be accused of being one-dimensional – for
instance Euphranor, who is usually aside during the whole discussion in order to
return in the seventh dialogue to sum it up, and especially Lysicles, who
passionately defends the minute philosophers’ point of view but fires only trivial
arguments. The construction of the characters of Crito and Alciphron is much
more interesting as the former articulates most of the substantive arguments and
the latter is forced to change his views (at least up to a certain point) and accept
them. The only way of explaining his firm defence of the free-thinkers’ position
is, as Berkeley seems to hold, by his persevering attachment to peculiar
superstitions.
In the Alciphron, we find many of Berkeley’s earlier theses: he holds on to the
division between the activity of spirits and passivity of ideas from his Principles
and the distinction of natural philosophy and metaphysics, as we know it, from
De Motu. The description of the functions of language and the emphasis on its
emotive role, especially the semiotic interpretation of natural phenomena, were
also already discussed in the Principles and the Theory of Vision. Nonetheless, as
we can read in David Berman’s elaboration, in the Alciphron many of these
problems are now discussed in a more systematic way, which proves Berkeley’s
intensive research on some of the earlier analysed issues. It also allows us to
understand the revisions he presented in his later editions of previous works.28
These issues are the concept of beauty (Alc III , 8–10), the more detailed
description of linguistic signs (Alc IV, 17–20) and an exhaustive analysis of the
mutual relation between determinism and human freedom (ibid.).
As has already been mentioned, the Alciphron is Berkeley’s testimony of his
gradual departure from religious radicalism, as presented in earlier social
treatises between 1712 and 1721, to proclaim the need of moderate customary
changes as well as the need to be governed by the goodness of all members of
society. This inclination of his becomes stronger in time, as in the Querist (1735–
37, 1750) and the Siris (1744). When it comes to Alciphron’s placement in
Berkeley’s later work, we must not forget about the speculations within chemistry
in the sixth dialogue, where he identifies soul with ‘essential oil’ and animal spirit.
In the Alciphron, this identification serves as a foundation of the rejected
physiological and naturalistic understanding of soul whereas in the Siris the
chemical processes are integral parts of the ladder of Creation reaching the
lucent ether along with God.29 Thus, similarly, in both the fourth dialogue of
the Alciphron and in the Theory of Vision Vindicated we find the theological
interpretation of his earlier vision theory that originally in 1709 had none of
these connotations, whereas the chemical debates included in the Alciphron, as
part of natural philosophy, gained their broader meaning in the Siris, twelve
years later, to become a part of Neoplatonist metaphysics. It documents Berkeley’s
consistency in developing his conception who, as early as during the 1730s, i.e.
since he started his work on the Alciphron, endeavoured not only to expand on
certain problems that were already argued, but also to incorporate the variety of
the elements of his concepts into one unitary form. If we were to assume that the
Siris is the capstone of this whole process, then we should also state that in the
Alciphron one may have a grasp of the beginning of this process, which in turn
emphasizes the meaning of this work for the comprehension of the complete
legacy of Berkeley.
Notes
1 The details concerning the historical background of the origin of the Alciphron and
of its editions are presented by Goeffrey Keynes in: Keynes, G. (1976), A Bibliography
of George Berkeley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 36–62 and David Berman in:
Berman, D. (1993a), ‘Introduction’ in D. Berman (ed.), Alciphron in Focus. London–
New York: Routledge, pp. 1–16. The newest essays on the Alciphron together with the
new edition of the text are collected in L. Jaffro, G. Brykman, C. Schwartz (eds.)
(2010), Berkeley’s Alciphron. English Text and Essays in Interpretation. Hildesheim–
Zürich–New York: Georg Olms Verlag.
2 This is a widely accepted view (see e.g. Flage, D. (2014), Berkeley. Malden: Polity
Press, p. 158). Timothy Dykstal, in turn, suggests that it is only Euphranor who is
Berkeley’s spokesman in the Alciphron (Dykstal, T. (2001), The Luxury of Scepticism.
Politics, Philosophy, and Dialogue in the English Public Sphere, 1660–1740.
Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press, p. 132) whereas G. Keynes remarks
that according to the convention used in the dialogue, neither Crito nor Euphranor
can be Berkeley’s alter ego, although both of them make use of Berkeley’s arguments
(A Bibliography of George Berkeley, p. 36).
3 Dykstal points out the specific character of the rhetoric in the Alciphron: quite in
contrast to Shaftesbury for whom dialogue was a way to reach the impartial truth
thanks to the opposition of various points of view (in the Moralists) and unlike
Mandeville, for whom the dialogue showed the clash of particular interests (in The
Fable of Bees), Berkeley uses the form of a dialogue to stress the unavoidable
presuppositions made by all interlocutors (also by free-thinkers); this feature of the
dispute is discussed in the second and the sixth dialogue of Alciphron (see: Dykstal,
T. (2001), The Luxury of Scepticism, pp. 133–4). Peter Walmsley, in turn, stresses the
satiric aspect of the parodic travesty of the literary styles of both authors in the
second and third dialogue (Walmsley, P. (1990), The Rhetoric of Berkeley’s Philosophy.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 110). According to T. E. Jessop, Berkeley
might have been influenced by satiric writings of Jonathan Swift in this aspect
(Works III, 336–7).
4 Flage, D. Berkeley, p. 159 ff. Paul Olscamp underlines the coexistence of two
motives – utilitarian and rule-utilitarian – in Berkeley’s practical philosophy
(Olscamp, P. (1970b), The Moral Philosophy of George Berkeley. The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, pp. 51–84).
5 See e.g. Locke, J. (1690), The Second Treatise of Government, chap. 2, par. 6–11.
6 There is not much scholarship concerning relations between Berkeley’s and
Shaftesbury’s moral philosophy. Detailed analyses can be found in Olscamp, P.,
The Moral Philosophy of George Berkeley, pp. 154–72 and Jaffro, L. (2007),
‘Berkeley’s Criticism of Shaftesbury’s Moral Theory in Alciphron III ’ in
S. Daniel (ed.), Reexamining Berkeley’s Philosophy. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, pp. 199–213. For the relations between Shaftesbury and deism
see: Alderidge A. O. (1951), ‘Shaftesbury and the Deist Manifesto’, Transactions
of the American Philosophical Society 41, 2, 297–382.
7 Cf. e.g. Leviathan, VI , where Hobbes gives the mechanical and materialist
interpretation of volitional activity; the claim that moral notions referring to
general good are but a tool in the hands of skilful politicians can be found in
Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees, and the naturalistic analogy between human
and animal activity appears in Shaftesbury’s Moralists. According to Berkeley,
the line of contention did not lie between Shaftesbury’s vision of nature with its
‘mutual sympathy of parts’ and Hobbes’ and Mandeville’s mechanical notion of
nature, but rather between various naturalist conceptions of man on the one
hand and religious doctrines that claim the uniqueness of man and his special
position in the act of Creation (with their theological implications concerning
the immortality of soul, the history of Incarnation and Redemption) on the
other.
8 See e.g. Passive Obedience 8 (Works VI , 21), An Essay Towards Preventing the Ruin of
Great Britain (Works VI, 71), and also A Discourse to Magistrates and Men in
Authority (Works VI, 204).
9 According to Peter Kivy, it is not Shaftesbury but rather Francis Hutcheson who
might have been the target of Berkeley’s attacks here. In An Inquiry concerning
Beauty, Order, Harmony and Design (1725) Hutcheson developed Shaftesbury’s
theory of beauty and in the fourth edition of the work (1738) he added the critique
of the utilitarian interpretation of beauty from the Alciphron (see: Kivy, P. (1976), The
Seventh Sense. New York: B. Franklin, p. 30 ff.).
10 It is also worth mentioning the similarity between Berkeley’s description of natural
beauty in the Three Dialogues (3D, 2; Works II , 210) and its descriptions given by
Shaftesbury. Though both seem to agree on the organic character of nature, the
expression of which is its beauty, in the Alciphron the vision is supplemented by
rational premises for the existence of natural teleology based on the rules established
by God.
11 See Smith, A., The Theory of Moral Sentiments, especially part III , Hume, D., A
Treatise of Human Nature, bk. III , part. 1.
12 See: Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion, 2; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ, I, 2, 3.
13 It is noteworthy that in the edition of the Theory of Vision published together with
the Alciphron Berkeley rephrased earlier statements concerning sensuous
phenomena, and started calling them not the ‘language of nature’ (as he did in the
first edition from 1709), but the ‘language of the Author of nature’ (see TV 147, 152),
giving a new interpretation of optical phenomena that could be reconciled with the
claims of the Principles (P 44, 65–6, 108).
14 Browne, P. (1703), A Letter in Answer to a Book entitled ‘Christianity not Mysterious’,
Dublin: W. Sayes for Robert Clavel, pp. 43–4. A year after the publication of the
Alciphron, Browne criticized Berkeley’s argumentation in his Things Divine and
Supernatural Conceived by Analogy with Things Natural, London (1733).
15 Berkeley was not the only clergyman who deplored the moral and religious decline
of the country in his time. Joseph Butler also wrote about religion: ‘In the present age
. . . nothing remained, but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule’
(Butler, J. (1736), The Analogy of Religion. London: J. and P. Knapton, Advertisement),
and Thomas Secker added that ‘Christianity is now ridiculed and railed at with very
little reserve; and the teachers of it without any at all’ (Secker, Th. (1738), The Charge
of Thomas Lord Bishop of Oxford to the Clergy of his Diocese in his Primary Visitation.
London: J. and J. Pemberton, p. 4). Robert Ingram suggests that many of the
complaints were caused by the spectre of the seventeenth century with its civil wars
looming large over the eighteenth century, which were seen as the evidence of
fragility of the established political-religious order that could be endangered by a
heterodoxy (Ingram, R. (2007), Religion, Reform and Modernity in the Eighteenth
Century: Thomas Secker and the Church of England. Martlesham: Boydell & Brewer,
pp. 71–2).
16 The defence of the thesis that ‘whatsoever resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance
of God’ (PO 1; Works VI , 17) is the chief motive of the Passive Obedience.
17 Especially the chapters related to religious faith, reason and probability (Essay, bk.
IV, chap. 15, 16 and 18). Locke conditioned the degree of probability on the
unanimity of testimonies and their congruence with everyday experience; although
such a claim made room for extra-rational truths (for example, referring to the facts
that ‘angels rebelled against God . . . and that the dead shall rise and live again’
(Locke, J. (1960), An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. A. S. Pringle-Pattison
(ed.), Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 357), it also opened a possibility of the critique of
traditional revelation. It should be noted however, that when Locke postulates that
‘Revelation cannot be admitted against the clear evidence of reason’ (ibid., p. 356), he
directed his Reasonableness of Christianity, where the thesis was developed in detail,
against those who ‘were not yet thoroughly or firmly Christians’, that is deists (the
clear evidence of Locke’s position can be found in his two Vindications of the
Reasonableness of Christianity. For the relations of Locke and British deism see:
Higgins-Biddle, J. C. (1999), Introduction in J. Locke, The Reasonableness of
Christianity as Delivered in the Scriptures. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. xxvii–xlii).
18 Collins, A. (1724), A Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion.
London.
19 Tindall, M. (1730), Christianity as Old as the Creation. London, p. 1.
20 See: Rogers, G. A. J. (1999), Locke and the Latitude-Men. Ignorance as a Ground of
Toleration in: R. W. F. Kroll, R. Ashcraft and P. Zagorin (eds.), Philosophy, Science and
Religion in England 1640–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 199–
229.
21 From the historico-philosophical perspective this argumentation, as well as the
earlier remark of Alciphron on the discussions restricted to the facts alone, may be
seen as a harbinger of David Hume’s claim that all knowledge concerning ‘matters of
facts and existence’ cannot be certain but only probable (see: Hume, D., An Enquiry
Concerning Human Understanding, sec. 4).
22 Such an interpretation of miracles would be in accordance with the remarks on the
emotive function of language in the Principles and Berkeley’s claim that the main
purpose of the descriptions of miraculous phenomena in the Scripture was
establishing the faith of Christians. ‘As for miracles recorded in Scripture,’ he writes
in the Passive Obedience, ‘they were always wrought for confirmation of some
doctrine, or mission from God, and not for the sake of the particular natural goods’
(PO 14).
23 See: Locke, J. (1960), An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, pp. 223–6.
24 This analogy does not reach far; although all the notions relate to causality, the notion
of force is applicable to natural philosophy, which – quite independently from
metaphysics – allows finding the order among various natural phenomena; in the
strict sense causality refers to the activity of spirits (see: Downing, L. (2005), ‘Berkeley’s
Natural Philosophy and Philosophy of Science’ in: K. Winkler (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to Berkeley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 231 ff.).
25 Ibid., pp. 249–56.
26 Locke, J. (1960), An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, pp. 190–91.
27 See: Berman, D. (1993), Introduction, pp. 2–6.
28 Apart from the changes Berkeley made in the new edition of the Theory of Vision, it
is also the new edition of the Principles (1734), in which natural phenomena are
referred to not as a language, but as signs.
29 See: Airaksinen, T. (2011a), Light and Causality in ‘Siris’ in Berkeley’s Lasting Legacy:
300 Years Later. T. Airaksinen, B. Belfrage (eds.), Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge
Scholars, pp. 91–120.
11
Berkeley’s Querist
‘Hints . . . What Is to Be Done in this Critical State of our
Affairs’ or Proposals for a Hyperborean Eutopia?1
Patrick Kelly
The Querist, containing several Queries, Proposed to the Consideration of the Public
was Berkeley’s major piece of economic writing.2 It first appeared anonymously
in three annual parts, from 1735–37, and was subsequently issued in a single,
much abbreviated volume, bearing Berkeley’s name in 1750.3 Its unusual format
of a series of often randomly linked rhetorical questions makes it a work that is
hard to view comprehensively, not least because of the wide variety of topics
covered. Nonetheless, the book created a considerable stir on its first appearance,
and ever since there have been those who have admired it for its theoretical
insights, its concern for the plight of Ireland’s impoverished masses, and not least
its literary skill.4 Far from being an isolated production, The Querist was one of
the most distinguished contributions to a rich literature on economic topics
published in Ireland between 1720 and 1750; other notable writers being Thomas
Prior, Arthur Dobbs, David Bindon and (best known to posterity) Jonathan
Swift.5 To apply the word ‘economic’ in the context of the first half of the eighteenth
century is, of course, somewhat of an anachronism. The term ‘economics’ had not
yet emerged nor had the ideas behind it established themselves as a distinct, self-
defining subject.6 For Berkeley and his contemporaries, the various writings on
banking, taxation, currency reform, trade, poor relief, etc., which had appeared
since the early seventeenth century belonged to a subordinate branch of politics;
namely provision for the material needs of the state and its inhabitants. For the
most part, these publications had been written in response to particular short-
term difficulties, and the profusion of such works in Ireland in the three decades
following the South Sea Bubble of 1720 testifies to the serious problems
confronting the country in those years. What follows focuses on the broader
context of Berkeley’s economic ideas and their relation to his social and ethical
196
Berkeley’s Querist 197
views (as has been the trend in the recent literature), rather than his contribution
to the history of economic analysis in the narrow sense – a topic that has been
extensively covered in the mid to later twentieth century.7
Before turning to this, it is necessary to say something more about the Querist’s
format and the relationship between its two editions. Berkeley’s decision to
present his thoughts on Ireland’s economic problems as series of, generally,
rhetorical questions (punctuated by occasional gnomic reflections such as Om.
Q. III . 62, ‘Whether there be not an art to puzzle plain cases as well as to explain
obscure ones?’), that periodically switch from topic to topic and back again,
creates difficulties for the would-be expositor. While there is an identifiable core
of propositions that add up to a comprehensive solution to Ireland’s economic
difficulties, on many issues Berkeley remains elusive, ironic and unwilling to
commit himself. Moreover, on a number of significant matters, particularly the
role of foreign trade, Berkeley not so much directly contradicts himself, as varies
his position so as to leave readers uncertain where he stands.8 Om Q. III . 88
indicated that The Querist’s frequent repetition and changing juxtaposition of
ideas was intended to convince readers not only intellectually but also emotionally:
‘Whether in order to make men see and feel, it be not often necessary to inculcate
the same thing, and place it in different lights?’ (my italics). Queries 41 and 458
further identified repetition as a strategy for overcoming prejudices, while Om.
Q. II . 315 suggested that Berkeley’s objective was in part as much to persuade
readers to think for themselves as to have them adopt the remedies he proposed.
A further difficulty arises from the considerable differences between two
main editions of The Querist.9 The first was an anonymous, three-part publication
in 1735, 1736 and 1737, totalling 895 queries, and the second a single volume
first issued in 1750. The latter reduced the number of queries to 595 by dropping
345 from the original and adding a further 45, the main difference being the
omission of the major number of queries relating to banking.10 This consolidated
volume, to which Berkeley set his name and added an Advertisement to the
Reader, is the version by which the work has generally been known to
economists.11 Further, mainly minor, variations are to be found in its subsequent
issues up to 1752, the year that saw the Dublin printing of Berkeley’s Miscellany
of 1752. For an economic pamphlet, The Querist enjoyed considerable popularity,
going through ten printings in the course of the eighteenth century, eight of
which were in Berkeley’s lifetime.12 Also important for spreading his ideas was
the anonymous compendium, Queries Relating to a National Bank, Extracted
from the Querist. Also the Letter Containing the Plan or Sketch of Such a Bank.
Republished with Notes (1737). This reprinted 288 queries, taken in roughly equal
shares from the three parts of The Querist, which serve as an introduction to a
short proposal for the National Bank that had first appeared as a letter in Dublin
newspapers in April 1737.13
Berkeley’s radical solution to Ireland’s problems
The most pressing problems confronting Ireland in the second half of the 1720s
and first half of the 1730s were agricultural depression, an ill-functioning
currency system and chronic underemployment, which in times of famine or
trade depression left a large part of the population vulnerable to pauperization
and beggary.14 Given contemporary ideas of what made for national prosperity,
Irish writers found it hard to account for their country’s destitution, other
than in terms of British malevolence and native idleness. With its fertile soil,
favourable climate, sufficient harbours and navigable rivers, and large, employable
population, Ireland seemingly possessed all the resources believed necessary to
make a nation rich and prosperous.15
Faced with the way Irish problems were intensified by the famine conditions
of the late 1720s, Swift had altogether despaired of finding any solution to
Ireland’s crisis through the application of received Mercantilist wisdom, while
younger commentators like Dobbs and Prior could only look to co-operation
with England in manufactures that complemented rather than threatened her
economy.16 In The Querist, however, Berkeley came up with a new and audacious
solution to Ireland’s problems, as radical in its context as his earlier rejection of
matter. This solution rested on two insights, neither of which was individually
novel, but which combined together had revolutionary potential for transforming
Ireland’s position. The first was that real wealth consisted not of gold and silver,
but of things that immediately satisfied human needs such as food, clothing and
shelter.17 The second was that the demand creating function of money in
circulation could be as effectively served by paper money as by gold and silver, a
perception that almost certainly arose from Berkeley’s experience of paper
money in America.18 Furthermore, Berkeley perceived that not only was
conventional Mercantilist wisdom at odds with the realities of a relatively
primitive, agricultural economy, but that the solutions it proposed would be
positively harmful for the latter. In the case of a poor agricultural economy, such
as Ireland’s, exporting the foodstuffs etc. required for the basic maintenance of
the population was the way not to wealth (as Mercantilists had argued since the
days of Thomas Mun) but to destitution (Queries 167–75, 325).19
Together, these insights freed Berkeley from the straitjacket of current

mercantilist thinking that the only way to achieve national prosperity was
through increasing the supply of gold and silver by means of a favourable balance
of trade, an assumption that blinkered the vision of even the most perceptive of
his Irish contemporaries. The immediate key to solving Ireland’s problems was
therefore to stop exporting raw agricultural commodities in exchange for
luxuries satisfying an extravagant and heedless gentry (Query 106), and to
introduce paper money that would transform the needs of the pauperized
masses into economic demand. Initially it would seem that Berkeley envisaged
that in order to safeguard the new paper money and advance the interests of the
rural poor over those of the luxury-importing gentry, Ireland would need to
become an economy cut off from trade with the rest of the world. His well-
known reference to the desirability of ‘a wall of brass a thousand cubits high
round this kingdom’ (Query 134) was, however, probably by way of illustration
of his argument rather than a call for absolute self-sufficiency. Berkeley’s solution
was therefore, in effect, to stand Ireland’s economic problems on their head,
making the needs of the pauperized and unemployed masses the motor to
develop the Irish economy. In tactical terms, however, the success of the proposal
would depend on the establishment of a National Bank to issue the necessary
paper money, and much of The Querist is directed to persuading the Irish
parliament to agree to this.
Berkeley’s economic principles
To convince the public that his proposals would work, Berkeley was led to the
exposition of the principles on which his solution rested, principles that are
encapsulated, as I have suggested elsewhere, in his first forty queries.20 Here he
defines what he terms the true nature of Wealth and the true nature of Money.
Wealth, properly understood as what satisfies direct human needs, is the creation
of labour and industry, even land being of no value without the application of
labour. What is necessary to promote wealth is to awaken the will to labour,
which in turn can only be stirred by creating the appetite to consume the product
of labour. The business of the state is therefore to promote employment by all
means possible, notably ensuring ‘that each member, according to his just
pretensions and industry have power [to supply wants]’.21 Paper money would
ensure a regular circulation of goods for money, and money for goods, thereby
facilitating economic activity at present choked by the lack of specie (Queries 6,
26 – see also 239, 424, 480, 567). As Berkeley’s definition of money is essentially
functional, the material of which money consists is therefore merely a matter of
convenience (Queries 34–5).22 As early as his 1713 Guardian essay ‘On Short-
sightedness’, Berkeley had repudiated the notion that gold and silver possessed
an intrinsic value of their own.23 In The Querist he rejected the Aristotelian
concept that the precious metals serve as a pledge redeemable against other
goods in the future – an idea that had recently been reformulated by Locke, the
foremost authority on money for Irish writers of the eighteenth century.24 This
important breakthrough was enshrined in Berkeley’s celebrated definition of
money as a ticket or counter, the statement that has above all else ensured his
place in the history of economic analysis.25 It is important to emphasize, however,
that for Berkeley the function of money as a ticket is not the inert formulation of
classical economy, but a ticket providing entitlement to power, whose circulation
serves to activate industry (Queries 441, 475; Om. Q. III . 176). In this latter
respect, Berkeley’s concept of money (for all its rejection of specie fetishism)
remained firmly within the Mercantilist paradigm, where money is seen an
independent variable in the economic process, serving, as Locke and Petty stated,
to drive the wheels of trade.26
The other respect in which Berkeley remained primarily a mercantilist
thinker was in looking to the state to direct economic activity, a necessity given
the absence of any notion of the optimization of resources through the operations
of the invisible hand, and his rejection, in Alciphron, part II , of effecting
prosperity through the untrammelled pursuit of self-interest (as advocated by
Mandeville).27 Locke and his contemporaries had accorded this directive role to
what they termed the ‘statesman’, but in Irish conditions the notion of the
‘statesman’ was a more contested entity than it would have been in Britain. Irish
opinion had long been that no British government would have Irish interests
truly at heart – a view reinforced by the recent crisis over Wood’s Halfpence.28
Although Berkeley did not share this conviction, awareness of the general
prejudice against the British government and its local administration in Ireland
led him to identify the Irish parliament (for all its shortcomings) as the only
body credible enough to assume the necessary direction of the national economy.
What Berkeley sought to bring about in place of dependence on a foreign
trade that involved the exchange of raw agricultural products and foodstuffs,
essential for the support of the poorer population, in return for unprofitable
luxuries consumed by the gentry was, first, the strengthening of agriculture
through the creation of mass internal demand for ‘beef and shoes’, (Query 20).
This in turn would expand agriculture and increase population, resulting in the
encouragement of domestic industry (Query 403), and thereby lead to the

expansion of towns and the improvement of their amenities in the form of
churches, public buildings and paved streets (Queries 414–15).
The expansion of agriculture meant, however, exclusively the expansion of
tillage, since Berkeley saw cattle-ranching and sheep-raising as reducing
employment in the countryside, and pandering to the Irish poor’s preference for
idleness and sloth – inherited from their Tartar ancestors.29 As well as providing
for the poor, a self-sufficient economy would also produce the amenities required
by the ‘upper rank’ (Query 18), which would include improved houses, furniture,
gardens and works of art (Queries 123–7; 399–401, 409). Such improvements in
gentry living standards would in time attract back the absentees, who now
expended their rents in England and abroad (Queries 408, 413).
For Berkeley, foreign trade came bottom of the list of desirable activities, being
identified as something in which the poorer economy should only seek to
participate, once its agricultural base and domestic commerce were firmly
established. Even then it should be regarded with circumspection, being only really
desirable when what was imported was intended for working up into re-exports
rather than luxury items that pandered to gentry extravagance (Queries 170, 554).
As far as the relationship with Britain was concerned, both political and economic,
Berkeley followed the call of Prior, and more especially Dobbs, for economic co-
operation.30 To succeed, this would require Britain to recognize Ireland’s potential
contribution to the British Empire in supplying cheap goods that she was currently
required to import expensively from her European competitors, in return for an
acceptance that Ireland would not seek to compete in sectors regarded as key to
Britain, notably the woollen export trade (Queries 64, 73, 81, 89, 492).31 Obsession
with the lost woollen manufacturing industry was a political grievance that the Irish
needed to put behind them, not merely to disarm British hostility but also because
pasturage was harmful to the economy in undermining employment.32 To Berkeley,
Ireland appeared best suited to develop not so much within the colonial empire but
as an integral part of Britain’s domestic economy. Although he spoke of it being ‘the
true interest of both nations to become one people’ (Query 90), unlike Dobbs,
Berkeley did not, however, make the case for political union.33
Persuading the recalcitrant
The practical obstacles to bringing Berkeley’s proposal to fruition were primarily

questions of motivation, viz. how to bring about the co-operation of the two
groups in Irish society whose apathy and self-indulgence obstructed the

implementation of the plan, namely the idle and impoverished poor and the
heedless and extravagant gentry. How Berkeley sought to achieve this reveals
significant links between the ideas of The Querist and the reflections on God’s
plan for society that he had articulated in his sermons and his 1713 essays for
The Guardian. In his 1714 sermon ‘On Charity’ Berkeley claimed that God’s plan
for providing for man’s material needs was to be effected through harmonious
co-operation in the mutual exchange of goods and services, both locally and
between countries.34 In the Guardian essays he asserted that men were driven by
an innate urge to pursue their own ‘happiness’, subsequently distinguishing the
forms that this took into ‘profit’ and ‘pleasure’.35 To facilitate provision for our
‘well-being’, God had implanted in man the twin attributes of sociability and
benevolence, which together ensured that individual behaviour ‘best suits with
the common well-being’.36 The divine plan also required the co-operation of
human industry to bring it to fruition, lest ‘a supine indolence and neglect’
deprived us of the benefits God had intended for us – phraseology strikingly
similar to that applied to the native Irish in The Querist.37 Properly understood
self-interest advances the common good, and it is through promoting the
common benefit that individuals most effectively promote their own good – a
notion constantly reiterated in The Querist.38 Berkeley’s position was thus
diametrically opposed to that of Adam Smith, for whom individuals’ pursuit of
self-interest achieved the optimum outcome for the community through the
operations of the invisible hand.39 Although Berkeley was prepared to concede
that selfish motives might lead people to fail to co-operate as God had intended,
he was confident that co-operation would be restored through ‘learning wherein
our true interest consists’. In the first edition of The Querist, he looked to the
legislature to effect the necessary co-operation to promote economic well-being,
confident that with proper training and education Irish legislators could
successfully perform this role. However, by the time of A Word to the Wise (1749)
and the 1750 edition of The Querist Berkeley had come to realize that bringing
about the necessary co-operation in Ireland was not the simple matter that he
had previously believed.40
Persuading the two main groups, whose failure to recognize their true interest
impeded the implementation of Berkeley’s solution to Ireland’s problems,
required contrasting approaches, the differences between which reveal much
about his perception of the classes who made up the Irish population. For
Berkeley the Irish poor were not fully rational, and thus needed to be incentivized
to labour by awakening their appetite to consume (rather than appealing to
their reason, as was the case with the gentry). Where the attractions of
consumption failed, Berkeley was prepared to resort to increasingly severe
forms of coercion.41 His ultimate sanction for the idle poor was forced labour
for the public benefit, and even temporary slavery (an unhappy echo of the
notorious English Poor Law Act of 1547).42 Indeed, Berkeley’s preoccupation
with the disinclination of the Irish poor to abandon their misery, dirt and
sloth in favour of industry (and cleanliness) could be said to verge on the
obsessive.43 The Irish were depicted as uniquely averse to labour: in no country
was industry said to be so ‘against the natural grain of the people’ (Queries 19,
132, 138, 357, 448).
Though the innate idleness of the Irish was a colonialist trope reaching back
to the sixteenth century, not all Berkeley’s contemporaries shared this view.
David Bindon, for example, argued that national dispositions to industry or
idleness depended on circumstances rather than innate characteristics, and that
whatever had happened in the past the Irish were now so eager for employment
that they would, if necessary, emigrate to find it.44 However, when Berkeley failed
with his appeal to the self-interest of the gentry in persuading them they could
not hope to thrive while their fellow countrymen starved (Queries 167, 255), his
approach was very different from his proposed treatment of the poor. In the case
of the gentry, Berkeley merely looked to the current legislature, together with the
exploitation of religious and national prejudices, to change their behaviour,
finally suggesting holding their self-indulgence up to public obloquy (Queries
10–14, 141, Om. Q. 162).45 Further resort to reason to induce co-operation from
the gentry came with Berkeley’s call for them to assume a directive role in
stimulating the economy at a local level by promoting employment through
improvements on their estates (Queries 407–13).
These differences in the treatment of the two classes raise the question of the
extent to which Berkeley as a member of the Anglo-Irish elite regarded the ‘poor,
native Irish’ as his fellow countrymen. Query 383 suggests that he saw the poor
as a resource to whose labour the state had an undoubted right, whether yielded
willingly or unwillingly. Their labour, over and above what was necessary to
provide ‘a tight house, warm apparel, and wholesome food’,46 was regarded as
available to serve the needs of the state and the prosperity of the upper classes
(Queries 59, 383, 487). There is no suggestion that, however hard they labour, the
poor might aspire to any higher standard than the modest prosperity of eating
beef and wearing shoes (Query 20). Against this seemingly unsympathetic
approach may be set Berkeley’s assertion that the happiness of the state cannot
be distinguished from that of the individuals who comprise it,47 and the statement
that ‘those who employ neither heads not hands for the common benefit deserve
. . . to be expelled like drones out of a well-governed State’ (Queries 345, 3). What
Berkeley proposes in overall terms, however, is prosperity in the form of
‘comfortable living’ for the poor, to be achieved, initially at least, by imposing
frugality on the rich (Query 18).48
The National Bank and the Irish Parliament
The immediate political objective of The Querist was to persuade Irish legislators
of the desirability of establishing a National Bank to issue and manage the paper
money that was the key to Berkeley’s project. As George Caffentzis has shown, The
Querist was originally published as part of a sustained propaganda campaign by
Berkeley and his associates, Thomas Prior, Samuel Madden and the Perceval
brothers, to prepare the way for the introduction of legislation for setting up an
Irish National Bank in the parliamentary session of 1737–8.49 Such a project was,
however, a contentious matter; after the failure of the 1720–21 bank scheme, both
Houses of Parliament had passed resolutions outlawing bank proposals for the
future, the Lords declaring any member who attempted to bring them forward a
public enemy.50 Even though some very limited suggestions for paper money had
been published in 1734, the long shadow of the South Sea Bubble and the
Mississippi debacle in France still compromised bank proposals in Ireland.51
Berkeley’s arguments in favour of a bank rested on the conviction that the question
for Ireland was not so much dependence on specie or paper money, but since
provision of credit by banks was unavoidable, whether the necessary credit should
be public or private (Query 429; Om. Q. III . 58). To win over the legislators
(particularly the members of the Lower House, who had the dominant voice in
financial business), Berkeley argued that a National Bank would uniquely mobilize
all the forces of the nation to promote industry and employment (Query 588).
To show how the benefits that other nations had derived from banks could be
reproduced in Ireland, while avoiding their errors and weaknesses, Berkeley
analysed at length the recent history of banking in Europe and America, focusing
particularly on the causes of the dramatic failure of Law’s bank in France. These
dangers, Berkeley was convinced, could be overcome through careful supervision
of the operations of the Irish National Bank; ensuring it operated exclusively in
the national interest, and by skilful controlling of the volume of notes issued
against the mortgaging of land. By separating management and note-issuing
functions, and a series of security measures (most incidentally initiated by Law
himself), a National Bank wholly owned by the public rather than private
shareholders, and therefore operating exclusively in the public interest, would
transform the Irish economy.
Most important was to avoid links between the bank and any form of trading
project, such as had bedevilled both Law’s Mississippi venture and the South Sea
Company in giving them an interest in promoting their own shares to the
detriment of the public (Om. Q. I, 220, 273; II . 106-10, 140). Finally, parliament
would receive responsibility for overseeing the bank through a committee of
MPs, Peers and Officers of State who would ensure that those managing the
bank adhered to the regulations laid down for them.52 Establishing and
supervising the bank was therefore a highly visible manifestation of what
Berkeley saw as the legislature’s general responsibility for directing the economy.
Though he still had doubts as to how well prepared Irish legislators were for this
function, he realized there was no other body in the state capable of performing
it (Om. Q. III . 49). In seeking MPs’ support for his bank, Berkeley appealed both
to their corporate pride and to their prejudices. He reminded them of their
initial support for a bank in 1720, and urged the protestant Irish parliament to
show themselves as resourceful as the ‘Popish Senate’ of Venice or the phlegmatic
Dutch (Query 368; Om. Q. II . 251–2, 37, 53). In the longer run, however, Berkeley
saw education as the key to developing the necessary knowledge, experience and
judgement for MPs to fulfil their role. In Query 346, one of the longer queries in
the book, Berkeley asked:
Whether, therefore, a legislator should be content with a vulgar share of

knowledge? Whether he should not be a person of reflexion and thought, who
hath made it his study to understand the true nature and interest of mankind,
how to guide men’s humours and passions, how to incite their active powers,
how to make their several talents co-operate to the mutual benefit of each other,
and the general good of the whole?
Aftermath and The Querist revised
Unfortunately for Berkeley, the campaign to launch the National Bank in the
parliamentary session of 1737–38 came to nothing, a failure that suggests that
even his practical ‘Hints’ were as utopian as his hopes of persuading the Irish
public to rely on reason to solve their country’s problems (Query 269, Om Q I.
312). The frustration and anguish that he felt on account of this setback are
manifest in a paper entitled ‘The Irish Patriot, Queries upon Queries’, which was
written in 1738 but did not see the light of day for nearly 200 years.53 As well as
excoriating Irish MPs, the paper illustrates what appear to be the behind-scenes
arguments that prevented his proposal from even being introduced into the
House.54 Although Berkeley’s practical involvement in promoting ‘the Manners,
Health, and Prosperity’ of his countrymen was put to the test in responding to
the terrible famine of 1740–41, it would take another dozen years before he
ventured again into print on the subject of economic improvement with the
pamphlet A Word to the Wise of 1749.55 This is not to say that he remained
uninvolved with matters of public interest. These included his call to Irish
Catholics to resist the blandishments of the Stuarts in the 1745 Rebellion56 and
his earlier contribution to combating the diseases consequent to the 1740–41
famine through advocating the use of tar water, which eventually received
literary formulation in Siris (1744). However, the experience of what was the
worst famine of the century, with the loss of between one fifth and one quarter
of the population, left little mark on Berkeley’s subsequent writings.57 Nothing is
known of his decision to publish A Word to the Wise in 1749, which was unique
in being a call to the Catholic clergy, especially priests in rural parishes, to
promote industry among their poorer parishioners and wean them away from
idleness through inculcating habits of industry and cleanliness from childhood.58
Though interpreted at the time as a more than gracious gesture of confidence in
his Catholic confreres, this decision to appeal to the Catholic clergy, as the group
who might exercise real influence over the Irish poor and arouse them to
industry, may well have reflected Berkeley’s despair over the possibility of
motivating the Irish poor to work as much a unwonted religious altruism.59
Indeed, the complaints of the sloth and idleness of the Irish poor in the first
edition of The Querist were so heightened in A Word to the Wise that Berkeley
felt it necessary to apologize to their pastors for ‘painting [their poorer
parishioners] in no very good light’.60
It was perhaps in response to the surprisingly enthusiastic reception of A
Word to the Wise, that Berkeley reissued The Querist in 1750, in a radically
different form and no longer anonymously. The ‘Advertisement by the Author’,
which prefaced this second version of the work, spoke in disappointingly
elliptical terms of the motives that prompted him to bring it before the public.
Berkeley acknowledged that ‘the face of things has somewhat changed’, and
stated that much of what he had omitted from the earlier version ‘relat[ed] to the
sketch or plan of a national bank, which it may be time enough to take in hand
again when the public shall seem disposed to make use of such an expedient’ (my
italics). In keeping with this, the major omissions from the first edition were
blocks of queries relating to banking, notably the general discussion of banking

(I. 209–67); the history of banking (II . 28–66); the critique of Law’s scheme (II .
67–125); consideration of the objections to the bank likely to be raised in
parliament (III . 14–128), and finally the role that the bank might serve in
facilitating a transition from the current Irish monetary standard back to sterling
(III . 133–64).61
Since he concedes that the time is not appropriate to raise the bank question
again, it is puzzling why Berkeley should have undergone the considerable
labour of readapting the work for the single volume edition, especially as writing
twice on the same subject was a task that he had privately described as highly
disagreeable.62 Consideration of the economic and political backgrounds throws
no light on why Berkeley might have felt it desirable to reissue The Querist at this
specific point. Although the Advertisement recognizes economic circumstances
had in some respects improved since 1737,63 Berkeley showed no awareness that
short-term conditions had greatly improved since 1747 with a substantial rise in
agricultural production and exports, especially in the Cork region.64 This
confirms the impression already given in the first edition that Berkeley was
concerned with long to medium-term developments in the economy rather than
short-term trends. The Advertisement goes on to claim that though Berkeley
‘had determined with myself never to prefix my name to the Querist, but in the
present edition [I] was overruled by a friend, who was remarkable for pursuing
the public interest with as much diligence as others do their own.’65 Whether this
is to be understood as meaning that Berkeley’s friend had persuaded him to
bring out the revised Querist, or merely to end his anonymity, is not altogether
clear, though the description of the public-spirited friend surely identifies
Thomas Prior. For all his claim in 1750 that public disinclination to consider a
proposal for a National Bank made it inappropriate to raise the matter, it is
possible, however, that Berkeley had not entirely given up hope that parliament
would respond in some form. Otherwise, what are we to make of the publication,
presumably later in the year, of Maxims on Patriotism By a Lady (otherwise
Berkeley), which rehearses much the same bitter criticisms of Irish MPs found
in the unpublished ‘Irish Patriot’ of twelve years earlier?
The significance of the changes in the 1750 Querist was first pointed out by
Ellen Leyburn in a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, in 1937,
which spoke of the work as toned down from the verbal brilliance and satire of
the anonymous three-part original but adopting a more tolerant attitude to
Catholics.66 Berkeley certainly dropped his assertion that uniformity in religion
was essential for the well-being of the state, along with suggestions on how to
distinguish Catholics loyal to the regime from those who were not (Om. Q. I.
289–300), although he also introduced new proposals for promoting conversion
(Queries 260–4). What he now looked to, however, was enlisting middle-class
and mercantile Catholic Ireland in the scheme for promoting national prosperity
(Queries 265–8), whereas his previous focus had been on motivating the poorer
Catholics. The appeal to the former was taken further in the most significant
addition to the version of The Querist in the 1752 Miscellany, where Berkeley
suggested that they might be allowed to acquire former Jacobite lands, despite
the penal laws (Query 265). To an extent, this more liberal view of Catholics may
be attributable to the notable lack of any overt Irish response to the 1745 rising
in Britain (though ironically its two most prominent, behind-the-scenes Irish
supporters, Lords Barrymore and Orrery, were substantial protestant landowners
in Berkeley’s own east Cork neighbourhood).67
Other changes in the 1750 edition included more emphasis on the role of
education in promoting economic prosperity (Queries 191, 194–8, 202–5);
considerations of how to increase the population (Queries 206–16); miscellaneous
recommendations in relation to particular manufactures and parts of the
country, and developing trade with Sicily (which Berkeley had visited in 1717)
(Queries 164–5).68 Despite his much harsher denunciations of Irish sloth,
indolence and dirt in A Word to the Wise, no further comments were added on
this score in 1750. Very noticeable, however, was Berkeley’s diminished confidence
in the capacity of Irish parliamentarians to respond to their country’s needs, a
change more evident in what was dropped from the book than in what was
added, particularly in omitting III , 49: ‘where the legislative Body is not fit to be
trusted, what security can there be for trusting anyone else?’69 Clearly, he had not
forgotten their failure to respond to his call in 1737–8.70 What had not changed,
however, was Berkeley’s commitment to state direction of the economy, without
which mutual co-operation in advancing the public welfare through industry
and trade could not be achieved. Belief in the need for state direction of the
economy had, alongside the accumulation of gold and silver, and the primacy of
foreign trade, been the three fundamental postulates of Mercantilist theory, and
it would be the last of the three to command the assent of economic writers right
up to the appearance of Smith’s Wealth of Nations.71 It is above all this conviction
that mutual co-operation in building prosperity cannot be left to self-interest that
measures Berkeley’s distance from Adam Smith’s ‘system of liberty’.
Ultimately, therefore, Berkeley’s approach to economics remains essentially
Aristotelian with the emphasis on providing for human needs at a level of
modest prosperity rather than unlimited accumulation; a process identified in
The Querist as leading to madness for individuals and corruption and ruin for
whole societies (Queries 306–9). As he expressed the matter in Alciphron, the real
question was that since ‘riches are not an ultimate end . . . in order to make a
nation flourish it is not sufficient to make it wealthy, without knowing the true
end and happiness of mankind, and how to apply wealth towards attaining that
end.’72 Berkeley’s view of economic activity as a necessary, but definitely
subordinate, part of the divine plan for mankind revealed him as fundamentally
out of sympathy with the confidence in the beneficial effects of the growth of
commercial society so widespread among the thinkers of the Enlightenment.73
And it is this attitude that probably accounts for the limited impact that The
Querist (for all Berkeley’s theoretical brilliance) had on the subsequent
development both of Ireland and of economics.74
Notes
1 See George Berkeley, Plan or Sketch of National Bank, reprinted in Johnston, J.

(1970), Berkeley’s Querist in Historical Perspective. Dundalk: Dundalgan Press, p. 207,
and The Querist, Query 269: ibid. p. 148.
2 His other significant economic works were the anonymous An Essay towards
Preventing the Ruine of Great Britain (London, 1721), (Works, vi. 69–86), and A Word
to the Wise: or An Exhortation to the Roman Catholic Clergy of Ireland (Dublin,
1749), (ibid. 233–55).
3 Citations from The Querist are taken from the version in Johnston, 1970, which
prints the 1750 text (as revised in Berkeley’s Miscellany, 1752), followed by an
appendix giving the omitted queries of the 1735–7 edition, divided into their three
original parts. For details of the editions of The Querist, see below. Future references
to the queries in the 1750 edition are in the form Query 000 in the text and notes,
and to the omitted queries in the form Om. Q. I/II / or III (as appropriate) followed
by their number in the relevant Part (e.g. ‘Om. Q. II . 25’).
4 See [Goldsmith, O.] (1989), ‘Memoirs of the late famous bishop of Cloyne’, The
Weekly Magazine: or Gentleman & Ladies Polite Companion [1759–60], reprinted in
George Berkeley: Eighteenth-Century Responses. 2 vols. New York and London:
Garland Publishing, p. 178; Balfour, A. (1897), ‘Biographical Introduction’ in George
Sampson (ed.), The Works of George Berkeley, D.D. Bishop of Cloyne. 3 vols. London:
George Bell, vol. 1, pp. i–lx, p. xlix; Leyburn, E. (1937–8), ‘Bishop Berkeley, The
Querist’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 44, sec. C, pp. 75–98, 77; Luce, A. A.
(1949/1992), The Life of George Berkeley Bishop of Cloyne (reprint, intro. by David
Berman). London: Thomas Nelson / London: Routledge/Thoemmes, pp. 195–6.
5 For these writers, see Rashid, S. (1988), ‘The Irish school of economic development,
1720–50’, Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies 56, 345–69, and Kelly, P.
(2000), ‘The politics of political economy in mid-eighteenth century Ireland’ in S. J.
Connolly (ed), Political Ideas in Eighteenth-Century Ireland. Dublin: Four Courts
Press, pp. 105–29.
6 Berkeley frequently uses the term ‘nation’ to designate what we would call the
economy, see Kelly, P. (2014), ‘Berkeley and the idea of a national bank’, in Daniel
Carey (ed), Money and Political Economy in the Enlightenment. Oxford: Voltaire
Foundation, pp. 163–84, p. 171.
7 Notably in Caffentzis, G. (2001), Exciting the Industry of Mankind: George Berkeley’s
Philosophy of Money. Dordrecht: Kluwer; Breuninger, S. (2010a), Recovering Bishop
Berkeley: Virtue and Society in the Anglo–Irish Context. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan; and Kelly, P. (2005), ‘Berkeley’s economic writings’ in Kenneth P. Winkler
(ed), The Cambridge Companion to Berkeley. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, pp. 339–68. The significant mid-twentieth century papers are found in Clark,
S. R. L. (ed) (1989), Money, Obedience and Affection: Essays on Berkeley’s Moral and
Political Thought. New York and London: Garland Publishing, especially those of
T. W. Hutchison, Douglas Vickers and Ian. D. S. Ward.
8 For Berkeley’s divergent comments on foreign trade, see below.
9 ‘Edition’ is employed in terms of common usage rather than the technical,
bibliographical sense. Successive editors since A.C. Fraser in 1871 have adopted the
alternative strategies for bringing both versions before the reader, of either
presenting the material dropped from 1735–7 in footnotes to the text, or relegating
this material to an appendix. The latter was the solution adopted by Luce and Jessop
in Works, vi. 87–181, the basis of the version in Johnston, 1970. Neither solution can
be said to be entirely satisfactory, making the imminent appearance of Bertil
Belfrage’s critical edition, which presents all 940 queries as a sequential text, with a
subjacent apparatus indicating significant changes in the eight impressions of
Berkeley’s lifetime, particularly welcome.
10 For an extended discussion of the changes in 1750, see further below.
11 Both Hume and Smith, for example, owned the 1751 reprint from the Foulis Press in
Glasgow. See Norton, D. F. and M. J. (1998), The David Hume Library. Edinburgh:
Scottish Bibliographic Society, p. 75; Hiroshi, M. (2000), Adam Smith’s Library.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, items 154, 1194.
12 These included the London printing of the original Querist, with an Advertisement
probably by Berkeley’s friend Lord Egmont (previously Perceval), issued in three
parts in 1736, 1736 and 1737; see further n. 31 below. Pace Keynes, G. (1976), A
Bibliography of George Berkeley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 86–7, a further
reference in HMC Egmont Diary, ii. 296 confirms that ‘Richardson the printer’ to
whom Egmont recorded sending the work (ibid. 275) was indeed Samuel Richardson
the printer and future novelist.
13 The Letter was based on Part III , Queries 118–28. Its text was not recovered in
modern times until 1926: Keynes, 1976, p. 86. Cf. Berkeley to Prior, on the difficulty
of obtaining the copy of The Querist requested by the viceroy, Lord Chesterfield,
February 1746: Works, viii. 282. Berkeley’s influence is perhaps detectable in
Chesterfield’s closing speech to the Irish parliament in April 1746: Lords Journals
[Ireland], iii. 646.
14 News of Ireland’s distress even crossed the Atlantic, cf. the harrowing account
(credited to reports in English newspapers) in Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania
Gazette, 20 November, 1729: reprinted in Franklin, B. (1959), The Papers of Benjamin
Franklin, vol. 1 (1706–34), ed. W. Labaree and B. Whitfield. New Haven: Yale
University Press, p. 162.
15 As argued in Swift, J. (1727/8), A Short View of the State of Ireland. Dublin: S.
Harding.; cf. Queries 271–3, 418.
16 Cf. Swift, J. (1729), A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in
Ireland, from being a Burden to their Parents or Country; and for making them
beneficial to the Publick. Dublin: S. Harding; Prior, T. (1729b), A List of the Absentees
of Ireland. And the Yearly Value of their Estates and Incomes Spent Abroad. With
Observations on the Present State and Condition of that Kingdom. Dublin: R. Gunne,
pp. 59–65; and Dobbs, A. (1729), An Essay on the Trade and Improvement of Ireland,
Part I. Dublin: A. Rhames, pp. 1–4, 74–8.
17 Berkeley’s understanding of wealth may derive from Fénelon’s immensely popular
Télémaque. See Fénelon, Francois de Salignac de la Mothe (1994), The Adventures of
Telemachus, ed. and trans. P. J. Riley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 109,
and Luce, 1992, p. 111. Interestingly, it was not until he wrote A Word to the Wise in
1749 that Berkeley included shelter amongst mankind’s basic needs: Works, vi. 238, 241.
18 For a useful introduction to American paper money of the early eighteenth century,
focusing particularly on Rhode Island, see Caffentzis, 2001, pp. 93–5.
19 Cf. Mun, T. (1664), England’s Treasure by Forraign Trade. Or, The Balance of our
Forraign Trade is the Rule of our Treasure. London: Thomas Clark; North, D. (1691),
Discourses upon Trade; Principally Directed to the Cases of the Interest Coynage
Clipping [and] Increase of Money. London: Thomas Basset, p. 17. Adam Smith would
comment that ‘The title of Mun’s book became a fundamental axiom in the political
economy not only of England but of all other commercial countries’ (Smith, A.
(1976), An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Glasgow
Edition, (eds) R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner and W. B. Todd. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, i. 434–5). It is therefore somewhat ironic that Smith chose to bind
his copy of The Querist (cf. n. 11 above) with the Foulis Press reprint of Mun.
20 Cf. Kelly, P. (1985), ‘Ireland and the critique of mercantilism in Berkeley’s Querist’,
Hermathena, 139, 109–10.
21 The theme of promoting employment is reiterated throughout The Querist; for
different means of doing so, see Queries 3, 54, 329, 361, 379. The citation is from
Query 8.
22 Queries 468–70, 473, 482, 571–2 recognize, however, the need for different forms of
money to service the needs of different classes, especially low denomination metal
pieces for the poor (shortage of which was a particular problem in Ireland during
the 1720s and 1730s).
23 Works, vii. 212.
24 Query 25. Cf. Locke, 1991, i. 233: ‘Money . . . carrying with it . . . Security, that he that
receives it, shall have the same Value for it again, of other things that he wants,
whenever he pleases.’
25 Cf. Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1953), A History of Economic Analysis. London: Allen and
Unwin, p. 296.
26 Cf. Bowley, M. (1973), Studies in the History of Economic Theory before 1870. London:
Macmillan, chap. 1.
27 Works, iii. 79–83.
28 Dickson, D. (2000), New Foundations: Ireland 1600–1800. 2nd edn. Dublin: Irish
Academic Press, pp. 72–5.
29 Queries 87, 489, 512–14; cf. Word to Wise: Works, vi. 235. Caffentzis, 2001, pp. 110–15,
has suggested that Berkeley’s hostility to pasturage may have had an element of
self-interest given the refusal of Irish landowners to pay tithes on cattle and sheep
rearing (known as agistment tithe). The switch from tillage in the 1730s threatened
the welfare of the Anglican clergy, and led to a lively pamphlet debate, involving
Swift among others.
30 The Querist did not raise the view that Berkeley broached to Prior, 7 May
1730, that it would be in England’s interest to grant Ireland free trade: Works,
viii. 208.
31 The Advertisement to the 1736 English reprint of The Querist, part I, recommended
the book for its call for increased co-operation between Ireland and England, in
phraseology reminiscent of the Dedication of William Molyneux’s Case of Ireland . . .
Stated (1698). This echo of Molyneux would seem to dispose of the claim in Keynes,
1976, p. 87, that this Advertisement was the work of its London publisher John
Roberts.
32 For the problems of the woollen trade, see Dickson, 2000, pp. 49–53, 135–8.
33 Dobbs, 1729, pp. 52, 56–72.
34 Sermon ‘On Charity’ (preached at Leghorn, spring 1714): Works, vii. 35.
35 Guardian essay viii – ‘Happiness’: ibid. 212; Guardian essay ix – ‘Short-sightedness’:
ibid. 211.
36 ‘The Author of our Being who aims at the common good of his creatures . . .
implanted the seeds of mutual benevolence in our souls’: Guardian essay xii, ‘On the
Bond of Society’ (1713): Works, vii. 227.
37 ‘On the Mystery of Godliness’ was preached in Boston on the eve of Berkeley’s
departure from America in 1731, ibid. 91. It also asserted that co-operation in trade
served to spread new ideas and technical processes. Cf. especially Query 357.
38 ‘Because the good of the whole is inseparable from that of the parts; in promoting
the common good every one doth at the same time promote his own private interest.’
Cf. Queries 586–7.
39 ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can
expect our dinner, but from their regard to their self interest’ (Smith, 1976, i. 26–7).
40 See further below.
41 Queries 53–4, 387–9 also proposed the forcible working of criminals in chain gangs
both to provide labour for the state and to discourage crime through harsher
punishments than the death penalty – a notion subsequently independently
advanced by the Austrian Emperor Joseph II . Cf. Ernst Wangermann (1973), The
Austrian Achievement, 1700–1800. London: Thames and Hudson, p. 144.
42 Berkeley’s views were by no means unique; other British philosophers such as Locke
and Francis Hutchison advocated similarly harsh treatment of the recalcitrant poor.
Cf. Woolhouse, R. (2007), Locke, a Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, pp. 396–7; T.W. Hutchison in Clarke, 1989, p. 49.
43 Query 61 does concede that misery and despair might be so extreme as to inhibit the
poor from seeking to better their condition.
44 Cf. Pref. to his translation of Jean-Francois Melon (1738), A Political Essay on
Commerce. Translated with some annotations and remarks by David Bindon.
Dublin: Philip Crampton, p. xiv (though Bindon also cited The Querist with
approval). Queries 447, 528–9 show Berkeley’s concern over the loss to Ireland
arising from people emigrating to work elsewhere.
45 The suggestion in Query 326 of banishing incorrigibly extravagant ‘fine folk of both
sexes’ from the country is merely a piece of Berkeleian irony.
46 A Word to the Wise; Works, vi. 241.
47 Phraseology that seemingly appealed to Adam Smith. Cf. Smith, 1976, i. 94: ‘No
society can surely be happy and flourishing of which the far greater part of the
members are poor and miserable.’
48 The frugality Berkeley called for was as much moral as economic (cf. Essay on
the Ruine of Great Britain: Works, vii. 74–9), but had no connection with Adam
Smith’s concept of the ‘parsimony’ of the industrious effecting the accumulation
of capital (Smith, 1976, i. 15–19), pace Smith, A. (1993), An Inquiry into the Nature
and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Laurence Dickey (ed), Indianapolis: Hackett,
p. 252.
49 Caffentzis, G. (2011), ‘The failure of Berkeley’s bank: money and libertinism in

eighteenth-century Ireland’, in Daniel Carey (ed), The Empire of Credit: the Financial
Revolution in the British Atlantic World. Dublin: Four Courts Press, pp. 229–48.
50 Lords Journals [Ireland], ii. 720; Commons Journals [Ireland], iii. 289.
51 For a detailed discussion of Berkeley’s bank proposals, see Kelly, 2014, pp. 165,
169–78. A useful summary of Law’s scheme and the South Sea Bubble is found in
Murphy, A. E. (1997), John Law: Economic Theorist and Policy Maker. Oxford: Oxford
52 Queries Relating to a National Bank . . . Also the Letter containing a Plan or Sketch of
the Bank, item 5, in Johnston, 1970, p. 205.
53 Ibid. 210–13.
54 Caffentzis, 2011, 230–2.
55 Citation from the ‘Advertisement by the Author’, which prefaces the 1750 edition of
The Querist: Johnston, 1970, p. 124.
56 ‘A Letter to the Roman Catholics of the Diocese of Cloyne’, Dublin Journal, 19–22
October 1745: Works, vi. 229–30.
57 A Word to the Wise (1749) speaks of ‘how many of [those poor creatures] perished in
a late memorable distress’: ibid. vi. 238. For the famine, Dickson, D. (1997), Arctic
Ireland: the Extraordinary Story of the Great Frost and Forgotten Famine of 1740–41.
Belfast: White Row Press.
58 Works, vi. 235–48.
59 For the Catholic response, see ‘A Letter from the Roman Catholic Clergy of the
Diocese of Dublin’ [Dublin Journal, 18 Nov. 1749] reprinted in ibid. 248. Cf.,
however, Berkeley’s sly intimation that given their ambiguous status in law, it
might be desirable for the Catholic clergy to show zeal for the public welfare:
ibid. 244–5.
60 Ibid. 236.
61 None of the 45 queries added in 1750 related to banks.
62 Berkeley to Johnston [29 November 1729]: Works, ii. 282–3.
63 A note to Query 482 refers to the improvements produced by the currency
reforms of 1735 [recte 1737]. These had brought the gold/silver ratio into line
with the English revaluation of the guinea in 1717, and issued some £40,000
worth of copper money (equivalent to 9,600,000 pennies), thereby ensuring
much-needed monetary stability. Other changes noted by Berkeley included
improvements in ‘the art of design’ and a decline in extravagant fashions
(Queries, 68, 140).
64 See Dickson, D. (2005), Old World Colony: Cork and South Munster, 1630–1830.
Cork: Cork University Press, tables VIII . i; X. i; XI . i, and XIII . i and ii.
65 The 1750 version of the Advertisement read ‘present edition’ (as here), which has
been altered to ‘last edition’ in the 1752 version that served as Johnston’s copy-text.
66 Leyburn, 1737–8, 91. Berkeley even dropped I. 316 (’Whether he, who only asks,
asserts? And whether any man can confute the querist?’), which was perhaps the
nearest he came to indicating his reasons for adopting the Querist format.
67 Cf. Dickson, 2005, 252–3.
68 Query 191 proposes admitting Catholics to Dublin University without requiring the
usual religious exercises, in the same way the Jesuits received Protestants at their
college in Paris.
69 Cf. the omission of III . 14–28.
70 Since there was only one election in George II ’s reign, membership of the Commons
would probably not have greatly changed between 1737 and 1750.
71 The need for enhanced state direction when the objective is to employ the whole
population would be stressed by Steuart, Sir James (1767), An Inquiry into the
Principles of Political Oeconomy, 2 vols, London: Strahan, i. 2, 15, 162, 249–50.
72 Alciphron, II , 10: Works, iii. 80. Berkeley had posed very much the same question in
his 1721 Essay towards preventing the Ruine of Great Britain: ibid. vi. 74–5.
73 A contrast notable by comparison with Hume, for example. Cf. ‘Of Commerce’; ‘Of
Refinement in the Arts’; ‘Of Money’, and ‘Of Interest’: Hume, D. (1994), Political
Essays, ed. Knud Haakonssen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 93–125
passim.
74 For the subsequent influence of The Querist, see Rashid, S. (1990), ‘Berkeley’s Querist
and its Influence’, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 12, 38–60.
12
Berkeley’s Siris, an Interpretation

Timo Airaksinen
Reading Siris
Siris: A Chain of Philosophical Reflexions and Inquiries is a short book, only some
130 pages, but it challenges its reader, especially when one compares it with, for
instance, the Principles of Human Knowledge. For Berkeley, Siris is a new kind of
book, a ‘rude essay’ and a stream of consciousness draft (S 297). Some modern
readers have adopted a negative attitude towards Siris, for understandable
reasons.1 Siris looks like a scandalous treatise if you admire the young Berkeley
of the Principles and the Three Dialogues. However, to understand George
Berkeley as a philosopher and a scientist, we need to tackle Siris as well. Some
critics think that a topic like tar water, which Berkeley promotes, is a sufficient
reason for rejecting the project. Berkeley indeed recommends tar water as a
medicine (S 12–3, 20, 22, also First Letter to Thomas Prior, Works 5). He tells us
how to prepare it, how it works as a medicine, and why it is so successful that we
can almost call it a panacea.2 The quest for a panacea, a catholicon, or a universal
medicine, which cures most diseases, had been around for a long time. I do not
see any problem here.3 Siris is, among other things, a medical work. Berkeley
develops his key ideas in his two long letters to Thomas Prior and in his last
publication, Farther Thoughts on Tar-Water (Works 5). He recommends tar water
to ‘sea-faring persons, ladies, and men of studious and sedentary lives’ (S 116).
Wood tar also happens to be a carcinogenic substance.4
Interpretative literature on Siris is available, although many errors prevail,
ranging from trivial to significant: for instance, that Siris is a large volume or that
Berkeley was an enemy of Newton but still accepted his idea of aether.5 Most of
the older literature may not hold much value but one hopes that the emerging
body of scholarship will be better.6 In its own time, Siris was a popular success; it
went quickly through several editions, even a Swedish language translation
216
Berkeley’s Siris, an Interpretation 217
appeared. One modern edition of Siris exists, which is T. E. Jessop’s edition in the
Works 5. My position is that Siris is a contribution to philosophy and especially
to sciences. It is an essential part of Berkeley’s corpus because he changed many,
or even most, of his youthful theories at this last stage of his career. Even his
theory of causality, which he may have considered as his key thesis, gets a new
twist in 1744. Siris has an ethical core, it is deeply philosophical, scientifically
informed and in many places beautifully written; at the same time it is a rambling,
prima facie self-contradictory, and sometimes a nostalgic intellectual journey.
Who would not like such a book?
Jessop says that the word ‘siris’ means a small chain and it is also an ancient
name of the river Nile in Egypt (Works 5, 5). As such, the name is well chosen.
Berkeley was interested in the religious symbolism of water, such as fountains
and vessels.7 The Nile is a symbol of fertility, religion, culture and travel. The
idea of a chain is repeated in the title of the book, Siris, A Chain of Philosophical
Reflexions. This chain is supposed to connect Earth to Heaven; the most base to
the most elevated, or mundane to heavenly. This is important because the text of
Siris consists of a series of numbered paragraphs, without chapters or headings.
Every paragraph is a link in the chain, siris, which ascends towards what is true,
good and beautiful or, as the author also says, towards what is pure: ‘And
according to the Platonists, heaven is not defined so much by its local situation
as by its purity’ (S 211). Berkeley’s religious concerns are strong all along the
chain but, in the end, they reach their stylistic and speculative crescendo.
Berkeley longs for the Christian religion to be part of science, and science
to be part of it, so that ultimately science will serve religion.8 However, all this
is in the past and Berkeley resents modern times, which breed freethinkers –
whom he hates – and this does not bode well. Alciphron displays confidence, but
in Siris the reader feels its author’s anger when he realizes that science and
religion may no longer form a unified hierarchic whole. Siris is one of the last
major attempts to provide a hierarchical definition of the relative positions of
science and religion. Berkeley is afraid religion will lose its dominance: ‘And have
not Fatalism and Sadducism gained ground during the general passion for the
corpuscularian and mechanical philosophy, which hath prevailed for about a
century?’ (S 331). Berkeley accepts new and old scientific doctrines. He may
admire René Descartes but he rejects, for instance, his cosmology.9 He does it
almost implicitly:
Nature seems better known and explained by attractions and repulsions than by
those other mechanical principles of size, figure, and the like; that is, by Sir Isaac
Newton, than Descartes. And natural philosophers excel, as they are more or less
acquainted with the laws and methods observed by the Author of nature.
S 243
Nevertheless, Berkeley adopts the key elements of Descartes’ physiology. He

criticizes Newton but he also follows him. He collects and collates existing
knowledge. He may not be an experimentalist like Isaac Newton but he knows
the value of experimentation.10 He understands the idea of double-blind
controlled experiments:
The experiment may be easily made if an equal number of poor patients in the
small-pox were put into two hospitals at the same time of the year, and provided
with the same necessaries of diet and lodging; and, for further care, let the one
have a tub of tar-water and an old woman, the other hospital, what attendance
and drugs you please.
Farther Thoughts on Tar Water, 210
Also, ‘In one family there was a remarkable instance of seven children, who
came all very well through the small-pox, except one young child which could
not be brought to drink tar water as the rest had done’ (S 2). However, Berkeley
himself does not rely on such experimental techniques. He trusts plain
observations – as if he still lived in the world of sensory ideas. As we will see, this
trust on sense data is inconsistent with the new epistemology of Siris.
However, in the ascending chain, experience and experiments are at a lower
level than theorizing and reasoning, which rest on first principles and
speculations. The higher along the chain he advances, the bolder Berkeley’s new
philosophical vision gets. The ultimate aim is to elevate one’s thoughts up the
chain all the way to God as the Holy Trinity. This is how the book’s argument
ends, in the understanding of the role and the nature of God. I will show below
in detail how Berkeley argues. Some commentators have said that Siris contains
no argumentation at all – this is a mistake. On the contrary, Siris exhibits some
solid argumentation, which is one of the reasons for reading it. Another reason
is that it reveals a new Berkeley.
Tar as medicine
Tar water is easy to make (S 1). Put one quart of fresh pine tar into a glazed
earthen vessel and add one gallon of cool water, then stir it for fifteen minutes,
let sit for thirty-six hours, skim the surfaced oily substance, and bottle the clear
liquid.11 Drink in normal conditions a half pint in the morning and another in
the evening; if you are sick, drink more. You can drink as much as your stomach
takes, as there is no overdose.
The idea of tar water is not new with Berkeley. He reports that he got the idea
in America (S 1, 17; First Letter to Thomas Prior, 132), but also ocean going ships
used tar water as medicine against scurvy, as we learn from Captain Drape’s
Affidavit (Works 5, 189).12 In Scandinavia, people used tar for medicinal purposes,
mostly externally, but its fumes were inhaled, too. To treat toothache, take a small
amount of fresh tar, press it into a ball, dip it in strong alcohol and press it firmly
into the cavity. Thus, we can say that Berkeley perfected the method of preparing
tar water, pioneered its wider use and explained its effects, but he did not invent it.
When tar water is prepared, a lump of brown substance will remain on the
bottom of the vessel. One can reuse it for making more tar water, otherwise it is
useless. The medicine is now in the bottle. What is in the bottle? Berkeley realizes
that tar does not dissolve in water; it dissolves in alcohol but that does not make
a plausible medicine. The case of resin applies to tar as well:
If anyone were minded to dissolve some of the resin, together with the salt or
spirit, he need only mix some spirit of wine with the water. But such an entire
solution of resins and gums as to qualify them for entering and pervading the
animal system, like the fine acid spirit that first flies off from the subject, is
perhaps impossible to obtain.
S 49
A crucial element in tar evidently dissolves in water, as one can see and taste: ‘no
acid more gentle than this obtained by the simple affusion of cold water’ (S 50). The
result is tar water, that clear, brownish, soothing liquid that is so good for us. It
contains an acid spirit, ‘that principle of life and verdure’ (S 24). Therefore, strictly
speaking, it is misleading to talk about tar water at all. Only a small portion of tar
works for medicinal purposes; the water-soluble part holds its effective element.
The trick is to get the good element out of its container, tar, which in itself is useless.
Next, Berkeley explains the science behind it. A stream of very small particles
hits the atmosphere of the earth and reacts with its larger particles:
Light impregnates air, air impregnates vapour; and this becomes a watery juice
by distillation, having risen first in the cold still with a kindly gentle heat. This
fragrant vegetable water is possessed of the specific odour and taste of the plant.
It is remarked that distilled oils added to water for counterfeiting the vegetable
water can never equal it, artificial chemistry falling short of the natural.
S 45, also S 37
Next, a variety of different particles enters plants, including trees, via the
porous outer surfaces of their leaves.13 The particles move through vents and
capillaries all the way to the roots of coniferous trees, such as pines and firs.
There they slowly concentrate and mature: ‘The trees, like old men, being unable
to perspire, and their secretory ducts obstructed, they are, as one may say, choked
and stuffed with their own juice’ (S 16). Tar is extracted from pine logs by means
of a dry distilling method called ‘tar burning’ in the Scandinavian languages and
Finnish, or making tar by slowly burning small logs under a thick dirt and turf
cover. Too much oxygen starts a flame and you will lose everything. The method
is pyrolysis, which induces various chemical reactions. Hot liquid tar pours out
through tubes inserted into the pile.14 Tar making used to be a major industry in
northern Europe.
Berkeley knows this process (S 13). He also refers to an alternative method,
namely cutting the bark of the tree open and collecting the liquid: ‘This balsam,
weeping or sweating through the bark hardens into resin’ (S 38; also S 16, 18).
Alas, this is not tar but a chemically different substance called resin, which is
hardened sap of coniferous trees. Resin and tar are chemically different and they
look very different. According to Berkeley, resin is healthy too, but it is a factual
mistake to think that this is tar, as he occasionally does: ‘[t]he brown old rosin,
that is to say hardened tar’ (S 111). These sections of Siris contain conflicting
information about the roles of such different substances as tar, resin and
turpentine.15
Berkeley thinks that God has given tar to us to use it for our benefit. Tar water
contains an element, pure acid from heaven, which God sent to us. It flows freely
from the heavens in the form of light and fire accumulating in old trees. What
Berkeley shows is that we are able first to extract it from trees and subsequently
learn how to mix it with water so that tar’s ingredients become a powerful
catholicon, or a universal cure. Tar water is good in every sense, because it is a
gift from God. This also means that tar water works in the best possible way. It
has no side effects, it cannot hurt the patient, it must be as powerful as any cure
ever was, because God himself guarantees it, at least in the Bishop’s imagination
while he sits and writes during his long-lasting isolation in Cloyne. Tar water is
perfect because it is natural and pure, unlike alcohol. It is natural in three
different senses. It comes from living nature, man minimally manipulates it, and
God’s wish is for us to have it.
Berkeley says that a medicine that is closest to nature is the best: ‘artificial
chemistry falling short of the natural’ (S 45). Of course, no artificial manufacturing
effort or chemistry is beneficial in the same perfect manner as are the works
of God. Tar flows freely and unassisted out of an incision on the bark of a
tree, as he believes; this is natural. Medicines we produce by chemical means are
artificial. Distillation is a good example: Iatrochemists applied distillation
methods. In the same way, people produced strong alcohol, Berkeley’s
nightmarish foe (S 53, 107–8). What is closer to God’s creations is better than
artificial products:
The less violence is used to nature the better its produce. The juice of olives or
grapes issuing by the lightest pressure is best. Resins that drop from the branches
spontaneously, or ooze upon the slightest incision, are the finest and most
fragrant. And infusions are observed to act more strongly than decoctions of
plants; the more subtle and volatile salts and spirits, which might be lost or
corrupted by the latter, being obtained in their natural state by the former. It is
also observed that the finest, purest, and most volatile part is that which first
ascends in distillation. And, indeed, it should seem the lightest and most active
particles required least force to disengage them from the subject.
S 46
Here Berkeley’s logic falters, because his ethical and theological concerns
override the factual foundations of his medical theories. Tar and turpentine,
unlike resin, come out of hell-like smoky and fiery conditions in tar-making
mounds, which changes the chemical constitution of the wood and resin inside.
If those conditions are not violent, unnatural and dangerous, nothing is.
Compared with what happens when one distils alcohol, tar making is unlike
anything that we call natural conditions. Distillation is not a chemical process.
Wine ferments on its own requiring minimal intervention. Metals may work as
medicines, as the case of antimony shows, and metals just sit in the bowels of the
earth where they wait to be discovered and extracted. Berkeley wants to show
the ideal nature of tar water and nothing is going to stop him, not even facts that
he should know well. In this way, Berkeley relies on something like theological
medicine where the cure comes from God and is therefore pure and perfect,
benevolent and not violent – but tar comes from Hell.
The chemistry of life
Next, chemical explanations follow. Berkeley is familiar with the work of Herman
Boerhaave and Wilhelm Homberg, and perhaps the Paracelsian lore (S 126 etc.)
– certainly, he does not rely on the Galenic medicine (S 171, Alc VI , 28). He
mentions Jan Baptist van Helmont, a Dutch Paracelsian (S 49).16 Berkeley says
that the sun’s light is an acid (S 202), and as an acid it combines with the salts in
the atmosphere, which again combine with the particles of earth. Later he
supplements this picture by saying that the salty acid particles, which are
combined with earth, are ‘sheathed in fine oil’:
[T]he gentle vibrations that are raised in the nerves by a fine subtle acid sheathed
in a smooth volatile oil, softly stimulating and bracing the nervous vessels and
fibres, promotes a due circulation and secretion of the animal juices, and creates
a calm satisfied sense of health. And, accordingly, I have often known tar-water
procure sleep and compose the spirits in cruel vigils occasioned either by
sickness or by too intense application of mind.
S 86
This fine oil mixes with water – this is why we call it tar water. Here Siris
applies contemporary chemistry based on the three chemical principles, salt,
sulphur and mercury, together with the four forms of matter: earth, air, fire and
water. Berkeley refers to earth, acids and the principle of salt. Salt is the deposit
you get when you boil various liquids, which then reduce to earth-like substances.
Salts are an element of life and the growth of plants and animals: ‘The salts, the
spirits, the heat of tar-water are of a temperature congenial to the constitution of
a man, which receives from it a kindly warmth, but no inflaming heat’ (S 74).
They are also soluble to water, which we have seen is important when you make
tar water. Already in Alciphron Berkeley reviews the key facts: ‘This volatile salt
is properly the essence of the soul of the plant, containing all its virtue; and the
oil is the vehicle of this most subtile part of the soul, or that which fixes and
individuates it. And as, upon separation of this oil from the plant, the plant died’
(Alc VI , 14).
All this chemistry used to be a freethinker’s doctrine in Alciphron, but not for
long. In Siris, tar water is healthy and its effects depend on acid salts, which
Berkeley knows to be beneficial to men and animals. All salts combine with
earth, which is present in the air or atmosphere, which itself is born out of the
inhalations of the earth radiated by the sun (S 33, 88). This is common knowledge:
the earth, animals and plants let out gases, including those that are evaporated
liquids.
We also find sulphur in tar, but its medical role is more controversial than that
of salts. Sulphur is a fiery substance that, unlike salts, heats and disturbs living
organisms. Tar water cools the patient down but sulphuric substances have the
opposite effect; they produce inflaming heat:
The salts, therefore, and more active spirits of the tar are got by infusion in cold
water; but the resinous part is not to be dissolved thereby. Hence the prejudice
which some perhaps may entertain against tar-water as a medicine, the use
whereof might inflame the blood by its sulphur and resin.
S 47
A problem follows:
The acid spirit or salt, that mighty instrument in the hand of nature, residing in
the air, and diffused throughout that whole element, is discernible also in many
parts of the earth, particularly in fossils, such as sulphur, vitriol, and alum. It was
already observed, from Homberg, that this acid is never found pure, but hath
always sulphur joined with it, and is classed by the difference of its sulphurs,
whether mineral, vegetable, or animal.
S 135
How do you explain, first, that tar water contains no sulphur and, yet, it must
contain some because of its salts? I mention this as a typical challenge to the
reader of Siris. Berkeley seems to argue that two types of heat exist in the body:
beneficial warmth and harmful inflammation, but tar water is not responsible
for the second type. The reason is that tar water contains no sulphur. Obviously,
the matter is more complicated than this.17
A well-known iatrochemists’ panacea used to be antimony, a metal that
Paracelsus favoured, and metals imply the principle of mercury. Gold, mixed
with a liquid, is another example of a traditional panacea, or potable gold.
Berkeley’s own list does not mention antimony or gold: ‘In the modern practice,
soap, opium and mercury bid fairest for Universal Medicines’ (S 69). He says tar
water is a soap (S 59). Of course, metals as medicines were controversial because
of their poisonous qualities. For instance, mercury is dangerous, as Berkeley
knows:
Mercury hath of late years become a medicine of very general use, the extreme
minuteness, mobility, and momentum of its parts rendering it a most powerful
cleanser of all obstructions, even in the most minute capillaries. But then we
should be cautious in the use of it, if we consider that the very thing which gives
it power of doing good above other deobstruents doth also dispose it to do
mischief. I mean its great momentum.
S 71
Metals are heavy and thus they break human tissues. Whole schools of
medicine depended on this before Berkeley’s time.18 Berkeley always emphasizes
that tar water is not poisonous or damaging. Doctors who recommended
metallic medicines, as well as those who favoured strong purges, bloodletting,

salivation and enemas, could say that these methods may be harmful but they
also cure the patient. Berkeley counters this by saying that the damage done is so
severe that a patient may recover from the illness but not from the cure: ‘But it is
well remarked in Plato’s Timaeus that vomits and purges are the worst exercise in
the world’ (S 67). Thus, he prefers a gentle cure: ‘[T]he saline extract is a gentle
purge and diuretic, by the stimulus of its salts’ (S 84).
Tar water contains an acid that comes from the sun. How can Berkeley know
that the light and fire of the sun is an acid (S 128)? He believes that light is a hail
of small, invisible particles, and so it is possible that they are chemically an acid.
He knows this by verifying that the particles behave like acids when they combine
with salts and earth. What kind of behavior are we talking about? He writes: ‘For
whatsoever strongly attracts and is attracted, may be called an acid, as Sir Isaac
Newton informs us in his tract De Acido. Hence it should seem that the sulphur
of Homberg and the acid of Sir Isaac are at bottom one and the same thing, to
wit, pure fire or æther’ (S 202). This quotation is a conceptual minefield. Sulphur
is not a medical substance but now it is the same as acid, which is the good part
of tar water. Sulphur as a fiery substance is a part of Berkeley’s pure fire, light and
aether. Siris contains such tangles, as one must admit.
Siris is a useful book because it promotes health, but what is health? What is
life? These are the central questions.19 Berkeley believes that the entire universe
is alive; this is one of his main metaphysical doctrines. However, he is aware of
its problems. This is typical of Siris. Berkeley first accepts some grand speculations
about the nature of things, but next he says that we should approach them with
care and subtle consideration. This is what life is:
And although an animal [the world] containing all bodies within itself could not
be touched or sensibly affected from without, yet it is plain they [ancients]
attributed to it an inward sense and feeling, as well as appetites and aversions;
and that from all the various tones, actions, and passions of the universe, they
supposed one symphony, one animal act and life to result.
S 273
Life is a symphony of motions, cosmic music that the world plays under the
direction of God as His mind animates the word. All living beings participate in
this musica universalis. Logically, it follows that the whole world is alive.
The living universe is not a mere metaphor – it also refers to natural motions,
appetites and aversions (conatus), vital motion and life force (vis vitae) (S 85, 218).
The universe as well as any living body is in motion and everything has its own
rhythm; all this activity plays cosmic music. What reason would there be to
distinguish sharply between the motions of the world and the bodies as they all are
the same? Our thoughts move and ideas change, blood circulates, animal spirits fly
through nerves, plants grow and change all the time. Life emerges from fire, ‘But
this active element [fire] is supposed to be everywhere, and always present,
imparting different degrees of life, heat, and motion to the various animals,
vegetables, and other natural productions, as well as to the elements themselves
wherein they are produced and nourished’ (S 190). A hail of small particles from
the sun is also the principle of life, an ‘active element’. Fire is the bringer of life.
A loss of life is a constant threat. Illnesses work by blocking and hindering the
harmonious motion that is life.
An obstruction of some vessels causeth the blood to move more swiftly in other
vessels which are not obstructed. Hence, manifold disorders ensue. Liquor that
dilutes and attenuates resolves the concretions which obstruct. Tar-water is such
liquor. It may be said, indeed, of common water, that it attenuates; also of
mercurial preparations, that they attenuate.
S 56
This has its unintended Galenic overtones as Berkeley emphasizes the

imbalance of humours in the body. All good chemical medicines work in the
same way, namely, they remove blockages. Medicine revives the life force by
allowing it to flow freely, naturally and in the right rhythms. Too much flow is
dangerous, too little means death, so we want the correct amount of flow and
motion. Only God can create the vital force but a good doctor and his medicine
alleviate problems by unblocking the pathways. Poisons do the opposite.
Nourishment reconstitutes life. Berkeley gives a relevant example. You extract
metal from ore and then leave it in the open air. This reconstitutes the ore, or
replaces some of the metal that you have already removed. The explanation is
that the inhalations of the earth put some metal into the atmosphere from where
it returns to the ore:
Air may also be said to be the seminary of minerals and metals, as it is of

vegetables. Mr. Boyle informs us that the exhausted ores of tin and iron being
exposed to the air become again impregnated with metal, and that ore of alum
having lost its salt recovers it after the same manner. And numberless instances
there are of salts produced by the air, that vast collection or treasury of active
principles, from which all sublunary bodies seem to derive their forms, and on
which animals depend for their life and breath.
S 142
This wonderful example shows how nourishment works and how the whole
universe is alive, even ores.
Science and its problem
In Siris Berkeley confronts Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, René Descartes

and other contemporary scientists for instance on the nature of light, explanation
of gravity and some new physical problems like electricity (S 235). Nothing
much is original here, except of course the way Berkeley approaches these
rather standard problems and theories. We do not go into details, but clearly
Berkeley admires science and the scientists. He is knowledgeable of their
theories. He never denies their prima facie value, as many religious
enthusiasts like, for instance, John Hutchinson did in his Moses’ Principia
(1724–7). Berkeley says that he does not know Hutchinson’s work and he is not
interested in it (Letter 260, to Johnson, Works 8, 305). Berkeley is no enthusiast;
therefore, it is a mistake to call Berkeley an enemy of Newton and the new
mechanistic epistemology. Berkeley only tries to put mechanism in its own
place, subordinated to God’s causal efficacy. Berkeley has read Newton’s Opticks
and its speculative Queries (4. ed, 1730), which obviously impressed him. He
mentions Newton’s own examples without giving him credit, for instance, that
flies walk on the surface of water ‘without wetting their feet’ (235).20 It is now
becoming clear to him that the physical world is excessively complicated. For
instance, electric and magnetic phenomena demand attention. The same applies
to fermentation and putrefaction (S 229, cf. S 126), which are originally alchemical
terms.
Berkeley refers to three important experimental devices: prism (S 165
indirectly; 3D 186), microscope (S 29; TV 85, etc.) and especially burning glass
(S 158, 169, 190, 193, 198, 221), which create new empirical knowledge.
Microscopic observations show what the surface structure of plants is like
and reveal aspects of the world by making them visible for the first time.
All this he takes for granted in Siris. However, things change when the prism
and the burning glass emerge. Light, when it hits a prism, forms a spectrum
of colours, as Newton showed. Berkeley accepts his idea that light is of
corpuscular nature, a fast moving set of very small particles (S 165, also
S 206–7). Moreover, the spectrum of colours indicates that the particles of white
light are of many different kinds, and because of this, their effects are variable,
too. He writes,
The pure æther or invisible fire contains parts of different kinds, that are
impressed with different forces, or subjected to different laws of motion,
attraction, repulsion, and expansion, and endued with divers distinct habitudes
towards other bodies. These seem to constitute the many various qualities,
virtues, flavours, odours, and colours which distinguish natural productions.
S 162
The rule is, different causes produce different results, even if, as he also says,
the same cause may have different effects: ‘[T]he same cause shall sometime
produce opposite effects: heat for instance thins, and again heat coagulates
the blood’ (S 74). Next, Berkeley rejects Newton’s idea of a separate ethereal
substance because its uniform particles do not allow for the observed variety of
the effects of light. Here Berkeley dismisses his own claim that the same cause
may bring about variable effects. Be this as it may, his point is clear. Sunlight,
unlike Newton’s aether, is a complex cause and hence its effects are equally rich
and variable.
Berkeley calls light and fire aether, but this not the substance that his
contemporaries talk about (S 226). The Newtonian aether is not what Berkeley
has in mind; his is that ‘active fiery ethereal substance of light’ (S 178). Aether
is the same as light, or the aether postulated by some ancient authors. Here
Berkeley follows them and rejects the modern thinkers. I find it puzzling that
commentators of Siris miss this elementary point. Perhaps it is because Newton
and Berkeley use the same word. However, Berkeley does not need the modern
concept. He says the ancient thinkers are correct when they identify aether and
pure light or fire (S 152, 264). If light, fire or aether consists of variable particles,
is it material?
Siris is clear on the subject of materialism and the nature of matter. Berkeley
postulates invisible particles and their motions. However, he never says that the
particles are material. They cannot be ideas, as they are first invisible and then
principles – so what is their true nature? Whatever it is, we must not call
corpuscles and particles material: ‘[A]ct is to be esteemed spurious whose object
hath nothing positive, being only a mere privation, as silence or darkness. And
such he accounteth matter’ (S 306). In other words, when you speak of matter
you say nothing. A reference to matter is never an explanans. It seems that
Berkeley’s physical world still consists of ideas, but this is problematic, too (see
the final section, below). Particles and their principles are the invisible furniture
of the world, which obviously cannot be ideas.
Berkeley says that different flavours, textures, colours and other things all
depend on the variable effects of light as their instrumental cause:
The element of æthereal fire or light seems to comprehend, in a mixed state, the
seeds, the natural causes and forms [. . .], of all sublunary things. The grosser
bodies separate, attract, and repel the several constituent particles of that
heterogeneous element; which, being parted from the common mass, make
distinct essences, producing and combining together such qualities and
properties as are peculiar to the several subjects, and thence often extracted in
essential oils or odoriferous waters, from whence they exhale into the open air,
and return into their original element.
S 164, also 165
Light particles are so small that they are imperceptible, and hence they cannot
be ideas in the sense defined in the Principles. Not even a microscope can reveal
them – they are indeed imperceptible as such. Yet they obey the laws of nature,
which may tempt us to call them proto-ideas: ‘The pure æther or invisible fire
contains parts of different kinds, that are impressed with different forces, or
subjected to different laws of motion, attraction, repulsion, and expansion’ (S
162). One way to understand this is by observing that we do not discuss light as
such but the principle of light and fire; in the same way we do not discuss acids
but their principle when we do chemistry. Light or fire is a living, active principle,
says Berkeley in Siris: ‘There is no effect in nature great, marvellous, or terrible
but proceeds from fire, that diffused and active principle’ (S 158). Of course, such
problems as these one cannot solve only by reading Siris. The text is too
rudimentary. However, Berkeley emphasizes light as an active principle; hence,
the particles of light we perceive only through their effects (S 169).21 This is
methodologically important because light as a flow of small pseudo-material
particles exists at the lower levels of the chain. When we ascend, light becomes a
richer metaphysical entity.
Let us take seriously the idea that light is a hail of small particles. Berkeley
considers the following anti-corpuscular argument and refutes it (S 207). How
can I see your eye and you see mine, if the light particles reflected from your
eyeball should reach mine and the other way round? The particles flying in
opposite directions should collide and disperse so that neither of us can see the
other’s eye. Berkeley says that there is enough empty space around the light
particles so that they pass each other and form an image of the person on the
other side. He writes logically and eloquently so that the argument is convincing.
Light or aether does not form a plenum, as Descartes erroneously supposed.
Another feature of light, and particularly the sun’s light, is its heat and fire.
Take a burning glass, or a magnifying glass, and let sunlight stream through it.
You see nothing but the glass itself. This is because light is invisible. Its existence
becomes evident only through its effects, as Siris emphasizes. Now, move a piece
of paper under the glass and change its position until a focus appears. The heat
generated at the focus burns the paper. This shows that light is hot, it is heat, and
it brings about a flame (S 159). The next step is to say that there are two forms of
light and fire: the perceptible and the pure form. Pure light is invisible; what we
call light is just its effects. Pure fire is different from culinary fire, or fire that
consumes, and its flame that we see; those again are effects (S 37). Occasionally
Berkeley utilizes a different notion of light. This is the pneumatic notion, which
has its roots in a tradition that is much older than Newton and Descartes.
Suppose light streams through a window into a dark place, then you block the
window. The place is dark as there is no light in that space. However, according
to the pneumatic theory, light stays there, as if waiting. Berkeley says that light or
fire hides and waits in dark places, such as deep, dark caverns, wherefrom it can
be released: ‘The eye by long use comes to see even in the darkest cavern,’ because
of hidden light (S 368, also S 213). Dark caves contain light. Perhaps Berkeley
thinks of the Cave of Dunmor, which he visited (Works 4, 257ff ).
Next, Siris presents a high drama that culminates in the radical effects of the
sun’s light and fire, which lie waiting in the deepest caves. When freed, the hiding
fire acts, its power is strong, terrible, and often violently destructive (S 176).22
This expresses God’s wrath. Berkeley thinks of earthquakes and volcanoes. He
witnessed the eruption of Mount Vesuvius when travelling in Italy and wrote a
report on it for the Royal Society (Works 4, 247ff.).23 Here his personal experiences
find their novel expressions. Then he says, again paradoxically, that pure fire
mixes with water, as shown by whitecap waves at sea glimmering with light in
the darkest night: ‘Fire or light mixeth with all bodies, even with water; witness
the flashing lights in the sea, whose waves seem frequently all on fire’ (S 195).
There is fire in the sea as well as in tar water. Berkeley sailed across the Atlantic
in a storm in 1728, so he should know. It is interesting that he refers to such a
theory of light. He does it because light as a hail of minimal bullets does not
allow us to predict dramatic effects. A resident light and fire is more potent. For
Berkeley, both types of light and fire are God’s instruments; because God is so
powerful, His tools are strong and terrible, too. God is able to destroy all he
created. He uses instruments, which are light and fire.
The point of introducing light and fire is to answer the following question:
How does God, the only active and efficient causal agent, control the world
He created? In Siris, light and fire are instrumental causes because God,
and human spirits in a limited way, bring about changes in the world by using
them. Notice that in the Three Dialogues and in the Principles, He denies the
use of instruments (3D 212; cf. S 61ff.). In the early system, God directly
manipulates the ideas perceived by man, as this is His causal function. He allows
man’s ideas to form regular patterns that express law like relations between ideas
or sensory data. When A appears, then B follows, regularly and thus predictably.
Obviously, this allows us to know what happens in our world, which is both
useful and good:
But where there is no such relation of similitude or causality, nor any necessary
connexion whatsoever, two things, by their mere coexistence, or two ideas,
merely by being perceived together, may suggest or signify one the other, their
connexion being all the while arbitrary; for it is the connexion only, as such, that
causeth this effect.
TV 39
In Siris, God is still an agent and efficient cause, but now He does not manipulate
our ideas directly but by means of His pure light and fire, which are instrumental
causes, machines and active principles. These change the world, which we, limited
causal agents, can mainly observe and understand (S 261). When the sun’s light
hits a surface, this becomes, say, red, its odour and its texture change, and we can
perceive all of this by using vision, smell and touch. Our perceptual ideas no
longer depend directly on God’s will but, on the contrary, on the effects of light
and fire, which obey God’s will. We do not possess sensory ideas of light as light is
invisible. Moreover, how could we see it, if all our ideas depend on light? Light
makes us see; what would make us see the light? Berkeley is correct when he
denies its visibility, although he himself never mentions this argument.
The second change in Berkeley’s theory of causality is as follows.24 Some
physical causes now seem to him occult and specific: ‘For although the general
known laws of motion are to be deemed mechanical, yet peculiar motions of the
insensible parts, and peculiar properties depending thereon, are occult and
specific’ (S 239).25 Hence, the simple versions of mechanistic natural philosophy
miss their mark. As Newton’s speculations in his Opticks indicate, and new
scientific experiments show, the proposition ‘A is followed by B, and that is why
A is the apparent cause of B’ fails to make sense. It does not fail only because of
its own internal weaknesses but because many new, unaccountable phenomena
become available. Think of the traditional weapons salve and its wonderful
effects. One spreads the salve over the blooded blade that made the wound, and
the wound heals. Here Berkeley’s A–B scheme of apparent causality fails.
Intuitively, the causal connection between the salve on the blade and the wound
is unrealistic. However, if God wants to do His healing in this way, what can one
say against it? This misses the point. The new science shows that the situation is
worse from the point of view of the A–B scheme.
Berkeley may still maintain that the A–B scheme is useful, because God wants
us to know and flourish. This is dubious if no antecedent causes are visible. How
does one plan one’s actions now? Think of gravity. I drop this brick. I know that
it will fall; I can calculate how quickly and how hard it will hit the ground.
However, no causal antecedents exist because dropping the brick is not a cause
that explains its fall. It falls when I let it go, but it does not fall because I let it go.
Thus, we cannot explain the fall, or the effect, if we work in an A–B causal context.
If I let go of a helium balloon, it will not fall down. The only thing one can do is
to calculate the force and the trajectory of the brick from the moment I release
it. This is useful, as God wanted, but not because we know the relevant causes.
They remain occult. Berkeley discourses on gravity and Newton’s efforts to
explain it and not just to calculate its effects on bodies (S 225 etc.). Berkeley
concludes that Newton is unsuccessful but he agrees that neither can his own
views on light and fire explain it. Gravity is an occult cause and a sui generis
mystery in physical science.26
Now, it becomes evident that in certain interesting cases the causal antecedent
A vanishes. Only the effect B remains. Think of magnetism. Two pieces of metal
attract or repel each other without a visible sign of which way they should go.
Hence, A is now missing but B is still visible. Only the effects are evident, not
their causes. This is what for Berkeley an occult cause is. Causes also tend to be
specific, as he says. Newton’s example, repeated by Berkeley, is a fly that walks on
water. What law would apply to this specific case? When a stump of a tree grows
a green shoot, it is a new, specific case: ‘Or how can it account for the resurrection
of a tree from its stump, or the vegetative power in its cutting? In which cases we
must necessarily conceive something more than the mere evolution of a seed’ (S
233). According to Berkeley, no law like the relation between A and B exists here.
It is an exception to the rule.
Physiology
Echoing Descartes, Berkeley writes: ‘We are embodied, that is, we are clogged by
weight and hindered by resistance’ (S 290). The human bodies emerge in a new
context, which we can call pseudo-materialist. Hence, a fourth form of light,
fire or aether also exists, namely spirits or corpuscular animal spirits (S 156).
‘Spirit’ means any volatile substance that may produce noticeable effects on its
environment, like alcohol. It is a kind of inherent energy. Berkeley resorts to the

Cartesian theory of the extraction of corpuscular animal spirits from heated
blood, when its heat results from fermentation: ‘The animal spirits are elaborated
from the blood. Such therefore as the blood is, such will be the animal spirit,
more or less, weaker or stronger’ (S 87). Moreover ‘[g]ravity and fermentation are
received for two most extensive principles. From fermentation are derived the
motion and warmth of the heart and blood in animals, subterraneous heat, fires,
and earthquakes, meteors, and changes in the atmosphere’ (S 241). Obviously, we
need to think in terms of the mighty principle of fermentation, which also
produces earthquakes. Notice that fermentation produces heat that indicates
fire.
In the animal body hot blood rushes out of the heart and this explains
circulation. Perhaps Berkeley wants to use this explanation, dismissing William
Harvey, because it explains the emergence of animal spirits.27 They are particles
of thin heated blood, which circulate in nerve tubes inside the living animal
body. It is difficult to understand that blood contains particles as light and fire,
except that blood is warm. However, one can imagine that they relate to vital
motion, but Berkeley never clarifies this point; he just says that animal spirits are
of the same kind as light and fire. They are all corpuscles. However, in the
Principles he wrote: ‘They indeed, who hold the soul of man to be only a thin vital
flame, or system of animal spirits, make it perishing and corruptible as the body,
since there is nothing more easily dissipated than such a being’ (P 141, see also
Alc VII , 16). Now he confirms the existence of ‘a thin vital flame’ that permeates
all: ‘It should seem that the forms, souls, or principles of vegetable life subsist in
the light or solar emanation, which in respect of the macrocosm [the world] is
what the animal spirit is to the microcosm [man] – the interior tegument, the
subtle instrument and vehicle of power’ (S 43, also S 143). Nevertheless, the role
of the soul and the human mind does not change in Siris. ‘Mind’ means the soul’s
cognitive and conative aspects (S 272, 279). Soul is not corpuscular, of course;
hence, Berkeley’s original dualism prevails in a new garb.
Mind is an agent that directs light, fire and animal spirits, and that applies to
the human mind too (S 261). The key word is, thus, ‘agent’, which has active
causal powers. Now, the corpuscular animal spirits, as a sub-type of light and fire,
circulate in the nervous system and in blood as well, allowing the human mind
to govern its immediate environment and promote her good. The powers of the
human mind may be limited, but as a causal agent she has powers: ‘In the human
body the mind orders and moves the limbs: but the animal spirit is supposed the
immediate physical cause of their motion’ (S 161). The mind is a free agent that
works by means of the animal spirits she commands (S 291). The mind uses an
instrument. Berkeley writes:
[T]he constant regular tenor of the motions of the viscera and contained juices
doth not hinder particular voluntary motions to be impressed by the mind on
the animal spirit; even so, in the mundane system, the steady observance of
certain laws of nature, in the grosser masses and more conspicuous motions,
doth not hinder but a voluntary agent may sometimes communicate particular
impressions to the fine æthereal medium, which in the world answers the animal
spirit in man. Which two (if they are two), although invisible and inconceivably
small, yet seem the real latent springs whereby all the parts of this visible world
are moved.
S 261
Mind is an agent who commands animal spirits as instruments that move the
limbs.
Light and fire reveal themselves only in their effects, says Berkeley, but
what perceived effects can animal spirits bring about? They bring about bodily
action. A hand raised by a person is such an effect. What does this mean? My
hand moves when I so decide. Animal spirits bring about an effect under the
guidance of my active mind. How is this possible? As I read it, the mind can
move animal spirits because they are so fine and unsubstantial; hence, they are
much less than material or even corpuscular, in fact they are akin to the mind.
Animal spirits can be mind-like. As Berkeley says, ‘there is something divine in
fire’ (S 180), and hence in animal spirits, too. They are mind-like mediating
substances, or instruments that follow the orders of the free and active mind, or
the mind that ‘permeates’ light, fire, aether or spirit (S 291). We only need to
add the following point. No causes exist such that they work from corpuscles
towards the mind; thus, the mind is independent and free. In this way, Berkeley
successfully faces the problem of dualism, which in Descartes’ hands proved to
be so intractable that he, infamously, suggested that the mind and the body meet
in the pineal gland. Berkeley suggests a better solution. Animal spirits, like fire
and light, are ambiguous as they are corporeal and soul-like, even divine. They
are particles but they are not mere particles. In this way, the mind as an active
agent moves the corpuscular/divine animal spirits, which it permeates. Berkeley
maintains that the mind is an active substance, and ‘active’ in its proper sense
means that the mind causally initiates action. This is his idea of agent causality,
which is real causality: ‘[T]here is no other agent or efficient cause than spirit, it
being evident that motion, as well as all other ideas, is perfectly inert’ (P 102).
Now, animal spirits are corpuscular, so the mind alone is a cause, and a causal
agent moves the animal spirits, which then work on the body making it move in
a typical way.
Life is motion and this motion travels through the body taking a new role or
form when necessary. First, there are the motions of the mind and, then, the
animal spirits move around moving body parts. Such a system is more
complicated than in the Principles. There you imagine a raised hand, which you
perceive. Bodily motion is a set of ideas in the mind, and imagination produces
new ideas. Subsequently, there must be two different kinds of imagination:
illusory and real. I may imagine that I raised my hand when this is an illusion. I
can imagine, in the Principles, that I raised my hand and this is a fact. My hand is
up. I see no problem here. Siris is different and more complicated. I can still
imagine my raised hand but now I can also raise my hand by means of an
embodied psychological and physiological engine actuated by my will. Action
and imagination are now two different things.
How does the human mind govern its animal spirits, if they follow the laws of
nature? This may imply determinism because it does not seem plausible that
man can break God’s laws of nature. Perhaps God allows one to act freely by
suspending the laws of nature at a given point. This permits conditionally free
will and partial causal agency. It is conditional, as the mind needs God’s
permission for every action. Another restriction applies, too. Even if the will is
free, what the animal spirits can do is limited. I am able to raise my hand but I
cannot change it into a foot or throw it away. The external world is a recalcitrant
place. This may be easier to explain in Siris than in the Principles. The main point
is, however, that the mind as a free agent is able to direct animal spirits because
they are ambiguously soul-like and divine. Thus, they mediate as instrumental
causes between the recalcitrant world and active minds. Animal spirits are at the
same time subject to the laws of nature and the vehicles of free will. This is an
ingenuous solution.
The freedom of the will may be a mere token capability. Free action is a rare
occurrence and its effects are limited. Yet the mind’s essence is to be a free and
active substance, that is, an agent.28 Berkeley mentions no other characterization.
For him the mind is an active agent. However, as human agency is weak, rare and
restricted, the soul’s substantiality is limited. The soul and mind as a free agent
are like a spark in darkness, yet they should be the glory of the created world, its
master, ready for eternal life. In Siris, the mind and its free will take their own
place in nature, but the role of the mind is not what Berkeley’s readers might
expect. In Sermon X he changes the rules of the game:
We shall abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul, and confine our
appetites within such limits, as their respective ends and uses require. And
instead of being slaves to them, we shall become their masters and governors,
ever bending them to a compliance with the divine will, which is the freedom
and perfection of a rational creature.
Works 7, 133–4
A novel sense of ‘freedom’ emerges. The true freedom, as ethical perfection, is

to know and follow the commands of God, after we have made a decision to do
so. Therefore, true freedom has little to do with agency. True freedom means that
one is free of evil and of all the impurities of the mind that condemn one to the
lower rungs of the Siris (S 290). Freedom, in this sense, perfects the soul.
Ancient lore and cosmological vision
Siris contains much information about ancient philosophy, especially about

Plato and his followers. Berkeley wants to retreat as far back to the past as
possible, all the way to the creation. It is evident in Siris that he is longing for the
past, the original source of wisdom. The ancients were closer to the creation and
not burdened by too many false ideas and bad theories; thus, they were closer to
the truth:
Men in those early days were not overlaid with languages and literature. Their
minds seem to have been more exercised, and less burdened, than in later ages;
and, as so much nearer the beginning of the world, to have had the advantage of
patriarchal lights handed down through a few hands.
S 298
Berkeley may have believed that the world is almost 6,000 years old, or the
creation took place in 4004 BC , as another Irishman, Bishop James Ussher,
calculated (1650). The ancient scholars knew more, yet they did not have the
science and scientific language Berkeley and his contemporaries have. First, they
knew the deepest truths better that the moderns but, second, they could not
express their findings in a fully comprehensible manner. Hence, Berkeley needs
a translation from the ancient lore to his own language (S 350, cf. Alc VI , 19). He
speaks, simultaneously, of the ‘hoary maxims’ and the ‘nice metaphysics’ of the
ancients (S 350–1).29
Did Berkeley believe in these theories? What is their role in the development
of his cosmological view? For instance, he says that light and fire are the key
ontological elements and their origins lie in the ancient theories. He really looks
back in time. Thus, when we read Siris, we must remember that Berkeley is
committed to his translation project, especially when he discusses his
metaphysical fundamentals. For instance, the idea of aether comes from the
ancients, not from Newton or other scientists. They knew what aether is and
Berkeley wants to rewrite it in Siris. He does so by relating aether to pure fire or
light that streams from the sun and which at the same time is an all-encompassing
instrumental cause and the active principle of fire. The Newtonian aether cannot
permit that many interpretations. It is just an element of physical science.
Berkeley wants a more fertile metaphysical notion whose meanings extend from
being a particle to expressing something essential about the Holy Trinity. The
ancient learning is essential for him. My position is that he accepts the old
theories as ‘glimpses [of divine ideas] within our reach’ (S 336, 367), or of the
truths that the ancients saw clearly (Alc VI , p. 234). What he accepts is not
possible to say; what he quotes is important.
An example of the ancient metaphysics and its translation into the modern
language follows. The world is both an animal, or a plant, and a macrocosm. Man
is a microcosm (S 153, 154).30 This language was popular among Paracelsians
and others, although it was old fashioned in the 1740s. However, Berkeley likes
such grand analogies as they stimulate his imagination and help his reasoning.31
Now, the Platonists are not atheists when they say the world is a living thing and
an animal. They keep it all under the control of gods (S 279). One should then
illustrate the analogy between the animal and the world. One should specify the
characteristics of perception, motion, life, alimentation, and so on. Berkeley
notices that external perception is a problem because the world-animal has
nothing to see – there is no outside to perceive (S 153). Hence, the analogy may
be weak. Nevertheless, Berkeley says that fire and light are the animal spirits of
the world-animal. Moreover, fire and light nourish the world and keep it going.
The sun’s light is the food of the world, which streams from the sun because God
wants it that way: ‘This luminous æther or spirit is therefore said by Virgil to
nourish or cherish the innermost earth, as well as the heavens and celestial
bodies’ (S 213). The modern scientific world is, for Berkeley, identical with the
Ancient’s macrocosm, or the Platonic world-animal. Man, his mind and animal
body, is a microcosm. This completes the four-fold analogy.
Many readers of Siris, if they admire the Principles, may find this disturbing.
Why would Berkeley speculate on something as poetic and abstruse as that?
Something even worse follows, his speculative theory of trinities: ‘Certain it is
that the notion of a Trinity is to be found in the writings of many old heathen
philosophers’ (S 361). A summary of these complicated paragraphs follows.

Seven minor trinities exist, for instance, birth, illumination and movement.
Berkeley organizes them analogously to the Holy Trinity, or Father, Son and the
Holy Spirit. Hence, two directions of reading are needed, that is, horizontally,
Plurality and vertically, Unity:
Father birth, sun, principle, one, good, authority, fons deitatis

Son illumination, light, mind, intellect, word, law, supreme reason
Holy Spirit movement, heat, soul, life, love, justice, spirit.32
Here we ‘touch the first One’ (S 345). The initial trinity is then, vertically, birth,
illumination and movement. The second trinity is sun, light and heat or fire, and so
on. Where is Berkeley supposed to get this knowledge? Not even the ancient lore
helps him here, and his speculations do not look fully Christian either. Such trinities
are a major new interpretation of the ultimate questions of metaphysics from his
personal point of view, directed to readers who might think as he does. Not many
have found this plausible, perhaps not even during the time when Siris was popular.
What is the ultimate aim of Siris? It has one aim at the bottom end of the
chain, health and happiness, but now we approach the top end and the key thesis
of perfectibility (Alc III , p.117). What is the view like from there? In other words,
what is the ultimate secret of Siris? Perhaps I agree with David Berman that it
exists. For Berman, it is the esoteric glimpses of truth, which should replace the
exoteric and ultimately misleading vulgar scientific speculations (personal
communication). Here is another secret of Siris. Berkeley discovered a medicine
and found its scientific and theological foundations. He wanted to show science
its place under God, and in this way fight the freethinking trend that threatened
to make science independent of God. These are no secrets, however. They are
exoteric facts. Yet there is a secret. Berkeley shows that the world, or the
macrocosm or the world-animal, is one single living being under God and man
a microcosm analogous to that big thing. Behind this basic order lies an all-
encompassing view of the universe as an organic living unity, a monad – if we
use the language of the magi.33 This comes close to monism. In Siris, Berkeley
may still be a dualist, but he also sees the coming of monism where ens is unum
(S 346, 355). Here my vision is different from Berman’s.
All the contents of the world form a set of seven trinities. The trinities together
are analogous to the Holy Trinity as One. The Holy Trinity is one thing, a personal
God. All the trinities are one, first individually and then collectively, as they
reflect the Holy Trinity. Therefore, everything under God is one, which is a
monad: ‘The several beings which compose the universe are parts of the same
system; they combine to carry on one end, and perfect one whole’ (S 342).
Because all the trinities vertically form their unities, just as the Holy Trinity is
one person, we may call the world a living monad. In other words, the main
trinity, Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, forms one God. Analogous to this, each
of the seven trinities forms its own unity as one. Seven of them exist but there is
only one monad (S 322). This is to say, that these seven trinities stay under the
main trinity, which is One. We form horizontally seven different trinities and
then vertically one monad. The monad emerges at the level of both the microcosm
(soul) and the macrocosm (the world-animal). In the microcosm,
According to the Platonic philosophy, ens and unum 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 centre 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 of the divine unity. In man the monad or
indivisible is [. . .] the self-same self or very self, a thing in the opinion of Socrates
much and narrowly to be inquired into and discussed, to the end that, knowing
ourselves, we may know what belongs to us and our happiness.
S 346, also S 322; my emphasis
This explains the ethics of human liberation and perfectibility in Siris.

However, the question remains: Do God and the world or macrocosm form one
unity (monism) or not (dualism)? Is the world in God? Is dualism Berkeley’s
strategic invention when he speaks with the vulgar?
When Berkeley introduces his trinities, he is already at the uppermost end of
the chain, or the siris. Everything in Siris is included in those trinities: they
contain everything there is. Moreover, because all there is forms one thing and a
living creature, it forms a monad – as ens is unum. This is Berkeley’s secret. He
appears to be an empirical scientist and a medical doctor to many, including his
editor, T. E. Jessop, but he is much more. This may turn the reader’s standard
expectations around and conflict with the assumed view of Berkeley the
philosopher. Siris itself creates these false expectations when it explores medical
and scientific issues in its early chapters.
Berkeley, new and old
Does a gap exist between the Principles, its immaterialism, and the new radical
metaphysics of Siris? Jessop, in his commentaries on Siris, says that no such gap
exists, so that the Principles and Siris are, when correctly understood, fully
compatible (Works 5, 12). However, ideas and abstractions, among other things,
have their new role in Siris. Berkeley mentions his old theories in Siris but does
not utilize them. He writes, for instance, ‘Natural phenomena are only natural
appearances. They are, therefore, such as we see and perceive them’ (S 292). He
recalls his old theories of natural grammar and the language of ideas (S 252–4).
We cannot take this seriously because too much of the natural world is invisible,
occult and specific anyway to allow for a regular language. The theory that
remains is the true efficient causality, or God’s causal role, although the concept
of instrumental or apparent causality changes.
I have already explained how Berkeley’s theory of apparent, false or
instrumental causality changes. We have also discussed his theory of corporeal –
but not material – spirits. Let us look at the immaterialist theory of ideas.
Berkeley says that ideas cannot be trusted as the source of certain knowledge.
He writes,
Sense and experience acquaint us with the course and analogy of appearances or
natural effects. Thought, reason, intellect introduces us into the knowledge of
their causes. Sensible appearances, though of a flowing, unstable, and uncertain
nature, yet having first occupied the mind, they do by an early prevention render
the aftertask of thought more difficult.
S 264, also S 340
No sensory ideas are certain, as Berkeley now emphasizes. Ideas are ‘such as
we see them’, but this fact is now irrelevant to their truth. What we see is confused;
and therefore any empiricist theory of reality is confused: ‘Those things that
before seemed to constitute the whole being [. . .] prove to be but fleeting fantoms’
(S 294). However, reason allows us to find natural causal relations that are beyond
the realm of ideas; hence, natural causality cannot be reduced to relations
between sets of ideas. This is especially pertinent to keep in mind when Berkeley
talks about light and fire as principles – active principles – that explain the world.
The corpuscular doctrine of light says that its particles are invisible and
therefore our empirical world cannot be fully ideational. In addition, natural
laws work independently of ideas. Many causes are occult. Hence, natural laws
cannot be useful expectations based on visible causes, or antecedent conditions
in law like connections between ideas. Some philosophers have said that this
does not matter as angels who see better (S 86) could see the particles of light.34
This solution is implausible. Berkeley says light is – unconditionally – invisible.
Moreover, light is an active principle, even a living principle, and as such a
messenger of the will (S 166). We do not perceive such principles, as they are just
the dynamic essences that explain a wide range of variable phenomena. For
instance, the principle of salt explains a large number of apparently unrelated
chemical phenomena. Thus, the principle is what is real and its apparent
instantiations, as ideas, are derivative. What explains the world, or its explanans,
is more real than the explanandum, as Berkeley thinks in Siris. We explain ideas
by referring to God. Thus, God is real when ideas are not. In this way, Berkeley
leaves his early phenomenalist worldview behind and moves towards realism
concerning universal forms. As he says, ‘The heaven is supposed pregnant with
virtues and forms, which constitute and discriminate the various species of
things’ (S 181). Berkeley is now a rationalist, not an empiricist philosopher. As
George Hicks puts it, Esse is percipi is now Esse is concipi.35 Reason is universal,
unlike perception; hence, Berkeley rejects his early, nearly solipsistic first-person
viewpoint to the world. He no longer believes that the world is a collection of his
ideas.
What happens to abstract ideas? An abstract idea of a triangle cannot exist,
according to the Principles and Theory of Vision. If a triangle is going to exist, it
must have its size and other specifications (TV 102). We of course have the word
‘triangle’, which refers to all possible triangles. However, we cannot say that an
abstract triangle exists, or that ‘triangle’ refers to triangle.
Mental concepts are more difficult. The discussion of free will in Alciphron
VII illustrates this. The discussants reach a dead end when they ponder the free
will from a deterministic point of view.36 They notice that those, who defend the
freethinkers, use certain psychological terms. These are declared abstractions
and their use condemned (Alc VII , 18). Berkeley says that we should think with
the vulgar, who do not use such terms. This is a radical change. Normally he
recommends that we think with the learned and speak with the vulgar. Now he
changes his mind in a populist direction. Psychological terms are abstractions,
which the learned should not use. Nevertheless, in Siris he himself uses abstract
terms all the time. How should we understand this?
Berkeley’s position in the Principles was that no generalizations or abstractions
could be real, or exist. Then in the Alciphron, he says that psychological terms
like power, faculty, act and indifference, which the learned use when they discuss
free will, are abstractions and, therefore, he bans them. Berkeley condemns
psychological speculations and insists on remaining at the level of vulgar
common sense.37 I know my will is free as I can kick a stone in front of me, or
refuse to do so. This is all I need to know. Then, in Siris his position in Alciphron
changes. In Siris, some terms, which look like abstractions, are acceptable as
existing real entities. Will is not just my individual act of will, but also the
principle of willing. All willing things share this real entity, which belongs to
everyone. Such an abstract entity cannot be real according to the Principles.
However, Siris allows the will, in its general meaning, to exist outside the human
language in which we formulate and use the term ‘will’. In other words, the
principle of will refers to the world of real things.
Berkeley implicitly denounces his own earlier projects, his ‘first prejudices’ in
his ‘vulgar speech and books’,
The mind, her acts and faculties, furnish a new and distinct class of objects [. . .]
from the contemplation whereof arise certain other notions, principles, and
verities, so remote from, and even so repugnant to, the first prejudices which
surprise the sense of mankind that they may well be excluded from vulgar
speech and books, as abstract from sensible matters, and more fit for the
speculation of truth, the labour and aim of a few, than for the practice of the
world, or the subjects of experimental or mechanical inquiry.
S 297, also S 264
Berkeley comes close to dismissing his old ideas concerning abstractions and
ideas in Siris. His former position has been vulgar. Abstract things are now real,
The most refined human intellect, exerted to its utmost reach, can only seize
some imperfect glimpses of the divine Ideas [. . .], abstracted from all things
corporeal, sensible, and imaginable. Therefore Pythagoras and Plato treated
them in a mysterious manner, concealing rather than exposing them to vulgar
eyes; so far were they from thinking that those abstract things, although the
most real, were the fittest to influence common minds, or become principles of
knowledge, not to say duty and virtue, to the generality of mankind.
S 337, also S 348
Abstraction is necessary if we hope to see the truth and to understand what

the existing reality might be like; hence, only abstract entities are real. The
problem is that they are so difficult to handle that most people should not think
of them; they should utilize sensory ideas, as the Bishop used to do.
Notes
1 See Airaksinen, T. (2008), ‘The path of fire: The meaning and interpretation of
Berkeley’s Siris’ in S. H. Daniel, (ed.), New Interpretations of Berkeley’s Thought.
Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, pp. 261–81, Appendix A.
2 About panacea, see Sloan, A. W. (1996), English Medicine in the Seventeenth Century.
Durham: Durham Academic Press, p. 61 ff; and Debus, A. G. (1991), The French
Paracelcians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; this is a valuable treatise.
3 See Holtzman, M. (2011), ‘Berkeley’s two panaceas’, Intellectual History Review 21,
473–95. This interesting paper starts by listing some old prejudices.
4 See http://ec.europa.eu/health/archive/ph_risk/committees/sccp/documents/
out_203.pdf
5 Airaksinen, T. (2011b), ‘Rhetoric and corpuscularism in Berkeley’s Siris’, History of
European Ideas 37, 23–44, p. 34.
6 Hicks, G. D. (1932), Berkeley. Bristol: Thoemmes Press can be recommended; also
Walmsley, P. (1990), The Rhetoric of Berkeley’s Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, Part IV.
7 About water symbolism, see Houghton, R. W., Berman, D., and Lapan, M. T. (eds.),
(1986), Images of Berkeley. Dublin: Wolfhound Press.
8 See Berman, D. (2005a), ‘Berkeley’s life and works’ in K. P. Winkler (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to Berkeley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 13–33, p. 26.
9 On Descartes, see Gaukroger, S. (2002), Descartes’ System of Natural Philosophy.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
10 Berman, D. (1997), Berkeley, Experimental Philosophy. London: Phoenix.
11 See Urmson, J. O. (1986a), Berkeley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 82, for a wild
mistake in a widely read book.
12 On the story of scurvy and its early medication, and cure, see Brown, S. R. (2003),
Scurvy. Camberwell: Viking.
13 Notice the hidden reference to the alchemical symbolism of the Philosopher’s Tree;
see Roob, A. (2005), The Hermetic Cabinet. Köln: Taschen, pp. 106 ff.
14 For a more modern method in Norway, see http://vimeo.com/40581474
15 See Airaksinen, T. (2006), ‘The chain and the animal: Idealism in Berkeley’s Siris’ in S.
Gersch and D. Moran (eds), Eriugena, Berkeley, and the Idealist Tradition. Notre
Dame: Notre Dame University Press, pp. 224–43, pp. 232ff.
16 See Debus, 1991, about medical chemistry.
17 See Principe, L. M. (2001), ‘Wilhelm Homberg: Chymical corpuscularianism and
chrysopoeia in the early eighteenth century’ in C. Lüthy, J. E. Murdoch, and W. R.
Newman (eds), Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter Theories.
Leiden: Brill, pp. 535–56; and Peterschmitt, L. (2011), Berkeley et la chimie. Une
philosophie pour la chimie au XVIII e siècle. Paris: Classiques Garnier.
18 See Debus, 1991.
19 Cf. Hall, T. S. (1975), History of General Physiology, Vol. I. Chicago: Chicago
University Press, p. 363: the soul animates the body. In Siris, this takes place via light.
20 Newton, I. ([1730]1979), Optics. Edited by E. T. Whittaker. New York: Dover
Publications, p. 396.
21 Such principles explain in a non-causal and non-mechanistic manner. Hence,

Berkeley has added a new conceptual tool to his philosophy of science. About
principles, see Airaksinen, T. (2010a), ‘Active principles and trinities in Berkeley’s
Siris’, Revue Philosophique, 1, 57–70.
22 Cf. Newton, 1730, p. 380: ‘a very potent principle’.
23 The Royal Society encouraged the writing of travel reports and gave advice on how
to do it right. See Vickers, I. (2006), Defoe and the New Sciences. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, pp. 132 ff.
24 See Airaksinen, 2011a, pp. 91–118.
25 Cf. Newton, 1730, p. 401, on occult qualities.
26 See Airaksinen, T. (2010b), ‘Berkeley and Newton on gravity in Siris’ in S. Parigi (ed.),
George Berkeley: Religion and Science in the Age of Enlightenment. Dordrecht:
Springer, pp. 87–106.
27 See Gaukroger, 2002, pp. 185 ff; Descartes, R. (1998), ‘Description of the human
body’ in S. Gaukroger (ed.), Descartes: The World and Other Writings. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, pp. 170–205; and Descartes, R. (1985), ‘The Passions
of the Soul’ in J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch (eds), The
Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Vol. I. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, pp. 328–404.
28 Brykman, G. (2008), ‘On human liberty in Alciphron VII ’ in S. Daniel (ed.), New
Interpretations of Berkeley’s Thought, pp. 231–46.
29 See Fowden, G. (1986), The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late
Pagan Mind. Princeton: Princeton University Press, e.g., p. 157, about the chain
metaphor and p. 77 on microcosm.
30 See Abraham, 1998, pp. 129–30. See also Roob, 2005.
31 See Walmsley, 1990, ch. 12, ‘The method of inductive analogy’.
32 Airaksinen, 2010a.
33 For an overview of this tradition, see Szönyi, G. E. (2004), John Dee’s Occultism.
Albany: SUNY Press.
34 Berkeley mentions angels but why would they see more than we do: Berkeley
mentions the ‘imperfections in the knowledge of men or angels’ (Alc IV, 20). He
also writes: ‘The mind which is pure and spiritual, which is made in the image
of God, and which we have in common with angels’ (Sermon VI ). About
sensible aether, see Downing, L. (2005), ‘Berkeley’s natural philosophy and
philosophy of science’, in K. Winkler (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to
Berkeley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 230–65, p. 256. However,
aether is also an active principle, which is not a visible entity. Urmson, 1986b, says
light and aether are incompatible with his earlier philosophy of science: Urmson,
J. O. (1986b), ‘Berkeley’s philosophy of science in the Siris’, History of European
Ideas 7, 563–6.
35 Hicks, 1932, p. 285. I think Hicks is right.

36 See Brykman, 2008.
37 Dr Johnson wanted to disprove immaterialism by kicking a stone. In Alciphron,
Euphranor himself wants to prove the existence of motion by ‘walking before them’
(Alc VII , 18). In the same way, he wants to prove the freedom of the will by willing
freely.
Part Three
Berkeley in Context
245
246
13
Berkeley and Descartes

Charles J. McCracken
From his notebooks, we know that as Berkeley was working out his own
philosophical views he was reading (among other things, to be sure) Descartes’
Meditations, probably in Molyneux’s 1680 translation. Berkeley did not form a
high opinion of Descartes, declaring cogito ergo sum to be ‘no mental Proposition’
but a mere tautology1 and complaining, in a letter to Molyneux, of Descartes’
‘inconsistencies’ and ‘blunders’.2 Nonetheless, Descartes’ philosophy formed an
important background for many of the developments in philosophy from the
mid-seventeenth through the eighteenth century, and this was true of the
development of Berkeley’s philosophy, too. This chapter will focus on two
features of Descartes’ philosophy that had importance for the formation of
Berkeley’s views: Descartes’ purported proof that a material world exists and his
doctrine that the mind is a thinking substance, and the reactions these provoked.
Descartes’ proof that there is a material world
In the Meditations, Descartes raised a doubt about the existence of the material
world – a doubt that, by the Meditations’ end, he believed he had removed.
(Descartes and his followers took ‘matter’, ‘material substances’, ‘bodies’ and
‘extended substances’ all to name the same thing, in contrast to Berkeley, who
sharply distinguished ‘bodies’, whose existence he affirmed, from ‘matter’, whose
existence he denied.) The question Descartes asked – does the material world
exist? – was a new one, for even the ancient sceptics were more inclined to doubt
that we could know the nature of material objects than to call their very existence
into question; nor was the existence of matter among the issues debated in the
medieval schools.3
Descartes’ proof that there is a material world turned on his claim that we have
a natural inclination to believe that our sensations are caused by bodies and we
247
have no faculty whereby we could discover that belief to be false, if it were false.
Since God is no deceiver, we can be confident that our belief in the existence of
bodies is true.4 But several thinkers who were otherwise well disposed to Descartes’
philosophy found this reasoning faulty. Descartes himself, after all, had held that,
to avoid error, we should suspend judgement about anything we do not clearly
and distinctly perceive to be the case. Yet in his argument for the existence of
bodies, he appealed to our natural inclination to believe that they exist, not to a
clear and distinct idea of extended things (we have, he held, such an idea, but that
only proves that the existence of extended things is possible, not that it is actual).5
Among thinkers who were in some ways close to Descartes but who raised
objections to this proof were Henricus Regius, Géraud de Cordemoy and Nicolas
Malebranche. They all granted that the evidence of our senses affords grounds
for believing it is probable that bodies exist, but they denied that reason can
prove beyond doubt that they exist. For that certainty, these thinkers declared,
we must have recourse to the Scriptures, which teach that God created heaven
and earth.6 François de Lanion and Michelangelo Fardella, both deeply influenced
by Descartes and Malebranche, went further, holding that reason, unaided by
faith in the Scriptures, can prove that the existence of bodies is possible (for we
can form a clear idea of extended objects), but it cannot prove their existence
even probable. Against the claim that the senses make it probable that bodies
exist, Lanion and Fardella argued that we cannot even understand how bodies
could cause sensations, whereas we can easily understand how God can do so.
Hence, were it not for Scripture, we would have to conclude it unlikely that there
are material objects corresponding to our sensations.7
Pierre Bayle, the foremost sceptic of the seventeenth century, recounted the
arguments of some of the foregoing thinkers, then added an argument of his
own, which, he claimed, showed that reason can actually prove that extended
things do not exist, for if they did, they would have to be divisible to infinity or
be composed of extensionless points or be composed of extended but indivisible
atoms, and Bayle offered arguments to show why each of these alternatives had
to be rejected. It is true, he concluded, that Scripture teaches that bodies exist, so
we can in fact be sure that they do exist, but only because we must accept the
teachings of the Bible, even when they contradict the evidence of reason.8
John Norris, Malebranche’s English disciple, argued that even faith in the
Bible cannot give us certainty that a material world exists, for we know of
the existence and teachings of the Bible only by means of our senses, and, while
the evidence of the senses makes it probable that bodies – including the Bible –
exist, nothing can make it certain that they do.9 Antoine Arnauld had argued that
Berkeley and Descartes 249
if bodies did not exist, God would have no reason to give us sensations, but
Norris answered that claim, arguing that our sensations themselves have great
beauty, whereas material things ‘have none of those Finenesses, Excellencies, or
Beauties (Figure alone excepted) which we think we see in them; . . . those
Beauties which [a man] thinks he perceives without, are really in himself, and he
carries about him the World that he admires.’10 By arguing that we cannot be
certain that matter exists, while urging that even if it did not exist, the beauty of
the ‘sensible world’ would explain why God gives us sensations, Norris brought
the discussion ever closer to immaterialism.
Soon after this, Arthur Collier, deeply influenced by the writings of Norris,
did draw the immaterialist conclusion from these considerations, offering in his
work Clavis Universalis nine arguments to prove that the material world does
not exist. Collier’s work was published in 1713, three years after Berkeley’s
Principles, a work that Collier apparently did not know. In a later work, A
Specimen of True Philosophy (1730), Collier claimed that the only book he knew
of, other than his own, that denied the existence of matter was Berkeley’s Three
Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, which was not published until a few
months after Collier’s Clavis. But even if Collier did know Berkeley’s Principles,
as G. A. Johnston believed, Collier’s arguments are drawn chiefly from Norris
and Malebranche (as Johnston granted).11 Collier thus belonged broadly to the
Cartesian tradition and saw himself as drawing conclusions about the existence
of matter that he thought that tradition led ineluctably to.
So the Cartesian tradition contained within it seeds for the development of
immaterialism.12 Berkeley would not have known some of these, but he was well
aware of others. He had studied Malebranche’s Search after Truth and sometimes
recorded in his notebooks his reflections on it. Certainly Malebranche’s claim
that neither sense nor reason can prove beyond doubt that matter exists, and
Malebranche’s conviction that only the Scriptures can give us certainty of the
existence of material things, must have caught the young Berkeley’s attention as
he worked out his own views.13 And from the articles ‘Pyrrho’ and ‘Zeno of Elea’
in Bayle’s Dictionary, which there is good reason to believe Berkeley had read, he
would have been acquainted with Bayle’s arguments against the existence of a
material world. From those articles he would even have got some idea of Lanion’s
and Fardella’s views on the subject.14 So, while there can be no question that
Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding (hereafter Essay) exerted the
greatest influence on Berkeley’s development, the criticisms others made of
Descartes’ putative proof of the existence of bodies is likely also to have played a
role in the development of his immaterialism.
Descartes’ doctrine of the mind
Berkeley’s views about the mind seem to have been influenced by Descartes in
two ways, one direct and the other indirect. The indirect influence came from
Berkeley’s reaction to Locke’s critique of Descartes’ claim that the mind always
thinks. The direct influence came from Descartes’ treatment of the relation of the
will and the understanding.
The indirect influence

In the Meditations, Descartes claimed to prove that the mind is an unextended
substance whose essential attribute – that which it cannot lose without ceasing
to exist – is thought, and hence that the mind always thinks. Locke, on the other
hand, denied that we can know whether the mind is a substance distinct from
the body (Essay, IV.iii.6); further, according to Locke, Descartes was wrong that
thought is the essence of the mind and that the mind always thinks. Thinking,
said Locke, is an activity of the mind, as motion is an activity of the body, and –
just as a body continues to exist when not moving – the mind can continue to
exist when it stops thinking, as it does in deep sleep (Essay, II .xix.4). Berkeley, for
whom the esse of the mind is percipere, rejected Locke’s view (Notebooks 612–15)
and agreed with Descartes ‘that the soul always thinks’ (Principles §98).
The direct influence

Throughout his notebooks, Berkeley struggled to be clear about the nature of the
mind. Early on he had taken the notion of the mind to be ‘a complex idea made
up of existence, willing, and perception in a large sense’ (Notebooks 154). This
view had to be abandoned when Berkeley ceased to believe in abstract ideas, and
for a while he entertained the view that ‘the understanding [is] not distinct from
particular perceptions or ideas. The will [is] not distinct from particular volitions’
(Notebooks 612–15; cf. 681). This inclined Berkeley, at one point, to entertain a
dualism of passive understanding (identified with our ideas taken collectively)
and active will (identified with our volitions taken collectively) and to the
surprising conclusion that ‘the will & the understanding may very well be
thought two distinct beings’ (Notebooks 708). But it soon became clear that a
sharp separation of the will from the understanding was untenable, for the will
must have an idea of what it is willing. This led him for some time to ponder the
relation of will and understanding (Notebooks 587, 611–15, 624, 645, 815, 820). It
was during this period that he read (or perhaps re-read) Descartes’ Meditations.
His notes on them begin around Notebooks 780 and continue intermittently to
822, and it seems clear that his reading of Descartes influenced his thinking
about the relation of the will and the understanding.
In the Fourth Meditation, Descartes had considered the relation of the will
and the understanding in connection with an explanation of error. Will and
understanding must work together, Descartes argued, for by itself the
understanding passively perceives ideas but neither affirms nor denies anything,
while the will can affirm or deny, but only if it has ideas present to it. Error,
according to Descartes, occurs because our will is free to affirm or deny
something, even if our idea of that thing is unclear or confused. Reading this
account seems to have led Berkeley to reflect on error, which he at first tried to
limit to the will (Notebooks 816). But Descartes had made a cogent point: If the
will is to affirm or deny something, it must have an idea of what it is affirming or
denying. And we soon find Berkeley reintegrating will and understanding. Eager
to identify the mind (i.e. the spirit) as something wholly active, Berkeley then
suggested that to understand and perceive something involves activity (Notebooks
821, 854). But he continued to the end of the Notebooks to identify the spirit with
the will, as something that is active (Notebooks 848). This view was different from
that of Descartes, who held that the mind consists of a passive faculty (the
understanding) and an active faculty (the will). But in the end, Berkeley too
came to acknowledge that the mind must have both active and passive
components, telling Samuel Johnson of Connecticut ‘that the soul of man is
passive as well as active, I make no doubt.’15
The view of the mind that Berkeley finally arrived at, as a simple, incorporeal
substance, whose esse is thinking and perceiving as well as willing, was close to
Descartes’ own view of the mind. But one important difference separated their
views about the mind. Although both held that the mind is an unextended,
thinking substance, Descartes maintained that the mind (in this life) is united to
a material substance – a human body. And Berkeley of course denied that there
are any material substances. (Willis Doney went so far as to call Berkeley ‘a
castrated Cartesian without matter’.16) But even here there is an interesting
connection in their views. For Berkeley, a body is a collection of sensible ideas
and as such is radically different from the mind – so much so that while mind
and body may each be called ‘a thing’, that term ‘comprehends under it two kinds
entirely distinct and heterogeneous’ (Principles §89). So in Berkeley too we get a
kind of dualism – not Descartes’ dualism of two kinds of substance, material and
mental, but a dualism of mind, which ‘is an active being, whose existence consists
. . . in perceiving ideas and thinking’, and of ideas, which are ‘entirely passive, and
[whose] existence consists only in being perceived’ – two things with ‘natures
perfectly disagreeing and unlike’ (Principles §139). In the end, Berkeley’s view of
the mind as a unitary substance that thinks and perceives, and is radically
different from the collection of sensible ideas that is the human body, is far closer
to Descartes’ view of the mind than to Locke’s, or even to the view of Malebranche,
who, while holding that the mind is an incorporeal substance, denied that we can
know what its nature is.
Thus in two of its most characteristic features – that matter does not exist and
that the mind is an incorporeal substance – Berkeley’s philosophy shows some
influences that came from Descartes or from the broad Cartesian tradition.
Notes
1 Notebooks, entry 738. Entry numbers are those in Berkeley, Works (1948–57), v. 1,
where the Notebooks are called Philosophical Commentaries.
2 Works, v. 8, p. 26.
3 On whether any philosophers before Descartes raised this issue, cf. Burnyeat, M.
(1982), ‘Idealism and Greek philosophy: What Descartes saw and Berkeley missed’,
Philosophical Review 91, 1, 3–40, and Groarke, L. (1984), ‘Descartes’ First Meditation:
Something old, something new, something borrowed’, Journal of the History of
Philosophy 22, 281–301.
4 Descartes, R. (1984), The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, J. Cottingham, R.
Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch (eds). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, v. 2,
p. 55.
5 Ibid., p. 50.
6 Regius, Henricus (1654), Philosophia Naturalis (2nd edn). Amsterdam: Apud
Ludovicum, pp. 347–51; Cordemoy, G. de (1666), Discernement du corps et de l’âme.
Paris, pp. 151–5; and Malebranche, N. (1677–78), Recherche de la vérité (3rd edn).
Paris: André Pralard, bk. 6, pt. 2, chap. 6, and Elucidation Six.
7 Lanion, François de (1678), Méditations sur la métaphysique. Paris, pp. 40–67; and
Fardella, M. (1691), Universæ philosophiæ systema. Venice: G. Albrizzi, appendix II .
8 Bayle, P. (1697), Dictionnaire historique et critique. Rotterdam: Reinier Leers, articles
‘Pyrrhon’, remark B and ‘Zénon d’Elée’, remarks G and H.
9 Norris, J. (1701–4), The Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World. 2 vols. London: S.
Manship, v. 1, pp. 189–90.
10 Ibid., v. 2, pp. 254–5.
11 Johnston, G. A. (1923), The Development of Berkeley’s Philosophy. London:
Macmillan, appendix I.
12 For a fuller account, see McCracken, C. J. (1986), ‘Stages on a Cartesian road to

immaterialism’. Journal of the History of Philosophy 24, 19–40.
13 See Chapter 16 on Berkeley and Malebranche in this volume.
14 Berkeley mentions Bayle’s views in Notebooks 358 and 424 and Fardella’s in
Notebooks 79. Fardella’s book was rare, and Berkeley probably knew of his views
from Bayle.
15 Works, v. 2, p. 293; cf. the discussion of the mind’s passivity in Three Dialogues, in
Works, v. 2, pp. 194–7.
16 Doney, W. (1982), ‘Is Berkeley’s a Cartesian mind?’, in C. M. Turbayne (ed.), Berkeley:
Critical and Interpretive Essays. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, p. 274.
14
Berkeley and Leibniz

Laurence Carlin
Historical background
Although the lives of George Berkeley and Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716)

overlapped by more than thirty years, it was not until the final years of Leibniz’s
life that Berkeley’s works became known to the learned world. Berkeley was not
yet twenty-five years old when he composed his first major philosophical work,
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), yet when
Leibniz learned of Berkeley’s work, the German was less than five years from
his death. There was thus less engagement between the two than one would
want. Still, they were aware of each other’s work, and each left us fragmented
commentary on the other’s philosophy.
Berkeley refers to Leibniz in no less than six of his writings: Of Infinities
(1707; Works 4, 236f.), Notebooks (1707–08; Works 1, 40), De Motu (1721; Works
4, 33, 35f.), Alciphron (1732; Works 3, 295), Theory of Vision Vindicated (1733;
Works 1, 254) and Analyst (1734; Works 4, 75).1 These early references mention
Leibniz’s work on mathematics (for which he was well known), while the later
references are critical of Leibniz’s philosophy. It seems Leibniz’s first encounters
with Berkeley’s philosophy were through critical reviews of the Principles and of
the Three Dialogues in various scholarly journals from 1711–13.2 But by 1715,
Leibniz had acquired his own copy of the Principles and wrote revealing
commentary on the last page of it. While this mutual exchange of commentary
is enough to draw the interest of scholars, it is also scant enough to make one
wonder how well each knew the other’s philosophy.
A number of questions present themselves when comparing the views of
Leibniz and Berkeley. First, there is the historical question concerning whether
they believed they had similar views. Consider Leibniz’s letter of 5 March 1715 to
Des Bosses, where Leibniz referred to Berkeley in negative terms: ‘The one in
254
Berkeley and Leibniz 255
Ireland,’ Leibniz wrote, ‘who attacks the reality of bodies does not seem to bring
forward suitable reasons, nor does he explain himself sufficiently.’ He continued:
‘I suspect that he is one of that sort of men who wants to be known for his
paradoxes’ (Leibniz, 1875, v. 2, p. 492/Leibniz, 1989, p. 306). Taken in isolation,
remarks such as these suggest that Leibniz did not view himself as having views
similar to those of Berkeley. And Berkeley too, it seems, did not wish to be
connected to Leibniz. In De Motu, we find Berkeley labelling Leibniz’s views ‘too
abstract and obscure’ and constituting no improvement over the medieval
doctrine of substantial forms (DM §19/Works 4, 25). If we focus on these types
of remarks, it is easy to get the impression that each thinker saw a vast
philosophical distance between himself and the other.
But then there is the interpretative question of whether in fact they held
substantially different views, regardless of how they saw the matter. It is not merely
the fact that there is historical interaction between the two that interests the
contemporary scholar. Each thinker endorsed some version of phenomenalism,
and it is largely this fact that has drawn the attention of scholars.3 A comparison
of their respective phenomenalisms is illuminating for both historical and
philosophical purposes and forms the basis of the discussion that follows.
In what follows, I discuss the fundamental differences between Berkeley’s
phenomenalism and that of Leibniz and I use as examples each thinker’s views on
the nature of force and infinite divisibility. I then turn to a discussion of how these
differences in phenomenalistic outlook led them to differences in their views
about causation and scientific explanation. I also explain how these differences in
phenomenalistic outlook led them to differences in their views about human
happiness. I conclude briefly with the suggestion that a comparison of Leibniz
and Berkeley is useful not only for highlighting differences in phenomenalisms,
but also insofar as it involves a clear example of how philosophy, science, theology
and value theory intersected in early modern intellectual thought.
Phenomenalisms
Consider the notes Leibniz took on the last page of his copy of Berkeley’s
Principles:
There is much here that is correct and close to my own view. But it is expressed
paradoxically. For it is not necessary to say that matter is nothing, but it is
sufficient to say that it is a phenomenon, like the rainbow; and that it is not a
substance, but the resultant of substances, and that space is no more real than
time, that is, that space is nothing but the order of coexistents, just as time is the
order of subexistences. True substances are monads, that is perceivers. But the
author should have gone further, to the infinity of monads, constituting
everything, and their pre-established harmony. Badly, or at least in vain, he
rejects abstract ideas, restricts ideas to imaginations, and condemns the subtleties
of arithmetic and geometry. The worst thing is that he rejects the division of
extension to infinity, even if he might rightly reject infinitesimal quantities.
Leibniz, 1989, p. 3074
Note first that at the start of this passage, Leibniz has an agreeable assessment.
He claims that in Berkeley’s Principles there is a lot that is ‘correct and close to
[his] own view’, a remark with a strikingly different tone from the negative
comments he sent to Des Bosses (quoted in the previous section). This, of course,
confounds the view that Leibniz saw his philosophy as fundamentally different
and makes the interpretive question all the more interesting. Is there in fact a lot
in Berkeley that is ‘close to’ Leibniz’s own view? The question is tricky since the
remainder of the passage suggests rather serious disagreements.
A useful way of approaching the phenomenalisms of Berkeley and Leibniz is
by focusing on the latter’s remark that Berkeley ‘restricts ideas to imaginations’.
Leibniz’s insight here is on target and may be usefully seen as the fundamental
difference between the two philosophers, one that led to further disagreements.
Berkeley’s phenomenalism is what we will call sensationalist. In this view,
phenomena are identical only with what appears in sensory perception. Since
what we perceive, according to Berkeley, is a collection of sensory ideas, he
identifies bodies with collections of ideas or sensible impressions. Moreover,
there is no deeper reality, no non-phenomenal world that the senses fail to
uncover. This is evident in passages such as the following from Berkeley’s Three
Dialogues: ‘I am of a vulgar cast, simple enough to believe my senses, and leave
things as I find them. To be plain, it is my opinion, that the real things are those
very things I see and feel, and perceive by my senses [viz., ideas]’ (3D/Works 2,
229; cf. 3D/Works 2, 249). It is precisely the phenomenalism presented in passages
such as this one that elicits Leibniz’s most basic disagreement.
Leibniz’s phenomenalism is what we will call intellectualist. This can be
understood for our purposes as the view that phenomena are the objects of the
perceptions of the intellect as well as sensation.5 It is in this sense that Berkeley
is wrong, according to Leibniz, to ‘restrict ideas to imaginations’. What Leibniz
means here is that Berkeley is wrong to restrict his conception of phenomena to
what is presented in sensory images. The intellect, for Leibniz, reveals that there
is far more to the phenomenal world than what the senses present via images.
Leibniz made this point in a letter to Burcher De Volder in 1699: ‘We are
constituted so full of preconceptions that although we properly distinguish in
theory intelligible things from those given in sense perception . . . we do not
observe the distinction in practice and regard almost as nothing everything
which is not to be grasped in images’ (Leibniz, 1875, v. 2, p. 194).
By restricting phenomena to sensible ‘images’, Leibniz believed that Berkeley
underestimated nature’s complexity. There are, Leibniz held, at least two costly
consequences of Berkeley’s restriction of ideas to images, and Leibniz’s position
on these matters is suggested clearly enough in his remarks on Berkeley’s
Principles quoted above. The first concerns force and its relationship to substance,
and the second concerns infinite divisibility. Both serve as examples of the sort
of phenomena (intellectualist) that Leibniz recognized, but Berkeley did not.
Force and substance

According to Leibniz, Berkeley’s sensationalism led him to deny active force
to bodies. In his De Ipsa Natura (1698), Leibniz made precisely the point that
one cannot understand the inherent force of bodies by sense perception
alone:
[I]t must be granted that there is a certain efficacy residing in things, a form or
force such as we usually designate by the name of nature, . . . [T]his inherent
force can indeed be understood distinctly, though it cannot be explained by sense
perception. It is no more to be thus explained than is the nature of the soul, for
this force belongs among those things which are grasped, not by the imagination
but by the understanding.
Leibniz, 1875, v. 4, p. 507 [my emphasis]
The forces in matter are not presented in sensory images, but they are
understood to exist. For example, consider Leibniz on inertia: ‘As matter itself is
nothing but a phenomenon, . . . it is the same with inertia, which is a property of
this phenomena’ (Leibniz, 1875, v. 3, p. 636).6 Leibniz thought inertia, the
tendency of an object to resist change, is clearly not presented by sensory image.
It is instead through the process of scientific reasoning that we ‘perceive’ that
such forces exist in phenomena.
Berkeley disagreed. He rejected Leibniz’s doctrine of force in a number of
texts. Consider the following from De Motu (1721): ‘Leibniz contends that effort
[i.e. force] exists everywhere and always in matter, and that it is understood by
reason where it is not evident to the senses. But these points, we must admit, are
too abstract and obscure, and of much the same sort as substantial forms and
entelechies’ (DM §19/Works 4, 25).
Earlier in De Motu, Berkeley characterized substantial form as ‘shadows of
scholastic things’ and ‘terms which have no certain significance’, for they are
beyond what is ‘evident to the senses’ (DM §8/Works 4, 33). For Berkeley, forces
do not literally exist, though positing them might have instrumental value in
explanatory contexts: ‘Force, gravity, attraction, and terms of this sort are useful
for reasonings and computations about motion and bodies in motion, but not
for . . . indicating so many distinct qualities’ (DM §17/Works 4, 35).7
This disagreement between Leibniz and Berkeley over the reality of force is
closely connected to another. Recall that, in his comments on Berkeley’s
Principles, Leibniz remarked that matter is ‘the resultant of substances’, and thus
Berkeley ‘should have gone further, to the infinity of monads, constituting
everything’ (Leibniz, 1989, p. 307). One of Leibniz’s chief motivations for
believing matter contains monads (simple substances) is that monads could
serve as the metaphysical elements from which force can arise; monads ‘present’
as forces. Berkeley’s charge that Leibniz’s view on force is ‘of the same sort as
substantial forms’ is clearly intended to be derogatory, but it is one that Leibniz
would have embraced. In the New System (1695) and elsewhere, Leibniz did not
hesitate to assimilate his doctrine of substance with the revival of substantial
forms. ‘I found that their [i.e. substantial forms’] nature consists in force,’ Leibniz
wrote, and thus ‘we must conceive of them on the model of the notion we have
of souls’ (Leibniz, 1875, v. 4, p. 479/Leibniz, 1989, p. 139). From this perspective,
the disagreement between Berkeley and Leibniz over the reality of force in
matter is closely linked to whether matter contains infinitely many monads (i.e.
‘simple substances’, ‘substantial forms’ or ‘seats of force’). It is a disagreement the
origin of which lies in whether sensationalism or intellectualism is the correct
phenomenalism.8
Infinite divisibility
Leibniz believed in the infinite division of matter. Recall that in his comments on
the Principles quoted above, Leibniz found Berkeley’s rejection of the infinite
division of the extended to be the ‘worst’ error of all. Leibniz was clearly referring
to Berkeley’s argument in Principles §124:
Every particular finite extension, which may possibly be the object of our
thought, is an idea existing only in the mind, and consequently each part thereof
must be perceived. If therefore I cannot perceive innumerable parts in any finite
extension that I consider, it is certain they are not contained in it: but it is evident,
that I cannot distinguish innumerable parts in any particular line, surface, or
solid, which I either perceive by sense, or figure to my self in my mind: wherefore
I conclude they are not contained in it.
P §124/Works 2, 98
Berkeley’s argument: finite extended things cannot be infinitely divided

because that would imply that they have ‘innumerable’ parts of which the mind
cannot form an image. But of course, if the mind cannot perceive them in this
way, then according to Berkeley’s sensationalism they do not exist. Hence, there
are only a finite number of parts in any given body, and thus matter is not
divisible into infinitely many parts.
Surely it is Leibniz’s understanding of geometry that leads him to object to
Berkeley’s rejection of infinite divisibility.9 In Leibniz’s view, one can reason to
the conclusion that matter is infinitely divided, and that suffices for those
innumerable parts to be genuine phenomena. But there is, we shall see, more to
it, for Leibniz’s value theory also motivates this objection since it demanded an
infinitely divided world of matter subsumable under intelligible laws of nature.
It is thus not surprising that Principles §124 drew Leibniz’s strongest reaction, for
in his mind there was much at stake. But the point for now is that there are
indeed significant differences between Berkeley’s phenomenalism and the
phenomenalism of Leibniz.
Explanation and causation
Given that the nature of Leibnizian phenomena is substantially different from

that of Berkeley, it is not surprising that each held a different account of scientific
explanation. Berkeley famously maintained that ‘all our ideas, sensations, or the
things which we perceive . . . are visibly inactive [and] there is nothing of power
or agency included in them’ (P §25/Works 2, 51). Since bodies, for Berkeley, just
are collections of ideas, they are not causally productive: ‘when we perceive
certain ideas of Sense constantly followed by other ideas . . . we forthwith
attribute power and agency to the ideas themselves, and make one the cause of
another, than which nothing can be more absurd and unintelligible’ (P §32/Works
2, 54). Explanations of phenomena, therefore, are to be understood in some way
that does not commit one to the real existence of efficient causes.
Berkeley appealed instead to an ontology of ‘sign’ and ‘thing signified’.
Consider the following from the Three Dialogues:
‘[T]he connection of ideas does not imply the relation of cause and effect, but
only of a mark or sign with the thing signified. The fire which I see is not the cause
of the pain I suffer upon my approaching it, but the mark that forewarns me of it.
(3D/Works 2, 69)
Certain successions of ideas should be understood, as Berkeley notes, as a series

of representative signs (fire) and the things those signs can represent (pain).
Consistent with this, Berkeley wrote that the job of scientists ‘with regard to their
knowledge of the phenomena, . . . consists, not in an exacter knowledge of the
efficient cause that produces them,. . .but only in a greater largeness of comprehension,
whereby analogies, harmonies, and agreements are discovered in the works of
nature’ (P §105/Works 2, 87; cf. DM §35/Works 4, 40). Berkeley’s scientist is not in the
business of discovering efficient causes but rather aims to establish regularities.
Accordingly, Berkeley made a crucial distinction between mechanistic explanation
and causal explanation. In De Motu, he described mechanistic explanation:
A thing can be said to be explained mechanically then indeed when it is reduced

to those most simple and universal principles, and shown by accurate reasoning
to be in agreement and connection with them. For once the laws of nature have
been found out, then it is the philosopher’s task to show that each phenomenon
is in constant conformity with those laws, that is, necessarily follows from those
principles. In that consist the explanation and solution of phenomena and the
assigning their cause, i.e. the reason why they take place.
DM §37/Works 4, 20
The point is that mechanical explanation consists in the deducing of phenomena

from established laws of nature, a version of the covering law model of explanation.
Note that such explanations carry no ontological commitment to real productive
causes, for they are merely ways of capturing perceived regularities.10
But in the very same works in which he discussed mechanical explanation,
Berkeley also insisted that causal explanation is something different. In Siris, we
find him insisting that scientists (‘mechanical philosophers’) are not engaged in
assigning causes:
Certainly, if the explaining a phenomenon be to assign its proper efficient and

final cause, it should seem the mechanical philosophers never explained
anything; their province being only to discover the laws of nature, . . . and to
account for particular phenomena by reducing them under, or shewing their
conformity to, such general rules.
S §231; Works 5, 111; cf. DM §41/Works 4, 42; P §105/Works 2, 87
The distinction between causal explanation and mechanistic (covering law)

explanation is clear enough in this text. But note that while he thought that the
scientist was not in the business of assigning causes, there were conditions under
which causal explanations of a sort were available to the philosopher.
Consider the following from Principles §107:
First, it is plain philosophers amuse themselves in vain, when they inquire for
any natural efficient cause, distinct from a mind or spirit. Secondly, considering
the whole creation is the workmanship of a wise and good agent, it should seem
to become philosophers, to employ their thoughts . . . about the final causes of
things: and I must confess, I see no reason, why pointing out the various ends, to
which natural things are adapted, and for which they were originally with
unspeakable wisdom contrived, should not be thought one good way of
accounting for them, and altogether worthy a philosopher.
P §107/Works 2, 88
In this passage, having again noted the lack of efficient causation in corporeal
nature, Berkeley then argues that final causes are a way to explain phenomena
intelligibly. Nature is not efficiently causal, but it is purposeful: fire feels warm
upon approach for the purpose of warning creatures of the potential pain. As we
will see in the next section, this ‘teleological requirement’11 for rendering
phenomena intelligible plays a crucial role in his theory of value.
But Leibniz saw things differently. It is central to Leibniz’s thinking that
‘everything . . . in nature . . . can be explained by efficient causes . . . and can be
explained by final causes’ (Leibniz, 1875, v. 7, p. 451/Leibniz, 1969, p. 472). Leibniz
and Berkeley, then, are on the same page when it comes to the pursuit of final
causes for rendering phenomena intelligible. But Leibniz, unlike Berkeley, posited
corporeal forces ‘in the phenomena’ (Leibniz, 1875, v. 2, p. 276/Leibniz, 1989,
p. 182) and cited them as the natural efficient causes of motion in bodies (Leibniz,
1875, v. 4, p. 444/Leibniz, 1989, p. 51; Leibniz, 1875, v. 2, p. 98). Leibniz’s mechanist,
unlike Berkeley’s, was in the business of providing efficient causal explanations
and in so doing, referenced real features of the world (forces) that are explanatorily
fruitful. This too, then, is a difference between the two philosophers that stems
ultimately from their different conceptions of phenomena.
Knowledge of nature and human happiness
As noted in the previous section, Berkeley interpreted relations of alleged cause

and effect as sign and thing signified. The view here is connected with his
teleology: in pointing out a succession of signs in nature, Berkeley was pointing

to a design in nature. And the laws of nature that govern the regularity with
which that series of signs occurs were instituted for purposes discoverable by
creatures. Berkeley claimed that these signs are constituents of a divine language
of nature. ‘Upon the whole,’ Berkeley wrote in the early New Theory of Vision
(1709), ‘I think we may fairly conclude the proper objects of vision constitute an
universal language of the Author 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’ (TV §147/Works 1, 231). And in the
later Siris, we find that Berkeley still held the ‘language of nature’ doctrine and
this time connected it with the doctrine of signs: ‘As the natural connexion of
signs with the things signified is regular and constant, it forms a sort of rational
discourse, and is therefore the immediate effect of an intelligent cause’ (S
§254/Works 5, 120). Clearly, Berkeley’s teleological commitment was firm
throughout his career: the whole of nature should be interpreted as proceeding
from purposive intentionality in the form of God’s communication to creatures
through signs.
What we end up with, then, is a view of the laws of nature as a set of rules that
govern a divine discourse for the purpose of helping creatures to make
predictions and prepare for their well-being:
[The laws of nature] give us a sort of foresight, which enables us to regulate our
actions for the benefit of life. And without this we should be eternally at a loss:
we could 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 . . . [T]his consistent uniform working
. . . so evidently displays the goodness and wisdom of that governing spirit whose
will constitutes the Laws of Nature.
P §§31–2/Works 2, 53–4
Nature is set up with law-like regularity and in such a way that the more we
know about how it works, the better we manage our affairs.
Armed with this conception of the laws of the nature, Berkeley built upon it a
science of happiness. Consider his definition of human happiness given to us in
Alciphron (1732): ‘[T]he good or happiness of a man consist in having both soul
and body sound and in good condition, enjoying those things which their
respective natures require, and free from those things which are odious or
hurtful to them’ (Alc 2: 10/Works 3, 79). In other words, happiness consists in
physical and mental health. The former ‘results from the right constitution and
temperature of the organs and the fluids circulating through them’, and the latter
results when ‘the notions are right, the judgments are true, the will regular, the
passions and appetites directed to their proper objects, and confined within due
bonds’ (Alc 2: 12/Works 3, 82).
If we focus on this conception of happiness we see how knowledge of nature
– knowledge of the law-like series of signs and things signified – is a necessary
condition for attaining such happiness. Berkeley’s position was that in order to
achieve a state of physical and mental health, we need to know how the world
works: we need to know, for example, what things bring pain and illness and
what things bring pleasure and health; what things lead to sadness and guilt and
what things delight and incite contentment in ourselves and others. Thus, in
designing the laws of nature in such a way that they ‘speak’ to us (via divine
language) about how to procure such things, Berkeley’s God thereby intentionally
provided the means for human happiness.12
But it is equally important to underscore the importance of religion for
Berkeley in this context. Although knowledge of natural laws is a necessary
condition for happiness (physical and mental health), it seems that such knowledge
is not, according to Berkeley, generally sufficient for the highest form of happiness.
In several passages Berkeley emphasized that for true happiness, one also needs to
acknowledge the moral laws (sometimes deemed ‘natural’ laws, as in Works 6, 18)
handed down by God – the ‘prescriptive’ laws, as well as the ‘descriptive’ ones.
According to him, these are handed down for the sake of ‘promoting’ happiness to
those who obey them (cf. Works 7, 130). Presumably, obeying such laws is
necessary in particular for the ‘mental health’ required for happiness, which as we
have seen, enables one to direct the ‘passions and appetites to their proper objects’
(Alc 2: 12/Works 3, 382). Moreover, Berkeley’s general position about the
procurement of happiness is often religious in tone: ‘the pleasure which naturally
affects a human mind with the most lively and transporting touches [is] . . . the
sense that we act in the eye of infinite wisdom, power and goodness’ (Works 7,
196). Still, Berkeley held, as we have seen, that knowledge of nature promotes
happiness, even if it is not sufficient for the highest form of happiness. And so it is
that in Berkeley’s system, a sensationalist phenomenalism of ‘signs’ and ‘things
signified’ intersects with and promotes his theory of human value.
But Leibniz would find most of Berkeley’s account of this intersection
inadequate, and again, it is the difference in phenomenalistic outlook that drives
the disagreement. Leibniz’s phenomena contain infinitely divided matter and

immaterial seats of force responsible for efficient causal change; they are infinitely
complex. But for all of the universe’s complexity, God has established intelligible
rules to govern it, as Leibniz told us in his only published book, Theodicy (1710):
‘[A]mong the general rules which are not absolutely necessary, God chooses
those which are the most natural, which it is easiest to explain, and which also
are of greatest service for the explanation of other things’ (Leibniz, 1952,
§208/Leibniz, 1875, v. 6, p. 241; cf. Leibniz, 1875, v. 4, pp. 568–9).
The infinite complexity of the world is balanced with laws of nature that
guarantee the intelligibility of that infinite complexity to finite minds. This
balance, for Leibniz, is an essential ingredient for making this the best possible
world. It is no wonder, then, that Berkeley’s rejection of infinite divisibility
elicited Leibniz’s protest.
And just as Berkeley’s sensationalist phenomena provided the basis for his
science of happiness, so too Leibniz’s intellectualism was the basis for his science
of happiness. He agreed with Berkeley that knowledge of nature serves the
purpose of allowing us to preserve and sustain our bodies. But he added that
there is another more important purpose: ‘The knowledge of bodies is therefore
most important on two grounds – first, to perfect our mind through an
understanding of the purposes and causes of things; second, to conserve and
nurture our body, which is the organ of the soul, by furthering what is wholesome
for it and reducing what is harmful’ (Leibniz, 1923, s. 6, v. 4, p. 1994/Leibniz,
1969, p. 280).
The second ‘ground’ about nurturing our body is one that Leibniz and
Berkeley both acknowledge. It is the first that is uniquely Leibnizian, and Leibniz
believed it to be the more important, the one that leads to the highest degree of
happiness. ‘For though all science increases our power over external things
provided a proper occasion arises for using it,’ Leibniz wrote, ‘there is nonetheless
another use which depends on no such occasion, namely the perfection of the
mind itself.’ He added that ‘by understanding the laws or mechanisms of divine
invention, we shall perfect ourselves far more than by merely following the
constructions invented by men’ (Leibniz, 1923, s. 6, v. 4, p. 1994/Leibniz, 1969,
p. 280). Knowledge of nature in itself is more valuable than any practical value
such knowledge might bring by being a means to a tangible end (e.g. how to
grow food, etc.), according to Leibniz.
Consistent with this, happiness does not consist in a static state of physical and
mental health for Leibniz as it did for Berkeley. Rather, happiness is an active state
in which the mind continually perfects itself, as Leibniz told us in the Principles
of Nature and Grace (1714): ‘Thus our happiness will never consist, and ought not
to consist in a complete enjoyment, in which there would be nothing left to desire,
and which would stupefy our mind, but in a perpetual progress to new pleasures
and new perfections’ (Leibniz, 1875, v. 6, p. 606/Leibniz, 1989, p. 213).
Happiness, then, consists in a state of progression in which one is constantly
acquiring new perfections. As we have seen, we perfect our mind through
‘knowledge of bodies’, or ‘through an understanding of the purposes and causes
of things’. But since the world, for Leibniz, consists of infinitely complex
phenomena subsumable under intelligible laws, God has thereby provided an
inexhaustible source of knowledge for humans, an inexhaustible source of
progress to ‘new pleasures and new perfections’. That is, God has provided the
necessary condition for happiness: intellectualist phenomena.13
Finally, it is worth noting that, while he agreed with Berkeley that the pleasures
attained through knowledge of nature ‘are the most valuable’ (Leibniz, 1875, v. 5,
p. 180/Leibniz, [1765]1981, p. 194), Leibniz also maintained, unlike Berkeley,
that knowledge of nature is sufficient for a state of happiness. ‘One must hold as
certain,’ Leibniz wrote in On Felicity (1694?), ‘that the more a mind desires to
know order, reason, the beauty of things which God has produced . . . the happier
he will be’ (Leibniz, 1948, p. 583). If one believes, as Leibniz did, that pleasure and
happiness involve perfection of mind and that mere accumulation of knowledge
of nature (i.e. independently of any practical benefits such knowledge brings)
gives such perfection, then one will hold that accumulation of knowledge of
nature in itself is sufficient for happiness. It seems that Berkeley has no account
of happiness that involves mere knowledge of nature, for it is only the practical
use such knowledge brings that is relevant to Berkeley’s conception of happiness,
one that relies on signs to help creatures procure physical and mental health.
Leibniz saw things differently: ‘For though all science increases our power
over external things provided a proper occasion arises for using it, there is
nonetheless another use which depends on no such occasion, namely the
perfection of the mind itself.’ An ongoing accumulation of knowledge of
infinitely complex phenomena suffices in itself to continuously perfect the mind
and thereby secure Leibnizian happiness.
Concluding remarks
This chapter covers only some points of useful comparison between Berkeley
and Leibniz, and there are other worthwhile areas to be considered. I hope to
have shown that the differences in their phenomenalisms form the basis of
significant differences in other areas of their thinking. I hope also to have shown
that a comparison of the views of Berkeley and Leibniz reveals the ways in which
many facets of their thinking – theological, ethical, scientific and philosophical
– intersected and supported each other.14
Notes
1 References to the works of Berkeley are cited by abbreviation, and references to the
works of Leibniz are to those listed in the Bibliography.
2 See Daniel, S. H. (2007), ‘The Harmony of the Leibniz–Berkeley Juxtaposition’ in P.
Phemister and S. Brown (eds), Leibniz and the English-Speaking World. Dordrecht:
Springer, pp. 163–80, p. 165.
3 The following studies make comparisons of Leibniz and Berkeley: Carlin, L. (2006),
‘Leibniz and Berkeley on Teleological Intelligibility’, History of Philosophy Quarterly
23, 151–69; Carlin, L. (2007), ‘Selecting a phenomenalism: Leibniz, Berkeley, and the
science of happiness’, Journal of the History of Ideas 68, 57–78; Daniel (2007); Adams,
R. M. (1994), Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
pp. 224f.; Wilson, M. (1987), ‘The phenomenalisms of Leibniz and Berkeley,’ in E.
Sosa (ed), Essays on the Philosophy of George Berkeley. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, pp. 3–22;
MacIntosh, J. J. (1970), ‘Leibniz and Berkeley’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,
1970–71, 147–63; Furth, M. (1967), ‘Monadology’, The Philosophical Review 76,
169–200; Kabitz, W. (1932), ‘Leibniz und Berkeley’, Sitzungsberichte der Preussische
Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse 24, 623–36.
4 This text was written in Leibniz’s hand on the last page of Leibniz’s copy of the
Principles. The original Latin is in Kabitz (1932), p. 636.
5 The difference here is related to the traditional distinction between Leibniz as a
rationalist and Berkeley as an empiricist. A rationalist phenomenalist, by placing
emphasis on reason, might thus be comfortable with intellectualism; a
phenomenalist from the empiricist tradition might restrict phenomena to what is
presented to the senses.
6 Cf. Adams (1994), p. 226 emphasizes this passage. See also Leibniz, G. W. (1875–90),
Die Philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 7 vols, C. I. Gerhardt
(ed.). Berlin: Weidman, v. 2, p. 276; Leibniz, G. W. (1989), ‘Philosophical essays’, in R.
Ariew and D. Garber (eds). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, p. 182, where he
explicitly located corporeal forces in phenomena.
7 It is for this reason that many have labelled Berkeley an instrumentalist (as opposed
to a realist) about forces. See, for example, Downing, L. (2005), ‘Berkeley’s natural
philosophy and philosophy of science’, in K. Winkler (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to Berkeley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 230–65, p. 247f.

See also DM 18/Works 4, 35, where Berkeley remarks that when it comes to forces,
‘to be of service to computation and mathematical demonstrations is one thing, to
set forth the nature of things is another’.
8 Of course, Berkeley might allow unsensed realities in the form of souls, spirits and
God. The point is that Berkeley, unlike Leibniz, would not allow that there is more to
non-rational nature than what is presented to the senses.
9 Cf. Adams (1994), p. 225.
10 See also P §62/Works 2, 67–8; cf. DM §37/Works 4, 41.
11 See Winkler, K. (1989), Berkeley: An Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 131.
12 It is worth noting that the pleasures promoted by this knowledge of nature’s
regularities are ‘natural’, as opposed to ‘fantastical’, pleasures. Natural pleasures are
‘suited to human nature in general, and . . . intended by Providence as rewards for the
using our faculties agreeably to the ends for which they were given us’ (Works 7,
193). Fantastical pleasures are those often based on convention, such as ‘money’ and
other ‘outward rewards’ (Works 7, 193). Berkeley believed that natural pleasures were
far more valuable (see Alc 2: 14/Works 3, 86).
13 Further details of the account of Leibniz’s theory of value that I outline here can be
found in Brown, G. (1988), ‘Leibniz’s Theodicy and the Confluence of Worldly Goods’,
Journal of the History of Philosophy 26, 571–91, and Brown, G. (1995), ‘Leibniz’s
Moral Philosophy’ in N. Jolley (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 411–41.
14 I am grateful to Richard Brook for very helpful comments on a previous draft of this
paper.
15
Berkeley’s Critique of Locke’s Theory

of Perception
Georges Dicker
Berkeley is sometimes credited with having refuted Locke’s ([1689]1975) theory

of perception. There is a standard portrayal of Locke, in no small part due to the
Good Bishop himself, that makes this assessment of Berkeley’s critique very
seductive. According to this portrayal, Locke holds that we cannot perceive
material things; rather, we can perceive only the ideas caused in us when those
things affect our senses. Ordinary material objects like rocks and trees and
wheels are unperceivable; they lie behind an impenetrable ‘veil of perception’. We
can know that they exist only by means of a problematic causal inference from
premises about ideas that is supposed to show that the ideas are produced in us
by material things and that they resemble those things to a certain extent.
In Part I of this chapter, I shall argue that Berkeley’s critique of Locke as standardly
portrayed fails when attention is paid to a feature of Locke’s thought that the standard
portrayal ignores. In Part II , I shall say what I think is right in Berkeley’s critique.
Part I
Berkeley’s most famous argument against Locke’s philosophy is that once it is

admitted that we perceive only our own ideas, the existence of material things
becomes unknowable.1 As Berkeley says:
So long as men thought that real things subsisted without the mind, and that
their knowledge was only so far forth real as it was conformable to real things, it
follows, that they could not be certain that they had any real knowledge at all.
For how can it be known, that the things which are perceived, are conformable
to those which are not perceived, or exist without the mind?
P 862
268
Berkeley’s Critique of Locke’s Theory of Perception 269
Furthermore, Berkeley argues that on this ‘veil-of-perception’ doctrine, the

belief in matter becomes unintelligible:
I ask whether those supposed originals or external things, of which our ideas are the
pictures or representations, be themselves perceivable or not? . . . If you say they are
not, I appeal to any one whether it be sense, to assert a colour is like something
which is invisible; hard or soft, like something which is intangible; and so of the rest.
P8
The upshot is that on Locke’s theory of perception as Berkeley construes it,

the existence of material things is unknowable, and the belief in such things is
unintelligible.
There is no doubt that Locke sometimes lays himself open to Berkeley’s attack.
For he writes:
’Tis evident, the Mind knows not things immediately, but only by the intervention
of the Ideas it has of them. Our Knowledge therefore is real, only so far as there is
a conformity between our Ideas and the reality of Things. But what shall be here
the Criterion? How shall the Mind, when it perceives nothing but its own Ideas,
know that they agree with Things themselves?
Essay IV.iv.3: 563; my italics except for ‘Ideas’3
SINCE the Mind, in all its Thoughts and Reasonings, hath no other immediate
Object but its own Ideas, which it alone does or can contemplate, it is evident, that
our Knowledge is only conversant about them.
Essay IV.i.1: 525; my italics except for ‘Ideas’
ALL our Knowledge consisting, as I have said, in the view the Mind has of its
own Ideas.
Essay IV.ii.1: 530
However, Locke does not always say that we perceive only ideas, and in the
chapter of the Essay officially addressed to ‘sensitive knowledge’ (= perceptual
knowledge), he says the opposite. He writes: ‘no particular Man can know the
Existence of any other Being, but only when by actual operating upon him, it
makes it self perceived by him’ (Essay IV.xi.1: 630). Here ‘any other Being’
obviously refers to material things, not to ideas, and Locke means that when a
material thing actually stimulates a person’s sense-receptors, the person perceives
that thing itself. A bit later, he says:
If we persuade ourselves, that our Faculties act and inform us right, concerning
the existence of those Objects that affect them, it cannot pass for an ill-grounded
confidence: For I think no body can, in earnest, be so sceptical, as to be uncertain

of the Existence of those Things which he sees and feels.
Essay IV.xi.3: 631
The words ‘those Things which he sees and feels’ unmistakably refer to
material things, not to ideas. Thus, although there are passages where Locke says
that we can perceive only our own ideas, in his most sustained discussion of
perceptual knowledge he accepts the common-sense view that we perceive
material objects. Further, even in the Essay’s chapter on primary and secondary
qualities, which is often thought to show his espousal of the ‘veil-of-perception’
doctrine, he says that primary qualities are those that ‘Sense constantly finds in
every particle of Matter, which has bulk enough to be perceived,’ and he contrasts
such a particle with one whose bulk is ‘less than to make it self singly be perceived
by our Senses’ (Essay II .viii.9: 134–5). These can hardly be the words of a man
who thinks material things are unperceivable.
So is Locke’s position flatly self-contradictory? No – at least not if we apply
the principle of charity. Notice the words ‘immediately’ and ‘immediate’ in the
first two passages from the Essay quoted above. If one heeds those words, then
what Locke can be taken to mean, when he says that we perceive only ideas, is
that we immediately perceive only ideas, and so never immediately perceive
material things. There is every reason to attribute this view to Locke, and indeed
also to Descartes, Malebranche and other early modern philosophers. In one
place, Locke even defines an Idea partly as ‘the immediate Object of perception’
(Essay II .8.8: 134; my italics). But if what Locke really means when he says that
we perceive only ideas is merely that we immediately perceive only ideas, then he
avoids contradiction, for his claim then leaves open the possibility that we
perceive material things non-immediately, or mediately. If we apply the principle
of charity to Locke, then this is the best way to interpret him.
Here, however, is where Berkeley re-enters the picture. For in Three Dialogues,4
he repeatedly puts forward a principle, which I call ‘the Principle of Perceptual
Immediacy’ (for short, ‘the PPI ’), which says that
(1) Whatever is perceived by the senses is immediately perceived.5
But if we combine this principle with Locke’s admission that
(2) No material things are immediately perceived,
then it obviously follows that
(3) No material things are perceived by the senses.

I shall call this line of reasoning the ‘argument from the PPI ’. I believe that it,
and certain variations of it that combine the PPI with other premises (notably
with the premise that no causes of sensation are immediately perceived), is a key
weapon that Berkeley uses to attack Locke’s theory of perception.6 What is
interesting and important about the argument from the PPI is that it is not
merely an ad hominem argument that takes Locke’s bald assertions that we
perceive only ideas at face value and then points to the paradoxical consequences;
rather, it tries to show that Locke is logically compelled by other, more refined
and potentially more plausible views of his, to accept the ‘veil-of-perception’
view that the standard portrayal attributes to him.
But is the argument from the PPI sound? That depends on a difficult and
controversial issue; namely, what does the term ‘immediately perceived’ mean in its
premises? For the argument to work, Berkeley needs a single sense of ‘immediately
perceived’ on which premises (1) and (2) are both true; for if this term has a
different meaning in each premise, then the argument is invalid, whereas if the
term has the same meaning in both premises but either premise (1) or premise (2)
is false, then the argument is valid but unsound. I shall now argue that there is no
single sense of ‘immediately perceived’ on which premises (1) and (2) are both true.
I shall also try to show that Berkeley thought there was because, contra what some
current scholars hold, he used at least two senses of the term, but conflated them.
According to the account of Berkeley’s views on mediate and immediate
perception recently proposed by Samuel Rickless, Berkeley is best interpreted as
operating throughout his works with a single, univocal sense of immediate
perception: ‘for X to be immediately perceived by S is simply for X to be perceived
without intermediary (and so without suggestion of any kind)’.7 I shall call this
the ‘no-suggestion’ sense of ‘immediately perceived’. On this sense of the term,
premise (2) of the argument from the PPI is plausible, because perceiving a
material thing, if this means perceiving it as a material thing, seems to require
‘suggestion’ in Berkeley’s sense. Think of Berkeley’s example of hearing the sound
of a coach, and treat it as hearing the coach as a (real) coach (whether material
or ‘real’ only in Berkeley’s idealist sense). Then Berkeley’s view that such hearing
requires that the sound suggest to the mind such things as the sight of wheels,
horses, a coachman, passengers, and so forth, seems correct and important.
Absent such suggestion, one does not perceive the coach as a coach, or hear it as
a coach, or take it to be a coach; one only hears a noise.
However, what Berkeley says about his ‘coach’ case also shows that if
‘immediately perceives’ is taken in the no-suggestion sense, then even he does
not believe that premise (1) of the argument from the PPI is true:
Though I grant we may in one acceptation be said to perceive sensible things

mediately by sense: that is, when from a frequently perceived connexion, the
immediate perception of ideas of one sense suggests to the mind others, perhaps
belonging to another sense, which are wont to be connected with them. For
instance, when I hear a coach drive along the streets, immediately I perceive only
the sound; but from the experience I have had that such a sound is connected
with a coach, I am said to hear a coach. It is nevertheless evident, that in truth
and strictness, nothing can be heard but sound: and the coach is not then
properly perceived by sense, but suggested from experience.
3D 204
This passage is as difficult as it is famous, and I once thought that it meant that
for Berkeley the coach is not perceived by sense (not heard) at all.8 But I now
think that he meant only to deny that the coach is a proper object of sense, in the
classic Aristotelian sense on which a proper object of any sense is one that can be
perceived only by that one sense.9 One point that supports this interpretation is
that there are many other places in Berkeley’s work, notably in Theory of Vision
and in Theory of Vision Vindicated, where he says that sense perception involves
suggestion.10 It is a main thesis of Theory of Vision that while distance is not
immediately perceived, it is nonetheless perceived by sight, by dint of suggestion.
Sometimes, Berkeley goes so far as to say that we perceive another person’s
emotions ‘by sight’, on the grounds that they are suggested to us by the colour of
a person’s face (as in blushing). Also, he explicitly says: ‘Things are suggested and
perceived by sense’ (TVV 9).11
Should we then see the coach passage, together with Berkeley’s statements in
his works on vision, as showing that he does not really accept the PPI , and that
he would have been prepared to simply retract the argument? I do not think so.
There are too many places in Three Dialogues where Berkeley insists on the truth
of the PPI , and the argument from the PPI plays too important a role, both in his
attack on Lockean realism and in his case for idealism, for that to be a plausible
interpretation.12 So I ask: is there a sense of ‘immediately perceived’, other than
the no-suggestion sense, on which (1) is true (and Berkeley accepts it)?
I think there is. Close to the beginning of Three Dialogues, Hylas says:
I tell you once for all, that by sensible things I mean those only which are perceived
by sense; and that in truth the senses perceive nothing which they do not
perceive immediately: for they make no inferences. The deducing therefore of
causes or occasions from effects and appearances, which alone are perceived by
sense, entirely relates to reason.
3D: 174–5
From this ‘the-senses-make-no-inferences passage’, which is meant to summarize

the progress of the First Dialogue up to that point, and from which Philonous
does not demur, one can extract a psychological sense of ‘immediately perceives’,
which I shall call the ‘no-inference’ sense, on which for X to be immediately
perceived by S is for X to be perceived without any (conscious) inference on S’s
part.13 I believe that in this sense of ‘immediately perceived’, the PPI is true (and
that Berkeley believes it to be true). For I agree with R. M. Chisholm’s view that
It is sometimes said that to perceive something is to ‘make an inference’ or to

‘frame a hypothesis’. . . . But surely no perceiver, on opening his eyes in the
morning, can be said to ‘infer’ that he is surrounded by familiar objects. . . . If we
do use the words ‘inference’ and ‘hypothesis’ in this context, we cannot take them
in the ordinary sense – in the sense in which a physician, studying symptoms,
may be said to ‘make an inference’ or ‘frame a hypothesis’ about the disorders of
his patients. Use of the psychological terms ‘unconscious inference’ and
‘interpretation,’ in this context, serves only to obscure the fact that perceiving is
not an inference, in the ordinary sense of the word ‘inference.’14
Of course, however, the fact that premise (1) is true on the no-inference sense
of immediate perception does not salvage the argument from the PPI ; for the
only sense of ‘immediately perceived’ that we have so far identifed on which
premise (2) is true (or at least plausible) is the no-suggestion sense, and the
argument cannot be valid if ‘immediately perceived’ has one sense in premise (1)
and another sense in premise (2). But it is worth noting that if we assume that
Berkeley reads the no-inference sense of immediate perception into premise (1)
and the no-suggestion sense into premise (2), then at least we have a possible
explanation of why he thinks the argument is valid. This is that he thinks that if
something is perceived without inference, then it is perceived without suggestion.
In other words, the possible explanation is that he does not distinguish, or does
not clearly distinguish, conscious inference from the kind of learned, unconscious
and automatic association that he calls ‘suggestion’, i.e. that he conflates the no-
inference and the no-suggestion senses of ‘immediately perceived’. There are
some passages that may seem to support this charge, as when Berkeley writes
that estimating a remote object’s distance from us involves ‘form[ing] a
conclusion’ that the object is far away, or performing ‘rather an act of judgment
grounded on experience than of sense’ (TV 3).15
Nevertheless, I do not think that Berkeley conflates lack of inference with lack
of suggestion.16 For one thing, he ascribes inference and suggestion to two
different faculties of the mind: the former to reason or understanding, the latter
to imagination, which for him (as for Hume and Kant after him) is involved in
all but the most rudimentary cases of sense perception. There is also this passage,
where he explicitly distinguishes inference from suggestion and ties suggestion
to sense perception: ‘To perceive is one thing; to judge is another. So likewise to
be suggested is one thing, and to be inferred another. Things are suggested and
perceived by sense. We make judgments and inferences by the understanding’
(TVV 42).
Furthermore, even in those passages that may seem to support the inference/
suggestion conflation charge, Berkeley talks about ‘instantly conclud[ing]’ or
‘fortwith conclud[ing]’ an object to be far off (TV 3, TV 45), about making
‘sudden judgments’ of distance (TV 20, TV 24) and about the ‘habitual or
customary connection’ between visual cues and judgments of distance (TV 17,
TV 21) – all expressions that show him to be aware of the difference between a
conscious inference and the kind of unconscious association that he calls
‘suggestion’.
It may now seem that I have overlooked the simplest way to save the argument
from the PPI : we have already seen that premise (1) is true on the no-inference
sense of ‘immediately perceives’, so why not just also use that sense in premise
(2)? Berkeley himself might have thought this to be a good solution, for he
frequently implies that if there were material things, then we could cognize them
only by inferring them from our ideas. For example, in the last-quoted passage
from Three Dialogues, he says: ‘The deducing . . . of causes or occasions from
effects and appearances, which alone are perceived by sense, entirely relates to
reason,’ and elsewhere he writes, ‘The objects of sense, being things immediately
perceived, are otherwise called ideas. The cause of these ideas, or the power
producing them, is not the object of sense, not being itself perceived but only
inferred by reason form its effects, to wit, the objects or ideas which are perceived
by sense’ (TVV 11).
But using the no-inference sense of immediate perception in both premises
of the argument from the PPI will not do. First, it would make premise (2) very
questionable (indeed, I believe, false), for there is no good reason to think that
a material thing cannot be perceived without a conscious inference on the
perceiver’s part. Second, it would be question-begging, for given only premise
(1), reading premise (2) with the no-inference sense of immediate perception is
tantamount to assuming from the outset that material things, if they exist at all,
are not perceived by sense – that ‘appearances . . . alone are perceived by sense’
– which is to take for granted the very ‘veil-of-perception’ stance that it was the
purpose of the argument to force one into. So we need to ask: is there yet a
further sense of ‘immediately perceived’, other than the no-suggestion and the
no-inference senses, on which (2) is true, and if that sense were used in (2), then
would (2) connect with (1), so as to yield a sound argument for (3)?
I think that the answer to the first part of this question is yes, and that the
answer to the second part is no. I have elsewhere maintained that Berkeley
sometimes operates with an epistemological sense of ‘immediately perceives’, on
which for X to be immediately perceived by S at time t is for X to be perceived in
such a way that its existence and nature can be known solely on the basis of S’s
perceptual experience at t.17 We can call this the ‘epistemological sense’ of
‘immediately perceives’. Now, in this sense of the term, it is clear that premise (2)
is true, because any perceptual experience obtained by perceiving a material
thing could be duplicated in a hallucination or in a dream. However, if (2) has
the epistemological sense that makes it true but (1) has the ‘no inference’ sense
that makes it true, then again the argument obviously commits the fallacy of
equivocation. It perhaps goes without saying that the problem cannot be avoided
by giving ‘immediately perceived’ the epistemological sense in premise (1); for
the existence of hallucinations and illusions shows that it is not the case that
whatever is perceived by the senses is perceived in such a way that its existence
and nature can be known solely on the basis of one’s present perceptual
experience – that if ‘immediately perceived’ is taken in the epistemological sense
in premise (1) (= the PPI ), then that premise is false.
I have also maintained elsewhere that the fundamental flaw in Berkeley’s
various appeals to the PPI to attack realism and to support idealism is an
equivocation between the non-inference sense and the epistemological sense of
immediate perception, and that he fails to see this flaw because he conflates these
two senses.18 Drawing only on what I have said so far in this chapter, I would
support this claim by arguing that since premise (1) is true on the no-inference
sense of immediate perception but premise (2) requires another sense, and since
Berkeley does not conflate the non-inference sense with the no-suggestion sense,
he must be conflating the no-inference sense with another sense that makes (2)
true, and the only such sense that I can identify is the epistemological one. There
is no space here to review all of my other reasons for making this criticism of
Berkeley. But since Samuel Rickless has recently argued that Berkeley never even
uses an epistemological sense of immediate perception, I shall now devote some
space to replying to his points.
As Rickless (2013) notes, I have offered textual support for holding that
Berkeley operates with an epistemological sense of ‘immediate perceived’. The
most direct support is a passage in Three Dialogues where Berkeley analyses the
error made by a person who thinks that an oar that looks crooked when dipped
in water is really bent: ‘His mistake lies not in what he perceives immediately and
at present (it being a manifest contradiction to suppose he should err in respect
of that)’ (3D: 238). Here Berkeley says that one cannot fail to know, solely on the
basis of one’s present perceptual experience, the existence and nature of what
one immediately perceives. Thus, he seems to invoke an epistemological notion
of immediate perception even stronger than the one I have attributed to him,
which requires only that one can know this solely on the basis of a given
perceptual experience.Yet, he shows no awareness that this strong epistemological
notion of immediate perception is different from the psychological, no-inference
one that he used in the senses-make-no-inferences passage.
There is also this passage: ‘The real objects of sight we see, and what we see we
know’ (TVV 20). Admittedly, Berkeley does not use the term ‘immediately
perceive’ here, but the reason why he says that ‘what we see we know’ can only be
that ‘see’ carries the epistemological import that it can have only if whatever is
seen is perceived in the epistemologically privileged way embodied in the strong
epistemological sense of immediate perception. There is even an entry in
Berkeley’s youthful notebooks that supports my view: ‘certainly I cannot err in
matter of simple perception’ (Notebook A, entry 693).19
Rickless rejects such pieces of evidence. With respect to the ‘oar’ passage he
writes:
The fact that P is a necessary a priori truth (or that P’s negation is self-
contradictory) does not entail that P is definitionally true. In particular, it does
not follow from the fact that one cannot (on pain of contradiction) be mistaken
about anything that one immediately perceives that the very concept of immediate
perception is or includes immediate perception [in Dicker’s epistemological
sense]. For all that the ‘Crooked Oar’ passage tells us, it may be that Berkeley
takes it to be necessary and a priori that perception of O without intermediary is
sufficient for knowledge of O. Why would he think this? Presumably on the
grounds that it is necessary and a priori that whatever is immediately perceived
without intermediary is directly and wholly present to the mind, and that there
is simply no room for the mind to be mistaken about what is directly and wholly
present to it. As Berkeley puts the point . . . ‘Colour, figure, motion, extension and
the like, considered only as so many sensations in the mind, are perfectly known,
there being nothing in them which is not perceived’ [P 87].
For Berkeley it is simply a fundamental truth that when a sensation is directly
and wholly present to the mind, there is nothing in the sensation that could
possibly be hidden from the mind. And if every aspect of a sensation is
necessarily manifest to the mind, then it is also a fundamental truth that the
mind cannot make a mistake about what the sensation is like. This result is
substantive, not definitional. So the ‘Crooked Oar’ passage does not suggest that
Berkeley is operating with an epistemic concept of immediate perception.20
With respect to the ‘what-we-see-we-know’ passage, the relevant part of what

Rickless says is
From the fact that I know what I see . . . it does not follow that my very concept
of (immediate) perception is epistemic. It could simply be necessary and a priori
that the very nature of the relation I bear to my own ideas (namely, that they are
directly and wholly present to me) makes it impossible for me to be mistaken
about them.21
In response, I note first that in the ‘oar’ passage, Berkeley does not say, ‘it being
a manifest contradiction to suppose he should err in respect of an idea’; instead
he says, ‘it being a manifest contradiction to suppose he should err in respect of
that’. Although the passage as a whole does indicate, unsurprisingly, that things
immediately perceived are ideas, within the key sentence Berkeley leaves the
reference of ‘that’ entirely general and open, which suggests that he means that
one cannot be mistaken about what one immediately perceives, no matter what
‘that’ refers to – that immediate perception is by its very nature, i.e. by definition,
infallible. Likewise in the ‘what-we-see-we-know’ and in the ‘simple-perception-
cannot-err’ passages, there is no reference to ideas, and the point seems to be that
the type of seeing or perception invoked is by nature immune to error. Contra
Rickless, therefore, I think that these passages do suggest that Berkeley is
operating with a strong epistemological concept of (immediate) perception.
But there is more to be said in favour of my view. The fact that X is ‘directly
and wholly present to the mind’ does not of itself show that one cannot be wrong
about X. Suppose that I am looking at a perfectly transparent object a couple of
feet in front of me, say a glass paperweight. In any ordinary sense, it is ‘directly
and wholly present’ to my mind: I see it, as it were, through and through. But it is
not the case that I can know its existence or (any of its) properties solely on the
basis of my present visual experience, for I could have exactly the same visual
experience in a hallucination or in a dream. Here Rickless might reply that this
lack of ‘immediate’ knowledge is due to the fact that a paperweight is not merely
an idea or sensation. Indeed, in the first passage just quoted he moves, apparently
without noticing the difference, from saying, ‘there is simply no room for the
mind to be mistaken about what is directly and wholly present to it’, to saying
‘when a sensation is directly and wholly present to the mind, there is nothing in
the sensation that could possibly be hidden from the mind’ [my italics]. He
thinks, then, that what accounts for the infallibility of immediate perception is
‘the very nature of the relation I bear to my own sensations [or ideas]’ [my italics].
But what is that relation? Well, he says, it is just that ‘they are directly and wholly
present to me’. But the glass paperweight example shows that this will not do, for
the paperweight is ‘directly and wholly present to me’, but I could be mistaken
about its existence and properties, since I could have the same experience if I
were hallucinating. So Rickless might press into service the word ‘directly’ and
say: ‘by saying that ideas are directly present to me I mean that I cannot be
mistaken about what in them is wholly present to me, and since everything in
them is wholly present to me, I cannot be mistaken about them at all’. But this
obviously reintroduces a crucial epistemological element, since ‘X is directly
present to me’ just means ‘X is present to me in such a way that I cannot be
mistaken about X’.
The fundamental weakness in Rickless’s view, I suggest, is that it seeks to
separate completely the nature of ideas from the epistemologically privileged
way in which they are perceived, and to use the former as an explanation of the
latter. I doubt that this is possible; it seems to me that the epistemologically
privileged way in which an idea is perceived is part of what makes it an idea.
Reading almost any philosophical work in which ideas play the foundational
role that they do in early modern philosophy reveals that ideas are understood
to be just those items that, unlike material things, can be known solely on the
basis of a momentary perceptual episode, apart from any other evidence or
corroboration. Thus, Descartes writes in the Meditations:
For example, I am now seeing light, hearing a noise, feeling heat. But [suppose
that] I am asleep, so all this is false. Yet I certainly seem to see, to hear, and
to be warmed. This cannot be false; what is called ‘having a sensory
perception’ is strictly just this, and in this restricted sense of the term it is simply
thinking.22
Descartes does not use the word ‘idea’ here, but he might just as well have
finished by saying, ‘and in this restricted sense of the term it is simply having
ideas’. So ideas are here understood at least partly in terms of the epistemologically
privileged way in which we perceive them, rather than that way of perceiving
ideas being explained in terms of some independent analysis of the nature of
ideas. And the special relation I bear to my own ideas is just that of perceiving
them in this epistemologically privileged way. Perhaps this can be traced back to
the fact that here, unlike in the perception of a material thing, the object of
perception – the idea – is not a cause of the perception. But this is a merely
negative point, and it seems that the only positive way to characterize the relation
between the object and the perceiver, S, is again to say that S perceives the idea
in such a way that S can (does) know its existence and nature solely on the basis
of ‘having’ it. It seems to me that the failure to recognize this point lies at the
root of Rickless’s (and some other recent scholars’) denial that Berkeley, like
other early modern philosophers and their more recent devotees, operates with
an epistemological concept of immediate perception.23
There remains one question. If the non-inference and the epistemological
senses of immediate perception are as different as I have claimed, then why
should Berkeley (or any other philosopher) conflate them or, as is needed
for premise (1) of the argument from the PPI to connect with premise (2),
assume that just because X is perceived without any inference, it is perceived in
such a way that its existence and nature can be known solely on the basis of one’s
present perceptual experience? Briefly, I suggest the following answer. We regard
sense perception, especially vision, as our basic way of acquiring knowledge
about the world we live in. With many qualifications that cannot be entered into
here, that is indeed the role that vision plays in human lives. It is therefore not
surprising that philosophers from Plato onwards have modelled their views of
what knowing is on vision, that they have so often used visual metaphors and
visual language to characterize knowing, that they have been ineluctably drawn
towards what John Dewey called a ‘spectator theory of knowledge’.24 It is only by
reflecting philosophically on such phenomena as hallucination and illusion and
on the causal facts of perception, among other things, that we come to realize
that it is not really the case that ‘what we see we know’ or that ‘I cannot err in
matter of simple perception’. Thus the conflation of the psychological immediacy
(lack of conscious inference) that characterizes mere seeing with the
epistemological immediacy captured by the epistemological sense of immediate
perception is natural, for it is based on a deeply rooted assimilation of seeing
with knowing.
Part II
I have argued that Berkeley’s most famous objection to Locke’s theory of

perception is based on an oversimplified portrayal of Locke’s position, but I also
think that Berkeley has another line of criticism that is much more powerful.25
Sceptical doubts about perception do not have to rest on the view (which I take
to be the erroneous) that we can perceive only ideas. For even if we perceive
material things, it is possible for any perceptual experience obtained by perceiving
a material thing to be duplicated in a hallucination or a dream. So the question
arises: even when I do perceive a material thing, how can I know that I am
perceiving a material thing, rather than hallucinating or dreaming? Locke
understood this problem, albeit without always seeing it as a serious one.26 The
solution may seem obvious: I must have other perceptual experiences that
corroborate the experience in question. But since those other experiences can
also be duplicated in a hallucination or a dream, this solution seems to lead to an
infinite regress of corroborations. And it may seem that the only way to stop this
regress is to show, by means of an argument that starts with premises about
experiences whose existence and character can be known without any
corroboration (whether we construe these experiences in terms of ideas or in
some more current way, such as in terms of being appeared to or sensing in
certain ways), that the experiences are caused by material things affecting our
senses. Locke offers just such an argument, when he argues in his ‘concurrent
reasons’ passage that the best explanation of certain specific features of our ideas
is that they are caused by material objects affecting our sense receptors (Essay
IV.11.4–8: 632–5).
Berkeley’s most powerful objection to Locke’s theory of perception is that
such an inference to the best explanation cannot possibly work. He presents it in
Principles 18 and elaborates it in Principles 19 and 20.27 Here is section 18, divided
into four segments:28
1. 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.
2. As for our senses, by them we have the knowledge only of our sensations,
ideas, or those things 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 perceived. This the
materialists themselves acknowledge.
3. 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.
4. 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 happens 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. Hence, it is evident the supposition of
external bodies is not necessary for the producing our ideas: since it is
granted they are produced sometimes, and might possibly be produced
always in the same order we see them in at present, without their
concurrence.
The opening premise of Berkeley’s argument here is contained in segment 1. But

as the argument continues, it becomes obvious that the issue it addresses is not
merely how we can know that our ideas ‘correspond’ to bodies, but how we can
even know that there exist any bodies for them to correspond to. So we may
initially put the opening premise in a way that simplifies its language without
distorting the argument:
If we know that material things exist, then we know this either (a) by sense
perception or (b) by reason.
The main point of segment 2 is to eliminate option (a), but in doing so Berkeley
also does something else: he equates whatever we do know by sense perception
with ‘those things that are immediately perceived by sense’. In segment 3, he
turns to option (b), but in doing so he again equates whatever knowledge we may
have by sense (and from which we would infer the existence of material things)
with what is immediately perceived by sense. In order to capture the role that
immediate perception plays in the argument, then, we should formulate the first
premise like this:
(1) If we know that material things exist, then we know this either (a) by
immediately perceiving them by sense, or (b) by inferring their existence
from what is immediately perceived by sense.
The second premise, stated in segment 2, may be put this way:
(2) We don’t know that material things exist by immediately perceiving them
by sense.
It now follows from (1) and (2) that
(3) If we know that material things exist, then we know this by inferring their
existence from what is immediately perceived by sense.
Segment 4 is meant to show that the consequent of (3) is false – that we cannot
know that material things exist by inferring their existence from what is
immediately perceived by sense. It contains two premises and a conclusion. The
premises are
(4) Our only evidence that material things exist – our sensations or ideas
– could be exactly the same even if no material things existed,
and
(5) If (4) is true, then we don’t know that material things exist by inferring
their existence from what is immediately perceived by sense.
The conclusion that follows from (4) and (5) is
(6) We don’t know that material things exist by inferring their existence from
what is immediately perceived by sense.
Berkeley does not flatly state (6), but it is implicit in his rhetorical question, ‘But
what reason can induce us to believe the existence of bodies without the mind,
from what we perceive?’ The argument can now be completed, for it follows from
(1), (2) and (6) that
(7) We cannot know that material things exist.
Simply put, having eliminated the only two possible ways of knowing that
material things exist, viz. by immediate perception and by an inference from
what is immediately perceived, Berkeley concludes that even if it material things
existed, we could not know that they do.
Let us consider Berkeley’s argument step by step. In premise (1), how should
we interpret the term ‘immediately perceived’? The natural answer is that it
should be understood in the epistemological sense, for it is clear that Berkeley
there regards immediate perception as tantamount to knowledge of any items so
perceived. There is more to be said in favour of this interpretation. First, Berkeley
clearly thinks that (a) and (b) are mutually exclusive (and jointly exhaustive)
possible human ways of knowing that material things exist; so the ‘or’ in (1)’s
consequent must be taken in the strong, exclusive sense. Second, for his argument
to bear on Locke’s prototypical inference to the best explanation, (b) should not
refer to the kind of conscious transition from premise to conclusion or from sign
to signified captured by the no-inference, psychological sense of immediate
perception, but rather to a back-up, justificatory argument to the best explanation,
as shown by Locke’s introducing it as a set of ‘concurrent reasons’ (Essay IV.xi.3:
632). Given these two points, ‘immediately perceived’ in (1) cannot have the
psychological sense, for perceiving a thing without any conscious inference and
justifying the claim that one perceives it by a certain type of argument are not
mutually exclusive alternatives (even if we suppose, perhaps a bit unrealistically,
that these are simultaneous) – in fact, this is presumably what Locke thinks that
he does and that we (can) do. Could ‘immediately perceived’ in (1) then have the
no-suggestion sense? I do not think so. For consider the only two possibilities
that would then be truth-makers for (1)’s consequent: (i) the material thing’s
existence is known without suggestion and without the help of a back-up
argument [option (a)], (ii) the material thing’s existence is known with suggestion
and with the help of a back-up argument [option (b)]. But case (i) seems
impossible because absent any element of suggestion – even the suggestion of
solidity based on what is seen – there seems to be no knowledge of material
existence (this much Berkeley himself teaches us in Theory of Vision), and case
(ii) is the one that Berkeley rules out in step (6) of the argument. So, (1)’s
consequent will be false if ‘immediately perceived’ is taken in the no-suggestion
sense, and we have already seen that (1)’s consequent is false (given the exclusive
use of ‘or’) if ‘immediately perceived’ is taken in the no-inference, psychological
sense. So, if we assume the truth of (1)’s antecedent and read either the non-
inference or the no-suggestion sense of ‘immediately perceived’ into the premise,
then there will no case in which its consequent is not false. It follows (assuming
there is not some fourth sense of the term that we need to consider) that the only
sense of ‘immediately perceived’ remaining that allows (1) to be true is the
epistemological one.
But what is the justification for premise (1)? Well, it rests on the regress of
corroborations that is generated by the possibility of hallucinations and dreams.
To see this, let us use the following abbreviations:
● K = We know that material things exist.
● (a) = We know that material things exist by immediately perceiving them by
sense.
● (b) = We know that material things exist by inferring their existence from
what is immediately perceived by sense.
Then the regress of corroborations shows that:

● (c) If K, then if not (a) then (b). [K ⊃ (∼a ⊃ b)]
This is because if we do not know that a material thing exists by immediately

perceiving it, then it seems that we can know this only by appealing to other
perceptions for corroboration. But since each of those corroborating perceptions,

taken individually, is subject to the same difficulty – i.e. since it too could be
duplicated even though no material thing were being perceived – it seems that
we could know of a material thing’s existence only if we could infer it from some
sufficiently rich set of perceptual experiences. But (c) is logically equivalent to:
● (d) If K, then either (a) or (b) [K ⊃ (a v b)]
which is identical to premise (1).

Premise (2) is of course accepted by Locke, and it can justified by appealing to
the possibility of hallucinations and dreams and to the multiple alternative
possible causes of any perceptual experience.
The next premise – line (4) (‘Our only evidence that material things exist –
our sensations or ideas – could be exactly the same even if no material things
existed’) could also be stated this way:
(i) There is in principle no way of knowing that any material thing exists
other than by immediately perceiving certain ideas or sensations
and
(ii) There is only a contingent relation between any set of ideas or sensations,
no matter how prolonged, systematic, and vivid, and the existence of any
material thing.
Any philosopher who tries to defend the senses by an inference to the best
explanation is committed to (i) and (ii), and must therefore accept premise (4).
For to deny (i) is to abandon the whole idea that knowledge of material things
can only be based on some sort of inference from items that can be known
without corroboration, and to deny (ii) is to deny that this inference is any sort
of non-deductive inference.
The next premise, line (5), claims that if (4) is true – i.e. that if (i) and (ii) are
both true – then we cannot possibly be justified in inferring the existence of a
material thing from the occurrence of any set of ideas or sensations (in which
case, assuming that knowledge requires justification, we cannot know the
existence of a material thing by such an inference). This is a key contention of the
argument, and one that seems difficult to deny.
Berkeley’s own reply to scepticism is to accept (i) but to deny (ii), by reducing
bodies to collections of ideas. So his cure for the scepticism that he powerfully
argues Locke’s epistemology leaves us with is idealism. I believe that the cure is
worse than the disease, but that is another story.29
Notes
1 Berkeley also attacks this theory by invoking his ‘Likeness Principle’. I have discussed
this topic in Georges Dicker, ‘An Idea Can Be Like Nothing But An Idea,’ History of
Philosophy Quarterly, 2, 1 (January 1985), 39–52. Reprinted in Walter E. Creery (ed.),
George Berkeley: Critical Assessments, 3 vols. (London: Routledge, 1991), Vol. III ,
162–76, and in Georges Dicker, Berkeley’s Idealism: A Critical Examination (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 149–69. Finally, as we shall see in Part II ,
Berkeley also has a more purely epistemological argument against Locke.
2 ‘P’ is the abbreviation of the title, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human
Knowledge, and references to that work are to section numbers in Part I.
3 ‘Essay’ is the shortened title for Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,
and references to that work are to the book number, chapter number, section
number and page number in John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, edited by Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
[1689]1975).
4 ‘Three Dialogues’ is the shortened title for Berkeley’s Three Dialogues between Hylas
and Philonous. ‘3D’ will be the abbreviation for the title, Three Dialogues between Hylas
and Philonous. References to this work will be by page number in A. A. Luce and T. E.
Jessop (eds.), The Works of George Berkeley, Volume II (London: Nelson, 1949).
5 I shall henceforth refer to this statement impartially as ‘the PPI ’, as ‘premise (1) of
the argument from the PPI ’, as ‘premise (1)’ and simply as ‘(1)’.
6 Berkeley’s most explicit statement of the argument is this, said by Philonous: ‘But the
causes of our sensations are not things immediately perceived, and therefore not
sensible’ (3D: 191). This is obviously an enthymeme whose missing premise is
‘sensible things are immediately perceived’, which is equivalent to the PPI . I have
argued elsewhere that Philonous reverts to this argument and variants of it several
times. See Dicker, Berkeley’s Idealism: A Critical Examination, 119–22 and my articles
on immediate perception listed in its bibliography.
7 Samuel C. Rickless, Berkeley’s Argument for Idealism (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2013), 56. Details aside, George Pappas defends a similar view in his Berkeley’s
Thought (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 147–82.
8 Georges Dicker, ‘The Concept of Immediate Perception in Berkeley’s Immaterialism,’
51–2, 54–7. In Colin M. Turbayne, ed., Berkeley: Critical and Interpretive Essays
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 48–66.
9 My view on this point changed as a result of reading Pappas, Berkeley’s Thought,
170–1. For details see Dicker, Berkeley’s Idealism: A Critical Examination, 134–5.
10 ‘Theory of Vision’ is the shortened title for Berkeley’s An Essay towards a New Theory
of Vision, and ‘Theory of Vision Vindicated’ is the shortened title for his Theory of
Vision Vindicated and Explained.
11 ‘TVV ’ is the abbreviation of the title, Theory of Vision Vindicated and Explained, and
references to that work are to section numbers. In one place in the same work,
Berkeley still wants to contrast suggestion with perception (TVV 52).
12 See 3D: 174–5, 183, 191, 194–5, 203, 204, 205.
13 Elsewhere I call this sense of immediate perception ‘immediately perceivedp’. See
Dicker, Berkeley’s Idealism: A Critical Examination, 87, 122, 127–8, and the articles
mentioned in note 6.
14 Roderick M. Chisholm, Perceiving: A Philosophical Study (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1957), 158–9.
15 ‘TV ’ is the abbreviation of the title, An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, and
references to that work are to section numbers.
16 Here I agree with Rickless, Berkeley’s Argument for Idealism, 24, and I must retract a
suggestion to the contrary that I made in ‘The Concept of Immmediate Perception in
Berkeley’s Immaterialism’, 55–6.
17 Elsewhere I call this sense of immediate perception ‘immediately perceivede’. See
Dicker, Berkeley’s Idealism: A Critical Examination, 86, 127–30, and the articles
18 See Dicker, Berkeley’s Idealism: A Critical Examination, 128–30 and the articles
19 These notebooks are published under the title, Philosophical Commentaries, in
A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop (eds.), The Works of George Berkeley, Volume I, pp. 1–139.
(London: Nelson, 1948).
20 Rickless, Berkeley’s Argument for Idealism, 41–2.
21 Ibid., 42n.
22 René Descartes, The Philosophical Works of Descartes, Volume II , trans. John
Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1984), 19.
23 One book on Berkeley that shows very well that he operates with different senses of
immediate perception (including notably an epistemological one), though it does
not use technical definitions, as do Pappas, Rickess, and I, is G. J. Warnock, Berkeley
(Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1982 [1953]), especially pp. 126–40 and
pp. 152–170.
24 See Georges Dicker, Dewey’s Theory of Knowing (Philadephia: Philosophical
Monographs, 1976), 4–5.
25 The analysis of the problem of perception that follows, as well as of Locke’s attempt
to solve it and of Berkeley’s critique of that attempt, is based on a more detailed
exposition given in Dicker, Berkeley’s Idealism: A Critical Examination, 29–35, 37–42,
48–63, 194–200.
26 Thus in introducing the topic of ‘sensitive knowledge’ (= perceptual knowledge) in
the Essay, Locke writes: ‘There is, indeed, another Perception of the Mind, employ’d
about the particular existence of finite Beings without us; which . . . passes under the
name of Knowledge. There can be nothing more certain than that the Idea we receive
from an external Object is in our Minds; this is intuitive Knowledge. But whether
there be anything more than barely that Idea in our Minds, whether we can thence
certainly infer the existence of anything without us, which corresponds to that Idea,
is that, whereof some Men think there may be a question made, because Men may
have such Ideas in their Minds, when no such Thing exists, no such Object affects
their Senses’ (Essay IV.ii.14: 537). Here Locke puts his finger on the fundamental
point behind the classic problem of perception – that any perceptual experience
obtained by perceiving a material thing can be duplicated when no such thing is
being perceived – a point that is different from, and not to be confused with, the
view that we can never perceive material things.
27 ‘Principles’ is the shortened title for A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human
Knowledge.
28 For brevity’s sake I shall here discuss only section 18; I disuss sections 19 and 20 in
Dicker, Berkeley’s Idealism A Critical Examination, 198–200.
29 Ibid., 245–51, 253–70, 281–95.
16
Berkeley and Malebranche

Charles J. McCracken
Berkeley was always prepared for the possibility that his philosophy might be
confused with that of the seventeenth-century French thinker Nicolas
Malebranche (1638–1715), a philosopher whose major works had all been
translated into English late in the seventeenth century. Malebranche was widely
read in Britain and Ireland, and Berkeley himself would later seek to meet
him – with what success we do not know – when, in 1713, he visited Paris for the
first time.1 Thus, towards the end of the Principles, Berkeley was at pains to say
he did not hold that ‘we see corporeal things, not by themselves, but by seeing
that which represents them in the essence of God, which doctrine is I must
confess to me incomprehensible’.2 Malebranche is not explicitly named here, but
it would be clear to any reader with some knowledge of his philosophy that the
reference is to him.
Nonetheless, a 1713 review of the Principles in the Jesuit journal Mémoires de
Trévoux pronounced Berkeley ‘un Malebranchiste de bonne foi’ – a bona fide
Malebranchist.3 It was a view that was to be shared by a number of others in the
eighteenth century, among them Samuel Clarke, Henry Bolingbroke, Thomas
Reid and James Beattie.4 Berkeley repeatedly sought to dispel this identification,
adding to the revised (1734) edition of the Three Dialogues a passage in which
Philonous, Berkeley’s spokesman, listed important differences between Berkeley’s
and Malebranche’s views, ending with the declaration that ‘upon the whole there
are no principles more fundamentally opposite than his and mine’.5 Berkeley was
not without justification for insisting that his philosophy differed radically from
Malebranche’s – Malebranche, after all, made a distinction between ideas and
sensations, believed in abstract ideas, affirmed the existence of matter and held
that God is the cause of human volitions, all views that Berkeley emphatically
rejected. Yet it was no accident that many readers thought they heard in him an
echo of Malebranche. It was not until 1934, though, with the publication of
288
Berkeley and Malebranche 289
Berkeley and Malebranche, by A. A. Luce (1934), the foremost Berkeley scholar of

the twentieth century, that the debt the Irish thinker owed to the Frenchman was
first shown in detail.
Numerous entries in Berkeley’s Notebooks show that he was studying
Malebranche’s Search after Truth (hereafter Search) during the period when he
was working out his views.6 These entries often show Berkeley hostile to one
view or another of Malebranche’s, but there are nonetheless noteworthy elements
of Berkeley’s philosophy that seem to reflect Malebranche’s influence. The most
important of these – important because it was a point central to both their
philosophies – was the contrast each drew between the ‘Heathen’ and the
‘Christian’ views of nature. The ‘Heathen’ view, according to Malebranche,
consists in the belief that the things in nature are themselves endowed with
causal powers, whereas the ‘Christian’ view recognizes that everything occurring
in nature depends directly on God as its sole cause. But, said Malebranche,
Christian philosophers have failed to recognize that ‘the Nature of the Heathen
philosophers is a chimera’, because the Christian philosophers, whether
Scholastics or Cartesians, while recognizing that God is the ultimate cause of all
that occurs, have supposed that nature is filled with ‘secondary causes’ – powers
in things to produce effects in other things.7 Berkeley’s view, and even the
language he expressed it in, was the same. If one means by ‘Nature’ a realm of
things that have the power to produce effects, rather than ascribing those effects
‘to the immediate and sole operation of God’, then ‘Nature in this acceptation is
a vain chimera introduced by those heathens, who had not just notions of the
omnipresence and perfection of God’. That the heathen philosophers held such a
view was unsurprising, according to Berkeley, but it was astonishing ‘that it
should be received among Christians professing belief in the Holy Scriptures’
(Principles §150). Both Malebranche and Berkeley saw, as a central mission of
their philosophies, the demonstration of the immediate dependence of the
things in nature on God (though, as we shall see later, Berkeley rejected
Malebranche’s view that all events, including voluntary human actions, are
caused by God).
Berkeley was, however, to press beyond Malebranche in this matter. Where
Malebranche had held that the Christian view of nature entails that there are no
corporeal powers in nature, Berkeley insisted that the Christian view also entails
that there are no corporeal substances in nature. Malebranche himself had said
that matter is ‘dead’, ‘inert’, ‘good for nothing’.8 It was, therefore, according to
Berkeley, ‘very unaccountable and extravagant’ for Malebranche and those who
thought like him to suppose that God had made ‘an innumerable multitude of
created beings, which they acknowledge are not capable of producing any one
effect in Nature, and which therefore are made to no manner of purpose, since
God might have done everything as well without them’ (Principles §53; cf. §§61–
6). Malebranche had also insisted that God, not material things, is the cause of all
our sensations, which sensations, he said, are a ‘natural revelation’ whereby God
tells us what we must do to protect and preserve our bodies. Berkeley too held
that our sensations ‘constitute an universal language of the Author of Nature’,
whereby God informs us of what we must do for ‘the preservation and well-
being of our bodies, as also to avoid whatever may be harmful and destructive to
them’.9 But since Malebranche himself insisted that God is the immediate cause
of our sensations, what reason would God have to create a world of inefficacious
material substances as the correlate of those sensations? Berkeley’s answer, of
course, was that God would have no reason to create such a world – a view he
thought Malebranche, who said that ‘God always acts by the simplest ways’,
should also have embraced. But notwithstanding this crucial difference between
the two thinkers, it is likely that, as Berkeley had studied the Search at the very
time when he was working out his own stance, Malebranche’s insistence that all
events in nature depend directly and immediately on God, and the arguments he
adduced in support of that view (some of which Berkeley was himself to use),
had an important influence on Berkeley.
The existence of matter
The influence of the Search on Berkeley was not limited, however, to this doctrine.
In Malebranche he would also have encountered prototypes of several arguments
he himself was to use against the existence of matter. For although Malebranche
continued to believe in the existence of material substances, he disagreed with
Descartes that reasoning can prove their existence with certainty. We can only
be certain that matter exists, he held, because Scripture reveals that God created
the heavens and the earth. Malebranche offered various arguments in defence
of the claim that we cannot prove with certainty that matter exists, and some of
them are quite similar to some arguments Berkeley was to give in defence of
immaterialism. Thus, Malebranche argued that neither the senses nor reason can
prove the existence of bodies (Malebranche supposed that ‘bodies’, ‘extended
substances’, ‘material substances’ and ‘matter’ all name the same thing; Berkeley,
of course, was sharply to distinguish ‘bodies’, in whose existence he believed,
from ‘matter’, whose existence he denied). The senses cannot prove that bodies
exist, said Malebranche, for we cannot directly perceive bodies by our senses nor
are bodies the cause of our sensations. And reason cannot prove that bodies
exist, for it can only establish what is necessarily the case, and bodies – if there
are any – exist not from any necessity but only because God has freely chosen to
create them.10
In Principles §18, Berkeley too argued that neither sense nor reason can prove
that matter exists. Like Malebranche, he argued that the senses cannot, because
‘by them we have the knowledge only of our sensations, ideas, or those things
that are immediately perceived by sense’. He did not give the same argument that
Malebranche had given for the claim that reason cannot prove that matter exists,
arguing instead that ‘what happens in dreams, phrensies, and the like puts it
beyond dispute’ that we could have sensations ‘though no bodies existed without,
resembling them’. But that was an argument Malebranche himself had used
elsewhere, arguing that dreams and what happens to people in a high fever show
that to have an idea ‘there need not be any external thing like that idea’.11 Berkeley
had concluded that since it is possible for ‘an intelligence, without the help of
external bodies, to be affected with the same train of sensations or ideas that
you are’, such an intelligence would have ‘all the reasons to believe the existence
of corporeal substances’ that we have (Principles §19). This should give us pause
in our conviction that, because we have sensations, there must be ‘external bodies’
corresponding to them (Principles §20). Malebranche had made the same point,
arguing that, since God can cause all our sensations himself, the senses do
not prove that there are ‘external bodies’ (corps hors de nous – Malebranche’s
curious expression that Taylor had translated as ‘external bodies’, the term
Berkeley also used).12
But although Malebranche held that we, were it not for the teaching of
Scripture, could not establish with certainty that matter exists, he did think that
Descartes’ argument for the existence of bodies in the Sixth Meditation proved
their existence highly probable. And he accepted Descartes’ view that extension is
the essence of material substances (that is, that without which they cannot exist).
Because of this, he sought to combat the Scholastic view that extension is just an
‘accident’ of bodies, not their essence. He did this by arguing that if you ask the
Schoolmen what their concept of matter is, their reply makes it clear that they
have no definite idea of what matter is, but only the idea of some ‘being or
substance in general’. But such an idea, said Malebranche, is too vague to provide
us with any definite idea of what matter can be. Now Malebranche did not at all
deny that we have an idea of ‘being in general’ – to the contrary, he insisted that
that idea is involved in any idea we have of particular things. But he also insisted
that our idea of any particular thing must be not ‘the indefinite idea of being in
general’, but the idea of something having a determinate essence. Descartes had
provided, he held, just such a definite idea of matter’s essence, by showing that
extension is that without which a body cannot exist. The Schoolmen’s idea of
matter, by contrast, contains ‘nothing real and cannot even be used to explain
natural effects’.13
Where Malebranche argued that the Schoolmen’s concept of matter was
nothing more than the idea of being in general, Berkeley made the same claim,
but against philosophers more generally. Ask the ‘most accurate philosophers’
what they mean by the expression material substance and they will ‘acknowledge
they have no other meaning annexed to those sounds but the idea of being in
general, together with the relative notion of supporting accidents’ (Principles
§17). While Locke has long been recognized as a source of this view,14 it was
Malebranche who expressly argued that if we adopt the Schoolmen’s view of
matter, which (he claimed) amounts to nothing more than the idea of being in
general, then we admit we really have no idea of matter at all. It seems plausible
to see in Malebranche’s argument the prototype of Berkeley’s argument, even
though the latter’s argument proceeded from a very different premise from
Malebranche’s – Malebranche insisted that we do indeed have an idea of being in
general, but claimed that it alone is never sufficient for us to conceive the nature
of any particular thing, whereas Berkeley denied that we can even form an idea
of being in general, which is ‘the most abstract and incomprehensible of all other’
(Principles §17).
Another way in which the Search was almost certainly instructive to the
young Berkeley was in its detailed argument that our ideas of the primary
qualities (extension, figure, motion and distance) vary just as much with changes
in the condition or position of the perceiver as do our ideas of the secondary
qualities (colour, heat, sound, smell, taste). It was widely agreed that there is
nothing in bodies that resembles our ideas of the secondary qualities (or ‘sense
qualities’, as Malebranche called them), whereas the primary qualities were
widely supposed to be like our ideas of them. But in the first book of the Search,
Malebranche examined both kinds of quality in detail and concluded that the
kinds of argument that were used to prove that secondary qualities are not in
bodies in the way they appear to our senses to be – arguments from how these
qualities vary depending on the perceiver’s condition – could be used to prove
the same thing about the primary qualities. Berkeley, from very early in his
notebooks, adopted a similar view: ‘Primary ideas prov’d not to exist in matter,
after the same manner that secondary ones are prov’d not to exist therein’
(Notebooks 20). Now Locke, in the Essay, had discussed both the primary and the
secondary qualities at length (indeed it was Locke, following Boyle, who
introduced these names for them, though the distinction was an old one). But
the argument Malebranche had insisted on – an argument Berkeley was to adopt
– to prove that the ideas we get from our senses are not present in the material
object (the argument that our ideas of the primary qualities are just as relative to
the condition and position of the perceiver as are our ideas of secondary
qualities) was not one Berkeley would have met in Locke’s Essay. To the contrary,
according to Locke the ‘idea of motion represents it as it really is in the manna
moving: a circle or square are the same, whether in idea or existence, in the mind,
or in the manna’ (Essay II .viii.18). Descartes had expressed much the same view
in the Principles of Philosophy, Part I, §70. By contrast, Malebranche insisted that
‘through sight we cannot even ascertain whether a circle or a square, the simplest
of figures, are not in fact an ellipse and a parallelogram, although these figures
might be in our hands and very close to our eyes’.15
Malebranche’s purpose in arguing that our ideas of both primary and
secondary qualities vary with our condition and position was not to impugn the
existence of material substances, but rather to show that the senses regularly
mislead us. This view of the senses was one Berkeley firmly repudiated. But
Malebranche had noted that this variability could raise a question about the very
existence of material substances: ‘What evidence do you have that an impression
that is deceptive not only with regard to sense qualities, but also with regard to
size, figure, and motion of bodies, is not so with regard to the actual existence of
these same bodies?’16 Pierre Bayle used this as grounds for calling the existence
of bodies into question, in his article on Zeno of Elea, in the Dictionnaire
historique et critique – an article there is good reason to believe Berkeley had
read – building explicitly on Malebranche’s treatment of the relativity of the
primary qualities.17 Berkeley came in time to recognize the limitations of the
argument from the relativity of perceived qualities and did not put great weight
on it in the Principles (cf. Principles §§14–15), but he did give it prominence in
the Three Dialogues, and it is noteworthy that he there took up the primary and
secondary qualities in much the same order that Malebranche had taken them
up in Book One of the Search, and often gave much the same arguments to prove
their relativity to the perceiver as Malebranche had given.18
Several other Malebranchean doctrines were of some importance for Berkeley,
and the rest of this chapter will look at three of them: the theory of ‘the vision of
things in God’; the doctrine of ‘occasional causes’ (Occasionalism); and the claim
that we know the human mind not by way of idea but by ‘inner feeling’.
The vision of things in God
Central to his theory of the ‘vision of all things in God’ was the radical distinction
Malebranche drew between ideas and sensations. Our ideas of bodies, according
to Malebranche, are not modifications (‘modes’) of the human mind at all, but
rather a portion of God’s idea of infinite extension (‘infinite intelligible extension’)
that God ‘unites’ our minds to when physically extended objects are present to one
or another of our sense organs. Sensations, on the other hand, are modes of our
minds, which we ‘paint’ or project onto the portion of intelligible extension that
God unites our minds to. It is by this projection of our sensations onto intelligible
extension that particular bodies are made visible, tangible, etc., to us. Thus, when
I look at, touch and taste an orange, the colour I see, the texture I feel, the flavour
I taste, are my sensations, which are projected onto a part of purely intelligible
extension (one without colour, texture, etc.), which intelligible extension (taken in
its infinite totality) is God’s archetypal idea of extension.19
Berkeley completely rejected this theory, calling it unintelligible and saying it
rested on a belief in abstract ideas – a belief Berkeley took himself to have refuted
in the Introduction to the Principles. For Berkeley, our sensations are ideas (we also
have other ideas, those we imagine or remember, but those ideas themselves are
ultimately based on sensations we have previously had) and no distinction of the
sort Malebranche tried to draw between ideas and sensations is intelligible. And yet
a Berkeleian idea seems, in some ways, to be a sort of synthesis of a Malebranchean
idea and a Malebranchean sensation. For, like a Malebranchean idea, a Berkeleian
idea is not a mode of the mind (Principles §49), but something radically different
from minds or states of mind (Principles §89). Ideas, said Berkeley, can exist even
when we do not perceive them, ‘since there may be some other spirit that perceives
them, though we do not’ (Principles §48). In the Three Dialogues, Berkeley makes
clear who that other spirit is: it is ‘an omnipresent eternal Mind, which knows and
comprehends all things’.20 In the Three Dialogues, Hylas asks whether the tree we
see exists independently of our minds. Philonous replies that it does, because it ‘is
truly known and comprehended by (that is, exists in) the infinite mind of God’.21 It
is such claims that led some of Berkeley’s early readers to suppose that he subscribed
to Malebranche’s doctrine of the vision of things in God.
But while Berkeley sometimes stresses that ideas are independent of our
minds (especially when eager to show his doctrine is compatible with our
ordinary belief that the things we perceive do not depend on us), at other times
he stresses that they are ‘inert, fleeting, dependent beings, which subsist not by
themselves but are supported by, or exist in minds or spiritual substances’
(Principles §89, Berkeley’s italics). And here Berkeleian ideas sound quite a lot
like Malebranchean sensations – transient things that are caused directly in us by
God. There is, I think, a certain tension in Berkeley’s notion that ideas are in
some sense independent of the human mind and yet are mere ‘fleeting, perishable
passions’ (Principles §89, 1st edition) – a tension that perhaps arises from a
notion of ideas that in some ways combines Malebranche’s concept of an idea
with his concept of a sensation.
Occasionalism
According to Malebranche’s theory of ‘occasional causes’, God alone is the true

cause of all that occurs in the universe; what we usually take to be the causes of
events are really just the occasions on which God produces effects. Thus, when
ball A strikes ball B and B begins to move, A’s striking B is not the cause of B’s
motion, but rather the occasion on which God causes B to move. Not, to be sure,
that Malebranche thought that God produces all the events in the universe by a
vast number of ‘particular volitions’; instead, he held, the laws of nature are God’s
‘general volitions’, and thus by a small number of basic laws of nature (i.e. a small
number of general volitions), God produces all the effects that make up the
course of nature. Malebranche’s chief argument for this claim is that, neither
from what we perceive by our senses nor from our purely geometrical concept of
an extended thing, do we get any concept of power. Our senses show us not
powers in things, but only that one event is followed by another. Nor does our
geometrical concept of extension include any notion of power, for it is just the
idea of something having figure and mobility. Our inner awareness, however,
provides us with a notion of volition or the will, and our concept of God includes
the notion that God’s will is unlimited – that is, that God can bring about any
(non-contradictory) state of affairs just by willing it. God requires no instruments,
Malebranche never tired of saying, to work his will. So the only clear idea we
have of a power to bring about effects is our concept of God’s unlimited ability
to produce whatever he wills. Since nothing can happen unless God wills it, and
whatever God wills does happen, his will is both the necessary and the sufficient
cause of all events. Hence it is unnecessary, indeed redundant, to suppose any
‘secondary causes’ when accounting for what occurs in the universe.22
Berkeley accepted part of this doctrine. He too argued that we have no idea of
a power in bodies (which, for Berkeley, are complexes of sensory ideas) to
produce effects; he too held that our notion of causal agency comes from our
notion of the will (Principles §§25–8). And he held, as we have seen, that events in
nature are immediately caused by God. In these matters he followed Malebranche.
But he departed from him in two important ways. First, Malebranche held that all
events, including human volitions and the actions they give rise to, are caused by
God. But that, Berkeley believed, would destroy our free will and our moral
responsibility. He therefore qualified the claim: all events that do not depend on
the will of human beings or other finite spirits (e.g. angels) are caused by God. But
we are the true causes of our own volitions and the actions they produce. ‘We
move our legs our selves. ’Tis we that will their movement. Herein I differ from
Malbranche’ (Notebooks 548).
The other way his account of causality departed from Malebranche’s was
about what the ‘occasions’ are that lead God to cause certain events. According to
Malebranche, events occurring in material objects are occasions on which God
causes certain other events to occur. Some of these are events in inanimate
material objects (the first ball striking the second is the occasion for God to
cause the second to move); others are events in those material substances that
are human bodies, which are occasions for God to cause events in human minds
(thus on the occasion of events occurring in our sense organs and our brains,
God causes sensations in our minds). By the same token, certain events in our
minds (e.g. my willing my legs to move) are the occasions for God to cause
correlated events (e.g. my legs moving) in those material objects that are our
bodies. Now since Berkeley denied that there are any material substances, he of
course rejected this whole doctrine (Principles §§67–76). Nonetheless, what
Malebranche had said of bodies (they never cause anything), Berkeley said about
ideas: ‘All our ideas, sensations, or the things which we perceive, by whatsoever
names they may be distinguished, are visibly inactive, there is nothing of power
or agency included in them’ (Principles §25). Thus when we see two bodies
collide and hear a loud noise, it is not the collision of the bodies that causes the
sound – it is God (Principles §§32–3). This is still a version of Occasionalism,
with ideas as the occasion on which God produces other ideas in the mind. But
as we have seen, it is only a partial Occasionalism, for the human will is the true
cause of our voluntary actions.
Our knowledge of the mind
In his views about the mind, Berkeley (who used the words ‘mind’, ‘soul’ and
‘spirit’ interchangeably) was closer to Descartes than to Malebranche.23 Although
Malebranche held that the mind is an incorporeal substance, he denied that we

can know its nature. By contrast, like Descartes, Berkeley believed both that the
mind is an incorporeal substance and that we can know what it is – it is a thing
that perceives and acts: Existence of a spirit, he said, is percipere and agere
(Notebooks 429–9a). But there is one notable point at which Berkeley’s view of
the mind is closer to Malebranche’s than to Descartes’ (or Locke’s), for both
Berkeley and Malebranche denied that we have an idea of the mind; instead,
both said, our knowledge of the mind depends on what Berkeley called ‘inward
feeling’ and what Malebranche called ‘sentiment intérieur’, where the two thinkers
seem to have intended, by these terms, much the same thing.24 Even here there is,
to be sure, an important difference in their views, a difference that arose from the
ways in which they understood what an idea is. According to Berkeley, there
could not be, even in principle, an idea of the mind, because ideas are passive
things, whereas minds are active things, and hence the mind could never be
represented by an idea (Principles §§137–8). Malebranche, on the other hand,
held that God must have an idea of the human mind – otherwise he could not
have created it; but, said Malebranche, although God has disclosed to us his idea
of the body, he has not chosen to disclose to us his idea of the human mind –
perhaps because if we had clear ideas of both our mind and our body, their
union would be weakened. Despite this important difference, it is noteworthy
that throughout his first notebook, Berkeley had agreed with Descartes and
Locke that we have an idea of the mind – had held, indeed, that we must have an
idea of the mind if we are to have any knowledge of it (Notebooks 378). In what
is generally taken to be his second notebook, however, Berkeley completely
changed his mind about this matter, now arguing that we have no idea of the
mind. This had been one of Malebranche’s most celebrated doctrines – one of
the ways in which he departed sharply from the Cartesians – and it seems
plausible that it was his reading of the Search that first suggested this view to
Berkeley as a serious possibility.
We may say in conclusion that Berkeley’s relation to Malebranche was far
more complex than would be supposed from his claim that ‘there are no
principles more fundamentally opposite than his and mine’.
Notes
1 On his attempt to meet Malebranche, see Berkeley’s letters to John Percival and
Thomas Prior in Works, 1948–59, v. 8, pp. 73–6.
2 Berkeley, Principles §148.

3 McCracken, C. J. and Tipton, I. C., eds. (2000), Berkeley’s Principles and Dialogues:
Background Source Materials. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 178.
4 See McCracken, C. J. (1983), Malebranche and British Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford
5 Works, v. 2, p. 214.
6 See Notebooks, entries 255, 257, 265, 269, 288, 358, 424, 548, 686, 686a, 800, 818; other
entries have some relation to Occasionalism, Malebranche’s theory of causality,
without naming Malebranche: 433, 499, 499a, 754, 794, 855, 856.
7 Malebranche, N. (1700), A Treatise concerning Nature and Grace, trans. Thomas
Taylor. London: W. Bowyer, pp. 32–3. This translation by Thomas Taylor was
published in a single volume along with Taylor’s translation of Malebranche’s Search
after Truth, which Luce (1934) has shown is the version of the Search Berkeley
probably read. Cf. also Search, Elucidation Fifteen, Reply to Seventh Proof.
8 Malebranche, N. (1980b), The Search after Truth, trans. T. M. Lennon and P. J.
Olscamp. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, bk. 6, pt. 2, chaps. 3 and 6, and
Elucidation Fifteen.
9 Berkeley, Theory of Vision §147.
10 Malebranche, 1980b, Elucidation Six.
11 Ibid., p. 217.
12 Cf. Malebranche, N. (1980a), Dialogues on Metaphysics, trans. W. Doney. New York:
Abaris Books, I.6, for an extended argument for this claim.
13 Malebranche, 1980b, p. 245.
14 Locke, J. ([1689]1975), An Essay concerning Human Understanding. P. H. Nidditch
(ed) Oxford: Clarendon Press, II .xxiii.2.
15 Malebranche, 1980b, p. 33.
16 Ibid., p. 573.
17 Bayle, P. (1697), Dictionnaire historique et critique. Rotterdam: Reinier Leers, ‘Zénon
d’Elée’, remark G. That Berkeley had read this article and associated it with
Malebranche seems clear from Notebooks, 358 and 424.
18 For a detailed examination of the similarities, see McCracken, 1983, pp. 218–24.
19 Malebranche, 1980b, bk. 3, pt. 2, chap. 6.
20 Works, v. 2, p. 248.
21 Works, v. 2, p. 235. Berkeley’s italics.
22 Malebranche, 1980b, Elucidation Fifteen.
23 See Chapter 13 in this volume on Berkeley and Descartes.
24 Cf. Berkeley, Principles §89 with Malebranche, 1980b, bk. 3, pt. 2, chap. 7, sect. 4 and
Elucidation Eleven.
17
Reid’s Opposition to Berkeley

James Van Cleve
Thomas Reid opposes the basic doctrines of Berkeley’s philosophy – that the
only objects of human knowledge are ideas, that ideas and spirits are the only
things that exist, that there is no such thing as matter, and that the objects of
sight and touch are radically heterogeneous. At the same time, he appropriates
key elements of Berkeley’s philosophy from the New Theory of Vision and makes
them central in his own – especially Berkeley’s views about the manifold ways in
which we gain information about features proper to one sense from cues
belonging to another. In what follows, I discuss the agreements and disagreements
between Berkeley and Reid under two headings: (I) ideas and idealism and (II )
space and sight.
Ideas and idealism
Reid opposes the way of ideas – the theory that the immediate objects of
perception are ideas existing only in the mind. He believes the way of ideas
leads either to scepticism about the material world (as with Hume) or to
idealism (as with Berkeley), and in the name of common sense he opposes them
both. It is therefore surprising to find Reid telling us that he once embraced
Berkeley’s philosophy in its entirety: ‘I once believed this doctrine of ideas so
firmly, as to embrace the whole of Berkeley’s system in consequence of it’ (EIP
2.10:142).1
What led him to change his mind? More than anything else, it was
the realization that the way of ideas leads to the loss of the mind itself, or
its demotion to a bundle of ideas (see EIP 2.12:162–3, but also all of EIP
2.10–11). Reid is the progenitor of the view that Hume is Berkeley made
consistent.
299
The alleged unknowability of external things

Reid holds there are two sceptical arguments we must accept if we embrace the
theory of ideas. The first is an argument that we have no knowledge of the
material world (if taken to be anything beyond our ideas); the second is an
argument that we do not even have any conception of such a world. The first
argument may be put thus (EIP 2.11:156–7):
1. If we have any knowledge of a material world, it must be through our

perceiving material things.
2. But we do not perceive material things; we perceive nothing but our own
ideas.
3. Therefore, we have no knowledge of a material world.
Reid accepts the first premise because he thinks that if we do not perceive
material things, we can know of their existence only through an inference that
would be hopelessly problematic. He cites Descartes, Malebranche, Berkeley and
Hume as having shown how questionable the required inference would be –
either by trying to give a good argument for the material world but failing, as in
the case of Descartes, or by arguing that no such argument is possible, as in the
case of Hume. According to Hume, the inference would go from ideas as effects
to objects as causes. We have reason to believe Ys are caused by Xs only if we
have experienced Xs conjoined with Ys in the past, but if the theory of ideas is
correct, we have never experienced any of the relevant Xs – that is, any objects
other than our ideas (EHU 12).
Reid holds that there is fortunately no need to make the problematic inference,
since we perceive material things directly, contrary to the second premise. We
need only open our eyes to see the sun and the moon (EIP 2.14:172). How, then,
does he respond to the pantheon of philosophers who subscribe to the way of
ideas?
Against the way of ideas

Reid rebuts the following argument for the way of ideas, taken from Hume but
also similar to some of Berkeley’s arguments in the Three Dialogues: ‘The table,
which we see, seems to diminish as we remove further from it; but the real table,
which exists independent of us, suffers no alteration. It was therefore nothing but
its image which was present to the mind’ ([1748]1975:152).
The argument may be put in the form of the following syllogism:
Reid’s Opposition to Berkeley 301
1. What I see diminishes in magnitude as I retreat from it.

2. The table itself does not diminish in magnitude as I retreat from it.
3. Therefore, what I see is not the table itself, but only its image or idea.
Ironically, Reid counters the argument by using a distinction he learned from

Berkeley. He contends that Hume’s premises are true only if we restate them as
follows (EIP 2.14:180–2):
1. What I see diminishes in apparent magnitude as I retreat from it.

2. The table itself does not diminish in real magnitude as I retreat from it.
3. Therefore, what I see is not the table.
Here Reid is appropriating Berkeley’s distinction between visible and tangible

magnitude, rebaptizing them as apparent and real magnitude. As Reid develops
it, the real magnitude of an object is an intrinsic property of it, measured in
inches or feet, whereas the apparent magnitude of an object is a relation between
the object and a perceiver, measured by the angle the object subtends at the eye.
It is easy to see that apparent magnitude diminishes with distance (objects
subtending smaller angles when further away) whereas real magnitude does not.
Once we record these facts correctly, Hume’s conclusion no longer follows. ‘The
syllogism has what the logicians call two middle terms’ (EIP 2.14:182).
Berkeley seems to take the way of ideas for granted without argument.
‘It is evident to anyone who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge,
that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses . . . (PHK 1).
Nonetheless, some of his arguments are adaptable to show that ideas, not external
things, are what we perceive. Consider the following argument from the First
Dialogue:
The point will be past all doubt, if you consider, that in case colors were real
properties or affections inherent in external bodies, they could admit of no
alteration, without some change wrought in the very bodies themselves: but is it
not evident from what has been said, that upon the use of microscopes, upon a
change happening in the humors of the eye, or a variation of distance, without
any manner of real alteration in the thing itself, the colors of any object are either
changed, or totally disappear? Nay, all other circumstances remaining the same,
change but the situation of some objects, and they shall present different colors
to the eye.
3D, 185–6
The conclusion is that colours are not inherent in external bodies, but we
could recruit the facts Berkeley cites to make an argument parallel to Hume’s:
1. What I see changes in colour as I draw nearer to it. (When I look at the
mountain from a distance through the haze, I see blue, but when I look at
it from close up, I see green.)
2. The mountain itself does not change in colour as I draw nearer to it.
3. Therefore, what I see is not the mountain itself, but only an image or idea.
I conjecture that Reid would reply as follows: What changes as I approach the
mountain is its apparent colour – first it appears blue, then green. Its appearing
green or blue is not a matter of its presenting me with some item that really is
green or blue, but is a dyadic relation between the mountain and me. What
remains the same all along is the real colour of the mountain, which may be
construed either as a disposition of the mountain to appear various colours in
various circumstances or as the underlying molecular constitution that grounds
the disposition. Like the table argument, the colour argument equivocates
between apparent colour as a relational property and real colour as an inherent
property. There is no one construal of colour that makes both premises true.
The alleged inconceivability of external things

Reid attributes to Berkeley and Hume an argument more radical than the
argument that we cannot know that matter exists – we cannot even conceive of
matter. The argument runs as follows (IHM 5.8:75):
1. ‘We can have no conception of any thing but what resembles some
sensation or idea in our minds.’
2. ‘The sensations and ideas in our minds can resemble nothing but the
sensations and ideas in other minds.’
3. Therefore, ‘we can have no conception of an inanimate substance, such as
matter is conceived to be, or of any of its qualities.’
The second premise states in Reid’s language Berkeley’s dictum that ‘an idea
can be like nothing but an idea’ (P 8). Reid accepts this premise, and he credits
Berkeley with having made it evident.
The first premise states in Reid’s language Hume’s empiricist principle that all
our simple ideas are copied from precedent impressions. This is the premise Reid
challenges. He believes we have many conceptions – of external bodies, of
substantial minds, and of active powers – that are exceptions to it.
One of Reid’s points against the empiricist principle echoes Hylas in the Third
Dialogue. Berkeley admits we can have no idea of spirits, since ideas do not
resemble them, but he nonetheless insists that we have some conception of
spirits – we have a notion of them. Then why, ask Hylas and Reid, cannot we have
notions of matter? (EIP 2.11:154). But Reid’s most important point against the
empiricist principle is his experimentum crucis.
Reid’s experimentum crucis

Reid thinks it is as clear as anything can be that we have notions or conceptions
of things and qualities that do not resemble any of our sensations. This is the
moral of a thought experiment he calls his experimentum crucis (IHM 5.6:65–7
and 5.7:70). He points to a notion that Berkeley and Hume would certainly agree
that we possess – the notion of extension – and contends that it could never be
extracted from our sensations. He asks us to imagine a being furnished with a
progressively richer array of sensations, beginning with the prick of a pin,
advancing to more complex sensations such as the pressure of a blunt object, and
culminating with the sensations accompanying the motion of his limbs. He asks
at each step of the way whether those sensations would suffice to give anyone a
conception of extension, and his answer is no. But if extension resembled
anything in our sensations, a notion of it could be extracted from our sensations,
so it follows that extension resembles nothing in our sensations. Our conception
of extension is innate in Hume’s sense – not copied from anything in our
sensations.
The experimentum crucis concerns only tactile sensations. Friends of Berkeley
may therefore ask, why can we not obtain our notion of extension from visual
sensations? Reid’s answer is that we can indeed do this, but only in virtue of an
innate human disposition, not in virtue of any resemblance between visual
sensations and extended objects. Visual sensations are caused by retinal
impressions, and retinal impressions cause us to see points of an object at various
positions in external space. (This happens thanks to the ‘receive low, perceive
high’ law discussed below.) To see points as occupying various positions in
external space is to see an extended expanse, but the sensations that are the
occasion of our so seeing are not themselves extended. Here is a case in which we
conceive of something bearing no resemblance to any of our ideas or sensations.
Space and sight
Berkeley’s Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision may be divided into four
quadrants, devoted to the seeing of outward distance (2–51), the seeing of size
(52–87), the seeing of up–down orientation (88–120) and the seeing of shape,
along with the question of whether shape is an idea common to sight and touch
(121–59). In each of the last three quadrants, Berkeley seeks to confirm his views
by applying them to a famous test case: the moon illusion in quadrant 2, the
problem of the inverted retinal image in quadrant 3 and Molyneux’s question in
quadrant 4.
Reid studied the Theory of Vision closely, and he has much to say about each
of its four principal topics. He agrees with Berkeley’s contention in quadrant 1
that distance is not perceived immediately by sight, but only through visual signs
that we have learned to associate with distance as apprehended by touch. Indeed,
he uses Berkeley’s theory of distance perception as the model for what he calls
acquired perception, an important extension of our cognitive capacities wherein
we learn to perceive by one sense features given originally only to another (IHM
6.20–3 and EIP 2.21–2). Reid pays his respects to the New Theory in the following
passage:
The Theory of vision . . . contains very important discoveries, and marks of great
genius. He distinguishes, more accurately than any that went before him, between
the immediate objects of sight, and those of the other senses which are early
associated with them. He shews, that distance, of itself, and immediately, is not
seen; but that we learn to judge of it by certain sensations and perceptions which
are connected with it. This is a very important observation; and I believe, was
first made by this author.
EIP 2.10:140
Nonetheless, Reid sharply disagrees with Berkeley’s views in quadrants 2, 3

and 4, disputing his theories and reaching opposite conclusions on each of the
three famous test cases.
Distance
Berkeley holds that sight alone gives us only a two-dimensional array of
colours, arrayed along vertical and horizontal axes, but not along any near–far
axis. It is only through touch and locomotion that we first apprehend the
distances away from us of things; for example, we find that we must walk so
many paces before we bump into the tree we see. We come to be able to perceive
the distances of things by sight mediately, however; that is to say, we learn a
battery of correlations between visual or ocular cues and distance as apprehended
by touch and kinaesthesis, and these correlations enable us to make automatic
judgements about the distances of objects on the basis of visual information

alone.
Reid agrees with everything in the preceding paragraph. In his language,
outward distance is not an object of original perception by sight, but only of
acquired perception, so called because it often seems so much like original
perception that ordinary perceivers do not know the difference (cf. TV 51, IHM
6.20:173 and EIP 2.14:182).
A person of common sense thinks that there are objects at various distances
from us, that we see these objects, and that we see their distance immediately.
Berkeley and Reid both depart from common sense in rejecting the last of these
beliefs. Reid makes no further departures, but Berkeley makes two. First, he
holds that the things whose distance we know by sight are not strictly seen by us;
they are objects of touch only. The moon we see is a small yellow disc, but there
is no small yellow disc where we take the moon to be, some 250,000 miles away
(TV 44). Second, though Berkeley allows the reader of the Theory of Vision to
believe there are objects at various distances from us, he intimates in the
Principles that nothing is really any distance from us, spatial distance being
reducible to the length of time required to reach certain tangible ideas (P 44). So
we have four progressively more radical views, with Reid occupying row 2 and
Berkeley row 4 of Table 17.1.
I believe Berkeley and Reid are both wrong in the point on which they
agree – that we do not see distance immediately. There is a way, not known in
their day, in which we can perceive distance with our eyes alone without relying
on touch, namely, stereopsis. Our two eyes receive slightly different views of any
object towards which both are directed, and the amount of discrepancy between
Table 17.1 Four progressively more radical views regarding distance perception
Are there Do we see these Do we see the

objects at a objects? distance of these
distance from objects
us? immediately?
Common sense Yes Yes Yes
Reid and Berkeley up to Yes Yes No
TV 44
Berkeley in the rest of the Yes No No
Theory of Vision
Berkeley in P 42–4 No No No
the views enables our visual systems to calculate the relative distances of objects
and make us perceive differences in depth. For corroboration, see the discussion
of ‘Stereo Sue’ in Van Cleve (2015).
Size
Berkeley distinguishes visible magnitude from tangible magnitude. Tangible
magnitude remains constant as objects move in relation to perceivers, while
visible magnitude varies. As I bring a basketball from arm’s length to just in front
of my face, its tangible magnitude remains constant, but its visible magnitude
increases rapidly until it takes up nearly all my field of view. To speak more
accurately, what increases is not its visible magnitude (that of the tangible
basketball), but the magnitude of the associated visual object or, more accurately
yet, the magnitudes in a series of distinct visible objects. As I bring the ball to my
face, I see a series of round, orange visible objects, each larger than the last. As in
the case of depth, we may come to judge tangible magnitude from visible cues,
and thus perceive it by sight mediately.
Reid follows Berkeley in distinguishing between visible and tangible
magnitude but, unlike Berkeley, he holds that they may belong to the same
objects. It is one and the same table that possesses a constant tangible or real
magnitude and a varying visible or apparent magnitude. As explained on p. 301,
this distinction is the key to Reid’s reply to Hume’s table argument for the way of
ideas.
Berkeley applies his account of size perception (that is, the perception of
tangible magnitude based on visible cues) to an ancient puzzle: why does the
moon look so much larger on the horizon than it does when higher in the sky?
The horizon moon is the same in angular size as the zenith moon, as one may
verify by comparing the moon at either location with the tip of one’s little finger.
Yet the horizon moon appears to most observers to be at least half again as large
as the zenith moon. What accounts for this difference?
A venerable explanation, sometimes attributed to Ptolemy and still defended
in our own day (Kaufman & Rock, 1962), invokes a relation between perceived
size and perceived distance. Intervening objects and terrain make the horizon
moon look farther away than the elevated moon. With constant angular size,
greater perceived distance means greater perceived size. Hence the horizon
moon is perceived as larger than the zenith moon.
Berkeley rejects this explanation. He notes that if it were correct, the horizon
moon should not appear larger when viewed through a tube or over a wall that
cuts off one’s view of the intervening terrain; yet it does still appear larger in
those circumstances, or so he claims (TV 70 and 77).
Berkeley’s preferred explanation invokes the size cue of faintness. The horizon
moon is seen through a larger tract of intervening atmosphere than is the zenith
moon and consequently appears fainter. Other things being equal, fainter things
look larger.
Reid accepts the Ptolemaic explanation. He dismisses both Berkeley’s theory
and Berkeley’s objection to Ptolemy:
Bishop Berkeley therefore committed a mistake, when he attributed the large
appearance of the horizontal moon to the faintness of her light, occasioned by its
passing through a larger tract of atmosphere: for we are so much accustomed to
see the moon in all degrees of faintness and brightness, from the greatest to the
least, that we learn to make allowance for it; and do not imagine her magnitude
increased by the faintness of her appearance. Besides, it is certain that the
horizontal moon seen through a tube which cuts off the view of the interjacent
ground, and of all terrestrial objects, loses all that unusual appearance of
magnitude.
IHM 6.22:184, my italics
Whoa! The horizon moon either continues to appear abnormally large when
viewed through a tube or it does not. How could Reid and Berkeley disagree on
such a seemingly easily resolvable matter of empirical fact? My own nighttime
attempts to settle the matter proved equivocal, however, and it turns out that
other investigators have disagreed on the same point, Molyneux and Euler siding
with Berkeley and Malebranche and Reimann with Reid (Egan, 1998 and Ross &
Plug, 2002: 120).
Ross and Plug note that modern experiments using large numbers of subjects
and quantitative methods show that ‘the presence of intervening objects, or
terrain, can increase perceived size by about 34 per cent’ (2002: 133). In the
moon illusion, perceived size is increased by about 50 per cent. Evidently, neither
Reid nor Berkeley is entirely correct in his claims about the effects of seeing
terrain on the moon illusion; pace Reid, it does not do everything, and pace
Berkeley, it does not do nothing.
Moreover, each of their explanations of the moon illusion faces independent
difficulties. Reid’s Ptolemaic explanation encounters the problem that most
observers report that the horizon moon appears closer than the elevated moon,
not farther as postulated by that explanation. Berkeley’s faintness explanation
runs up against the following difficulties: (1) the constellations are not less bright
upon rising, but do then appear larger, and (2) the Apollo astronauts reported an
earth illusion, even though the moon has no atmosphere to make the earth
appear fainter upon rising (Egan, 1998). For further difficulties, see Ross and
Plug (2002), chapter 6. To this day, none of the dozen or so explanations of the
moon illusion has won consensus.
Situation
By ‘situation’, Berkeley means the positions of objects as described by such
terms as ‘left’, ‘right’, ‘high’, ‘low’, ‘erect’ and ‘inverted’. In Berkeley’s view, situation
is not an immediate object of sight. Like distance, it is perceived by sight
only after one has learned correlations between visual signs and tangible data.
To have a visual perception of an apple as high on a branch is to know from
visual cues that one must turn one’s eyes up to see the apple clearly or reach up
to grasp its tangible counterpart. In the absence of visual–tangible associations,
one could attach no meaning to terms like ‘high’ and ‘low’ as applied to objects of
vision.
Berkeley uses his theory to solve the conundrum of the inverted retinal image.
The image of a tree on our retinas is inverted with respect to the tree, so why do
we see the tree the right way up? The question may seem naive, resting on the
dubious presupposition that retinal images are what we see. But even if the naive
question is dismissed, a real question with several possible answers remains
(Rock, 1975). Do we see the world the right way up because (1) the orientation
of the retinal image does not matter? Or do we see the world the right way up
because (2) the inverted image is the very means of upright vision, a lower point
in the retinal image signifying a higher point in ambient space? In the latter case,
does a lower point on the retina signify a higher point in space by virtue of (a)
geometrical reasoning, (b) empirical learning or (c) an innate law of the human
constitution? Berkeley and Reid agree in rejecting answer (2a), which was given
by Descartes and Kepler (TV 89–90; IHM 6.11, 115–16). As for the remaining
possibilities, Berkeley gives answer (1) in a passage or two, but gives pride of
place to answer (2b); Reid gives answer (2c).
The materials for answer (2b) are developed by Berkeley in TV 91–8,
culminating with the following remark: ‘And this seems to me the true reason
why he should call those objects uppermost that are painted on the lower part of
his eye. For, by turning the eye up they shall be distinctly seen’ (TV 98).
With this account, Berkeley answers the naive question and Rock’s question
in one stroke. There is no reason to think the inverted image should make us see
things upside down, since before learning sight–touch correlations we see things
in no orientation whatsoever, and after learning such correlations we see things

in their correct orientation. Moreover, the inverted image, rather than being
irrelevant to the perception of orientation, is the means of our seeing objects
erect once we have learned how to interpret it.
Reid dismisses the naive problem by rejecting its presupposition that we
perceive our own retinal images (IHM 6.12:121). He answers Rock’s question by
saying the inverted image signifies an erect object not by virtue of learning, but
innately. He cites the following as a law of nature: ‘Every point of the object is
seen in the direction of a right line passing from the picture of that point on the
retina through the centre of the eye’ (IMH 6.12:122–3).
It is a consequence of this law that a point whose image is projected high on
the retina will be seen as low in ambient space, and a point whose image is
projected low will be seen as high; I therefore call it the ‘receive low, perceive
high’ law. It implies that if a man’s feet are ‘painted’ high on our retinas and his
head low (as they are when a man stands upright in front of us), we shall see his
head as high and his feet as low.
Reid points out that his answer to Rock’s question and Berkeley’s answer
make conflicting predictions about certain hypothetical cases (IHM 6.12:116).
Suppose someone had worn inverting lenses from birth, making his retinal
images erect rather than inverted with respect to objects, as hypothesized by
Berkeley in section 278 of his Notebooks. How would this person see the world?
Berkeley’s view implies that the person would see nothing as erect or inverted
initially – he would first have to learn associations with directions of reaching or
looking. But after forming such associations, his erect image would signify for
him an erect object in the same manner that in Berkeley’s theory an inverted
image does for us now. It would cue him to reach up to touch a man’s face and
down to touch his feet. On Reid’s theory, by contrast, the lens wearer would see
objects as oriented right from the start – erect objects as inverted and inverted
objects as erect – and he would continue to perceive them that way indefinitely,
thanks to the ‘receive low, perceive high’ law.
Whose prediction is correct, Berkeley’s or Reid’s?

A variant of the experiment Berkeley envisioned in his notebooks was actually
carried out by the American psychologist G.M. Stratton (1896, 1897) in the
1890s. Stratton wore a blindfold over one eye and a set of lenses over the other
that turned his retinal image by 180 degrees. The results over a period of three days,
which I separate into three phases, are summed up in Stratton’s words as follows:
Phase 1: When he first looked through the lenses, everything looked upside
down. ‘All images at first appeared to be inverted; the room and all in it seemed
upside down’.
1896: 6132
Phase 2: As time wore on, he learned to adjust his movements to the new scene,
and things sometimes seemed normal again. ‘When . . . full attention was given
to the outer objects, these frequently seemed to be in normal position’.
1896: 616
Phase 3: ‘On removing the glasses on the third day, there was no peculiar
experience. Normal vision was restored instantaneously and without any
disturbance in the natural appearance or position of objects’.
1896: 616
Phase 2 of the experiment is often taken to confirm Berkeley’s view. If seeing

an object erect is just a matter of having the appropriate expectations about
where to reach in order to feel various parts of it, then a person who systematically
relearns where to reach will thereby see the world aright again, just as allegedly
happened with Stratton in Phase 2. By the same token, Stratton apparently
refutes Reid’s view, which implies that a man with inverting lenses would
continue to see things as inverted no matter how well he learned to cope with his
tangible environment.
If those who wear inverting lenses achieve upright vision, Berkeley’s view is
indeed upheld and Reid’s refuted. But is that really what happens? Doubts may
be raised about this on two scores. First, as Rock points out, if Stratton had
achieved genuine perceptual adaptation (not just motor adaptation) in Phase 2,
there should have been a negative aftereffect in Phase 3. The world should have
flipped again when he removed the lenses. But Stratton reports no such effect; on
the contrary, he says ‘there was no peculiar experience’. Second, in an attempted
replication of experiments like Stratton’s by Linden, Kallenbach, Heinecke,
Singer, and Goebel (1999), the researchers reached the conclusion that the return
of upright vision during adaptation to inverting spectacles is a myth. In their
experiment, four subjects wore either inverting prisms or mirror spectacles.
They rapidly achieved motor adaptation, becoming able to ride bicycles, negotiate
department stores, and the like, but none of them reported a return of upright
vision. Moreover, their introspective judgements that things continued to appear
upside down were confirmed by independent tests, involving reading tasks and
shape-from-shading tasks. In no previous experiments with inverting lenses
were the subjects’ own impressions corroborated by such independent checks. In
sum, the latest and most sophisticated experiment with inverting lenses confirms
Reid’s position, not Berkeley’s.
Figure
In the fourth quadrant of the Theory of Vision, Berkeley maintains that the items
given to sight are not only numerically distinct from the items given to touch (as
affirmed in TV 49), but also ‘specifically distinct’ from them, that is, different from
them in species or kind (TV 121 and 127). This is Berkeley’s heterogeneity thesis;
it implies that shape is not a common sensible. Visible things and tangible things do
not both possess shape in any univocal sense of the term, and a tangible square
bears no more likeness to a visible square than it does to the word ‘square’ (TV 140).
Reid disagrees:
Visible figures . . . have not only a resemblance to the plane tangible figures
which have the same name, but are to all sense the same. . . . Berkeley therefore
proceeds upon a capital mistake, in supposing that there is no resemblance
betwixt the extension, figure, and position which we see, and that which we
perceive by touch.
IHM 6.11:118–19
Berkeley’s test case for the heterogeneity thesis is Molyneux’s question, first
publicized by Locke: Would a man born blind and made to see recognize by
sight alone cubes and globes that were previously known to him by touch?
Berkeley says no.
Diderot proposed an important amendment to the question: change it from
globe vs. cube to circle vs. square. He reasoned that a subject gaining sight for the
first time might not be able to perceive depth (as Berkeley maintained), in which
case he would not be able to see anything as a three-dimensional globe or cube,
but might still be able to distinguish and recognize two-dimensional visual
figures like circles and squares.
Berkeley says ‘no’ both to the original Molyneux question and to Diderot’s
variant. In effect, he offers the following modus tollens:
1. If visible squares resemble tangible squares, the answer to Molyneux’s

question is yes.
2. But in fact the answer is no.
3. Therefore, visible squares do not resemble tangible squares.
He explains, as follows, why the first premise is true:

Now, if a square surface perceived by touch be the same sort with a square
surface perceived by sight, it is certain the blind man here mentioned might
know a square surface as soon as he saw it. It is no more but introducing into his
mind, by a new inlet, an idea he has been already well acquainted with.
TV 133
Reid’s answer to Molyneux’s question is ‘yes’. He expresses confidence that Dr

Saunderson, a blind mathematician of his acquaintance, could have figured out the
visible appearances of cubes and spheres so as to know which is which upon seeing
them for the first time (IHM 6.7:95–6). And if we confine the question to circles and
squares, he thinks that even a mathematically unsophisticated person could know
which is which, since a visible square and a tangible square resemble each other in
figure as closely as a hot square and a cold square (IHM 6.11:118). So it appears that
Reid would replace Berkeley’s modus tollens with his own modus ponens:
1. If visible squares resemble tangible squares, the answer to Molyneux’s
question is yes.
2. Visible squares do resemble tangible squares.
3. Therefore, the answer to Molyneux’s question is yes.
Who is right this time?
For three centuries after Molyneux’s question was posed, the evidence drawn
from cases of restored vision was equivocal. (See Van Cleve, 2015, for references
and discussion.) Subjects who could recognize newly seen shapes may already
have had relevant experience, and subjects who could not recognize them
may have been unable to see shapes distinctly at all. But under the auspices of
Project Prakash, a humanitarian and scientific project now underway in India,
unequivocal answers may finally be forthcoming. In their first published results
(Held et al., 2011), the Prakash researchers report that in five subjects operated
on to cure congenital blindness, the mean success rate in matching seen to
previously felt shapes was 58 per cent, not significantly above chance. Their
results thus support a negative answer to Molyneux’s question. It should be
noted, however, that the shapes used in their experiment were three-dimensional
Lego blocks. On the two-dimensional Diderot variant of Molyneux’s question,
the jury is still out.
To summarize part II , Berkeley and Reid are both wrong in holding that
depth cannot be seen immediately, and both are again wrong in their explanations
of the moon illusion. Reid is right and Berkeley is wrong about inverted vision,
and we do not yet know who is right on the two-dimensional version of
Molyneux’s question.
Notes
1 ‘EIP 2.10:142’ denotes Essay 2, Chapter 10, p. 142 of Reid’s Essays on the Intellectual
Powers of Man ([1785] 2002) edited by Derek R. Brookes. University Park, PA :
Pennsylvania State University Press. ‘IHM 5.8:75’ denotes Chapter 5, Section 8, p. 85
of Reid’s, An Inquiry into the Human Mind, edited by Derek R. Brookes. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
2 Now is the time to say something about Berkeley’s other solution to the inversion
problem. In TV 111, Berkeley allows that there is, after all, a purely visual sense in
which things may be said to high or low, erect or inverted. So long as a man’s feet are
seen against the visible earth and his head against the visible sky, he is erect in a
sense that owes nothing to touch or any other sense. There is no problem about the
inverted retinal image because, however the image were turned, we would see things
as we do – this is answer (1) to Rock’s question. As will readily be seen, this answer
cannot accommodate Phase 1 of Stratton’s experiment. It implies that when the
subject first donned the inverting lenses, there should have been no difference in his
visual experience – but in fact there was.
18
Berkeley and Hume on the Imagination

Keota Fields
There is longstanding scholarly interest in David Hume’s intellectual debt to

George Berkeley.1 Hume himself claims that in order to fully understand his
metaphysics one should read Berkeley.2 Eighteenth-century readers of Hume,
most notably Thomas Reid, took Hume’s radical scepticism to be the logical
extension of Berkeley’s idealism. But by the mid-twentieth century, scholars
were debating whether Hume had read Berkeley at all.3 While that debate is now
settled (Hume indeed read Berkeley), questions linger about the extent of
Berkeley’s intellectual influence on Hume.
I argue that there is significant evidence that Berkeley strongly influenced
Hume’s account of the faculty of imagination and its role in mental representation.
Both Berkeley and Hume use what they call suggestion as a model for explaining
how the imagination constructs mental representations. According to this
model, representations are constructed from simple ideas in a manner analogous
to how words are combined into sentences in order to signify states of affairs,
and letters are combined into words in order to signify objects and properties.
This semiotic model seems to be unique to Berkeley and Hume, and stands in
contrast to resemblance models of mental representation adopted by other
prominent early modern philosophers. Berkeley and Hume also draw similar
conclusions about human psychology and metaphysics from their accounts of
the imagination and its objects. Given the centrality of Hume’s account of mental
representation to various aspects of his philosophical thought, what emerges is a
picture of Berkeley as a major intellectual influence on Hume.4
Berkeley’s account of mental representation is best understood in the context
of his extremely successful empirical theory of vision.5 There he seeks to explain
visual perception of depth, size and orientation. Since Berkeley intends this to be
an empirical theory, these explanations are based primarily on observational and
experimental data, although he also makes extensive use of thought experiments.
314
Berkeley and Hume on the Imagination 315
Those thought experiments are often variations on the Molyneux man – a

natively blind subject who is asked to distinguish a cube from a sphere on the
basis of visual sensations alone immediately after he begins to see (Molyneux
1688, quoted in Locke ([1689]1975).
Berkeley rejects theories that explain visual representation of distance in
terms of lines and angles because lines and angles do not exist in reality. They are
theoretical constructs. Berkeley admits that lines, angles and other geometric
models are instrumentally useful in a variety of scientific explanations. But
the question of visual representation of distance seems to require an empirical
explanation rather than an explanation in terms of theoretical constructs. He
also rejects the claim that necessary connections among abstract mathematically
quantifiable properties explain visual representations of distance. Instead, he
argues that the correct explanation involves ‘suggestion’, ‘habit’ or ‘custom’, and
that visual representation of distance is learned through experience (TV 16–17).
I see a barn in a field. As I approach it, maintaining visual contact all the while,
my visual sensations constantly change relative to my tactile and proprioceptive
sensations until finally I reach the barn (perhaps I extend my hand to touch it).
These successive sensations occur with a regularity that eventually allows me to
estimate how far I would have to walk (e.g. the succession of tactile and
proprioceptive sensations required) for me to reach the barn. Such estimates are
made given only my initial visual sensations. But Berkeley does not think that
these estimates are calculations. Instead, he thinks they are interpretations of visual
sensations in terms of tactile sensations. I do not mentally attach, say, a certain
number of paces to my visual sensations. Rather, I see the barn as being so-and-so
succession of such-and-such tactile sensations away. Such interpretations happen,
as it were, automatically and explain how we manage to see distances.6
Berkeley’s theory of vision uses language as a model for explaining how these
interpretations work. Since tactile sensations are objects of experience they may
be included in the explanation of visual distance perception along with visual
sensations. Berkeley combines this data with suggestion to provide the following
theory of visual representations of distance. Through experience of constant
connections between visual and tangible sensations (including kinaesthetic and
other tangible sensations) the imagination learns to use visual sensations as
signs for tangible sensations. But just as there is only a contingent connection
between signs and what they signify in a language, so too there is only a
contingent connection between visual and tangible sensations. Visual sensations
come to suggest or mean those tangible sensations that provide us with
information about depth, size and situation just as words come to mean that
which they signify through custom and habit. In vision we use tactile sensations
to interpret our visual sensations so that visual perception is more informative
than visual sensations alone.7
Berkeley proposes the following schematic account of how the imagination
functions. Ideas of the imagination are less vivid copies of sensations. Berkeley calls
sensations ‘real things’, by which I take him to mean that they are original, non-
derivative objects of experience. Ideas of the imagination, in contrast, are derivative
objects of experience, relying for their existence and content on antecedent
sensations (P 33, 3D 235). The relation between sensations and ideas of the
imagination is one of resemblance. Ideas of the imagination are copies or images
that resemble sensations, and represent sensations in virtue of that resemblance.
The imagination can also produce representations by ‘compounding, dividing
or barely representing’ ideas originally perceived by sensation or reflection (P 1),
so that the imagination is not limited to producing representations through
resemblance. It can also produce representations through suggestion of non-
resembling ideas. The imagination is free to do this because it has ‘an entire
dependence on the will’. Suggestion includes conceiving, expecting and inferring.
In all of these cases, an idea x suggests another idea y when x is a sign for y.
According to Kenneth Winkler (2008, 134), Berkeley proposes several ways in
which something becomes a sign including convention, annexation, appointment,
co-presence in perception, and custom. The latter two, co-presence in perception
(or contiguity) and custom, are what Berkeley uses to explain the imagination’s
use of ideas as signs for other ideas, particularly when the ideas in question (sign
and signified) do not resemble one another.
Berkeley notices that sensations often occur in a contiguous manner. In my
example of seeing a barn, I described a structured order of visual as well as tactile
sensations. Berkeley recognizes that ‘ideas of sense’ have ‘a steadiness, order, and
coherence, and are not excited at random . . . but in a regular train or series’.8 This
coherence is governed by ‘the laws of nature’ and experience ‘teaches us that such
and such ideas are attended with such and such other ideas’ (P 30). We not only
observe sensations but we also observe certain regularities to hold between
them. Those regularities may be either co-presence, as when one sees ice while
simultaneously feeling its coldness and hardness; or they may be regularities of
succession, as when each step towards a fire makes it appear larger and hotter.
Berkeley goes on to argue that the imagination learns to unify ideas into
representations of objects as a result of experienced contiguities of ideas. The
interpretation of my visual sensations as discrete objects – a barn, a field, etc. – is
the work of the imagination (P 1; 3D 245). Visual ideas of the far side of a
magnolia tree are suggested by the imagination when only the near side is seen.
Likewise, the imagination suggests tactile sensations of rough bark and smooth
leaves although the tree is not touched. What the imagination does not suggest,
for instance, are tactile ideas of liquidity when one has visual sensations of the
tree’s bark. That is because such ideas are not regularly experienced together. The
imagination also suggests ideas that might be experienced in succession to
sensations presently experienced, as when visual sensations of a flame and tactile
sensations of warmth suggest ideas of pain to come if I should get too close.
The result of such suggestions is that for Berkeley the imagination rather than
the intellect bears primary responsibility for representing external objects.9
Berkeley makes this point explicitly in his Theory of Vision Vindicated (TVV ):
By a sensible object I understand that which is properly perceived by sense.

Things properly perceived by sense are immediately perceived. Beside things
properly and immediately perceived by any sense, there may be also other things
suggested to the mind by means of those proper and immediate objects. Which
things so suggested are not objects of that sense, being in truth only objects of
the imagination, and originally belonging to some other sense or faculty. Thus,
sounds are the proper object of hearing, being properly and immediately
perceived by that, and by no other sense. But, by the mediation, of sounds or
words all other things may be suggested to the mind, and yet things so suggested
are not thought the object of hearing.
TVV 9
There is scholarly debate over how Berkeley draws the distinction between
immediate and mediate perception,10 but a consensus has emerged according to
which Berkeley takes sensations to be immediately perceived (or, as he calls
them, the immediate or proper objects of perception). Berkeley claims here that
sensations are immediately perceived by some sensory faculty (say, vision) and
that the imagination suggests or associates other ideas, formerly perceived either
by the same sense faculty or by some other sense.
In Berkeley’s example, a word is heard (i.e. immediately perceived by hearing)
and the imagination associates with those sounds other ideas. For instance,
when the word ‘apple’ is heard the imagination suggests visual ideas of certain
colors, tactual ideas of smoothness and roundness, gustatory ideas of sweetness
and crunchiness, etc. In the next paragraph, Berkeley extends this analysis to all
mental representations:
The peculiar objects of each sense, although they are truly or strictly perceived
by that sense alone, may yet be suggested to the imagination by some other
sense. The objects therefore of all the senses may become objects of imagination,
which faculty represents all sensible things. A colour, therefore, which is truly
perceived by sight alone, may, nevertheless, upon hearing the words blue or red,
be apprehended by the imagination. It is in a primary and peculiar manner the
object of sight: In a secondary manner it is the object of imagination: But cannot
properly be supposed the object of hearing.
TVV 10
Berkeley identifies a two-stage process by which the imagination acquires ideas

and associates them with other ideas. First, ideas are immediately perceived by
sense and all such immediately perceived ideas ‘may become objects of the
imagination’, that is, any idea immediately perceived by sense is copied by the
imagination and may thereafter be associated with another idea by the imagination.
Such associations may include ideas from more than one sensory faculty although
the ideas themselves are unique or exclusive to a particular sense faculty (e.g.
colours are exclusive to vision, and cannot be sensed by touch, etc.). Berkeley
concludes that the imagination represents objects by associating ideas from diverse
senses. The resulting complex idea is ‘in a secondary manner’ the object of the
imagination – by which Berkeley apparently means that representations are
mediately perceived by the imagination although their constituent parts are ideas
that are (or were previously) immediately perceived by one or another sense faculty.
The means by which the imagination associates ideas of one sense faculty
with ideas of another is called ‘suggestion’ in the passages above, but in a later
passage Berkeley specifies that what he has in mind is a form of signification:
Ideas which are observed to be connected with other ideas come to be considered
as signs, by means whereof things not actually perceived by sense are signified or
suggested to the imagination, whose objects they are, and which alone perceives
them. And as sounds suggest other things, so characters suggest those sounds;
and, in general, all signs suggest the things signified, there being no idea which
may not offer to the mind another idea which hath been frequently joined with
it. In certain cases a sign may suggest its correlate as an image, in others as an
effect, in others as a cause. But where there is no such relation of similitude or
causality, nor any necessary connexion whatsoever, two things, by their mere
coexistence, or two ideas, merely by being perceived together, may suggest or
signify one the other, their connexion being all the while arbitrary; for it is the
connexion only, as such, that causeth this effect.
TVV 39
The imagination associates two ideas by using one as a sign for the other. In
some cases, the imagination uses an immediately perceived idea as a sign for
an idea that is not immediately perceived – as when immediately perceived

visual sensations of ice signify tactual sensations of coldness although no
such tactile sensations are immediately perceived. In other cases, a mediately
perceived idea of the imagination may signify other ideas of the imagination – as
when I visually imagine an apple (i.e. I have certain ideas of color in my
imagination) and that visual image signifies tactual sensations of smoothness,
roundness, etc.
Importantly, Berkeley claims that the imagination learns which ideas to
associate as sign and signified through experience of ‘their mere coexistence’ or
‘being perceived together’. My imagination learns to associate visual ideas of ice
with tactual ideas of cold because at some point I immediately perceived those
ideas simultaneously. In 3D 254, Berkeley adds succession as a means by which
the imagination learns to associate ideas as sign and signified, so that I learn to
associate ideas x and y when y regularly succeeds x in my experience. Once an
association is learned, the imagination can use an immediately perceived idea to
signify an idea ‘not actually perceived by sense’. Such significations are ‘arbitrary’
(by which Berkeley means contingent – in contrast to a necessary connection –
rather than random), and the regular experience of coexisting or successive
ideas alone is sufficient to establish a semiotic connection between ideas.11
In TV, Berkeley supports this result with his analysis of the Molyneux man
thought experiment. Berkeley thinks that the Molyneux man would be incapable
of seeing objects at all. Rather, Berkeley says, ‘The objects intromitted by sight
would seem to him . . . no other than a new set of thoughts or sensations’. The
Molyneux man would not judge that he sees external objects, according to
Berkeley, but rather, ‘the sun and stars, the remotest objects as well as the nearer,
would all seem to be in his eye, or rather in his mind’ (TV 41). Elsewhere he says
that the Molyneux man ‘would never think of men, trees, or any other objects
that he had been accustomed to perceive by touch, upon having his mind filled
with new sensations of light and colours’. This is because he ‘doth not yet
understand, or know the meaning of ’ his visual sensations and has not learned
to interpret them, ‘no more than a Chinese, upon first hearing the words man
and tree, would think of the things signified by them’. The Molyneux man’s
imagination has yet to learn which tactile ideas to associate with his visual ideas,
leaving the latter as uninterpreted signs until through ‘time and experience, by
repeated acts’ the imagination acquires ‘a habit of knowing the connection
between the signs and the things signified’ (Alc 155, also see TV 110). For
Berkeley, the imagination is responsible for perceptual representations of what
is and what is not an object. Since the Molyneux man cannot form such
representations with respect to vision, Berkeley claims he cannot yet see objects
despite being restored to sight.
Notably, Berkeley argues that the natural laws according to which the
imagination learns which ideas to suggest are actually the rules of a divine
language (TV 147, P 44, 3D 231, Alc IV.10). That language is universal but is no
less arbitrary than human languages. Fundamentally, mental representations are
semantic items – words in a divine language of vision. When Berkeley says that
the Molyneux man cannot see objects because he has not learned the language
of vision this is meant quite literally.
Berkeley’s account of the imagination raises two points relevant to
understanding Hume’s analysis of mental representation.12 The first point is
methodological. Berkeley consistently rejects theoretical constructs in favour of
objects of experience. Necessary connections are also rejected in favor of
suggestion. The second point is philosophical. Berkeley generalizes his theory of
vision to conclude that all mental representations are the products of suggestion
rather than reason, and are produced by the imagination rather than the intellect.
This philosophical point is quite unique and anticipates Hume’s thinking in
these areas.
In many ways, Hume’s accounts of the imagination and mental representation
are meant to prepare the reader for his metaphysical accounts of external objects,
space and time, and the self. The similarities between Hume and Berkeley on the
former issues suggest that Berkeley may have had a significant impact on Hume’s
thought on the latter issues. For Hume the objects of experience are of two kinds:
impressions and ideas. Impressions include what I have been calling sensations.
Hume claims that the difference between impressions and ideas is ‘in the degrees
of force and liveliness, with which they strike upon the mind’. Impressions have
a higher degree of ‘force and vivacity’ whereas ideas are ‘faint images’ of
impressions ‘used in thinking and reasoning’ (T 1.1.1.1). Having distinguished
impressions from ideas Hume’s Copy Principle explains the relation between
them: all ideas are copies of impressions (T 1.1.1.8). In broad outline this is very
much like Berkeley’s claim that ideas of the imagination are less vivid derivative
copies of sensations.13
However, the details of their respective accounts differ. Don Garrett (1997)
reads Hume’s Copy Principle as consisting of a resemblance thesis (ideas
resemble their antecedent impressions) and a causal thesis (impressions cause
ideas). While Berkeley agrees that ideas of the imagination resemble their
antecedent sensations, he rejects any causal link between them if only because he
thinks that ‘it is impossible for an idea . . . to be the cause of anything’ (P 25).
Hume observes three ‘universal principles of association’ that explain how the
imagination unites ideas into mental representations. According to Hume, the
imagination is at ‘liberty . . . to transpose and change its ideas’ (T 1.1.3.4). This is
because the imagination is at liberty to separate and unite distinct ideas ‘in what
form it pleases’ (T 1.1.4.1). Hume scholars call this the Separability Principle.
Hypothetically, the result would be utterly random combinations of ideas. But
our experience reveals that ‘simple ideas . . . fall regularly into complex ones’,
implying the presence of ‘some bond of union among them, some associating
quality, by which one idea naturally introduces another’. This bond is a universal
association that Hume argues occurs in three kinds: resemblance, contiguity and
causation. Hume repeatedly claims that all three kinds of mental association are
arbitrary and result from habit, custom or experience. Berkeley also recognizes
psychological associations between ideas in terms of resemblance and contiguity,
although signification takes the place of causation (and in any case Hume’s
account of the origin or our ideas of causality is quite different from Berkeley’s).
A key feature of Hume’s account of the principles of association is that they
are not deterministic. That is, Hume rejects necessary (or inseparable)
connections as grounding associations among ideas:
This uniting principle among ideas is not to be consider’d as an inseparable

connection; for that has been already excluded from the imagination. Nor are we
to conclude that without it the mind cannot join two ideas, for nothing is more
free than [the imagination]: But we are only to regard it as a gentle force, which
commonly prevails . . . nature in a manner pointing out to every one those simple
ideas, which are most proper to be united into a complex one.
T 1.1.4.1.
Inseparable connections are rejected because the imagination is free to

associate ideas as it pleases. If associations between ideas were grounded in
necessary connections, the imagination would be compelled to associate ideas in
certain ways, but we know from experience that this is not the case. This freedom
also implies that the imagination is not limited to the principles of association
when uniting ideas. The imagination is free to flout those principles in order to
form ideas of dragons or winged stallions. This was also recognized by Berkeley,
who suggests that he is free to ‘imagine a man with two heads, or the upper parts
of a man joined to the body of a horse’ (PI 10) and other ‘chimeras or ideas of
our own framing’ (P 34; cf. P 28).
One might wonder how associations of ideas could be free given that they
are automatic, but such a claim becomes considerably less perplexing once
one considers what Hume and Berkeley have to say about free action,
although detailing their respective views would take us too far afield. Hume
is widely considered to be a compatibilist about freedom. He is committed
to the claim that an action’s being free is compatible with its being causally
determined. Briefly, for Hume what distinguishes a free action from a compelled
action is not whether the action was caused (i.e. a free action is uncaused
whereas a compelled action is caused); but rather the type of cause: ‘By liberty,
then we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the
determinations of the will; that is, if we choose to remain at rest, we may; if
we choose to move, we also may’ (E 8.1.23; italics in original). For Hume, a
free action is caused by the agent of that action whereas a compelled action is
caused by a power external to that agent. That is, for Hume free actions are
volitional whereas compelled actions do not result from the agent’s will (also see
T 2.3.2.1).
Berkeley’s views on free will are more complex and there is not as clear a
scholarly consensus as there is with Hume. Berkeley was not a compatibilist but
instead seems committed to an agent causation model of freedom. For Berkeley,
as for Hume, the distinction between a free action and a compelled action rests
on the causal source of the action rather than the presence or absence of a cause.
That is, for Berkeley an action is free if it is caused by the agent and compelled if
it is caused by some power external to the agent. Berkeley expresses this
distinction in terms of activity (i.e. free or volitional action) and passivity (i.e.
compelled action) in the following passage:
Phil When is the mind said to be active?

Hyl When it produces, puts an end to, or changes anything.
Phil Can the mind produce, discontinue, or change anything, but by an act of
the will?
Hyl It cannot.
Phil The mind therefore is to be accounted active in its perceptions so far forth
as volition is included in them?
Hyl It is.
3D 196
Berkeley argues here that insofar as the mind produces some change, it is
acting on its own volitions. He goes on to say that the mind is passive in sensation
– in perceiving light, colour, texture, etc. But he nevertheless claims that the
mind is active in representation – in using sensations as signs. That activity is
volitional, and so is free for Berkeley:
Phil . . . I perceive numberless ideas; and by an act of my will, can form a great
variety of them, and raise them up in my imagination.
3D 215; my emphasis
The imagination acts under its own power when using one idea as a sign for
another. In that sense, the imagination’s association of ideas is volitional and so
it is free rather than compelled for Berkeley.
We can now see how psychological associations can be automatic yet free for
Berkeley and Hume. The fact that associations are automatic does not imply that
they are compulsory. Associations are actions of the imagination because they
are directed by the imagination’s power to associate ideas. Associations do not
merely happen to the imagination – the imagination is not passive with respect
to associations. Rather, associations are something that the imagination does
(perhaps the chief activity of the imagination). Associations are voluntary or free
insofar as they flow from the imagination’s power to connect or relate ideas – the
power to direct how such associations are composed. The imagination does not
direct that visual ideas of ice be associated with tactile ideas of heat, for instance.
It directs that the former be associated with tactile ideas of cold. Associations are
compulsory when the imagination’s power to direct how ideas are associated is
thwarted – that is, when the imagination is prevented from associating ideas by
some external power.
For Berkeley and Hume, freedom is a power – the power to exercise a volition.
While this may imply that there is a necessary connection between volitions and
actions it also implies that volitions themselves are not determined by external
forces, which is all that is required for an action to be free for Berkeley and
Hume. There is no conceptual barrier to claiming that this power can be exercised
automatically. Insofar as a habit is the automatic exercise of a volition, habits can
be free and automatic. Perhaps we can get a better idea of what Berkeley and
Hume have in mind by describing psychological associations as routine rather
than automatic. Fidgeting and nail biting are examples of routine behaviour (of
which the subject may not even be aware). But we would nevertheless call such
behaviours volitional in the relevant sense. They are caused by the agent rather
than by some external power. My claim is that Berkeley and Hume agree that the
imagination routinely associates ideas in a similarly relevant sense.
It is also worth pointing out that ‘habitual’ and ‘automatic’ do not imply
determinism. This is because the latter requires a necessary connection but the
former do not. The reason we do not judge fidgeting and nail biting to be
determined by some cause external to the agent is that there is no necessary
connection between any external cause and the observed behaviour. Both
Berkeley and Hume claim that associations are contingent, which implies that
they are not determined by an external cause even if it is conceded that they are
automatic. If freedom is incompatible with determinism, then the absence of
determinism with respect to psychological associations implies at least the
possibility of freedom whether or not such associations are automatic. In any
case, both Berkeley and Hume say that the imagination is free. So, these texts
must be included in an interpretation of their respective understandings of the
imagination.
Still, one might wonder what differences there are between perceptual
representations and chimera since the imagination is responsible for both. If the
imagination is free in both cases, it seems that the difference between perceptual
representations and chimera dissolves. This seems especially problematic for
Berkeley given his idealist metaphysics. Berkeley addresses this complaint in the
following passage:
Hyl But, according to your notions, what difference is there between real things,
and chimeras formed by the imagination, or those visions of a dream – since
they are all equally in the mind?
Phil The ideas formed by the imagination are faint and indistinct; they have,
besides, an entire dependence on the will. But the ideas perceived by sense . . .
have not the like dependence on our will.
3D 235; my emphasis14
Berkeley has not completely answered Hylas’s question, which I take to be the
question of what difference there is between actually seeing an apple and
imagining an apple (or a griffin). In order to provide an answer on Berkeley’s
behalf I draw on an insight from Samuel Rickless (2013, 80). The imagination is
active both when actually seeing an apple and when imagining an apple (and so,
the imagination is free in both cases). But when I actually see an apple, I have
immediately perceived sensations of light and colour in addition to ideas
suggested by the imagination. Those sensations ‘have not the like dependence on
[my] will’, yet they are constituents of the resulting perceptual representation.
The imagination’s activity consists in suggesting ideas that are not immediately
perceived in order to convert immediately perceived sensations into a perceptual
representation.15 But when I merely imagine an apple (or when I imagine a
griffin) I have no immediately perceived sensations – only ideas suggested by the
imagination. In that case, all of the constituents on my representation are
provided by the imagination, instead of merely some of those constituents as in
the case of perceptual representation. Yet suggestion is operative in both cases.

Otherwise, like the Molyneux man, I could not have a mental representation of
an apple even when I immediately perceive apple-like sensations. For Berkeley,
perceptual representations and chimera are not different in kind as far as the
imagination is concerned. They differ in their contents – i.e. in the kinds of ideas
that are their constituents. Perceptual representations include immediately
perceived sensations whereas chimera do not.16
Although the imagination is free, Hume observes that it habitually applies
principles of association to ideas. As John Biro puts it on Hume’s behalf, ‘the
imagination . . . produces a “habit” or “custom”, which consists in a tendency to
move from an idea one has to another idea linked to the first idea by one of the
principles of association’ (2009, 48). These habits are the result of experience.
Ideas are constantly conjoined in experience and from those constant
conjunctions emerge habits of associating ideas in virtue of resemblance,
contiguity or causation. The imagination learns through experience which ideas
to associate together. This is unmistakably similar to Berkeley’s view.
Hume describes the habitual functioning of the imagination in some detail
when giving an account of how we come to have certain fundamental beliefs.
According to David Owen, for Hume a ‘central case of belief is not the assent we
might attach to any proposition, whether known or merely believed, but rather
the belief we have in unobserved existents’ (2009, 86). Such beliefs are ideas with
a force and vivacity approaching that of impressions.17 In the present context, a
useful example of the kind of unobserved object that Hume has in mind is visual
depth. Depth is not seen because of considerations Berkeley brought to bear. Yet
the mind moves from impressions of light and colour to visual ideas of depth, i.e.
to the vivid belief that one sees depth. Hume intends to offer an account of this
psychological relation. His view is that the mind moves from impressions of
light and colour to the belief that one sees depth although depth is not among
the impressions that one actually sees.18
The question Hume considers in Treatise 1.3 is how such beliefs emerge from
impressions. His answer is that the imagination rather than reason is responsible
for them:
The nature of experience is this. We remember to have had frequent instances of

the existence of one species of objects; and also remember, that the individuals
of another species of objects have always attended them,19 and have existed in
regular order of contiguity and succession with regard to them. Thus we
remember to have seen that species of object we call flame, and to have felt that
species of sensation we call heat. We likewise call to mind their constant

conjunction in all past instances. . . . But in all cases, wherein we reason
concerning them, there is only one perceiv’d or remember’d, and the other is
supply’d [by the imagination] in conformity to our past experience.
T 1.3.6.120
Memories of constant conjunctions prompt the imagination to produce an
idea of heat at the sight of a flame; that is, to unite the impression of a flame with
the idea of heat.
If reason were the source of such beliefs, they would be ‘deriv’d merely from a
survey [i.e. conceptual analysis] of these particular objects, and from such
penetration into their essences as may discover the dependence of the one upon
the other’ (T 1.3.6.1). In other words, we would observe a necessary connection
between the impression of a flame and the idea of heat, implying that one could
not be psychologically separated from the other. The impression or idea of one
would include the idea of the other. But experience shows us that this is not the
case (T 1.3.6.1). For this reason Hume rules out the intellect as an explanation of
such beliefs in favour of association (T 1.3.6.12, 15).
The similarities between Berkeley and Hume so far are readily apparent. The
imagination rather than the intellect is responsible for perceptual belief in the
existence of external objects. Necessary connections are rejected and replaced
with learned associations. Those associations arise from regularities of experience
and the imagination makes such associations freely, further indicating lack of
any necessary connections.21 Hume’s version differs from Berkeley’s in that
Hume is explicit about the distinction between impressions and ideas (a
distinction only implicit in Berkeley’s distinction between immediately and
mediately perceived ideas). For Hume, the imagination associates impressions
with ideas, and associates ideas with other ideas. For Berkeley, the imagination
associates immediately perceived sensations with mediately perceived ideas, and
associates ideas with other ideas.
Hume presents three experiments to support his conclusions. He first rules
out external powers or qualities of the object perceived, and any necessary or
causal relation those qualities might have to the object of belief, on the simple
principle that because those qualities are external they cannot be observed. But
since the phenomenon under examination is entirely internal to the mind, ‘these
powers and qualities, being entirely unknown, can have no hand in producing it’.
This is similar to Berkeley’s rejection of geometric approaches to seeing distances
because they are premised on unobservable lines and angles. Hume concludes
that ‘the present impression has not this effect by its own proper power and
efficacy, and when consider’d alone, as a single perception, limited to the present
moment’ (T 1.3.8.9). This is presumably because impressions lack information
given in the beliefs prompted by those impressions, just as visual sensations
themselves lack information given in visual representations of depth.
Hume’s second observation is that ‘the belief, which attends the present
impression . . . I say, arises immediately . . . because I am never conscious of any . . .
operation [of the mind], and find nothing in the subject, on which it can be
founded’. The last phrase is a restatement of the first observation: there is
insufficient information in the impression to give rise to the information included
in the idea. The first part of the sentence is a bit trickier. What would it mean to be
conscious of any such operation? Presumably, it would mean having an impression
of the operation such that the impression is related to both the original impression
and the belief that ultimately results from association of the impression with
other sensations and ideas. But Hume reports lacking any such impression. This is
similar to Berkeley’s report of lacking any sensations of lines or angles when
visually perceiving distance. Hume again appears to reject necessary connections
as the relevant explanation in favour of mental habits that move the mind from a
present impression to a belief in unobserved objects (T 1.3.8.10).
Hume claims that the mind moves immediately from impressions to ideas of
unobserved objects. Combined with the observation that an impression alone is
insufficient to move the mind to a relevant belief, these data suggest that the
mind is not moved by necessary connections in these cases. Impressions alone
would be sufficient to move the mind to the relevant belief if the relevant
connection were a necessary connection because the impression and the belief
could not be separated. Instead, Hume proposes habit as the relation between
present impressions and the ideas they prompt in a manner quite similar to
Berkeley.
Perhaps the best example of a necessary psychological connection in Hume’s
writings is the Copy Principle itself. The occurrence of an impression causes a
corresponding idea resembling the original impression. This is so in cases where
the impression has never before been experienced. To take Hume’s example,
even if I have never tasted a pineapple I know that my first impression of the
taste of a pineapple will cause a corresponding idea. Because of this causal
relation, I can anticipate that a resembling idea will follow my first impression. I
need not associate the idea with the impression. Moreover, I am conscious of my
mind’s operation of copying impressions to generate ideas. Were I not conscious
of such an operation, the Copy Principle could not be an empirical principle of
human psychology.
But such a similar operation does not occur when the mind moves from
impressions to ideas of unobserved objects. Hume makes this clear in the
Abstract of the Treatise when he considers the biblical character Adam watching
a billiard ball strike another for the very first time: ‘Were a man, such as Adam,
created in the full vigour of understanding, without experience, he would never
be able to infer motion in the second ball from the motion and impulse of the
first’ (TA 11).22
Hume argues that Adam’s mind would not move from impressions of the first
ball moving and striking the second to a belief that the second ball will move
because he lacks the relevant experiences to ground psychological associations
between impressions of the first type and ideas of the second type:
It would have been necessary, therefore, for Adam (if he was not inspired)23 to
have had experience of the effect which followed upon the impulse of these two
balls. He must have seen, in several instances, that when the one ball struck upon
the other, the second always acquired motion. If he had seen a sufficient number
of instances of this kind, whenever he saw the one ball moving towards the other,
he would always conclude without hesitation that the second would acquire
motion. His understanding would anticipate his sight and form a conclusion
suitable to his past experience.
TA 12
The belief that the second ball will move arises immediately from impressions
of the first ball in motion and striking the second ball. But this is a matter of habitual
psychological association grounded in a sufficient number of past experiences:
When I see a billiard-ball moving towards another, my mind is immediately

carried by habit to the usual effect, and anticipates my sight by conceiving the
second ball in motion. But is this all? Do I nothing but conceive the motion of the
second ball? No surely. I also believe that it will move.
TA 17; my emphasis
Moving from impressions of motion of the first ball to the belief that the second
ball will move is not an indication of a necessary connection between impression
and belief because the mind ‘can always conceive . . . any event to follow upon any
other’. It is a function of habit or as Hume sometimes calls it, custom.
Hume’s third set of experiments is meant to determine whether anything
other than habit is needed to produce belief from an impression. In that set of
experiments, the impression is changed into an idea. From this change Hume
observes that although the correlative idea still follows (i.e. the idea that followed
the impressions still follows when the impression is converted into an idea), ‘yet
there is in reality no belief or perswasion’ (T 1.3.8.11). Consider the billiard balls

again. My impression of the first ball’s motion is immediately followed by the
belief that the second ball will move. But if I only have an idea (rather than an
impression) of the first ball’s motion, while I may still have an idea of the second
ball’s motion I will not thereby believe that the second ball will move. (Perhaps I
see the balls stationary on the billiard table and conceive of the first ball moving
towards the second, but do not see the first ball move. Such a conception does
not produce in me a belief that the second ball will actually move.) Hume
concludes from this observation that the present impression and ‘the customary
transition’ are necessary and sufficient for producing the belief (T 1.3.8.12).
It seems then, that Hume’s account of the imagination is quite similar to
Berkeley’s work. One difference between Berkeley and Hume is that Berkeley
takes his divine language thesis seriously as an explanation for how the
imagination produces mental representations. For Berkeley, the imagination is
engaged in explicitly linguistic signification. This is not a feature of Hume’s
account. Given that Berkeley also thinks that linguistic signification is rule-
governed (cf. TV 147; P 30, 65; 3D 231), the regularities we experience and use
to unify sensations into ideas are instances of natural linguistic rules (which
Berkeley identifies with natural laws). No such rule-governed linguistic structure
is apparent in Hume’s account. Instead, Hume takes regularities at face value and
uses them alone to explain the imagination’s acquisition of habits of signification.
This is presumably because Hume considers Berkeley’s natural rules to be
supernatural,24 and in that sense Hume’s method for investigating the functions
of the imagination is more strictly empirical that Berkeley’s.
Both Berkeley and Hume reject necessary connections as explaining mental
representations in favour of suggestion, and they both reject theoretical
constructs as explanatory in favour of objects of experience. These methodological
commitments result in strikingly similar treatments of mental representation.
They both claim that ideas of the imagination are copies or resemblances of
sensations and that complex ideas of the imagination are constructed through
suggestion, which is a relation of arbitrary or contingent signification between
ideas. They both argue that suggestion is learned and habitual, and that the
imagination is free to suggest ideas. They both argue that the imagination rather
than reason is responsible for mental representations and they both offer
empirical evidence for these claims. They differ in that Hume distinguishes
between impressions and ideas, and between simple and complex impressions
and simple and complex ideas, whereas Berkeley leaves these distinctions vague.
Hume also provides a detailed account of the psychology of belief that Berkeley
does not offer. Perhaps most prominently, Berkeley’s treatment of suggestion is

explicitly linguistic in TV and TVV, whereas Hume recognizes only regularities
as explaining how the imagination learns which ideas to suggest.
I have argued that Hume’s account of mental representation is importantly
similar to Berkeley’s account. This includes Hume’s commitment to methodological
and philosophical principles similar to those that motivate Berkeley’s theory of
vision. Interestingly, Hume is more conservative than Berkeley about mental
representation, limiting suggestion and association to those occasions when
resemblance is available. Yet Berkeley is less resolutely empirical, relying on divine
language rules to help explain mental representations. Perhaps the reason for
Hume’s conservatism is that he does not take Berkeley’s divine language seriously.
For Berkeley, the semiotic relations that the imagination uses to associate ideas
are fundamentally linguistic relations. For Hume, they simply emerge from
observed regularities. Moreover, Hume’s account of the imagination and its
relation to belief is considerably more detailed than Berkeley’s. Still, the texts
provide sufficient evidence that, as Hume himself suggests, reading Berkeley is a
guide to understanding Hume’s account of mental representation.
Notes
1 References to Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature are indicated with ‘T’ followed
by Book number, Part number, Section number, and paragraph number (e.g.
T 1.1.1.1). References to the Abstract of the Treatise are indicated by a ‘TA’
followed by the paragraph number (e.g. TA 1). References to Hume’s Enquiry
Concerning Human Understanding are indicated with an ‘E’ followed by
Section number, Part number (where applicable) and paragraph number
(e.g. E 2.1.3).
2 In a letter from Hume to Michael Ramsay dated 31 August 1737, Hume recommends
that Ramsay read Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge as well as works by
Descartes, Malebranche and Bayle in order to understand Hume’s metaphysics.
3 See Popkin, R. (1959), ‘Did Hume ever read Berkeley?’ The Journal of Philosophy 56,
535–45. Popkin’s essay prompted replies by Anthony Flew and Philip Wiener, with
responses from Popkin, over the course of several years. Popkin only conceded that
Hume had read Berkeley after the discovery of Hume’s letter to Ramsay, cited above.
Hume refers to Berkeley explicitly when discussing abstraction in T 1.1.7.1 note 4;
and in E note 64.
4 I do not argue that Berkeley was Hume’s exclusive influence, or even Hume’s most
prominent influence. Nor do I advocate a return to something like Reid’s view of
Berkeley as Hume’s intellectual fulcrum. Those strike me as implausible given the

breadth of Hume’s interests and source materials.
5 Margaret Atherton notes that Berkeley’s theory of vision was ‘undeniably
successful’ and had ‘remarkably long lasting consequences’ (1990, 3) after its 1709
publication: Atherton, M. (1990), Berkeley’s Revolution in Vision. Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press. Atherton quotes John Stuart Mill’s 1842
assessment of the success of Berkeley’s theory of vision as having ‘remained, almost
from its first promulgation, one of the least disputed doctrines in the most disputed
and most disputable of all sciences, the Science of Man’ (’Baily on Berkeley’s Theory
of Vision,’ in Dissertations and Discussions, vol. 2. New York, 1973, 84; quoted by
Atherton 1990, 4).
6 I have said ‘automatically’, which might imply involuntary behaviour. But Berkeley
seems to think that these interpretations are willed by us, and so are voluntary. Still,
he also thinks they are habitual, and the habitual performance of some action
involves some element of automaticity. That is the sense of automaticity I have in
mind here.
7 This theory also explains the Molyneux man. He has not learned to use his visual
sensations as signs for his tactile sensations and so cannot interpret his very first
visual scene in terms of information about the depth, size and shape of the objects
placed before him.
8 The phrase ‘regular train or series’ suggests that the structure in question is temporal
rather than spatial. Various ideas regularly occur before or after one another, or
simultaneously. This leaves open an interesting question about the extent to which
Berkeley’s account of time is consistent with or in conflict with Hume’s account.
9 For Berkeley the faculty of imagination is responsible for both associating ideas and
allowing us to have fantastical ideas (such as chimera) and images. It is unclear to
me what connection there is between these roles for the imagination.
10 See Atherton (1990); Dicker, G. (1982), ‘The Concept of Immediate Perception in
Berkeley’s Immaterialism’ in C. M. Turbayne (ed.), Berkeley: Critical and Interpretive
Essays. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press; Dicker, G. (1992), ‘Berkeley on
the immediate perception of objects’ in P. Cummins and G. Zoeller (eds.), Minds,
Ideas, and Objects: Essays in the Theory of Representation in Modern Philosophy.
North American Kant Society Studies in Philosophy, Volume 2. Atascadero, CA :
Ridgeview; Dicker, G. (2006), ‘Berkeley on immediate perception: Once more into
the breach’, The Philosophical Quarterly 56, 517–35; Pappas, G. S. (2000), Berkeley’s
Thought. Ithaca: Cornell University Press; Rickless, S. C. (2013), Berkeley’s Argument
for Idealism. Oxford: Oxford University Press; and Winkler, K. (1989), Berkeley: An
Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
11 Berkeley suggests that experiences of coexistence or succession must be regular (or,
as he sometimes puts it, natural) in order to establish a semiotic relation.
12 In 2011 Hume’s copy of Berkeley’s TV (2nd edition, 1709) was discovered at the
University of Otago, New Zealand. There are no annotations and so no direct
evidence that Hume studied Berkeley’s theory of vision with care. Still, this is
evidence that Hume was at least familiar with Berkeley’s theory as are the similarities
between their respective published treatments of the imagination.
13 As mentioned above, Berkeley also thinks that chimera are ideas of the imagination.
He seems to think that we cannot have, for instance, an idea of a lion’s body with an
eagle’s head unless we have had sensations of some sort of lions’ bodies and eagles’
heads: ‘I may indeed divide in my thoughts or conceive apart from each other those
things which, perhaps, I never perceived by sense so divided. Thus I imagine the
trunk of a human body without the limbs. . . . So far I will not deny that I can
abstract . . . which extends only to the conceiving separately such objects as it is
possible may really exist or be actually perceived asunder. But my conceiving or
imagining power does not extend beyond the possibility of real existence or
perception’ (P 5). Berkeley seems to be saying here that I cannot compose an idea of
a chimera from ideas of its parts if I have never perceived its parts (even derivatively,
as in seeing a picture of a lion’s body).
14 See also P 33–4.
15 Rickless (2013) calls such representations Type 3 sensible objects.
16 They also differ in the principles that guide the imagination’s associations (e.g.
natural laws for perceptual representations; convention for chimera).
17 See page 86 of Owen, D. (2009), ‘Hume and the mechanics of mind: Impressions,
ideas, and association’ in D. F. Norton and J. Taylor (eds), The Cambridge Companion
to Hume. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 70–104.
18 It is unclear to me whether, like Berkeley, Hume thinks that the mind associates
tactile ideas with visual impressions in order to form visual representations of depth.
19 I am unclear what Hume means when he writes of ‘[individuals] of one species of
objects’ and of ‘individuals of another species of objects that have always attended
[the first species]’. His talk of individuals appears to be a reference to what we would
call tokens – i.e. token impressions. My hunch is that, since the only objects in this
passage are impressions and ideas, ‘species’ refers to sensory modalities. In that case,
token visual sensations are ‘one species of objects’ and token tactile sensations are
‘another species of objects that have always attended the first’. This reading is
supported by Hume’s subsequent examples of a flame (which is presumably seen)
and heat. Distinguishing visual and tactile sensations as different ‘species’ of objects
makes me wonder to what extent Hume accepted Berkeley’s heterogeneity thesis,
construed as the principle that tactile sensations, and the information they provide,
are unavailable to vision. If this passage is textual evidence that Hume accepts even a
limited version of Berkeley’s heterogeneity thesis, that would cast some doubt on
claims that Hume rejects the thesis on the basis that he thinks that we have abstract
ideas of distance, shape etc. common to sight and touch. The latter claim also needs
to be evaluated in terms of Hume’s own Berkeleyan account of abstract ideas.
20 The reader should note the similarity between this passage and Berkeley’s P 30–2.
The two writers offer quite similar accounts of psychological association.
21 It is useful to point out that Hume is no less hesitant than Berkeley to use thought
experiments to support his views. Whereas Berkeley used the Molyneux man
thought experiment prominently in his explanation of the role of the imagination in
producing perceptual judgements, Hume used a very similar thought experiment
concerning Adam in his Abstract of the Treatise. In Hume’s thought experiment
Adam is created whole as a fully functioning adult, not unlike the Molyneux man
gaining sight as an otherwise fully functioning adult except that in the case of Adam
all of his senses and cognitive faculties are newly operative rather than just vision.
Similar to Berkeley’s query whether the Molyneux man would be able to see a sphere
and a cube with his new vision, Hume asks whether Adam would be able to predict
that a billiard ball will transfer its motion to a second billiard ball upon only seeing
the first one move. Hume, like Berkeley, answers in the negative; and both support
their negative answers by appealing to a lack of experience. Adam must learn to
make such predictions, just as the Molyneux man must learn to see objects.
22 The reader should note the close similarity between this thought experiment and the
Molyneux man.
23 Hume seems to mean here: if the information that the second ball would move had
not been divinely revealed to Adam.
24 Hume famously rejects what he calls the principle of the uniformity of nature (E 4.2)
in the course of articulating his problem of induction, and Berkeley’s natural
linguistic rules look suspiciously like an instance of that principle.
19
The Reception of Berkeley in Eighteenth-

Century France
Sébastien Charles
The early reception of Berkeley in France
With its explicit aim of opposing scepticism and atheism, Bishop Berkeley’s
philosophy would appear to have been a natural choice of reference point, indeed
source of inspiration, for eighteenth-century French Christian thinkers who
wished, in the name of an apologetic purpose identical to his, to demolish the
materialism and atheism of their day. And yet, with a few very rare exceptions, a
natural alliance of this kind failed to take shape. This was because the reception
of immaterialism in France gave rise from the outset to a distortion of Berkeley’s
thought that held sway with Enlightenment thinkers and their opponents alike
right through the Enlightenment period. The earliest French reviews of Berkeley’s
immaterialism, which appeared in 1713 following the publication of Dialogues
between Hylas and Philonous, presented it not as a philosophical stance that
stripped matter of existence as the ontological foundation of the real, but rather
as a somewhat strange system whose purpose was supposed to be to doubt, and
in fact to deny, the effective existence of the external world.
The source of this confusion was above all the work of Jesuit thinkers (in
particular René-Joseph de Tournemine), who were then doing battle with
Malebranche and wished to use immaterialism as a means to discredit his
concept of intelligible extension by tarring it with the brush of absurdity. But
opposition to Malebranchism does not explain everything; we must also
recognize in the Jesuit critique of immaterialism a concerted attack on all
forms of ontological monism, with Spinoza’s thought being viewed as the
materialist counterpart to Berkeleyan immaterialism. It appeared important to
mount serious opposition to such a doctrine, soon termed ‘egoism’. (The word
‘egoist’ had at the time a metaphysical meaning and did not represent a moral
334
The Reception of Berkeley in Eighteenth-Century France 335
judgement; it designated one who is certain of nothing besides his or her own
existence.)
An attempt at such opposition was first undertaken by the Jesuit thinker
Claude Buffier, based on his theory of common sense, which treats the existence
of the external world as a first truth, since there is common consent about this
proposition. From Tournemine to Buffier, the Jesuits forcefully denounced the
slippery slope from Cartesianism to scepticism and then from scepticism to the
purported egoism of Berkeley. Several factors besides opposition to Malebranchism
underlay the Jesuits’ attack. On one hand, a system of this kind was deemed
pernicious because it leads to atheism by destroying the cosmological proof,
which seems the proof best suited to bringing the creature back to the Creator. On
the other hand, by questioning the reality of the external world, such a system
undermines the established political and religious orders, since it denies existence
and seems conducive to encouraging libertinism. Last but not least, the system
was a Protestant brainchild, which was ample reason to consider it suspect.
Berkeley and the philosophes
French Enlightenment philosophers arrived at a kind of unanimity regarding

Berkeley’s thought. Whether atheists, Christians or deists, they all mobilized
against him. They had divergent reasons, of course, but their unanimity of purpose
is notable for its rarity during the Enlightenment. The deists and the Christians
shared one familiar argument: by suppressing the world, the egoist also suppresses
the most tangible proof of God’s existence as Creator. But another far more subtle
reason is to be found in explicit form in only one place, a philosophical novel by
the Abbé Prévost: Le Philosophe anglais, ou Histoire de Monsieur Cleveland. There
it is argued that, if it is claimed that of necessity sensations cannot refer to a matter
that is not perceived, we can also conclude that the spiritual effects that belong to
us (desire, will) do not point to an immaterial substance like the soul or the self.
Egoism is dangerous not just because it destroys the cosmological proof of God’s
existence, but also because it leads us, through a conceptual manoeuvre, to deny
the existence of the soul and consequently its immortality. It then points us
directly towards atheism, or at least to scepticism.
What about the philosophes? As deists or materialists, they viewed solipsism
as a logical error or a metaphysical mistake that we can and must counter. For
Voltaire, the only way to do this was to reject Bayle’s and Berkeley’s epistemologies,
which reduce primary qualities to secondary ones. Voltaire adds to this the
argument from impenetrability, the essential characteristic of extension that the

sense of touch discovers in external bodies and that, according to Voltaire, gives
us the idea of matter. This is not very convincing, however, and Voltaire knows it,
making numerous statements about his ignorance on the subject. In Chapter IV
of the Traité de métaphysique, he concludes his argument with an absurd process
of reasoning that leaves the problem unsolved: ‘[T]he Pyrrhonians will allow me
to start by believing firmly that bodies exist, otherwise I will have to reject these
gentlemen’s own existence’ (Voltaire [1734]1984, p. 448).
Much more systematic is the position adopted by Turgot, expressed as early as
1750 in his Lettres à M. l’Abbé de . . . sur le système de Berkeley (Turgot 1913) and
again six years later in his entry on ‘Existence’ in the Encyclopédie (Turgot 1913).
The argument Turgot advances most often is that of causality, which can be summed
up in the following syllogism: ‘There is no effect without a cause. Sensations are
effects. Therefore they obviously have a cause’ (Wendel 1978, p. 182). But is this
sufficient to prove that these sensations have external causes? The case of dreams
seems to point to an answer in the negative. That is why Turgot adds to this first
argument a second one, the argument from repetition. If we deny the existence of
external objects, it is impossible to grasp the cause of a linked series of similar
impressions. The existence of these objects does not tell us anything about their
nature, however. Turgot knows this all too well; and yet, like Voltaire, he does not try
to go further. He too acknowledges his ignorance, and he refuses to qualify the
substance of either material extension or the spiritual monad.
If Rousseau did not wish to produce a formal refutation of solipsism, he
nevertheless often showed interest in it as a theory. In La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761),
simplicity serves as a major objection to solipsism. For Rousseau, it seems
simpler to say that sensations effectively refer to external bodies as their real
cause. Whether these bodies are pure appearances or substantial beings is of no
importance. What is important is the fact that the world’s presence reveals itself
to us as a whole, be it phenomenal or substantial.
In Condillac’s Traité des sensations (1754), we find a supposed demonstrative
proof of the external world’s existence. This proof is based on the sensation of
double contact that guarantees the existence of bodies by means of the sense of
touch, the only sense that provides a degree of objectivity because it allows us to
perceive obstacles; a fact that enables the sense of touch to confer the awareness
of the external. But if the sense of touch guarantees the existence of external
objects, it does not allow us to reach their essence. A true child of his century,
Condillac assigns limits to reason, limits that do not allow him to grant
unconditional objectivity to things.
The most original treatment of egoism is without any doubt that of Diderot.
First, because he makes a clear distinction between egoism and scepticism, the
latter being no more than a variant of Pyrrhonism. Second, because he
understands the difficulty of challenging a metaphysical stance that presupposes
a truly objective point of view from which it is to be challenged. Such a point of
view would entail standing outside the phenomenological order, and this is
impossible. Third, and last, because Diderot realizes that only the introduction of
a new dimension will allow him to attack egoism effectively. This dimension is
that of practical experience. Theoretical irrefutability, practical impossibility –
these are Diderot’s last words on solipsism. As Diderot put it at the end of his life
in his Essai sur les règnes de Claude et de Néron, ‘Berkeley still awaits an answer’
(Diderot 1985, p. 291).
To close this discussion of the responses to egoism by Enlightenment thinkers,
let me add a word about the materialists d’Holbach and Helvétius. What a
disappointment to find that they did not take it seriously, even though it
undermined the very basis of their materialism. Indeed, d’Holbach ([1770]
1999) recognizes in Chapter X of the first section of his Système de la nature that
we must choose between Berkeley and Spinoza, but no demonstration justifies
his choice. It is ultimately on the grounds of its likelihood that he chooses the
materialist hypothesis. In La morale universelle (1776), he adds to it the concept
of good will, and resorts to the moral argument used by Diderot. But he
nevertheless concludes his discussion by remarking on the difficulty of resolving
the immaterialist question, a sentiment shared by Helvétius. In fact, the only
materialist who affirms that he can easily refute egoism is the anonymous author
of the Jordanus Brunus Redivivus, a clandestine manuscript from the end of the
eighteenth century. But it would be generous to call this so-called demonstration
a real refutation. According to the manuscript’s author, we must admit either the
existence of an infinite spiritual being or that of a material and immensely
extended being. Since, according to him, matter exists, God does not; in this way,
the egoist thesis self-destructs.
Allies and adversaries of Berkeley in

the Counter-Enlightenment
Among eighteenth-century Christian thinkers, the encounter with Berkeley

tends to occur as a side-trip during an attack on an Enlightenment philosopher
or school of thought, whether on Voltaire by Le François, Nonnotte and Bergier,
on Helvétius by Liger and Barruel, on English deism by Caraccioli, or on the

Scottish School of Common Sense by Isaac de Pinto. In this context, Bergier’s
reading is undoubtedly the most original, with other authors persisting in the
view of Berkeley as a solipsist. While analysing the entry ‘Corps’ (‘The Body’) in
Voltaire’s Dictionnaire philosophique (1764), Bergier comes to defend Berkeley,
finding that his arguments for radical scepticism survive Voltaire’s critique.
Bergier maintains that reducing extension to secondary qualities is legitimate if
one accepts the modern theory that these qualities are a modality of the soul,
refusing to grant specific ontological status to extension. In fact, the purported
objectivity of extension conceived of as constitutive of the real world poses a
problem; and it is preferable to think of sensation as being above all a relationship,
perception of a colour (for example) needing to be contemplated simultaneously
from the perspective of the subject, in which it reflects a certain constitution of
the sensory organs, and that of the object, in which it designates a certain
disposition of the parts, a certain way of being that is specific to the perceived
object. In this way, immaterialism had the interesting consequence of leading
some antiphilosophes to revisit dualism from within a modern conception of
sensation.
Of course, all eighteenth-century Christian thinkers did not, like Bergier,
discover the merits of immaterialism through a philosopher whom they were
critiquing. Some had direct access to Berkeley’s text and yet even this made no
difference to their final judgement: the work of conceptual distortion done by
the Jesuits was all too efficient. A few notable exceptions may be mentioned:
David-Renaud Boullier, the translator of Siris, Charles Bonnet and the Abbé
Pluquet all strove to take immaterialism seriously, but they did not draw
inspiration from it, because the system’s implications struck them as problematic.
Only a very few thinkers breached the barriers that prejudice and habit had
erected against the adoption of the immaterialist doctrine. These included
Thomas-Jean Pichon in France, Joseph Berington in England and Corneille de
Nélis in Belgium. Their influence, however, was comparatively marginal.
It must be acknowledged that the conception of immaterialism proper to the
Enlightenment – with the philosophes in general sharing the view of the
antiphilosophes on this score – remained that of a doctrine that was at once
absurd and impossible to refute. This peculiarity of appearing to be impossible
either to adopt or to refute undoubtedly contributed to the dissemination of
immaterialism, but it also contributed to its critique: many thought they could
get around the obstacle of the irrefutability that Diderot claimed for it. From this
emerged some astonishing solutions to the problem of solipsism, consisting
mainly of returns to the metaphysics of the previous century. Thus Descartes was
reclaimed by Aubry, Malebranche by Boncerf and Joannet, and Arnauld by
Lelarge de Lignac and Para du Phanjas.
In short, faced with scepticism, and the farfetched version of it known as
egoism, French Christian thinkers of the Enlightenment era generally agreed on
the view that the existence of the sentiment intime must surely convince solipsists
of their own existence and that, seen from the angle of solipsism, the doctrine of
immaterialism is both untenable and pernicious. Untenable because sensations
are effects and every effect has a cause (which proves the existence of matter as
cause) – and Enlightenment philosophers said nothing further on the topic. We
can only regret that this stance of rejection is largely explained by ignorance of
Berkeley’s doctrine, an ignorance due in turn to the work of denigration carried
out by the Jesuits whose success is observable in the writings not just of the
Christian thinkers but also the philosophers of the eighteenth century.
340
Part Four
Main Themes in Berkeley’s

Philosophy
341
342
20
Immaterialism and Common Sense

S. Seth Bordner
Berkeley is famous for his immaterialism and for his idealism. Let us define
immaterialism as the denial that there is anything answering to the name ‘matter’,
and idealism as the view that, fundamentally, everything that exists is either a
mind or in a mind. These are somewhat unorthodox definitions, in part because
they separate two ideas that are sometimes blended together. A recent book on
Berkeley defines immaterialism as ‘the view that only minds and ideas exist;
there is no such thing as matter’ (Dicker 2011, 3).1 But it is important, I think, to
keep these views separate. What counts as an argument that there is no such
thing as matter does not show anything with regard to whether everything is a
mind (or in a mind), or even whether anything is a mind (or in a mind). This
distinction is also useful for the present discussion, since Berkeley is also famous
for claiming to be a philosopher of common sense, and he arguably regards
the question of whether immaterialism is commonsensical differently from the
question of whether idealism is.2
In Principles §4, Berkeley says that the belief ‘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’ – a belief that conflicts with idealism
but not necessarily with immaterialism – is ‘strangely prevailing’. Here, ‘strangely’
means just ‘very much’, not ‘oddly’ (see Winkler 1989, 5). So, Berkeley here notes
that the anti-idealist view is also the more popular view. If being common is part
of being commonsensical, then Berkeley seems self-aware that his idealism is
not straightforwardly commonsensical.
Yet Berkeley does seem to regard his philosophy as somehow open to the idea,
perhaps even constituting a philosophical defence, of common sense. And if his
idealism is not the part of his system that he thinks is commonsensical, it seems
even stranger to say that it is immaterialism that he thinks is the touching point
between his philosophy and the views of that ‘illiterate bulk of mankind that
walk the high-road of plain, common sense’ (PI §1).
343
How Berkeley thought his views were aligned with common sense has
intrigued scholars for years. Why would Berkeley claim to side with common
sense? What philosophical benefit is there in such a claim? Did he completely
misunderstand the views of the ‘common run of mankind’ or not realize how
unusual the denial of the existence of matter would sound to them? Or did
he actually disregard common opinions and only cynically claim the title of
‘common sense’ for the views he thought he could defend?
At the outset, it is worth noting that there is no consensus on how Berkeley’s
philosophy and common sense are supposed to be related. Some think Berkeley’s
philosophy just is common sense itself and so in offering arguments for his
philosophy Berkeley offers arguments for common sense (Luce 1967, 82). Many
scholars think Berkeley regarded his philosophy as a defence of common sense;
that he was offering arguments that supported common sense views or showed
in what way common sense is correct (see, e.g. Muehlmann 1992, and Stoneham
2002). On this interpretation, Berkeley is an apologist for common sense. Others
think that Berkeley’s project was more modest. George Pappas, for instance, sees
Berkeley as claiming only that his philosophy is consistent with common sense,
though to a greater degree than the views of his materialist opponents (see
Pappas 2000). There are other interpretations as well. In this chapter, we will
survey the range of positions that scholars have defended on the relationship
between Berkeley’s philosophy and common sense, beginning with the view that
Berkeley’s apparent respect for common sense was at best disingenuous.
Dismissive accounts
Berkeley promotes his Three Dialogues as an attempt to combat scepticism and

atheism, and to ‘reduce men from paradoxes to common sense’ (3D 2:168).3
Yet, Berkeley’s philosophy is so odd that it is natural to wonder whether he
could have been serious to think he was in any way defending, vindicating or
corroborating common sense. There are some reasons to think that Berkeley was
disingenuous. For one thing, he seems to distinguish his views from common
sense more so in his private correspondence than in his published works. He
tells his friend Percival that
whatever doctrine contradicts vulgar and settled opinion had need been
introduced with great caution into the world. For this reason it was I omitted all
mention of the non-existence of matter in the title-page, dedication, preface, and
Immaterialism and Common Sense 345
introduction, that so the notion might steal unawares on the reader, who possibly
would never have meddled with a book that he had known contained such
paradoxes.
Works 8:36, emphasis added4
Even in his published works there are hints that Berkeley recognized there was
friction between his views and common sense. In the preface to his Principles, for
example, he notes that his views are ‘contrary to the prejudices of mankind’
(Preface to Principles, 2:23).
Admissions such as these provide ample ground for those, like Jonathan
Bennett, who read Berkeley’s friendly claims about common sense as thinly
veiled rhetorical window-dressing (see also Yandell 1995). Bennett thinks
Berkeley’s idealist treatment of ordinary objects – his claim that such objects are
collections of ideas – is ‘casually dismissive’ and ‘disrespectful’ of commonsensical
beliefs. Bennett writes, ‘Berkeley does not endorse the plain person’s belief in
sensible things – he condescends to it’ (Bennett 2001, 176–7).
That is an easy verdict to reach. Too easy, perhaps. For one thing, there are
more passages where Berkeley seems to place his philosophy on the side of
common sense than those where he notes a conflict. These cannot be ignored,
even if one thinks there is a strain of cynicism in Berkeley’s writing.
More importantly, Berkeley’s metaphysics is intimately tied to – perhaps
even derived directly from – his epistemology. That epistemology provides a
theoretical framework through which ordinary ways of speaking and belief
ascriptions are to be understood. For Berkeley, ordinary language claims
and belief ascriptions have to be analysed into their constituent ideas to
understand what they really mean. Berkeley simply would not allow the kinds
of beliefs Bennett thinks are part of common sense to be accounted for as
data without first recasting those beliefs in the terms of his epistemology.
This recasting would show that what people say is different from what they
mean or believe. One cannot simply note that the vulgar say they believe that
sensible objects exist independently of minds and conclude that common sense
includes the proposition ‘sensible objects exist independently of minds’. For
Berkeley, we must first ask what is meant – that is, what ideas are signified – by
someone who says they believe sensible objects exist independently of minds.5
Of course, it is Berkeley’s view that the mind-independence of sensible objects
is inconceivable; this is the intended result of the so-called Master Argument of
both the Principles and the Dialogues (see P §§22–4 and 3D 2:200). So, there is
no coherent idea for anyone uttering such words to signify. No one can either
mean or believe that sensible objects exist independently of minds, though of

course one can say it.6 For Bennett then to claim that Berkeley is dismissive
of common sense attitudes about sensible objects begs the question against
Berkeley’s epistemology and the consequences it has for understanding ordinary
language, and inter alia, common sense. In short, the beliefs Bennett claims are
part of common sense, in Berkeley’s view, may not be beliefs one could hold in
the first place.
Dismissive interpretations such as Bennett’s are in the minority among
Berkeley scholars. There is a fair consensus that Berkeley was at least some of the
time interested in showing a fit between his philosophy and (some understanding
of) common sense. The textual evidence counts strongly in favour of such
readings. The most oft-quoted text is Berkeley’s remark in the Notebooks that
‘I side in all things with the Mob’, which is shortly followed by his self-reminder
to be careful in explaining what, in his view, is meant by claims of sensible
objects existing when unperceived, so as to ‘shew how the Vulgar notion agrees
with mine’ (NB 405 & 407). And while the Preface to the Principles suggests a
Berkeley self-conscious about the ‘novelty and singularity’ of his views, the
Preface to the Three Dialogues – explicitly intended to be a popularized edition
of the material from the Principles – is thoroughly populist. There, it is not
Berkeley’s views but ‘the prejudices of philosophers which have so far prevailed
against the common sense and natural notions of mankind’ (3D 2:167–8).
Berkeley’s advertised project is to introduce new principles he thinks will
undermine scepticism and atheism and see ‘men reduced from paradoxes to
common sense’ (Ibid.). The bulk of the Three Dialogues is set at determining
whether Hylas’s materialism or Philonous’s novel denial of the existence
of matter is ‘most agreeable to common sense, and remote from skepticism’
(3D 2:172). And when all is said and done, Berkeley (through Philonous) claims
to have united and placed in a clearer light ‘that truth, which was before shared
between the vulgar and the philosophers: the former being of the opinion, that
those things they immediately perceive are the real things; and the latter, that
the things immediately perceived, are ideas which exist only in the mind. Which
two notions put together, do in effect constitute the substance of what I advance’
(3D 2:262, original emphasis).
If, in the Three Dialogues at least, Berkeley is not genuine in claiming that his
views are closer to common sense than materialism, then he is an exceedingly
artful deceiver. Yet accepting that Berkeley is serious about the close relationship
between his philosophy and common sense does little to answer just what he
thinks that relationship is, or how close he thinks it to be.
What does Berkeley mean by ‘common sense’?
Bennett’s (2001) conclusion that Berkeley is dismissive of common sense rests

on an assumption about the nature of common sense: that common sense
is readily understood independently of philosophy and that Berkeley shares
this understanding. This is not (pardoning the pun) an uncommon kind of
assumption to make. After all, if anything can be discussed ‘pre-philosophically’
surely it is common sense. And, since Berkeley nowhere says in great detail what
exactly he means by common sense, it is tempting to think he did not say more
because he thought it would have been obvious to his readers. As a result of his
saying so little, scholars have had much to say about what Berkeley counts as
common sense. On this point, there are a number of views that fall roughly into
three types.
Propositional accounts
The most common kind of interpretation takes common sense to be a set or
family of propositions that are commonly held, philosophically basic or perhaps
just plain obviously true. Typically, Berkeley’s philosophy is judged to be
commonsensical according to how many of the common sense propositions it
either entails or is consistent with. But just which propositions are counted as
commonsensical, and of those, which ones Berkeley’s philosophy is supposed to
support, are up for debate.
According to David Berman, it is the common sense view that physical
objects have causal power that makes Berkeley’s claim that only agents can be
causes ‘embarrassingly uncommonsensical’ (Berman 1994, 41; see also Ibid., 42).
Margaret Atherton says, ‘common sense clearly supposes that we don’t have
to do anything to perceive physical objects’ and that, when we see, ‘we see what’s
out there’ (Atherton 2008a, 109; see also Atherton 1990, 209). George Pitcher
thinks it is common sense that we see and feel the very same objects (Pitcher
1977, 59–61). Bennett thinks that it is part of common sense that physical
objects ‘can be perceived by you and by me, yesterday and tomorrow, by sight
and by touch’ (Bennett 2001, 170). George Pappas presents a detailed list
of propositions he thinks are most fundamental to common sense and is
equally detailed in showing which of these Berkeley accepts and defends (Pappas
2000, 217).
Propositional accounts are the most common type because Berkeley’s texts
are riddled with suggestive remarks deriding the consequences of his opponents’
views as being contrary to common sense. There are even occasional positive
remarks that appear to endorse one view or another as being in accord with
common sense. This can be taken to mean both that (a) Berkeley thinks of
common sense as containing definite propositions, and (b) the contraries of the
views being criticized are either Berkeley’s views or common sense views (or
both). Pappas takes Berkeley’s critical comments about the uncommonsensical
nature of materialism to be indicative of his views about common sense itself
(see Pappas 2000, 218 ff.).
As tempting as this approach may be, it is fraught with difficulty. For starters,
as we have already seen, Berkeley’s remarks about common sense and his
philosophy’s relationship to it are not univocally positive. It is hard to distil from
his scattered remarks anything more than an uneven affinity for common sense.
Also, it is not always clear what Berkeley’s positive views are. So, noting that he
rejects materialist view P is not necessarily an indication that Berkeley holds
rival view Q, let alone whether either P or Q are considered by Berkeley to be
part of common sense. Partly, this is due to Berkeley’s insistence that many
materialist claims are meaningless, not simply false. A meaningless claim has no
contrary, so Berkeley’s rejection of such a claim should not be taken to imply that
he accepts its contrary.
The biggest difficulty with a propositional account of common sense is
in giving an answer to the question of why Berkeley cares to defend such a
conception of common sense. Even a careful accounting of all the passages
where Berkeley mentions common sense does not generate anything more than
a hodgepodge of propositions with little connection to each other. There is no
principle that appears to unify the allegedly commonsensical propositions into
a coherent body of common sense knowledge.7 Absent such a principle, it is a
vexing question as to why Berkeley cares at all about showing his philosophy is
consistent with – let alone a defence of – a cluster of unrelated propositions, why
he defends some commonsensical propositions and not others, or why he thinks
doing so is any mark in favour of his philosophy.8
The perspectival approach

Where propositional accounts of Berkeley’s view of common sense fail is in
explaining what the various commonsensical propositions have in common and
why Berkeley cares to show his philosophy is, variably, either consistent with
them or a defence of them. One way to provide both is to understand common
sense more holistically, as a worldview or perspective that Berkeley might have
better reasons for cleaving to. This is the approach John Russell Roberts (2007)
has defended. Borrowing a Sellarsian notion of an image of humanity-in-the-
world – a conceptual framework through which the world and humanity’s place
in it are understood – Roberts argues that Berkeley’s conception of common
sense can be understood as a religious image. The religious image conceives of
the world first and foremost as a creation of a supreme God, and human beings
are conceived as specially made in the image of that God and given a special
place in the world because of it. The core of the religious image is monotheism.
Roberts’ interpretation then takes Berkeley’s claims regarding common sense to
be claims about the religious image. Berkeley’s philosophy is, if not common
sense itself, at least open to it since common sense is, after all, nothing but
monotheism.
If Berkeley himself understood common sense as something like the holistic,
conceptual scheme of the religious image, then it should be clear both how
Berkeley thought he was offering a defence of common sense and why he thought
it might be worth defending. Berkeley does say that one of the principal dangers
of materialism is the possibility that it would lead people to scepticism and
atheism, ‘to entertain suspicions concerning the most important truths which
they had hitherto held sacred and unquestionable’ (3D 2:172). So presenting a
metaphysics that places an active personal God at its centre is conducive to both
projects.
Explaining Berkeley’s motivation and his sense of having succeeded in
defending (this view of) common sense is not a problem for a perspectival
approach such as Roberts’. The real problem is much simpler: there is no textual
evidence to support it. Of course, Berkeley is a monotheist and his motivation
for advancing a monotheistic metaphysics is transparent. But there is no
indication in Berkeley’s texts that he thought of his monotheism as central to
common sense. Indeed, all of Berkeley’s major philosophical opponents, the
same people whose views he considers dangerously opposed to common sense,
are monotheists as well. When Berkeley talks about common sense, his major
concern is with the dangers posed to it by materialism, not polytheism, pantheism
or atheism. Remember, Berkeley’s worry is that materialism leads to atheism,
not the other way around. So the strange truth, as I suggested at the beginning of
this chapter, seems to be that Berkeley thought of his immaterialism – not his
theism – as the main point of contact between his philosophy and the untutored
common sense of the vulgar. Roberts’ religious image is very probably an image
that Berkeley would have shared, but it is a stretch to think that Berkeley
identified it with common sense itself.
Alternative strategies
Applicable to all the accounts discussed above is an assumption that Berkeley’s
intention was to offer a philosophical apology for common sense, or at least
to provide it with some additional philosophical support by showing that
common sense is consistent with strict philosophy. The idea shared by nearly
all commentators is that Berkeley meant to defend common sense in a positive,
constructive manner by offering arguments for propositions or perspectives that
he thought were philosophically sound and commonsensical at the same time.
This assumption raises a number of difficult questions, as I have already
mentioned. Why does Berkeley think common sense is worth defending in this
way? Why does he single out only some apparently commonsensical views for
defence and criticize others? If the views being defended really are just common
sense, why would Berkeley feel compelled to offer additional philosophical
support in the first place? And, most pressingly, how could Berkeley be so
apparently clueless that his philosophy is so far from (what most would say is)
common sense?
If we reject the assumption that Berkeley was arguing for common sense,
however, these questions lose their force. And we should reject this assumption.
Indeed, Berkeley nowhere says that he aims to ‘defend’ common sense, he says
that he aims to vindicate it (3D 2: 244). My own view is that Berkeley’s strategy
was not to defend common sense by arguing for it, but to protect common sense
by arguing against views he regarded as threats to it – to vindicate common
sense.
I read Berkeley as being fully aware that his own views were not
commonsensical; that few among the vulgar would ever consider, let alone agree,
that the sensible world depends for its existence on its being perceived, or that
we do not touch the very same thing we see, and so on. But this does not mean
that Berkeley could not reasonably regard his philosophy as being salutary to the
‘illiterate bulk of mankind who walk the high-road of plain, common sense’.
The reason why is stated clearly in both the Introduction to the Principles and in
the Preface to Three Dialogues: philosophy is supposed to lead to greater clarity
and wisdom, yet in practice it leads its practitioners into ‘uncouth paradoxes,
difficulties, and inconsistencies’. The result is that philosophers who are supposed
to know as much as anyone can are drawn insensibly to scepticism. This
scepticism among philosophers is dangerous to people of common sense because,
when men of less leisure see them who are supposed to have spent their whole
time in the pursuits of knowledge, professing an entire ignorance of all things, or
advancing such notions as are repugnant to plain and commonly received

principles, they will be tempted to entertain suspicions concerning the most
important truths, which they had hitherto held sacred and unquestionable.
3D 2:172
These sacred and unquestionable truths are, no doubt, those of religion. There
is then a connection between Berkeley’s views about common sense and his
religious commitments, but it is not exactly the one Roberts has highlighted.
What Berkeley seems to be saying is not that theism is a part of common sense,
but that sceptical philosophy can have a disrupting effect on the common sense,
religion-friendly credulity of the non-philosopher. The vulgar are ‘for the most
part easy and undisturbed. To them nothing that’s familiar appears unaccountable
or difficult to comprehend. They complain not of any want in their senses, and
are out of all danger of becoming sceptics’ (PI §1).
This credulity is useful for the ends of religion, and as clergy himself, Berkeley
has a clear motivation to preserve this. So, the question as to why Berkeley would
care about defending – or rather, vindicating – common sense is easily answered:
common sense, considered as the default, credulous state of the vulgar, is useful
for ecclesiastical purposes.
It is also easy to identify the dangerous philosophical views most centrally in
Berkeley’s sights, especially given how Berkeley defines ‘sceptic’. A sceptic is one
who ‘denies the reality of sensible things, or professes the greatest ignorance of
them’ (3D 2:173). We might put the point more pointedly: a sceptic denies that
sensible things – the things perceived immediately by sense – are real. Of course,
Berkeley is adamant that the only things perceived by sense, strictly speaking, are
those immediate objects of sense: ideas of light and colour (by sight), or of heat
and cold, motion and resistance (by touch) (see P §§38 & 54, 3D 2:188 and
2:236). These ideas are nothing but what they are perceived to be and have
no being in themselves outside of the mind. On these points, Berkeley would
have met with little resistance, even from Locke himself. The crucial and
dangerous move that Locke and others make is in supposing that something
beyond our ideas – something more real yet less evident – is perceived, indirectly,
by the senses. This is matter, material substance, or substratum; or as Berkeley
understands it, an ‘inert, senseless unknown substance’ that ‘neither acts,
nor perceives, nor is perceived’ (P §68). But with the supposition of matter, the
‘real’ things are the material objects that one supposes to be the causes of our
immediately perceived ideas; the ideas themselves, the things immediately
perceived by sense, are reduced to a false imaginary glare.
In Berkeley’s view, materialism directly implies scepticism about the reality of

sensible things, and scepticism leads to atheism and irreligion. So it is Berkeley’s
immaterialism – his case against the existence of matter and the attending belief
that the sensed world is not the real world – that is the lynchpin of his vindication
of common sense. As a negative metaphysical thesis, there is little Berkeley
can offer by way of positive arguments for immaterialism, which explains why
Berkeley’s case consists primarily in drawing out the absurd consequences –
metaphysical, epistemological and semantic – of the materialist hypothesis. That
is enough for Berkeley’s purposes. The reason why is again suggested by Berkeley
himself: the vulgar are naturally disposed to accept that the things they perceive
are the real things and not merely appearances caused in our minds by some
unperceived somethings-we-know-not-what. This natural credulity is the default
state of mind for anyone not in the grips of sceptical philosophy; this is what
Berkeley means by common sense. And he means to vindicate it by warding off
the major threat to it: by offering arguments against materialism and, in the
process, scepticism and atheism.
That Berkeley thought of common sense as this default naive realism is,
I think, nicely shown by his closing remarks in the Three Dialogues.
Philonous I do not pretend to be a setter-up of new notions. My endeavours

tend only to unite and place in a clearer light that truth, which was before shared
between the vulgar and the philosophers: the former being of the opinion,
that those things they immediately perceive are the real things; and the latter,
that the things immediately perceived, are ideas which exist only in the mind.
Which two notions put together, do in effect constitute the substance of what
I advance.
3D 2:262; original emphasis
By understanding Berkeley’s defence of common sense as this negative,

vindicatory project, we can better understand why he was so ambivalent towards
other commonly held beliefs and the vulgar more generally. The ‘illiterate bulk of
mankind’ is unlearned, and, quite naturally, one would expect to find more
superstition and old wives’ tales in commonly held beliefs than deep philosophical
truth. Yet even the vulgar have sense enough to trust in their senses that fire is
hot and sugar sweet.
We can also see how Berkeley could have simultaneously thought of his own
philosophy as contrary to common opinions and yet also useful in the service of
common sense. Since the vulgar’s naive realism is the default position, it need
not be argued for, it needs only to be left undisturbed. Nor are the vulgar his
audience; sceptically minded philosophers are. So it would not much matter to

Berkeley whether the vulgar would find his philosophy perfectly obvious or
downright ridiculous if, as is unlikely, they were ever confronted with it. What
matters from Berkeley’s perspective, rather, is whether or not those in a position
of intellectual authority are setting the right example: whether they believe that
we can know, directly and immediately, that the objects of sense are red, round,
sweet or hot, or whether they profess that the world is fundamentally unknowable.
Berkeley, along with the vulgar, holds with the former.
Notes
1 One might doubt whether the clause following the semicolon is intended to explicate
the preceding clause. However, Dicker later explicitly conflates the two views:
‘Berkeley’s position is also called “idealism”, and I shall use that term more frequently
than “immaterialism”.’ Dicker, G., Berkeley’s Idealism: A Critical Examination
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 4.
2 For alternative definitions of idealism, see Muehlmann, Berkeley’s Ontology
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992), p. 13.
3 Berkeley also claims here that the Dialogues are meant simply ‘to treat more clearly
and fully of certain principles’, introduced in his Principles of Human Knowledge, ‘and
to place them in a new light’. A natural reading of this is that Berkeley thought of the
Principles as equally open to common sense despite how little he says about common
sense in that work; although one might contend that the connection to common
sense that Berkeley draws in the Dialogues is just the ‘new light’ he mentions.
4 Berkeley used the term ‘vulgar’ typically to refer to uneducated people and their
opinions. Because the vast majority of the population in Berkeley’s day fit this
description, it is a fair inference that where he speaks of ‘the vulgar’ and ‘vulgar
opinions’ he is speaking of common folk and common sense opinions.
5 There is some debate on this point, but most scholars agree that Berkeley held some
kind of ideational theory of meaning on which language gains its meaning from
ideas perceived and signified by the speaker. To my knowledge, only John Russell
Roberts denies that Berkeley holds any kind of ideational theory of meaning. See his
A Metaphysics for the Mob: The Philosophy of George Berkeley (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2007), especially chapter 2. For a more mainstream account of
Berkeley’s theory of meaning, see Winkler’s Berkeley: An Interpretation (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1989), chapter 1, and ‘Berkeley and the Doctrine of Signs’, in
K. Winkler (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Berkeley (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, pp. 125–65, 2005).
6 Berkeley himself vacillates between calling such utterances meaningless or

contradictory, but the upshot is the same in either case. Someone who claims,
‘I believe that sensible objects exist independently of minds’ certainly does not take
her claim to be either meaningless or contradictory. In Berkeley’s view, however, this
is only because the speaker does not carefully attend to the ideas she signifies (or
rather her failure to signify any ideas) when speaking. So recognizing what people
might commonly say does not require Berkeley to grant that anything in particular
is meant or believed as part of common sense.
7 This is not to say that a reconstructive propositional account of what Berkeley means
by common sense could not provide a unifying principle or an answer to the
question of why Berkeley cares about common sense in the first place. There might
be such a connecting principle that scholars have overlooked. My point here is just
that the propositional accounts on offer have as yet failed to show convincingly
what it is about common sense – considered as a collection of commonsensical
propositions – that Berkeley finds valuable.
8 Pappas at least is aware of this challenge and tries to meet it, I would argue
unsuccessfully. See Bordner, ‘Berkeley’s “Defense” of “Commonsense”,’ Journal of the
History of Philosophy, 49, 315–38 (2011), 331–3 for a critique of Pappas’s attempt at
answering these questions.
21
Immediate and Mediate Perception in Berkeley

Richard Glauser
Berkeley was concerned with perception from the Notebooks to Siris. Daringly
innovative in its day, his position in this field has remained a notoriously radical
one ever since its initial appearance in An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision,
closely followed by A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. Other important works are
Alciphron and The Theory of Vision, Vindicated and Explained.
When discussing perception in Berkeley, one must distinguish between the
perception of a sensible quality (e.g. a colour, a sound, a figure, distance, size,
situation, etc.) and that of a physical object (e.g. a cherry, a coach). For the time
being let us consider the perception of sensible qualities; we will discuss physical
objects in the final two sections of this chapter.
Immediate and mediate perception in the theory of vision
According to Berkeley’s understanding of immediate perception to be gathered

from the Theory of Vision, one perceives x immediately just if x is a sensible
thing and one perceives x directly, i.e. one’s perception of x does not depend on
the perception of an intermediary idea (an idea that is neither identical with, nor
a part of, x), which either suggests or represents x.1 Let us call this the TV
definition. In contrast, one perceives y mediately just if y is a sensible thing,
and one’s perception of y depends on the immediate perception of one or
more intermediary ideas x, in such a way that: (i) the immediate perception of x
suggests the idea of y; and (ii) given x, one expects one will, or would, immediately
perceive y under such and such conditions.2 Due to her past experience, when
Sally immediately perceives some visible ideas and these suggest to her
imagination the ideas of sensible qualities she would perceive by touch if she
were to move in the direction of a certain tangible body, she mediately perceives
355
ideas of tangible figure, size, situation and distance. Mediate perception is made
possible by the facts that: (a) visible ideas are produced by God in lawfully
ordered sequences; (b) tangible ideas are also produced in this way; (c) these
intra-modal lawfully ordered sequences co-vary in complex ways according to
lawful intermodal relations; and (d) human beings and at least some animals
more or less subconsciously register these intra-modal and intermodal relations
merely by experience, custom and association.3
Berkeley’s ‘first conferred’ criterion describes the domain of immediately
perceivable sensible things: ‘those things alone are actually and strictly perceived
by any sense, which would have been perceived, in case that same sense had then
been first conferred on us’ (3D 204). Thus, immediate perception is independent
of the psychological, associative activity involved in mediate perception. The
criterion also implies that immediate perception is not conceptual. For, if Sally
immediately perceives x when her senses are ‘first conferred’ on her, and if x is an
F, she will presumably not perceive x as an F until she forms the concept of F. For
Berkeley, the kind of concept, or general idea, involved in conceptual perception
is just a particular idea made functionally and extrinsically general by being
made a sign of other particular ideas that are sufficiently similar for all of them
to be given the same general name.4 Forming such a sign, however, goes beyond
immediate perception, because when we make a particular idea a sign of similar
particular ideas, we are disposed to use the sign to signify and suggest similar
ideas (to which we give the same general name). Thus, because forming and
using a concept go beyond immediate perception and depend on suggestion,
immediate perception taken strictly by itself must be non-conceptual.5
In mediate perception the suggested ideas are not sensible ideas proper, but
‘in truth only objects of the imagination’.6 These suggested ideas nevertheless
have sensory content; they are ideas of – they represent – possible ideas of touch,7
namely sensible ideas that one does not immediately perceive at present, but that
one would immediately perceive under certain conditions. The expression
‘tangible ideas’ in the Theory of Vision is sometimes ambiguous: it can refer either
to tangible ideas proper or to ideas of the imagination. Berkeley warns the reader
of the ambiguity in TV §45, and he clears it up in a letter to Jean Le Clerc8 and
in TVV §51.
Contrary to what is sometimes held, Berkeley does have a representative
theory of perception of sorts, because the ideas suggested to the imagination
represent certain sensible ideas of touch in such a way that one expects to
immediately perceive the latter under such and such conditions. Given that
Berkeley grants, however, that mediate perception is sometimes non-veridical,9
Immediate and Mediate Perception in Berkeley 357
one should presumably say that the suggested ideas of the imagination represent
sensible ideas of touch either correctly or incorrectly, and the expectation
will thus be either correct or incorrect. That being so, what fundamentally
distinguishes Berkeley’s representative theory of mediate perception from
‘materialist’ representative theories is that, for Berkeley, when mediate perception
is veridical, the mediately perceived qualities are always perceivable immediately.
More accurately: the suggested ideas are immediately perceived by the
imagination ‘whose objects they are, and which alone perceives them’ (TVV
§39); and when mediate perception is veridical the sensible qualities that the
former (correctly) represent can all in principle be immediately perceived by
sense, although it may not be possible to do so due to practical limitations.
Berkeley’s claim that mediate perception depends entirely on experience and
association, not on rational inference (thereby giving his theory application to
animals), goes hand in hand with his denial of necessary connexions – and
phenomenal resemblances – between visible and tangible ideas. This denial leads
Berkeley to the ‘heterogeneity thesis’, a conjunction of three points: (i) there is no
numerically identical sensible idea common to two or more senses; (ii) there are
no specifically identical sensible ideas common to two or more senses; (iii) there
are no intrinsic phenomenal resemblances between ideas of different senses.10
Contrary to the long-standing tradition stemming from Aristotle, there are no
common sensible qualities for Berkeley, only proper sensible qualities. Given
(iii) it follows that it is not even possible to form a general idea of extension – in
the sense in which Berkeley accepts general ideas – capable of representing both
visible and tangible extension.
Natural signs and the language of the Author of nature
In the Theory of Vision Berkeley argues not only that groups of visible ideas are
natural signs of tangible ideas, but also that visible ideas are analogous to
linguistic signs of human institution in that they naturally signify tangible ideas
by constituting ‘an universal language of the Author of Nature’ (TV §147). In the
Three Dialogues, and arguably in the Principles, Berkeley expands the scope of his
theory of mediate perception so as to include ideas of the other three senses as
well. In Alciphron he spells out his expanded theory:
Alciphron It seems to me that every other sense may as well be deemed a

language as that of vision. Smells and tastes, for instance, are signs that inform us
of other qualities to which they have neither likeness nor necessary connexion.
Euphranor That they are signs is certain, as also that language and all other
signs agree in the general nature of sign, or so far forth as signs. But it is as
certain that all signs are not language: not even all significant sounds, such as
the natural cries of animals, or the inarticulate sounds and interjections of
men. It is the articulation, combination, variety, copiousness, extensive and
general use and easy application of signs (all of which are commonly found in
vision) that constitute the true nature of language. Other senses may indeed
furnish signs; and yet those signs have no more right than inarticulate sounds
to be thought a language.
IV §12 157
Euphranor grants that not only visible ideas, but also smells, tastes – and,
presumably, unintentionally produced sounds, such as the rattling of a coach, a
thunderclap or an accidental yawn – are signs. Given that a finite agent does not
intentionally produce these signs (contrary to the signs of human conventional
languages, and contrary, too, it seems, to ‘significant sounds, such as the natural
cries of animals, or the inarticulate sounds and interjections of men’), such signs
can only be natural. Furthermore, the ideas they and visual signs signify are
‘qualities to which they have neither likeness nor necessary connexion’. Hence, the
ideas signified by them are not necessarily tangible ideas only, for there is ‘neither
likeness nor necessary connexion’ between the ideas of any of the five senses. In
sum, whereas in TV Berkeley’s description of mediate perception was limited to
the mediate perception of tangible ideas by the immediate perception of visible
ideas, he later expands the scope of his theory to the extent that at least some
ideas of each sense are natural signs of at least some ideas of any one or more
of the other senses. However, Euphranor states that only visual signs constitute
a natural language. Why? Because: ‘It is the articulation, combination, variety,
copiousness, extensive and general use and easy application of signs (all of which
are commonly found in vision) that constitute the true nature of language’. These
features sum up Berkeley’s conception of the necessary and jointly sufficient
conditions for signs – whether natural or of human institution – to constitute a
language. Such features are not found in the combinations of, respectively, smells,
tastes and unintentionally produced sounds. Thus, although these are natural
signs, they do not constitute as many natural languages.11
The natural language of vision has a biological and practical finality. By means
of this language ‘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’.12 This suggests
a distinction that Berkeley does not make, but that he arguably should make:
between what a visual sign suggests and what it naturally signifies. Visual signs
suggest ideas of the imagination in the sense that they prompt them, i.e. excite
them so as to be perceived by the imagination. However, ideas of the imagination
are obviously not the things we strive ‘to attain’ as ‘necessary to the preservation
and well-being of our bodies’, nor are they ‘hurtful and destructive of them’. The
things we seek to attain are food, clothing, shelter, etc.; the things that are hurtful
and destructive are raging fires, wild storms, etc. All of which are collections of
sensible ideas. So, Berkeley ought to say that visual signs are the relata of two
distinct relations: (1) through psychological association they come to suggest
ideas of the imagination (say, ideas that merely represent a forthcoming storm
and lead one to expect one); (2) independently of our psychological associations,
they are instituted by God to naturally signify the sensible ideas that the suggested
ideas represent correctly when mediate perception is veridical (namely, the
sensible ideas one immediately perceives in a real storm).13
The identity of sensible qualities and sensible ideas
As Berkeley acknowledges in the Principles §44, he neither presupposed, nor

argued for, immaterialism in the Theory of Vision. Let us now take for granted
three of the claims he argues for in the Principles and the Three Dialogues:
(1) material substances cannot exist; (2) sensible qualities and sensible ideas
are identical; (3) a physical body is a ‘collection’, a ‘combination’ or a ‘congeries’
of sensible qualities, or ideas that belong to several senses, and that share no
common space.14 Let us consider (2).
It seems that the best way to understand the claim that sensible qualities and
sensible ideas are identical is to see that Berkeley wants to construct an original
ontological category of sensible items that share: (A) some of the features
commonly attributed by seventeenth-century philosophers to ideas of sense (e.g.
Descartes and Locke), or sensations (Malebranche); and also (B) some of the
characteristics ascribed by ‘materialist’ philosophers to primary qualities, and
ascribed, too, by ordinary persons to secondary qualities. For instance, among
the features in (A) are the following:
(A1) the sensible items are immaterial; hence they are not modes or accidents
of material substances;
(A2) they necessarily exist in a mind; that is, they necessarily depend on a
mind inasmuch as they exist if, and only if, they are perceived;
(A3) they are passively received by the finite minds that perceive them;
(A4) they have an external cause;
(A5) they are perceived immediately;
(A6) when the items are immediately perceived, they appear exactly as they
are, and they are exactly as they appear, as to all of their intrinsic,
phenomenal traits.
Among the characteristics in (B) we find:
(B1) the sensible items are all particulars;

(B2) they are not acts, but objects of perception;
(B3) these objects are not ideas of qualities; contrary to ideas of imagination,
they are not intentional items that represent qualities; they are a
particular figure, a redness, a hardness, a sound, etc.;
(B4) they are constituents of physical objects, which are governed by physical
laws, whereby the latter constitute a physical universe;
(B5) they are not modes of minds;15
(B6) they have a kind of being which is ‘entirely distinct and heterogeneous’
from that of minds, or spiritual substances (P §89).
We may add an altogether different characteristic, which Berkeley’s items share

with Malebranchean physical objects and primary qualities:
(B7) they are causally inert.
Berkeley calls the items that belong to this original ontological category either
‘sensible ideas’ or ‘sensible qualities’. He stresses, however, that his only reason for
calling such qualities ‘ideas’ is due to feature (A2), the idealist tenet.16 He calls
them ‘ideas’, not because they are modes of a mind, which indeed they cannot be
(B5), but because they necessarily depend on minds in virtue of the fact that they
cannot exist unperceived.
Let us look at (A6), part of which is the basis for (B7). In the Principles §25
Berkeley says that ‘since they [sensible ideas] and every part of them exist only
in the mind, it follows that there is nothing in them but what is perceived’. He
uses the claim that ‘there is nothing in them but what is perceived’ as a major
premise for the argument that, since we perceive no causal activity in any of our
sensible ideas, they have no such activity (B7).17 This means that, if S immediately
perceives a sensible quality, all of its intrinsic, phenomenal traits and all of its
parts, if it has parts, are manifest to the perceiver.18 Let us call this, following
Cummins (1995), the Manifest Quality Thesis (MQT ).
Berkeley argues for MQT by saying that it follows from the fact that sensible
qualities can only exist in a mind (A2). Thus, according to Berkeley, MQT is not
part of the definition of immediate perception. MQT follows from the application
of the esse is percipi principle to immediately perceived sensible qualities, that is,
from the identification of sensible qualities with sensible ideas.
Berkeley also holds a complementary thesis. In the ‘crooked oar’ passage of
the Three Dialogues Philonous says that ‘his mistake lies not in what he perceives
immediately and at present (it being a manifest contradiction to suppose he
should err in respect of that) but in the wrong judgement he makes concerning
the ideas he apprehends to be connected with those immediately perceived: or
concerning the ideas that, from what he perceives at present, he imagines would
be perceived in other circumstances’ (238). What is obviously intended here,
in the first instance, is that the visible form of the oar really is crooked. But the
more general claim embedded in Philonous’s reply is that the perceiver cannot
be mistaken ‘in what he perceives immediately and at present’. Let us call this the
Infallibility Thesis (IT ): if S immediately perceives a sensible quality as having
certain intrinsic, phenomenal traits, then it has those traits. The conjunction of
MQT and IT amounts to point (A6): when sensible qualities are immediately
perceived, they appear exactly as they are, and they are exactly as they appear, as
to all of their intrinsic, phenomenal traits.
Notice that we have formulated MQT and IT in terms of perception, rather
than knowledge. However, Berkeley closely links immediate perception with
knowledge. It is presumably with both MQT and IT in mind that he says
that immediately perceived sensible ideas are ‘perfectly known’ (P §87). In the
Published Introduction to the Principles: ‘so long as I confine my thoughts to my
own ideas divested of words, I do not see how I can easily be mistaken. The
objects I consider, I clearly and adequately know’ (§22). And in TVV: ‘The real
objects of sight we see, and what we see we know’ (§20). Formulated in epistemic
terms MQT would exclude ignorance; IT would rule out error.
The immediate and mediate perception of sensible qualities
Berkeley’s notion of immediate perception is the locus of three distinctions.

(1) It is distinguished from mediate perception as Berkeley endorses it in the
TV and the TVV, as discussed above. The objects of immediate and mediate
perception in Berkeley’s accepted sense are all and only ideas and collections
of ideas. (2) Both immediate and mediate perception as Berkeley accepts them
are distinguished from inference and reasoning. (3) Immediate perception is

distinguished from the sort of representative mediate perception that Berkeley
does not accept and that, according to him, the ‘materialist’ endorses on the
assumption that material bodies exist and that it is possible to perceive them and
their qualities. On that assumption the objects of immediate perception would
be sensible ideas, whereas the mediately perceived bodies and their qualities
would be ontologically distinct both from the mind and from its ideas.
Let us approach the second distinction – that between immediate and mediate
perception on the one hand, and on the other hand inference and reasoning –
by raising a question. Given the importance of ideas of the imagination in
mediate perception, does Berkeley consider mediate perception to be a form of
sense perception, or not? Pitcher (1977) denies that he does, for there are quite a
few passages, especially in the Three Dialogues, to the effect that ‘sensible things
are those only which are immediately perceived by sense’ (175); ‘there is nothing
perceived by sense, which is not perceived immediately’ (215).19 I believe,
however, that Berkeley’s more considered position enlarges the notion of sense
perception so as to encompass mediate perception, as in the ‘coach passage’:
‘I grant we may in one acceptation be said to perceive sensible things mediately by
sense: that is, when from a frequently perceived connexion, the immediate
perception of ideas by one sense suggests to the mind others perhaps belonging
to another sense, which are wont to be connected with them’ (3D 204; my italics).
That Berkeley considers mediate perception a form of sense perception gains
confirmation from TVV, where he distinguishes between (a) perception by the
senses, which is either immediate or mediate, and (b) acts of the understanding,
such as judgements and inferences:
To perceive is one thing; to judge is another. So likewise, to be suggested is
one thing, and to be inferred another. Things are suggested and perceived by
sense. We make judgements and inferences by the understanding. What we
immediately and properly perceive by sight is its primary object, light and
colours. What is suggested or perceived by mediation therefore, are tangible
ideas which may be considered as secondary and improper objects of sight. We
infer causes from effects, effects from causes, and properties one from another,
where the connection is necessary.
TVV §42; my italics
When Berkeley says that ‘things are suggested and perceived by sense’, he
endorses the view that mediate perception, in his accepted sense, is a case of
sense perception. Furthermore, because judgements and inferences, as described
here, are acts of the understanding rather than sense, and because inference
deals with causal relations and necessary connections between properties, it

follows that immediate and mediate perception, taken strictly in themselves, do
not contain judgements and inferences. This, however, leaves Berkeley ample
room to hold – if he so wishes – that mediate perception can depend on, be
accompanied by, or prompt perceptual judgements, as the case may be.
The Theory of Vision Vindicated, from which we have just quoted, is a late text,
so some chronological perspective is in order regarding Berkeley’s use of his
central epistemic notions. His distinction between suggestion and judgement
is not made in TV, where he often uses both terms equivalently.20 His reason for
doing so is presumably that mediate perception, although not an inference, is
generally accompanied by expectations and beliefs regarding the sort of ideas
one would immediately perceive by sense under such and such conditions.
Indeed, the very finality of the natural language of vision, inasmuch as it concerns
our survival and well-being, is precisely to ensure that such expectations and
beliefs are formed rapidly and are, for the most part, correct. Next, Berkeley’s
distinction between suggestion and inference is implicit, but clear in TV, where
he seems never to use the terms equivalently when describing his own theory.
The distinction between immediate perception and inference is explicit in
the Three Dialogues, although worded by Hylas: ‘in truth the senses perceive
nothing which they do not perceive immediately: for they make no inferences.
The deducing therefore of causes or occasions from effects and appearances,
which alone are perceived by sense, entirely relates to reason’ (174–5). Finally, the
distinction between, on the one hand perception by the senses, both immediate
and mediate, and on the other hand inference, or ‘ratiocination’, is made in
the Three Dialogues: ‘Whatever therefore you could before apprehend, either
immediately or mediately by your senses, or by ratiocination from your senses
[. . .] remains still with you’ (255; my italics).
Let us return to the two last distinctions mentioned at the beginning of this
Section: (2) the distinction between sense perception (immediate and mediate
in Berkeley’s accepted sense) and inference, or reasoning; and (3) the distinction
between immediate perception and the sort of representative mediate perception
that Berkeley rejects, but that, according to him, the ‘materialist’ endorses. There
is an important connexion between the two distinctions: the connexion is that
so-called ‘mediate perception’ in this latter sense, according to Berkeley, would
have to contain an inference, and so would not be an instance of sense perception.
Let us explain.
In the first of the Three Dialogues, Philonous sets out to show Hylas that
all sensible qualities are mind-dependent, i.e. they are sensible ideas. Before
surrendering, however, Hylas resorts to the ‘materialist’ distinction between, on

the one hand sensible ideas, and on the other hand qualities that inhere in
material substances. Hylas agrees with Philonous’s analogy between: (i) the
mediate perception of an external sensible quality by means of the immediate
perception of an idea of that quality, presuming the external quality has ‘a
conformity or resemblance to our ideas’ (203); and (ii) the perceptual situation
of a person who is said to perceive Caesar when perceiving a picture of him.
Philonous notes that two persons who can see the picture equally well may differ
in that the one’s ‘thoughts are directed to the Roman Emperor’ (204), whereas the
other person’s thoughts are not, and that the difference cannot be explained by
a difference in what they perceive since they both see the picture equally well.
Philonous infers that the difference between the two persons ‘should seem
therefore to proceed from reason and memory’ (204). By way of the purported
analogy, the implication is that when a ‘materialist’ speaks of mediately perceiving
a quality of a material substance, the position he really holds is that: (a) a person
immediately perceives a sensible idea; and that (b) the step further – the step
from the sensible idea to the external quality itself, i.e. the step whereby her
thoughts are mediately directed to the quality – depends on the use of ‘reason
and memory’. (Berkeley knows that the ‘materialist’ has to exclude memory from
his explanation of his so-called ‘mediate perception’, because memory depends
on perception, and perception is precisely what the ‘materialist’ is trying to
explain. This, then, leaves only reason open to the ‘materialist’, that is, inference.)
In sum, according to Berkeley, although the ‘materialist’ speaks of mediately
perceiving qualities of material substances, in his mouth the expression ‘mediate
perception’ is bogus, because he uses the expression to describe, not a case of
sense perception, but an inference from immediately perceived sensible ideas to
external objects.21 Thus, material bodies and their qualities, if any existed, could
not be mediately perceived in the sense in which mediate perception is a form of
sense perception. Given that Berkeley takes it that the ‘materialists’ agree that
material bodies and their qualities cannot be immediately perceived, he holds
that they could be perceived neither immediately nor mediately, that is, not at all.
How many definitions of immediate perception

does Berkeley have?
A question raised by Dicker and Pappas is that of Berkeley’s definition of

immediate perception. I agree with Pappas that Berkeley’s definition of immediate
perception is the TV definition.22 In an excellent paper Dicker argues that in the

First Dialogue Berkeley also operates with two other, quite different definitions,
and that he conflates them. These are what Dicker describes as a psychological
notion (to immediately perceive-p) and an epistemic notion (to immediately
perceive-e). The psychological definition of ‘x is immediately perceived-p’ is:
x is perceived without the perceiver’s performing any (conscious) inference.
The epistemic definition of ‘x is immediately perceived-e’ is:

x is perceived in such a way that its existence and nature can be known solely on
the basis of one’s present perceptual experience.
2006, 518
Dicker would surely agree that the psychological notion of immediate

perception is not Berkeley’s proper definition. It gives only a necessary, not a
sufficient, condition of immediate perception, because, as we have seen, the
definiens applies just as well to mediate perception as Berkeley accepts it.23
More must be said, however, about Dicker’s epistemic notion of immediate
perception. He sees it surreptitiously at work in at least three passages of the First
Dialogue, where he holds that Berkeley conflates it with the psychological notion.
His reason for attributing to Berkeley the epistemic definition, and for Berkeley’s
conflation, can be summarized as follows.
In the Three Dialogues 180–7 Hylas tries to distinguish between (a) sensible
qualities ‘as immediately perceived by us’, which exist only in the mind, and
(b) qualities as they are ‘in themselves’ and that exist without the mind. For
instance:
Hylas You must distinguish, Philonous, between sound as it is perceived by
us, and as it is in itself; or (which is the same thing) between the sound we
immediately perceive, and that which exists without us. The former indeed is a
particular kind of sensation, but the latter is merely a vibrative or undulatory
motion in the air.24
Hylas agrees that qualities ‘as immediately perceived by us’ are sensations,
sensible ideas. He believes that qualities as they are ‘in themselves’ are material
entities that cause the former, and that they are numerically distinct from them
(cf. 3D 186–7). He thus holds that there are two sorts of qualities – two sorts of
sounds, light, colours, etc. – the one in the mind, the other without the mind.
Philonous denies that such qualities exist without the mind. So, he denies Hylas
the right to call the hypothetical material causes of our sensible ideas ‘sounds’,
‘light’, ‘colours’, etc. How does Philonous do this? He reminds Hylas that they are
supposed to be talking only about sensible qualities, and that the qualities as they
are ‘in themselves’ that Hylas wishes to posit are not sensible qualities at all. Why
are they not? Because, says Philonous, they cannot be immediately perceived:25
Philonous Colours then in the vulgar sense, or taken for the immediate objects
of sight, cannot agree to any but a perceiving substance.
Hylas That is what I say.
Philonous Well then, since you give up the point as to those sensible qualities,
which are alone thought colours by all mankind beside, you may hold what
you please with regard to those invisible ones of the philosophers. It is not my
business to dispute about them; only I would advise you to bethink yourself,
whether considering the inquiry we are upon, it be prudent of you to affirm,
the red and blue which we see are not real colours, but certain unknown
motions and figures which no man ever did or can see, are truly so. Are not
these shocking notions [. . .]?26
According to Philonous, Hylas’s external qualities are not sensible qualities

because they cannot be immediately perceived. Dicker asks: ‘What notion of
immediate perception is required in order to make it true that we do not
immediately perceive the causes of our sensations?’ (2006, 528). Well, how about
Berkeley’s TV definition of immediate perception? Dicker concedes that ‘if we
think of sensations as thing-like intermediaries (‘sense-data’) involved in all
perception’, then the TV definition will be ‘sufficient to rule out the claim that we
immediately perceive the causes of those sensations. For then it will be the case
that we do not perceive those causes unless we perceive an intermediary not
identical with them, which means that our perception will be mediate rather
than immediate’ (2006, 528). In short Berkeley’s TV definition will do the job if,
and only if, it is agreed that sensations are immediate objects of perception.
However, according to Dicker, this is not agreed, for Hylas may be considering
sensations as ‘merely states of the self, or ways the self senses or is appeared to’
(ibid.). Therefore, in order to block the possibility that we immediately perceive
the external causes of our sensations, Philonous must implicitly appeal to the
epistemic definition of immediate perception.
I agree with Dicker that, if sensations are immediately perceived objects of
perception in the passages under discussion, then Philonous’s rebuttals do not
require an epistemic definition of immediate perception. I believe, however, that
the antecedent is true, and so, that the consequent is, too. Hylas distinguishes
‘between sound as it is perceived by us, and as it is in itself; or (which is the same
thing) between the sound we immediately perceive, and that which exists without
us. The former indeed is a particular kind of sensation, but the latter is merely a
vibrative or undulatory motion in the air’ (my italics). Hylas equates a sensation
with an immediately perceived quality, an object of immediate perception. And
that is how Philonous understands him: ‘Colours then in the vulgar sense, or
taken for the immediate objects of sight, cannot agree to any but a perceiving
substance’.27 As Philonous says later on: ‘the materialists themselves acknowledge
what we immediately perceive by our senses, to be our own ideas’ (3D 248). Thus,
it is unnecessary to see Philonous as relying on Dicker’s epistemic definition; the
TV definition is all that is required.
Of course, Berkeley would accept the following epistemic conditional, where
immediate perception is understood according to the TV definition: if one
immediately perceives a sensible quality, one perceives it in such a way that its
existence and nature can be known solely on the basis of one’s present perceptual
experience.28 Indeed, the conditional can be derived from MQT. According
to MQT, if one immediately perceives a sensible quality, all of its intrinsic,
phenomenal traits and all of its parts, if it has parts, are manifest to the perceiver.
Therefore, if one immediately perceives a sensible quality, one perceives it in
such a way that its existence and nature can be known solely on the basis of one’s
present perceptual experience. Remember, though, that according to Principles
§25, MQT follows from the claim that immediately perceived qualities exist
only in the mind, i.e. they are sensible ideas. Thus, if Philonous were implicitly
presupposing the derived epistemic conditional in 3D 180–7, Berkeley would be
committing a petitio principii. His being guilty of that, however, is far from
obvious.
The immediate and mediate sense perception of

physical objects
When discussing physical objects, we must distinguish two different levels. At

the upper, phenomenological level an apple is a hard, smooth, round object in
three-dimensional space; its colour seems to cover its entire hard surface;
its smell seems to be situated a few inches from the apple, in varying degrees
of intensity; its taste seems to be uniformly spread in each morsel; and the
sound the apple makes when dropped on a table seems to come from the
exact place where it hits the table. This phenomenological picture, however, is
partly – not entirely – mistaken. It is wrong insofar as it represents an apple’s
different sensible qualities as located and coexisting in three-dimensional space.
Berkeley’s explanation as to how this misleading picture is constructed by finite

minds relies largely on his theory of mediate perception and on the associative
connections in the imagination.29
However, philosophical reflection, in particular the heterogeneity thesis, helps
us to understand what an apple really is, and this can only be found out at a level
that is more basic than the upper, phenomenological level. At the more basic
level an apple is a collection of sensible ideas that belong to several senses, and
that share no common space. Within each sense modality the ideas that constitute
a physical object belong to numerous, complex, lawfully regulated sequences.
The sequences of ideas within each sense modality are correlated with those of
other sense modalities by further lawfully ordered relations. The intra-modal
and intermodal relations are what bind the sense-specific ideas into a bundle, a
physical object.30
Up to here, when talking of Berkeley’s accepted sense of mediate perception,
we have focused on the mediate perception of sensible qualities of one sense by
means of the immediate perception of ideas of another sense. In the ‘coach
passage’ of the Three Dialogues, Berkeley intends his notion of mediate perception
to apply not only to sensible qualities, but also to physical objects:
I grant we may in one acceptation be said to perceive sensible things mediately

by sense: that is, when from a frequently perceived connexion, the immediate
perception of ideas by one sense suggests to the mind others perhaps belonging
to another sense, which are wont to be connected with them. For instance, when
I hear a coach drive along the streets, immediately I perceive only the sound; but
from the experience I have had that such a sound is connected with a coach, I am
said to hear the coach.31
Presumably then, we mediately perceive a physical object when: (i) immediately

perceived sensible ideas x suggest ideas of the imagination that represent sensible
ideas y ‘perhaps belonging to another sense’; (ii) given x, one expects one will, or
would, immediately perceive y under such and such conditions; and (iii) sensible
ideas x and y are constituents of the same physical object.
Question: Philonous says that ‘In reading a book, what I immediately perceive
are the letters, but mediately, or by means of these, are suggested to my mind the
notions of God, virtue, truth, etc.’ (3D 174). Of course, God, virtue and truth are
not sensible things. But, the question goes, what if the immediately perceived
words suggest ideas of flowers and trees, which are sensible things? Would this
count as a case of mediate sense perception? Reply: clauses (ii) and especially
(iii) rule out such a possibility.
For the last thirty years there has been an on-growing debate concerning the
question whether, according to Berkeley, physical objects such as described at
the basic level can be immediately perceived. Let us call those who give a positive
reply ‘the advocates’, and those who give a negative reply ‘the opponents’.32
The advocates hold that in some cases a physical object may be immediately
perceived without being mediately perceived, and that in other cases a physical
object may be simultaneously perceived both immediately and mediately. The
opponents believe that a physical object cannot be immediately perceived. We
might distinguish two sorts of opponents: extreme and moderate. Extreme
opponents, such as Pitcher, believe that physical objects can be perceived neither
immediately nor mediately. As I have already shown that Berkeley acknowledges
mediate sense perception of physical objects, from now on I will be considering
the moderate opponents. They hold that physical objects can be mediately, not
immediately, perceived.
How does the problem arise? On the one hand we find numerous passages to
the apparent effect that only sensible ideas can be immediately perceived. For
instance, there is the ‘coach’ passage, where Philonous says:
It is nevertheless evident, that in truth and strictness, nothing can be heard but
sound: and the coach is not then properly perceived by sense, but suggested from
experience. So likewise when we are said to see a red-hot bar of iron; the solidity
and heat of the iron are not the objects of sight, but suggested to the imagination
by the colour and figure, which are properly perceived by that sense. In short,
those things alone are actually and strictly perceived by any sense, which would
have been perceived in case that same sense had then been first conferred on us. As
for other things, it is plain they are only suggested to the mind by experience,
grounded on former perceptions.
3D 204; my italics
Further on, Philonous reiterates the heterogeneity thesis: ‘we do not see the
same object that we feel’ (3D 245); this, too, might seem to rule out the possibility
of immediately perceiving a physical object. On the other hand there are several
passages in the Principles and Three Dialogues to the apparent effect that finite
minds do immediately perceive physical objects. Two such passages are the
following:
Take away this material substance, about the identity whereof all the dispute is,
and mean by body what every plain ordinary person means by that word, to wit,
that which is immediately seen and felt, which is only a combination of sensible
qualities or ideas: and then their most unanswerable objections come to nothing.
Wood, stones, fire, water, flesh, iron, and the like things, which I name and
discourse of, are things that I know. And I should not have known them, but
that I perceived them by my senses; and things perceived by the senses are
immediately perceived.33
The advocates, who take the latter passages literally, have to acknowledge a
gap in Berkeley’s theory of perception: he offers no explicit account of what the
immediate perception of a physical object amounts to. They believe the gap
should be bridged – though not filled up – so as to satisfy Berkeley’s declared
intentions. The advocates cannot fill the gap because they are not supposed to
invent a theory where Berkeley gives none; they can only bridge it, by showing
that the quoted passages taken literally are consistent with Berkeley’s views on
the nature of immediate perception. They believe this can be done. The opponents
hold that the latter passages cannot be taken literally because they would be
inconsistent with Berkeley’s views on immediate perception, and with the
boundaries he draws between immediate and mediate perception.
Several advocates reply by highlighting three points. First, the TV definition
of immediate perception can be used to speak of the immediate perception of
a physical object: one perceives x immediately just if x is a sensible thing and
one’s perception of x does not depend on the perception of an intermediary
idea (an idea that is neither identical with, nor a part of, x), which either suggests
or represents x. According to the advocates, x can be a number of sensible
qualities – of one or more senses – constitutive of the same physical object, so
that to perceive x immediately is to perceive a physical object immediately.
Second, MQT as put forth in Principles §25 applies to the immediate perception
of sensible qualities, not to that of physical objects. It would be obviously
mistaken to say that if one immediately perceives a physical object, say a tree, all
of its intrinsic, phenomenal traits and its parts are manifest to the perceiver.
Therefore, the epistemic conditional discussed at the end of the previous section
applies only to the immediate perception of a sensible quality, not to that of a
physical object. Third, several passages, including 3D 204 quoted above, show
that Berkeley has in mind a distinction between what is merely immediately
perceived and what is strictly, or properly and immediately perceived.34 According
to several advocates, sensible qualities proper to a sense are properly and
immediately perceived by that sense. However, when Berkeley speaks of the
immediate perception of physical objects, he dispenses with the adverbs
‘strictly’ and ‘properly’, thereby implying that physical objects can be immediately
perceived, albeit not properly because they are not the proper objects of any one
sense modality.
Some opponents seem to believe (a) that for Berkeley the perception of a
physical object is necessarily conceptual. For example, to perceive a physical
object one must perceive it as an apple, or as a tomato, etc. Opponents and
advocates agree (b) that conceptual perception of a physical object involves
mediate perception. For example, one would not perceive an apple as an apple
unless the immediate perception of some sensible ideas that belong to an apple
suggest ideas of the imagination that represent other sensible ideas that also
belong to the apple. The conjunction of (a) and (b) leads the opponents to
the conclusion that it is impossible to perceive a physical object immediately.
Given that the advocates accept (b), they deny (a). So their reply is, or should be,
that immediate perception is, and mediate perception can be, non-conceptual
for Berkeley. We have seen at the beginning of this chapter that immediate
perception is non-conceptual because of the ‘first conferred’ criterion. I now
wish to show that mediate perception can be non-conceptual.
Berkeley’s awareness of conceptual perception is evidenced in a group of four
sections of the Theory of Vision Vindicated, where he explains that suggested
ideas of tangible distance, size and situation vary considerably according to what
he calls our ‘praenotions’ concerning, among other things, the kind of object we
are mediately perceiving. Here is one such passage:
Beside this magnitude, situation, and faintness of the pictures, our praenotions
concerning the kind, size, shape and nature of things do concur in suggesting to
us their tangible magnitudes. Thus, for instance, a picture equally great, equally
faint, and in the very same situation, shall in the shape of a man suggest a lesser
tangible magnitude than it would in the shape of a tower.35
If Jane has the ‘praenotion’ that she is perceiving a man, the visible ideas she
immediately perceives will suggest to her imagination an idea of tangible size
much smaller than what would be suggested by similar visible ideas (‘equally
great, equally faint, and in the very same situation’) if she thought she were
perceiving a tower. Suppose that, due to her immediately perceiving man-shaped
visible ideas rather than tower-shaped visible ideas, Jane has the correct
‘praenotion’ that she is mediately perceiving a man rather than a tower. In
Berkeley’s example Jane mediately perceives a physical object as a man, rather
than as a tower. This is a case of conceptual mediate perception.
I believe, though, that conceptual mediate perception, for Berkeley, must be
preceded by non-conceptual mediate perception. Why? It seems that the only way
Berkeley can explain how we mediately perceive a physical object as an F, say as
an apple, is by supposing that we have already formed the concept of F, say the
general idea of an apple.36 This is confirmed by Berkeley’s expression ‘praenotion’:
a previously acquired conception.37 Now, we must perceive particular ideas before

making them general; general ideas are dependent on, and subsequent to, particular
ideas. Thus, taking ‘F’ to stand here for a sort of physical object (a coach, an apple,
etc.), one must perceive at least one F non-conceptually before forming a concept
of F, and therefore before perceiving it, or another physical object, as an F.
Perceiving a certain physical object as an F is necessarily dependent and consequent
on perceiving some F non-conceptually, whether it be the same one or another,
numerically distinct one. In sum, although mediate perception of a physical object
can be either conceptual or non-conceptual, non-conceptual mediate perceiving is
prior to, and independent of, conceptual mediate perceiving.38
The advocates’ hypothesis is that Berkeley can consistently claim both:
(1) that sensible qualities of one sense modality are properly and immediately
perceived by that sense (in accordance with the ‘first conferred’ criterion); and
(2) that a physical object can be immediately perceived (in accordance with the
TV definition), albeit not properly, nor conceptually, just in virtue of the fact that
one immediately perceives some of the sensible qualities that happen to belong
to such a collection. In order to immediately perceive a physical object it is not
necessary to perceive the object as of this or that sort.39
Let us now envisage what may be a difficulty for the opponents. The difficulty
concerns point (a) mentioned above: that for Berkeley the perception of a
physical object is necessarily conceptual. How is (a) to be interpreted? Surely the
opponents do not mean to say that in order to perceive a tomato, one must
perceive it as a tomato, because we have seen that Berkeley readily acknowledges
cases of misperception. To clarify this, let us consider a common case of sortal
misperception. Mary (an experienced perceiver equipped with all of our ordinary
concepts) perceives a round red fruit as an apple and believes it is an apple,
although, unknown to her, it is a tomato. If the opponents’ understanding of
(a) were that, in order to perceive a physical object that is an F, it is necessary to
perceive it as an F, they would have to deny that (unknown to her) Mary perceives
a tomato. This would rule out the possibility of sortal misperception. Why?
Because in order to (mis)perceive as an apple a round red fruit that is a tomato,
it must be true that one perceives a tomato even though one does not perceive it
as a tomato. Therefore, let us interpret (a) so as to accommodate the possibility
of sortal misperception: in order to perceive a physical object that is an F, it is
necessary to perceive it either as an F, or a G, or an H, etc.
So the question now becomes: How do the opponents account for the fact
that Mary perceives a tomato (although she perceives it as an apple, and believes
it is one)? It seems they will offer the following account: (i) Mary immediately
perceives some sensible ideas that, unknown to her, belong to a tomato; (ii) these
suggest to her imagination ideas that correctly represent several sensible qualities
of a red fruit, e.g. its figure, size, distance and situation; (iii) they also suggest to
her imagination other ideas that represent apple-like, but not tomato-like,
sensible qualities; and (iv) if (counterfactually) Mary were closer to the tangible
tomato, another set of immediately perceived sensible ideas would suggest to her
imagination ideas such as those mentioned in (ii), and also ideas that represent
tomato-like sensible qualities, instead of the apple-like sensible ideas mentioned
in (iii). Furthermore, the opponents’ account goes, because of (ii) Mary mediately,
conceptually and correctly perceives a round red fruit. Because of (iii) she falsely
believes that the fruit she mediately perceives is an apple. Because of (iv) it is
counterfactually true that, given certain conditions, Mary would mediately,
conceptually and correctly perceive the tomato as a tomato, and believe it is one.
So far, so good. However, since the opponents deny that a physical object can be
immediately perceived, (i) does not account for the fact that Mary at present
really perceives a tomato. So what, according to the opponents, does account for
this fact?40
As for the advocates, they will agree with (i)–(iv), but they will claim that
(i) accounts for the fact that, unknown to her, Mary perceives a tomato: she
perceives it immediately, and just insofar as she perceives it immediately, she
perceives it non-conceptually.
Two objections, replies, and further considerations
Let us now discuss two objections to the advocates’ reading so far proposed. In a
fine paper Atherton rejects the distinction between what is immediately perceived
(both sensible qualities and physical objects according to the advocates) and what
is properly and immediately perceived (only sensible qualities). She believes that
the ‘first conferred’ criterion implies that ‘the concept of what is immediately
perceived collapses into the concept of what is properly perceived’ (2008a, 114).
Why? Because:
mental activity is required before the different sensible ideas are perceived as or
constitute a collection. Indeed, this seems to be a job for suggestion. Ideas form a
collection when immediate ideas suggest other sensible ideas of the imagination.
Since physical objects are collections of a variety of sensible ideas, under this
account, they are mediately perceived.
2008a, 111; my italics
Apparently she holds that the collection of sensible ideas that constitutes a
physical object is literally produced by a finite mind’s mental activity in mediate
perception:
Although the Man Born Blind immediately perceives the visual properties of a
globe and a cube, he does not yet perceive a globe or a cube, because the visual
cues do not yet suggest tangible meanings to him. The tangible properties of the
globe and cube are not yet part of the collection along with the visual ideas that
make up the globe and cube.41
If so, then it follows that physical objects, collections of sensible ideas, can be
only mediately perceived.
The argument contains two premises, however, that I find ambiguous, true in
one sense, false in another: (1) a collection of ideas is formed when immediately
perceived ideas suggest ideas of the imagination; (2) mental activity typical
of mediate perception is required for different sensible ideas to constitute a
collection. The reason why the two premises are ambiguous is that I believe
Berkeley distinguishes between: (a) the collection of sensible ideas that constitute
a physical object; and (b) the combination of ideas of the imagination that finite
minds produce in mediate perception. As I have argued for the distinction
elsewhere,42 let me briefly rehearse its main points.
According to Berkeley, physical objects are produced by God, not by finite
minds: ‘Moses mentions the sun, moon, and stars, earth and sea, plants and
animals; that all these do really exist, and were in the beginning created by God,
I make no question’ (3D 255). This must be understood of individual, particular
physical objects as described at the basic level: combinations of inter-related
sensible qualities. God produces both the constituent sensible ideas and the
intra-modal and intermodal lawfully regulated relations that unite them into a
combination.43
Now, the relations that obtain between past, present and possible sensible
ideas must not be confused with the psychological, associative relations by which
a finite mind combines together suggested ideas of the imagination so as to form
a complex idea that represents a physical object. First, whereas the former
relations are produced by God and, thus, can only be discovered by finite minds,
the psychological, associative relations are produced by finite minds and depend
on the discovery of the former. (As Cummins says, ‘it is the lawful connections
that bind diverse qualities into individual things’.44 Associative relations in the
imagination are not lawful connections, although many such relations depend
on a finite mind’s registering lawful connections between sensible ideas.) Second,
whereas the latter relations connect only sensible ideas proper, the associative
relations connect immediately perceived sensible ideas with only ideas of the
imagination. Whereas the sensible ideas that constitute a physical object are
sensible qualities, the suggested ideas of the imagination are not sensible qualities
(although they have sensory content). Third, whereas the amount of sensible
ideas that constitute a physical object at the basic level is indefinitely great, the
complex idea that a finite mind forms of a physical object by associatively
combining ideas of the imagination is highly selective because the mind includes
in its combinations only the ideas of the imagination that represent the qualities
that it finds relevant to its needs, ‘in such sort as experience shows it to be most
convenient’.45
To return to the opponent’s argument, (1) and (2) above are ambiguous
because they do not distinguish between (a) the God-produced collection of
sensible ideas that constitutes an individual physical object, and (b) the very
selective combination of associatively connected ideas of the imagination that is
produced by a finite mind, and that represents a physical object. If ‘collection’ in
(1) and (2) refers to (a), I believe the two statements are false. If it refers to (b),
then they are true, but irrelevant, because Berkeley can consistently hold that a
finite mind can immediately perceive a physical object by immediately perceiving
some of the sensible ideas that belong to the collection produced by God,
whether or not it mediately perceives other qualities belonging to the same
collection, and whether or not it has combined together ideas of the imagination
that represent (some of) the sensible qualities that belong to the God-produced
collection. This possibility is compatible with Berkeley’s TV definition of
immediate perception. As long as the possibility remains open, it has not been
established that whatever is immediately perceived is properly and immediately
perceived.
Let us clarify. The advocates’ argument, as I would state it, is not: God produces
particular physical objects, therefore finite minds immediately perceive them.
The point is rather the following: Berkeley says on several occasions that finite
minds immediately perceive physical objects, and good sense can be made of
this claim if: (i) we acknowledge that, although finite minds make sorts and
kinds, God produces particular physical objects; (ii) immediate perception
is understood according to the TV definition, which seems to be Berkeley’s
only definition, as argued in Section V; (iii) we acknowledge that immediate
perception for Berkeley is non-conceptual, as argued in Section I; and (iv) we
accept the distinction between what we properly and immediately perceive and
what we immediately perceive, albeit not properly.
Let us turn to a second objection, made by Brook, according to whom it is

not possible to immediately perceive a physical object, because a bundle theory
such as Berkeley’s does not allow this. Why? Imagine Sarah, who does not
yet have the concept of an apple, and who immediately perceives seriatim
different sensible ideas that, unknown to her, happen to be constituents of
one and the same apple. Brook compares Sarah’s situation with that of a visitor
to a large house containing a collection of, say, a hundred vases spread out
in many different rooms. The thought experiment consists of four steps. First,
we have the intuition that the visitor cannot be said to perceive the collection
of vases merely by perceiving two of them. Second, we are invited to envisage
an analogy: constituent sensible ideas are to a Berkeleian physical object what
the individual vases are to the collection of a hundred. Third, we are to transfer
the common-sense intuition from the visitor’s perception of the collection
of vases to Sarah’s immediate perception of a physical object. Finally, we are
supposed to conclude that, just as the visitor cannot be said to perceive
the collection of vases unless he perceives all of them, a finite mind cannot
immediately perceive a physical object unless it immediately perceives all of its
constituent ideas: ‘Unless Sarah has experienced all the sense elements of the
apple bundle (and perhaps not even then) she has not, in my view, perceived
the bundle’ (Brook 2005, 500).
The argument, I believe, is inconclusive because the second step – the
purported analogy – does not hold. The differences between a collection of vases
and a physical object in Berkeley’s view are too great for one to legitimately
transfer the common-sense intuition about perceiving the collection of vases to
the question of one’s immediately perceiving a physical object. The reason is that
the comparison is based on the everyday intuition we have of a collection of
vases at the phenomenological level: a hundred coloured and tangible physical
objects spread out discontinuously in three-dimensional space. But this picture
fails to represent what a physical object is for Berkeley, because its constituents
are not spread out discontinuously in three-dimensional space. On the contrary,
(1) the tangible ideas of solidity that constitute a physical object are spread out
continuously in three-dimensional space, and (2) the constituents of the same
physical object that belong to touch and the other senses share no common
space at all. Because of these differences the analogy does not hold, and so one
cannot transfer the phenomenological intuition of the collection of vases down
to Berkeley’s basic-level conception of a physical object. This leaves unwarranted
the claim that to immediately perceive a physical object one should immediately
perceive all of its constituent ideas.
It remains an open question: How many, and what kinds of sensible qualities
must one immediately perceive in order to immediately perceive a physical
object? Advocates have given different answers,46 which is only to be expected.
Given the heterogeneity thesis, our common-sense intuitions can afford no
principled reply. Berkeley’s basic-level conception of a physical object is too
remote from common sense for our phenomenological, upper-level intuitions
to bear conclusively on the issue. In any case the advocates cannot be held to give
a precise answer; their task is merely to establish the consistency of Berkeley’s
views on immediate perception, not to invent a theory.
Let us now consider an argument – independent of the dubious claim that
physical object perception for Berkeley is necessarily conceptual – that might
favour the opponents. A possible assumption concerning perception is that
in order to perceive a physical object (even non-conceptually) one must be
able to perceptually discriminate it from its surroundings. Berkeley, as far as
I know, does not state the assumption explicitly; I am far from certain it is
true, or that Berkeley believes it is. Nevertheless, because some opponents
might take it for granted, or ascribe it to Berkeley, let us grant it for the sake
of the argument. Now, consider Susan, who has just received the sense of
sight. We, who have already coordinated our sight with our touch, can say
that her visual field is that of a table, on which there is a computer and a pen,
behind which there is a window frame. Yet, it seems plausible to say that
her visual field is manifest to her, so to speak, as a variegated kaleidoscopic
field of coloured patches, so that Susan, in her present state, is unable to
parcel out by sight which visible ideas belong to the table, which to the
computer, which to the pen, and which to the window frame, etc. Although
she immediately perceives all of these visible ideas, Susan cannot visually
discriminate one from another the physical objects to which the visible ideas
respectively belong. If the assumption mentioned above is granted, Susan does
not immediately perceive these physical objects because she cannot distinguish
them by sight.
The argument favours the opponents’ case, but does not clinch it. Why not?
Consider June, who is blind and has just had the sense of touch first conferred
on her. She might be able to discriminate these physical objects merely by
touch, before having sufficient experience for her tangible ideas to suggest any
ideas to her imagination. If so, even if Berkeley did endorse the discrimination
assumption, he might nevertheless agree that it is satisfied in June’s case: she
immediately perceives the physical objects because she distinguishes them by
touch, unaided by mediate perception.47
Notes
1 A more complex definition is given by Pappas in Pappas, G. (2000), Berkeley’s

Thought. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, p. 159.
2 At the beginning of TV Berkeley uses a broader notion of mediate perception. He
says that we perceive another person’s passions ‘by sight, though not immediately,
yet by means of the colours they produce in the countenance’ (TV §9, cf. §10). This
seems to be a loose way of speaking because, on Berkeley’s own grounds, passions
are not sensible things, they cannot be immediately perceived, nor can they be
represented by ideas of the imagination. We experience, but do not perceive, our
own passions; we neither perceive nor experience other persons’ passions. For this
reason, I submit, Berkeley would agree that the case at hand does not count as a
case of mediate sense perception, which is what we are concerned with.
3 That Berkeley intends his theory of mediate sense perception to apply to animals,
too, is clear in TV §59, and implicit in 3D 185 and 188.
4 Cf. PI §12 and §§15–16.
5 For a different argument concluding that immediate perception is non-conceptual,
cf. Pappas (2000: 167–8).
6 TVV §9; cf. TVV §§10, 39, 51 and 3D 204. In the context of mediate perception
Berkeley considers the imagination as a power of representing sensible things in
their absence, rather than as a power of intentionally and fancifully compounding
or dividing the representations of such things, as in Principles §1.
7 ‘Possible’ should be taken as ‘possible relative to a certain finite mind’. Such ideas
may be real in God’s mind (cf. 3D 230–1). Thus, if an idea of a tangible quality is
suggested to Sally’s imagination, the suggested idea is an idea of the imagination
that is supposed to represent a tangible idea of sense that she would immediately
perceive under such and such conditions. However, since she does not immediately
perceive that sensible idea at present, it is only, for her, a possible idea of sense,
although it may be real in God’s mind.
8 Cf. Bellemare, P. & Raynor, D. (1989), ‘Berkeley’s letters to Le Clerc [1711]’,
Hermathena, 146: 7–23, p. 11. A draft of the letter is in Works VIII , 50.
9 Cf. TV §45; 3D 238; TVV §25; Alc IV §12 157–8. In a footnote at p. 158 editors
Luce and Jessop correctly refer the reader to TV §45.
10 Cf. TV §§121, 127–8, 133 and 140–3.
11 Given that the ‘the natural cries of animals, or the inarticulate sounds and
interjections of men’ are ‘significant sounds’ (presumably sounds intentionally
produced to express a passion or to convey a meaning), they are probably not
natural signs as used by those making such cries and sounds, but nor are they
constitutive of a language, natural or not.
12 TV §147; cf. TV §59 and P §44.
13 Although Berkeley never makes this distinction in so many words, I have argued
elsewhere that it is implicit in his theory of perception; cf. Glauser, R. (2003), ‘La
structure de la perception médiate dans la théorie berkeleyenne de la vision’, in
D. Berlioz (ed.), Berkeley. Langage de la perception et art de voir, 103-133, Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France.
14 Cf. respectively P §§1, 4, 95 and 3D 175 and 249.
15 Cf. P §49 and 3D 237. The following concerns (B2), (B3) and (B5). ‘Idea of a quality’
could have at least two meanings in seventeenth-century philosophy. It could mean
an act or event of perceiving a quality, or it could mean a perceived intentional
object that represents a quality. According to the standard metaphysics of Berkeley’s
day, such entities would be modes of a finite mind. According to P §49, however,
precisely because Berkeley’s sensible items are qualities – in fact we literally eat,
drink and are clothed with combinations of sensible ideas (cf. P §38) – they cannot
be modes of a finite mind, for otherwise the mind, a spiritual substance, would be
occasionally red, hard or loud, which is absurd. Notice that if they are not modes
of a mind, then they are not necessarily private, although they may be so as a
matter of fact.
16 Cf. e.g. P §§2, 38, 39; also 3D 250.
17 The major premise is echoed at least twice in the Principles: ‘Colour, figure, motion,
extension and the like, considered only as so many sensations in the mind, are
perfectly known, there being nothing in them which is not perceived’ (§87); ‘Every
particular finite extension, which may possibly be the object of our thought, is an
idea existing only in the mind, and consequently each part thereof must be
perceived’ (§124). The same premise appears in the Three Dialogues: ‘PHILONOUS :
Do you not perfectly know your own ideas? HYLAS : I know them perfectly; since
what I do not perceive or know, can be no part of my idea’ (206).
18 (1) The claim is limited to the intrinsic, phenomenal traits of a sensible quality, or
idea, because such an entity can be the term of many relations: intermodal relations
to ideas of other sense modalities, relations to God who causes it, and relations to the
finite mind that perceives it. Relations, however, are not objects of perception.
According to a passage added in the second edition of the Principles (1734), ‘we
know and 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’ (§89). (2) Furthermore, to say that all of the
parts of a sensible quality are manifest does not mean that they are necessarily
perceived as parts. For, as pointed out to me by Dick Brook, a Berkeleian extensive
magnitude, visible or tangible, is composed of minima sensibilia, and the minima are
not perceived as parts if, to do so, one must perceive their boundaries.
19 Cf. Pitcher, G. (1977), Berkeley. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 145–6.
20 Cf. e.g. TV §§20, 22, 24, 38, 45 (‘conclude’), 57, 61, 73, 78–9 and 98.
21 (1) Berkeley is arguing here against all of the ‘materialists’, who, according to him,
either do not realise that their notion of mediate perception involves an inference,
or are content to include an inference in their notion. (2) Philonous’s argument, of
course, leaves open the possibility that – if per impossibile material substances and
qualities existed – the inferred proposition may be true. But that would count as
knowledge based on immediate perception, not as sense perception. Berkeley has
other arguments to the effect that such knowledge would be impossible, too: cf.
P §§18–20. (3) Philonous’s argument raises problems I have no space to discuss.
For instance, how does Berkeley explain on his own terms what we ordinarily call
perceiving Caesar in a picture? (4) Philonous’s intended conclusion is that, when
a ‘materialist’ says that we mediately perceive a material object or quality by
immediately perceiving some sensible ideas that are supposed to resemble the
object or quality, the position he actually holds is as far from describing a case of
sense perception as we would be if we were to say that we have sense perception
of Caesar himself merely by seeing his portrait.
22 Cf. Pappas (2000: 147–82).
23 Dicker bases his attribution of immediate perception-p to Berkeley on 3D 174:
‘HYLAS : in truth the senses perceive nothing which they do not perceive
immediately: for they make no inferences’. However, in the light of the ‘Caesar
passage’ we can now see, retrospectively, that when Berkeley put the words just
quoted in Hylas’s mouth, he was anticipating the distinction, not between immediate
perception and mediate perception as Berkeley accepts it, but between immediate
perception and what he takes to be the ‘materialist’s’ false notion of ‘mediate
perception’, criticized in the ‘Caesar passage’.
24 3D 181–2. Dicker quotes Hylas’s three attempts and Philonous’s three rebuttals
(cf. Dicker, G. (2006), ‘Berkeley on immediate perception. Once more unto the
breach’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 56 (225): 517–35, pp. 525–7). Here is another
such passage, to which I shall refer in this chapter: ‘HYLAS : I tell you, Philonous,
external light is nothing but a thin fluid substance, whose minute particles being
agitated with a brisk motion, and in various manners reflected from the different
surfaces of outward objects to the eyes, communicate different motions to the optic
nerves; and which being propagated to the brain, cause therein various impressions:
and these are attended with the sensations of red, blue, yellow, etc. [. . .] Light and
colours, as immediately perceived by us, I grant cannot exist without the mind. But
in themselves they are only the motions and configurations of certain insensible
particles of matter’ (3D 186–7; my italics).
25 At this stage of the First Dialogue, Hylas and Philonous are not yet talking about
mediate perception, which will only be discussed explicitly as of 3D 203. They are
debating whether sensible qualities exist only in the mind (as Philonous claims),
or also without the mind (as Hylas claims). The issue at stake here is not whether
hypothetical material causes (qualities as they are ‘in themselves’) of our sensations,
or sensible ideas, can be mediately perceived, but whether they can be immediately
perceived.
26 3D 187, my italics. Here is another of Philonous’s rebuttals: ‘PHILONOUS : I say it
is nothing to the purpose. Our discourse proceeded altogether concerning sensible
things, which you defined to be the things we immediately perceive by our senses.
Whatever other qualities therefore you speak of, as distinct from these, I know
nothing of them, neither do they at all belong to the point in dispute. You may,
indeed, pretend to have discovered certain qualities which you do not perceive, and
assert those insensible qualities exist in fire and sugar. But what use can be made
of this to your present purpose, I am at a loss to conceive’ (3D 180).
27 The only place where Hylas seems to envisage the distinction Dicker has in mind
– between, on the one hand sensations as ‘merely states of the self, or ways the self
senses or is appeared to’, and, on the other hand external objects of immediate
perception – is in 3D 195: ‘HYLAS : [. . .] The sensation I take to be an act of the
mind perceiving; beside which, there is something perceived; and this I call the
object’. However, Philonous’s ensuing rejection of this distinction does not rely
on Dicker’s epistemic notion of immediate perception. Philonous’s principal
objection is that, because immediate perception is passive, it is not an act of the
mind (cf. 3D 195–7).
28 The expression ‘can be known’ in the conditional implies that it is not the case that
immediate perception just is knowledge.
29 ‘Throughout this whole affair the mind is wonderfully apt to be deluded by the
sudden suggestions of fancy, which it confounds with the perceptions of sense,
and is prone to mistake a close and habitual connexion between the most distinct
and different things for an identity of nature’ (TVV §52). Cf. TV §144.
30 As Brook aptly notes, it is ‘important to distinguish constitution as uniting a
bundle of ideas or sense qualities from constitution in terms of structural parts
that compose objects’: Brook, R. (2005), ‘Berkeley, bundles, and immediate
perception’, Dialogue, 44 (3): 493–504, p. 498. For example, the relations between
the functional parts of a clock are not the same as those between its constituent
sensible qualities. The former obtain only between tangible, functional parts of a
tangible clock.
31 3D 204, my italics. The italicized words lead Pitcher to write that Berkeley ‘says [. . .]
this is a loose, and in fact false, way of speaking’ (1977: 145). Berkeley certainly
does not say it is a false way of speaking. And unless one would have him trying to
deceive both the vulgar and the learned, there is no reason to attribute to him the
belief that it is false. It is more reasonable to take Berkeley as working here with a
bona fide ‘acceptation’ of mediate sense perception, one that, moreover, encompasses
the mediate perception of physical objects. An acceptation is the meaning, the sense,
of an expression; it is not just a manner of speaking. Thus, when Philonous says ‘we
may in one acceptation be said to perceive sensible things mediately by sense’ (my
italics), he is not endorsing a mere rhetorical way of speaking, even less a false one,
but an important distinction between his own notion of mediate sense perception
and the ‘materialists’ false notion, criticised and rejected a few lines before in the
‘Caesar passage’.
32 Among the advocates are: Luce, A. A. (1963), The Dialectic of Immaterialism.
London: Hodder & Stoughton; Ayers, M. (1975), ‘Introduction’, in George Berkeley:
Philosophical Works, ed. M. Ayers, London: Dent, vii–xxiii; Grayling, A. C. (1986),
Berkeley: The Central Arguments. London: Duckworth, p. 62; Winkler, K. (1989),
Berkeley. An Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp, 149–61); Muehlmann,
R. (1992), Berkeley’s Ontology. Indianapolis: Hackett, p. 123; Graham, J. (1997),
‘Common sense and Berkeley’s perception by suggestion’, International Journal
of Philosophical Studies, 5 (3): 397–423; Pappas (2000: 147–82) and Dicker (2006:
535). Among the opponents are: Tipton, I. C. (1974), Berkeley. The Philosophy of
Immaterialism. London: Methuen, 195 ff.); Pitcher (1977: 140 ff.; also 1986),
Brook (2005) and Atherton, M. (2008a), ‘The Objects of Immediate Perception’,
in S. H. Daniel (ed), New Interpretations of Berkeley’s Thought. New York: Humanity
Books, pp. 107–120 and Atherton, M. (2008b), ‘The books are in the study as before.
Berkeley’s claims about real physical objects’, British Journal for the History of
Philosophy, 16 (1): 85–100. Ayers’s position as an advocate is expressed more
trenchantly in a review of Pitcher (1977), quoted by Pitcher, G. (1986) ‘Berkeley
on the perception of objects’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 24 (1): 99-105,
p. 99. There are important differences between the members of each family;
taking account of the differences would expand this paper unduly. My presentation
of both camps, therefore, is somewhat approximate.
33 Respectively P §95 and 3D 230. Other passages are in P §38, §88; 3D 175, 195, 224,
261, 262, and Berkeley’s first letter to Johnson (Works II , 282).
34 Cf. Winkler (1989: 156 ff.); Graham (1997: 398–99); Pappas (2000: 170 ff.); Dicker
(2006: 532–3). Cf. TV §77; 3D 174, 204; Alc IV 154, 155, 156.
35 TVV §59, my italics. ‘The faintness, therefore, and vividness, the upper and
lower situation, together with the visible size of the pictures, and our praenotions
concerning the shape and kind of tangible objects, are the true medium by which
we apprehend the various degrees of tangible distance’ (§62, my italics). Cf. also
§§60, 63 and TV §57.
36 (1) This is not to be confused with knowing that the object is an F, since one might
perceive a tomato as an apple, and mistakenly believe it is one. (2) Generally it is the
context that explains why a person, who has the concepts (general ideas) of an apple
and a tomato, perceives a certain round red fruit as an apple rather than as a tomato,
or vice versa.
37 (1) Even if the conception is a belief, rather than a concept, it nevertheless involves
a concept, a general idea. (2) ‘Praenotion’, although latinized, is apparently of
Epicurean and Stoic origin. On the use of the term in Gassendi, cf. Glidden, D.
(1988), ‘Hellenistic backgrounds for Gassendi’s theory of ideas’, Journal of the
History of Ideas, 49 (3): 405–24, pp. 411, 413 and 417.
38 Additional support can be gathered from Berkeley’s application of his theory of
mediate perception to animals. Animals mediately perceive physical objects as well
as humans do. Yet, either they do not form general ideas, or, if they do, they do not
give them general names so as to be able to store such ideas in memory, at disposal
for spontaneous use in conceptual perception.
39 Brook notes that Winkler and Pappas ‘correctly require Berkeley to have an
extensional or non-conceptual reading of immediate perception’ (2005: 495).
However, he objects: ‘Nowhere, to my mind, does Berkeley make use – as a
philosophic thesis – of people non-conceptually and immediately perceiving
physical objects’ (495); ‘there is nothing I find in the texts that suggest he had any
philosophic interest in an extensional or non-conceptual account of object
perception’ (500). Reply: Berkeley repeatedly says that we immediately perceive
physical objects, so, given that Winkler and Pappas ‘correctly require Berkeley to
have an extensional or non-conceptual reading of immediate perception’ in order
to account for the immediate perception of physical objects, they are certainly
entitled to that reading. The expressions ‘conceptual perceiving’ and ‘non-conceptual
perceiving’ were not in use in Berkeley’s day, which does not mean that he was
unaware of the distinction, as we have seen above in TVV.
40 (1) If the opponents just deny that Mary does perceives a tomato (as an apple), they
deny the possibility of sortal misperception of physical objects, and this seems to fly
in the face of Berkeley’s granting that misperception does occur. In any case, would
it not be paradoxical to say that: (a) Mary perceives (mediately) a round red fruit;
(b) the fruit Mary perceives (mediately) is a tomato; and yet (c) Mary does not
perceive a tomato (immediately or mediately)? (2) If the opponents say that,
unknown to her, Mary at present mediately perceives a tomato (as an apple),
how can they block the advocates’ claim that, unknown to her, she immediately
perceives a tomato (while mediately perceiving it as an apple)?
41 (2008a: 114 my italics). Another opponent believes the same: ‘physical objects are
congeries of sensory ideas linked together by perceivers for practical reasons and
given one name. No congeries exist “out there” to be later experienced. Rather,
Berkeley’s important thought is that congeries are constructed by us out of sensory
elements’ (Brook 2005: 499, my italics).
42 Glauser, R. (2007), ‘The problem of the unity of a physical object in Berkeley’, in
S. Daniel (ed.), Reexamining Berkeley’s Philosophy, 50–81, Toronto: University of
Toronto Press.
43 According to Berkeley finite minds determine the sorts and kinds under which we
classify physical objects; what they do not make, I believe, are particular physical
objects. In two passages in 3D (245 and 249) Philonous certainly seems to say that
particular physical objects are made by finite minds. I have proposed what I believe
is a plausible way of interpreting these passages otherwise (cf. Glauser 2007: 72–5).
44 Cummins, P. D. (1995), ‘Berkeley’s manifest qualities thesis’, in R. Muehlmann (ed.),
Berkeley’s Metaphysics: Structural, Interpretive and Critical Essays, 107–125,
Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, p. 118, fn. 18.
45 TV §109. Presumably, for instance, we include ideas of taste in our complex idea of
chocolate, but not in our complex idea of a coach; we include olfactory ideas in our
complex idea of a rose, but not in our complex idea of the Eiffel Tower, even though
such qualities are surely constituents of such physical objects.
46 Jody Graham says: ‘we immediately perceive ordinary physical objects only by
immediately perceiving with several sense modalities, simultaneously’ (1997: 417).
Winkler seems to hold that one might immediately perceive a physical object by
immediately perceiving only one quality: ‘To perceive an object immediately, on this
view, is to perceive immediately a quality that belongs to it’ (1989: 159). Pappas’s
position is intermediate between the two: ‘By immediately perceiving enough of an
object’s qualities, one thereby immediately perceives the object’ (2000: 199), leaving
it an open question how much is enough and how many sense modalities should be
involved. Stoneham makes an interesting suggestion without, however, attributing it
to Berkeley: Stoneham, T. (2002), Berkeley’s World. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
pp. 278–82.
47 I wish to thank Dick Brook for many helpful comments on a previous version of this
paper.
22
Berkeley on Ordinary Objects

Jeff McDonough
Berkeley famously maintains that spirits and ideas exhaust the fundamental
ontology of the world. How then do ordinary objects – tables and chairs, cats and
dogs – fit into Berkeley’s metaphysics? I start below by presenting the core of
Berkeley’s account of ordinary objects as well as a longstanding objection to that
account, namely that he must deny the commonsense conviction that ordinary
objects persist even when they are not perceived. Next I consider three lines of
response to the problem of the persistence of ordinary objects that have been
attributed to Berkeley by his commentators. Finally, I suggest that those three
lines of response might perhaps best be seen as complementary – rather than
rival – threads in Berkeley’s considered understanding of things such as birds
and bees, mountains and lakes.
Ordinary objects and the persistence problem
It is tempting to suppose that for Berkeley ordinary objects should be identified

with particular ideas. A rose, for example, might be identified with a rose-idea. A
bird with a bird-idea, etc. Particular Berkeleyian ideas, however, would offer a
poor substitute for ordinary objects. For ordinary objects are generally assumed
to be perceivable at different times, via different sensory modalities, and by
different perceivers. I am able to see the same rose today that I saw yesterday. I
am not only able to see it but to smell it as well. And the same holds for others –
my wife and daughter can see and smell the same rose as I. If Berkeley were to
identify ordinary objects with particular ideas, he would have to deny all these
commonsense convictions about ordinary objects in light of the fact that he
takes particular ideas to be transitory, restricted to particular sensory modalities,
and resolutely private.
385
Berkeley is able to recapture many of our commonsense intuitions concerning

ordinary objects, however, by identifying them with collections or ‘combinations’
of ideas rather than with particular ideas (see, P 1, 3, 12, 148; 3D 1:195, 2:224,
2:249). In this vein, an apple, for example, might be identified with a collection of
ideas enjoyed at different times, via different sensory modalities, and by different
perceivers. I might be said to have perceived the same apple on two different days
in virtue of my experiencing two members of an apple-collection; one member
on Monday, another member on Tuesday. Likewise, I might be said to have both
touched and tasted the same apple in virtue of my experiencing a tactile and a
gustatory idea from one and the same collection of ideas. And similarly you
and I might be said to perceive the same apple in virtue of our having direct
perceptual acquaintance with different members of the same apple-collection of
ideas. In identifying ordinary objects with collections of ideas, rather than with
particular ideas, Berkeley is thus able to salvage many of our commonsense
intuitions concerning ordinary objects without abandoning any of his deep
metaphysical principles.
One should not suppose that in identifying ordinary objects with collections
of ideas Berkeley thereby commits himself to the view that any old collection
of ideas must count as an ordinary object. My tactile sensation of sandpaper,
visual glimpse of a silk tie, and olfactory perception of my neighbour’s fresh-cut
grass might well constitute a collection of ideas. There is no reason, however, to
suppose that they must constitute an ordinary object. In a passage from the first
section of the Principles, Berkeley suggests some rough and ready considerations
that might be used to distinguish mere collections of ideas from ordinary objects:
[A]s several of these [ideas] are observed to accompany each other, they come to
be marked by one name, and so to be reputed as one thing. Thus, for example, a
certain colour, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been observed to go
together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name apple. Other
collections of ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book, and the like sensible things;
which, as they are pleasing or disagreeable, excite the passions of love, hatred, joy,
grief, and so forth.
P 1; see also 3D 245, 249; TV 109
This passage implies that a collection of ideas is a better candidate for counting
as an ordinary object if its members are instances of types of ideas that regularly
co-occur in experience, if we have names for referring to such collections, and if
it is the sort of collection that interests us. While these suggestions do not, of
course, represent a fully developed theory of necessary and sufficient conditions
Berkeley on Ordinary Objects 387
according to which a collection of ideas may be designated an ordinary thing,

they nonetheless provide some plausible heuristics for distinguishing between
‘mere’ collections of ideas and the collections of ideas that might appropriately be
identified with ordinary objects (see Atherton 2008b; Flage 1994; Glauser 2007).
A more serious difficulty for Berkeley’s account of ordinary objects, however,
remains. It is nicely captured in an often-quoted limerick attributed to Monsignor
Ronald Knox:
There was a young man who said God,

must find it exceedingly odd
when he finds that the tree
continues to be
when noone’s about in the Quad.
The difficulty alluded to by Knox’s poem arises from a tension between

Berkeley’s ‘esse is percipi’ doctrine and our commonsense intuitions concerning
the persistence of ordinary objects. Berkeley’s doctrine – central to his defence
of immaterialism – insists that perceived things exist only as long as they are
perceived (P 2–4, 48, 139; 3D 3:230). If the tree in the quad is a perceived thing,
this implies that it exists only as long as someone is perceiving it, and thus that it
must cease to exist when no one is around and that it, or perhaps another tree
altogether, must suddenly ‘pop’ into existence as soon as someone enters the
quad. This apparent consequence of Berkeley’s immaterialism has long troubled
his readers and has been much discussed by his commentators. The next three
sections will take up three lines of response that have been developed by leading
scholars in light of various suggestive passages in Berkeley’s writings.
A dismissive response
Since Berkeley is not committed by his fundamental metaphysics to the

continuous existence of ordinary objects, he could have simply dismissed the
widespread conviction that the tree in the quad continues to exist when no one
is there to see it. All interesting philosophical theories have some unintuitive
consequences, and Berkeley could have counted the ‘gappy’ existence of ordinary
objects as one of the more surprising results of his often-surprising immaterialism.
Furthermore, he could have hoped to soften the initial shock of such a move by
noting that the intermittent existence of ordinary objects need not have any
practical significance whatsoever given Berkeley’s system. If the tree ceases to
exist precisely when no one is there to see it, its absence clearly could not be
noticed directly. But it might also be impossible to notice gaps in the tree’s
existence even indirectly since Berkeley’s God might guarantee that our actual
perceptions are indistinguishable from the perceptions we would have if the
tree were to exist continuously. While it might still be counted as a shocking
metaphysical conclusion that the tree in the quad pops in and out of existence
depending on whether or not anyone is about, it appears that Berkeley, if he
had wanted to, could have turned his back on the commonsense belief in the
persistence of ordinary objects without inflicting any serious damage to his
considered metaphysics.
But did Berkeley adopt such a dismissive attitude? In a provocative series of
writings spanning almost four decades, Jonathan Bennett has argued vigorously
that Berkeley’s ‘fundamental attitude toward the plain person’s trees and stones’
was a ‘disrespectful one’ (Bennett 2001, p. 177; see also Bennett 1965; Bennett
1971, pp. 169–98). In support of his interpretation, Bennett offers three main
lines of evidence.
The first line of evidence involves a close examination of Berkeley’s texts for
signs that he does not take the person on the street’s view of ordinary objects
to be a serious metaphysical concern (see, TV 49, 108, 110; P 1; 3D 1:245).
Especially relevant in this regard is a three-paragraph stretch of the Principles,
which begins with Berkeley noting that ‘it will be objected that from the
foregoing principles it follows, things are every moment annihilated and created
anew . . . the trees therefore are in the garden, or the chairs in the parlour,
no longer than while there is some body by to perceive them’ (P 45). Instead
of immediately rejecting this apparent consequence of his immaterialism,
however, Berkeley spends the remainder of the section, as well as most of the
next two sections, implying that the commonsense belief in the persistence
of ordinary objects is less secure than one might have imagined. He maintains
that philosophers in general are widely committed to the non-persistence of
ordinary objects given their views on sensible qualities, divine conservation, and
the divisibility of matter (P 46–7). And he entreats ‘the reader to sound his own
thoughts, and not suffer himself to be imposed on by words’, declaring that if the
reader
can conceive it possible either for his ideas or their archetypes to exist without
being perceived, then I give up the cause: but if he cannot, he will acknowledge
it is unreasonable for him to stand up in defense of he knows not what, and
pretend to charge on me as an absurdity, the not assenting to those propositions
which at bottom have no meaning in them.
P 45
Passages such as these provide some textual support for Bennett’s suggestion
that Berkeley did not have a considered interest in reconciling his own immaterial-
ism with the person on the street’s belief in the persistence of ordinary objects.
Bennett finds a second line of support for the same conclusion in Berkeley’s
failure to pursue various philosophical strategies that might have brought his
fundamental ontology into better agreement with commonsense beliefs about
ordinary objects. Particularly glaring, in Bennett’s opinion, is Berkeley’s failure to
‘reach for the glittering prize of an account of thing-collections which allows for
one to exist when not perceived by anyone’ (Bennett 2001, p. 177). As we have
noted, by identifying ordinary objects with collections of ideas, Berkeley is able
to recapture some of our commonsense beliefs about ordinary objects – that, for
example, they can be perceived at different times, by different perceivers, and
via different sensory modalities. But once ordinary objects are identified with
collections of ideas, it seems that they might also be said to persist through gaps
in our perceiving them provided that they include ideas that exist both before
and after those gaps. The tree in the quad might thus be said to exist on Wednesday
even if it is unperceived provided that it is constituted by a collection of ideas, at
least one member of which is perceived earlier in the week and another member
of which is perceived later in the week. This is the ‘glittering prize’ that Bennett
maintains Berkeley could have failed to adopt only through wilful neglect;
Bennett therefore counts Berkeley’s indifference to this solution as evidence of
his indifference to the problem that it would solve.
A third line of support invoked by Bennett is similarly indirect. In an
undeniably important passage from the Dialogues, Berkeley’s spokesperson
Philonous implies that whether two perceivers may be said to perceive the same
object or not might be simply a matter of convention. In making the point he
introduces the following analogy:
[S]uppose a house, whose walls or outward shell remaining unaltered, the

chambers are all pulled down, and new ones built in their place; that you should
call this the same, and I should say it was not the same house: would we not for
all this perfectly agree in our thoughts of the house, considered in it self? and
would not all the difference consist in a sound?
3D 3:248
The analogy implies, of course, that whether a house with a fully replaced
interior should be counted as the same house or not is of no metaphysical
importance – a matter of pure convention. One might therefore see in Berkeley’s
analogy an indication that he intends to take the same stance toward the
persistence of ordinary objects more generally; as saying, in effect, that the

question of whether or not the tree in the quad continues to persist when no one
is looking is metaphysically shallow and unworthy of serious reflection – a
matter ripe for brute stipulation.
An idealist response
While it might well be correct to see Berkeley’s treatment of ordinary objects as

occurring at a level removed, as it were, from his most fundamental metaphysics,
it must be counted against Bennett’s interpretation that Berkeley appears to offer
not just one, but two positive strategies for reconciling his immaterialism with
the commonsense view that the tree in the quad persists when no one is there to
perceive it. The more famous of those two strategies is suggested by yet another
limerick attributed to Knox:
Dear Sir, your astonishment’s odd

I’m always about in the Quad
And that’s why the tree
continues to be
Since observed by, yours faithfully, God
As Knox’s poem implies, Berkeley could hope to reconcile his commitment to

the esse is percipi doctrine with the persistence of ordinary objects by insisting
that ordinary objects are always perceived by God. That is to say, he could
maintain that an ordinary object, taken to be a collection of ideas, exists as long
as at least one of its members is perceived, and, in particular, that the tree in
the quad may exist when no one is about because at least one of its member-
ideas is always perceived by God. This ‘idealist’ strategy suggests an especially
straightforward way in which Berkeley might have reasonably hoped to
accommodate commonsense views concerning the persistence of ordinary
objects while nonetheless remaining true to his deepest metaphysical principles.
There is clear textual evidence that Berkeley at least entertained an idealist
account of the persistence of ordinary objects. At Principles 48, he writes:
[T]hough we hold indeed the objects of sense to be nothing else but ideas
which cannot exist unperceived: yet we may not hence conclude that they
have no existence except only while they are perceived by us, since there may be
some other spirit that perceives them, though we do not. Wherever bodies are
said to have no existence without the mind, I would not be understood to mean
this or that particular mind, but all minds whatsoever. It does not therefore
follow from the foregoing principles, that bodies are annihilated and created
every moment, or exist not at all during the intervals between our perception
of them.
A clearer general statement of the idealist strategy could hardly be hoped for.
Nor is this the only passage in which Berkeley suggests that ordinary objects
might persist in virtue of being perceived by other minds and by God in
particular. In Principles 6, for example, Berkeley, having affirmed that ‘all the
choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word 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’, immediately goes on to
emphasize that if those bodies ‘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’ (italics added).
Additional evidence that Berkeley took seriously an idealist response to the
problem of the persistence of ordinary objects can be found in a novel argument
he offers for the existence of God. Responding to Hylas’s charge that his
immaterialist philosophy is, in fact, a version of external world scepticism,
Berkeley’s spokesperson Philonous begins by reaffirming his commitment to the
esse is percipi doctrine, stating ‘sensible things cannot exist otherwise than in a
mind or spirit’ (3D 212). Philonous goes on to concede, however, that sensible
things exist independently of his perceiving them, and implies that the same
must hold for any finite perceiver. He infers that there must therefore ‘be some
other mind’ wherein sensible objects exist, and concludes ‘As sure therefore as
the sensible world really exists, so sure is there an infinite, omnipresent spirit
who contains and supports it’ (3D 212). Summarizing his novel argument
for God’s existence, he proudly declares that ‘Men commonly believe that all
things are known or perceived by God, because they believe the being of a God,
whereas I on the other side, immediately and necessarily conclude the being of
a God, because all sensible things must be perceived by him’ (3D 212). Insofar
as this argument takes for granted the idealist strategy in order to reach its
conclusion, Berkeley’s endorsement of the argument lends support to seeing him
as committed to the idealist strategy as well.
Even if it is granted, however, that ordinary objects might persist through
gaps in our perceptions in virtue of their being perceived or known by God, an
important objection, forcefully raised by George Pitcher, remains. Since human
perception is passive, and God himself is wholly active, the nature of our
perceiving must be very different from the nature of God’s perceiving (Mabbott
1931, p. 24; McCracken 1979, pp. 282–7; Thomas 1976). Having concluded that
God’s perception of an object must amount to his merely thinking it, or having
an idea of it, Pitcher declares of the idealist response:
I have to remark that I think the doctrine is by no means an attractive one.

Anyone who wants to, or does, believe that objects continue to exist when no
finite creature is observing them – and this includes at least all of mankind who
are sane – should not be satisfied with the statement that they merely continue
to exist in God’s mind . . . God must have ideas of all possible worlds in His
mind, in addition to ideas of this actual world. The kind of existence that
Berkeley accords to unperceived objects of this world, then, is precisely the kind
that objects in merely possible, but non-actual worlds, have – e.g. the kind
and amount that a purple man with three heads has. No one, I say, should be
satisfied with so little.
Pitcher 1977, pp. 171–2
Pitcher’s objection is that if an object were to count as existing merely in virtue

of God’s having some idea of it, then given God’s omniscience, every possible
object should count as existing. In short, an idealist account would appear to be
overly permissive in supposing that God’s having an idea of an object is sufficient
for that object’s having a real and full-blooded existence. As we will see below,
this objection leaves open the possibility that being perceived by God might
nonetheless be a necessary condition for an object’s continued existence.
A phenomenalist response
In addition to the idealist strategy, Berkeley’s texts also suggest another approach
to the difficulty presented by the persistence of ordinary objects. In his early
notebooks, he writes, ‘The trees are in the park, that is, whether I will or no,
whether I imagine anything about them or no, let me but go thither and open my
eyes by day and I shall not avoid seeing them’ (NB 98). Similarly, in the Principles
he tells us: ‘The table I write on, I say, exists, that is, I see and feel it; and 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’ (P 3).
These and other passages suggest that statements about the continued
existence of objects might be understood at least partially in terms of conditional
statements about what we would perceive in various circumstances (see also, NB
52, 185a, 282, 293, 293a, 408; P 58). That is to say, they suggest that Berkeley
seems to have entertained a phenomenalist account of ordinary things like trees
and parks, tables and chairs.
Further evidence of a phenomenalist strain in Berkeley’s thinking about

ordinary objects can be found in his response to a difficulty originally raised
by Lady Percival shortly after the publication of the Principles. She points out
that, according to the Bible, God created trees prior to the creation of sentient
beings. But how, she wonders, if idealism is true, could trees exist before there
were sentient beings to perceive them? In his reply, Berkeley invokes not only
God’s eternal perception of ideas, but also an element that clearly smacks of
phenomenalism:
I do not deny the existence of any of those sensible things which Moses says
were created by God. They existed from all eternity in the Divine intellect, and
then became perceptible (i.e. were created) in the same manner and order as is
described in Genesis. For I take creation to belong to things only as they respect
finite spirits, there being nothing new to God. Hence it follows that the act of
creation consists in God’s willing that those things should be perceptible to other
spirits, which before were known only to Himself.
Works 8:37; see also 3D 3:251–4, 3:253
In this passage, Berkeley implies, in keeping with the idealist thread discussed
above, that sensible things have always existed in the divine intellect. But the
passage also introduces an additional consideration, namely, that the creation of
sensible things relative to finite spirits involves God’s decreeing that they should
become perceptible to sentient perceivers. That further element may be seen as
betraying a phenomenalist strain in Berkeley’s thinking insofar as it suggests
that the existence of ordinary objects, perhaps relative to us, or in the fullest
sense, depends on the truth of conditionals involving the circumstances under
which they would be perceived by finite spirits.
In spite of passages such as those just cited, however, any attempt to read
Berkeley as a straightforward phenomenalist must face serious difficulties. Some
of those difficulties are of a general philosophical nature. It has long been
objected, for example, that the conditional truths involved in phenomenalist
analyses of ordinary objects inevitably become unmanageably and implausibly
complex in short order. Thus, for example, the statement that I will see my desk
if I open my office door helps itself to ‘office door’. ‘Office door’ will therefore
itself have to be analysed, in turn, in terms of further conditional statements, e.g.
‘if I were in Emerson Hall with the lights on I would see my office door’. But that
statement, in turn, makes reference to a building – to another ordinary object
that will therefore also stand in need of further analysis. Phenomenalist analyses
of even the most banal statements involving ordinary objects, such as ‘I will see
my desk if I open my office door’ thus threaten to quickly become wildly,

even unimaginably, complex. Other difficulties in attributing a straightforward
phenomenalist account of ordinary objects to Berkeley concern more directly
matters of textual interpretation. It has been noted, for example, that several key
phenomenalist-sounding passages may be read as being conjectural or pragmatic,
rather than as expressing clear statements of considered doctrine (see, for
example, 3D 3:253; P 52). Likewise, it has often been suggested that strict
phenomenalism is, at any rate, inconsistent with the letter of Berkeley’s esse is
percipi doctrine insofar as it implies that objects may exist when they are not, in
fact, actually being perceived (see, for example, Dicker 2011, p. 271; Stoneham
2002, pp. 288–91).
A rather different, and I think ultimately more revealing, objection might
be called the ‘wrong answer objection’. When Berkeley is pressed to give an
account of how sensible objects can persist when no finite being senses them,
he frequently says, as we have seen, that they can persist in virtue of God’s
perceiving them. Such a reply, however, does not merely lend support to an
idealist interpretation, but also seems to be altogether the wrong sort of response
for a phenomenalist to offer. For a proponent of phenomenalism there is a
straightforward answer to the challenge presented by continuity: sensible objects
continue to exist because they would be perceived if such and such conditions
were to obtain; that answer, it would seem, has absolutely nothing to do with
God’s having the relevant ideas in mind. The ‘wrong answer objection’ thus
suggests that Berkeley’s sympathy for an idealist solution militates against
attributing a phenomenalist response to him.
Complementary threads?
One might not unreasonably suppose that the three accounts just sketched
represent irreconcilable strains in Berkeley’s thinking about ordinary objects –
that while he recognized the persistence of things like tables and chairs as a prima
facie difficulty for his system, he never settled upon a consistent response to it.
Alternatively, however, one might endeavour to see the responses just sketched as
complementary threads in an inclusive, if perhaps not fully articulated, account
of ordinary objects. Such an approach holds out the promise of seeing Berkeley’s
treatment of things like bats, balls and baubles as being essentially coherent.
As a first step towards such a conciliatory account, it should be conceded, in
the spirit of the dismissive response, that ordinary objects like tables, books and
lamps do not, for Berkeley, belong to the fundamental ontology of the world.
He may therefore allow the identity conditions of ordinary objects to differ from
the identity conditions of ideas and spirits and he may even grant that they
might be determined at least in part by convention and commonsense. Such
concessions, however, are perfectly consistent with Berkeley’s taking the project
of reconciling his fundamental metaphysics with the existence of ordinary
objects very seriously, and, indeed, with his having considered views concerning
how his fundamental metaphysics and commonsense might best be reconciled.
Second, in the spirit of the idealist response, it should be conceded that, for
Berkeley, an object’s being continuously perceived is a necessary condition for its
persistence. That is to say, having identified ordinary objects with collections of
ideas, Berkeley may insist that things like tables and chairs can exist only as long
as at least one of their members is perceived – an insistence most likely rooted in
his ground-floor conviction that it is impossible to even conceive of a sensible
thing existing unperceived. Such a concession to idealism, however, should
not be taken to imply that an object must be continually perceived by the same
finite agent, or, indeed, by any finite agent at all. Berkeley may thus allow that
the requirement of being continuously perceived may be satisfied by a higher
spirit, or even by God himself. In this regard, one should not, I think, be overly
worried that God’s perception of ordinary objects must be quite different from
our sensory perception of ordinary objects insofar as the former must be active
and the latter must be passive. For such a concern represents a standard worry
confronting essentially all Christian philosophers of the past, and Berkeley would
have been in good company in allowing that God may perceive in some sense
even if not in exactly the same sense in which creatures perceive (McCracken
1979, pp. 287–90; Pitcher 1977, pp. 175–9; Winkler 1989, pp. 235–6).
Finally, in the spirit of the phenomenalist response, it should be granted
that the truths of certain counterfactual statements play an important role for
Berkeley as necessary conditions for the existence, or full existence, of ordinary
objects. Indeed, his proposal that the ‘steadiness, order, and coherence’ of a
collection of ideas contributes to its qualifying as an ordinary object, as well
as his analysis of perceptual error in terms of mistaken inferential judgements,
suggest that counterfactual truths play a constitutive role in the existence
of what we take to be ordinary objects (P 30; 3D 3:235). It should be quickly
added that such a view does not commit Berkeley to the position that the truth
of various counterfactual statements by itself is sufficient for the existence of
ordinary objects. As a result, one may see the idealist and phenomenalist threads
in Berkeley’s treatment of ordinary objects as reinforcing one another, as together
laying out a pair of individually non-sufficient, but mutually necessary conditions

for the existence of ordinary objects (see especially, Winkler 1989, pp. 204–37).
Woven together, these threads may considerably strengthen what is essentially
one side of Berkeley’s account of ordinary objects. On offense, Berkeley famously
argues that what exists most fundamentally in the world are spirits and ideas,
extols the virtues of his immaterialism, and attacks what he sees as the confused
and pernicious postulate of a mind-independent material world. On defense,
however, Berkeley engages in a secondary project aimed at showing how his
immaterialism may be reconciled as far as possible with accepted philosophical
doctrine, theological commitment and commonsense belief. His treatment of
the problem of the persistence of ordinary objects belongs firmly to this
secondary project, but it is a serious treatment nonetheless, directed at showing
how many – if perhaps not all – of our commonsense convictions concerning
things like apples and trees, chairs and desks can be recaptured in a framework
that incorporates both idealist and phenomenalist elements.
23
Berkeley’s Philosophy of Mind

Talia Mae Bettcher
The substance of mind in Berkeley’s philosophy
Berkeley’s theory of mind, as defended principally in the Principles and the

Dialogues, has traditionally been the source of considerable perplexity. One
of the perennial concerns is how Berkeley can reject material substance while
retaining spiritual substance.1 More generally, however, there is simply deep
confusion about just what Berkeley’s account of the mind is supposed to be.
While the Principles and Dialogues together certainly contain Berkeley’s most
detailed elaboration of his view, they are not, for all that, very detailed at all.
What is a Berkeleian mind? The question does not merely concern fine-tuned
details about the account. The question concerns, rather, its basic ontological
outlines. Is Berkeleian spirit like Descartes’s thinking thing?2 Or, on the contrary,
is it perhaps like Locke’s unknown spiritual substratum?3 Or is it more like
Locke’s self?4 Or is it, rather, in the end, actually much more like Hume’s bundle-
conception of the mind?5 That such widely disparate models have all been
proposed for understanding Berkeleian spirit speaks volumes about the depth of
confusion about just what a Berkeleian spirit is supposed to be.
One of the main sources of confusion about these basic ontological contours
concerns Berkeley’s claim that spirits are substances that support ideas (and that
ideas are dependent upon spirits ‘supporting’ them for their existence). It is very
unclear how Berkeley understands this support relation. Another source of
confusion is Berkeley’s puzzling thesis that spirits are things ‘entirely distinct’
from ideas. It is not clear what this thesis even amounts to and why Berkeley
thought it was important. A final source of confusion is that the two preceding
claims are in some tension with each other.
The first mention of ‘mind, spirit, soul or my self’ occurs at P 2, where Berkeley
makes plain that such terms ‘do not denote any one of my ideas’ but rather
397
something that is ‘entirely distinct from them’. In the same sentence he then says
that spirit is that ‘wherein they exist’, which he explicitly treats as synonymous
with ‘whereby they are perceived’. Later in the Principles Berkeley appears to
identify ‘existing in a mind’ with ‘being supporting by a mind’ (P 89). So the
expressions ‘is perceived by a mind’, ‘is supported by a mind’ and ‘exists in a mind’
all appear as equivalences for Berkeley. The question concerns how this relation
of ‘support’ is to be understood.
Let us distinguish Berkeley’s claim that sensible things are mind-dependent
from his claim that ideas are mind-dependent. His claim that sensible things are
mind-dependent amounts to the view that such items are nothing but ideas or
combinations thereof (P 4). In essence, the first claim identifies sensible things
with ideas. What this identification does not explain, however, is the nature
of support that exists between spirit and its ideas. For one could accept this
identification while endorsing the view that minds are nothing but collections of
ideas. And, if so, there would appear to be no relation of dependence between
mind and idea (rather, minds would be dependent on ideas). Indeed some
have defended a deflationary reading according to which this second type of
dependence relation does no work in Berkeley’s theory at all.6 Such a move
confronts the inconvenience of deflating what appears to be of central importance
to Berkeley’s theory of mind.
The problem, at any rate, is that perception is not a good candidate for the
support relation. The fact that a tree is perceived by a mind does not in itself imply
that a tree is supported by a mind unless it can be shown that the tree cannot exist
without being perceived by a mind (or perhaps, that mind specifically). To be sure,
Berkeley’s explanation of his claim that sensible things cannot exist unperceived
comes down to his claim that they are ideas or combinations thereof. But, then,
the question we are left with is this: What is it to perceive an idea? Indeed, what is
an idea? And why is it that an idea cannot exist unperceived?
What is needed is some deeper account – some ‘metaphysical machinery’ –
that elucidates the nature of ideas and their dependence upon this something
‘entirely distinct’ from them. Consequently, it has been tempting to understand
perception of ideas in terms of the more explicitly metaphysical notions of
‘support’ and ‘existence in’ (rather than the other way around). Alas, Berkeley
himself appears to claim that the explanation works in the opposite direction –
‘support’ or ‘existence in’ is explained in terms of ‘perception’ (3D 250). But the
lack of any account of how perception could constitute such support might be
thought serious enough to motivate overlooking this claim. And so the temptation
is to go looking at other metaphysical conceptions of support.
Berkeley’s Philosophy of Mind 399
While Aristotelian-Scholastic, Cartesian and Lockean accounts of substance

are by no means the same, there are nonetheless important commonalities. For
the most part ‘accidents’, ‘modes’, ‘modifications’, ‘properties’ and the like were
thought to be ontologically distinct items (at least insofar as they possessed their
own being). Such items were not capable of ‘subsisting on their own’ (unlike
substances) and so require a substance in which to exist. In this model, such
dependent items exist in, inhere in or are supported by a substance. And the
relation of support roughly conforms to a subject-predicate structure whereby
items that exist in a substance are predicated of it. Perhaps, it has been thought,
Berkeley’s support relation can be understood within this framework. There are
two ways this has been attempted.
The first involves explaining perception in terms of the traditional support
(or inherence) relation.7 One difficulty, however, is that Berkeley does not
endorse the view that sensible qualities are predicated of the mind (spirits are
not hot, big, and so forth). Indeed, he explicitly rejects this at P 49. So this view
leaves Berkeley in the awkward position of endorsing a conception of substance
that is fundamentally at odds with one of its most central elements.
The second strategy is to identify ideas with states of perception (or with ways
of perceiving).8 This affords a possible distinction between viewing ideas as
thought-contents (which are not predicated of the mind) and viewing them as
modifications of mind (which are so predicated) thereby avoiding the difficulty
with the inherence account. By itself, the identification of ideas with perceptions
leaves open how they are thought to be related to the mind – indeed, it is
compatible with a bundle account according to which the mind is nothing but a
collection of perceptions. The intuition, however, is that the mind is something
over and above its perception – it is the thing that does the perceiving. Thus, the
relation of support will be given by the relation between mental subject and
perception (namely, inherence).
There are difficulties with both of the preceding strategies, however – particularly
with regard to making the underlying metaphysical account of spiritual substance
consistent with Berkeley’s rejection of material substance. In both the Principles
and the Dialogues Berkeley attacks what appears to be a Lockean conception of
material substratum (P 16, 3D 197–8). The thrust of the argument is that it is not
clear what expressions such as ‘support’ even mean when used in a traditional way.
If this is right, then it is hard to see how an appeal to traditional relations of support
or inherence is going to help elucidate his account spiritual substance. For the
attack on the vacuity of such expressions would appear to cut against spiritual
support as well – at least if such expression are taken in the traditional way.
To be sure, it is not clear that the argument works so well against a Cartesian
conception of mind according to which the mind is constituted by conscious
thought itself, and its various perceptions are but modifications thereof. In the
Dialogues version of the argument, at least, Berkeley makes plain, as part of the
argument, that ‘the thing supported is different from the thing supporting’ and
that the substratum is ‘somewhat in its own nature entirely distinct from
extension’ (3D 197). And this is not something that is accepted in the Cartesian
view. Instead, modes are merely the substance itself existing in a determinate
way – effectively obviating the need for any explanation of the support relation.
Yet a Cartesian reading is not without its problems.
In the Dialogues, Berkeley has Philonous argue against the Cartesian account
of extension. The basic idea is that one cannot frame an idea of extension
abstracted from particular sensible extensions (3D 193). It seems, however, that
the same argument can be made about thought: Is it possible for there to be a
conception of thought in general, abstracted from all particular thoughts? If not,
how can Berkeley secure that unity of a mind over and above the multiplicity of
its particular thoughts? The result appears to be a collapse of the mind into
something like a Humean bundle.
So both ways of understanding Berkley’s support relation using traditional
metaphysical machinery have serious problems. And what makes this problem
of understanding the support relation yet more difficult is Berkeley’s other
metaphysical thesis that spirits and ideas are ‘entirely distinct’. His clearest
formulation of the claim is in the Principles. He writes: ‘Thing or being is the most
general name of all, it comprehends under it two kinds entirely distinct and
heterogeneous, and which have nothing common but the name’ (P 89), And then
later: ‘Spirits and ideas are things so wholly different, that when we say, they exist,
they are known, or the like these words must not be thought to signify anything
common to both natures’ (P 142). The basic thought is that spirit and idea are
very different sorts of things. The problem, however, is that it puts pressure on
the claim that spirits support ideas. If ideas are mental states of perceiving,
for example, then won’t they have something in common – namely, the subject
that bears the state? The problem is particularly acute on a Cartesian reading of
Berkeley according to which ideas are just determinate manifestations of spirit
itself and which cannot be even ‘somewhat entirely distinct’ from it. For surely, in
that case, spirit and idea would have something in common.
The natural solution is to deflate the significance of Berkeley’s entire distinctness
claim by interpreting it as merely indicating that spirit and idea belong to different
ontological categories (just as substance and mode belong to different ontological
categories).9 The problem, however, is that this deflation runs against the
importance that Berkeley appears to assign to it. First, Berkeley’s introduction of
the claim at Principles 89 seems to suggest its importance in addressing scepticism
in general. Moreover, he indicates the importance of this principle in addressing
concerns about knowledge of the mind (P 135–40). Finally, the principle seems
almost to ground a kind of dualism in Berkeley’s ontology that serves as an
analogue to Cartesian Dualism. If this is right, then a deflationary reading may
undercut important aspects of Berkeley’s project.
One non-deflationary way of understanding the distinctness claim sees
Berkeley as endorsing a stoic conception of mind. In this view, the mind is
its active perception of ideas (activity that involves the individuation and
discrimination thereof); indeed, in this view, mind just is the very existence of its
ideas.10 This move has the effect of placing spirit and idea on extremely different
ontological levels. In an important way, in this view, spirits don’t count as things
or being at all, rather, they count as the sheer existence of things (ideas). One
difficulty with this move, therefore, is it departs radically from the traditional
conception of substance, according to which substances are things par excellence.
Another concern is that, despite reading the entire distinctness claim in a non-
deflationary way, elements of that claim, such as the thesis that spirits and ideas
have nothing in common, do not seem to be well accommodated. How could it
be that an idea and its very existence have nothing in common? Isn’t the idea
itself common to both?
Another non-deflationary reading of the entire distinctness claim sees
Berkeley as rejecting the view that ideas are mental states that are adjectival on
the subject and that inhere in them. Instead, Berkeley may endorse a model in
which the subject is related to an object through the relation of perception,
where perception is not itself reduced to traditional notions of inherence.11
In what might be called a subject–object model, neither idea nor perception are
understood as intrinsic states of mind. Rather, perception is the relation that
links the subject (or perception) to the object (of perception). The problem, of
course, is how to make sense of perception as a genuine relation of support.
One line of thought involves noting that it was generally accepted during
Berkeley’s day that mental items such as pain could not exist outside of
consciousness (i.e. could not exist unperceived). If the perception of ideas is
understood as the consciousness of ideas, then we can see how, for Berkeley,
perception might have been a relation of support (insofar as ideas cannot
possibly exist except as objects of conscious awareness). The remaining question,
of course, is how the spirit itself figures in this equation. One possibility is that
Berkeley recognized a self-conscious being – a self or I – likewise given in

consciousness, but nonetheless distinct from ideas. In such a view, then, ideas
could not exist unperceived/unsupported. That is to say, they could not exist
except as objects of the consciousness of some I or self.12 What, exactly, this self
might come to, what is included in the content, however, is far from clear. For
example, awareness of oneself as a sheer being or even as a self-conscious being
may prove too thin to provide a robust account of spirit and how it is known.
The epistemology of mind in Berkeley’s philosophy
In the Principles and the Dialogues, Berkeley makes it plain that spirit cannot be
‘of itself ’ perceived and that there cannot be any idea of spirit (P 27). His main
argument for the latter is that while ideas are passive, spirits are active and so
ideas cannot represent spirits through a kind of resemblance (P 27). This
obviously raises the question of how spirit is known at all. After all, it is clear that
Berkeley thinks that spirit is known. He makes many weighty pronouncements
about it – spirit is active, simple, the supporter of ideas, a substance, and naturally
immortal (P 7, 27, 141). So how does one secure this knowledge of spirit given
that spirits cannot be perceived and given that there cannot be any ideas of
them? On the face of it, the answer appears to be Berkeley’s appeal to ‘notions’.
For example, he writes, ‘It must be owned . . . that we have some notion of soul,
spirit, and the operations of the mind, such as willing, loving, hating, in as much
as we know or understand the meaning of those words’ (P 27). But this appeal
raises its own worry. Berkeley does not use ‘notion’ in any evident technical way
in the early editions of the Principles and Dialogues. And this perhaps suggests
that he added it only when he realized the problem of how spirits are known
(if not by idea). It makes the appeal seem ad hoc. If Berkeley can help himself to
a notion of spirit, one wonders, why can a materialist not help himself to a notion
of matter?
Complicating this concern is the fact that even in the first edition of the
Principles, Berkeley touts his claim that there cannot be an idea of spirit as if it
were crucial in unlocking problems about knowledge of mind: ‘The great reason
that is assigned for our being ignorant of the nature of spirits, is, our not having
an idea of it. But surely it ought not be looked on as a defect in a human
understanding, that it does not perceive the idea of spirit, if it is manifestly
impossible that there should be any such idea’ (P 135). The impossibility of there
being ideas of spirit does not undo (rather than secure with necessity) our
alleged ignorance of spirits, however, unless there is another way that spirits are
known that is to be distinguished from knowledge by way of idea suggesting that
there is perhaps something more going on with Berkeley’s account, than a mere
ad hoc appeal. So how are spirits known, according to Berkeley?
His view about other minds appears relatively straightforward. First, Berkeley
claims that one understands other minds simply by using one’s own mind as a
kind of model or ‘image’: ‘We know other spirits by means of our own soul,
which in that sense is the image or idea of them, it having a like respect to other
spirits’ (P 140). So while idea and spirit are too unlike to yield a resemblance,
according to Berkeley, one spirit can be taken as a resemblance of another.13
According to Berkeley, we infer the existence of other spirits on the basis of ‘their
operations, or the ideas by them excited in us’ (P 145). In his rather platonic
conception, a human being is nothing but a finite spirit that has a body where
the body is nothing more than a collection of ideas – a kind of ‘sensible badge’.
One does not perceive humans, therefore. Rather one perceives the ideas
that lead one to conclude the existence of the spirit. And this is likewise the case
in our knowledge of God. Unlike the small collection of ideas that directs us to
the existence of some finite spirit, the natural world (as a collection of ideas)
directs us to the existence of God. One demonstratively concludes the existence
of God, according to Berkeley, because only spirits can produce ideas and
because the spirit responsible for all sensible ideas (and their order and regularity)
must necessarily be a Supreme Being (3D 232). In the case of finite minds,
by contrast, one merely probabilistically concludes the existence of a unique
centre of rationality based on certain movements of the sensible body (3D 233).
(The inference is not necessary, since it is possible that God is actually responsible
for all movement.)
The tough question is how one knows one’s own mind. At the beginning of
the Principles, Berkeley encourages the reader to look at his own ideas, divested
of words in order to avoid confusion. He writes, ‘We need only draw the curtain
of words, to behold the fairest tree of knowledge, whose fruit is excellent, and
with the reach of our hand’ (PI 24). So one way to put the question is to ask
whether one finds only ideas in drawing back the curtain of words, or whether,
rather, there is something else there. And if there is nothing else there, then how
is spirit known?
One possibility is that one likewise infers the existence of one’s own mind.
Some passages might seem to suggest this reading. For example, Berkeley writes:
‘Such is the nature of spirit, or that which acts, that it cannot be of it self perceived,
but only by the effects which it produceth’ (P 27). On such a view, one would
perceive only ideas as effects of one’s wilful activity, and then inferentially
conclude the existence of one’s mind as a willing agent on the basis of that. In this
strong inferential reading, there is nothing about one’s mind that is not inferred
(not even one’s perceivings and willings); the only things one has non-inferential
cognition of are ideas.14 In a weaker variant of this, by contrast, Berkeley can say
that he has at least an immediate awareness of his own perceivings and willings,
and, on the basis of this, infers the existence of the thing that has such states or
activities.15 In this later view, at least some portion of the mind is present, if you
will, once the curtain of words is pealed back. And on the basis of this, one then
infers the existence of oneself (i.e. the things that possesses these states). Both
views, in this regard, seem to be in tension, with what Philonous actually says:
‘The being of my self . . . I evidently know by reflexion’ (3D 233) and then later
‘I know or am conscious of my own being’ (ibid.). In the Principles he says, ‘We
comprehend our own existence by inward feeling or reflexion’ (89). And in
De Motu: ‘The sentient, percipient, thinking thing we know by a certain internal
consciousness’ (21). Such remarks are clearly suggestive of a non-inferential
reading – at least with regard to the sheer existence of one’s own self – a view that
seems to have been endorsed by philosophers such as John Locke: ‘In every
Act of Sensation, Reasoning, or Thinking, we are conscious to our selves of our
own Being’ (E. 4.9.3, 619). In this reading, Berkeley commits to the view that
he has a datum of the self or, perhaps more correctly, that the self is, in addition
to ideas, present in the given. One important question to be noted is just how
robust this datum is for Berkeley. In a weak view, it is merely an awareness
of one’s own being, or one’s being a conscious thing (i.e. a self). In a more robust
view, such awareness is also awareness of oneself as an agent. This second,
stronger, reading is suggested in De Motu as Berkeley writes: ‘A thinking, active
thing is given in experience as the principle of motion in ourselves’ (30).16
If there is any evidence of an inference at all it concerns the nature (rather
than the existence) of one’s mind: ‘I know that I, one and the same self, perceive
both colours and sounds: that a colour cannot perceive a sound, nor a sound a
colour: that I am therefore one individual principle, distinct from colour and
sound’ (3D 234). In this passage, Philonous appears to conclude that he is not a
collection of ideas by appeal to something like the unity of consciousness and
the further claim that ideas cannot perceive, or at least perceive each other.
Yet even this apparent inferential move is in tension with Berkeley’s claim
that, ‘My own mind and my own ideas I have an immediate knowledge of; and by
the help of these, do mediately apprehend the possibility of the existence of other
spirits and ideas’ (3D 232). And, again: ‘I know what I mean by the terms I or
myself, and I know this immediately, or intuitively’ (3D 231). To be sure, much
depends upon what Berkeley means by ‘immediately’ and ‘intuitively’ (in the
second passage he seems to treat them as interchangeable). Obviously, to sustain
some variant of the inferential reading, both ‘immediately’ and ‘intuitively’ need
to be compatible with an inference. And the problem is that Berkeley uses
‘immediate’ in a highly technical way in his discussion of sense perception. He
has Hylas concede ‘that in truth the senses perceive nothing which they do not
perceive immediately: for they make no inferences. The deducing therefore of
causes or occasions from effects and appearances, which alone are perceived by
sense, entirely relates to reason’ (3D 174). Philonous then uses this concession
against Hylas later on in the Dialogues: Whenever there is an inference of
something, there is no immediate perception of it (202–3). The defender of
an inferential reading must therefore argue that he is using ‘immediate’ in a
radically different sense when he discusses our knowledge of spirit. However,
there is no clear basis for doing this. Worse, Berkeley says that he has an
immediate knowledge of both his own mind and his own ideas in the same
sentence, and so it is hard to believe that he is using ‘immediately’ equivocally
there – in one case incompatible with inference, in the other case not.
That said, it also worth noting that whenever Berkeley discusses our immediate
knowledge of what spirit is – particularly as it is defined in terms of its powers of
willing and perceiving, as well as other mental operations, this occurs in the
context of our knowledge of what words such as ‘spirit’ mean. And this suggests
the importance of Berkeley’s theory of meaning. It is clear that to at least some
degree, Berkeley rejects Locke’s thesis that a term becomes intelligible only by
having some pre-linguistic mental item (i.e. an idea) annexed to it. Berkeley
outlines this departure in the Introduction to the Principles. And in Alciphron,
Berkeley flags an even stronger departure from Locke.
The first (weak) possibility is this: While there is indeed something in the
pre-linguistic given that provides terms like ‘I’ and ‘spirit’ with their cognitive
content, this something is so different from everything else that we had better
not call it ‘an idea’ and we had better not say that we perceive it. This reading has
Berkeley staying fairly close to Lockean semantics in this case insofar as some
pre-linguistic phenomenon provides the relevant terms with their cognitive
content. The only departure is the claim that this phenomenon is sufficiently
different that it is not properly called an idea.
The more radical possibility is that Berkeley denies that there is anything at all
in the given that provides terms like ‘spirit’ and ‘I’ their cognitive content. In the
Introduction to the Principles, Berkeley notes that an idea does not need to be
stirred in a mind every time a term is used. It can simply have its cognitive value
fixed at the outset by an idea without that idea popping up on every deployment.
More radically, he then claims that the chief end of language is not always to
convey an idea in the first place to the ‘raising of some passion, the exciting to,
or deterring from an action, but, rather, the putting of mind in some particular
disposition’ (PI 19).
While in the Introduction, Berkeley suggests that in such cases there may
have been an idea originally annexed to the term (providing the term with its
cognitive content), in Alciphron, Berkeley drops even that requirement: ‘A
discourse, therefore, that directs how to act or excites to the doing or forbearance
of an action may, it seems, be useful and significant, although the words whereof
it is composed should not bring each a distinct idea into our mind’ (VII 5).
Berkeley specifically argues that this is the case with respect to terms like ‘force’
and ‘grace’. Some interpreters have read Berkeley as endorsing an emotive theory
of meaning (with respect to terms such as ‘grace’ and ‘force’) according to which
sentences including such terms do not express true or false proposition, but
rather, merely exhort, inspire, or encourage to action.17 Such readings have,
however, been contested in the literature.18
At any rate, in the second possibility mentioned above, terms such as ‘spirit’
and ‘I’ are like ‘grace’ and ‘force’ in that they do not actually name anything that
can be found among the pre-linguistic given.19 There meaning would only
be derived from their use. While this seems to be a fairly radical reading, it is
worth noting that some commentators have read Berkeley’s discussion of mind
as metaphoric in nature.20 And, indeed, Berkeley himself acknowledges the
metaphoric nature of our talk of things spiritual in both Three Dialogues and in
Alciphron (3D 250, ALV VII 13). Such a view is compatible with the position
that, ultimately, the mind is nothing but a collection of ideas.
However, in Alciphron, Berkeley discusses our knowledge of spirit and our
knowledge of force and grace in two rather different ways. For the latter, we find
outright denials that any corresponding idea can be found when we turn to
look for it (VII 4, 6). In a minimal way, to be sure, Berkeley does assign both
‘force’ and ‘grace’ some cognitive content. Alciphron claims, ‘Everyone knows
what is meant by force’ (VII 5). Indeed, he appears to provide an explication of
the meaning of the word in saying, ‘Force is that in bodies which produceth
motion and other effects’ (ibid.). And Euphranor could presumably define Grace
as ‘that principle by which God brings about virtue and piety in men’. What is
lacking, however, are any distinct ideas answering to or denoted by the terms
‘grace’ and ‘force’.
For the former (i.e. spirit), by contrast, there is no similar turning to look for
an idea and failing to find one. Rather, Euphranor merely says that because an
agent is altogether different from an idea ‘those words which denote an active
principle, soul, or spirit do not, in a strict and proper sense, stand for ideas’ (VII
5, my italics) – a remark that echoes Berkeley’s Notebook entry: ‘It seems improper
and liable to difficulties to make the word person stand for an idea, or to make
our selves ideas or thinking things ideas’ (NB 523). This is suggestive of the first,
weaker possibility. If that is right, then something is available to us when we peal
back the veil of words. After all, it is difficult to believe that empirical knowledge
of one’s own existence or agency should somehow fall out of the sheer meaning
of a term. Indeed, this minimal content (agent) would likewise appear to be
needed in order for the terms used to explicate ‘grace’ (e.g. God as author, man as
subject) to have even the minimal content described above. What isn’t exactly
clear, however, is what else there is to be found once the words are set aside. To
further explore that question, of course, we must turn to Berkeley’s account of
mental activity.
The activity of mind in Berkeley’s philosophy
If anything is clear in Berkeley’s theory of mind it is that spirits are active beings,
while ideas are ‘passive and inert’ (P 25, 27). Unfortunately, it is far from clear
what this activity comes to. Indeed, this is easily the most underdeveloped aspect
of his already meagre theory of mind.
According to Berkeley, only spirits are causes. Berkeley rules out ideas as
causes on the grounds that they are ‘visibly inactive’ (P 25) – a ‘bare observation’
is all that is required to see that ‘there is nothing of power or agency included in
them’. And material substance is ineligible, of course, since Berkeley rejects the
very notion of such a thing as incoherent. Berkeley writes that ‘when we talk of
unthinking agents, or of exciting ideas exclusive of volition, we only amuse our
selves with words’ (P 28).
Berkeley bases his claim that spirits are active on the empirical observation
that he can create and destroy imaginary ideas at will: ‘I find I can excite ideas in
my mind at pleasure. . . . It is no more than willing, and straightway this or that
idea arises in my fancy’ (P 28). Thus, it appears that the imaginative production
and destruction of ideas is the paradigm case of agency, for Berkeley: ‘This
making and unmaking of ideas doth very properly denominate the mind active’,
he writes (ibid.).
One of the most perplexing features of Berkeley’s account, however, is his

admission that finite spirits are passive in their perception of sensible ideas
(3D 197). While he allows that we are active in the wilful motion of our bodies
often implicated in sense perception (e.g. ‘opening and turning the eyes’), the
very perception of sensible ideas themselves (e.g. ‘light and colours’) is passive
insofar as we are not their causal source. One concern is that this admission
appears to undermine his claim that spirits and ideas have nothing in common
by making both finite spirits and ideas ‘passive’. This seems easily answered,
however, by recognizing that the two are passive in altogether different ways:
Finite spirits are passive in that they perceive some ideas that they don’t produce.
Ideas, by contrast, neither perceive nor produce anything at all, and so cannot be
passive in that sense. Rather, they are passive in the sense that they lack causal
efficacy altogether and are the mere effects of spiritual production. Spirits are
clearly not passive in that sense.21
The tougher question concerns the compatibility of the passivity admission
with Berkeley’s further claim that spirit is ‘one simple, undivided active being’
(P 27).22 First, it seems spirit cannot be called an ‘active being’ with respect to its
sense perception. Second, it now seems that a finite spirit has two parts – an
active part and a passive part, and hence that it cannot be simple. One plausible
way to address the first concern is to claim that for Berkeley, even in sense-
perception, a spirit remains an active being in its on-going thinking. Indeed, this
would appear necessary in order for it to be passive (to receive will-independent
ideas) in the way that Berkeley describes.23 But reconciling the simplicity claim
with both the passivity and activity of finite spirits seems to depend much on
how Berkeley’s ontology of mind is understood – that is, how ideas are conceived
of in relation to spirits. And that is, as we have seen, a complicated affair.24
There is another problem here that arises from Berkeley’s assigning finite
spirits limited causal powers over their own bodies, such as the opening and
turning of one’s eyes (P 147, 3D 237). Berkeley claims that God is the immediate
cause of all ideas of sense (P 29–30) and all ‘motions in nature’ (3D 236). If this
is so, however, in what sense do human spirits move their own bodies, which are
presumably collections of sensible ideas? At best, it would seem that we can form
imaginary ideas of bodily motion, and then God himself produces the actual
sensible ideas of that motion that follow. But does this not make God the
immediate cause of all of our bodily actions (3D 236)? Berkeley allows that ‘the
will of man hath no other object, than barely the motion of the limbs of his body’
(P 147). And in the Dialogues Philonous speaks of ‘the use of limited powers,
ultimately derived from God, but immediately under the direction of their own
wills’ (3D 237). But how can we have immediate power over our own limbs, one
wonders? The answer, if there is one, is far from clear.25 But one possibility is that
Berkeley allowed finite spirits to produce internal, kinaesthetic ideas of motions
that were vivid (and hence, non-imaginary). Such ideas would be part of the
causal order of the natural world so that by producing the kinaesthetic idea, the
visible idea of one’s arm moving, say, would typically follow in accordance with
the natural laws.26
Regardless of such difficulties, Berkeley allows for the sheer activity of
thinking. He lists diverse ‘operations of the mind’ – including willing, imagining,
remembering, loving and hating (P 2 and P 27). And this raises the important
question: What is the ontological status of these diverse operations? Are they all
to be found among the given when one pulls back the curtain of words? Towards
the very end of his Notebooks, Berkeley remarks: ‘Will, Understanding, desire,
Hatred etc. so far forth as they are acts or active differ not, all their difference
consists in their objects, circumstances etc.’ (NB 854). So one possibility is that,
for Berkeley, all mental operations ultimately reduce to one kind of act – namely,
volition. Regardless of whether this is correct, however, it is nonetheless clear
that volition is the common denominator of all operations of thought (3D 196).
This raises some interrelated questions. First, what is the relationship, for
Berkeley, between acts of the will and perception? Obviously perception must
somehow be involved in volitional activity of the sort Berkeley has in mind (e.g.
the imaginative production of an idea). Second, what are volitions? How are they
related to spirit?
The first question concerns the denial of blind agency – a view that prevailed
at the time. According to this view, there can be no agency without a prior
intention or end in sight to bring about the desired effect.27 That is, all acts of
will are guided by an idea of the effect to be wrought. Such a view poses some
specific challenges for Berkeley’s account. Is the ideational content an intrinsic
component of the volition? If not, then how does the ideational content give
the volition foresight of the effect? If it is an intrinsic component, then is there
a resemblance between that ideational content and the ideational effect? If there
is, then does this not undermine the thesis that ideas cannot resemble mental
operations? If there is not, then how is the content aligned with ideational
effect?28
Notably, Berkeley nowhere states a commitment to the denial of blind agency
in either the Principles or the Dialogues. He does make it plain in his Notebooks
(812) ‘There is in the Deity Understanding as well as Will. He is no Blind agent &
in truth a blind Agent is a contradiction’. But even here, there is only the insistence
that a willing agent also understand (perceive), not that it must always possess an
idea of an intended effect before bringing it about. Indeed, subsequent remarks
in the Notebooks indicate unclarity on Berkeley’s part. ‘Qu: Whether perception
must of necessity precede volition?’ (NB 815), and ‘Qu: Whether the Will can be
the object of Prescience or any knowledge’ (NB 875).
While ideational content in a volition may make sense in the case of bodily
movement (one’s act of moving one’s arm is guided by a prior idea of one’s
moving arm), it makes little sense in the case of sheer thought or idea-production
(Berkeley’s paradigm case of agency). Indeed, it yields a redundancy: The relevant
idea has already been postulated as a guiding idea of the volition, and hence
there is no need to produce any further idea-effect in accordance with it. To put
it plainly: The view that one needs to intend to think about a unicorn before one
goes ahead and just thinks about a unicorn is surely absurd. So perhaps Berkeley
did not affirm the pre-existence of a guiding idea in the case of sheer thought.
Perhaps Berkeley only required an awareness of what one was doing when one
was doing it – at least in the case of thinking qua activity. Such an awareness
would, of course, require that the cause of an idea also perceive it. Part of the
issue here depends upon what Berkeley took the term ‘volition’ to mean. In one
gloss, a volition is an act of choosing something or choosing to do something.
And if this is right, then it does appear that some guiding ideational content
would be required. It is worth noting, however, that Berkeley does not gloss
‘volition’ that way. Rather, he characterizes it merely as an act of will (3D 196,
NB 611) and that does not have any similar entailment.
Let us now turn to the other interrelated questions: What exactly are
volitions? And how are they related to the agent that performs them? In the
Dialogues, Berkeley says that ‘neither can I conceive volition to be any where
but in a spirit’ (3D 239). This suggests that volitions, like ideas, ‘exist in’ a spirit.
But clearly Berkeley cannot mean ‘is perceived by’ a spirit since that would
make them mere ideas. But, then, what does he mean? As we saw in the first
section, Berkeley demands that such expressions be explicated, yet in this case
he never provides such an explication. Certainly, it would appear difficult to
view volitions as mere states or modifications of spirit given that Berkeley
appears to reject the traditional support relation between substance and its
modifications or properties. Notably, he never says that spirits are substances in
their supporting of volitions.
Such a view also entails a distinction between spirit (an agent) and its volitions.
But if spirit and its volitions are distinct, they are surely not ‘entirely distinct’ as
spirit and ideas are. So there would need to be a weaker distinction and it is not
clear what such a distinction would come to. Worse, it would appear that two
causal sequences need to be introduced. The volition causes an idea, presumably.
But what causes the volition? Surely, it must be the agent: If agents do not produce
their own volitions, then in what sense are they agents at all? Thus, it now seems
that there are two causal relations – one between an agent and its volitions,
the other between volitions and produced ideas. But if agents can produce
volitions without further intervening volitions (i.e. without an infinite regress),
why postulate a volition in the first place?
One possible response to this doubling of causal relation is to simply identify
spirit with its volitions. However, this would appear to run contrary to Berkeley’s
claim that spirits are simple. Moreover, it would be far from clear what held the
discrete volitions together. A variant of this strategy would involve viewing spirit
as simply volitional activity in general. That is, various volitions, in this view,
would merely be determinate manifestations of one on-going volition. While
this might appear to solve both the simplicity and unity problem, the problem
now is that this appears to involve an illicit abstraction from particular volitions
to volition in general. If it does not involve such an abstraction, it is hard to see
why we should speak of only one act of the will that, on the face of it, goes against
the empirical evidence suggesting we engage in many acts of the will over the
course of time.
A final possibility is to say that volitions (i.e. acts of the will) are nothing more
than instances of idea production and destruction: In thinking about a horse,
one ipso facto creates an idea of a horse. And the awareness that one is producing
an idea just is an awareness of an act of will. That is, awareness of oneself as an
agent, in such a view, would not require an awareness of further discrete items
(volitions) insofar as awareness of oneself qua agent as the cause of some idea-
effect would already constitute one’s awareness of a volition.29
In support of this reading, one could note that Berkeley claims in the
Principles, ‘Men have imagined they could frame abstract notions of the powers
and acts of the mind, and consider them prescinded, as well from the mind
or spirit it self, as from their respective objects and effects’ (P 143). Spirit
itself and its ideas (i.e. object and effects) are considered basic here and one
cannot consider acts (acts of will, one presumes) apart from agent and effect.
This remark is notably similar to statements in Alciphron where Euphranor
denies that there is a distinct idea of grace ‘separate or abstracted from God the
author, from man the subject, and from virtue and piety its effects’ (ALC VII 7)
and that there is an idea of force ‘excluding body, time, space, motion, and all its
sensible measures and effects’ (VII 6). According to the reading proposed, then,
‘volition’, like the terms ‘grace’ and ‘force’, has nothing answering to it in the
given, no pre-linguistic cognitive content. Instead, it is defined through terms
that do have pre-linguistic content (‘agent’ and ‘effect’). If so, the immediacy
that Berkeley assigns to our knowledge of the operations of spirit, while non-
inferential, differs from the immediacy by which we perceive our ideas insofar
as the former would merely concern our non-inferential knowledge of what the
relevant terms mean rather than some underlying item in the given.
One difficulty with the reduction of all acts of the will to acts of idea production/
destruction, however, concerns the plausibility of supposing Berkeley can actually
accommodate all forms of mental activity in this way. For example, does the
comparison of two ideas reduce to the production of two ideas side-’by-side’ in
the same view? Or would something more be required? Perhaps the principle
of charity may lead to an interpretation of Berkeley that allows for acts of the will
that do not reduce to the making and unmaking of ideas. If so, the challenge
to explain what volitions actually are and how they are related to their agents will
remain in full-force.
The development of Berkeley’s account of mind
In addition to the perplexity that has beset Berkeley’s account of spirit, as

defended in the Principles and the Dialogues, has been the complicating concern
that Berkeley may have had different versions of that account. In particular, it
seems on the face of it that some of his early Notebooks offer views that seem to
conflict with his ‘official one’. Moreover, there are key changes in the text between
the initial publications (1710 and 1713 respectively) and the second edition of
the Principles and the third edition of the Dialogues, both published in 1734.
Thus, questions are raised as to whether Berkeley’s views changed and, if so, why
and how, or whether the apparently conflicting texts can be interpreted as one
coherent view.
The Notebooks (1707–1709)

Perhaps the most fascinating fact is that Berkeley appears to have anticipated
something like a Humean account of the mind in his Notebooks. He writes, for
example, ‘Mind is a congeries of Perceptions. Take away Perception & you take
away the Mind put the Perceptions & you put the mind’ (NB 580). This has led
some commentators to see Berkeley as concealing his true view behind an
official account that he did not really believe in.30 Other commentators have
attempted to read the entries in such a way that conforms to his published view.31
Another plausible interpretation, of course, is that this is a view that Berkeley
considered and then abandoned.32
Complicating this issue is the thesis, defended by A. A. Luce, that the ‘+’ sign
(obelus) that marks some of Berkeley’s entries indicates subsequent rejection or
a ‘black list’ (many of the so-called Humean entries are so marked) – a thesis that
has been refuted by Bertil Belfrage.33 It is important to note, however, that it does
not follow from the rejection of the Black List hypothesis that Berkeley continued
to endorse the view outlined in these passages. Certainly, doctrinal development
in the Notebooks remains a plausible scenario. Indeed, a cursory review of the
Notebooks suggests that, overall, this is probably the case.
The earliest entries of Berkeley’s Notebooks suggest that he thought of the
soul as something akin to a Lockean person (NB 14, 25). Towards the end of
the Notebooks he also reminds himself not to use the word ‘person’ as it would
offend the churchmen (NB 713). This suggests that he continued to think of
the soul as a person throughout the Notebooks, although he officially avoided
the term. It is also clear, however, that while Berkeley identified person as a
‘conscious being’ (NB 24) he did not accept Locke’s memory-based account
of personal identity. Berkeley spells out the grounds for rejection at NB 200.
Even earlier, it seems that Berkeley’s account of the person differs from Locke’s.
Indeed, Berkeley appears to have allowed for an ever-changing momentary
self-consciousness, thereby rejecting identity over time, writing, ‘Eternity is only
a train of innumerable ideas . . . the immortality of the person . . . not being
necessary for ought we can see’ (NB 14) and ‘Men die or are in a state of
annihilation oft in a day’ (NB 83).
At this early stage he also indicated interest in how the soul is known. His
first proposal was a complex idea made up of the ideas of existence, willing
and perception (NB 154) – a view that he inarguably came to reject. This
rejection first appears at 176a: ‘The grand mistake is that we think we have
ideas of the operations of our minds. Certainly this metaphorical dress is an
argument we have not.’ As it was written on the verso page, it may have come
later. But by 230, we find him writing, ‘Absurd that men should know the soul by
idea.’ This theme is taken up against at 523: ‘It seems improper and liable to
difficulties to make the word person stand for an idea, or to make our selves
ideas or thinking things ideas.’ Of course, once it becomes clear that Berkeley
made at least one change in his Notebooks, it becomes far easier to believe that he
made more.
Much of the subsequent entries on mind appear to concern how to conceptualize

the nature of this conscious being, how to characterize its central defining features.
He asks: ‘How is the soul distinguish’d from its’ ideas? Certainly if there were no
sensible ideas there could be no soul, no perception, remembrance, love, fear etc.’
(NB 478). Specifically, Berkeley is interested in accounting for the constituting
properties of the mind’s essence. By understanding what a soul is, one would
thereby have a handle on its ‘substance’. Unsurprisingly, much of his discussion
concerns the will and the understanding. His first move was to identify the
understanding with its particular perceptions: ‘The understanding seemeth not
to differ from its perceptions or Ideas. Qu: what must think of the Will & the
passions’ (NB 587), indicating that he not yet have given the will much thought.
By NB 615 he has answered his question, however, by identifying the will with
particular volitions, following a reiteration of his identification of the understanding
with perceptions or ideas (614).
The so-called Humean passages occur in between his initial question at
478 and his claims about the will at 615. He writes, for example: ‘The very
existence of Ideas constitutes the soul’ (NB 577). The entries raises two pertinent
questions. First, did Berkeley mean to identify the entire soul with the perception
of ideas, or was he merely speaking about the understanding? In light of his
remarks at 587, it would seem the latter is more plausible.34 Second, did he
distinguish between the perception of ideas (i.e. their existence) and the ideas
themselves? If the answer is ‘yes’, it may be, as some commentators have argued,
that he did not endorse a Humean bundle, but something else (i.e. volitionally
conditioned perception of ideas).35 Both NB 587 and 614 treat ‘idea’ and
‘perception’ interchangeably, however, suggesting the answer to this last question
is ‘no’.
The verso entries of 614 and 615 indicate a subsequent change of heart in
Berkeley’s identification of the understanding with its ideas and the will with its
volitions: ‘The Understanding taken for a faculty is not really distinct from the
Will’ (614a) and ‘This alter’d hereafter’ (615a). It seems likely that the verso entries
were not written until sometime later, as by NB 708 he still regarded the
understanding and the will as ‘two distinct beings’ and by 714 he continued to
identify the will with its volitions, ‘unite being no more’. During this period,
Berkeley strongly insists that the will cannot be an object of the understanding
on the grounds that while ideas are passive, volitions are active (NB 643) and he
begins to identify the soul (which he now calls spirit) as the will alone (NB 712).
Notably, he allows that one is conscious of one’s various volitions (NB 744) and
that ‘particles’ can be used to denote them (NB 667): ‘Tis allw’d that Particles
stand not for Ideas & yet they are not said to be empty useful sounds. The truth
on’t is they stand for the operations of the mind i.e. volitions.’
The verso entry changes mentioned above become clear later on, however. At
NB 788 he appears to relinquish the identification of the will with particular
volitions: ‘We see not variety or difference betwixt the Volitions, only between
their effects. Tis One Will one Act distinguished by the effects.’ And by NB
821 he has written ‘Understanding is in some sort an Action.’ This last shift
appears to indicate his growing recognition that while the reception of at least
sensible ideas is passive, the soul ever actively thinks about what it perceives and
that the complex process of forming mental propositions about what one
perceives requires mental activity. At any rate, by NB 848 he writes, ‘I must not
say that the Understanding differs not from the particular Ideas, or the Will from
particular Volitions.’ And while the phrasing of this last entry is consistent with
a mere terminological recommendation, NB 788, 821, as well as the verso entries
mentioned above, suggest otherwise.
Finally, it is possible that Berkeley came even to reject his view of the soul as
‘one act’: ‘I must not give the Soul or Mind the Scholastique Name pure act, but
rather pure Spirit or active Being’ (NB 870).36 This, of course, is precisely how
Berkeley comes to speak of spirit in the Principles and the Dialogues – namely,
as an active being, rather than as an act. Again, while this is consistent with a
mere terminological adjustment, Berkeley’s next entry reads: ‘I must not say that
Will & Understanding are all one but that they are both Abstract Ideas, i.e. none
at all. They not even ratione different from the Spirit, Qua faculties, or Active’
(NB 871). If Berkeley continued to view the soul in terms of ‘one act’, surely he
could allow that will and understanding were all one (namely, the act). If the act
were rejected as an illicit abstraction, however, he would have no recourse but to
refer to an agent alone, making them not even ‘ratione different’ from the Spirit.
At any rate, at this stage Berkeley appears to move away from locating
the substance or essence of the soul within the given, instead relying on the
inclusion of these so-called various properties within the definition of the word
‘spirit’: ‘I must not Mention the Understanding as a faculty or part of the mind, I
must include Understanding & Will etc. in the word Spirit by which I mean all
that is active’ (NB 848) – a move that Berkeley makes in his published work: ‘For
by the word spirit we mean only that which thinks, will, and perceives’ (P 138).
And: ‘A spirit is one simple, undivided, active being: as it perceives ideas, it is
called the understanding, and as it produces or otherwise operates about them, it
is called the will’ (P 27). This stage may therefore reflect a rejection of there being
anything in the given, such as an on-going volition that constitutes the essence
or substance of spirit. Instead, Berkeley now appears to be relying only on the

self qua agent alone. As he writes, ‘The Spirit, the Mind, is neither a Volition nor
an Idea’ (NB 849).
The 1734 revisions of the Principles and Dialogues

The second edition of the Principles and the third edition of the Dialogues see
some important textual revisions with regard to Berkeley’s claims about our
knowledge of spirit. First, Berkeley adds to two exchanges between Philonous
and Hylas concerning worries about possible parity of reasoning between the
rejection of material substance and the rejection of spiritual substance. In the
first and second editions, the exchange only concerns how the existence of things
in the mind of God could be conceived, given that there is no idea of God (God
being active, ideas being passive and inert).37
Second, Berkeley denies that we possess a notion of spirit in some passages of
the first edition of the Principles. At 138 he writes, ‘If therefore it is impossible
that any degree of those powers should be represented in an idea or notion, it is
evident there can be no idea or notion of spirit.’ And at 139 he writes, ‘What I
am my self, that which I denote by the term I, is the same with what is meant by
soul or spiritual substance. But if I shou’d say, that I was nothing, or that I was an
idea or notion, nothing cou’d be more evidently absurd than either of these
propositions.’ In the second edition, portions of these passages are deleted and
he adds several sentences claiming that while he lacks an idea of spirit (and
its operations), he still possesses ‘some notion’ of them (P 27, 89, 140, 142). He
also now adds that we ‘comprehend our own existence by inward feeling
or reflexion’ (P 89). Such changes raise the concern that Berkeley introduced
‘notion’ as a technical term in order to salvage his account of spirit that had
earlier effectively committed to our not knowing spirit at all. This fear, in turn,
colours our understanding of the additional exchanges between Hylas and
Philonous introduced in the Dialogues.
Part of the problem is that Berkeley uses ‘notion’ in different ways. In the first
edition of the Principles, for example, he sometimes uses it, very roughly, as
equivalent to definition (qua explication of the meaning of a term). At P 9 he
writes, ‘By matter therefore we are to understand an inert, senseless substance,
which extension, figure, and motion, do actually subsist. . . . It is plain, that
the very notion of what is called matter or corporeal substance, involves a
contradiction in it.’ Clearly, he does not mean to deny that there can be a notion
of spirit in this sense, as he also affirms a definition ‘spirit’ in the first edition at
P 138: ‘By the word spirit we mean only that which thinks, will and perceives;
this, and this alone, constitutes the signification of the term.’ Second, in the
earlier editions of the Dialogues, he uses it in a way that is equivalent to
‘knowledge’: He writes that ‘All the notion I have of God, is obtained by reflecting
on my own soul’ (231). Clearly, he allows, right in this passage, that we have some
knowledge of spirit.
The question, then, is just what is he denying in the first edition of the
Principles? Did he mean, for example, to deny even a consciousness of his own
existence? This seems inconsistent with his denial that he is nothing. However
there are perhaps delicate issues here as to whether he recognizes this merely as
a self-evident proposition rather than a datum of consciousness (an internal
feeling).38 Notably, if this was a change in Berkeley’s philosophy it is one that
occurred earlier than the 1734 revisions as he very explicitly commits to a datum
view in De Motu (1721). That said, the postulation of any change here also seems
implausible given Berkeley’s long-standing commitment to a variant of the
Lockean self in his Notebooks. Recall, for example, his remark: ‘It seems improper
and liable to difficulties to make the word person stand for an idea, or to make
our selves ideas or thinking things ideas’ (NB 522), which suggests a mere
terminological decision to not call something an idea, rather than a denial that
the self is part of the given. Indeed, this seems to accord quite well with the first
edition claim that calling himself an idea (or notion) is absurd.
Another question concerns whether or not he is simply (and redundantly)
using ‘notion’ as a synonym for ‘idea’ in the deleted passages. If he is, then he is
simply making the point that selves are not ideas. Recall, however, that Berkeley
had also once allowed what he called particles to stand for individual volitions.
And note that Berkeley’s first edition claim at P 138 that his self is neither an idea
nor a notion is fairly close to his denial at NB 849, ‘The Spirit, the Mind, is neither
a Volition nor an Idea.’ So another possibility is that he meant ‘notion’ to apply to
anything, besides ideas and his self, that was available in the given once the
curtain of words was pulled away. If so, his claim at 138 that the powers of willing,
thinking and perceiving cannot be represented in an ‘idea or notion’ may be
suggesting that such powers cannot be represented in a volition either, since
these powers are nothing but spirit itself (i.e. the self-aware agent that is part of
the given).
Regardless of how these passages are read, however, it seems fairly plausible
Berkeley did not introduce a new sense of ‘notion’ in the subsequent editions in
an about-face or ad hoc appeal. Rather, he simply restricted the term ‘notion’ to
the two other senses described above – affirming what he had earlier affirmed,
namely that we do have a definition (a notion) of ‘spirit’, that we do have some

knowledge (some notion) thereof. The foundation of such knowledge, for
Berkeley, is plausibly viewed as the self as it appeared in the given – namely, as a
conscious agent.
Notes
1 For a classic formulation, see Colin Turbayne (1959): Turbayne, C. M. (1959),

‘Berkeley’s Two Concepts of Mind’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
20:1, 85–92.
2 See Margaret Atherton, Atherton, M. (1983), ‘The Coherence of Berkeley’s Theory of
Mind’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 43, 389–99 and William Beardsley,
Beardsley, W. H. (2001), ‘Berkeley on Spirit and Its Unity’, History of Philosophy
Quarterly 18: 3, 259–77. (2001) for this reading.
3 See Daniel Flage: Flage, D. (1987), Berkeley’s Doctrine of Notions: A Reconstruction
Based on his Theory of Meaning. London: Croom Helm, 133–70. While Flage does
not explicitly claim that that Berkeleian spirit should be understood as a Lockean-
style substratum, he does argue that Berkeley spirit is only known through its
relations to ideas. We have no positive conception of its essence. See also Melissa
Frankel: Frankel, M. (2009), ‘Something-We-Know-Not-What, Something-We-
Know-Not-Why: Berkeley, Meaning, and Minds’, Philosophia 37, 381–402.
4 See Ian Tipton (1966) for this reading: Tipton, I. C. (1966), ‘Berkeley’s View of
Spirit’ in W. Steinkraus (ed.), New Studies in Berkeley’s Philosophy. New York: Holt,
Rinehart, and Winston, pp. 59–71. See also John Russell Roberts (2007): Roberts, J. R.
(2007), A Metaphysics for the Mob: The Philosophy of George Berkeley. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
5 See Robert Muehlmann (1995a) for this reading.
6 Ibid.
7 See Edwin B. Allaire (1963) for this view: Allaire, E. B. (1963), ‘Berkeley’s Idealism’,
Theoria 29, 229–44. Muehlmann (1995a) provides extension overview of the
literature. See, also George Pappas (2000) pp. 128–31 for a critique: Pappas, G.
(2000), Berkeley’s Thought. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
8 See George Pitcher: Pitcher, G. (1977), Berkeley. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
pp. 189–203; Atherton (1983); Beardsley (2001). See Kenneth Winkler: Winkler, K.
(1989). Berkeley: An Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, and Pappas
(2000) for critique.
9 See Beardsley (2001).
10 See: Daniel, S. H. (2008), ‘Berkeley’s Stoic Notion of Spiritual Substance’ in S. H.
Daniel (ed.), New Interpretations of Berkeley’s Thought. Amherst: Humanity Books,
pp. 203–30.
11 See Talia Bettcher (2007): Bettcher, T. M. (2007), Berkeley’s Philosophy of Spirit:

Consciousness, Ontology, and the Elusive Subject. London: Continuum; Philip
Cummins (2005): Cummins, P. D. (2005), ‘Berkeley on Minds and Agency’ in
K. Winkler (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Berkeley. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, pp. 190–229 and Cummins, P. D. (2007), ‘Perceiving and Berkeley’s
Theory of Substance’ in S. H. Daniel (ed.), Reexamining Berkeley’s Philosophy,
pp. 121–52.
12 See Bettcher (2007).
13 See Frankel (2009) for some difficulties with this position.
14 See Frankel (2009) for a view that approaches but does not fully endorse this
position.
15 See Flage (1987).
16 See Laurent Jaffro (2004) for a discussion: Jaffro, L. (2004), ‘Le cogito de Berkeley’,
Archives de Philosophie 67, 85–111.
17 See, for example, see David Berman (1981): Berman, D. (1981), ‘Cognitive theology
and emotive mysteries in Berkeley’s Alciphron’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish
Academy 81: 7, 219–29, and Bertil Belfrage (1986): Belfrage, B. (1986), ‘Berkeley’s
Emotive Theory of Meaning (1708)’, History of European Ideas 7:6, 643–99. The
latter’s emotivist account applies only to Berkeley’s Notebooks.
18 See Roomet Jakapi (2002): Jakapi, R. (2002), ‘Emotive Meaning and Christian
Mysteries in Berkeley’s Alciphron’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy
10: 3, 401–11.
19 See Jaffro (2004) for a discussion of this possibility as well as a more moderate
version.
20 Turbayne (1959).
21 For discussion and further references, see Genevieve Migely (2007): Migely, G.
(2007), ‘Berkeley’s Actively Passive Mind’ in S. H. Daniel (ed.) Reexamining Berkeley’s
Philosophy, pp. 153–71.
22 For an excellent articulation of this problem, see Charles McCracken (1986).
23 See Migely (2007).
24 For an attempted solution, see Migely (2007).
25 For discussion, see Robert McKim (1984): McKim, R. (1984), ‘Berkeley on Human
Agency’, History of Philosophical Quarterly 1:2, 181–94, and Tom Stoneham (2002):
Stoneham, T. (2002), Berkeley’s World: An Examination of the Three Dialogues.
Oxford: Oxford Press, p. 187.
26 See Bettcher (2007, 85–6).
27 See Kenneth Winkler (1989).
28 For discussion of these types of problems, see Muelmann (1995b, 149–69) and
Cummins (2005, 222–3).
29 See Bettcher (2007, 72–4).
30 Turbayne (1959), Muehlmann (1995).
31 Daniel (2013).
32 Charles McCracken (1986), Belfrage (2007).
33 A. A. Luce (1944): Luce, A. A. (1944), Introduction to Philosophical Commentaries,
generally called the Commonplace Book, by George Berkeley. London: Thomas Nelson
and Sons, xiii–xxxvi; Bertil Belfrage (1987): Belfrage, B. (1987), ‘A New Approach to
Berkeley’s Philosophical Notebooks’ in E. Sosa (ed.), Essays on The Philosophy of
George Berkeley. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing, pp. 217–30.
34 See McCracken (1986) for this view.
35 Daniel (2013).
36 For this view, see Belfrage (2007).
37 For a discussion of these passages, see Cummins (1982).
38 See George Pitcher (1977, 214–19).
24
Berkeley on the Philosophy of Language

John Russell Roberts
I am inclined to think the doctrine of signs a point of great importance and

general extent, which, if duly considered, would cast no small light upon things,
and afford a genuine solution of many difficulties.
PI §4
The dust metaphor
Berkeley was a revolutionary figure in the philosophy of language and he gave

the topic a uniquely privileged position in his work. To appreciate the former
point will require some stage setting. But to draw out the privileged position he
gives the philosophy of language we need look no further than the Published
Introduction to the Principles. Towards the beginning, he gives us his memorable
dust metaphor of philosophical perplexity.
Upon the whole, I am inclined to think that the far greater part, if not the whole,
of those difficulties which have hitherto amused philosophers, and blocked up
the way to knowledge, are entirely owing to ourselves. That we have first raised a
dust, and then complain, we cannot see.
PI §3
Stripped from its context, that may come across as cynical. But in context it is
clearly not. Berkeley is opposing his view of the source of philosophical perplexity
to those that take the cause to lie in either the inherent ‘obscurity of things’, or
‘the natural weakness and imperfection of our understandings’ (PI §2). His own
outlook is more optimistic. As he sees it, it is more likely that ‘we [are] too partial
to our selves in placing the fault originally in our faculties’ rather than ‘in the
wrong use we make of them’ (PI §3).
421
Importantly, Berkeley immediately follows up this diagnosis of philosophical

perplexity by telling us how he intends to proceed. ‘My purpose therefore is, to
try if I can discover what those principles are, which have introduced all that
doubtfulness and uncertainty, those absurdities and contradictions into the
several sects of philosophy’ (PI §4). Given the title of the work, A Treatise
Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, one would expect that Berkeley’s
aim is to provide the basic principles on which to build a sound philosophical
system. But what we find is that the principles he is first concerned with are here
characterized as principal causes of error. As he goes on to say, we have reason to
suspect that ‘those lets and difficulties, which stay and embarrass the mind in its
search after truth, do not spring from any darkness and intricacy in the objects,
or natural defect in the understanding, so much as from false principles which
have been insisted on, and might have been avoided’ (PI §4). The suggestion is
that if we can identify and eliminate these false principles, then we can keep our
philosophical inquiries from leading us into confusion; we can keep from
kicking up a dust.
Berkeley proceeds to identify his initial target:
In order to prepare the mind of the reader for the easier conceiving what follows,
it is proper to premise somewhat, by way of introduction, concerning the nature
and abuse of language. But the unravelling this matter leads me in some measure
to anticipate my design, by taking notice of what seems to have had a chief part
in rendering speculation intricate and perplexed, and to have occasioned
innumerable errors and difficulties in almost all parts of knowledge. And that is
the opinion that the mind hath a power of framing abstract ideas or notions
of things.
PI §6, emphasis added
Actually, what we get here is a pair of targets. Berkeley’s focus is going to be

‘the nature and abuse of language’ and ‘abstract ideas’. Traditionally, scholarship
has concentrated its attention on the latter. And not without justification. As
Berkeley sees it, ‘of all the false principles that have obtained in the world,
amongst all which there is none, methinks, hath a more wide influence over the
thoughts of speculative men, than this of abstract ideas’ (PI §17). However, what
tends to get overlooked is that this only underscores the fundamental importance
of the philosophy of language because what we find as the Introduction proceeds
is that this false belief in abstract ideas has its source in a more fundamental
error, a false philosophy of language. Thus, the aim of §19, Berkeley tells us, is to
identify the source from which the belief in abstract ideas flows. There he begins
Berkeley on the Philosophy of Language 423
to ‘give a farther account of how [a view about] words came to produce the
doctrine of abstract ideas’ (PI §19).
Given the fundamental importance that Berkeley places on the issue, one
might reasonably expect there to be general agreement on just what Berkeley’s
basic philosophy of language is or at the absolute least, what the false view is. But
there isn’t. The focus of the debate is the Ideational Theory and Berkeley’s attitude
towards it.
The Ideational Theory
The Ideational Theory, although often referred to simply as a theory of meaning,

is more accurately a package of views about meaning, communication and
thought. Berkeley himself provides a helpful summary of the position. It is worth
quoting at length.
Words are signs: they do or should stand for ideas, which so far as they suggest
they are significant. But words that suggest no ideas are insignificant. He who
annexeth a clear idea to every word he makes use of speaks sense; but where
such ideas are wanting, the speaker utters nonsense. In order therefore to know
whether any man’s speech be senseless and insignificant, we have nothing to do
but lay aside the words, and consider the ideas suggested by them. Men, not
being able immediately to communicate their ideas one to another, are obliged
to make use of sensible signs or words; the use of which is to raise those ideas in
the hearer which are in the mind of the speaker; and if they fail of this end they
serve to no purpose. He who really thinks hath a train of ideas succeeding each
other and connected in his mind; and when he expresseth himself by discourse
each word suggests a distinct idea to the hearer or reader; who by that means
hath the same train of ideas in his which was in the mind of the speaker or
writer. As far as this effect is produced, so far the discourse is intelligible, hath
sense and meaning. Hence it follows that whoever can be supposed to understand
what he reads or hears must have a train of ideas raised in his mind, correspondent
to the train of words read or heard.
Alc 7, §2
According to the Ideational Theory of meaning, words are signs, but what
those signs immediately signify is ideas. Thus, when I utter the sound, ‘Bjork’, my
utterance is only meaningful because it immediately signifies my idea of a certain
Icelandic singer. It is the representational power of my idea of Bjork that
ultimately makes that utterance about her. If I uttered ‘blictri’ the sound would be
meaningless because there is no idea conventionally associated with that word. I

also will not be able to communicate anything to another by the latter utterance
because my utterance of the word will not bring about an idea in someone else’s
mind. Finally, thinking is here characterized simply as a matter of having a train
of ideas present before the mind. Where there are no ideas, there can be no
thought and, thus, no understanding.
Four interpretive options
But what is Berkeley’s attitude towards the Ideational Theory? Is he advocating it

or attacking it? There are four main interpretative options. I will first consider a
‘Simple Ideational Interpretation’, then two modifications of it, the ‘Late Revolution
Interpretation’, and ‘The Periphery of Language Interpretation’. Finally, I will
consider the ‘Anti-Ideational Interpretation’.
1. The Simple Ideational Interpretation

As we will see, the view that Berkeley simply accepts the Ideational Theory is
the least plausible of our interpretive options. However, it is the place to start
because there are two important, mutually supportive arguments in its favour
that together give this interpretation undeniable prima facie appeal.
First, the Simple Ideational Interpretation provides a straightforward reading
of Berkeley’s concerns about the aforementioned ‘nature and abuse of language’
that begins the Principles. To make the connection to the Ideational Theory one
can simply point to the conclusion of the Introduction:
Unless we take care to clear the first principles of knowledge from the embarrass
and delusion of words, we may make infinite reasonings upon them to no
purpose; we may draw consequences from consequences, and be never the wiser.
The farther we go, we shall only lose ourselves the more irrecoverably, and be the
deeper entangled in difficulties and mistakes. Whoever therefore designs to read
the following sheets, I entreat him to make my words the occasion of his own
thinking, and endeavour to attain the same train of thoughts in reading that
I had in writing them. By this means it will be easy for him to discover the truth
or falsity of what I say. He will be out of all danger of being deceived by my
words, and I do not see how he can be led into an error by considering his own
naked, undisguised ideas.
PI §25
The call to attain the same ‘train of thoughts’ as Berkeley suggests that he
conceives of thinking as a matter of having a ‘train of ideas’ before the mind –
just as the Ideational Theory would have it.
To this one might add that in Alciphron, immediately after the title character
gives the above quoted summary of the Simple Ideational Theory, he then
explicitly connects it to the dust metaphor itself.
We may perhaps raise a dust and disputes about tenets purely verbal: but what is
this at bottom more than mere trifling? All which will be easily admitted with
respect to human learning and science; wherein it is an allowed method to
expose any doctrine or tenet by stripping them of the words, and examining
what ideas are underneath, or whether any ideas at all? This is often found the
shortest way to end disputes, which might otherwise grow and multiply without
end, the litigants neither understanding one another nor themselves.
Alc 7, §3
In short, according to the Simple Ideational Interpretation, Berkeley is joining

the chorus of his contemporaries in the standard criticism of the empty jargon
of the scholastic philosophers. So, this interpretation not only fits the tone of
Berkeley’s complaints about how language can mislead, it also places Berkeley in
a larger historical narrative in a very natural way.
Ideation and abstraction

The second argument in support of the Simple Ideational Interpretation is that
if we read Berkeley as advocating an empiricist version of it, it makes ready sense
of the connection he explicitly draws at §23 of the Introduction between the
danger of the deception of words and Berkeley’s famous attack on abstract ideas.
To see this we first need to say a little bit about what abstract ideas are
supposed to be. It is easiest to begin by explaining what they are supposed to do.
Following Berkeley, it will be best to focus on John Locke’s treatment of the issue.
Locke asked, ‘How come we by general terms?’ (Locke 1979, 3.3.6). By a ‘general
term’ or ‘general word’, Locke means, for instance, a word like ‘human’. Where a
singular term, like the proper name, ‘Bjork’, names just one particular thing, and
my utterance of ‘Bjork’ allows me to talk about one particular human, the word
‘human’ has a much broader reach. It lets me talk about all humans that have ever
existed, or that ever might. So why is there a problem about the meaning of the
word ‘human’? Well, if that word is going to be meaningful it will have to signify
an idea. Locke is a concept empiricist; he holds that we get all of our ideas from
sensory experience. He also believes that all things are particular; there are no
universals. That makes it much easier to see how my use of ‘Bjork’ is meaningful
than how the word ‘human’ is. My idea of Bjork can be traced to its experiential
source in a perceivable particular, Bjork. But what about ‘human’? Meeting with
any given particular human should just give me an idea of that particular human.
Thus Locke asks, ‘[f]or since all things that exist are only particulars, how come
we by general Terms, or where find those general Natures they are supposed to
stand for?’ (Locke 1979, 3.3.6). Travel as I might, I do not expect to bump into
the general nature of humanhood. So how is it that my utterance of the word
‘human’ lets me talk not just about one particular person, but rather all humans
that have ever existed and ever might? Where am I getting the general idea that
is, according to the Ideational Theory, necessary to make the general word
meaningful?
Well, since the world cannot provide us with an idea for ‘human’ to signify,
Locke concludes that we must have a power to supply the needed idea ourselves.
He calls this process ‘abstraction’.
Words become general, by being made the signs of general ideas: and ideas
become general, by separating from them the circumstances of Time and Place,
and any other ideas that may determine them to this or that particular Existence.
By this way of abstraction they are made capable of representing more individuals
than one; each of which, having in it a conformity to that Abstract Idea, is (as we
call it) of that sort.
Locke 1979, 3.3.6
It would seem that to form the general idea of a human for my word ‘human’
to signify, I must focus my attention on some particular human, say Bjork, and
then narrow my focus onto what she has in common with all other humans to
the exclusion of all of her other properties – what time of day I saw her, where
I saw her, what colour her hair is, how tall or short she is, etc. This then gives me
the needed abstract general idea.
For his part, Berkeley says he can make nothing of this process of abstraction,
or rather that it makes nothing.
Whether others have this wonderful faculty of Abstracting their ideas, they best
can tell: for myself, I find indeed I have a faculty of imagining, or representing to
myself, the ideas of those particular things I have perceived, and of variously
compounding and dividing them. I can imagine a man with two heads, or the
upper parts of a man joined to the body of a horse. I can consider the hand, the
eye, the nose, each by itself abstracted or separated from the rest of the body. But
then whatever hand or eye I imagine, it must have some particular shape and
colour. Likewise the idea of man that I frame to myself must be either of a
white, or a black, or a tawny, a straight, or a crooked, a tall, or a low, or a middle-
sized man. I cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstract idea
above described. . . . I deny that I can abstract from one another, or conceive
separately, those qualities which it is impossible should exist so separated; or that
I can frame a general notion, by abstracting from particulars in the manner
aforesaid.
PI §10
As Berkeley sees it, if I try to frame the idea of human by abstracting away
from all the features not shared by every human I will end up abstracting away
the entire idea. Whatever might be left, if anything, would have no content with
which to do its representational work. In light of which, the Simple Ideational
Interpretation says that Berkeley is here objecting to Locke on Lockean grounds.
He is simply applying the implications of the Ideational Theory more rigorously
than Locke himself did. Locke is kicking up dust with his abstract ideas.
In all, this might seem to make a very strong case for the Simple Ideational
Interpretation. Certainly, it has struck many as the natural way to read Berkeley.
Just the same, it is perfectly clear that Berkeley rejects the Simple Ideational
Theory.
First, we should note that the summary and advocacy of the Ideational Theory
quoted above is given by the character of Alciphron. Alciphron is the designated
opponent to the views that Berkeley advocates in the Alciphron dialogue. In the
‘Seventh Dialogue’, after introducing the Ideational Theory, Alciphron uses it to
attack a host of religious terms, most prominently ‘Grace’ and the ‘Trinity’, as
meaningless bits of noise since we cannot form ideas for either of them to signify.
Since the words are deemed meaningless, Alciphron concludes that belief in
Grace and/or the Trinity of God is impossible. In response, Berkeley does not
attempt to argue that in fact we do have ideas of Grace and the Trinity. Instead,
he attacks the Ideational Theory. For instance, in response to Alciphron’s
complaint that no one can believe in the Trinity, Berkeley’s chief advocate in the
dialogue, Euphranor, responds:
I do not wonder you thought so, as long as you maintained that no man could
assent to a proposition without perceiving or framing in his mind distinct ideas
marked by the terms of it. But, although terms are signs, yet having granted that
those signs may be significant, though they should not suggest ideas represented
by them, provided they serve to regulate and influence our wills, passions, or
conduct, you have consequently granted that the mind of man may assent to
propositions containing such terms, when it is so directed or affected by them,

notwithstanding it should not perceive distinct ideas marked by those terms.
Alc 7, §8
This passage alone puts paid to the Simple Ideational Interpretation. Berkeley
straightforwardly rejects its basic assumption, i.e. that every meaningful word
must signify an idea.
2. The Late Revolution Interpretation

In response, the Ideationalist might abandon the Simple version for a slightly
more complex one. She might say, with Anthony Flew, that,
[I]n the Alciphron we find a revolutionary and historically premature insight.

But that, of course, is not to say that Berkeley himself saw how far he had moved;
or that he himself appreciated how drastically the development of this insight
might affect some of his own most cherished and distinctive philosophical
moves. On the contrary: the claim that it was historically premature should
suggest the very opposite.
1993, 225
As Flew saw it, Berkeley’s rejection of the Ideational Theory in Alciphron

marked a radical innovation for the philosophy of language in general, and
for Berkeley in particular. But recognition of this means we need to partition
Berkeley’s views about language into an early and late period. In the early period,
i.e. when the Introduction to the Principles was written, he embraces the Simple
Ideational Theory and uses it to attack abstract ideas. But in the later period he
rejects it in order to rescue the meaningfulness of key religious terms, all the
while not realizing that it undercuts his attack on abstract ideas. Berkeley effects
a revolution in the philosophy of language, but within the scope of his works, it
is a late revolution.
However, this modified Ideational Interpretation faces a serious difficulty. If
we look at the Introduction to the Principles, we find Berkeley clearly rejecting
the claim that in order for a word to be meaningful it must signify some idea.
May we not, for example, be affected with the promise of a good thing, though
we have not an idea of what it is? Or is not the being threatened with danger
sufficient to excite a dread, though we think not of any particular evil likely to
befall us, nor yet frame to ourselves an idea of danger in abstract? If any one shall
join ever so little reflexion of his own to what has been said, I believe that it will
evidently appear to him that general names are often used in the propriety of
language without the speaker’s designing them for marks of ideas in his own,
which he would have them raise in the mind of the hearer.
PI §20
He extends the point to some uses of proper names.
Even proper names themselves do not seem always spoken with a design to
bring into our view the ideas of those individuals that are supposed to be marked
by them. For example, when a schoolman tells me ‘Aristotle has said it,’ all
I conceive he means by it is to dispose me to embrace his opinion with the
deference and submission which custom has annexed to that name. And this
effect is often so instantly produced in the minds of those who are accustomed
to resign their judgment to authority of that philosopher, as it is impossible any
idea either of his person, writings, or reputation should go before.
PI §20
Such remarks make it difficult to justify partitioning Berkeley’s attack on the

Ideational Theory to a supposed ‘late period’ starting with Alciphron. It seems
he has it in his sights very early on, even if, as Flew suggests, that means that in
doing so Berkeley undercuts his own attack on abstract ideas.
3. The periphery of language interpretation

These remarks, however, might suggest the possibility of a different way to
partition the Ideational Interpretation, one that would not necessarily undercut
his attack on abstract ideas. One might think that Berkeley is only objecting
to the Simple version of the Ideational Theory, i.e. as an account of the
meaningfulness of words for all areas of discourse. According to Jonathan
Bennett, when Berkeley claims that ‘the mind of man may assent to propositions
containing . . . terms’ even though not ‘perceiving or framing in his mind distinct
ideas marked by the terms’ he is only talking about the ‘periphery of language’, he
is not talking about language that is used to communicate claims about facts
(1971, 55). As he sees it, ‘Berkeley is right to stress that words may be used “in
propriety of language” for purposes other than theoretical ones of stating or mis-
stating what is the case about some factual matter, e.g. that one may speak in
order to “raise some passion” in the hearer’ (1971, 56). What Berkeley is saying is
that ‘words can be used meaningfully in the absence of ideas only because words
can be used non-theoretically’ (1971, 56). So, according to this interpretation,
Berkeley is not rejecting the Ideational theory for the whole of language, just the
periphery.
Of course, this too is to see Berkeley as a revolutionary figure in the philosophy

of language, albeit of a more limited stripe. It credits Berkeley with appreciating
that words can be used to do different things and can correspondingly acquire
meaning in different ways. They can, for instance, be used for emotive purposes.
When I am promised a good thing or threatened with danger, this talk is
meaningful not because the words ‘good’ and ‘danger’ signify ideas in the speaker’s
head that are then communicated to the hearer but, rather, because it successfully
expresses some passion of mine and/or gives rise to a certain passion and a
corresponding disposition to action in another. However, when I wish to make
meaningful truth-evaluable claims, there must be ideas. I may be able to get you
out of harm’s way by screaming ‘Bear!’ without raising an idea of a bear in you,
but if I want to make a meaningful truth-evaluable claim such as, ‘There is a bear
trying to steal your picnic basket,’ I will need a train of ideas in my mind. And if
I am to successfully communicate a truth-evaluable claim to you my utterance
must successfully give rise to a train of ideas in you.
But the Periphery Language Interpretation has its own serious problems. First
and foremost is the fact that consistently, and repeatedly, Berkeley denies that we
can have any idea of human spirits or God. As he repeatedly tells us, spirits are
not known by way of having an idea of them. What’s more, the contrary belief is
identified as the source of pernicious errors.
From the opinion that spirits are to be known after the manner of an idea or
sensation have risen many absurd and heterodox tenets, and much scepticism
about the nature of the soul. It is even probable that this opinion may have
produced a doubt in some whether they had any soul at all distinct from their
body since upon inquiry they could not find they had an idea of it. That an idea
which is inactive, and the existence whereof consists in being perceived, should
be the image or likeness of an agent subsisting by itself, seems to need no other
refutation than barely attending to what is meant by those words.
P §137
According to Berkeley, our talk of spirits is meaningful even though we do

not and cannot have an idea of any spirit. To see that this fact leaves the advocate
of the Periphery of Language Interpretation with an ugly dilemma, we need only
add that spirits, simple active substances, are the fundamental component of
Berkeley’s ontology. Thus, the advocate will either have to say that Berkeley holds
that claims like ‘I am a spirit,’ ‘Spirits are simple active substances’ or ‘God exists’
are not true because they are not claims about matters of fact, or she will have to
say that Berkeley somehow failed to see that his own philosophy of language has
absolutely devastating consequences for his metaphysics as a whole.
4. The Anti-Ideational Interpretation

These considerations recommend an Anti-Ideational Interpretation, i.e. the
view that Berkeley rejected the Ideational Theory in all its forms right from the
beginning. To bolster this case, the Anti-Ideationalist will draw our attention
back to our opening discussion of the Introduction. It will be recalled that
Berkeley promised to show us that it was a mistaken view of the nature of
language that produced the pernicious doctrine of abstract ideas. His answer
occupies §§18–20 of the Introduction. Berkeley begins, in §18,
I come now to consider the source of this prevailing notion and that seems to
me to be language. And surely nothing of less extent than reason itself could
have been the source of an opinion so universally received. The truth of this
appears as from other reasons so also from the plain confession of the ablest
patrons of abstract ideas, who acknowledge that they are made in order to
naming; from which it is a clear consequence that if there had been no such
things as speech or universal signs there never had been any thought of
abstraction.
He then proceeds, in §19, to identify a particular view about the nature

of language as the source of the trouble. What he identifies is the Ideational
Theory.
[I]t is a received opinion that language has no other end but the communicating
our ideas, and that every significant name stands for an idea. This being so, and
it being withal certain that names which yet are not thought altogether
insignificant do not always mark out particular conceivable ideas, it is straightway
concluded that they stand for abstract notions.
As we saw, this is precisely what led Locke to posit abstract ideas. He assumed
the truth of the Ideational Theory and then seeing that this required abstract
general ideas for general terms to signify he introduced the process of abstraction
to provide the needed ideas.
In §19 of the Introduction, Berkeley attacks the heart of the Ideational Theory.
‘The communicating of ideas marked by words is not the chief and only end of
language, as is commonly supposed.’ The belief that the primary function of
language is to communicate ideas is the central motivation for the Ideational
Theory. So the fact that Berkeley targets it both here and in Alciphron provides
powerful support for the view that Berkeley’s revolutionary thoughts about the
nature of language were no late addition. Already in the Introduction he attacks
it as the ultimate source of the most pernicious doctrine in philosophy, abstract
ideas.
This, however, should immediately raise a concern. Isn’t Berkeley’s attack on

abstract ideas premised on an acceptance of the Ideational Theory? Did he not
object to abstract ideas on the basis that no one can form such ideas? If so, this
means that the argument of the Introduction is simply an inconsistent mess. And
if that is an implication of the Anti-Ideational Interpretation, then it seems no
better off than either of the modified versions of the Ideational Theory. It too
leaves Berkeley looking implausibly confused about the obvious implications of
his own views.
However, the Anti-Ideationalist has a ready reply to this objection. The
objection mistakenly assumes that Berkeley’s rejection of abstract ideas is
premised upon his own acceptance of the Ideational Theory. Thus, it assumes
that when Berkeley points out that one cannot form an idea of a human that is
neither tall, nor short, nor fat, nor slim etc., that this commits him to holding that
a word can only be meaningful if it is associated with a non-abstract idea. But
that is obviously not necessary. One need not embrace a theory in order to point
out that it makes impossible demands.
Thus, according to the Anti-Ideational Interpretation, the message of the
Introduction is that it is a mostly unwitting acceptance of the Ideational Theory
that causes us to kick up the dust of abstract ideas.
Berkeley and the Use Theory
Since Berkeley’s aim is primarily the rooting out of principles of error, it is not
terribly surprising that there is less effort in his work devoted to developing
a positive philosophy of language. But what Berkeley does say suggests that
he was attracted to a ‘Use Theory’ approach. According to the Use Theory of
Meaning, signs are not meaningful in virtue of the fact that they denote some
representational mental entity, an ‘idea’, but rather because they can be used in
certain ways. And just as the Ideational Theory tends to come naturally packaged
with a view of understanding and thought, so does the Use Theory. It suggests
that we see concept possession not in terms of the perception of ideas before
the mind but rather as the possession of certain abilities. So, I may be said to
understand signs because I have mastered their correct usage. Thinking, likewise,
is not the having of a ‘train of ideas’ before the mind, but should be thought of
more along lines of an exercise of certain kinds of abilities.
So, for instance, Euphranor tells Alciphron, ‘signs may be significant, though
they should not suggest ideas represented by them, provided they serve to regulate
and influence our wills, passions, or conduct’ (Alc 7, §8; emphasis added). He
claims that words can be meaningful because they serve to
[influence] our conduct and actions, which may be done either by forming rules
for us to act by, or by raising certain passions, dispositions, and emotions in our
minds. A discourse, therefore, that directs how to act or excites to the doing
or forbearance of an action may, it seems, be useful and significant, although
the words whereof it is composed should not bring each a distinct idea into
our minds.
Alc 7, §5
Just how complete Berkeley’s commitment to a Use Theory was is hard to say.
His attacks on the Ideational Theory are normally accompanied by qualifiers. So,
when, for instance, in the Introduction, he denies that the communicating of
ideas is the ‘chief and only end’ of language, this leaves open the possibility that
it is still one of the ends of language. We find similar qualifications in Alciphron.
For instance, Euphranor says, ‘there may be another use of words besides that
of marking and suggesting distinct ideas’. However, it should be noted that
these qualifications always occur in context of approaching language from the
perspective of what language does. Note that Euphranor’s qualification is that
there may be ‘another use of words’. Likewise in the Introduction, the Ideationalist’s
mistake ultimately lies in that she has misidentified the chief end of language.
Berkeley consistently encourages us to approach the philosophy of language
from the perspective of language’s many functions. Language should be studied
from the perspective of its connection with human activity. As Berkeley tells us,
‘[T]he true end of speech . . . is not merely, or principally, or always, the imparting
or acquiring of ideas, but rather something of an active operative nature, tending
to a conceived good’ (Alc 7, §14).
In addition to these considerations, the advocate of the Use Theory
Interpretation will point out that, as we saw, the Ideational Interpretation
seems incompatible with Berkeley’s commitment to a metaphysics of spiritual
substances. In stark contrast, the Use Theory proves an excellent fit. According to
Berkeley, spirits are simple active substances. And, as Berkeley tells us, activity is
volition (D3, 217, 239). The upshot is that Berkelean spirits are, fundamentally,
agents. Ideas however are wholly passive. As such they are nothing like spirits,
they are even, in a sense, opposites. Consequently, Berkeley insists that they
cannot be represented by them. So, if concept possession is, as the Ideational
Theory would have it, a matter of possessing a representational idea, then we
should not have any conception of spirits. In contrast, the Use Theory encourages
us to see concept possession as a matter of possessing certain abilities. And

abilities are exactly the sort of things that agents have. Unlike the Ideational
Theory, the Use Theory nicely dovetails with the fundamentals of Berkeley’s
ontology.
Consequently, there is no need to see Berkeley as a revolutionary figure in
the philosophy of language who gave the topic a uniquely privileged position in
his work while, at the same time, thinking of him as having failed to see that
his views undercut his basic metaphysical commitments. The Use Theory
Interpretation has the distinctive advantage of seeing Berkeley’s approach to the
philosophy of language as of a piece with his revolutionary metaphysics as
a whole.
25
Berkeley’s Philosophy of Mathematics

Wolfgang Breidert
The scientific situation
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the development of mathematics

was founded on two important innovations: The first was during the Middle
Ages: The interest in infinity caused an enormous increase in theology and, as a
consequence, its employment in science and culture was intensely stimulated.
This movement initiated the now famous changes in cosmology by the
conceptions of infinity in space and time, and in mathematics by the invention
of the calculus (Leibniz’s infinitesimals, Newton’s fluxions). Nicholas of Cusa
said ‘mathematical things are finite’,1 but the enthusiasm for infinity beyond
theology increased, as is paradigmatically marked by the Spanish scholar Juan
Caramuel y Lobkowitz in a sentence in 1670: ‘In every science there are infinite
worlds; each of them is infinitely extended.’2
The second movement of mathematical innovation was the increasing
importance of signs for mathematical variables and the use of symbols in algebra.
Since antiquity, algebra had been in a way an appendix to arithmetic, but now
it became a third discipline almost independent of arithmetic and geometry.
The new notation of power admitted exceeding the third power to arbitrary
‘dimensions’, whereas geometry was limited to the cube. By developing analytical
geometry, Descartes surpassed that limitation.
Though Cartesianism influenced many of the seventeenth-century
philosophers, the antagonism of Platonistic rationalism and nominalistic
empiricism imbued philosophy and science. When Berkeley began his studies at
Trinity College Dublin in the early eighteenth century, Locke’s philosophy and
Newton’s scientific works intensively attracted scholars’ attention because these
were the most modern theories, and Berkeley was involved in both areas, as can
be proved by his early Notebooks. Shortly before Berkeley entered Trinity College,
435
the doctrines of John Locke and Isaac Newton had been introduced into the
studies at the college by George Ashe, the provost of the college, during the
last decade of the seventeenth century. A member of the Philosophical Society
of Dublin for Promoting Natural Knowledge, Ashe had published some
mathematical papers, for instance an article in the Philosophical Transactions
of 1684 on some of Euclid’s propositions. Ashe was an advocate of classical
accuracy in mathematics, and he derived the assumed security of mathematical
propositions from his opinion that mathematical objects, i.e. the quantities, were
sensible things, with which we are acquainted in everyday life. We have no evidence
that Berkeley read any mathematical work written by Ashe, but it is important to
know that a teacher of mathematics with a sensualistic attitude had some influence
at Trinity College at that time.
Arithmetic
Berkeley was no professional mathematician, nevertheless his first publications

were concerned with mathematical subjects. In a twin book (Arithmetica absque
algebra aut Euclide demonstrata/Miscellanea mathematica) he delivered an
introduction into the use of numbers in the first part, and in the second part he
presented a collection of papers concerned with irrational numbers, geodesy (the
shape of the earth), a geometrical proposition (about the proportions of the
cylinder and the equilateral cone circumscribed to the sphere)3 and an algebraic
game (for the production of equations). In that game (De ludo algebraico) we
do not find any support for solving equations, the whole game serves for the
invention of equations only. The rules of the game concern the production of
systems of equations, but the task to solve the invented equations is no intrinsic
move in the game.4 De ludo algebraico is rather a pedagogical or moral work than
a mathematical one. In its introduction Berkeley enthusiastically recommends
the study of algebra, and eulogizes Descartes and Malebranche for having given
such recommendations. The book exhibits more of its author’s enthusiasm for
algebra than he may have later wished, nevertheless the recommendation of
the algebraic game is restricted to aims of learning, or at least to recreation, but
it does not include mere amusement. Playing did not have its own value, it was
nothing more than an instrument for instruction or recreation. Nowadays we
are accustomed to looking at the game of chess as a logical or mathematical
game, but Berkeley invented his algebraic game against the passion for chess. The
reason being that chess was not yet considered as a logical or mathematical game.
Berkeley’s Philosophy of Mathematics 437
The reason that Berkeley later regretted his recommendation of algebra

was because he became aware of the dangers to religion emanating from the
universal mathematization of all the branches of knowledge. Therefore he
developed his unusual mathematics founded on primarily finite concepts. But
in his early writings, Berkeley, following Francis Bacon, René Descartes and
Nicolas Malebranche, is recommending mathematics and especially algebra for
educational reasons, and he is convinced that it would be good training for the
mind, like sport is for the body. Beyond the practical utility of mathematics,
algebra seems to him to be useful by distracting the mind away from sensible
things in accordance with the Platonistic attitude. In this respect, and during that
early time, Berkeley shows himself as a Platonistic idealist, but that is not his final
philosophy of mathematics.
That early booklet shows also that Berkeley emphasizes the traditional
distinction of arithmetic and geometry, which Descartes’ analytical geometry
began to lessen. In spite of Berkeley’s explicit intention of answering the demand
for reasons and rational foundation in mathematics, his Arithmetica delivers
only some bare rules for computing and instructions for the use of numbers.
That is in accordance with his considerations in his early Notebooks, where he
remarked that numbers do not have any fixed relationships to things they refer
to. There is no specific number belonging to any empirically given set of objects.
For example, six apples are three pairs of apples, both expressions referring to
the same set of real things. Numerals are uninterpreted signs before they are
interpreted or connected to a specific context. In opposition to the Platonists,
Berkeley maintains that numbers are mere signs without any particular reference,
and in the Principles he says: ‘In arithmetic therefore we regard not the things but
the signs, which nevertheless are not regarded for their own sake, but because
they direct us how to act with relation to things, and dispose rightly them.’5 Like
words in language, numerical signs have to be studied only with respect to a
possible use in practical situations. Otherwise it would be a waste of time.
As well as signs for the immediate signification of extensions, Berkeley also
uses mathematical signs that have no separate reference, but are meaningful
together with their context or concerning their application. In his early writings,
Berkeley still intended a strict correlation between words and ideas to avoid
meaningless speech but already, in the introduction to his Principles (§ 20), he
recognized with respect to theology the need for an extension of meaningful
language not only admitting terms supported by context (synkategormatike) but
also allowing the use of language for the motivation to act (emotive language
theory). And in Alciphron he declares: Words may be significant ‘although they
should not, every time they are used, excite the ideas they signify in our minds;
it being sufficient that we have it in our power to substitute things or ideas for
their signs when there is occasion’.6 In this manner, arithmetical and algebraic
signs are significant. But Berkeley added a second sort of significance: ‘It seems
also to follow that there may be another use of words besides that of marking
and suggesting distinct ideas, to wit, the influencing our conduct and actions,
which may be done either by forming rules for us to act by, or by raising
certain passions, dispositions, and emotions in our mind.’7 Numerals are helpful
instruments for adjusting our actions, even if every number is not representing
a particular idea.
Though the subject of Alciphron VII (§§ 13 and 14) is the language and the
problem of signification in the theological area, Berkeley uses a mathematical
example as proof that ‘the true end of speech . . . is not merely, or principally, or
always, the imparting or acquiring of ideas’. Contrary to his early convictions,
Berkeley admits meaningful signs, which do not signify ideas: ‘for instance, the
algebraic mark, which denotes the root of a negative square, hath its use in
logistic operations, although it be impossible to form an idea of any such quantity’.
Leibniz had already taken just the contrary path, namely from mathematics to
theology, by remarking that the result of calculations with imaginary numbers
can be a real number. And he made the theological note:
For the Nature of things, the mother of eternal varieties, or rather the Divine
Mind is more jealous than that she would admit to press all things into one
genus. Therefore she invented a distinguished and wonderful way out in that
miracle of analysis, the monster of the ideal world, almost an amphibian between
being and not-being, which we call imaginary root.8
Leibniz noticed (in a letter to Huygens) the following example:9
√(1 + √ – 3) + √(1 – √ – 3) = √6,
[proof : the square of the left side makes 6] which is a real number. Another
example is: The result of the multiplication of (x + 1)(x – 1)(x + √ – 1)(x – √ – 1) =
(x4 – 1), which is a real number.
In calculation the merely imagined numbers may serve as instruments for the
transition from real numbers to other real numbers, though they do not represent
any real quantity by themselves. They work like a black box with some input and
output. In the Analyst Berkeley is convinced that infinitesimals work in this way.
We may use them in mathematical operations, but they represent nothing.
Therefore Berkeley calls the mathematicians ‘nihilarians’. The mathematicians
could have replied: Yes, we have realized that signs denoting nothing are not
senseless because they may be used for something.
Yet the transition through the black box by not-representing signs is explained
neither by Berkeley nor by the mathematicians, whereas they detect one of the
main functions that language has, i.e. to speak of temporally and spatially absent
things and even to speak of impossible things, if it is allowed to use the word
‘things’ in an expression like ‘impossible things’. We need language for impossible
references.
Berkeley denied that it is possible to represent things in themselves by ideas
in our spirit. In Principles § 87 he says, ‘We see only the appearances, and not
the real qualities of things [in themselves]. . . . Things remaining the same, our
ideas vary, and which of them, or even whether any of them at all represent the
true quality really existing in the thing, it is out of our reach to determine.’ And
in the Three Dialogues he argues against the opinion that our ideas might be
representations or copies of things in themselves: ‘it is impossible to know how
far our ideas resemble them; or whether they resemble them at all’.10
We cannot have any knowledge except the knowledge produced by a
connection of ideas, i. e. either the connection of an image with the original
thing, that means a connection by similarity (or even equality), or an arbitrary
connection of things without any similarity, that means a non-pictorial
representation, for instance the representation of a spoken word by some letters.
Though the relation of representation may be arbitrary, the related things may
fit together, more or less. In the Theory of Vision (§§ 141–4) Berkeley emphasizes
that no kind of similarity between the represented and the representing thing is
necessary, but one thing is more suitable than another to represent the original,
if its complexity is closer to the complexity of the original. So ‘the visible square
is fitter than the visible circle to represent the tangible square, then it is not
because it is liker, or more of a species with it, but because the visible square
contains in it several distinct parts, whereby to mark the several distinct
corresponding parts of a tangible square, whereas the visible circle doth not’
(§ 142). Moreover, the representation of tangibles by visibles in ‘visual language’
is not totally arbitrary, since it is intercultural. It is the same language in Europe
and America (§ 152).
In a similar way, Leibniz argued in his Nouveaux Essais that a person born
blind and made to see can identify the visible cube and the visible globe in virtue
of the edges of the cube,11 but he has no regard to the fact that this is only
true under the condition that both bodies are illuminated in the ‘normal’ way.
Otherwise a reflecting globe may show a very complicated visual structure. And
a cube may be illuminated in a certain way so that some edges vanish. Not to
mention other optical illusions! Visual things are signs signifying tangible things.
The visual language is, like each language, a medium or instrument.
Geometry and minima sensibilia
In Berkeley’s view, the fundamental error in mathematics is the admission of

abstract general ideas, and that these ideas are supposed to exist without the
mind.12 He opposes the abstract ideas of number to prevent ‘the most trifling
numerical speculations’ and mysteries, which he considers to be mere gimmickry
(difficiles nugae).13
At first glance, Berkeley’s philosophy of geometry looks like a Platonistic
or realistic one, but then the question arises as to how that attitude could
consist with Berkeley’s sensualistic theory of knowledge and his principle of
perceptibility. In Berkeley’s view, geometry has no place outside the area of
sensible perception, but he advocates Euclid’s definitions, according to which
points lack any extension at all and lines have no breadth. By Berkeley’s principle
(esse is percipi) the area of entities is restricted to the area of perceptibility. Except
the reference to spirits all speech without any relation to perceivable ideas has to
be avoided, because it would be meaningless. Therefore perceptibility has to be
the limit in the speech about geometrical extension. Words or signs allegedly
referring to extension below perceivable magnitude are meaningless. So, Berkeley
thought of a geometry of minima sensibilia.
Based on this principle, Berkley disavows that one could get any idea either of
a line without breadth or even of a point. According to him ‘point’, ‘line’ and
‘surface’ must refer to sensible entities. According to Euclid’s definition, a point is
something that has no part. If a line is divided as far as is possible, the process of
division will end in a point, because the result will not have any piece, otherwise
it would be divisible once more. Therefore Berkeley holds that the smallest part
of a sensible line (minimum sensibile) is a point. But since a finite sensible line
contains only a finite set of minima sensibilia in this Berkeleyan geometry each
finite line contains only a finite set of points. And there is a ‘natural’ measure for
the length of a line, namely the number of its points. In his Notebooks Berkeley is
pondering about that geometry: ‘If wth me you call those lines equal wch contain
an equal number of points, then there will be no difficulty. that curve is equal to
a right line wch contains as [many] points as the right one doth.’14
Such a finitistic geometry, as it had been discussed since antique atomism,

entails some advantages: (1) The Aristotelian heterogeneity of right and curved
lines is hurdled; (2) There will be no incommensurable magnitudes;15 (3) The
paradoxes of infinity vanish (e.g. a big circle does not contain more points
than a small circle). But with respect to Euclid’s geometry, it implies grave
disadvantages: Lines containing an odd number of points cannot be divided
into two equal parts;16 there will be points on a circle line that do not have
any straight connection to the centre of the circle etc. This outcome looks
mathematically strange at first glance, but nowadays it is easily realized on a
computer display digitizing discrete points. Furthermore, the question may
be raised as to whether a minimum sensibile could be extended. If it were
unextended, a set of minima could not be extended. Therefore it is indivisible but
extended. PC 439: ‘if you say it may be divided into insensible parts. I say these
are nothings’. Though Berkeley emphasizes that the minimum visibile and the
minimum tangibile are heterogeneous, he denies that there are two heterogeneous
geometries.
For Berkeley’s philosophy of mathematics it is very important that he does
not develop his geometry of minima as a second geometry besides the standard
geometry, a system that could perhaps be useful for particular cases. Since to
him geometry seemed to be necessarily linked to the real world in a very close
way, he was unable to think of several geometries, and therefore he searched for
the only true geometry.
Abstraction in mathematics
Berkeley denied emphatically the possibility of general abstract ideas. The term
‘general triangle’ has no general referent, because each triangle must be, as John
Locke remarked, either acute-angled or rectangular or obtuse-angled. There
is no Platonic idea of triangle.17 To avoid the total collapse of geometry by
abandoning abstraction, a nominalist like Berkeley has to find a way out. In the
introduction to the Principles he tried to explain how a particular triangle is
nevertheless able to represent any arbitrary triangle. The key for solving that
problem is Berkeley’s theory of representation.
Berkeley was asked by Samuel Molyneux ‘whether the ideas laid up in the
imagination are all images of what they represent’,18 and Berkeley answered in
a letter,
That the Ideas laid up in the Imagination need not be Images, strictly speaking
of what they represent, for Example, in demonstrating the Proposition which
says, that the Sum of the Angles of any Polygon is equall to twice as many right
Ones, as there be Sides in the Figure, bating four, You may make use of any one
Polygon, e.g. a pentogon [sic] to represent all the infinite Variety of regular and
irregular Polygons that may possibly exist.
This question put by Molyneux concerns the representation of image, but

Berkeley’s answer goes on to the problem of universality. One polygon represents
an infinite variety of polygons. And it is remarkable that the problem of general
ideas explained in the introduction to the Principles (PI § 12) is also illustrated
by a geometrical example. In geometrical cases as given by Berkeley we have no
total arbitrariness between represented and representing things. The representing
particular idea ‘stand[s] for all other particular ideas of the same sort’. In this
section a black line ‘represents all particular lines whatsoever’. It ‘becomes
general, by being made a sign’.
In the Principles § 65 Berkeley explains a fundamental relation between ideas,
namely the relation of signification. There he does not reflect on how the process
of signification is possible or how it is possible to comprehend a thing or an idea
as a sign. What does it mean being a sign, and what is the difference between a
mere thing and a signifying thing? Moreover: How can one sign stand for many
signified things? In Principles § 68 Berkeley answers the question only in the
negative way, saying that the relation between a mark (or sign) and the thing
signified is not a relation between cause and effect: ‘the connexion of ideas does
not imply the relation of cause and effect, but only of a mark or sign with the
thing signified’. The fire that I see forewarns me of the pain I will suffer upon my
approaching it.
But what is the relation of representation? Is it a relation sui generis? In
Alciphron Berkeley mentions the general ‘doctrine of signs’, but he does not
answer these general questions.19 Anyway, he thought to have solved the problem
of abstract general ideas in geometry by his theory of representation presupposing
the doctrine of signs, developed by John Locke in his Essay, which Berkeley used
in several battles against his opponents.
Infinite divisibility
The conception of representation is a fundamental one in Berkeley’s philosophy

of mathematics, for it is not only used for the expressing of general propositions
in geometry, but it enables him to hold infinite divisibility within his finite
concept of perception.
Infinity is a central point pervading Berkeley’s thinking, because philosophy
and mathematics meet in that issue. A very important aspect of his principle of
perceptibility is the finiteness of perception. Berkeley underlines that we are
unable to perceive innumerable parts in any finite extension.20 So, that principle
achieves a very helpful service for Berkeley’s theological intention, because to
reserve infinity for God alone Berkeley was compelled to eliminate the infinite
from all profane sciences and mathematics or at least to restrict them to the
application of potentially infinite considerations only. This means that only
quantities of arbitrary, but finite, magnitude are admitted.
The infinite divisibility of a line is a fundamental concept in geometry, and
Berkeley has to deliver an explanation for how to escape that concept or how it
would be possible to handle it. His way out is taken via his theory of representation.
It is possible to represent an extension by another (enlarged or diminished)
extension that is, in some sense, similar to the first one. So in NB 260 Berkeley
writes: ‘Suppose an inch represents a mile.’ In this case the inch is selected for the
representation because it is similar to the mile, for the proportions between the
parts of the inch are equal to the proportions between the parts of the mile. But
with respect to Berkeley’s principle of perceptibility there is the problem of
unlimited divisibility. If we proportionally divide both extensions, we will arrive
at the minimum perceptibile in the case of the inch earlier than in the case of the
mile. And Berkeley says in NB 260: ‘1/1000 of an inch is nothing [because it is
not perceivable], but 1/1000 of ye mile represented is something therefore 1/1000
of an inch tho’ nothing is not to be neglected, because it represents something i.e.
1/1000 of a mile.’21 This entry looks strange, because a ‘nothing’ is supposed to
represent something.
(1) Either we take the entry as a Berkeleyan argumentum ad absurdum against
infinite divisibility. This would be in accordance with the entries 247 and 248: ‘In
Geometry it is not prov’d that an inch is divisible ad infinitum’ (247); ‘Geometry
not conversant about our compleat determin’d ideas of figures, for these are not
divisible ad infinitum’ (248). And in 261 Berkeley says: ‘Particular Determin’d
lines are not divisible ad infinitum, . . . Yet a Geometer [. . .] will very readily say
he can demonstrable [demonstrate?] an inch line is divisible ad Infinitum.’
(2) Or we take the representation as a serious strategy to handle the imagined
parts of a line, which are less than minima sensibilia. Indeed, such imagined lines
are not perceivable, but their representatives are perceivable and some of their
collections, if they are large enough, are perceivable, too. Therefore it could be
possible to use these imagined extensions as instruments or ‘like the scaffold of

a building . . . as things to be laid aside or got rid of as soon as finite lines were
found proportional to them’.22 This application of ‘unperceivable extensions’ may
look dangerous, but the method of representation by magnifying makes sure
that there are always lines proportional to the represented, though unperceivable,
lines.
But there is still a problem. The reasoning is based on the supposition that
proportionality of the parts consists at each stage in the process of division.
How can we be sure that this condition is in force? Though the most famous
mathematicians in the first half of the eighteenth century were convinced that
this condition of continued proportionality stands in the process of proportional
division,23 in Berkeley’s view it seems to be a petitio principii.
Now we can ask the question in a general way: If we apply representatives
with respect to similarity between the representing and the represented thing,
how can we ensure the similarity? If we immediately perceive the similarity,
why should we use representatives for things we immediately perceive? If we do
not immediately perceive the represented things, we cannot be sure of the
similarity. This is a fundamental problem for all knowledge by proportion or
analogy, and especially in mathematics, which Berkeley revealed in his P (128):
‘it is necessary we speak of the lines described on paper, as though they contained
parts which really they do not’. This means: The mathematicians speak about
inexistent things.
The inducement for the Analyst
Following his early entries in his Notebooks, Berkeley devoted himself to the new
mathematics of the infinitesimals, and his main reproach was that mathematicians
were dealing with nothings. But he did not publish anything on the subject
before the Principles appeared, though he had already written his, posthumously
published, short paper Of Infinites, which contains his first critique of the
calculus.
Modern research on Berkeley’s philosophy of mathematics and the interest of
historians of mathematics are concerned primarily with the Analyst and the
Analyst controversy, but Dominique Berlioz also performed some interesting
investigations into Berkeley’s lecture Of Infinites, and Silvia Parigi enlightened the
mathematical background of the Notebooks and the Principles. Furthermore, we
have the important works on Berkeley’s philosophy of mathematics and his
relationship with other mathematicians by Michel Blay, Douglas Jesseph and David
Sherry.24 Ben Vermeulen traced the connexions between Berkeley and Nieuwentijt
with regard to infinitesimals,25 and Bjørn Smestad wrote a thesis on Roger Paman,
who was a hitherto neglected participant in the Analyst controversy.26
In Berkeley’s view, the influence of sciences and mathematics in all of
the cultural domains that increased during the Enlightenment, particularly
promoted by Descartes in France as well as by Leibniz and Wolff in Germany,
seemed to be a dangerous threat for religion, though in the eighteenth century
the tendency towards rationalism and mathematization was perhaps much
stronger on the continent than in British philosophy. So the German translation
of Berkeley’s Alciphron, published in 1737, appeared together with an additional
introduction about the question of ‘Whether one could introduce profitably the
mathematical way of learning into theology’.27 It is obvious from the Analyst how
strong the relationship between theology, philosophy and mathematics affected
Berkeley, and how ambivalent was his interest in mathematics. He had to respect
the fact that his contemporaries were in high regard of mathematics but at the
same time he was aware that inappropriate applications could lead to atheism,
and he was therefore anxious to restrict the influence of the ‘exact’ sciences in
metaphysical matters.
When Berkeley, during his stay in Rhode Island, saw the failure of his Bermuda
project he suspected that it was brought down by some atheistic mathematicians
and scientists. Therefore he wrote his Analyst to undermine their reputation. It is
addressed to an infidel mathematician who was identified to be Edmond Halley,
but Berkeley did not name him, because Halley was exemplarily to stand for any
infidel mathematician. Though the Analyst was induced by apologetic intentions
the arguments claim to be based only on philosophical or logical reasoning, and
they are really independent of Berkeley’s theological ambition.
In the Principles and in the Analyst Berkeley underlines his intention to rid
mathematics of dispensable quibbles but he endeavours to retain all of the
practically useful results in the calculus: ‘whatever is useful in geometry and
promotes the benefit of human life, doth still remain firm and unshaken on our
principles’.28
The new ‘Cavalierian method’
With respect to Berkeley’s critique of the infinitesimal calculus in the Analyst,

one may ask the question of what he knew about the calculus and where he had
got that knowledge. In his Notebooks Berkeley refers to Newton’s fluxions in

several entries, but Leibniz is named only once. Although Leibniz and other
mathematicians considered Bonaventura Cavalieri as one of the most important
forerunners of the calculus, it is noteworthy that Berkeley, obviously with regard
to his geometry of minima sensibilia, mentioned Cavalieri only once in his
Notebooks (346): ‘all might be demonstrated by a new method of indivisibles,
easier perhaps & juster than that of Cavallerius’.29 Therefore it appears that
Berkeley did know something about Cavalieri, though he assumed a detached
attitude to this Italian mathematician.
In books on Berkeley’s philosophy of mathematics we find the plain
statement that Berkeley did know many of the mathematical books written in
the seventeenth and eighteenth century, and particularly that he was acquainted
with Cavalieri’s method of indivisibles.30 It was common practice to make a
reference to Cavalieri’s most famous book, namely to the Geometria, which
appeared in a first edition in 1635 and in a second one in 1653. But there are
some reasons why Berkeley did not use these or any other of Cavalieri’s works.31
Writing about indivisibles in his Notebooks Berkeley mentioned Newton and
Barrow, but the corresponding section in Newton’s Principia mathematica does
not contain any reference to Cavalieri.32 Indeed Berkeley quotes explicitly
Barrow’s Mathematicae lectiones.33 Though we can be sure that Berkeley used
Barrow’s book, Cavalieri’s method is not explained there in such a way that the
reader could get an adequate idea thereof, because there is nothing more than
an almost commonplace sentence that Cavalieri’s method is founded on the
congruence of geometrical figures. The source of Berkeley’s knowledge of the
Cavalierian method is a mathematical text by Claude-François Milliet
Dechales. Before Berkeley made his early private notes on Cavalieri, he had
mentioned Dechales’s book on the method of indivisibles already in the
Micellanea mathematica, where the proposition about a cylinder and a cone
is demonstrated.
Without any doubt Berkeley was well acquainted with Dechales’s book, for he
quotes correctly the number of the needed proposition, but a separate publication
of Dechales’s work on indivisibles does not exist. Instead there is a treatise on
indivisibles in his voluminous book entitled Cursus seu, mundus mathematicus,34
and the section on indivisibles is contained in the first edition only. The difference
between the first and the second edition (1674, 1690) characterizes a noteworthy
change in the history of mathematics. In the first edition the section on
indivisibles and a section of algebra are added at the end of the last volume.
Obviously the author intended additionally to take into consideration the
‘modern’ tendencies in mathematics. This may be inferred from the fact that in
the second edition the section about algebra appears earlier on, where it ought
to have its place from a systematic point of view, but the method of Cavalieri’s
indivisibles disappears completely. For in the intervening time it had been
considered to be obsolete, because Newton’s theory of fluxions and the
Leibnizian differential calculus initiated an alteration of mathematical analysis.
Dechales does not merely repeat Cavalierian ideas but he offers a rather original
interpretation thereof. Dechales’s fictionalistic reading may have the greatest
importance with regard to its effect on Berkeley.
When Cavalieri published his new method of indivisibles for the first
time, the concepts of the indivisible, of the point, of the atom etc. were quite
controversial ideas. While Cavalieri’s indivisibles are nothing but the geometrical
figures limiting the continuous figure of a higher dimension and the indivisible
of a line, i.e. a point, does not have any extension, and while other mathematicians
tried to demonstrate that a point does not have any extension at all,35 Dechales
took quite a different view, and disregarded Cavalieri’s caution with respect to
the composition of the continuum. He wrote explicitly that the hemisphere
‘consists’ of hemispherical shells around one centre, and that a cone could be
‘resolved’ in circular surfaces.36
Cavalieri himself did not use such expressions. Dechales held that any
arbitrary extension could be considered ‘as a point’. But during one and the same
reasoning we should take care to handle it as an indivisible and to admit no
extension less than the assumed minimal one. If it were necessary one could use
another extension which is less than the first minimal extension for the aim of
another demonstration. With this idea Dechales leaves the known Aristotelian
way of thinking, according to which a point could never be divided, whereas all
the other extensions were divisible in infinitum. Dechales also accepted the
infinite divisibility, but he founded it upon the possibility to take even a ‘point’,
i.e. a thing hitherto considered as indivisible, as a divisible thing in the next step
of reasoning. This fictionalistic attitude is not like Hilbert’s formalistic view, for
Dechales starts from an empirical and intuitive base, which he changes, if it is
needed by the geometrical reasoning, whereas Hilbert uses arbitrary objects as
points applying formal systems to them. Berkeley may have been impressed by
Dechales’s doctrine and its relationship to empirical intuition, for it is similar to
Berkeley’s doctrine of the infinite divisibility by successive representation of
indivisibles by divisible extensions, which we find in the Notebooks.
How limited the accordance between Berkeley’s views and Cavalieri’s original
attitude is may be seen by the fact that Berkeley does not consider the geometrical
figures as continuous and that he means by ‘continuity’ nothing but the divisibility
with the help of the successive representability, substituting the minor extension
to be the larger one for further divisibility. Strictly speaking it is not a ‘further’
division, for the extension divided in such a way is not quite identical to the
original one, because the first extension is substituted by the second one but not
‘enlarged’. Berkeley’s view is essentially finitistic and therefore totally different
from the Cavalierian conception.
The claim for exactitude
Berkeley’s main reproach against the new calculus concerned the exactitude in
mathematical reasoning. Since Greek antiquity, mathematics had been famous
for its exactitude. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Euclid’s geometry
was considered the pure example of an exact deductive system that was worthy
of imitation in all sciences and, as Spinoza attested, even in ethics. But in the new
calculus, be it by Newton’s fluxions or by Leibniz’s infinitesimals, mathematicians
themselves abandoned their own standard of exactness.
In Berkeley’s time mathematicians used infinitesimals or fluxions (moments,
prime or ultimate ratios) that were declared to be quantities different from
zero, but at some point of reasoning they were neglected as if they were
nothing. Therefore already in his early Notebooks Berkeley mockingly called the
mathematicians of the new calculus ‘nihilarians’. He censured the lack of
exactitude in the calculus, and in his paper Of Infinites he particularly attacked
the Leibnizian infinitesimals with disdain, because this famous mathematician
had explicitly rejected scrupulosity in mathematics and intended to justify
formulas such as
x = x + dx
which obviously contradicted every standard of mathematical exactitude. With

reference to the principles of logic, Berkeley insisted on asking the question of
whether the quantity dx would assign either zero or a positive magnitude. If it
were zero, it could be neglected, but if it were another quantity, then the asserted
equation would be wrong, even if dx means an infinitely or incomparably small
quantity. In Newton’s theory of fluxions there arose an analogous problem. He
considered quantities (‘fluents’) kinetically generated by continuous motions.
The momentary increment of a fluent is called its ‘moment’, and is defined by the
part of the quantity increased in an ‘infinitely small’ time. The incremental
velocity is called ‘fluxion’. And again Berkeley insisted on asking the question of
whether ‘indefinitely small’ does mean either zero (nothing) or a positive
quantity, although very small. Newton’s own dissatisfaction with the theory
of moments instigated him to project a second draft of foundation himself,
namely the theory of prime and ultimate ratios. These ratios correspond in some
sense to the differential quotients in the modern terminology. Newton wrote in
the Introduction to the Quadrature of Curves: ‘Fluxions are very nearly as the
augments of the Fluents, generated in equal, but infinitely small part of Time;
and so to speak exactly, are in the Prima Ratio of the nascent Augments: but they
may be expounded by any Lines that are proportional to them.’ Though the
words ‘infinitely small part of Time’ are followed by ‘to speak exactly’ it is by no
means clear what an infinitely small part of time could be. There arises the same
question as in the Leibnizian context.
Without doubt, in his critique of the infinitesimals and fluxions, Berkeley was
absolutely right in his time, for the foundation of the calculus by contemporary
mathematicians was certainly insufficient, and this historical case is a paramount
example showing that in the development of mathematical thought logically
founded proof is not needed for antecedent mathematical success. The
foundation of a mathematical theory may be adopted at any remote period of
time.
The compensation of error
Berkeley refused the calculus with respect to its foundations and applied notions
but not with regard to its results, because in spite of his intense attack on the
foundation of the new calculus Berkeley was not able to disavow the correct
results it reached. Therefore, he was compelled to explain how it could be possible
that those unfounded methods yielded valid and useful results. As a learned
logician he knew that true conclusions may be drawn from false premises by
logically correct inferences. By virtue of this Aristotelian knowledge he asserted
that the numerous valid results could be obtained by a compensation of error.
At first glance the compensation of error is a general conjecture, which could
be doubted, but Berkeley tried to prove his assertion. However, his demonstration
is by no means a general one. As a proof of the principle of compensation in the
case of derivation he delivered only one example, namely the computation of the
subtangent of a parabola. His argumentation is as follows:
Figure 25.1
TP /y = dx/dy + z (by similar triangles)
The mathematicians make the first error taking dy instead of dy + z, i.e. they
take a quantity less than the true one, putting
TP /y = dx/dy. (1)
According to their rule of derivation they get from the original equation (y2 = px)
a new one:
2y dy/dx = p.
Therefore
dy = pdx/2y. (2)
Berkeley argues that this value for dy is bigger than the true value, for
substituting y by y + dy and x by x + dx we get
y2 + 2ydy + (dy)2 = px + pdx,
Therefore
dy = pdx/2y – (dy)2/2y.
If dy designates a finite value, in accordance with the figure and to the initial
suppositions, then the values of dy both in (1) and (2) are wrong, and the errors
do compensate each other, as Berkeley emphasized. Berkeley insists strictly on
the suppositions made at the beginning, where the quantities dx, dy and z were
supposed to differ from zero. Therefore critiques taking them to be differentials
in respect of infinitely small quantities cannot meet the argumentation. Indeed,
Berkeley avoids infinite quantities as well as infinitesimals, nor does he use
limiting values. It may be expected that some errors could be found in his
considerations but it is strange to see that they were not clearly recognized by
neither his contemporaries nor his modern interpreters.
Berkeley never discussed the question of whether the supposed compensation
of error, which he demonstrated in the case of the parabola, would also work in
a more general case, or even in every case. He was never asked such questions. It
is strange that his opponents did not attack him where he was mathematically
most vulnerable.
One of Berkeley’s weakest points is his reasoning in sections 28 and 29 of the
Analyst, where he aims to demonstrate the derivation of xn without the application
of infinitesimals. There he compares some analytical terms with some geometrical
figures (surfaces), and it is his opinion that it would be possible to adjoin
homological terms corresponding to each other in a natural way. He does not
drop any hint of a definition of ‘homology’ between an algebraic term and a
geometrical quantity, much less how to find it out. Perhaps on this point Berkeley
was seduced by the antique principle of homogeneity allowing the comparison
of solely homogeneous quantities, i.e. lines with lines, surfaces with surfaces, and
bodies with bodies. It seems that Berkeley’s opponents did not notice the
weakness of this argumentation, nor did they recognize the fact that the evidence
of an error in one of Berkeley’s demonstrations could not in the least confirm the
foundations and methods of their calculus.
The Analyst controversy
Berkeley’s Analyst elicited a lot of reactions. James Jurin, alias Philalethes

Cantabrigiensis, a Newtonian physician and scientist, published several writings
objecting to Berkeley.37 In a satirical diction he submitted some weak arguments. For
instance, in the Principia mathematica Newton calculated the moment of an
increasing rectangle AB, but he did not consider the point of time when the sides
were increased by a and b respectively. Instead he considered the rectangle, when
a was less by ½a and b was less by ½b. Then the magnitude of the rectangle was:
(A – ½a)(B – ½b) = AB – ½aB – ½Ab + ¼ab.

When the sides are increased by a and b respectively the rectangle will be
(A + ½a)(B + ½b) = AB + ½aB + ½Ab + ¼ab.
The difference will be aB + Ab, which Newton took for the increment of AB .
Berkeley revealed this calculation as a deceitful trick, because starting with AB
the increment will come out to aB + Ab – ab. Jurin replied in a ridiculous way
that both the increment and the decrement were moments, and therefore to get
the true moment these quantities had to toss, and therefore one has to take that
method of averaging. Such arguments could scarcely be considered for serious
reasoning.
Similarly, Jacob Walton could not really defeat Berkeley’s attack on the
calculus, because he did not recognize that Berkeley was not bent on admitting
infinitely small quantities or infinite decrease.38 At that time neither Berkeley nor
the mathematicians had a distinct mathmatical notion of limit. Berkeley insisted,
regarding the unanswered question, how it could be possible to consider the
proportions of quantities after they disappeared. With reference to a quotation
from Butler’s Hudibras he calls them ‘the ghosts of departed quantities’.39
In his Defence of Free-Thinking in Mathematics (1735) Berkeley tried to
undermine the authority of mathematicians, for he took science to be a republic
where verifiability had to be respected and foundations must be understandable
even for laymen, which is a very doubtful demand, and this point was quite
rightly attacked by his opponents.
The set of participants in the Analyst controversy increased during the following
ten years.40 The debate was based on several antitheses: the faithful Christian
against the ‘atheistic’ mathematicians, Newton’s defender against the Leibnizian
(aftermath of the battle about the priority of the calculus), the expert against
the layman, the theorist philosophically concerned with foundations against the
practically calculating mathematician. At last the controversy stimulated the
mathematicians to develop a satisfying foundation for the calculus, which was
finally reached in the middle of the nineteenth century (Karl Weierstrass).
Formalist or Instrumentalist?
Modern Berkeley scholars have tried to answer the question of whether Berkeley
was a formalist or an instrumentalist or a philosopher of mathematics in any
other sense.41 There is no simple solution to that problem, for we find various
attitudes in various contexts in the development of Berkeley’s thinking.
In Alciphron (VII ,5) Berkeley says, ‘it seems neither you nor I can form
distinct simple ideas of number, we can nevertheless make a very proper and
significant use of numeral names’.
In this respect Berkeley is a nominalist, because numbers are mere names,
which are assigned to things by a process of counting. They are not founded in
the things themselves but marks supporting memory.42 There is no thing which
is five. Nevertheless there is a system ruling the relationships among these names.
So we find a formalistic attitude in Berkeley’s philosophy of arithmetic.
According to modern philosophy of mathematics, formalistic mathematicians
develop bare algorithms that have their own mathematical objectivity, but they
may be interpreted on a second level of reasoning. In this way mere formulas
are the immediate objects of mathematics and may be useful instruments. But
the mere use of instruments does not make an instrumentalist, who believes
that mathematical formulas have no other meaning than to be an instrument.
An instrumentalist or pragmatist is characterized by substituting truth with
utility. In this regard Berkeley was no instrumentalist, though he considered
some mathematical concepts and operations to be mere tools, particularly as
instruments for abbreviation.
By the same reason he was no formalist in the sense of David Hilbert, who
developed his concept of formalism with respect to geometry. For Hilbert even
geometry is concerned only with formal axiomatic systems independent of their
interpretation. He is said to maintain that we could use the words ‘tables, chairs,
and beer mugs’ instead of ‘points, lines, and surfaces’. In contrast, Berkeley denied
any philosophy of formalism with respect to geometry. For him the famous work
of Euclid entailed the paradigm of scientific geometry.
On the verge of non-Euclidean geometry

It would not be appropriate to say that Berkeley kept Euclidean geometry in
mind, for he did not think of more than one and only one geometry. The
multitude of geometries were not yet discovered or invented, though Leibniz
contemplated in the context of Molyneux’s problem about the identity of two
geometries, namely the geometry of the blind and the geometry of people unable
to move.43 For the history of philosophy it was a pity that Berkeley could not
know this passage because it was posthumously published after 1765. But in his
Theory of Vision (1709), Berkeley put a similar question. He did not ask the
question, as Leibniz did, whether the geometry of sight and the geometry of
touch were identical; instead he imagined a fictitious spirit who could not move
or touch, but who would be able to see and think. Would such a spirit be able to
develop geometry? Since Berkeley did not take into consideration any other
geometry than the traditional one, the question of which sort of geometry such
a spirit would develop was beyond his horizon.
The main reason for Berkeley’s denying that the immovable spirit could not
have any geometry was its inability to conceive the third dimension, because
the visual field of one fixed eye entails no more than two dimensions. It is
remarkable that Berkeley did not worry about other items that could prohibit
the aforementioned spirit to achieve geometry. There is no consideration of the
angle sum or the missing of infinite lines. Obviously Berkeley is bound by his
pondering over the heterogeneity of sight and touch, where it is his main aim to
prove that distance from the perceiving eye is not perceivable by mere sight.
Nevertheless, by his only seeing spirit Berkeley was led to the brink of a new
mathematical discovery that he was not able to fully explore. He stood only at
the edge of the non-Euclidean geometries. Starting with Berkeley’s heterogeneity
of sight and touch and his fictitious spirit, Thomas Reid made the important step
forward.44 He realized that the visual field is governed by a second geometry
different from that of the tactual field. There are lines that have indistinguishable
sides and whose points are indistinguishable from each other. According to
Euclid’s definition, they are straight lines, even if the visual field may be modelled
by a sphere in a three-dimensional space, where these ‘straight lines’ are
represented by great circles. So Thomas Reid deserves a prominent place in the
history of non-Euclidean geometry, and Berkeley has to be mentioned therein as
an important inspirer.
Notes
1 Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia I [On Learned Ignorance], 1440, cap. 12:
‘cum omnia mathematicalia sint finita’. In Hopkins, J. (1985), Nicholas of Cusa on
Learned Ignorance: A Translation and an Appraisal of De Docta Ignorantia. Arthur J.
Banning.
2 Caramuel y Lobkowitz, J., Mathesis biceps, Campaniae 1670, tom. I, p. 117: In qualibet
Scientia infiniti sunt Mundi: quicunque ex ipsis infinite est extensus.
3 This proposition was already demonstrated by André Tacquet, but Berkeley
maintains that he invented it independently.
4 That is not recognized e.g. by D. M. Jesseph: Jesseph, D. M. (1990), ‘Berkeley’s
Philosophy of Geometry’. Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 72, 301–32, p. 307.
5 P, § 122.
6 Alciphron VII , 5 (Works, III , 292)
7 Op. cit.
8 Leibniz, G. W. (1971), Mathematische Schriften, ed. C. I. Gerhardt, Halle 1849 ff.,
Reprint Hildesheim. New York: Olms, vol. 5, p. 357 (Specimen novum analyseos, Acta
Eruditorum 1702): Verum enim vero tenacior est veritatis suae pulcherrimae Natura
rerum, aeternarum varietatum parens, vel potius Divina Mens, quam ut omnia sub
unum genus compingi patiatur. Itaque elegans et mirabile effugium reperit in illo
Analyseos miraculo, idealis mundi monstro, pene inter Ens et non-Ens Amphibio,
quod radicem imaginariam appelamus. (Transl. W. B.).
9 G. W. Leibniz, 1971, vol. 1 (2), p. 12 and vol. 7, p. 141.
10 III , [§ 17]; Works II , p. 246.
11 B. II , chap. 9, §§ 8 ff.
12 P, § 118.
13 P, § 119.
14 NB , No. 516.
15 NB , No. 263. 264: ‘The Diagonal is commensurable with the Side.’
16 NB , No. 276: ‘It seems all lines can’t be bisected in 2 equall parts, Mem: to examine
how the Geometers prove the contrary.’
17 Defence of Free-thinking in Mathematics, § 45.
18 Works, VIII , p. 25 (Berkeley’s letter, 8 December 1709).
19 Alc VII , §§ 13 and 14; Works III , 307.
20 P, § 124.
21 Cf. P, § 127.
22 Berkeley uses this expression with respect to the infinitesimals in Analyst § 35.
23 E.g. L. Euler, ‘Lettres à une princesse d’Allemagne’, in L. Euler, Opera omnia, Ser. 3, vol
11, Turici 1960.
24 Berlioz, D. (1982), ‘G. Berkeley: “Of Infinites” ’. Revue philosophique, 45–57; Berlioz, D.
(1988), ‘Berkeley et la polémique du calcul infinitésimal’, in O. Bloch, B. Balan, P.
Carrive (eds.), Entre form et histoire, Paris: Méridiens-Klinicksieck, 71–85; Parigi, S.
(1993), ‘I filosofi e il microscopio: da Descartes a Berkeley’. Rivista di storia della
scienza 1, 155–72; Blay, M. (1986), ‘Deux moments de la critique du calcul
infinitésimal: Michel Rolle et George Berkeley’. Revue d’histoire des sciences 39,
223–53; D. Jesseph, 1990; Sherry, D. (1987), ‘The Wake of Berkeley’s Analyst: Rigor
Mathematicae?’ Studies of the History and Philosophy of Science 18, 455–80.
25 Vermeulen, B. (1985), ‘Berkeley and Nieuwentijt on Infinitesimals’. Berkeley
26 Smestad, B. (1995), Foundations for fluxions, Cand. Scient Thesis in Mathematics,
Department of Mathematics, University of Oslo. http://home.hio.no/~bjorsme/
hovedoppg.HTM ; Breidert, W. (2000), ‘Maximinus und Minimajus – Roger Pamans
Begründung der Fluxionsrechnung’, in R. Thiele (ed.), Mathesis, Festschrift zum

siebzigsten Geburtstag von Matthias Schramm. Berlin – Diepholz: Verlag für
Geschichte der Naturwiss. und der Technik, 119–27.
27 ‘Ob man die Mathematische Lehr = Art mit Vortheil in die Theologie einführen
könne.’
28 P, § 131.
29 Works, I, p. 42.
30 E.g. Jesseph, D. M. (1987), Berkeley’s Philosophy of Mathematics. Ph. D. Princeton
University (Univ. Microfilm International, Ann Arbor, No. 8705020), p. 115.
31 One of the minor arguments comes from the fact that there is no reference to
Cavalieri in the catalogue of the Berkeleyan library (R. Maheu, ‘Le catalogue de la
bibliothèque des Berkeley’. Revue des sciences humaines, Lille 1929, pp. 180–99).
32 NB No. 374 concerns Newton’s Principia mathematica, lib. I, sect. 1 (Opera, ed.
S. Horsley, London 1779, Reprint Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1964, II , p. 39 f.).
33 NB , No. 462. Isaac Barrow, Mathematicae lectiones (1665), London 1684, p. 51.
34 Claude-François Milliet Dechales, Cursus, seu mundus mathematicus, Lugduni:
Anisson 1674.
35 E.g. Jacques du Chevreul (Capreolus), De demonstratione magnitudinis in puncto
quaestio singularis, s.l., s.a. (1636).
36 Claude-François Milliet Dechales, Cursus, seu mundus mathematicus, Lugduni 1674,
t. III , p. 766, 771, 779.
37 Geometry no Friend to Infidelity, London 1734; The Minute Mathematician: or, the
Free-Thinker no Just-Thinker, London 1735; Considerations upon some passages
contained in two Letters to the Author of the ‘Analyst’ . . . (November 1735);
Considerations occassioned by a Paper . . . concerning some late Objections against the
Doctrine of Fluxions . . . (January 1736); Considerations upon some passages of a
Dissertation concerning the Doctrine of Fluxions (July 1736); The Remainder of the
Paper begun in our last, entituled, Considerations . . . (August 1736).
38 A Vindication of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principles of Fluxions, Dublin 1735. The Catechism
of the Author of the Minute Philosopher [i.e. Berkeley] Fully Answer’d, Dublin (also
London) 1735.
39 Analyst, § 35.
40 (B. Robins), A Review of some of the principal Objections that have been made to the
Doctrines of Fluxions and Ultimate Proportions (December 1735). (B. Robins),
Remarks on the Considerations relating to Fluxions (August 1736). J. Colson, A
perpetual comment, in: Isaac Newton, The Method of Fluxions and Infinite Series,
London 1736. J. Hodgson, The Doctrine of Fluxions, London 1736. (Th. Bayes), An
Introduction to the Doctrine of Fluxion, London 1736. J. Muller, A Mathematical
Treatise: Containing a System of Conic-Sections; with the Doctrine of Fluxions and
Fluents, applied to various Subjects, London 1736. J. Smith, A New Treatise of
Fluxions, London 1737. Th. Simpson, A New Treatise of Fluxions, London 1737.
B. Martin, Pangeometria; or the Elements of all Geometry, London 1739. J. Rowe, An
Introduction to the Doctrine of Fluxions, London 1741. (F. Blake), An Explanation of
Fluxions, London 1741. (Anonym), An Explanation of Fluxions, London 1741.
C. Maclaurin, A Treatise of Fluxions, Edinburgh 1742 (2 vols.). William Emerson,
The doctrine of fluxions, London 1743. R. Paman, The Harmony of the Ancient and
Modern Geometry asserted, London 1745.
41 C. Schwartz (2010) referring to Baum, Brook, Pycior, Jesseph, Sherry: Schwartz, C.
(2010), ‘Berkeley and His Contemporaries: The Question of Matheamtical
Formalism’, in S. Parigi (ed.), George Berkeley: Religion and Science in the Age of
Enlightenment, Dordrecht etc., pp. 43–56.
42 P, § 121.
43 G. W. Leibniz, Nouveaux essais, II , chap. 9.
44 Th. Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind, Dublin 1764, in Philosophical Works, ed.
W. Hamilton, vol. I, Edinburgh 1895, Reprint Hildesheim 1967. W. Breidert (1973),
‘Die nichteuklidische Geometrie bei Thomas’.
26
Berkeley’s Philosophy of Religion

Kenneth L. Pearce
Religion has traditionally been divided into two parts: natural religion, which
purports to be justified by natural reason alone, and revealed religion, which
purports to be justified only by means of supernatural revelation. One of the
central aims of Berkeley’s philosophy is to understand and defend religious
doctrines and practices of both sorts. This chapter provides a survey of this
aspect of Berkeley’s thought.
Natural religion
Berkeley, like many of his contemporaries, holds that natural religion is founded
upon two principal doctrines, the existence of God and the natural immortality
of the soul. These doctrines provide the foundation for moral motivation, and
the resulting moral behaviour is the practice of natural religion.
Berkeley’s arguments for the existence of a super-mind

Berkeley’s early works contain two arguments for the existence of God, known
as the ‘Passivity Argument’ and the ‘Continuity Argument’ (Bennett 1971, ch. 7).
Additionally, an argument for the existence of God from Berkeley’s theory of
visual language appears in the fourth dialogue of Alciphron.1
Each of these arguments purports to establish the existence of a mind superior
to us. However, the arguments do not, by themselves, show that this mind has the
traditional divine attributes. Establishing traditional monotheism requires
further argument (Olscamp 1970a; Bennett 1971, 165; Grayling 1986, 194–5;
Ksenjek & Flage 2012). In this section, we will consider each of the three groups
of texts as providing an argument for the existence of a ‘super-mind’. The
458
Berkeley’s Philosophy of Religion 459
following section will address the question of whether the arguments, if

successful, would support traditional monotheism.
The Passivity Argument

The explicit premises and conclusions of the Passivity Argument are these
(P 25–6, 29):
(1) Changes in my ideas occur.
Therefore,
(2) Something causes changes in my ideas.

(3) No idea causes anything.
Therefore,
(4) Changes in my ideas are caused by a substance.

(5) All substances are spirits.
(6) Changes in my ideas of sense do not depend on my will.
Therefore,
(7) Every change in my ideas of sense is caused by some spirit distinct from
myself.
In order to render this argument valid, additional premises must be supplied.

However, most scholars agree that on Berkeley’s principles, an argument of this
sort succeeds in establishing that a mind distinct from myself sometimes causes
ideas in me. Thus the argument, although in a certain sense successful, has two
limitations. First, it depends on controversial premises, some of which Berkeley
defends elsewhere, and others of which he simply assumes. Second, the
conclusion it supports is weaker than traditional monotheism. Most crucially,
this argument gives no reason for supposing that all of my sensory perceptions
are caused by one and the same mind (Tipton 1974, 299; Pitcher 1977, 133;
Grayling 1986, 194–7; Roberts 2007, 159n36; Ksenjek & Flage 2012, 282–5).
Given the theory of ideas, premise (1) is a datum of experience, and so needs
no defence. However, in order to get to (2), we need:2
(1*) Every change is caused by something.
Berkeley supports premise (3) by remarking that ideas ‘are visibly inactive’
(P 25, emphasis added): we do not perceive any activity or causal power in them.
To support (3), this observation must be combined with Berkeley’s claim that
‘there is nothing in [our ideas] but what is perceived’ (P 25). One of the
fundamental principles of Berkeley’s theory of ideas is that ideas have only
those features they are perceived to have. But, he claims, ideas are not perceived
to have any causal powers. Therefore, they have none.3
An implicit premise is again required to make the inference to (4). Berkeley is
however certainly committed to the claim:
(3*) Everything is either an idea or a substance.
This renders the inference valid.

Berkeley defends (5) at Principles 7. From (4) and (5) we can conclude:
(5*) Every change in my ideas is caused by some spirit.
Berkeley next argues that some changes in my ideas are caused by a spirit distinct
from myself. He does not hold that all changes in my ideas are caused by a spirit
distinct from myself, for Berkeley believes that I cause ideas in myself when I
imagine things (P 28). He therefore brings in the distinction between ideas of
sense and ideas of imagination and claims that changes in the former do not
depend on my will. In order to get to Berkeley’s conclusion (7), we then assume:
(6*) If a spirit S is the cause of a change c, then c depends on S’s will.
In a passage in Berkeley’s notebooks that gives an early version of the Passivity

Argument, we read: ‘[a] Cause [is] . . . nothing but a Being wch wills wn the Effect
follows the volition’ (NB 499; see Tipton 1974, 307). Berkeley here takes (6*) to
be implicit in the very notion of (efficient) causation. Many scholars believe that
Berkeley implicitly assumes this principle both here and elsewhere (Tipton 1974,
320; Pitcher 1977, 132–3; Winkler 1989, §7.2; Stoneham 2002, §5.2; Roberts
2007, §4.2).
Berkeley’s ultimate conclusion, that changes in my ideas of sense are caused
by a spirit distinct from myself, follows from (5*), (6) and (6*).
The Passivity Argument is valid. Its premises are among the central
commitments of Berkeley’s philosophy. The mind (or minds) referred to in the
conclusion can properly be described as a ‘super-mind’ insofar as it has a power
that I evidently do not: the power to excite ideas in other minds (P 33). According
to some interpretations, Berkeley holds that I do something like this when I
move the parts of my body, but I certainly cannot cause in other minds all the
sorts of ideas that I receive by sense.
The continuity argument

In the Principles, Berkeley insists that in denying that objects of sense can exist
outside the mind, he ‘would not be understood to mean this or that particular
mind, but all minds whatsoever’. It is therefore not a consequence of Berkeley’s
theory that bodies ‘have no existence except only while they are perceived by us’
(P 48). In the Dialogues, this line of thought becomes an argument for the
existence of a super-mind (3D 212, 230–1).
Following Jonathan Bennett, we call the argument found in these texts ‘the
Continuity Argument’. Bennett chose this label because he held that in these
passages Berkeley was arguing from the premise that objects have continuous
existence despite gaps in human perception to the existence of a super-mind
(Bennett 1971, §37). Similar interpretations have been advocated by Ian Tipton
and Georges Dicker (Tipton 1974, 320–50; Dicker 2011, §13.3). This approach is
disputed by another group of scholars who deny that the (so-called) Continuity
Argument is actually about continuity at all. According to these scholars, the
central premise of the argument is the independence of objects from human
perceivers (Ayers 1987; Atherton 1995; Stoneham 2002, §§5.3–5.4).
Bennett formulates the Continuity Argument as follows:
(a) No collection of ideas can exist when not perceived by some spirit;
(b) Objects are collections of ideas;
(c) Objects sometimes exist when not perceived by any human spirit;
Therefore
(d) There is a non-human spirit which sometimes perceives objects (Bennett

1971, 169).
It is a matter of controversy whether Berkeley is committed to premise (b),4

but the argument can clearly be adapted to other interpretations of Berkeley’s
account of physical objects. Subject to this caveat, most interpreters agree that
Berkeley accepts all of the premises. Furthermore, the argument is valid.
However, two difficulties remain: first, there is a problem about the status of
premise (c); second, the conclusion of the argument is weaker than Berkeley’s
stated conclusion.
It has seemed to many scholars that Berkeley is not entitled to premise (c). As
Bennett points out, premise (b) casts doubt on the commonsense principle that
objects exist when no human perceives them (ibid. 170). According to Bennett,
Berkeley has done nothing to dispel this doubt because Berkeley was ‘indifferent’
to continuity: although he wishes to show that the continuity of objects is

compatible with his system, he has no interest in showing that objects actually
exist when humans do not perceive them (ibid. §38).
According to Tipton and Dicker, Bennett is mistaken about Berkeley’s attitude
to continuity: Berkeley defends continuity in other contexts (Tipton 1974, 320–
50; Dicker 2011, 253–4). This does not, however, solve the problem. Dicker
explains:
Berkeley cannot even legitimately use the continuity argument as a supplementary

argument for the existence of God. For in his system the key premise of the
continuity argument – the premise that objects continue to exist when no finite
minds are perceiving them – rests solely on the existence of an all-perceiving
God.
Dicker 2011, 261
The Continuity Argument is, therefore, problematically circular.

Bennett, Tipton and Dicker all believe that Berkeley has made a serious error
in the passages under discussion. One option for those who wish to escape this
conclusion is to reject the continuity interpretation in favour of an independence
interpretation of the sort to be discussed below. A second option, which has not
previously appeared in the literature, is to appeal to the differences in dialectical
situation between the Principles and the Dialogues. At the beginning of the
Dialogues, the characters agree ‘to admit that opinion for true, which upon
examination shall appear most agreeable to common sense and remote from
scepticism’ (3D 172). The continuity of objects could be regarded as an anti-
sceptical principle and, if it is, then it might be held that, in the context of the
Dialogues, it needs no defence. Immaterialism with God preserves continuity
and immaterialism without God does not. This makes the former more ‘agreeable
to common sense and remote from scepticism’ than the latter. Immaterialism
with God must therefore be ‘admitted for true’.5
Even if the dialectical problem can be solved, we are still faced with the
problem that Berkeley’s conclusion is stronger than Bennett’s. One strategy for
getting from (d) to the existence of ‘an omnipresent eternal Mind’ (3D 231)
would be to argue that the supposition of one mind that perceives everything is
simpler than the supposition of a variety of different minds plugging the gaps in
human perception to ensure continuity. Since distance is a sensible quality (P 44)
and time is merely the succession of ideas (P 98), a mind that perceived
everything would exist in every time and place. However, the introduction
of these simplicity considerations would render the argument less than
demonstrative, which means that Philonous’ claim that by this argument ‘the
whole system of atheism, is . . . entirely overthrown’ (3D 213) would have to be
regarded as hyperbolic.
Responding to the difficulties faced by continuity interpretations, some
interpreters have denied that the continuity of objects figures as a premise in the
(so-called) Continuity Argument. Michael Ayers points out that both of the texts
in question mention the existence of objects outside my mind. On this basis,
Ayers suggests that Berkeley’s argument proceeds ‘from causal independence to
ontological independence’ (Ayers 1987, 120–1). On Ayers’ interpretation, the key
premise of the Continuity Argument is also one of the key premises in the
Passivity Argument: sensible ideas do not depend on my will. From this, Berkeley
concludes that sensible things exist outside my mind. But (Berkeley has already
argued) sensible things can only exist in a mind, so they must exist in some mind
distinct from me.
The step from the claim that sensible ideas do not depend on my will to the
claim that sensible things exist outside my mind sounds like an equivocation:
Berkeley’s premise is that sensible ideas are causally independent of me (I don’t
cause them), and his conclusion is that they are ontologically independent of me
(they exist ‘outside’ me). Bennett has argued that this sort of equivocation is
found throughout Berkeley’s writings (Bennett 1971, §§35–8). Ayers argues,
however, that this is not a simple equivocation between two unrelated meanings
of ‘independent’, but an inference from one species of independence to another
(Ayers 1987, 117–19).
Is this inference legitimate? Kenneth Winkler argues that the inference here,
and in the other texts where Bennett charges Berkeley with equivocation, makes
use of a suppressed premise which Winkler calls ‘the Denial of Blind Agency’
(Winkler 1989, §7.2). According to this thesis, which was widely accepted in the
period and is explicitly endorsed by Berkeley in other contexts (NB 812, 841–2;
3D 239), an agent cannot act without having some conception of what she is
trying to accomplish. Once this thesis is accepted, it will follow from the fact that
some other mind is the cause of an idea in me that some other mind has that idea
(or an idea like it). In other words, God has to have the idea of redness in order
to cause me to have the idea of redness. This principle renders the first step of the
argument, from causal independence to ontological independence, valid.
Advocates of independence interpretations have often held that the Continuity
Argument is much more closely related to the Passivity Argument than the
advocates of continuity interpretations suppose. For instance, according to
Margaret Atherton, the Passivity Argument relies on the premise that the ideas
of sense are independent of my will, whereas the Continuity Argument relies on

the premise that the ideas of sense are independent of my thought (Atherton
1995, 247). According to Berkeley, ‘A spirit is one simple, undivided, active being.
As it perceives ideas it is called the understanding, and as it produces or otherwise
operates on them, it is called the will’ (P 27; cf. Ayers 1987, 123). It can thus be
said that, on the independence interpretation, the central premise of Berkeley’s
argument for the existence of God in both the Principles and the Dialogues is
really that my ideas of sense are independent of me.
Independence interpretations do not face the dialectical difficulty faced by
continuity interpretations: they do not rely on any premises that Berkeley
elsewhere derives from the existence of God. However, there are other problems.
First, as Stoneham has emphasized, the notion of ontological independence in
this argument is somewhat puzzling. Ideas, on Berkeley’s theory, depend on
minds at least in the sense that they cannot exist without being perceived by
some mind, but, on Berkeley’s theory, the real things are the things sensed by us,
and not merely known by God (Stoneham 2002, 158–9). The Denial of Blind
Agency allows Berkeley to infer only that my ideas of sense must be copied from
an ‘archetype’ in some other mind. This is, however, not a particularly robust
form of independence. Stoneham argues that Berkeley is instead appealing to a
notion of ontological dependence from traditional theistic metaphysics, that is,
to the world’s dependence on God to sustain it in existence (ibid. 159–61). This,
Stoneham thinks, vitiates the argument since atheists have no reason for thinking
the world (i.e. on Berkeley’s theory, our ideas) needs to be sustained in this way.
Independence interpretations also do not solve the problem of how Berkeley
gets to his stated conclusion. It is not clear why, even given that my ideas are
ontologically independent of me, I should suppose that all of them depend on
one and the same other mind, let alone that that mind has many or all of the
traditional divine attributes (ibid. 158, 161–2).
The Divine Language Argument

In Alciphron IV, Berkeley argues, through his character Euphranor, that any
argument that will justify belief in other minds can be used, mutatis mutandis, as
a justification for belief in God. Euphranor’s opponent Alciphron says that he is
most convinced of the presence of another intelligence when he witnesses ‘the
arbitrary use of sensible signs, which have no similitude or necessary connexion
with the things signified . . . directing me how to act, not only with regard to
things near and present, but also with regard to things distant and future’ (Alc
4.7). In the 1709 New Theory of Vision, which was included as an appendix to
Alciphron, Berkeley had argued that vision was just such a system of signs: visual
stimulus conveys complex practical information to us regarding our tangible
environment, and the connection between these signs and their significations is
arbitrary (see Chapter 5 of this volume). Thus, Berkeley thinks, if upon hearing
human language we are entitled to infer the existence of human minds, then the
visual language gives us grounds to infer the existence of a ‘speaker’ of that
language, a super-mind.
E. G. King takes this to be a version of the analogical design argument (E. G.
King 1970), similar to William Paley’s claim that observing biological organisms
is like finding a watch on a heath: if the inference to a maker is justified in the
latter case, it is likewise justified in the former (Paley 1809, 1–3). Berkeley’s
analogy, on this interpretation, would be between the system of visual stimulus
and a text or speech. If, Berkeley might say, one were to find a book on the heath,
one would infer that it had an author. But, Berkeley argues, the total system of
our visual stimulus is like a book in all the relevant respects. We should therefore
conclude that our visual stimulus has an author.
Analogical arguments have been a staple of religious apologetics since long
before Berkeley’s time. On this interpretation, all Berkeley has done is to adapt
the argument to rely on his own idiosyncratic views. Some interpreters have,
however, found more original lines of thought in Berkeley’s text.
According to an interpretation suggested by Michael Hooker, Berkeley’s
argument can be seen as intended to uncover a presupposition of the
commonsense assumption that vision is informative (Hooker 1982, 267–9). It is
rational for us to treat language as informative only because we take it to be a
product of the intentions of agents. Since vision, like human language, consists
of signs that are connected only arbitrarily to what they signify, it is not rational
to take vision as informative unless we presuppose that there is a ‘speaker’ of the
language of vision.
An interpretation along these general lines has more recently been defended
by John Russell Roberts. Roberts interprets Berkeley as arguing that the world
can be rendered intelligible to us only if we adopt what Roberts calls the ‘religious
stance’. To adopt the religious stance is to treat the deliverances of the senses as
utterances of a perfectly trustworthy person (Roberts 2007, 83–7). No other way
of looking at the world can, according to Roberts’ interpretation of Berkeley,
justify our trust in the predictability of nature.
A. David Kline emphasizes Berkeley’s comparison of our knowledge of God
to our knowledge of other minds, and argues that Berkeley’s Divine Language
Argument is based on René Descartes’ account of our knowledge of other minds
(Kline 1987).6 Descartes held that the complexity with which signs are
recombined appropriately in human linguistic behaviour was impossible to
explain mechanically, and that we must therefore posit other souls like our own.
Kline takes Berkeley to be arguing that all of the same features are to be found in
much greater degree in vision.
According to Tom Stoneham, the central premise of Berkeley’s argument is
that vision is literally a language. Since a language must have a speaker, the
existence of a super-mind follows immediately (Stoneham 2013; cf. Olscamp
1970a).
It is widely held that Berkeley’s argument here is an inference to the best
explanation (Kline 1987, 131–2; Atherton 1995, 233–4; Jesseph 2005). If so, then
it must be regarded as merely probable and not demonstrative. The argument
does, however, appear to favour a more religiously adequate conception of God
than more ‘metaphysical’ arguments, such as the Passivity and Continuity
Arguments (see Alc, 4.14).
Is Berkeley’s super-mind God?

Berkeley’s Passivity Argument shows that, if Berkeley is right that only minds are
causes and that minds cause only by volition, then many of my perceptions are
caused by a mind or minds distinct from myself. Immediately following the
Passivity Argument, Berkeley argues that this cause is a single ‘more powerful
spirit’ (P 33) characterized by ‘goodness and wisdom’ (P 32). Near the end of the
Principles Berkeley defends the stronger conclusion that there is ‘one, eternal,
infinitely wise, good, and perfect . . . spirit, “who works all in all,” and “by whom
all things consist” ’ (P 146; cf. NB 838; 3D 215). The latter definition closely
resembles a description of God found in the Thirty-Nine Articles, the doctrinal
standard of Berkeley’s church (Ksenjek & Flage 2012, 291–2).
Both the earlier and the later argument are generally agreed to be inferences
to the best explanation (Pitcher 1977, 133–5; Stoneham 2002, §4.4; Jesseph 2005;
Ksenjek & Flage 2012, 292). Berkeley concludes that there is one ‘Author’ of our
sensations, and that this author is wise and benevolent, from the fact that the
ideas of sense ‘are not excited at random . . . but in a regular train or series . . .
[which] gives us a sort of foresight, which enables us to regulate our actions for
the benefit of life’ (P 30–1). Similarly, the evidence cited later in the Principles is
the constant regularity, order, and concatenation of natural things, the surprising
magnificence, beauty, and perfection of the larger, and the exquisite contrivance
of the smaller parts of creation, together with the exact harmony and
correspondence of the whole, but above all, the never enough admired laws of
pain and pleasure, and the instincts or natural inclinations, appetites, and
passions of animals.
P 146
The orderliness of the world does seem to favour the hypothesis of one
super-mind over many. Simplicity considerations, which are admissible in
inferences to the best explanation, also favour positing a single super-mind as
the cause of all those perceptions which ‘are not produced by or dependent on
the wills of men’ (P 146; see Ksenjek & Flage 2012, 286–7). The existence of a
single super-mind thus seems to be supported by Berkeley’s argument. If,
however, there is only a single super-mind, then that mind must be eternal, at
least in the sense of existing at every time the world does, since the existence of
the world depends on there being a super-mind to cause sensory perceptions.
The super-mind must also be able to keep track of the total state of the world and
its complex laws so as to preserve its orderliness, and must therefore have
wisdom far beyond mine. Furthermore, the super-mind appears to have selected
rules which bring about a variety of beautiful and otherwise desirable results.
For this reason, Berkeley says that the ‘consistent uniform working’ of nature
‘displays the goodness and wisdom of that governing spirit whose will constitutes
the laws of nature’ much more clearly than exceptions to this consistent uniform
working (P 32).7
Berkeley’s argument gives us some reason to suppose that there is only one
super-mind and that wisdom, power and benevolence are among the respects in
which that mind is superior to us. Nevertheless, Berkeley’s claim that the super-
mind is infinitely wise, powerful and benevolent seems rather extravagant if it is
meant to be drawn only from empirical observation of the character of our
sensory perceptions (cf. Grayling 1986, 184–9, 195–8). Indeed, considerations of
natural and moral evil seem to suggest just the opposite (P 151–3; Winkler 1989,
286).
Berkeley’s natural theology is ambitious, and it does not seem ultimately to
succeed in its ambitions. However, it does come to a more modest conclusion,
which is still interesting and significant. If Berkeley’s basic metaphysical premises
are accepted, then I can have deductive proof that there exists at least one mind
that is in certain respects superior to me and, further, I can have good reason to
suppose that there is exactly one such mind, and that it is eternal, exceeds human
beings in wisdom and power, and is at least somewhat benevolently inclined
towards me. The further claim that this being is infinitely or perfectly wise,
powerful and benevolent can perhaps be regarded as a teaching of revealed

theology, that is, an article of faith (cf. Grayling 1986, 188).8
The natural immortality of the soul

In addition to the existence of God, Berkeley saw the natural immortality of the
soul as ‘a fundamental Doctrine . . . of natural Religion’ (Works, 7:114). In fact, he
goes so far as to say that the denial of this doctrine is ‘the most effectual antidote
against all impressions of virtue and religion’ (P 141). Berkeley understands the
natural immortality of the soul as the doctrine that the soul ‘is not liable to be
broken or dissolved by the ordinary laws of nature or motion’ (P 141). The
religious (and moral) importance of this claim stems from the fact that it opens
up the possibility of judgement after death.9
Berkeley begins his discussion by noting that the doctrine is not to be
understood as the claim ‘that [the soul] is absolutely incapable of annihilation
even by the infinite power of the Creator’. Rather, the doctrine states that the
operation of ‘the ordinary laws of nature or motion’ cannot lead to the destruction
of the soul (P 141). The view that the soul can be so destroyed follows from
materialist theories of the mind: if the soul is ‘a thin vital flame or system of
animal spirits’ or if the soul (mind) is identical to the brain, then the destruction
of the body would destroy the soul. However, Berkeley has argued that souls
alone are substances, and bodies are ‘barely passive ideas in the mind’ (P 141).
Bodies cannot, therefore, act on souls in any way. Furthermore, Berkeley has
argued that the ‘laws of nature’ and the causal relations we attribute to bodies are
merely regularities in our ideas of sense, and should be understood as relations
of signification rather than genuine causation (P 66, 108). As a result, it is
impossible that the soul should be destroyed by ‘the ordinary laws of nature’.
This is a weak doctrine. It simply opens up the possibility that the soul may
survive the destruction of the body. However, Berkeley believes that this mere
possibility has a substantial effect on moral motivation, for if it is possible that I
may continue to exist after the destruction of my body, then the fact that I escape
punishment for my misdeeds, or go unrewarded for my good deeds, in this life,
is no guarantee that I will escape punishment, or go unrewarded, altogether.
The language of natural religion

The traditional view in Western philosophical theology has been that all, or
nearly all, religious language is analogical: when we apply predicates to God, we
use them in a way that differs from their use as applied to creatures. Thus, for
instance, the meaning of the word ‘wise’ in ‘God is wise’ differs from its meaning
in ‘Socrates is wise’. In the traditional view, these uses are thought to be somehow
related, but there is no consensus, within the tradition, on precisely how they are
related. In Berkeley’s immediate context, the doctrine of analogy had two
influential proponents, William King and Peter Browne (W. King 1709; Browne
1697, 1729, 1733).
King had attempted to use the doctrine of analogy to solve such problems as
the existence of evil and the compatibility of human freedom with divine
foreknowledge and predestination. All of these problems, King says, stem from
the error of attributing goodness, foreknowledge, predestination and other such
attributes to God literally (W. King 1709, §§6–7). When these predicates are
understood analogically, they will not support these inferences. As the Deist
Anthony Collins pointed out, this seems to be because they will not support any
inferences at all (Collins 1710; cf. Hight 2013, letter 12).
In Alciphron IV, the freethinker Lysicles deploys Collins’ objections to argue
that the dispute about the existence of God is purely verbal.10 Lysicles first argues
that King’s doctrine of analogy makes God ‘an unknown subject of attributes
absolutely unknown’ (Alc 4.17), then points out that ‘You cannot argue from
unknown attributes. . . . You cannot prove, that God is to be loved for his
goodness, or feared for his justice, or respected for his knowledge’ (Alc 4.18).
Thus the existence of God becomes a point of, literally, no consequence.
In response to Lysicles, Crito describes King’s strategy as a ‘method of growing
in expression, and dwindling in notion, of clearing up doubts by nonsense, and
avoiding difficulties by running into affected contradictions’ (Alc 4.19). Crito
argues that the correct notion of ‘proper’ (as opposed to ‘metaphorical’) analogy,
and the only notion of analogy which is needed in theology, is simply the
mathematical notion of a ratio: divine knowledge is to human knowledge as the
infinite to the finite.11 ‘We may therefore . . . affirm that all sorts of perfection,
which we can conceive in a finite spirit, are in God’ in the very same sense, but in
infinite degree (Alc 4.21).
Berkeley thus agrees with Collins, against King and Browne, that the
attributes ascribed to God by natural religion must be ascribed literally,
differing only in degree from the human ‘perfections’ from which they get
their names. The central reason for this is simply that, according to Collins’
published position,12 and according to Berkeley, design arguments show that
God is wise, powerful, etc., in the ordinary, everyday senses of those terms (Collins
1710, 5).
In this discussion, Berkeley reveals a fundamental methodological

disagreement with most of the defenders of divine analogy, especially Peter
Browne.13 Browne seeks to support his theological position by quotations from
the ‘Doctors of the Church’. He takes these quotations to be authoritative both as
to what the teaching of Christianity is and as to what the truth is.14 Berkeley, on
the other hand, consistently seeks to answer the freethinkers on their own terms,
allowing them to banish authority from discussions of natural theology (Alc
4.2). Furthermore, it is not often noticed that Berkeley’s famous comment about
‘siding in all things with the mob’ is made in a religious context. The complete
notebook entry reads: ‘All things in Scripture wch side with the Vulgar against
the Learned side with me also. I side in all things with the mob’ (NB 405).15 For
Berkeley, although ‘the writings of the primitive fathers’ are a source of theological
truth (Works, 7:146), in the end ‘our notions about faith [must be] taken from the
commerce of the world, and practice of mankind, rather than from the peculiar
systems of refiners’ (Alc 7.10). Those, such as Browne, who think otherwise
‘confound Scholasticism with Christianity’ (Alc 7.9). For Berkeley, philosophical
theology attempts to systematize the beliefs of ordinary Christians, so that the
success of the ‘particular systems of refiners’ is to be judged by whether they
accurately capture the beliefs of ordinary Christians. When ordinary Christians
say ‘God is wise’, they mean that God is wise.
The practice of natural religion

Berkeley consistently insisted that the end of speculation must be practice (3D
167). Belief in natural religion is meant to lead to the practice of natural religion,
which consists in moral behaviour.
The view that belief in the existence of God and the natural immortality of
the soul is foundational to moral motivation was the philosophical orthodoxy
of Berkeley’s day. However, it had recently come under fire from the Earl of
Shaftesbury, who held that the foundation of moral motivation must be placed
in aesthetic appreciation of the intrinsic beauty of virtue.
In the third dialogue of Alciphron, the title character makes use of Shaftesbury’s
moral theory to argue that ‘all the ends of society are secured without religion,
and that an infidel bids fair to be the most virtuous man, in a true, sublime, and
heroic sense’ (Alc 3.3).16 According to Alciphron, genuine virtue cannot be
produced by fear of punishment or hope of reward. Instead it can come only
from appreciation of ‘the moral excellence, the beauty, and decorum’ of the
virtues (Alc 3.3; cf. Shaftesbury 1714, 2:21, 29–31, 55).
Euphranor agrees that virtue and the moral order are beautiful, and that the
appreciation of this beauty is a strong source of moral motivation. However,
according to Euphranor, this appreciation is tied up with ‘regard [for] the opinion
of others concerning it’ and is therefore not ‘a sufficient ground or principle of
virtue, for a man to act upon, when he thinks himself removed from the eye and
observation of every other intelligent being’ (Alc 3.4; cf. Shaftesbury 1714, 2:57).
Furthermore, Euphranor argues, the beauty of virtue is often insufficient as a
motive to overcome our selfish desire for pleasure (cf. Shaftesbury 1714, 2:61).
Later in the dialogue, Euphranor provides a further argument for the
fundamental dependence of moral motivation on natural religion. Alciphron
had held that the moral sense consisted in an aesthetic appreciation of the beauty
of virtue. Euphranor argues that beauty always consists in fitness for an end (Alc
3.8–9). To suppose that the ‘moral system’ is beautiful is thus to suppose that it
aims at some end. However, it cannot aim at an end unless it is a product of
design (Alc 3.10). Thus Shaftesbury’s moral theory is to be seen as fundamentally
presupposing theism, and hence is not a genuine alternative to a morality based
on natural religion after all.
Berkeley also addresses this issue in Passive Obedience, where he argues that
it is rational to obey God’s commands because God alone is able to determine
our eternal fate, which infinitely outweighs temporal goods (Passive Obedience
6). However, our natural knowledge (i.e. our knowledge independent of
revelation) of God’s commands can only come from a prior conception of the
good and of divine rationality (Passive Obedience 7). From here, Berkeley argues
that God’s commands consist in a beautiful, harmonious collection of moral
laws, which together maximize human well-being. The goodness of the outcome
(namely, human well-being) is prior to God’s command, and so it is not merely
because God commands it that we ought to value and pursue universal human
well-being. However, knowledge that there is a good and rational God, and that
it is within his power to confer a life after death, of whatever sort he chooses,
upon us, ensures that we always have sufficient reason to follow these rules.
As Vanessa Nurock has emphasized (Nurock 2010), Berkeley’s interest in
moral motivation is fundamentally different from Shaftesbury’s. Shaftesbury has
an elitist conception of ethics, whereas Berkeley the clergyman is concerned for
the moral education of the common folk. Accordingly, Crito shrugs off the
question of whether the virtuous atheist is a possible character (Alc 3.12), and
focuses instead on insisting that an atheistic moral theory patterned on
Shaftesbury does not provide adequate moral motivation for the ordinary
person. As a result, by casting doubt on traditional religion and demeaning
motivation based on reward and punishment, Shaftesbury has, ‘under pretence

of making men heroically virtuous, endeavour[ed] to destroy the means of
making them reasonably and humanly so’ (Alc 3.13; cf. TVV, 3–5). Berkeley’s
central claim is that belief in God and in at least the possibility of reward and
punishment in an afterlife is essential if we ordinary (non-heroic) human beings
are to do our duty consistently. This consistency in our duty, done in obedience
to divine commands, is the practice of natural religion.
Revealed religion
‘Revealed religion’ is that part of religious belief and practice which is accepted
on the basis of faith. The starting point, therefore, in any philosophical
examination of revealed religion should be an examination the nature of faith
and its relation to reason.
Faith and reason

John Locke defined ‘faith’ as belief on the basis of divine testimony (Locke 1689,
§4.18.2). A crucial consequence of Locke’s definition of faith is that one must
believe that God exists and has revealed some particular propositions before one
can have faith. These claims must therefore be established by reason, that is, by
our natural faculties, and cannot themselves be articles of faith (ibid., §§4.18.6,
10; Jolley 2007, 443–4). Furthermore, Locke holds that, although it can be
demonstrated that God exists, the claim that God has revealed some particular
proposition is a historical claim and hence can never be more than merely
probable (Locke 1689, §§4.18.5–6, 4.16.8–11). A consequence is that ‘no
Proposition can be received for Divine Revelation . . . if it be contradictory to our
clear intuitive Knowledge’ (ibid. §4.18.5), or, as Nicholas Jolley puts it ‘knowledge
trumps faith’ (Jolley 2007, 445).
Unlike most of Locke’s early religious critics, Berkeley accepts Locke’s account
of faith, along with these consequences (Pearce 2014). Berkeley’s aim in his
defence of Christianity, especially in the fifth and sixth dialogues of Alciphron, is
to provide probable arguments in favour of the belief that the Bible is a revelation
from God, and to rebut claims that it contains propositions known to be false.17
On Berkeley’s broadly Lockean view, if it can be shown, by natural reason, that it
is probable that the Bible contains a revelation from God, then it is rational to
accept any proposition contained in the Bible as an article of faith.
Although both Locke and Berkeley usually treat faith as a purely doxastic
state, they also both sometimes employ a more practical conception of faith.
According to Berkeley, an individual has ‘saving faith’ when Christian doctrine
‘makes proper impressions on his mind, producing therein love, hope, gratitude,
and obedience, and thereby becomes a lively operating principle, influencing his
life and actions’ (Alc 7.8; cf. Locke 1823, 7:131). Here again ‘speculation [must be]
referred to practice’ (3D, 168).
Bodily resurrection
The standard view of the afterlife in Berkeley’s Anglican context was roughly as
follows.18 Upon death, each soul is subject to an immediate ‘personal’ judgement,
so that the (disembodied) soul experiences either immediate conscious bliss or
immediate conscious torment until the end of the world. At the end of the world,
the bodies of the dead will be raised and each soul will be reunited with its own
body, the very same body it animated in its earthly life. At this point, there will be
a public judgement and the creation of a ‘new heaven and new earth’ (Revelation
21:1) to be inhabited by the elect, while the reprobate are now sent permanently
to hell.
When Berkeley mentions ‘Socinian scruples’ about this doctrine (P 95), he
probably has in mind Locke’s doubts, expressed in his correspondence with
Edward Stillingfleet, about the identity of the resurrected body with the earthly
body (Locke 1823, 4:301–30).19 According to Berkeley, ‘the most plausible of
[these scruples] depend on the supposition that a body is denominated the same,
with regard not to the form or that which is perceived by sense, but the material
substance which remains the same under several forms’ (P 95; cf. Stillingfleet
1698, 35). Thus, Berkeley suggests:
Take away this material substance, about the identity whereof all the dispute is,
and mean by body what every plain ordinary person means by that word, to wit,
that which is immediately seen and felt, and which is only a combination of
sensible qualities, and then [the Socinians’] most unanswerable objections come
to nothing.
P 95
Berkeley claims here that the identity of bodies across a large gap, such as the
gap between death and resurrection, is, on his view, utterly unproblematic. This
is an exaggeration, for it is unclear how Berkeleian bodies can persist over time
at all, even in the most ordinary cases. However, it seems likely that, for Berkeley,
the identity of bodies over time consists in some kind of systematic, lawful
relationship between one perception and another. If this is true, then there will
not be any special problem about the identity of resurrection bodies as there is
for the materialist (see Hight 2007).
The language of revealed religion

Even more than the debate about the divine attributes, the Anglo-Irish intellectual
scene in Berkeley’s lifetime was dominated by an extremely contentious debate
about religious ‘mysteries’, such as the doctrine of the Trinity. In 1696, John
Toland, a native Irish convert to Protestantism, published a tract entitled
Christianity Not Mysterious, in which he used Locke’s theory of ideas as a
platform to attack traditional Christian doctrines as inventions of ‘priestcraft’.
Most notoriously, Toland argued that Arianism and orthodox Trinitarianism are
both incomprehensible (Toland 1696, 27).20
The overarching argument of Christianity Not Mysterious is simple. Toland
defines ‘mystery’ as ‘a thing of its own Nature inconceivable, and not be judg’d of
by our ordinary Faculties and Ideas’ (ibid. 66) This implies that mysteries are
really ‘Words that have no Ideas at all’ (ibid. 135). However, if the words to which
we verbally assent in confessing our belief in mysteries do not correspond to
ideas, we may as well be confessing ‘that something call’d Blictri [has] a Being in
Nature’ (ibid. 128): the alleged belief has no content, and thus cannot be a genuine
belief, but is only an empty form of words (ibid. 134–5). It is therefore impossible
to believe in mysteries.
Providing a response to Toland was one of Berkeley’s main philosophical
preoccupations, beginning at least as early as 1708 (Works, 7:9–15).21 Berkeley’s
earliest detailed treatment of the matter can be found in the Manuscript
Introduction, which had been written by November of that year (Belfrage 1987,
20–3). Here, Berkeley considers St. Paul’s statement that ‘the Good Things which
God hath prepared for them that love [him]22 are such as Eye hath not seen nor
Ear heard nor hath it enter’d into the Heart of Man to conceive (MI 36; see 1
Corinthians 2:9). Berkeley notes that the apostle says quite explicitly that the
heavenly reward is presently inconceivable by us, but nevertheless expects us to
understand him when he tells us that there is such a reward. The conclusion
Berkeley draws from this is that the aim of St. Paul’s statement ‘is not to raise in
the Minds of Men the Abstract Ideas of Thing or Good nor yet the particular
Ideas of the Joys of the Blessed. The Design is to make them more chearfull and
fervent in their Duty’ (MI 36).
In order to explain how this works, Berkeley provides an account of how

children learn the proper use of the English word ‘reward’. According to Berkeley,
we are conditioned by experience to increase our ‘Zeal and Activity’ upon hearing
the promise of a reward from ‘an honest Man’ (MI 37; see Berman 1994, 162).
Berkeley does say that it may sometimes happen that upon a person’s hearing the
word ‘reward’,‘there may be excited in his Understanding an Idea of the particular
good thing to him proposed for a Reward’ (MI 37). However, Berkeley holds
that even in many ordinary cases, in which we are capable of having ideas of
the particular rewards in question, the effect of the words is nevertheless directly
to motivate us, without the mediation of an idea. In the case of the heavenly
reward – a particular example of a religious mystery – it is impossible for us
(now) to have any such idea, but we nevertheless can and should be motivated
by the promise of a heavenly reward, and that use of language is therefore
meaningful.
According to Bertil Belfrage, Berkeley’s view here is that,
What the apostle intends to do is to make people act in a certain way. Therefore,
instead of saying:
4. There are inconceivably pleasant joys in store for blessed souls in heaven,
one could equally well say:
5. Act in accordance with what Christian doctrine prescribes as being our
duty!
Belfrage 1986a, 646
This interpretation of the Manuscript Introduction has been criticized by

Kenneth Williford. Williford complains that Belfrage’s interpretation reduces
religious mysteries to nothing more than ‘useful nonsense’ (Williford 2003, 291).
Although Belfrage notes that Berkeley could not possibly accept the
characterization of religious mysteries as ‘nonsense’ (Belfrage 1986b, 321), on his
interpretation the ‘sense’ that religious mysteries make is merely emotional and
practical, with no descriptive or cognitive component. Thus it is unclear how, on
Belfrage’s account, the mysteries can count as true (or false) rather than merely
useful (or useless). On Williford’s alternative interpretation, although the promise
of an unspecified reward does not communicate any ideas, it does communicate
the speaker’s intentions. With respect to the heavenly reward, this theory has the
benefit of explaining how, on Berkeley’s view, we can expect really to be rewarded
in the afterlife (something to which, as we saw above, Berkeley is clearly
committed) despite the fact that the promise on which this expectation is based
conveys no ideas.
In Alciphron VII , the title character argues, following Toland, that religious
mysteries are ‘empty notions, or, to speak more properly, . . . mere forms of
speech, which mean nothing, and are of no use to mankind’ (Alc 7.1). Alciphron’s
particular target is the concept of grace, which, he observes, ‘is the main point in
the Christian dispensation’ (Alc 7.4). To the word ‘grace’, Alciphron says, no idea
can be attached. However, ‘there can be no assent where there are no ideas: and
where there is no assent there can be no faith: and what cannot be, that no man
is obliged to’ (Alc 7.4).
Euphranor responds by arguing that there are in fact a great many meaningful
words that do not stand for ideas (Alc 7.5–8 [1732 ed.]). He emphasizes in
particular the use of the word ‘force’ as a technical term in physics. Despite the
lack of any idea corresponding to the word ‘force’, Euphranor says, ‘there are very
evident propositions or theorems relating to force, which contain useful truths’
(Alc 7.7). Euphranor emphasizes that these theorems of force guide our actions,
explain various phenomena, and allow the construction of machines ‘by means
of which things difficult and otherwise impossible may be performed’.
Furthermore, ‘the same doctrine, which is so beneficial here below, serves also as
a key to discover the nature of the celestial motions’. In light of these important
results, Berkeley thinks, it would be absurd to ‘deny that [‘force’] is of use, either
in practice or speculation, because we have no distinct idea of force’ (Alc 7.7).
From the fact that ‘force’ does not stand for an idea, but must nonetheless be
regarded as meaningful because of its practical utility, Euphranor concludes that
‘grace’, despite not standing for any idea, can ‘be an object of our faith, and
influence our life and actions, as a principle destructive of evil habits and
productive of good ones’ (Alc 7.7). The same, he says, applies to other Christian
mysteries. For instance, although no one can ‘frame in his mind any abstract or
distinct idea of Trinity, substance, or personality’ it is nevertheless possible that
‘the doctrine of a Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier makes proper impressions
on [one’s] mind, producing therein, love, hope, gratitude, and obedience, and
thereby becomes a lively operative principle influencing [one’s] life and actions,
agreeably to that notion of saving faith which is required of a Christian’ (Alc 7.8).
Euphranor’s claim is clearly that ‘grace’ and ‘Trinity’ have legitimate uses, and
are therefore meaningful, whether or not they stand for ideas. These uses evidently
have to do with moral motivation. Beyond this, things become rather murky. In
the discussion of ‘grace’ there is a use/mention ambiguity. It sounds as though
Euphranor is saying that grace itself ‘influence[s] our life and actions, as a principle
destructive of evil habits and productive of good ones’ (Alc 7.7), and this would
certainly be in line with traditional Protestant theology, and with Alciphron’s
earlier description of what grace is supposed to be (‘an active, vital, ruling principle,
influencing and operating on the mind of man’ – Alc 7.4). However, in the
discussion of ‘Trinity’ it is not the Trinity Itself, but the ‘doctrine of a Creator,
Redeemer, and Sanctifier’ that ‘becomes a lively operative principle’ (Alc 7.8,
emphasis added). Similarly, it is belief in Original Sin that is said to ‘produce in [the
believer’s] mind a salutary sense of his own unworthiness, and the goodness of his
Redeemer: from whence may follow good habits, and from them good actions’
(Alc 7.10). Furthermore, it is not clear how our lack of an idea of grace could be
thought to be a hindrance to its being ‘a principle destructive of evil habits and
productive of good ones’. On the other hand, if it is our belief in grace that is meant
to be such a principle, then one can clearly see how it could be thought that the
lack of an idea of grace would prevent this from happening. What is clear is that
the notion we have of grace cannot be ‘separate or abstracted from God the author,
from man the subject, and from virtue and piety its effects’ (Alc 7.7).
That ‘grace’ and ‘Trinity’ are connected to other notions in this way is crucial
here, since Berkeley had said that ‘force’ is meaningful in virtue of the theorems
which can be demonstrated by the use of that word. Thus Berkeley’s defence will
not work if the mysteries are inferentially inert; instead, it must be possible to
demonstrate ‘theorems of grace’, analogous to the theorems of force (Pearce 2008,
261–2), and these theorems must, like the theorems of force, have practical import.
David Berman has characterized Berkeley’s thought on religious language as
involving a contrast between ‘cognitive theology’ and ‘emotive mysteries’ (Berman
1993b). It is indeed clear that there is a contrast to be drawn between Berkeley’s
treatment of the language of natural theology and the language of revealed
theology. However, Berman’s use of twentieth-century terminology is apt to
mislead (Williford 2003; Belfrage 2007). ‘Emotivism’ or ‘non-cognitivism’ about a
domain of discourse is often understood as involving the claim that the statements
(or pseudo-statements) in that domain of discourse are not truth evaluable (see,
e.g., Ayer 1952, 107; cf. Williford & Jakapi 2009, 100). However, as Berman
recognizes (Berman 1994, 161–3), Berkeley seems to think that claims about
grace are genuinely true (Alc 7.7; cf. Jakapi 2007, 189–190). Furthermore, in
comparing ‘grace’ with ‘force’, Berkeley connected the uses of language in religious
mysteries with the use of language in physics, a paradigmatically cognitive
domain of discourse (Williford & Jakapi 2009, 106; cf. Roberts 2007, 59–60).
Berman sees Alciphron VII as arguing that terms like ‘grace’ and ‘Trinity’ are
meaningful in virtue of their ability to ‘produce emotions, dispositions, and
actions’. In this, they are like such utterances as ‘Cheer up!’, ‘Life’s a bore’ and ‘Get
out!’ (Berman 1994, 148).
This account has been challenged by Kenneth Williford and Roomet Jakapi,
who argue that the motivational force had by terms like ‘grace’ is not constitutive
of their meaning, but simply evidence of their meaningfulness (Williford &
Jakapi 2009, 105). In place of the emotional and motivational associations of
words, Williford and Jakapi emphasize the inferential relations in which the
words stand, and claim that it is only indirectly, by means of these inferences,
that the words impact actions and emotions.
On either of these interpretations, Berkeley has a serious theological problem,
for Berkeley says that ‘grace’ and ‘Trinity’ are meaningful in much the same way
that ‘force’ is. However, Berkeley’s De Motu was dedicated to showing that
‘ “Force”, “gravity”, “attraction” and similar terms are useful for reasoning, and for
calculations about motion and moving bodies, but not for understanding the
simple nature of motion itself or for designating so many distinct qualities’ (DM
17). If the analogy is to hold, Berkeley would seem to be committed to the claim
that ‘grace’ and ‘Trinity’ are useful for religious and moral reasoning, but not for
understanding the nature of God or for designating qualities of God. To state the
matter more emphatically, Berkeley’s aim in his discussions of ‘force’ is to argue
that discourse involving ‘force’ can be useful and perhaps even (in some sense)
true, despite the fact that, strictly speaking, there are no such things as forces.
From the perspective of Christian orthodoxy, the application of the same line of
thought to revealed theology would be a disaster. Berman and Belfrage seem to
hold that Berkeley does indeed depart from (or at least radically reinterpret)
Christian orthodoxy in this way, while Williford and Jakapi argue that Berkeley
would have found this conclusion unacceptable (see especially Jakapi 2007).23
This problematic aspect of Berkeley’s view was recognized early on by Peter
Browne. Browne complains that ‘in the particular Instance of divine Grace,
[Berkeley] in effect gives up the whole Cause of Revelation and Mystery’ (Browne
1733, 508), and, more generally, that, on Berkeley’s account, Christian faith ‘is no
other than believing in certain Sounds and Syllables’, so that belief in God
becomes ‘no more than Faith in a Monosyllable’ (ibid. 539). Berkeley never
answered these strong words of Browne’s. As a result, the question of whether he
would have accepted Browne’s characterization of his view remains open.
The practice of revealed religion

At the end of the Principles, Berkeley indicated that it was part of ‘the main drift
and design of [his] labours’ to ‘dispose [us] to reverence and embrace the salutary
truths of the Gospel, which to know and to practise is the highest perfection of
human nature’ (P 156). In revealed religion, as in natural religion and in life in

general, belief must not be divorced from practice.
According to Berkeley, the central elements of Christianity are ‘the love of
God and man, the practising every virtue, the living reasonably while we are here
upon earth, proportioning our esteem to the value of things, and so using this
world as not to abuse it’ (Alc 5.5; cf. 5.15). This is very similar to Berkeley’s
account of the practice of natural religion, and indeed Berkeley holds that one of
the most important recommendations of Christianity is that it has succeeded in
popularizing natural religion (Alc, 5.9, 5.27; cf. Leibniz 1710, 50–1). Nevertheless,
Berkeley holds that the specific, distinctive doctrines of Christianity can shape
our practice in morally beneficial ways which go beyond the effects of natural
religion.
Berkeley says that when the ‘doctrine of a Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier
makes proper impressions on [one’s] mind, producing therein, love, hope,
gratitude, and obedience, [it] thereby becomes a lively operative principle
influencing [one’s] life and actions’ (Alc 7.8). Why exactly this doctrine should
produce love, hope, gratitude and obedience is not explained by Berkeley.
However, it is clear that these attitudes towards God provide a deeper sort of
moral motivation than a mere prudential calculation on the basis of the promise
of reward and threat of punishment. In this way, revealed religion goes beyond
natural religion with respect to moral motivation.
In the succeeding portions of Alciphron, Berkeley discusses the motivational
impact of two other distinctive Christian doctrines. Berkeley says that when we
‘believe the divinity of our Saviour, or that in him God and man make one Person
. . . by virtue of such persuasion [we] submit to His government, believe His
doctrine, practice His precepts’ (Alc 7.8). In other words, the doctrine that God
became a visible human person in concrete historical circumstances makes it
easier for us to accept that certain beliefs and practices are backed by divine
authority.
Similarly, the doctrine of Original Sin,24 we are told, ‘may produce in [our]
mind[s] a salutary sense of [our] own unworthiness, and the goodness of [our]
Redeemer: from whence may follow good habits, and from them good actions’
(Alc 7.10). Here the effect of the doctrine is tolerably clear: a belief in one’s own
innate moral corruption, accompanied by the belief that one has been saved by
the grace of God, produces humility and gratitude toward God. These mental
attitudes have a positive effect on moral behaviour.
Moral behaviour is not, however, exhaustive of religious practice. According
to Berkeley, the claim that ‘God Ought to be worship’d’ is an analytic truth, and
so a proposition of natural theology (NB 705). The manner of worship is,

however, a matter of revealed religion. The government and precepts of Christ,
which belief in the Incarnation leads us to obey, include regular communal
meetings for worship featuring the Christian sacraments. The sacraments are
‘means of grace’ and grace, for Berkeley, is ‘a principle destructive of evil habits
and productive of good ones’ (Alc 7.7), which is to say that God’s grace is his
supernatural intervention for the reformation of the believer’s moral character.
Thus, in Berkeley’s view, participation in Christian worship is important in large
part because of its effect on moral character (Works, 7:121).
In revealed as well as natural religion, ‘the end of speculation [is] practice’ (3D
167). In particular, ‘the sum and substance, scope and end of Christ’s religion, [is]
the love of God and man’ (Alc 5.15). It is the practice of this religion that
Berkeley’s philosophy aims to promote (P 156).
Notes
1 On the theory of visual language, see Chapter 21 of this volume.

2 Tipton 1974: Tipton, I. C. (1974), Berkeley: The Philosophy of Immaterialism. London:
Methuen & Co, 302–20; Pitcher 1977, 131: Pitcher, George (1977), Berkeley. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul; Muehlmann 1992, 249–50: Muehlmann, Robert G. (1992)
Berkeley’s Ontology. Indianapolis: Hackett; and Dicker 2011, 231: Dicker, Georges
(2011), Berkeley’s Idealism: A Critical Examination. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
all take Berkeley to rely on a premise like this one.
3 As Richard Brook pointed out, Berkeley at one point concedes that we are often
inclined to ‘attribute power or agency to the ideas themselves, and make one the
cause of another’ (p. 32, emphasis added). Nevertheless, we do not perceive any
power or agency in our ideas, hence they have none.
4 On Berkeley’s theory of bodies, see Chapter 21 of this volume.
5 On the sceptical consequences of ‘Godless immaterialism’, see Stoneham 2013:
Stoneham, Tom (2013), ‘Response to Atherton: no atheism without scepticism’, in
Stewart Duncan and Antonia LoLordo (eds), Debates in Modern Philosophy:
Essential Readings and Contemporary Responses. New York: Routledge, pp. 216–26.
6 Roberts also lays a great deal of stress on the comparison to our knowledge of other
minds, but does not take Berkeley to be following Descartes here.
7 This causes obvious problems for belief in miracles. For Berkeley’s response to these
difficulties, see P 63; Passive Obedience 14.
8 For Berkeley’s view of the status of articles of faith, see the section ‘Faith and reason’
below.
9 In a 1713 Guardian essay, Berkeley makes a slightly more ambitious attempt ‘to
evince that there are grounds to expect a future state, without supposing in the
reader any faith at all, not even the belief of a Deity’ (Works 7:181). One of the
arguments from the Guardian essay reappears in two later sermons (Works 7:73,
114–15), and also in Alciphron (Alc 6.11). Due to limitations of space, these
arguments will not be discussed here.
10 Collins appears under the pseudonym ‘Diagoras’ (Taranto 2010: Taranto, Pascal
(2010) ‘Le personnage de Diagoras’, in Jaffro, Laurent, Geneviéve Brykman, and
Claire Schwartz, eds, (2010), Berkeley’s Alciphron: English Text and Essays in
Interpretation. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, pp. 361–70).
11 According to James O’Higgins, in this discussion Berkeley follows the late Medieval
philosopher-theologian Thomas de Vio Cajetan ‘with remarkable closeness’ (O’Higgins
1976: O’Higgins, James (1976), ‘Browne and King, Collins and Berkeley: agnosticism
or anthropomorphism?’, Journal of Theological Studies, 27, (1), 88–112, 96).
12 Although Collins purported to be a Deist, Berkeley accused him of secretly being an
atheist (Alc Advertisement, 4.16; TVV 6). For discussion, see: Berman 1988, ch. 3:
Berman, David (1988), A History of Atheism in Britain: From Hobbes to Russell.
London: Croom Helm; Berman 1994, 78, 164–6: Berman, David (1994), George
Berkeley: Idealism and the Man. Oxford: Clarendon Press; Taranto 2010, 361.
13 Browne interpreted Berkeley’s discussion in Alciphron as a criticism of his Procedure
(Browne 1729: Browne, Peter (1729), The Procedure, Limits, and Extent of Human
Understanding (2nd edn). London: Williman Innys), so that when he published
Divine Analogy (Browne 1733: Browne, Peter (1733), Things Divine and Supernatural
Conceived by Analogy with Things Natural and Human. London: William Innys/
Richard Manby) he appended a reply to Berkeley that took up nearly one-third of
the book. It seems, though, that Browne was mistaken and King was Berkeley’s
primary target in Alciphron (Berman 1976, 23: Berman, David (1976), Introduction
to W. King 1709; O’Higgins 1976, 94). Berkeley would, however, have been familiar
with Browne’s earlier discussion of the doctrine of analogy in his Letter against
Toland (Browne 1697, 37–58: Browne, Peter (1697), A Letter in Answer to a Book
Entitled Christianity not Mysterious. Dublin: John North; see Berman 1976, 21–2;
Pearce 2014: Pearce, Kenneth L. (2014), ‘Berkeley’s Lockean religious epistemology’,
Journal of the History of Ideas, 75, (3), 417–38.). On Berkeley’s relation to Browne, see
Hight 2013, letter 246: Hight, Marc A., ed. (2013), The Correspondence of George
Berkeley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; TVV 6; Olscamp 1970b, ch. 9:
Olscamp, P. J. (1970b), The Moral Philosophy of George Berkeley. The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff; Winnett 1974, ch. 11: Winnett, Arthur Robert (1974), Peter Browne: Provost,
Bishop, Metaphysician. London: SPCK .
14 One of the main aims of Browne 1697 had been to argue that ‘authority’ is an
independent source of knowledge, distinct from ‘evidence’.
15 One commentator who does quote the entry in full and recognize its primarily
religious significance is Roberts 2007, 142–3: Roberts, John Russell (2007), A
Metaphysics for the Mob: The Philosophy of George Berkeley. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
16 On Berkeley’s interpretation of Shaftesbury, see Olscamp 1970b, ch. 6; Jaffro 2007:
Jaffro, Laurent (2007), ‘Berkeley’s criticism of Shaftesbury’s moral theory in Alciphron
III ’, in Daniel 2007, pp. 199–213.
17 The structure of the argument in Alciphron VI has been examined by Jakapi 2010:
Jakapi, Roomet (2010), ‘Berkeley’s defense of the Scripture in Alciphron VI ’, in Jaffro
et al. 2010, pp. 353–6, and Charles 2011: Charles, Sébastien (2011), ‘Foi, croyance et
raison selon Berkeley’, Science et Esprit, 63, (2), 135–47. For more details on Alciphron
and its arguments, see Chapter 10 of this volume.
18 The doctrine of the afterlife I describe can be found in the Belgic Confession (1561),
art. 37; the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), questions 57–8; the Irish Articles of Religion
(1615), §§101–3; and the Westminster Confession (1647), chs. 32–3. None of these
documents was considered authoritative by the Anglican Church in Berkeley’s day
(and the Thirty-Nine Articles are silent on this matter), but the view continued to be
the standard one.
19 Locke’s ambivalence on this point led to his being charged with Socinianism (Milner
1700, 187: Milner, John (1700), An Account of Mr. Locke’s Religion, Out of his Own
Writings, and in his Own Words. London: J. Nutt). Socinianism was among the most
extreme movements of the radical Reformation, emphasizing individual, rational
interpretation of Scripture and showing open hostility toward tradition. Locke’s
relationship to Socinianism is studied in detail by Marshall 2000: Marshall, John
(2000), ‘Locke, Socinianism, “Socinianism”, and Unitarianism’, in M. A. Stewart (ed.),
English Philosophy in the Age of Locke, vol. 3 of Oxford Studies in the History of
Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 111–82.
20 Arianism is the view that the Son of God was the first and greatest creature, by
whom all other creatures were made, and is called ‘god’ or ‘divine’ only as an
honorific title. Orthodox Trinitarianism, by contrast, holds that the Son is ‘begotten,
not made, being of one substance with the Father’ (‘The Niceno-Constantinopolitan
Creed’, in Schaff 1931, 2:58: Schaff, Philip, ed, (1931), The Creeds of Christendom (6th
edn), revised by David S. Schaff. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007), and hence is a
divine person in precisely the same sense as the Father.
21 On the circumstances that may have occasioned this preoccupation, see Belfrage
1985, 117–19: Belfrage, Bertil (1985), ‘The clash on semantics in Berkeley’s Notebook
A’, Hermathena, 139, 117–26; Berman 1994, 11–17.
22 Inserted above a caret mark.
23 Belfrage, however, never applied his thesis beyond the Manuscript Introduction, and
in a later paper he explicitly agrees that Berkeley would have been dissatisfied with
this account. He therefore holds that Berkeley’s view underwent significant

‘transformation’ throughout the course of his career (Belfrage 2007, 51: Belfrage,
Bertil (2007), ‘The theological positivism of George Berkeley (1707–1708)’, Acta
Philosophica Fennica, 83, 37–52.).
24 The doctrine of Original Sin states that human beings inherit moral corruption from
the first sin of Adam. In the West, a stronger version, sometimes called ‘Original
Guilt’, has traditionally been held. According to this view each of us bears moral
responsibility for Adam’s sin.
Bibliography
Works by George Berkeley
For a detailed account of Berkeley’s works, see Geoffrey Keynes, A Bibliography of

George Berkeley Bishop of Cloyne. The Soho Bibliographies. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1976.
Works published in Berkeley’s lifetime

Arithmetica absque Algebra aut Euclide Demonstrata. Cui accesserunt, Cogitata Nonnulla
de Radicibus Surdis. de Æstu Aeris, de Ludo Algebraico, &c. [Arithmetic demonstrated
without Euclid or algebra. To which are added, some thoughts concerning surds, the
atmospheric tide, the Algebraic Game, etc.]. The book has this second title page for the
‘Cogitata Nonnulla’: Miscellanea Mathematica: sive Cogitata Nonnulla, de Radicibus, de
Æstu Aeris, de Cono æquilatero & Cylindro eidem Sphæræcircumscriptis, de Ludo
Algebraico; & Parænetica quædam ad Studium Matheseos, præsertim Algebræ
[Mathematical miscellanies: or some thoughts on surd roots, the atmospheric tide, an
equilateral cone and cylinder circumscribed with the same sphere, on the Algebraic
Game; and some reasons for studying mathematics, especially algebra] London: Typis
J. Matthews, Impenis A. & J. Churchill, . . . & Jer. Pepyat Dubl . . . MDCCVII . [This
edition appeared in London (1707) in two versions. In the second, he added a few errata
and a comment connected with the Algebraic Game.]
An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision. Dublin: Jeremy Pepyat, 1709. [A second
edition, including an Appendix answering criticism (from William King), appeared the
same year. Three further editions followed in 1732, appended to editions of Alciphron,
without the Appendix.]
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowle[d]ge. Part I. Wherein the chief
Causes of Error and Difficulty in the Sciences, with the Grounds of Scepticism, Atheism,
and Irreligion, are inquir’d into. Dublin: Jeremy Pepyat, 1710. [A second edition was
published with the Three Dialogues, London: Jacob Tonson, 1734.]
Passive Obedience, or, the Christian Doctrine of Not Resisting the Supreme Power,
Proved and Vindicated upon the Principles of the Law of Nature. In a Discourse Deliver’d
at the College-Chappel. Dublin: Jeremy Pepyat, 1712. [Two London editions followed the
same year. Berkeley did not include Passive Obedience in A Miscellany 1752.]
Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. The Design of which Is plainly to
demonstrate the Reality and Perfection of Humane Knowle[d]ge, the Incorporeal Nature
484
Bibliography 485
of the Soul, and the Immediate Providence of a Deity: In Opposition to Sceptics and
Atheists. Also, To Open a Method for Rendering the Sciences More Easy, Useful, and
Compendious. London: Henry Clements, 1713. [Unsold sheets of this edition were
bound in 1725 with a new title page, misleadingly presented as ‘The Second Edition’. A
second edition, printed with the Principles, appeared in London: Jacob Tonson, 1734.
The Dedication and the Preface are omitted from this edition, and the sentence ‘Also, To
open a Method for rendering the Sciences more easy, useful, and compendious’ is
excluded from the title page.]
Advice to the Tories Who have Taken the Oaths. [A pamphlet published anonymously.
London: R. Burleigh, 1715.]
De Motu; sive, De Motus Principio & Natura, & de Causa Communicationis Motuum
[On Motion: Or The Principle and Nature of Motion and the Cause of the
Communication of Motions]. London: Jacob Tonson, 1721. [New editions were
included in the Dublin and London editions of A Miscellany 1752.]
An Essay Towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain. London: J. Roberts, 1721.
[New editions were included in the Dublin and London editions of A Miscellany 1752.]
A Proposal For the better Supplying of Churches in our Foreign Plantations, and for
Converting the Savage Americans to Christianity. London: H. Woodfall, 1724. [A second
London edition appeared in 1725 with several additions. The title page adds ‘By a
College to be erected in the Summer Islands, otherwise called the Isles of Bermuda’. On a
few copies the title page adds ‘sold by J. Roberts’. The first Dublin edition 1725, as well as
the editions included in A Miscellany 1752, follow the second London edition.]
A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish-Church of St. Mary-le-Bow,
On Friday, February 18, 1731. London: J. Downing, 1732. [A second issue of this edition
appeared the same year with a slightly different title page. New editions were included
in the editions of the Miscellany 1752.]
Alciphron: or, the Minute Philosopher. In Seven Dialogues. Containing an Apology for
the Christian Religion, against those who are called Free-thinkers [in two volumes with
the Theory of Vision appended] London: J. Tonson, 1732. [A Dublin edition and a
second London edition appeared in 1732 with the Theory of Vision. The third, one-
volume, London edition in 1752 did not include the Theory of Vision. The numbering of
the sections in the seventh dialogue of the 1752 edition is confusing, because Berkeley
omitted sections 5–7 on abstract ideas, so sections 8–23 in the three first editions are
numbered 5–20 in the last edition, in which no sections are numbered 21–23. From
section 24 the numbering is the same in all editions.]
The Theory of Vision, or Visual Language, shewing The Immediate Presence and
Providence of a Deity, Vindicated and Explained. London: J. Tonson, 1733.
The Analyst; or, A Discourse Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician. Wherein It is
examined whether the Object, Principles, and Inferences of the modern Analysis are
more distinctly conceived, or more evidently deduced, than Religious Mysteries and
Points of Faith. London: J. Tonson, 1734. [A Dublin edition appeared the same year.]
486 Bibliography
A Defence of Free-Thinking in Mathematics. In Answer To a Pamphlet of Philalethes

Cantabrigiensis, intituled, Geometry no Friend to Infidelity, or a Defence of Sir Isaac
Newton, and the British Mathematicians. Also an Appendix concerning Mr. Walton’s
Vindication of the Principles of Fluxions against the Objections contained in the Analyst.
Wherein It is attempted to put this Controversy in such a Light as that every Reader
may be able to judge thereof. London: J. Tonson, 1735. [A Dublin edition was published
the same year.]
Reasons For not Replying to Mr. Walton’s Full Answer In a Letter to P. T. P. By the
Author of the Minute Philosopher. Dublin: R. Gunne, 1735. [A second issue, to which the
Appendix of Walton’s pamphlet was added to the second impression of this edition.]
The Querist, containing Several Queries, Proposed to the Consideration of the Public.
Dublin: G. Tisk, G. Ewing, and W. Smith, 1735. [A new edition appeared in London:
J. Roberts, 1736.]
Part II . Dublin: G. Tisk, G. Ewing, and W. Smith, 1736. [A London edition, printed for
J. Roberts, was published the same year.]
Part III . Dublin: G. Tisk, G. Ewing, and W. Smith, 1737. [With another edition in
London: J. Roberts, 1737.]
Queries Relating to a National Bank, Extracted from the Querist. Also a Letter
containing A Plan or Sketch of such Bank. Republished with Notes. Dublin: George
Faulkner, 1737.
The Querist containing Several Queries, Proposed to the Consideration of the Public.
The Second Edition, with Additions. Dublin: George Failkner, 1750. [Berkeley writes in
the ‘Advertisement by the Author’: ‘The three Parts [forming the first edition] are
published in one: some few Queries are added and many omitted, particularly of those
relating to the Sketch or Plan of a national Bank; which it may be Time enough to take
again in Hand, when the Public shall seem disposed to make Use of such an Expedient.’
Four issues of this edition appeared with new title pages announcing (incorrectly) the
‘third’, ‘fourth’ and ‘fifth edition’. A second London edition appeared the same year with ‘A
Word to the Wise’. New editions, with ‘A Word to the Wise’, followed in London and
Glasgow 1751. Finally, The Querist was included in the editions of A Miscellany in 1752.]
A Discourse Addressed to Magistrates and Men in Authority. Occasioned By the
enormous Licence, and Irreligion of the Times. Dublin: George Faulkner, 1738. [A Cork
edition and a London edition in three issues followed the same year. The second and
third of these London impressions added ‘A Report from the Lords Committees for
Religion’, 1737. In a second Dublin edition, 1738, there are a few changes including the
addition of footnotes. The Discourse was included in the editions of A Miscellany 1752.
Geoffrey Keynes observed that there are two states of the Dublin edition of A Miscellany
with considerable changes in the Discourse. One section was added in the second state,
two sections and a few footnotes omitted, and a few pages reset with a number of minor
changes.]
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Siris: A Chain of Philosophical Reflexions and Inquiries Concerning the Virtues

of Tar Water, And diverse other Subjects connected together and arising one from
another. Dublin: R. Gunnes, 1744. [This was a great success. It appeared
in several editions and occasioned a great number of books and
pamphlets.]
A Word to the Wise: or, an Exhortation to the Roman Catholic Clergy of Ireland. By a
Member of the Established Church. Dublin: 1749. [This pamphlet was first published
anonymously, but in the second Dublin edition 1749, and in later editions, it was
published as ‘the Bishop of Cloyne’s Exhortation to the Roman Catholic Clergy’. It was
appended to the London and Glasgow editions of The Querist 1750 and included in the
editions of A Miscellany 1752.]
Berkeley, G. ed. (1714), The Ladies Library, 3 Volumes. London: Jacob Tonson.
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1752).
Collected works of George Berkeley

Stock, J., ed. (1784), Works of George Berkeley, D.D. Late Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland. To
which is added, An Account of his Life, and Several of his Letters . . . In two volumes.
Dublin: Printed by John Exshaw, and London: Printed for G. Robinson, and John
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Tegg and Son.
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. . ., and of De Motu, and annotations to the Introduction to the Principles by
G. N. Wright. London: Printed for Thomas Tegg.
Fraser, A. C., ed. (1871), The Works of George Berkeley, D.D. Formerly Bishop of Cloyne.
Collected and Edited with Prefaces and Annotations. In three volumes. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Sampson, G., ed. (1897), The Works of George Berkeley, D. D. Bishop of Cloyne. In three
volumes. With a biographical introduction by the rt. Hon. A. J. Balfour, M. P. London:
George Bell and Sons.
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Belfrage, B., ed. (1987), George Berkeley’s Manuscript Introduction. An edition
diplomatica transcribed and edited with introduction and commentary. Oxford:
Doxa.
Breidert, W., ed. (1969), Berkeley, G., Schriften über die Grundlagen der Mathematik und
Physik, Einleitung und Übersetzung von Wolfgang Breidert, Frankfurt a. M.:
Suhrkamp (reprinted 1985).
Hight, M. A., ed. (2013), The Correspondence of George Berkeley. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Luce, A. A., ed. (1944), Philosophical Commentaries, Generally Called the Commonplace
Book. London: Thomas Nelson.
Park, D., ed. (1984), The Notebooks of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne. Facsimile of
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Thomas, G. H., ed. (1975), Philosophical Commentaries with explanatory notes by
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Index
Academics 127 Arithmetica 436, 437

Abbott, Thomas 85 Armstrong, David 68, 85
absolute motion 158, 164 Arnauld, Antoine 248, 339
abstract ideas 240, 241, 422, 423, 425, 426, Ashe, St George 7, 436
428, 431, 432 Ashe, St George, Jr. 10
abstraction, doctrine of 101–3, 114, 116, Astell, Mary 9, 26–9, 34
117, 411, 415, 425–7, 431, 441 atheism 121, 334, 446, 453, 462–4, 470, 471
action 438 Atherton, Margaret 314, 347, 373, 397,
active, 434 463–4
Addison, Joseph 9, 27, 59 atomism 441
Advice to the Tories 9, 15 Aubry, Jean-Baptiste 339
aesthetics 178, 181 Augustine of Hippo 115
aether 216 authority 470
afterlife 151, 458, 468, 473–5 A Word to the Wise 15, 206, 208
agent 232, 430, 433 Ayer, A. J. 71
agistment tithe 212 Ayers, Michael 463
agriculture 198, 200, 201
Airaksinen, Timo 157, 191 Bacon, Francis 437
Alciphron 209, 217, 446, 454, 464–6, 469–72 Bailey, Samuel 85
Philosophy of language in 423, 427–9, bank
431–3, 437, 438, 442, 476–8 advantages of 204
Aldridge, Alfred Owen 178 management of 204
algebra 435, 437, 447, 448, 452 public or private 205
algebraic game 436 banking, history of 204
Allaire, Edwin B. 399 Barrow, Isaac 93, 447
America 198, 219 Barruel, Augustin 338
Analyst 438, 446, 452 Barry, James, 7th earl of Barrymore 208
Analyst controversy 452, 453 Bayle, Pierre 100, 122–4, 127, 133, 248, 249,
Anglicanism 466, 473 293, 314, 335
animal spirits 182, 191 Beardsley, William 397
Annesley, Dorothea 53 Beattie, James 288
Anselm of Canterbury 182 being 438
aphelion 163 Belfrage, Bertil 44, 48, 210, 413, 419, 420,
aporia 127 475, 478, 482, 483
appearances 127, 129 benevolence and sociability 152, 202
Arbuthnot, John 59 Bennett, Jonathan 345, 347, 388, 389,
archetypes 464 429, 461–3
argument from the PPI 271–4 Benson, Martin 12, 58, 61
argumentum ad absurdum 443 Bergier, Nicolas-Sylvestre 337
Aristotle 68, 102, 115, 182, 185, 200, 208 Berington, Joseph 338
272, 448, 450 Berkeley (née Forster), Anne 5, 11, 12, 21, 24
arithmetic 436, 437, 454 Berkeley (née Frinsham), Eliza 11, 55
514
Index 515
Berkeley, George Bradley, F. H. 68

appeal to Catholic clergy 206 Bray, Thomas 22, 31, 32, 40, 41, 43
as bishop of Cloyne 61 Brewer, Bill 75
and the Bermuda project 58, 60 Britain 198, 200, 201
and book donation to Yale 58, 60 Brook, Richard 98, 376, 384, 460
master argument 65 Browne, Peter 177, 183, 184, 190, 469,
meeting Benson in Italy 58 470, 478
and missing family letters 61 Brykman, Geneviève 1, 174
occasionalism 295 Buffier, Claude 335
and tar water 61 Burgersdijck, Franco 7
Berkeley, George and Leibniz 254 Burnyeat, Myles 127
divisibility 258 Butler, Joseph 186, 189
explanation 259 Butler, Samuel 453
force 257 Byrd, William 12
happiness 262
language of nature 262 Caffentzis, George 204
phenomenalism 256 Cajetan, Thomas de Vio 481
teleology 262 calculus 435, 445, 446, 448–50, 452, 453
Berkeley, George Jr. 5 Campailla, Tommaso 54, 60
Berkeley, George Monck 55 Campbell, John 74
Berkeley, Robert (Robin) 61 Caraccioli, Louis Antoine 338
Berkeley, Thomas 61 Caramuel, Juan 435
Berlioz, Dominique 445 Cartesianism 127, 335, 435
Berman, David 15, 50, 54, 95, 174, 190, 237, Catholic clergy 206
347, 406, 477, 478 causality 230, 233, 336, 442, 459, 460, 463,
Bermuda project 56, 446 466–8
Bernon, Gabriel 53, 60 cause
Bettcher, Talia 401, 411 efficient 159, 261
Bible 186, 187, 470, 472–4, 482 final 261
Bindon, David 196, 203 of sensations, not immediately
Bird, Alexander 73 perceived 271
Biro, John 325 Cavalieri, Bonaventura 447, 448
Blackburn, Simon 70 Cavalierian method 446, 447
Blay, Michel 446 centrifugal effect 165
blind agency 409, 463–4 Chalmers, David 73
bodies 127, 367, 374, 461, 464, 468, Chandler, Edward 187
473–4 Charles, Sébastien 334
Boerhaave, Herman 221 chess 436
Bolingbroke, Henry 288 Chisholm, Roderick M. 273
Boncerf, Claude Joseph 339 Christianity, orthodox 122
Bonnet, Charles 338 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 177
Bordner, S. Seth 348 circulation, of money and goods 199
Boscovich, R. J. 73 Clap, Thomas 60
Boullier, David-Renaud 338 Clarke, Henry 53
Boyle, Dorothy 52 Clarke, Samuel 288
Boyle, Richard, 4th earl of Orrery 208 coach example 271, 272
Boyle, Robert 226 Collier, Arthur 121, 249
Boyle, John 52 Collins, Anthony 175, 177, 187, 469,
Bracken, Harry M. 342 481
516 Index
colours Diderot, Denis 311, 337

apparent 131 differentials 452
not inherent in external bodies 301 Diogenes Laertius 124
real 131 Discourse to Magistrates 13
commerce 29, 32–4, 43 disposition 438
common sense 121, 182, 335, 385, 386, distance, not perceived immediately by
388–90, 395, 396, 461, 462, 465 sight 304, 305, 312
apologetic defense 344 divine language thesis 320
dismissive accounts 345 divine mind 438
and materialism 349 divine plan 202, 209
and monotheism 349 divisibility 258, 440, 449
perspectival accounts 348 infinite 442, 443, 448
propositional accounts 347 Dobbs, Arthur 196, 198, 201
and scepticism 350, 351 dogmatism 123, 127, 129, 130
vindication account 350 Donellan, Anne 11
compensation of error 450, 452 Doney, Willis 251
Condillac, Étienne Bonnot de 336 Downing, Lisa 189
consciousness 417 dream 275, 277, 280, 283, 284
consumption, stimulus to growth 199, dualism 238
200, 202 Dublin Philosophical Society 7
context 437 Dubois, Dorothea 61
continuity argument 449, 458, 461–4, 466 Ducasse, C. J. 66
continuum 448 Dummett, Michael 64, 70
Coram, Thomas 31, 32, 40, 43 a modern Berkelian 75
Cordemoy, Géraud de 248 Dykstal, Timothy 177
corpuscularism 217
cosmological proof 335 Earman, John 169
covering law 160 economic activity/growth 202
creation 393 and education 208
Creator 183, 184 increases employment 199
‘crooked oar’ passage 276, 277 education
Cummins, Philip 416 of Native Americans 22–4, 26, 28, 29,
36–8, 40, 43
Dalton, Richard 60 of women 26–9, 34, 40
Daniel, Stephen 401, 413 educational reform 24, 25, 28, 29, 31–9
Dechales, Claude-François Milliet 447, 448 egoism 334
Defence of Free-Thinking in Mathematics Einstein, Albert 71
453 Elisabeth of Bohemia, Princess 112
deism 469, 481 emotion 438
De ludo algebraico 436 emotive language theory 156, 437, 477
demonstration 462–3, 466, 477 empiricism 435
de Montaigne, Michel 100 Empiricus, Sextus 122, 123, 125–7, 129–31
De Motu 10 Epicureans 112, 114
Descartes, René 7, 102, 137, 182, 217, 218, epistemology 335
228, 229, 231, 233, 247–52, 270, 278, Essay towards preventing the Ruin
291, 296, 300, 308, 314, 339, 435–7, of GB 10
446, 465, 466 esse is percipere 135
Dewey, John 279 esse is percipi 101, 105, 128, 387, 390, 391, 394
Dicker, Georges 98, 317, 343, 364, 461, 462 essence 336
Index 517
ethical objectivism 153 free will 234, 235, 240, 469

ethics 217, 458, 468, 474, 476, 479 agent causation 322
Euclid of Alexandria 190, 436, 440, 441, automaticity 321
449, 454, 455 compatibilism 322
Euclidean geometry 117 determinism 323
Euler, Leonhard 307 fundamentalism 154
evil 467, 469
Ewing, A. C. 63 Galenic medicine 221, 225
exactitude 449 Galilei, Galileo 103
experience 337 Garrett, Don 320
experimentalism 218 Gassendi, Pierre 7, 112, 122
experimentum crucis 303 generalizing abstraction 100
explanans 161 geodesy 436
explanation 259 geometry 437, 440, 452, 454
extension 336, 440, 437, 443, 449 finitistic 441
Cartesian view of 135 of minima 441
conception of 303 non-Euclidean 454, 455
external (material) things 300 of sight 454
inconceivability of 302 of touch 454
reality of 127 Gervais, Isaac 53, 58
unknowability of 300 ghosts of departed quantities 453
Gibson, Edmund 12, 53, 54, 60
faculties of the mind God 181, 182, 184, 374, 390, 391, 427, 430,
imagination 274 443, 477
reason or understanding 274 attributes of 458, 464, 466, 468,
Fairfax, Brian 60 474
faith 185, 188, 468, 472, 473, 478 causality 229, 230
famine 198, 206 existence of 105, 106, 182, 184, 185,
Fardella, Michelangelo 248 189, 458–66, 468, 470, 472
fashion 203 grace 188, 189, 467–8
Fénelon, Bertrand Salignac de la Mothe 9 knowledge of 416, 465
Fénelon, François 26 language 183–5
fictionalism 448 gold and silver 198, 199, 200, 208
finitism 449 Gooch, William 12
fixed stars 166 goodness
Flage, Daniel 176, 178, 397, 404 divine 150
Flew, Anthony 314, 428, 429 natural 149
fluxions 435, 447–50 good will 337
force 161, 257 grace 427
formalism 448, 453, 454 gravity, gravitational 160
Forster, Nicholas 61 Guardian essays 9
‘deviant space’ argument 79
a modern Berkelian 78 Hall, A.R. 162
Foster, John 64 Halley, Edmond 446
Foucher, Simon 133 hallucination 275, 277, 279, 280, 283,
Frankel, Melissa 397 284
Fraser, A.C. 50, 54 Hanmer, Thomas 54, 62
freedom 175, 186, 189–91, 235 happiness 202, 203, 209, 262
freethinkers 121, 470 Harvey, William 232
518 Index
Hegelian idealism, British 63, 66 immaterialism 123, 125, 136, 238, 343, 352,
Helvétius, Claude-Adrien 337 387, 388, 396, 462
heterogeneity 311, 357, 441, 455 Cartesian roots of 248
Hicks, George 240 immediate perception 270–2, 281, 355
Higgins-Biddle, John C. 186 conflation of no-inference and
Hilbert, David 448, 454 epistemological sense 275, 276,
Hinton, Edward 6 279, 365
Hoadly, John 53, 61, 274 conflation of no-inference and
Hobbes, Thomas 112, 115, 177, 179 no-suggestion senses 273, 274
Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry d’ 337 and distance 272, 304
Holland 205 epistemological sense 275, 276,
Homberg, Wilhelm 221 282, 283
homogeneity 452 of ideas 270
homology 452 material things not immediately
Hooker, Michael 465 perceived 270, 281
Hume, David 63, 181, 187, 299–301, 303 no-inference sense 273–5, 282
copy principle 320 no-suggestion sense 271, 272, 275, 283
empiricist principle of 302 psychological (no-inference) sense
scepticism 314 283, 365
separability principle 321 senses of 274
table argument of 300, 306 strong epistemological sense 276, 277
Humphreys, David 60 immortality 335, 468, 470
Hutcheson, Francis 181, 190 impenetrability 336
Hutchinson, John 226 impression 336
Huygens, Christiaan 438 incommensurability 441
Hypostases 123 indivisibles 447, 448
inference 272, 273
iatrochemists 221, 223 conscious 273
idealism 99, 104, 299, 343, 393 distinguished from suggestion 274, 363
advantage of 112–14, 116 from ideas 274
objections to 106–11 to the best explanation 284, 466, 467
proof of 101, 102, 107 unconscious 273
idealist 390 versus perception 273
ideas infinite regress of corroborations 280, 283
abstract 440–2, 474 infinitesimals 435, 438, 445, 446, 449,
can be like nothing but ideas 302 450, 452
connection of 439 infinity 435, 443
of imagination 460 Ingram, Robert 186
in the mind 126 innate, in Hume’s sense 303
material causes of 126 instrumentalism 438, 445, 453, 454
passivity of 459–60, 468 intentionalism 75
of quantity 438 inverted retinal image, problem of the 304,
of sense 359, 460, 466–8 308–10, 312
sensible 359 inverting lenses 309–11
of spirit 413, 416 invisible hand 202
identity 473 Ireland
illusion 275, 279 depressed condition 196, 198
imagination 442 differential rationality in 202
faculty of 314, 316, 321 economic crisis in, responses to 198
Index 519
isolated economy 199 King, E. G. 465

National Bank 199, 204 King, William 8, 87, 469, 470
natural resources 198 Kivy, Peter 181
woollen exports 201 knowledge
Irish gentry by analogy 445
absentees 201 immediate 412
extravagance 199 Knox, Ronald 387, 390
growth benefits 201 Kochiraas, Hylari 164
promote local economy 203
self-interest 203 language 183, 239, 421–4, 428, 430–1, 434
Irish parliament, legislators 437–9
Berkeley’s criticism of 205, 206, analogical 468–70
208 human 465
directs economy 200, 202 of nature 458, 464–6
establish National Bank 199, 204 religious 468–70, 474–8
failure to set up National Bank Lanion, François de 248
205 Law, John 204
role in National Bank 205 law of visual direction 303, 309
Irish poor laws of motion 159
benefit rich 203 LeClerc, Jean 53, 59
coerced to work 203 Le François, Laurent 337
favoured over rich 199, 204 Leibniz, G. W. 68, 162, 164, 254, 435, 438,
idleness 201, 203, 206 439, 446–9, 453, 454
irrationality 203 divisibility 258
restricted expectations 203 explanation 261
irreligion 121 force 257
happiness 263
Jacobite Rebellion 206, 208 phenomenalism 256
Jaffro, Laurent 174, 178, 404 Lelarge de Lignac, Joseph-Adrien 339
Jakapi, Roomet 406, 478 Leyburn, Ellen 207
James, John 60 libertinism 335
Jammer, Max 164 life 234
Jan Baptist van 222 Liger, René 338
Janssson, Lina 161 Likeness Principle 268, 285, 302
Jesseph, Douglas 446 limit value 452, 453
Jessop, T. E. 1, 177, 217, 238 Linden, D.W. 55, 62
Joannet, Claude 339 linguistic idealism 67
Johnson, Samuel 54, 57, 60, 251 Locke, John 7, 9, 26, 68, 100, 102, 107, 132,
Johnston, G. A. 249 178, 179, 187, 189, 200, 250, 252,
Jolley, Nicholas 472 268–71, 279, 285, 286, 292, 297, 311,
judgement, suspension of 123 351, 413, 425, 426, 435, 441, 442,
Jurin, James 452, 453 472–4
abstract ideas 425–7
Kant, Immanuel 181, 274 ‘concurrent reasons’ passage 280, 282
Kendrick, Nancy 9, 157 inference to the best explanation
Kennet, Basil 9 280, 282
Kepler, Johannes 187, 308 moral judgements 156
Keynes, Geoffrey 174, 176 political liberalism 31, 41
Kilkenny College 6 primary qualities 293
520 Index
Lockwood, Michael 73 Migely, Genevieve 408

logic 449 Mill, John Stuart 85, 314
Luce, A. A. 1, 6, 15, 50, 289, 351, 413 mind 159, 232, 233
and missing Swift letters 59 Cartesian account 397
luxury 201 Humean account 397, 412
nature of 250
Mach, Ernst 71, 158 minima sensibilia 440, 441, 443, 444, 447
Machamer, Peter 164 miracles 187, 188, 467
Madden, Samuel 204 Mississippi scheme 204, 205
magnitude ‘mite’ argument 74
apparent and real 301 Molnar, George 73
visible and tangible 301, 306 Molyneux, Samuel 7, 53, 59, 441, 454
Malebranche, Nicolas 9, 110, 248, 249, 270, Molyneux, William 7, 16, 247, 307
300, 307, 314, 334, 436, 437 Molyneux’s Problem 70, 79, 311, 312, 315,
existence of matter hard to prove 290 319
primary qualities, relativity of 292 monad 336
vision of things in God 294 money
Mander, W. J. 63 different forms of 212
Mandeville, Bernard 175, 177–9, 190, paper 198, 199, 204
200 as pledge 200
Martin, C. B 73 substance of 200
master argument 104, 105, 345 as ticket 200
materialism 101, 103, 104, 106, 110–17, monism 238, 334
123, 126, 334, 468, 473, 474 Montaigne, Michel de 122, 124, 127
material things, 336 moon illusion 304, 306, 307, 312
denial of 126 Moore, G. E. 66
not known by inference 282 moral goods vs. public goods 30, 33, 43
mathematics 435 moral motivation 150, 458, 468, 476, 479
mathematization 446 moral sense 181
matter, schoolmen’s concept of 292 morality 121, 176, 181, 189, 436
Maxwell, Grover 73 utilitarianism 178
McCracken, Charles 96–7, 249, 293, Mordaunt, Charles, Third Earl of
408, 413 Peterborough 9
McDonnell, Thomas 50 Moses 393
McDowell, John 67 motion 136
McGuire, J.E. 164 Muehlmann, Robert G. 344, 397, 413
McKim, Robert 409 Mumford, Stephen 73
meaning 438 Mun, Thomas 198
meaning, theory of 118, 119, 406, 438 mysteries 145–7, 150, 474–8
mediate perception 270, 271, 355
mental representation 314, 321 Nagel, Thomas 74
psychological association 318 natural law 150, 178
resemblance 316 natural philosophy 158
suggestion 314 negative theology 184
mercantilism Nélis, Corneille de 338
harms Ireland 198 Neo-platonism 69
state direction of economy 200, 208 neutral monism 72
metaphysics 158, 121, 136 Newman, Henry 58
Micellanea mathematica 447 Newton, criticism of
Index 521
on absolute space, time, and motion Pellham-Holles, Thomas 61

116 perceptibility 440, 443
Optics 164 perception 355, 391, 443
Principia 158 act-object model of 136
Newton, Isaac 115, 187, 216, 218, 226, 227, acquired vs. original 304, 305
229–31, 236, 435, 447–50, 452, 453 conceptual and non-conceptual 356,
Nicholas of Cusa 435 371, 372, 383
Nieuwentijt, Bernhard 446 immediate v. mediate 317, 355
nihilarians 438, 449 infallibility thesis 361
nominalism 441, 454 manifest quality thesis 360
Nonnotte, Claude-François 337 natural 357
Norris, John 248 representative theory of 356–7
Notebooks 435, 437, 440, 443, 445–7, 449 sensible 440
nothing 443, 445, 450 of situation 308–10
notions 303, 416, 417 Percival, John 5, 11, 50, 51, 56, 204
abstract 189 Percival, Lady 393
number 436–8, 454 Perceval, Philip 204
Nurock, Vanessa 471 persistence 391
person 413, 417
objects person born blind 439
ordinary 385 Petty, William 200
sensible 99, 100, 102, 104, 106, 109, 338, phenomena, denial of 126
391 phenomenalism 256, 393
occasionalism 295 phenomenalist 392
occult quality 162 Philosophical Society of Dublin 436
Of Infinites 7, 8, 445, 449 Philosophical Transactions 436
O’Higgins, James 470 philosophy of mathematics 435, 445
Olscamp, Paul 178 philosophy of science 136
optical illusions 440 physics 476–8
Owen, David 325 Pichon, Thomas-Jean 338
Pinto, Isaac de 338
Paley, William 465 Pitcher, George 347, 368, 381, 391,
Paman, Roger 446 399
Pappas, George 271, 285, 286, 317, 344, Plato 182, 235, 279
347, 364, 399 Platonism 217, 437, 440
Paracelcus 221, 223 Plug, Cornelis 307
paradoxes 124 Pluquet, François André Adrien 338
of infinity 441 political liberalism 31, 41
Para du Phanjas, François 339 Pope, Alexander 9, 59
Parfit, Derek 69 Popkin, Richard 122–4, 127, 133, 314
Parigi, Silvia 445 Popper, Karl 63, 71, 158
particles 414, 417 population 200, 208
passions 186, 438 positivism 72
passive 433 PPI (Principle of Perceptual Immediacy)
Passive Obedience 8, 150–4, 186–8 270, 272, 273, 275
inconsistency in 141 prejudices 187
passivity argument 458–460, 463, 466 prejudices, exploitation of 205
Peacocke, Christopher 73 Prévost, Antoine François 335
pedagogy 436 primary qualities 335
522 Index
principle of charity 270 Reid, Thomas 288, 299–313, 314, 455

principles 422, 424 relations 68
Principles 8, 10, 15, 437–9, 441, 442, 445, religion 176, 189, 217, 458
446 natural 175, 185, 458, 459, 477, 479, 480
Prior, Thomas 11, 14, 54, 55, 57, 196, 198, revealed 175, 185, 458, 472
204, 207 social function 185
Project Prakash 312 religious practice 458, 470–2, 475, 478–80
proof, mathematical 450 representability 449
proper object of sense 272 representation 439, 441–3, 445, 448
providence 178, 181 representationalism 75
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite 184 republic of science 453
Ptolemy, Claudius 306 Rickless, Samuel 271, 275–7, 279, 317, 324
public good 178 Riemann, Bernhard 307
pyrrhonism 127, 336, 337 Roberts, John Russell 349, 351, 397, 465,
480, 482
qualities Rock, Irwin 309
primary and secondary 103, 115, Rogers, G. A. J. 187
133–5, 270, 335 Rorty, Richard 67
sensible 107, 128, 473 Ross, Helen 307
quantity 443 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 336
infinite 452 Russell, Bertrand 65, 72
Queries Relating to a National Bank 197
Querist Saunderson, Nicholas 312
ambiguities 197 savage Americans 22–6, 28–30, 33, 35, 37,
editions 196 41, 43
format 196, 197 scepticism 101, 104, 112, 121, 123, 126,
repetition 197 136, 137, 177, 190, 299, 334, 391,
reprintings 197 462
responses 196, 209 definition of 124
Querist, 1st edn 197 doubt-condition for 123
London issue 210, 212 early modern understandings of 124
Querist 1750 edn sceptics 123, 127
Advertisment 206 Schliesser, Eric 159
background 206, 207 Schwartz, Claire 174
on Catholics 208 sciences 446
changes 207 Scripture 187, 188
material omitted 207 Secker, Thomas 61, 186
Querist in the Miscellany 197 and Benson 58
self 417
Ramsay, Michael 314 sensations 336, 338
Rand, Benjamin 50, 66 sense experience 182, 183
rationalism 240, 435, 446 sensible object 111, 112, 127
rationality 176, 178, 179, 182 sensible things 123
realism, ‘veil of perception’ 127 denial of 123, 126, 127, 133, 136
reality reality of 126
denial of 135 sensualism 436, 440
extra-mental 125 Sextus Empiricus 100
reason 336 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper 175,
Regius, Henricus 248 177–9, 181, 187, 190, 470–21
Index 523
Sherry, David 446 Society for Promoting Christian

Sicily 208 Knowledge 52, 58
significance 437 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
signification 438, 442, 464, 465, 468 in Foreign Parts 51
signs 421, 423, 426, 427, 431, 432, 437, Socinianism 114, 473
438, 442 solipsism 336, 338
natural 357 soul 127, 188, 335, 430
similarity 439, 445 sound, two opposing accounts of 125
‘simple-perception-cannot-err’ passage South Sea Bubble 196, 204, 205
276, 277, 279 South Seas Company 56
simplicity 411 space, absolute 158
singling abstraction 100, 102 Spinoza, Baruch 334, 449
Siris 14 spirits 302, 391, 430, 434, 440
active principles 228 Sportelli, Silvano 342
aether 227 Sprigge, Timothy 68
aim of 237 Stanley, Thomas 123, 124, 130
alcohol 221 Steele, Richard 9, 27, 29, 40, 43, 59
ancient learning 236 stereopsis 305
animal spirits 225, 233 Stewart, M. A. 16
burning glass 226 Stillingfleet, Edward 473
chemical principles 222 Stock, Joseph 6, 15, 55
fermentation 232 Stoneham, Tom 344, 409, 464, 466
fire 227, 229 Stratton, G.M. 309, 310
gravity 231 Strawson, Galen 73
human perfectibility 238 Suarez, Francisco 184
illness 225 subject 338
life 224 substances
light 222, 224, 229 active 430, 433, 434
macrocosm 236 immaterial 102, 103, 105, 112, 117,
magnetism 231 335
meaning of 217 material 101, 103–5, 109, 110, 112–14,
microcosm 236 128
microscope 226, 228 substance-dualism 103
monad 237 substance-monism 103
occult cause 231 substratum 397
particles 220, 228 Suchting, W. A. 169
prism 226 suggestion 271–3, 283
realism 240 and automatic assciation 273
spirit 231 different from conscious inference 274
tar water as panacea 216 involved in sense perception 274
trinity 237 and perception by sense 272
the universe 224 super-mind 458, 466
world-animal 236 Swift, Jonathan 9, 11, 23, 59, 177, 196, 198
slavery 31, 39–41, 203 Szymanska-Lewoszewska, Marta 157
Sloane, Hans 59
Smestad, Bjorn 446 tar
Smibert, John 10, 60 God given 220
Smiglecki, Marcin 7 panacea 223
Smith, Adam 181, 202, 208 in Scandinavia 219
524 Index
tar water 206, 216 Theory of Vision, reply by Berkeley

how to make 218 it does not ask questions about external
as medicine 219 objects 86
science of 219 it includes geometrical optics 87
Taylor, Thomas 289, 291 it includes physiological observations 88
tenderness and benevolence, apt to it investigates processes in visual
corrupt the mind 152, 154 perception 88
testimony 472 Theory of Vision, suggestion 316
The Ladies Library 9, 25, 27, 36 Theory of Vision, supporting the
the Matrix 80 Principles 96
The Querist theory vs. practice 453
appeal to Catholic clergy 206 The Querist 14
economic principles 199 and Alciphron 200, 209
essentially mercantilist 200 and Guardian essays 202
focus on medium to long term 207 and Maxims on Patriotism 207
on the common good 202 and sermons indicating a divine plan
radicalism of economic proposals 198, 199 202, 209
rejects limitless accumulation 209 and Siris 206
reservations on commercial and The Irish Patriot 205
society 209 and Word to the Wise 206
things, real nature of 128 Thomas Aquinas 182
theological positivism Three Dialogues 8, 439
the positivistic aspect 143 Tillins, Laura 162
the restrictive aspect 144 Tillotson, John 9
theology 136, 435, 438, 443, 446, 469–70, time 450, 462
473–8 Tindal, Matthew 175, 187
Theory of Vision 8, 183, 314, 454 Tipton, Ian 397, 461, 462
Theory of Vision, atomistic approach in Toland, John 175, 177, 184, 187, 470,
the Association Thesis 92 474, 476
atomistic principle 89, 95 touch 336
basic micro relations 91 Tournemine, René-Joseph de 334
causality 89 towns 201
composing heterogeneous units 92 trade
descriptive and operative elements 91 domestic 200, 201
instruments for describing visual favourable balance of 199
appearances 90 foreign 201
instruments for structuring visual triangle, general 441
data 91 Trinity 427, 474, 476, 478, 479
the law of specific sense responses 90 Trinity College Dublin 6, 7, 142, 435, 436
raw data in microcosm 89 truth 237, 475, 477, 478
Reid’s appropriation of and reaction Turbayne, Colin 397, 406, 413
to 304 Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques 336
Theory of Vision, beyond atomism
conditioning processes in visual universality 442
perception 88, 94, 95 Ussher, James 11, 187, 235
the failure of introspection 94
sensations and perceptions defined 94 Van Fraassen, Baas 80
Theory of Vision, criticism of Van Homrigh, Hester 11, 57, 59
by Bailey and Atherton 86–8 value statements 147–8
Index 525
‘veil of perception’ 268–71, 274 wealth, real 198, 199

Venice 205 Weierstrass, Karl 453
Vermeulen, Ben 446 Wesley, John 55, 61
vices, intellectual 121 ‘what-we-see-we-know’ passage 277, 279
‘view from nowhere’ 74 Whiston, William 187
visible language 439 Wiener, Philip 314
vis insita 162 Williams, Elisha 60
vision 458 Williford, Kenneth 475, 478
visual experience 183 Winkler, Kenneth 316, 317, 343, 399, 463
visual field 455 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 68
visual language 440 Wolff, Christian 446
volition 410, 460, 466 Wollaston, William 175
Voltaire 335 Wood’s Halfpence 200
words, use of 438
Wadsworth, Benjamin 60 world
Wake, William 52, 60 external 128
Walmsley, Peter 177 extra-mental 125
Walton, Jacob 453 material 127
Warnock, G. J. 279, 286
way of ideas 299–302 Zeno of Elea 123
526

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The Bloomsbury Companion

Aesthetics, edited by Anna Christina Ribeiro

50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway

First published 2017

© Bertil Belfrage, Richard Brook and contributors, 2017

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Series: Bloomsbury Companions

Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

Part 1 Berkeley’s Life and Importance

1 George Berkeley’s Biography Tom Jones 5

Part 2 Berkeley’s Major Works

5 Atomism in Berkeley’s Theory of Vision Bertil Belfrage 85

Part 3 Berkeley in Context

13 Berkeley and Descartes Charles J. McCracken 247

15 Berkeley’s Critique of Locke’s Theory of Perception Georges Dicker 268

Part 4 Main Themes in Berkeley’s Philosophy

20 Immaterialism and Common Sense S. Seth Bordner 343

Alc Alciphron; or, the Minute Philosopher (1732)

Analyst The Analyst; or, a Discourse Addressed to an Inﬁdel Mathematician

DM De Motu; sive, De Motus Principio & Natura, & de Causa

NB Two notebooks (A and B) published as Philosophical Commentaries.

P A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. Part I

PI Published Introduction to the Principles.

MI Manuscript Introduction to the Principles.

TV An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (1709)

TVV The Theory of Vision . . . Vindicated and Explained (1732)

3D Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1712)

Siris Siris: A Chain of Philosophical Reﬂexions . . . (1744)

Q The Querist, Containing Several Queries, Proposed to the

Timo Airaksinen is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Helsinki,

Bertil Belfrage became Assistant Professor (universitetslektor) in Theoretical

Talia Bettcher is Professor and Department Chair of Philosophy, College of Arts

Seth Bordner is Assistant Professor Philosophy at the University of Alabama,

Wolfgang Breidert was formerly professor of philosophy at the University of

Richard Brook is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Bloomsburg University,

Laurence Carlin is Associate Professor of Philosophy and a member of the

Sébastien Charles is a Professor and Dean of Research at the University of

James Van Cleve is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern

Georges Dicker is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the College of

Keota Fields is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts,

Richard Glauser is a Professor at the Institute of Philosophy, University of

Adam Grzeliński is the Director of the Institute of Philosophy at Nicholas

Marc Hight is Eliot Professor of Philosophy at Hampden-Sydney College,

Tom Jones is a Reader in English, University of St. Andrews, UK .

Patrick Kelly is Professor and Fellow Emeritus of History at Trinity College,

Nancy Kendrick is a Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College, USA .

Charles McCracken is Professor Emeritus Philosophy at Michigan State

Jeﬀ McDonough is Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University, USA .

Kenneth Pearce is Ussher Assistant Professor in Berkeley Studies in the

Samuel Rickless is a Professor in the Philosophy Department of the University

John Roberts is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Florida

Howard Robinson is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Central

Tom Stoneham is a Graduate Research Professor of Philosophy at the University

mathematics, natural philosophy and empirical psychology; from theology to

Berkeley’s Life and Importance

George Berkeley’s Biography

George Berkeley was born on 12 March 1685. He entered Kilkenny College on

good required demonstrating the falsehood of materialistic, atheistic and free-

essay represents a continuation of Berkeley’s earlier attitudes to obedience and

This is not strategy, but having an immoveable conviction of the priority of