The Works of George Berkeley. Vol. 1 of 4 · George Berkeley
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151 Locke explains “substance” as “an uncertain supposition of we know not what.” _Essay_, Bk. I. ch. 4. § 18. M199 E. M200 I. M201 Mo. M202 Mo. 152 Locke makes certainty consist in the agreement of “our ideas with the reality of things.” See _Essay_, Bk. IV. ch. 4. § 18. Here the sceptical difficulty arises, which Berkeley meets under his Principle. If we have no perception of reality, we cannot compare our ideas with it, and so cannot have any criterion of reality. M203 Mo. M204 Mo. 153 [This seems wrong. Certainty, real certainty, is of sensible ideas. I may be certain without affirmation or negation.—AUTHOR.] This needs further explanation. M205 Mo. M206 Mo. M207 Mo. M208 I. 154 This entry and the preceding tends to resolve all judgments which are not what Kant calls analytical into contingent. M209 I. M210 I. M211 E. M212 N. Mo. 155 See Locke’s _Essay_, Bk. IV. ch. 1, §§ 3-7, and ch. 3. §§ 7-21. The stress Berkeley lays on “co-existence” is significant. 156 i.e. we must not doubt the reality of the immediate data of sense but accept it, as “the mob” do. 157 But is imagination different from actual perception only in _degree_ of reality? 158 Cf. _Principles_, sect. 13, 120; also Locke’s _Essay_, Bk. II. ch. 7. sect. 7.
159 Cf. _Principles_, Introduction, sect. 1. 160 Berkeley’s aim evidently is to deliver men from empty abstractions, by a return to more reasonably interpreted common-sense. 161 The sort of _external_ world that is intelligible to us is that of which _another person_ is percipient, and which is _objective_ to me, in a percipient experience foreign to mine. M222 S. M223 Mo. M224 S. 162 Cf. Berkeley’s _Arithmetica_ and _Miscellanea Mathematica_, published while he was making his entries in this _Commonplace Book_. 163 Minima sensibilia? M225 Mo. M226 E. M227 Mo. M228 Mo. 164 Pleasures, _quâ_ pleasures, are natural causes of correlative desires, as pains or uneasinesses are of correlative aversions. This is implied in the very nature of pleasure and pain. 165 Here we have his explanation of _idea_. 166 Absent things. 167 Here, as elsewhere, he resolves geometry, as strictly demonstrable, into a reasoned system of analytical or verbal propositions. 168 Compare this with note 3, p. 34; also with the contrast between Sense and Reason, in _Siris_. Is the statement consistent with implied assumptions even in the _Principles_, apart from which they could not cohere? 169 To have an _idea_ of God—as Berkeley uses idea—would imply that God is an immediately perceptible, or at least an imaginable object. 170 Cf. _Principles_, sect. 89. M237 I. M238 M. S. M239 S. M240 Mo. M241 S. M242 M.
171 Ch. 11. § 5. 172 Why add—“or perception”? M245 Mo. M246 M. 173 Here we have Berkeley’s favourite thought of the divine arbitrariness of the constitution of Nature, and of its laws of change. 174 This suggests the puzzle, that the cause of every volition must be a preceding volition, and so on _ad infinitum_. M250 S. M251 E. S. M252 M. P. E. _ 175 Recherche_, I. 19. 176 i.e. of his own individual mind. 177 i.e. to _a_ percipient mind, but not necessarily to _mine_; for natural laws are independent of individual will, although the individual participates in perception of the ordered changes. 178 Cf. the _Arithmetica_. 179 i.e. which are not phenomena. This recognition of originative Will even then distinguished Berkeley. 180 Is this Part II of the _Principles_, which was lost in Italy? M259 I. S. M260 I. Mo. M261 S. 181 The thought of articulate _relations_ to which real existence must conform, was not then at least in Berkeley’s mind. Hence the empiricism and sensationalism into which he occasionally seems to rush in the _Commonplace Book_, in his repulsion from empty abstractions. 182 This is the essence of Berkeley’s philosophy—“a blind agent is a contradiction.” M263 G. M264 S. M265 S. M266 S. Mo. M267 Mo. N. M268 M. 183 This is the basis of Berkeley’s reasoning for the necessarily _unrepresentative_ character of the ideas or phenomena that are presented to our senses. _They_ are the originals.
M269 M. S. M270 S. M271 S. M272 S. M273 M. M274 M. M275 G. 184 Berkeley’s horror of abstract or unperceived space and atoms is partly explained by dogmas in natural philosophy that are now antiquated. 185 Ralph [?] Raphson, author of _Demonstratio de Deo_ (1710), and also of _De Spatio Reali, seu ente Infinito: conamen mathematico-metaphysicum_ (1697), to which Berkeley refers in one of his letters to Johnson. See also Green’s _Principles of Natural Philosophy_ (1712). The immanence of omnipotent goodness in the material world was unconsciously Berkeley’s presupposition. In God we have our being. M278 S. M279 S. M280 G. M281 E. N. 186 Note here Berkeley’s version of the causal principle, which is really the central presupposition of his whole philosophy—viz. every event in the material world must be the issue of acting Will. 187 So Locke on an ideally perfect memory. _Essay_, Bk. II. ch. x. § 9. 188 John Sergeant was the author of _Solid Philosophy asserted against the Fancies of the Ideists_ (London, 1697); also of _the Method to Science_ (1696). He was a deserter from the Church of England to the Church of Rome, and wrote several pieces in defence of Roman theology—some of them in controversy with Tillotson. 189 Spirit and Matter are mutually dependent; but Spirit is the realising factor and real agent in the universe. 190 See Descartes, _Meditations_, III; Spinoza, _Epist._ II, ad Oldenburgium.
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