Footnotes
[1.] Philosophy of Theism: The Gifford Lectures delivered before the University of Edinburgh in 1894-96. (Second Edition, 1899.) [2.] Essay on Vision, sect. 147, 148. [3.] Principles, sect. 6. [4.] Preface to the Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. [5.] By Anthony Collins. [6.] See vol. III, Appendix B. [7.] Murdoch Martin, a native of Skye, author of a Voyage to St. Kilda (1698), and a Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (1703). [8.] See Stewart's Works (ed. Hamilton), vol. I. p. 161. There is a version of this story by DeQuincey, in his quaint essay on Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts. [9.] Sir John became Lord Percival in that year. [10.] A place more than once visited by Berkeley. [11.] Bakewell's Memoirs of the Court of Augustus, vol. II. p. 177. [12.] A letter in Berkeley's Life and Letters, p. 93, which led me to a different opinion, I have now reason to believe was not written by him, nor was it written in 1721. The research of Dr. Lorenz, confirmed by internal evidence, shews that it was written in October, 1684, before Berkeley the philosopher was born, and when the Duke of Ormond was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The writer was probably the Hon. and Rev. George Berkeley, a Prebendary of Westminster in 1687, who died in 1694. The wife of the “pious Robert Nelson” was a daughter of Earl Berkeley, and this “George” was her younger brother. [13.] Percival MSS. [14.] For the letter, see Editor's Preface to the Proposal for a College in Bermuda, vol. IV. pp. 343-44. [15.] Afterwards Sir John James. [16.] Smibert the artist, who made a picture of Berkeley in 1725, and afterwards in America of the family party then at Gravesend. [17.] Historical Register, vol. XIII, p. 289 (1728). [18.] New England Weekly Courier, Feb. 3, 1729. [19.] For valuable information about Rhode Island, reproduced in Berkeley's Life and Correspondence and here, I am indebted to Colonel Higginson, to whom I desire to make this tardy but grateful acknowledgement. [20.] James, Dalton, and Smibert. [21.] Whitehall, having fallen into decay, has been lately restored by the pious efforts of Mrs. Livingston Mason, in concert with the Rev. Dr. E. E. Hale, and others. This good work was completed in the summer of 1900; and the house is now as nearly as possible in the state in which Berkeley left it. [22.] See vol. III, Appendix C. [23.] Three Men of Letters, by Moses Coit Tyler (New York, 1895). He records some of the American academical and other institutions that are directly or indirectly, due to Berkeley. [24.] The thought implied in this paragraph is pursued in my Philosophy of Theism, in which the ethical perfection of the Universal Mind is taken as the fundamental postulate in all human experience. If the Universal Mind is not ethically perfect, the universe (including our spiritual constitution) is radically untrustworthy. [25.] Life and Letters of Berkeley, p. 222. [26.] The third Earl of Shaftesbury, the pupil of Locke, and author of the Characteristics. In addition to the well-known biography by Dr. Fowler, the present eminent Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, Shaftesbury has been interpreted in two other lately published works—a Life by Benjamin Rand, Ph.D. (1900), and an edition of the Characteristics, with an Introduction and Notes, by John M. Robertson (1900). [27.] The title of this book is—Things Divine and Supernatural conceived by Analogy with Things Natural and Human, by the Author of The Procedure, Extent and Limits of the Human Understanding. The Divine Analogy appeared in 1733, and the Procedure in 1728. [28.] Spinoza argues that what is called “understanding” and “will” in God, has no more in common with human understanding and will than the dog-star in the heavens has with the animal we call a dog. See Spinoza's Ethica, I. 17, Scholium. [29.] The question of the knowableness of God, or Omnipotent Moral Perfection in the concrete, enters into recent philosophical and theological discussion in Britain. Calderwood, in his Philosophy of the Infinite (1854), was one of the earliest, and not the least acute, of Hamilton's critics in this matter. The subject is lucidly treated by Professor Andrew Seth (Pringle-Pattison) in his Lectures on Theism (1897) and in a supplement to Calderwood's Life (1900). So also Huxley's David Hume and Professor Iverach's Is God Knowable? [30.] Stewart's Works. vol. I. pp. 350-1. [31.] Berkeley MSS. possessed by Archdeacon Rose. [32.]
Pope's poetic tribute to Berkeley belongs to this period—
“Even in a bishop I can spy desert;
Secker is decent; Rundle has a heart:
Manners with candour are to Benson given,
To Berkeley—every virtue under heaven.”
Epilogue to the Satires.
Also his satirical tribute to the critics of Berkeley—
“Truth's sacred fort th' exploded laugh shall win;
And Coxcombs vanquish Berkeley with a grin.”
Essay on Satire, Part II.
That Berkeley was buried in Oxford is mentioned in his son's letter to Johnson, in which he says : “His remains are interred in the Cathedral of Christ Church, and next week a monument to his memory will be erected with an inscription by Dr. Markham, a Student of this College.” As the son was present at, and superintended the arrangements for his father's funeral, it can be no stretch of credulity to believe that he knew where his father was buried. It may be added that Berkeley himself had provided in his Will “that my body be buried in the churchyard of the parish in which I die.” The Will, dated July 31, 1752, is given in extenso in my Life and Letters of Berkeley, p. 345. We have also the record of burial in the Register of Christ Church Cathedral, which shews that “on January ye 20th 1753, ye Right Reverend John (sic) Berkley, Ld Bishop of Cloyne, was buryed” there. This disposes of the statement on p. 17 of Diprose's Account of the Parish of Saint Clement Danes (1868), that Berkeley was buried in that church.
I may add that a beautiful memorial of Berkeley has lately been placed in the Cathedral of Cloyne, by subscriptions in this country and largely in America.
Sir A. Grant, (Ethics of Aristotle, vol. II. p. 172) remarks, as to the doctrine that the Common Sensibles are apprehended concomitantly by the senses, that: “this is surely the true view; we see in the apprehension of number, figure, and the like, not an operation of sense, but the mind putting its own forms and categories, i.e. itself, on the external object. It would follow then that the senses cannot really be separated from the mind; the senses and the mind each contribute an element to every knowledge. Aristotle's doctrine of κοινὴ αἴσθησις would go far, if carried out, to modify his doctrine of the simple and innate character of the senses, e.g. sight (cf. Eth. II. 1, 4), and would prevent its collision with Berkeley's Theory of Vision.”—See also Sir W. Hamilton, Reid's Works, pp. 828-830.
Dugald Stewart (Collected Works, vol. I. p. 341, note) quotes Aristotle's Ethics, II. 1, as evidence that Berkeley's doctrine, “with respect to the acquired perceptions of sight, was quite unknown to the best metaphysicians of antiquity.”
The rough draft of the Introduction, prepared two years before the publication of the Principles (see Appendix, vol. III), should be compared with the published version. He there tells that “there was a time when, being bantered and abused by words,” he “did not in the least doubt” that he was “able to abstract his ideas”; adding that “after a strict survey of my abilities, I not only discovered my own deficiency on this point, but also cannot conceive it possible that such a power should be even in the most perfect and exalted understanding.” What he thus pronounces “impossible,” is a sensuous perception or imagination of an intellectual relation, as to which most thinkers would agree with him. But in so arguing, he seems apt to discard the intellectual relations themselves that are necessarily embodied in experience.
David Hume refers thus to Berkeley's doctrine about “abstract ideas”:—“A great philosopher has asserted that all general ideas are nothing but particular ones annexed to a certain term, which gives them a more extensive signification. I look upon this to be one of the greatest and most valuable discoveries that has been made of late years in the republic of letters.” (Treatise of H. N. Pt. I, sect. 7.)
Simultaneous perception of the “same” (similar?) sense-ideas, by different persons, as distinguished from purely individual consciousness of feelings and fancies, is here taken as a test of the virtually external reality of the former.
Berkeley does not ask whether the change of the rod into a serpent, or of the water into wine, is the issue of divine agency and order, otherwise than as all natural evolution is divinely providential.
The following is the translator's Prefatory Note, on the objects of the Dialogues, and in explanation of the three illustrative vignettes:—
“L'Auteur expose dans le premier Dialogue le sentiment du Vulgaire et celui des Philosophes, sur les qualités secondaires et premieres, la nature et l'existence des corps; et il prétend prouver en même tems l'insuffisance de l'un et de l'autre. La Vignette qu'on voit à la téte du Dialogue, fait allusion à cet objet. Elle représente un Philosophe dans son cabinet, lequel est distrait de son travail par un enfant qu'il appercoit se voyant lui-méme dans un miroir, en tendant les mains pour embrasser sa propre image. Le Philosophe rit de l'erreur où il croit que tombe l'enfant; tandis qu'on lui applique à lui-même ces mots tirés d'Horace:
Quid rides?....de te
Fabula narratur.
“Le second Dialogue est employé à exposer le sentiment de l'Auteur sur le même sujet, sçavoir, que les choses corporelles ont une existence réelle dans les esprits qui les apperçoivent; mais qu'elles ne sçauroient exister hors de tous les esprits à la fois, même de l'esprit infini de Dieu; et que par conséquent la Matière, prise suivant l'acception ordinaire du mot, non seulement n'existe point, mais seroit même absolument impossible. On a taché de représenter aux yeux ce sentiment dans la Vignette du Dialogue. Le mot grec νοῦς qui signifie âme, désigne l'àme: les rayons qui en partent marquent l'attention que l'âme donne à des idées ou objets; les tableaux qu'on a placés aux seuls endroits où les rayons aboutissent, et dont les sujets sont tirés de la description des beautés de la nature, qui se trouve dans le livre, représentent les idées ou objets que l'âme considère, pas le secours des facultes qu'elle a reçues de Dieu; et l'action de l'Étre suprème sur l'âme est figurée par un trait, qui, partant d'un triangle, symbole de la Divinité, et perçant les nuages dont le triangle est environné. s'étend jusqu'à l'âme pour la vivifier; enfin, on a fait en sorte de rendre le même sentiment par ces mots:
Quæ noscere cumque Deus det,
Esse puta.
“L'objet du troisième Dialogue est de répondre aux difficultés auxquelles le sentiment qu'on a établi dans les Dialogues précédens, peut être sujet, de l'éclaircir en cette sorte de plus, d'en développer toutes les heureuses conséquences, enfin de faire voir, qu'étant bien entendu, il revient aux notions les plus communes. Et comme l'Auteur exprime à la fin du livre cette dernière pensée, en comparant ce qu'il vient de dire, à l'eau que les deux Interlocuteurs sont supposés voir jaillir d'un jet, et qu'il remarque que la même force de la gravité fait élever jusqu'à une certaine hauteur et retomber ensuite dans le bassin d'où elle étoit d'abord partie; on a pris cet emblême pour le sujet de la Vignette de ce Dialogue; on a représenté en conséquence dans cette dernière Vignette les deux Interlocuteurs, se promenant dans le lieu où l'Auteur les suppose, et s'entretenant là-dessus, et pour donner au Lecteur l'explication de l'emblême, on a mis au bas le vers suivant:
Urget aquas vis sursum, eadem flectitque deorsum.”