The Works of George Berkeley Part 4

Page 512, note 6, line 3 _for_ imminent _read_ immanent.

Vol. II

Page 194, note, line 3 _for_ Tyndal _read_ Tindal.

Page 207, line 1, insert 13. before _Alc._.

Page 377, line 6 _for_ antethesis _read_ ant.i.thesis.

Vol. IV

Page 285, lines 4, 5 _for_ Thisus Alus Cujus, &c. _read_ Ursus. Alus.

Cuius. &c. The inscription, strictly speaking, appears on the Palace of the Counts Orsini, and is dated MD.

COMMONPLACE BOOK. MATHEMATICAL, ETHICAL, PHYSICAL, AND METAPHYSICAL

Written At Trinity College, Dublin, In 1705-8

_First published in 1871_

Editor's Preface To The Commonplace Book

Berkeley's juvenile _Commonplace Book_ is a small quarto volume, in his handwriting, found among the Berkeley ma.n.u.scripts in possession of the late Archdeacon Rose. It was first published in 1871, in my edition of Berkeley's Works. It consists of occasional thoughts, mathematical, physical, ethical, and metaphysical, set down in miscellaneous fas.h.i.+on, for private use, as they arose in the course of his studies at Trinity College, Dublin. They are full of the fervid enthusiasm that was natural to him, and of sanguine expectations of the issue of the prospective authors.h.i.+p for which they record preparations. On the t.i.tle-page is written, "G. B. Trin. Dub. alum.," with the date 1705, when he was twenty years of age. The entries are the gradual acc.u.mulation of the next three years, in one of which the _Arithmetica_ and the _Miscellanea Mathematica_ made their appearance. The _New Theory of Vision_, given to the world in 1709, was evidently much in his mind, as well as the sublime conception of the material world in its necessary subordination to the spiritual world, of which he delivered himself in his book of _Principles_, in 1710.

This disclosure of Berkeley's thoughts about things, in the years preceding the publication of his first essays, is indeed a precious record of the initial struggles of ardent philosophical genius. It places the reader in intimate companions.h.i.+p with him when he was beginning to awake into intellectual and spiritual life. We hear him soliloquising. We see him trying to translate into reasonableness our crude inherited beliefs about the material world and the natural order of the universe, self-conscious personality, and the Universal Power or Providence-all under the sway of a new determining Principle which was taking profound possession of his soul. He finds that he has only to look at the concrete things of sense in the light of this great discovery to see the artificially induced perplexities of the old philosophers disappear, along with their imposing abstractions, which turn out empty words. The thinking is throughout fresh and sincere; sometimes impetuous and one-sided; the outcome of a mind indisposed to take things upon trust, resolved to inquire freely, a rebel against the tyranny of language, morally burdened with the consciousness of a new world-transforming conception, which duty to mankind obliged him to reveal, although his message was sure to offend.

Men like to regard things as they have been wont. This new conception of the surrounding world-the impotence of Matter, and its subordinate office in the Supreme Economy must, he foresees, disturb those accustomed to treat outward things as the only realities, and who do not care to ask what const.i.tutes reality. Notwithstanding the ridicule and ill-will that his transformed material world was sure to meet with, amongst the many who accept empty words instead of genuine insight, he was resolved to deliver himself of his thoughts through the press, but with the politic conciliation of a persuasive Irish pleader.

The _Commonplace Book_ steadily recognises the adverse influence of one insidious foe. Its world-transforming-Principle has been obscured by "the mist and veil of words." The abstractions of metaphysicians, which poison human language, had to be driven out of the author's mind before he could see the light, and must be driven out of the minds of others before they could be got to see it along with him: the concrete world as realisable only in percipient mind is with difficulty introduced into the vacant place. "The chief thing I pretend to is only to remove the mist and veil of words." He exults in the transformed mental scene that then spontaneously rises before him. "My speculations have had the same effect upon me as visiting foreign countries,-in the end I return where I was before, get my heart at ease, and enjoy myself with more satisfaction. The philosophers lose their abstract matter; the materialists lose their abstract extension; the profane lose their extended deity. Pray what do the rest of mankind lose?" This beneficent revolution seemed to be the issue of a simple recognition of the fact, that the true way of regarding the world we see and touch is to regard it as consisting of ideas or phenomena that are presented to human senses, somehow regularly ordered, and the occasions of pleasure or pain to us as we conform to or rebel against their natural order. This is the surrounding universe-at least in its relations to us, and that is all in it that we have to do with. "I know not," he says, "what is meant by things considered in themselves, i.e. in abstraction. This is nonsense. Thing and idea are words of much about the same extent and meaning. Existence is not conceivable without perception and volition. I only declare the meaning of the word _existence_, as far as I can comprehend it."

In the _Commonplace Book_ we see the youth at Trinity College forging the weapons which he was soon to direct against the materialism and scepticism of the generation into which he was born. Here are rough drafts, crude hints of intended arguments, probing of unphilosophical mathematicians-even Newton and Descartes, memoranda of facts, more or less relevant, on their way into the _Essay on Vision_ and the treatise on _Principles_-seeds of the philosophy that was to be gradually unfolded in his life and in his books. We watch the intrepid thinker, notwithstanding the inexperience of youth, more disposed to give battle to mathematicians and metaphysicians than to submit even provisionally to any human authority. It does not seem that his scholars.h.i.+p or philosophical learning was extensive. Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke were his intimates; Hobbes and Spinoza were not unknown to him; Newton and some lesser lights among the mathematicians are often confronted. He is more rarely in company with the ancients or the mediaevalists. No deep study of Aristotle appears, and there is even a disposition to disparage Plato. He seeks for his home in the "new philosophy" of experience; without antic.i.p.ations of Kant, as the critic of what is presupposed in the scientific reliability of any experience, against whom his almost blind zeal against abstractions would have set him at this early stage. "Pure intellect I understand not at all," is one of his entries. He asks himself, "What becomes of the _aeternae veritates_?" and his reply is, "They vanish." When he tells himself that "we must with the mob place certainty in the senses," the words are apt to suggest that the senses are our only source of knowledge, but I suppose his meaning is that the senses must be trustworthy, as 'the mob' a.s.sume. Yet occasionally he uses language which looks like an antic.i.p.ation of David Hume, as when he calls mind "a congeries of perceptions. Take away perceptions," he adds, "and you take away mind. Put the perceptions and you put the mind. The understanding seemeth not to differ from its perceptions and ideas." He seems unconscious of the total scepticism which such expressions, when strictly interpreted, are found to involve. But after all, the reader must not apply rigorous rules of interpretation to random entries or provisional memoranda, meant only for private use, by an enthusiastic student who was preparing to produce books.

I have followed the ma.n.u.script of the _Commonplace Book_, omitting a few repet.i.tions of thought in the same words. Here and there Berkeley's writing is almost obliterated and difficult to decipher, apparently through accident by water in the course of his travels, when, as he mentions long after in one of his letters, several of his ma.n.u.scripts were lost and others were injured.

The letters of the alphabet which are interpreted on the first page, and prefixed on the margin to some of the entries, may so far help to bring the apparent chaos of entries under a few articulate heads.

I have added some annotations here and there as they happened to occur, and these might have been multiplied indefinitely had s.p.a.ce permitted.

Commonplace Book

I. = Introduction.

M. = Matter.

P. = Primary and Secondary qualities.

E. = Existence.

T. = Time.

S. = Soul-Spirit.

G. = G.o.d.

Mo. = Moral Philosophy.

N. = Natural Philosophy.

Qu. If there be not two kinds of visible extension-one perceiv'd by a confus'd view, the other by a distinct successive direction of the optique axis to each point?

(M1) No general ideas(46). The contrary a cause of mistake or confusion in mathematiques, &c. This to be intimated in ye Introduction(47).

The Principle may be apply'd to the difficulties of conservation, co-operation, &c.

(M2) Trifling for the [natural] philosophers to enquire the cause of magnetical attractions, &c. They onely search after co-existing ideas(48).

(M3) Quaecunque in Scriptura militant adversus Copernic.u.m, militant pro me.

(M4) All things in the Scripture wch side with the vulgar against the learned, side with me also. I side in all things with the mob.

(M5) I know there is a mighty sect of men will oppose me, but yet I may expect to be supported by those whose minds are not so far overgrown wth madness. These are far the greatest part of mankind-especially Moralists, Divines, Politicians; in a word, all but Mathematicians and Natural Philosophers. I mean only the hypothetical gentlemen. Experimental philosophers have nothing whereat to be offended in me.

Newton begs his Principles; I demonstrate mine(49).

(M6) I must be very particular in explaining wt is meant by things existing-in houses, chambers, fields, caves, &c.-wn not perceiv'd as well as wn perceived; and shew how the vulgar notion agrees with mine, when we narrowly inspect into the meaning and definition of the word _existence_, wh is no simple idea, distinct from perceiving and being perceived(50).

The Schoolmen have n.o.ble subjects, but handle them ill. The mathematicians have trifling subjects, but reason admirably about them. Certainly their method and arguing are excellent.

G.o.d knows how far our knowledge of intellectual beings may be enlarg'd from the Principles.

(M7) The reverse of the Principle I take to have been the chief source of all that scepticism and folly, all those contradictions and inextricable puzzling absurdities, that have in all ages been a reproach to human reason, as well as of that idolatry, whether of images or of gold, that blinds the greatest part of the world, and that shamefull immorality that turns us into beasts.

(M8) ??? Vixit & fuit.