pure space stand or fall together. Space and them) of pure space and its infinite divisibility. The truth seems to be that-at any rate in the state of mind represented by his earlier treatises-he was only able to work on the lines which Locke had laid. It did not occur to him to treat the primary qualities as relations constituted by thought, because Locke had not done so. Locke having treated them as external to the mind, Berkeley does so likewise, and for that reason feels that they must be got rid of. The mode of riddance, again, was virtually determined for him by Locke. Locke having admitted that they copied themselves in feelings, the untenable element in this supposition had only to be dropped and they became feelings simply. It is thus only so far as space is supposed to exist after a mode of which, according to Locke himself, sense could take no copy-i.e. as exclusive not merely of all colour but of all body, and as infinitely divisible-that Berkeley becomes aware of its incompatibility with his doctrine. Pure space, or vacuum,' to him means space that can not be touched-a tangible extension that is not tangible-and is therefore a contradiction in terms. The notion that, though not touched, it might be seen, he excludes,' apparently for the same reason which prevents him from allowing visible extension to be space at all; the reason, namely, that there is no 'outness' or relation of externality between the parts of such extension. The fact that there can be no such relation between the successive feelings which alone, according to him, constitute 'tangible extension,' he did not see to be equally fatal to the latter being in any true sense space. In other words, he did not see that the test of reduction to feeling, by which he disposed of the vacuum, disposed of space altogether. If he had, he would have understood that space and body were intelligible relations, which can be thought of apart from the feelings which through them become the world that we know, since it is they that are the conditions of these feelings becoming a knowledge, not the feelings that are the condition of the relations being known. Whether they can be thought of apart from each other-whether the simple relation of externality between parts of a whole can be thought of without the parts being considered as solid-is of course a further question, and one which Berkeley cannot be said properly to discuss at all, since the abstraction of space from body to him 1 'Principles of Human Knowledge,' sec. 116. meant its abstraction from feelings of touch. The answer to it ceases to be difficult as soon as the question is properly stated. space for God. 180. As with vacuum, so with infinite divisibility. Once Berkeley let it be understood that extension is constituted by the rela- disposes of tion of externality between homogeneous parts, and it follows fear of that there can be no least part of extension, none that does limiting not itself consist of parts; in other words, that it is infinitely divisible: just as conversely it follows that there can be no last part of it, not having another outside it; in other words, that (to use Locke's phrase) it is infinitely addible. Doubtless, as Berkeley held, there is a minimum visibile'; but this means that there are conditions under which any seen colour disappears, and disappearing, ceases to be known under the relation of extension; but it is only through a confusion of the relation with the colour that the disappearance of the latter is thought to be a disappearance of so much extension.1 It was, in short, the same failure to recognise the true ideality of space, as a relation constituted by thought, that on the one hand made its 'purity' and infinity unmeaning to Berkeley, and on the other made him think that, if pure (sc. irreducible to feelings) and infinite, it must limit the Divine perfection,either as being itself God or as 'something beside God which is eternal, uncreated, and infinite' ('Principles of Human Knowledge,' sec. 117). Fear of this result set him upon that method of resolving space, and with it the world of nature, into sequent feelings, which, if it had been really susceptible of logical expression, would at best have given him nothing but a péya Çov for God. If he had been in less of a hurry with his philosophy, he might have found that the current tendency to bind God in nature or diffuse in space' required to be met by a sounder than his boyish idealism-by an idealism which gives space its due, but reflects that to make space God, or a limitation on God, is to subject thought itself to the most superficial of the relations by which it forms the world that it knows. 181. So far we have only considered Berkeley's reduction How he of primary qualities, supposed to be sensible, to sensations deals with possibility as it affects the qualities themselves, rather than as it affects of general the possibility of universal judgments about them. If, indeed, knowledga tangibile.' See below, paragraphs 265 and 266. The same remark of course applies, mutatis mutandis, to the ⚫ minimum His theory of univer sals, 6 as we have found, such reduction really amounts to the absolute obliteration of the qualities, no further question can remain as to the possibility of general knowledge concerning them. As Berkeley, however, did not admit the obliteration, the further question did remain for him: and the condition of his plausibly answering it was that he should recognise in the 'idea,' as subject of predication, that intelligible qualification by relation which he did not recognise in it simply as 'idea,' and which essentially differences it from feeling proper. If any particular tangible extension,' e.g. a rightangled triangle, is only a feeling, or in Berkeley's own language, ‘a fleeting perishable passion' not existing at all, even as an 'abstract idea,' except when some one's tactual organs are being affected in a certain way-what are we to make of such a general truth as that the square on its base is always equal to the squares on its sides? Omitting all difficulties about the convertibility of a figure with a feeling, we find two questions still remain-How such separation can be made of the figure from the other conditions of the tactual experience as that propositions should be possible which concern the figure simply; and how a single case of tactual experience-that in which the mathematician finds a feeling called a right-angled triangle followed by another which he calls equality between the squares, &c.leads in the absence of any 'necessary connexion' to the expectation that the sequence will always be the same. The difficulty becomes the more striking when it is remembered that though the geometrical proposition in question, according to Berkeley, concerns the tangible, the experience which suggests it is merely visual. 182. Berkeley's answer to these questions must be gathered from his theory of general names. 'It is, I know,' he says, 'a point much insisted on, that all knowledge and demonstration are about universal notions, to which I fully agree: but then it does not appear to me that those notions are formed by abstraction-universality, so far as I can comprehend, not consisting in the absolute positive nature or conception of anything, but in the relation it bears to the particulars signified or represented by it; by virtue whereof it is that things, names, or notions, being in their own nature particular, are rendered universal. Thus, when I demonstrate ''Principles of Human Knowledge,' sec. 89. 2 See above, paragraph 122. any proposition concerning triangles, it is to be supposed that uni in relation. 183. In this passage appear the beginnings of a process of value, as of thought which, if it had been systematically pursued by implying Berkeley, might have brought him to understand by the versality of 'percipi,' to which he pronounced esse' equivalent, defi- ideas lies nitely the 'intelligi.' As it stands, the result of the passage merely is that the triangle (for instance) in its own nature,' because particular,' is not a possible subject of general predication or reasoning: that it is so only as 'considered' under a relation of resemblance to other triangles and by such consideration universalized. 'In its own nature,' or as a 'particular idea,' the triangle, we must suppose, is so much tangible (or visible, as symbolical of tangible) extension, and therefore according to Berkeley a feeling. But a relation, as he virtually admits,' is neither a feeling nor felt. The triangle, then, as considered under relation and thus a possible subject of general propositions, is quite other than the triangle in its own nature. This, of course, is so far merely a virtual repetition of Locke's embarrassing doctrine that real things are not the things which we speak of, and which are the subject of our sciences; but it is a repetition with two fruitful differences -one, that the thing in its 'absolute positive nature' is more explicitly identified with feeling; the other, that the process, by which the thing thought and spoken of is supposed to be derived from the real thing, is no longer one of abstraction,' but consists in consideration of relation. It is true that with Berkeley the mere feeling has a 'positive nature' apart from considered relations, and that the considered relation, by which the feeling is universalised, is only that of resemblance between properties supposed to exist independently of it. The 'particular triangle,' reducible to feelings of touch, has its See Principles of Human Knowledge,' sec. 89. (2nd edit.) 2 See below, paragraph 298. But he fancies that each idea has a positive nature relation. triangularity (we must suppose) simply as a feeling. It is only the resemblance between the triangularity in this and other figures—not the triangularity itself—that is a relation, and, as a relation, not felt but considered; or in Berkeley's language, something of which we have not properly an 'idea' but a notion.'1 184. But though Berkeley only renders explicit the difficulties implicit in Locke's doctrine of ideas, that is itself a great step taken towards disposing of them. Once let the equivocation between sensible qualities and sensations be got apart from rid of-once let it be admitted that the triangle in its absolute nature, as opposed to the triangle considered, is merely a feeling, and that relations are not feelings or felt-and the question must soon arise, What in the absence of all relation remains to be the absolute nature of the triangle? It is a question which ultimately admits of but one answer. The triangularity of the given single figure must be allowed to be just as much a relation as the resemblance, consisting in triangularity, between it and other figures; and if a relation, then not properly felt, but understood. The particular triangle, if by that is meant the triangle as subject of a singular proposition, is no more 'particular in time,' no more constituted by the occurrence of a feeling, than is the triangle as subject of a general proposition. It really exists as constituted by relation, and therefore only as 'considered' or understood. In its existence, as in the consideration of it, the relations indicated by the terms 'equilateral, equicrural and scalene,' presuppose the relation of triangularity, not it them; and for that reason it can be considered apart from them, though not they apart from it, without any breach between that which is considered and that which really exists. Thus, too, it becomes explicable that a single experiment should warrant a universal affirmation; that the mathematician, having once found as the result of a certain comparison of magnitudes that the square on the hypothenuse is equal to the square on the sides, without waiting for repeated experience at once substitutes for the singular proposition, which states his discovery, a general one. If the 1 'Principles of Human Knowledge,' Ibid. This perhaps is the best place for saying that it is not from any want of respect for Dr. Stirling that I habitually use notion' in the loose popular way which he counts barbarous,' but because the barbarism is so prevalent that it seems best to submit to it, and to use 'conception' as the equivalent of the German Begriff.' |