The Works of George Berkeley Part 77

370 What follows to the end of this section is not contained in the first edition.

371 i.e. tangible.

372 Cf. sect. 38; and _Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 31.

373 "Never"-"hardly," in first edition.

374 Cf. Appendix, p. 208.-See Smith's _Optics_, B. I. ch. v, and _Remarks_, p. 56, in which he "leaves it to be considered, whether the said phenomenon is not as clear an instance of the insufficiency of faintness" as of mathematical computation.

375 A favourite doctrine with Berkeley, according to whose theory of visibles there can be no absolute visible magnitude, the _minimum_ being the least that is _perceivable_ by each seeing subject, and thus relative to his visual capacity. This section is thus criticised, in January, 1752, in a letter signed "Anti-Berkeley," in the _Gent. Mag._ (vol. XXII, p. 12): "Upon what his lords.h.i.+p a.s.serts with respect to the _minimum visibile_, I would observe that it is certain that there are infinite numbers of animals which are imperceptible to the naked eye, and cannot be perceived but by the help of a microscope; consequently there are animals whose whole bodies are far less than the _minimum visibile_ of a man. Doubtless these animals have eyes, and, if their _minimum visibile_ were equal to that of a man, it would follow that they cannot perceive anything but what is much larger than their whole body; and therefore their own bodies must be invisible to them, because we know they are so to men, whose _minimum visibile_ is a.s.serted by his lords.h.i.+p to be equal to theirs." There is some misconception in this. Cf. Appendix to _Essay_, p. 209.

376 Those two defects belong to human consciousness. See Locke's _Essay_, II. 10, on the defects of human memory. It is this imperfection which makes reasoning needful-to a.s.sist finite intuition. Reasoning is the sign at once of our dignity and our weakness.

377 Sect. 59.

378 Sect. 80-82.

379 Sect. 88-119 relate to the nature, invisibility, and arbitrary visual signs of Situation, or of the localities of tangible things.

Cf. _Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 44-53.

380 Cf. sect. 2, 114, 116, 118.

381 This ill.u.s.tration is taken from Descartes. See Appendix.

382 Sect. 10 and 19.

383 Sect. 2-51.

384 Omitted in author's last edition.

385 This is Berkeley's universal solvent of the psychological difficulties involved in visual-perception.

386 Cf. sect. 103, 106, 110, 128, &c. Berkeley treats this case hypothetically in the _Essay_, in defect of actual experiments upon the born-blind, since acc.u.mulated from Cheselden downwards. See however the Appendix, and _Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 71.

387 i.e. tangible things. Cf. _Principles_, sect. 44.

388 The "prejudice," to wit, which Berkeley would dissolve by his introspective a.n.a.lysis of vision. Cf. _Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 35.

389 Thus forming individual concrete things out of what is perceived separately through different senses.

390 This briefly is Berkeley's solution of "the knot about inverted images," which long puzzled men of science.

391 i.e. perceive _mediately_-visible objects, _per se_, having no tactual situation. Pure vision, he would say, has nothing to do with "high" and "low," "great" and "inverted," in the real or tactual meaning of those terms.

392 i.e. tangible.

393 e.g. "extension," which, according to Berkeley, is an equivocal term, common (in its different meanings) to _visibilia_ and _tangibilia_. Cf. sect. 139, 140.

394 Cf. sect. 93, 106, 110, 128.

395 i.e. real or tangible head.

396 Cf. sect. 140, 143. In the _Gent. Mag._ (vol. XXII. p. 12), "Anti-Berkeley" thus argues the case of one born blind. "This man,"

he adds, "would, by being accustomed to feel one hand with the other, have perceived that the extremity of the hand was divided into fingers-that the extremities of these fingers were distinguished by certain hard, smooth surfaces, of a different texture from the rest of the fingers-and that each finger had certain joints or flexures. Now, if this man was restored to sight, and immediately viewed his hand before he touched it again, it is manifest that the divisions of the extremity of the hand into fingers would be visibly perceived. He would note too the small s.p.a.ces at the extremity of each finger, which affected his sight differently from the rest of the fingers; upon moving his fingers he would see the joints. Though therefore, by means of this lately acquired sense of seeing, the object affected his mind in a new and different manner from what it did before, yet, as by _touch_ he had acquired the knowledge of these several divisions, marks, and distinctions of the hand, and, as the new object of _sight_ appeared to be divided, marked, and distinguished in a similar manner, I think he would certainly conclude, _before he touched his hand_, that the thing which he now saw was _the same_ which he had felt before and called his hand."

397 Locke, _Essay_, II. 8, 16. Aristotle regards number as a Common Sensible.-_De Anima_, II. 6, III. 1.

398 "If the visible appearance of two s.h.i.+llings had been found connected from the beginning with the tangible idea of one s.h.i.+lling, that appearance would as naturally and readily have signified the unity of the (tangible) object as it now signifies its duplicity." Reid, _Inquiry_, VI. 11.

399 Here again note Berkeley's inconvenient reticence of his full theory of matter, as dependent on percipient life for its reality. Tangible things are meantime granted to be real "without mind." Cf.

_Principles_, sect. 43, 44. "Without the mind"-in contrast to sensuous phenomenon only.

400 Cf. sect. 131.

401 Sect. 2, 88, 116, 118.

402 In short, we _see_ only _quant.i.ties of colour_-the real or tactual distance, size, shape, locality, up and down, right and left, &c., being gradually a.s.sociated with the various visible modifications of colour.

403 i.e. tangible.

404 Sect. 41-44.

405 i.e. tangible things.

406 i.e. visible.

407 Cf. sect. 41-44. The "eyes"-visible and tangible-are themselves objects of sense.

408 Cf. _Principles_, Introduction, sect. 21-25.

409 "Visible ideas"-including sensations muscular and locomotive, _felt_ in the organ of vision. Sect. 16, 27, 57.

410 i.e. objects which, in this tentative _Essay_, are granted, for argument's sake, to be external, or independent of percipient mind.

411 i.e. to inquire whether there are, in this instance, Common Sensibles; and, in particular, whether an _extension_ of the same kind at least, if not numerically the same, is presented in each.

The Kantian theory of an _a priori_ intuition of s.p.a.ce, the common condition of tactual and visual experience, because implied in sense-experience as such, is not conceived by Berkeley. Cf. _Theory of Vision Vindicated_, sect. 15.

412 In the following reasoning against abstract, as distinguished from concrete or sense presented (visible or tangible) extension, Berkeley urges some of his favourite objections to "abstract ideas,"

fully unfolded in his _Principles_, Introduction, sect. 6-20.-See also _Alciphron_, VII. 5-8.-_Defence of Free Thinking in Mathematics_, sect. 45-48.

413 Berkeley's _ideas_ are concrete or particular-immediate data of sense or imagination.

414 i.e. it cannot be individualized, either as a perceived or an imagined object.

415 Sect. 105.

416 "Endeavours" in first edition.

417 i.e. a mental image of an abstraction, an impossible image, in which the extension and comprehension of the notion must be adequately pictured.