A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 2: Modern Philosophy

by Herbert Ernest Cushman

Berkeley, therefore, (1) agrees with Locke that all knowledge is derived from sense-perception, i. e. he agrees with Locke’s empirical psychology, and (2) he also agrees with one of Locke’s assumptions, viz., that the spiritual substances exist.

The Negative Side of Berkeley’s Philosophy. We have now pointed out Berkeley’s general relation to Locke and Hume, and more in particular his agreements with Locke. We are now prepared to examine the teaching of Berkeley by itself.

Berkeley was obliged to devote a good deal of time to the negative side of his philosophy. Just as Locke could not construct an empirical psychology until he had disclaimed all allegiance to innate ideas, so Berkeley could not construct an idealism until he had brought to bear in a polemical fashion all his forces against abstract ideas. Of his two masterpieces he devotes the entire essay on the Theory of Vision and a good part of his Principles of Human Nature to this end.

1. In proof of this he advances his analysis of abstract ideas. He not only denies that abstract ideas have a corresponding external reality, but he even denies that abstract ideas exist in the mind itself. The deception in abstract ideas arises from the use of words as general terms. Words are always general; ideas are always particular. There is never an idea that exactly corresponds to a word. Words are useful not as a conveyance of ideas, but for inciting men to action and arousing the passions. Whenever a word is used, what we think of is the particular sense, idea, or group of sense objects that give rise to it. For example, the word “yellow” cannot be employed by us except in connection with the thought of some particular yellow thing. Berkeley is a nominalist of the extremest type.

2. Again Berkeley seeks to show, by demolishing the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, that matter as an abstract idea has no existence. This distinction was as old as the Greek, Democritus, and was accepted by Locke. We have already described it: of a thing like a lump of sugar, the sense qualities of whiteness, roughness, sweetness, etc., are secondary because they depend upon our sensations for their existence;they are the ways in which our organisms are affected, and not true copies of things; the mathematical qualities, form, size, density, impenetrability, are primary because they exist independent of our senses and are true copies of things. Hobbes had already shown that such a distinction is erroneous, and Berkeley followed him by maintaining that all qualities are secondary. The size and impenetrability of a body depends as much on sense-perception as its sweetness and color. At some length in his Theory of Vision Berkeley takes up the question of the solidity, or third dimension, of a material body, and shows that it is an inference depending on sensations arising from the convergence of the two eyes and complicated by the sensations of touch.

Berkeley professed to be pleading the cause of the man in the street who wants a philosophy that is real “common sense.” He maintained that the conception of matter is only a philosophical subtlety for those philosophers who seek for something beyond perception. The man in the street wishes to explain things as he finds them, and not to seek mysterious abstractions which philosophers say in one breath that we know, and in another that we cannot know.

Therefore, while Berkeley agreed with Locke’s assumption of the existence of the spiritual substance, he departed from Locke in denying the existence of a material substance. Berkeley accepted, therefore, one of the two assumptions common to the Enlightenment, but he denied the other. Now Berkeley was trying to prove a thesis. He was controlled by the ideal of his ardent religious nature to free religion from false philosophy. He felt that the foes of religion—atheism and materialism—had employed effectively abstract ideas, which had been one of the weapons of religion, against religion itself. Berkeley concentrated his attack against the traditional scholastic conception of abstract ideas in general and the abstract idea of matter in particular. Abstract ideas have no existence; the idea of a material substance is an abstract idea and therefore has no existence. Berkeley was bound from the beginning of his religious crusade to explain away the existence of material substance.

The Positive Side of Berkeley’s Philosophy.[42] In the construction of his theory in a positive way Berkeley abridged the dualism of “common sense,” and asserted that the abridged form was better. He converted the dualism into a religious hypothesis, but it was a dualism still,—a dualism of minds and their ideas. Berkeley then set to work to show how much better his theory would explain the problems of knowledge. “Berkeley sought to humanize science.” He set the spirit free by relieving it of the falsities of the old dualistic assumption, but the usefulness of his abridgment lay in its solution not of metaphysical, but of epistemological problems.

1. Berkeley’s theory may be summed up in his own abbreviated statement of it,—Esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived). Or it may be stated in that figurative and oft-quoted paragraph, “Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, viz., that all the choir of heaven and the furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies whichcompose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind—that their being is to be perceived or known.” Or we may state Berkeley’s position in the terms of a modern interpreter[43] of him: “All objects are mentally discerned; all objects are mentally constituted.” Berkeley means that the existence and character of all objects are within the confines of consciousness, and there are no objects outside of consciousness. As sense-perceptions they have reality; as memories they lose their warmth and distinctness; but they are not objects at all when neither perceived nor remembered. These objects are always colored by the sense-perception. They are received through the consciousness, and constituted by the consciousness. Minds and their ideas are all that exist.

2. Berkeley does not try to prove the existence of the mind or soul, nor does he attempt to show that we perceive the soul. But in the spirit of the Enlightenment he hardly questions its reality. He takes its existence for granted, and like the philosophers of the period he makes a direct appeal to consciousness. “I know I am conscious of my own being.” Like Locke and Descartes he alleges the direct intuition of the self. In the Principles he speaks of “a notion of our own minds or spirits.” Since the ideas are copies of other ideas, there can be no idea of the soul; but the “notion is like the spirit that knows it.” We have therefore direct knowledge or notion of ourselves in knowing our ideas; we have direct knowledge of something superior to the ideas, an activity whose reality consists not in being perceived, but in perceiving. Indeed, he made the assertion in his Commonplace Book, which he began incollege, that nothing properly does exist but conscious persons. All other things are not so much existences as signs of the existences of persons. One is absolutely certain of what one means by “I.”