[2] Locke, Book II. chap. xv. sec. 1.
He does not even retain them as ‘abstract ideas’.
175. This, it may seem, however inconsistent with the doctrine of primary qualities, is little more than the result which Locke himself comes to in his Fourth Book; since, if ‘actual present succession’ forms our only knowledge of real existence, there could be no time at which distance and body might be known as really existing. But Locke, as we have seen, is able to save mathematical, though not physical, knowledge from the consequences of this admission by his doctrine of abstract ideas—‘ideas removed in our thoughts from particular existence’—whose agreement or disagreement is stated in propositions which ‘concern not existence,’ and for that reason may be general without becoming either uncertain or uninstructive. This doctrine Berkeley expressly rejects on the ground that he could not perceive separately that which could not exist separately (‘Principles of Human Knowledge,’ Introduction, sec. 10); a ground which to the ordinary reader seems satisfactory because he has no doubt, and Berkeley’s instances do not suggest a doubt, as to the present existence of ‘individual objects’—this man, this horse, this body. But with Berkeley to exist means to be felt (‘Principles of Human Knowledge,’ sec. 3), and the feelings, which I name a body, being successive, its existence must be in succession likewise. The limitation, then, of possibility of ‘conception’ by possibility of existence, means that ‘conception,’ too, is reduced to a succession of feelings.
On the same principle all permanent relations should disappear.
176. Berkeley, then, as a consequence of the methods by which he disposes at once of the ‘real existence’ and ‘abstract idea of matter,’ has to meet the following questions:—How are either reality or knowledge possible without permanent relations? and, How can feelings, of which one is over before the next begins, constitute or represent a world of permanent relations? The difficulty becomes more obvious, though not more serious, when the relations in question are not merely themselves permanent, as are those between natural phenomena, but are relations between permanent parts like those of space. It is for this reason that its doctrine of geometry is the most easily assailable point of the ‘sensational’ philosophy. Locke distinguishes the ideas of space and of duration as got, the one from the permanent parts of space, the other ‘from the fleeting and perpetually perishing parts of succession.’ [1] He afterwards prefers to oppose the term ‘expansion’ to ‘duration,’ as bringing out more clearly than ‘space’ the opposition of relation between permanent facts to that between ‘fleeting successive facts which never exist together.’ How, then, can a consciousness, consisting simply of ‘fleeting successive facts,’ either be or represent that of which the differentia is that its facts are permanent and co-exist?
[1] Book II. chap. xiv. sec. 1.
By making colour = relations of coloured points, Berkeley represents relation as seen.
177. This crucial question in regard to extension does not seem even to have suggested itself to Berkeley. The reason why is not far to seek. Professor Fraser, in his valuable edition, represents him as meaning by visible extension ‘coloured experience in sense,’ and by tangible extension ‘resistent experience in sense.’ [1] No fault can be found with this interpretation, but the essential question, which Berkeley does not fairly meet, is whether the experience in each case is complete in a single feeling or consists in a succession of feelings. If in a single feeling, it clearly is not extension, as a relation between parts, at all; if in a succession of feelings, it is only extension because a synthetic principle, which is not itself one of the feelings, but equally present to them all, transforms them into permanent parts of which each qualifies the other by outwardness to it. Berkeley does not see the necessity of such a principle, because he allows himself to suppose extension—at any rate visible extension—to be constituted by a single feeling. Having first pronounced that the proper object of sight is colour, he quietly substitutes for this situations of colour, degrees of strength and faintness in colour, and quantities of coloured points, as if these, interchangeably with mere colour, were properly objects of sight and perceived in single acts of vision. Now if by object of sight were meant something other than the sensation itself—something which to a thinking being it suggests as its cause—there would be no harm in this language, but neither would there be any ground for saying that the proper object of sight is colour, for distinguishing visible from tangible extension, or for denying that the outwardness of body to body is seen. Such restrictions and distinctions have no meaning, unless by sight is meant the nervous irritation, the affection of the visual organ, as it is to a merely feeling subject; yet in the very passages where he makes them, by saying that we see situations and degrees of colour, and quantities of coloured points, Berkeley converts sight into a judgment of extensive and intensive quantity. He thus fails to discern that the transition from colour to coloured extension cannot be made without on the one hand either the presentation of successive pictures or (which comes to the same) successive acts of attention to a single picture, and on the other hand a synthesis of the successive presentations as mutually qualified parts of a whole. In other words, he ignores the work of thought involved in the constitution alike of coloured and tangible extension, and in virtue of which alone either is extension at all.
[1] See Fraser’s Berkeley, ‘Theory of Vision,’ note 42. I may here say that I have gone into less detail in my account of Berkeley’s system than I should otherwise have thought necessary, because Professor Fraser has supplied, in the way of explanation of it, all that a student can require.
Still he admits that space is constituted by a succession of feelings.