Berkeley and Irish Philosophy

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BERKELEY AND IRISH PHILOSOPHY

Continuum Studies in British Philosophy: Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin Duncan Richter, Wittgenstein at his Word Wilfrid E. Rumble, Doing Austin Justice Maria J. Frapolli (ed.), F. P. Ramsey: Critical Reassessments William R. Eaton, Boyle on Fire David Berman, Berkeley and Irish Philosophy Colin Tyler, Radical Philosophy Stephen Lalor, Matthew Tindal, Freethinker Angela M. Coventry, Hume's Theory of Causation Colin Heydt, Rethinking Mill's Ethics Stephen J. Finn, Thomas Hobbes: The Politics of Natural Philosophy J. Mark Lazenby, The Early Wittgenstein on Religion Dennis Desroches, Francis Bacon and the Limits of Scientific Knowledge Megan Laverty, Iris Murdoch's Ethics Talia Mae Bettcher, Berkeley's Philosophy of Spirit Patricia Sheridan, Locke's Moral Theory Michael Taylor, The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer James E. Crimmins, Jeremy Bentham'sFinal Tears James G. Buickerood, John Locke on Imagination and the Passions

BERKELEY AND IRISH PHILOSOPHY

DAVID BERMAN

continuum LONDON

•

NEW YORK

Continuum The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX 15 East 26th Street, New York, NY 10010 www.continuumbooks.com © David Berman 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 0-8264-8590-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Berman, David, 1942Berkeley and Irish philosophy / David Berman.

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: George Berkeley-On missing the wrong target-Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment in Irish philosophy-Francis Hutcheson on Berkeley and the Molyneux problem-The impact of Irish philosophy on the American Enlightenment-Irish ideology and philosophy-An account of the life of Berkeley (1776)—Some new Bermuda Berkeleiana-The good bishop: new letters-Beckett and Berkeley. ISBN 0-8264-8590-1 1. Berkeley, George, 1685-1753. 2. Philosophy-Ireland. I. Title. B1348.B458 2005 192-dc22

Typeset by Aarontype Limited, Easton, Bristol Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

2005041933

In memory of my father, Seymour Berman, and my teachers, A. A. Luce and E. J. J. Furlong

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CONTENTS Note on the Text AcknowledgementsS Introduction

Part I BERKELEY'S PHILOSOPHY 1 George Berkeley 2 On Missing the Wrong Target

1

19 21 58

Part II 3 4 5 6 7

THE GOLDEN AGE OF IRISH PHILOSOPHY Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment in Irish Philosophy The Culmination and Causation of Irish Philosophy Francis Hutcheson on Berkeley and the Molyneux Problem The Impact of Irish Philosophy on the American Enlightenment Irish Ideology and Philosophy

viii ix

79 106 138 150 167

Part III 8 9 10 11 12 Index

NEW BERKELEY LETTERS AND BERKELEIANA An Early Essay concerning Berkeley's Immaterialism Mrs Berkeley's Annotations in An Account of the Life of Berkeley ( 1 7 7 6 ) Some New Bermuda Berkeleiana The Good Bishop: New Letters Beckett and Berkeley

77

175 177 186 202 215 226 231

NOTE ON THE TEXT

Apart from minor changes, the essays, notes and reviews are reprinted in this volume as they originally appeared between 1968 and 1996. One change is the addition of some new endnotes, which are indicated in the text by superscript letters, rather than numbers. Thus every item reprinted here carries an initial note stating where and when it was first published. A full list of sources is also given in the Acknowledgements. In two chapters — 3 and 7 - additional material has also been inserted, as mentioned in the Introduction, from a later publication. These additions, too, are signalled by additional endnotes. A few stylistic changes have also been made, as well as the correction of some factual errors.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Chapter 1: 'George Berkeley', was originally published in British Philosophy and the Age of Enlightenment (London: Routledge, 1996), edited by Stuart Brown, vol. V of the Routledge History of Philosophy, pp. 123-49. Chapter 2: Section 1 was originally published as 'On Missing the Wrong Target', a review-article of Jonathan Bennett's Locke, Berkeley, Hume, in Hermathena cxiii (1972), pp. 54—67; section 2 was originally published as a review of George Pitcher's Berkeley, in the Journal of the History of Philosophy xviii (1980), pp. 352-3. Chapters 3 and 4: 'Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment in Irish Philosophy' and 'The Culmination and Causation of Irish Philosophy', were originally published in the Archivfiir Geschichte der Philosophic 64 (1982), pp. 148-65 and 257-79. Also a portion of Chapter 3 was originally published as part of the Editors' Introduction, by D. Berrnan and P. O'Riordan, to The Irish Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2002), vol. 1, pp. xvi-xvii. Chapter 5: 'Francis Hutcheson on Berkeley and the Molyneux Problem', was originally published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 74, C (1974), pp. 259-65. Chapter 6: 'The Impact of Irish Philosophy on the American Enlightenment' originally appeared as 'Irish Philosophy and the American Enlightenment during the Eighteenth Century' in Eire-Ireland, xxxiv (1989), pp. 28-39. Copyright © 1989: Irish American Institute, 1 Lacawanna Place, Morristown, NJ 07960, USA. Reproduced by permission of the Irish American Cultural Institute.

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Acknowledgements

Chapter 7: Section 1 was originally published as 'Irish Philosophy and Ideology' in the Crane Bag, Final Issue (1985), pp. 158-9. Section 2 was originally published as part of the Editors' Introduction, by D. Berrnan and P. O'Riordan, to The Irish Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2002), vol. 1, pp. xxii-xxiii. Chapter 8: 'An Early Essay concerning Berkeley's Immaterialism' was originally published in Hermathena cix (1969), pp. 37—43. Chapter 9: 'Mrs Berkeley's Annotations in An Account of the Life of Berkeley (1776)' originally appeared as 'Mrs Berkeley's Annotations in her interleaved copy of An Account of the Life of George Berkeley (1776)' in Hermathena cxxii (1977), pp. 15-28. Chapter 10: Section 1 was originally published as 'Some New Bermuda Berkeleiana' in Hermathena cx (1970), pp. 24—31. Section 2 was originally published in the Berkeley Newsletter 4 (1980), pp. 14-15. Chapter 11: 'The Good Bishop: New Letters': section 1 was originally published as 'A new letter by Berkeley on Tar-water' in Hermathena cvii (1968), pp. 45-8; sections 2 and 3 were originally published in the Berkeley Newsletter 1 (1977), pp. 8-9, and the Berkeley Newsletter 3 (1979), pp. 12-13. Section 4 was originally published as the Appendix to 'Berkeley, Clayton and An Essay on Spirit' in the Journal of the History of Ideas XXXII (1971), pp. 376—8. Chapter 12: 'Beckett and Berkeley', was originally published in the Irish University Review: A Journal of Irish Studies 14 (1984), pp. 42-5. I am grateful for permission to reprint from the above publications. I am also grateful to Joseph O'Gorman for help with scanning, to Evin Harris for help with proofreading, to William Lyons for reading a draft of the Introduction, and to Rudi Thoemmes for suggesting the idea of this book.

INTRODUCTION 1 The collection The essays, notes and reviews in this volume were originally published between 1968 and 1996. To make the collection as informative and readable as I could, I have grouped the original material into three parts under the following headings: I 'Berkeley's Philosophy'; II 'The Golden Age of Irish Philosophy'; and III 'New Berkeley Letters and Berkeleiana'. The third part is the most factual; it presents a number of uncollected letters by Berkeley as well as unnoticed comments on his life and work. There are more interpretation and larger themes in part II. It contains an account of the one great period of Irish philosophy, from the 1690s to the 1750s5 and Berkeley's place in it. Items in part I are more directly about Berkeley's philosophy and involve philosophical exposition and critique. The three parts are like three levels in a building: part III is the lowest and most basic; part I is most ideational and interpretative, with part II fitting in between the two. One principle I used in selecting and assembling this collection was to avoid duplication between this volume and my earlier George Berkeley: Idealism and the Man (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994; paperback 1996 and 2002). This has meant that some of the story of Berkeley and Irish philosophy is to be found in detail in the earlier volume — for example, the Irish context of Berkeley's semantic revolution (in Chapter 1), Berkeley and the political question of passive resistance (Chapter 4), and (in Chapter 7) the connection between Berkeley and Robert Clayton. For this reason, these topics are only briefly considered here or adverted to in notes to the two-part essay on the subject, originally published

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Berkeley and Irish Philosophy

in 1982, and revised and reprinted here in part II, Chapters 3 and 4. Work on this classic period of Irish philosophy was also carried forward in 'The Irish Counter-Enlightenment', a number of articles I wrote for Thoemmes' Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century British Philosophers (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1999), an essay on John o Toland, 'The Irish Freethinker', and another on William King, 'The Irish Pragmatist'. References to these articles have also been added, where appropriate, in the notes to the two-part essay of part II, which, I believe, constitutes the nearest thing to a history of the golden age of Irish philosophy. Work on Berkeley and Irish philosophy was also importantly advanced in the Editors' Introduction to The Irish Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2002), a six-volume anthology of writings of the classic Irish philosophers. A few extracts from this Introduction, written with Patricia O'Riordan, have been added to the first and last items of part II. Much of the material in part III will, it is hoped, be incorporated into a new edition of Berkeley's correspondence and notes on it. As it stands, part III can be used as a supplement to volumes viii and ix of The Works of George Berkeley (London: Nelson), published in 1956 and 1957 respectively, which contain Berkeley's letters and notes on them, edited by A. A. Luce. Part III adds some six new or partly new letters, mostly concerning the middle and final phases of Berkeley's career, his Bermuda project and his advocacy of tar-water. Their chief interest is the light they throw on Berkeley's life. This is even more the case with the second item in part III, Mrs Anne Berkeley's annotations in her copy of the first separately printed biography of her husband. Taken as a whole, this book, as its title indicates, can be described as a work of historical philosophy. It is about the life and work of a great philosopher, the father of idealism, and an important national development in philosophy, of which Berkeley was the outstanding figure. As a work of historical philosophy, it aims to be scholarly and expository rather than purely philosophical.

Introduction

3

So while it contains some arguments and assessments of arguments, these are largely elucidations of Berkeley's arguments or those of his countrymen. The main aim was to present or mirror what Berkeley and others thought. Going somewhat further is my later volume, Berkeley: Experimenf\ tal Philosophy (London: Phoenix, 1997). For though it is generally expositive and critical in details, its tendency is positive: it recommends Berkeley's psychological approach to philosophy. To be sure, there are at least two respects in which the expository works of parts I and II are also positive: (1) in recognizing the historical importance of Berkeley's philosophy and the ingenuity of his arguments, and (2) in criticizing Berkeley's critics. But these stop short of positive endorsement. In the remainder of this Introduction I should like to go further and continue the more positive approach of my 1997 volume, by saying something more about Berkeley as a psychological philosopher. By doing so, I shall also be lending additional weight to part I of the present book.

2 Berkeley and psychological philosophy In his History of Western Philosophy (1 Oth printing, New York: Simon & Shuster, 1964), Bertrand Russell suggested that ever since the time of Pythagoras there have been two strands in philosophy one that was influenced by mathematics, the other by the empirical sciences (p. 828). In my 1997 volume I suggested that there are two not dissimilar strands in Berkeley's philosophy, which can be described as the conceptual, analytic and argumentative, on the one hand, and the psychological, experiential and observational, on the other. In short, in addition to being a great conceptual analyst and arguer, Berkeley was also a great psychological philosopher, although this side of his work has been largely eclipsed by the anti-psychologistic, logico-linguistic revolution that occurred

4


in philosophy at the beginning of the twentieth century. This was the revolution led by Russell himself, along with Frege, Moore and Wittgenstein, among others, and which continues to influence not just philosophy but the scholarly understanding of philosophers such as Berkeley. So most twentieth-century commentators focus almost exclusively on Berkeley as a conceptual analyst and arguer, and also do so in a conceptual and argumentative way. For that is regarded as the way to do philosophy and history of philosophy, at least in the Anglo-American analytic tradition. But there was and is another way — the psychological or observational way. As I see it, Berkeley's heart and main concern were with this other way of doing philosophy. One nineteenth-century commentator who, I think, saw this was James Ferrier, according to whom: 'The peculiar endowment by which Berkeley was distinguished, far beyond his predecessors and contemporaries, and far beyond almost every philosopher who has succeeded him, was the eye for facts''. Expressed in more familiar terms, this is the approach of British empiricism, which goes back to Hobbes and Locke, and was carried forward by Hutcheson, Hume, the early Burke, James and J. S. Mill, T. H. Huxley and Francis Galton, among others. What these thinkers had in common was a concern with observation in the psychological realm. For Berkeley, this concern comes out, as I tried to show in my 1997 volume, in his various experiments, which mainly took the form of armchair psychology — armchair psychology being hands-on philosophy. My aim here is to carry this empirical approach one further step, by directing attention to the psychological side of Berkeley's philosophy, focusing on the role of mental images.

3 Berkeley and Galton on images That images form an important part of Berkeley's philosophy comes out in the first section of his Principles of Human Knowledge

Introduction

5

(Dublin, 1710), where he says that they, together with ideas of memory, constitute one of the three objects of human knowledge: the two others being, first, sense experiences, and second, emotions and mental acts. However, after that important classificatory statement, images melt into the background, replaced by the more general and familiar term idea. But images, more than anything else, are what give ideas their particular character. As Berkeley puts it in his philosophical notebooks, no. 657a: 'M properly speaking Idea is a picture of the Imagination's making ...'. What I shall be doing, then, is bringing images back from the periphery of Berkeley's system into the centre where they actually belong. And the best way of doing this is by drawing on the great pioneer psychologist who first put images at the centre of psychology. This was Sir Francis Galton, whose work on imaging in his Inquiries into the Human Faculty and its Development (London: Macmillan, 1883) marked, as William James put it, an 'era in descriptive psychology'. At the basis of Galton's account of imagery was a questionnaire he developed about the vividness, detail, colouring, etc. of mental images. This is sometimes called his 'breakfast-table' questionnaire, because that was the specific object that he suggested his subjects try to imagine. What Galton found, to his astonishment, was that the range in imaging or visualizing ability was enormous, which he expressed in terms of percentiles a term he invented with the highest imagers being what are now usually called eidetics, to the lowest, where a person is unable to produce any images. The great majority of us, as might be expected, are distributed somewhere in the middle between these two extremes. Of course, speaking of little or much ability is somewhat crude, since, as Galton shows, images appear in various ways. For our present purpose, I will be concentrating on the following: (1) their degree of detail, vividness and independence; or, to put it in other terms, the extent to which they are like actually seen objects; and (2) the extent to which images can be produced and

6


controlled by the imager. The first of these combines Galton's questions 1 and 2; the second is the initial setting of all Galton's questions and in particular question 12, that is 'Call up before your imagination ...' and also question 6. Taken together (1) and (2) come close to Galton's question 9 and are also exemplified in individual cases of strong or eidetic imagers, especially that of Galton's fellow scientist, Flinders Petrie, who informed Galton that 'he [Petrie] habitually works out sums by aid of an imaginary sliding rule, which he sets in the desired way and reads off mentally' - which, as Galton indicates, puts him into one of the highest percentiles of visualizers, the eidetic imagers. Where, then, or in what percentile, would Berkeley fit? Probably the best way of getting some kind of standard, or grid, is to see the two extremes. Here, then, are two responses which Galton received from those in the lowest percentiles: Extremely dim. The impressions are in all respects so dim, vague, and transient, that I doubt whether they can reasonably be called images. They are incomparably less than those of dreams. My powers are zero. To my consciousness there is almost no association of memory with objective visual impressions. I recollect the breakfast-table, but do not see it. (p. 64) But the most interesting of the low-imagers was, as we now know, Major John Herschel, FRS, an astronomer and son of the astronomer Sir John Herschel. In his response to Galton's questionnaire, he writes: The questions presuppose assent to some sort of a proposition regarding 'the mind's eye' and the 'images' which it sees. The more ... that one tries to settle the preliminaries, so as to answer conscientiously, the more difficult does it become to 10 answer them at all. This points to some initial fallacy.

Introduction

7

Herschel goes on to say that he thinks the fallacy involves making an analogy between real seeing and mental seeing, which is like that between knitting wool and knitting or stitching together an argument. So the belief in mental images, Herschel thinks, arises from taking an analogy or metaphor too literally - like thinking that the terms or premises of an argument are really stitched together. Thus 'It is only by a figure of speech [he says] that I can describe my recollection of a scene as a "mental image" ... I do not see it . . . , any more than a man sees the thousand lines of Sophocles which under pressure he is ready to repeat' (p. 59). For Herschel, then, people who believed that they perceived actual visual images were confusing or deceiving themselves. In fact, what seems clear is that Herschel himself had no imaging power. As Galton puts it, he was one of those men who 'had a deficiency of which [he] was [previously] unaware, and naturally enough supposed that those who affirmed they possessed it, were romancing.' (p. 59). From Herschel's responses to the questionnaire, it seems that he did not even have the sort of passive imagery found in dreams, or the imagery - now called hypnogogic - that comes to some people just as they are falling asleep. For many people, this will seem incredible: that someone could have no imaging power and no images at all, yet function normally. Judging from Herschel's detailed responses and his later correspondence with Galton, the questionnaire seems to have caused him a good deal of agonizing and soul-searching. Apparently Herschel had never considered that he might be lacking mental images. He therefore struggled to understand whether he actually lacked them or whether others were, as Galton puts it, romancing themselves. Eventually what pretty much convinced him that other people really did have images was Gallon's allied work on number forms. These are visual configurations, strikingly specific and stable, which some people imagine whenever they think of numbers. As Herschel says in a letter to Galton of 21 February 1880: 'The cases which you have elicited of numerical imagery

8


reconcile me to the general fact of what you denote by visualiza1Q tion'. Herschel is almost certainly referring here to Galton's article published in Mature of January 1880, which sets out in graphic detail the number form imagery of various individuals. What is clear is that Herschel was inferring from these cases, which he took to be genuine and reliable instances of imaging, that some people do have mental images, i.e. non-physical images, resembling visual things, that they can see in their minds without the use of their physical eyes. But though Herschel was 'reconciled', he still felt uneasy, understandably enough, since he still had no actual experience of images. Yet it is not just the poor- or non-imagers that might find Galton's work on imagery problematic. For so might those on the other extreme, those in the highest percentiles of imaging ability, like Flinders Petrie. However, for them the problem might be formulated as: 'Well, what's the problem?' Having such strong imagery, they find it hard to imagine what mental life could be like without it. That is their blind spot. Although Galton doesn't seem to mention this, they too can think that the putative non- or weakimagers are romancing, perversely denying something which they must have. This is relevant, because I think that Berkeley was a strong or eidetic imager, who supposed that everyone else was basically like him. Here are two of the responses Galton received from those in the highest percentiles: The image once seen is perfectly clear and bright... I can see my breakfast-table or any equally familiar thing with my mind's eye quite as well in all particulars as I can do if the reality is before me.15 Eidetic imaging is usually understood as the extreme end of the imagery scale. One of its important characteristics is that it is real, occurrent, i.e. present-tense, seeing, although no physical object

Introduction

9

need be actually present before the eidetic. In this respect it is like experiencing an after-image or an hallucination. But an eidetic image differs from an after-image in that, like a normal visual object, it retains its original colour. It is also more independent of the imager; for the eyes of an eidetic actually move as the image is scanned. An after-image, on the other hand, does not show the same stability or independence; it moves as the imager's eyes or face moves (presumably because it is imprinted on the retina or retinas). And an eidetic image differs from an hallucination in that the eidetic knows that the image is an image and not real. What present-day psychologists are not so clearly agreed on is whether eidetic images also need to be highly detailed, or photographic, and under the close control of the imager - as they are for the most powerful and extraordinary imagists, most notably the subject of A. R. Luria's The Mind of a Mnemonist (1968), the female art teacher in Stromeyer and Psotka's 1970 study and Flinders Petrie. In any case, since there seems to be no other accepted term for the strongest imagers, I shall continue to use the term eidetic in that sense.

4 Berkeley: eidetic imager Why, then, do I think that Berkeley was, like Flinders Petrie, a strong or eidetic imager? Well, the idea initially occurred to me when I was working on my 1997 volume, Berkeley: Experimental Philosophy and, more specifically, reflecting on Berkeley's observational powers in his first extant work, his description of the Cave of Dunmore. Berkeley explored this unusual cave, which is near his school in Kilkenny, in 1699, when he was about 14 years old, but did not write up his account until 1706. My conclusion was that this 'suggests, given the essay's accurate detail, that he had considerable capacity for vivid recollection, perhaps even for eidetic imagery and memory.' That is to say, he could produce

10


images of considerable detail that could be used for observational purposes. Having once considered the hypothesis, it was only a matter of time before I recalled a passage in Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge that seemed to support it. Here it is: I find [writes Berkeley] I can excite an idea in my mind at pleasure, and vary and shift the scene as oft as I think fit. It is no more than willing, and straightaway this or that idea arises in my fancy: and by the same power it is obliterated and makes way for another. This making and unmaking of ideas doth very properly denominate the mind active. This much is certain, and grounded on experience: but when we talk of unthinking agents, or of exciting ideas exclusive of volition, we only amuse ourselves with words, (sect. 28) That Berkeley is thinking of images here is clear from his speaking of ideas arising in his 'fancy', which was another term for the imagination. In short, this passage, taken together with the evidence of his description of the Dunmore cave, strongly enforced my suspicion that Berkeley was a strong or eidetic imager in being able to produce at will whatever image he wished, which I supposed would include images of considerable detail and stability that he could examine in something like the way that Flinders Petrie used his slide-rule image. But these were still largely supposals and inferences. I wanted something more first-hand, and I think there is that evidence in Berkeley's account of imaging in section 10 of the Introduction to the Principles: Whether others have this wonderful faculty of abstracting their ideas, they best can tell: for my self I find indeed I have a faculty of imagining, or representing to my self the ideas of those particular things I have perceived and of variously compounding

Introduction

11

and dividing them. I can imagine a man with two heads or the upper parts of a man joined to the body of a horse. I can consider the hand, the eye, the nose, each by it self abstracted or separated from the rest of the body. But then whatever hand or eye I imagine, it must have some particular shape and colour. Likewise the idea of man that I frame to my self, must be either a white, or black, or tawney, a straight, or a crooked, a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man. I cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstract idea above described. And it is equally impossible to me to form the abstract idea of motion distinct from the body moving, and which is neither swift nor slow, curvilinear nor rectilinear; and the like may be said of all other abstract general ideas whatsoever, (sect. 10) What we need to focus on here is what Berkeley says he is able and, even more important, not able to do. As we would expect from section 28 and his essay on the Dunmore cave, he can easily produce all sorts of imagined objects - men with two heads, parts of bodies imagined on their own - but whatever he imagines must have a particular, detailed shape and colour. It must, as Berkeley goes on to explain in the example of a man, be 'either white, or black, or tawney, a straight, or a crooked, a tall, or a low, or middle-sized man.' It must be like a photograph in its specificity or detail. He could not, it seems, imagine vague, sketchy ideas. In short, given what he says about his images, I conclude that Berkeley was in one of the very high percentiles, that he was a strong or eidetic imager, able to produce images of extraordinary vividness, detail and independence.

5 The typical mind fallacy But why, if this is so evident, has Berkeley's unusual imaging ability not been seen before now? Berkeley's Principles has been the

12


object of close study for nearly 300 years. Why has this only been noticed now? There are a number of reasons. One reason is that neither the discussion in section 10 of the Introduction nor that in section 28 is directly concerned with imaging. The aim of section 10, like that of most of the Introduction to the Principles, is negative - to prove that there are no abstract general ideas. Berkeley's account of his imaging in section 10 is only one among a number of arguments to that end. Nor is it his best-known argument, which is no doubt that in section 13, where Berkeley tries to show that Locke's abstract general idea of a triangle, that incorporates all and none of the features of triangles, is contradictory and absurd. Moreover, in section 10, Berkeley is specifically talking about a mental ability which he doesn't have — 'this wonderful faculty of abstracting' - not a wonderful ability that he has. Because the drift of the passage is downbeat and underplayed, commentators have failed to see the upbeat message. More basically, however, I think that we have been prevented from recognizing his eidetic ability in section 10 by a powerful and pervasive assumption: that all human minds are, qua cognitive abilities, essentially the same. But as Galton's work on imaging shows, this is just not so. Thus the high-imaging respondent who said that his 'mental image appears to correspond in all respects with reality . . . [and] is as clear as the actual scene' (Inquiries, p. 62) had a very different kind of mind from Herschel's or my own, since I find it difficult to produce even the most sketchy images. However, it was not until Galton's work of the 1880s that these huge differences came clearly to light. And even Galton, as I've noted, was astonished by it. Up to then, it was believed that the imaging ability was something everyone had in much the same way. Galton showed that this was false, as false yet as important as supposing that water comes in one form only, the watery variety, and that it cannot be either solid (ice) or vapory (steam). I call this assumption the Typical Mind Fallacy, or TMF for short.

Introduction

13

Galton and William James are important in their protest against the TMF. James put the point well in his Principles of Psychology (1890), in the chapter on imagination, where he draws heavily on Galton's account and quotes long portions from it: Until very recent years [writes James] it was supposed by all philosophers that there was a typical human mind which all individual minds were like, and that propositions of universal validity could be laid down about such faculties as 'the Imagination'. Lately, however, a mass of revelations have poured in, which make us see how false a view this is. There are imaginations, not 'the Imagination', and they must be studied in detail, (vol. 2, pp. 49-50). The rejection of the typical mind became one of the hallmarks of the newly developing science of experimental psychology, also forming the basis of the narrower fields of differential psychology and mental typology. Indeed, it was partly on this basis that the newly developing science distinguished itself from the older form of psychological philosophy, which had been practised by the great philosophers, such as Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, etc. Because these older thinkers believed in the typical human mind, or the human mind, each of them thought he could understand all human minds by merely attending to his own. Yet, as Galton observed: 'It will be seen how greatly metaphysicians and psychologists may err, who assume their own mental operations, instincts, and axioms to be identical with those of the rest of mankind, instead of being special to themselves' (p. 32). This, at bottom, was Berkeley's assumption. He believed that if only others reflected carefully on their own minds, they would also see that their images had the same specificity and detail that his had. But here he was mistaken. This, more than anything, helps to explain why Berkeley's strong or eidetic imaging has been overlooked. It wasn't seen

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because he himself wasn't aware of it as something special. He did not have the advantage of Galton's descriptive work. But why have we also overlooked it? At least partly, I suggest, because of the logico-linguistic revolution in philosophy, mentioned above, which directed philosophers and their students away from using psychology in philosophy. What is relevant, it was thought, is the philosopher's assertions and his arguments. Bringing in psychology and especially a philosopher's psychology was committing the genetic fallacy or being guilty of psychologism. These were taken to be enormously serious errors for philosophers, especially from around 1900 until the 1960s, when it began to be challenged, in some respects, by the emergence of cognitive science and naturalized epistemology. Coming back to Berkeley's specific case, we can see that much of what I said (above) about section 10 of the Introduction also applies to section 28. The discussion there is not primarily about imaging. In sections 28—30 Berkeley is trying to do a number of things. First he wants to pick out the essential feature of the active mind, which he takes to be the making and unmaking of ideas, which is where images come in, since they are for him what the human mind makes and unmakes. Next he observes that what we experience of the physical world are also ideas, ideas imprinted on the senses, which are stronger than our imaginative ideas. As he puts it in section 33: 'The ideas of sense are allowed to have more reality in them, that is, to be more strong, orderly, and coherent than the creatures of the [i.e. human] mind'. But his primary point is that the strong ideas of sense require a will to produce them and we do not have such a will; hence they must be produced by a 'more powerful spirit', the 'Author of Nature' (sect. 33). This is Berkeley's main argument for the existence of God. What is thrown into the background - displaced, as it were — is the considerable similarity between our - or, as I should say, Berkeley's - will and that of God. Once again, however, this is largely

Introduction

15

invisible — to him and to us — if we are not observant. No doubt part of the difficulty in seeing this lies in the concision of Berkeley's argument and that the argument involves him in pushing in two opposing directions. The main and final direction is showing that ideas of sense are very much more lively, orderly and coherent than our imaginative ideas, and hence require a proportionately superior mind to produce them, that is, God's. Hence we lose sight of where the argument started — with that other direction, according to which our (or his) images are such that he can excite this or that one whenever he pleases. His final point is that our ability and ideas are puny and slight compared to God's a point that he is also concerned to make in order to distinguish real, physical things, the ideas imprinted on our senses, from the images of our fancy. Another reason or cause that has hidden Berkeley's unusually strong imaging ability is that it is a mental abililty and not either a physical or pathological one. Hence it can be easily overlooked, just as colour blindness, as Galton notes, can be overlooked by the oi subject and also by onlookers. Had Berkeley been talking about a physical ability, such as being able to juggle ten balls at once, then it would surely have been recognized as unusual. Similarly, had he been talking about something that was pathological, say the phobic fear of spiders, then it would also have been more noticeable, as something distinguishing him. A final factor that has obscured what I am taking to be Berkeley's eidetic ability is the ambiguity of language itself. If someone says that he can produce detailed mental images, what does that really mean? It is like saying that I have a long piece of string. But how long is a long piece of string? How detailed is a detailed image? Indeed, it is more than possible - as I know from experience with students - that even when someone tells you that he has a detailed image of X, that needn't mean he has any image at all; for what he might have is the ability to remember and/or correctly speak about X.

16


Having established that Berkeley was a strong or eidetic imager, what I am hoping to show in a future work are the positive implications of this for Berkeley's idealism: for his account of ideas of sense but especially for his account of mind.

Notes 1. 2.

3.

4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

In Richard Kearney (ed.), The Irish Mind (Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1985). These are on the following Irish philosophers: Peter Browne (pp. 134—7), Robert Clayton (pp. 208-10), Henry Dodwell (pp. 281-2), John Ellis (pp. 309-10), George Ensor (pp. 317-18), Philip Skelton (pp. 799800), Edward Synge junior (pp. 864-5), T—r (pp. 892-3), John Trenchard (pp. 892-3), Duke Tyrrell (pp. 906-7). In Philip McGuinness, A. Harrison and R. Kearney (eds), John Toland's Christianity not Mysterious: Text,, Associated Works and Critical Essays (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1997). In C.J. Fauske (ed.), Archbishop William King and the Anglican Irish Context 1688-1729 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004), pp. 123-34. For a discussion of how these annotations and other recently discovered material bear on Luce's authoritative Life of George Berkeley (London: Nelson, 1949), see my Introduction to the Thoemmes/Routledge reissue of Luce's Life of George Berkeley (Bristol: Thoemmes, 1992). This essay is reprinted in Frederick Raphael and Ray Monk (eds), The Great Philosophers (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2000; paperback 5th printing 2003). See my Berkeley: Experimental Philosophy, pp. 4-5, 50-1, and Gilbert Ryle (ed.), The Revolution in Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1965), especially Ryie's Introduction. See James Ferrier, 'Berkeley and Idealism', Blackwood Magazine (June 1842), p. 813; reprinted in George Pitcher (ed.), Berkeley on Vision: A Nineteenth-Century Debate (New York: Garland, 1988). Emphasis in original. All quotations from Berkeley's writings are taken from the standard nine-volume edition of The Works of George Berkeley (London: Nelson, 1948-57), edited by A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop; see vol. i, p. 80.

Introduction 10. 11.

12.

13. 14. 15. 16.

17.

18. 19. 20.

21.

17

See William James, The Principles of Psychology (London: Macmillan, 1890), vol. 2, p. 51. See Gallon, Inquiries into the Human Faculty and its Development (London: J. M. Dent, 1907), p. 66. All references to Gallon's Inquiries, unless otherwise stated, are to this 1907 edition, part of the Everyman Library series, which was the final edition prepared by Gallon himself. Gallon's questionnaire is prinled as Appendix E, pp. 255-6. See Inquiries, p. 59. I am also here drawing on David Burbridge's fuller accounl of Herschel's responses in 'Gallon's 100: an exploration of Francis Gallon's imagery sludies', in ihe British Journal of the History of Science 27 (1994); see p. 461. See Burbridge, 'Gallon's 100: an exploration of Francis Gallon's imagery sludies', pp. 461-2. See Francis Gallon, 'Visualized numerals', Nature 21 (1880), pp. 252~6. Inquiries, p. 64. See E. R. Jaensch, Eidetic Imagery andthe Typological Methods of Investigation (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, 1930) and P. W. Sheehan, R. Ashton and K. While, 'Assessmenl of Menial Imaging', in Anees A. Sheikh (ed.), Imagery: Current Theories (New York: Wiley, 1983), especially pp. 196-200. A. R. Luria, The Mind of a Mnemonist (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002, 11th printing), Irans. by Lynn Solotaroff; C. F. Slromeyer and J. Psolka, 'The detailed texlure of eidelic images', Nature 225 (1970), pp. 347-9. Anolher Olympic-class imager, mentioned by Gallon, is ihe slalesman, who assured him 'lhat a certain hesilalion in utterance which he has at times, is due to his being plagued by the image of his manuscript speech wilh ils original erasures and corrections' (Inquiries, p. 67). See Berkeley: Experimental Philosophy, p. 13. For Berkeley's description of ihe Cave of Dunmore, see Works, vol. iv, pp. 257-64. See Daniel Robinson, An Intellectual History of Psychology (3rd edn, Boslon: Arnold, 1995), chap. 11, especially p. 306. In his 'Fifty Years of Philosophy', H. J. Palon says: 'As to psychology [at Oxford], every hackle was up at the mere mention of its name . . . and the prevailing altitude was mirrored in the well-known slory of the examinee who finished a not loo impressive answer by saying, "Here Logic ends and piscology and Error begin" '; in H. D. Lewis (ed.), Contemporary British Philosophy, (London: Allen and Unwin, 1956), p. 345. Also see Ryle, The Revolution in Philosophy. Gallon, Inquiries, pp. 58-9.


Parti

BERKELEY'S PHILOSOPHY


1

George Berkeleya

1 Background and early work George Berkeley was born on 12 March 1685 in Co. Kilkenny, where he spent his early years. His father was from England, his mother (very probably) was born in Ireland. After attending Kilkenny College, he entered Trinity College, Dublin, in March 1700, where he became a Scholar in 1702 and received his BA in 1704. In 1707 he undertook the examination for a College Fellowship. In the same year he published his minor mathematical works, Arithmetica and Miscellanea Mathematica, probably in the hope of supporting his candidature for Fellowship, to which he was admitted on 9 June 1707. He then held such College positions as Librarian, Junior Dean, and Junior Greek Lecturer. In 1710 he was ordained into the Church of Ireland. It was as a young Fellow in his early twenties that Berkeley developed his immaterialist philosophy, which he published in (what are now) three philosophical classics: An Essay towards a Mew Theory of Vision (1709), The Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713). Much of his philosophy's complex development can be traced in the two philosophical notebooks he kept during this creative period, c. 1707—8. The notebooks, first printed in 1871 and now widely known as the Philosophical Commentaries., also enable us to see the influences on Berkeley's thinking. This is especially useful in Berkeley's case, since his three early works contain few references to the writings of other philosophers. It is clear from the Philosophical Commentaries that he was profoundly inspired by the work of John Locke and the Cartesians, particularly Nicolas Malebranche. Locke's Essay concerning Human

22


Understanding (1690) had been put on the course at Trinity College as early as 1692 (see [5.15], 149). That Berkeley read it carefully and appreciatively is evident from numerous references in his notebooks. Berkeley admired Locke's candour and concern for clarity. In the Essay of Vision, section 125, he describes Locke as 'this celebrated author', who has 'distinguished himself... by the clearness and significancy of what he says', Berkeley also uses some of Locke's terminology, for example, when talking of'primary and secondary qualities'. He also derived important theories from Locke, although he almost always modifies these in crucial ways. On certain issues, most notably abstract general ideas, he could be extremely critical of Locke. The influence of Malebranche is harder to pin down. But since the publication of A. A. Luce's Berkeley and Malebranche in 1934, Berkeley's major debt to Malebranche's Search after Truth (1674/5) has been generally recognized. 'Ideas' play as central a role in Berkeley's Principles as they do in both Locke's Essay and Malebranche's Search. All three philosophers describe ideas as the immediate objects of the mind, when it experiences or thinks. But Berkeley is closer to Malebranche in characterizing ideas as having a certain substantial and independent reality. Summing up Berkeley's intellectual debt, Luce wrote: 'Locke taught him, but Malebranche inspired him' ([5.18], 7). There were other philosophers, however, who exerted a powerful, although less positive influence on Berkeley. Here Luce singled out Pierre Bayle, the great sceptic who 'alarmed and alerted' Berkeley, making him aware of the sceptical dangers inherent in Gartesianism. But the Philosophical Commentaries show that Berkeley was also reacting to the irreligious challenge of Hobbes and Spinoza — the two philosophers then most vilified by orthodox thinkers of Berkeley's theological sympathies. Hobbes's materialism and Spinoza's pantheism posed a formidable danger to theistic systems, and Berkeley felt that one great merit of his immaterialism was its effective response to this danger. As he notes in entry

23

George Berkeley

824 of the Commentaries: 'My Doctrine rightly understood all that Philosophy of Epicurus, Hobbes, Spinoza &c wch has been a declared enemy of religion comes to ye ground'. Of course, as this entry itself shows, Berkeley's philosophical horizon was not confined to (then) modern writers of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He was also responding to ancient writers, notably Epicurus and Lucretius, as well as drawing inspiration from Plato, Aristotle, and other classic philosophers. Nor was Berkeley influenced only by philosophers. Like most astute thinkers, he was attentive to the revolutionary scientific and mathematical developments of the time, particularly to the mechanistic corpuscularianism of Isaac Newton, whose Celebrated' Principia is the only book that Berkeley discussed and mentioned by name in the body of the Principles. So far I have tried to situate Berkeley, as most histories of philosophy do, as the foremost philosopher after Locke (and before David Hume), who was responding to the irreligious, sceptical and scientific challenges in seventeenth-century thought. Yet it is also important to see the local, Irish context of Berkeley's writings. It is probably no accident that Ireland's greatest philosopher emerged at the centre of Ireland's one great period of philosophical activity. This is, very briefly, the period that opens in the 1690s with William Molyneux, Robert Molesworth and John Toland; develops in the early eighteenth century with Berkeley, Francis Hutcheson, William King, Peter Browne; and culminates in the late 1750s with Edmund Burke and Robert Clayton. Neither before this sixty-year period, nor after it, has Ireland produced such continuous creative philosophy, or a philosopher of Berkeley's stature. o

2

The Essay of Vision: limited immaterialism

The importance of the Irish context can be seen straightaway in Berkeley's first major work, An Essay towards a New Theory of

24


Vision, published in Dublin in 1709. Here the main influence was Molyneux, the Dublin polymath and friend of Locke, whose celebrated problem pervades much of Berkeley's argument in the Essay. Molyneux's problem was whether a man blind from birth would upon gaining his sight be able to distinguish (visually) a sphere and cube that he formerly knew by touch. Berkeley adverts again and again to this problem, which was first published in the second (1694) edition of Locke's Essay, II. ix. 8. Berkeley also made considerable use of Molyneux's Dioptrica Nova (1692) — from which, for example, his Essay's key section 2 is drawn - as well as Molyneux's essay on the moon illusion. Another Irish influence on Berkeley's Essay was Archbishop King, a philosopher of European standing, whose criticisms prompted Berkeley to add an Appendix to the second edition, also published in 1709. Berkeley's main aim in the Essay was to establish one part of his immaterialism, namely, that everything we see is mind dependent. He assumes here what he will deny in his next work, The Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), that there are tangible things independent of the mind. His strategy was to teach or convince his readers by stages. If he could show that the visual world was mind dependent, then that would be a crucial step towards the acceptance of full immaterialism: that the whole physical world — including what we touch - exists in the mind. Another of Berkeley's objectives in his Essay was to explain how the mind judges visual distance, magnitude and situation, and while doing this to solve three notable problems, associated with these topics, problems that seemed intractable on the (then) accepted theory of vision. One problem, concerned with the judgement of size, is why the moon looks larger on the horizon than in the zenith of the sky. According to the accepted theory, articulated in Descartes's Dioptrics (1637), most of our judgements of size are accomplished by a natural geometry. In short, rays coming from objects project onto the eyes angles by means of which the mind judges an object to be large or small, near or far away. Yet

George Berkeley

25

why, Berkeley asks, do we mistakenly see a large moon on the horizon? How can geometry lead us to false judgements? The moon illusion, Berkeley concludes, 'is a clear instance of the insufficiency of lines and angles for explaining the way wherein the mind perceives and estimates the magnitude of outward objects' (sect. 78). Berkeley's broader argument against the natural geometry theory is set out earlier in the Essay with reference to judgements of distance; but it can be reformulated to refer to size. In short: (1) (2) (3) (4)

We do not immediately see the size of an object (sect. 2). What we judge size by must itself be perceived (sects 10-12). But we do not perceive projected lines or angles. Therefore, we do not judge size by a natural geometry.

In asserting (1) Berkeley was not distinguishing himself significantly from the received theory. Everyone seemed to agree that what we immediately see are variable patterns of visible points that change with the movement of our or other bodies; although for the accepted theory the visible points were immediately seen on the eye, whereas for Berkeley they are in the mind. But the important difference between the two positions is that for Berkeley the judgement of size is an inference based on what we immediately see, whereas for the innate-geometry theorist the judgement arises from the (unconscious) calculation of rays and angles. Estimating the size of an object is, for Berkeley, like seeing that someone is angry or embarrassed. Although some people might say that they can directly see my anger, all they really see, according to Berkeley, are signs or expressions of it: my reddish face, flashing eyes, clenched fist. And if they were not able to see such perceptible signs, or connect them with the appropriate emotions, then they would not be able to infer that I am angry. So the innategeometry theorist is like someone who claims to know that I am angry, although he admits that he has not observed any behaviour expressive of anger.

26


Berkeley has another way of expressing this thesis which reveals his ultimate metaphysical position in the Essay: that what we see constitutes a language by means of which God tells us about the tangible world. This is the kernel of his so-called optic-language proof for the existence of God, a proof that Berkeley first presented in Dialogue Four of Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher (1732), to which he appended a revised (third) edition of the Essay. If his conclusion is correct - and I shall be considering his detailed argument below - then to claim that we can judge the size of an object by sight alone would be like asserting that we can be aware of what a sign or utterance signifies on first hearing it, and that there is a necessary or inner connection between, say, the English word 'table' and the table it signifies. This is clearly mistaken in the case of language, and Berkeley tries to show that it is equally wrong in the case of vision. For, according to him, the visual and the tangible are entirely different: it is only by correlating them over time that we learn to judge size, distance or shape by sight. It is here that we can appreciate the importance of the Molyneux problem, mentioned above. For if the newly sighted man could see straightaway which was the sphere, then this would show that the visual and tangible sphere have shape in common, that Tt is no more but introducing into his mind by a new inlet [sight] an idea he has been already well acquainted with [by touch]' (sect. 133). Hence a positive answer to the Molyneux problem consistently goes with the theory that there are common ideas underlying sight and touch. But Locke - who agreed with Molyneux's negative answer - also held that the sphere has one shape or figure, whether it is seen or touched; see, for example, Locke's Essay II. v. Berkeley's conclusion, then, is: 'We must therefore allow either that visible extension and figures are specifically distinct from tangible extension and figures, or else that the solution of this problem given by those two thoughtful and ingenious men is wrong' (sect. 133). Of course, for Berkeley their negative answer is correct; indeed, if anything, it does not go far enough.

George Berkeley

27

For when the newly sighted man is asked the question - which is the sphere and cube? - he should be utterly perplexed and baffled, even by the question. He would be in a position similar to a person who was asked a question in Chinese, having never before heard that language spoken.

3

Complete immaterialism: the Principles

The authorative statement of Berkeley's philosophy, generally called immaterialism, is to be found in The Principles of Human Knowledge (1710). It contains his most complete defence of his 'immaterialist hypothesis' and its consequences, although it is supported by his earlier Essay of Vision and his later and more popular Three Dialogues (1713). Immaterialism has, broadly speaking, a negative and a positive side. It denies that matter or corporeal substance exists; it explains all existence in terms of minds and ideas. Although the Principles and Dialogues are mainly concerned with the negative side, Berkeley's original plan was to explicate the positive side of immaterialism in a second part of the Principles. Thus in the Commentaries, 508, he writes: 'The two great Principles of Morality, the Being of a God & the Freedom of Man: these to be handled in the beginning of the Second Book.' And he had, as he informed his American friend, Samuel Johnson, on 25 November 1729, made considerable progress on Part Two, 'but the manuscript was lost about fourteen years ago [while travelling in Italy], and I never had leisure since to do so disagreeable a thing as writing twice on the same subject'. Berkeley never did publish Part Two of the Principles^ although he made important additions in its second edition (1734), which is still described on the title-page as 'Part One'. He also probably introduced material from the projected part (or parts) in his later works, particularly Alciphron (1732) and The Analyst (1734). Thus in a letter of 1 March 1709/10, he mentions that one of the main topics of the

28


Principles was to be the 'reconciliation of God's foreknowledge with the freedom of men' — a subject which is not discussed in the Principles (as we have it), but is examined at length in Alciphron VII. 16-23. The negative thrust of the Principles begins in the Introduction, where Berkeley hopes 'to clear the first principles of knowledge, from the embarras and delusion of words' (sect. 25). Probably the two main delusions he has in mind are the dogma that (1) all meaningful words stand for ideas, from which it seemed to follow that (2) general words, such as 'extension', 'triangle' and 'motion', must stand for abstract general ideas. This conclusion was also based, according to Berkeley, on the nominalistic proposition, which he accepts, that (3) only particular triangles and specific instances of motion exist in nature, rather than (as Plato thought) triangularity or motion as such. The mistake was to infer from (3) and (1) that the mind must be able to form general ideas by a process of abstraction, that is, by eliminating those features which distinguish particular triangles, say, and retaining that which all triangles have in common. For Berkeley we can only abstract or form an idea of things that can exist separately. Thus we can abstract a lion's head from his body, but not the lion's colour from his (visual) shape. Berkeley had previously attacked this influential theory of abstraction in the Essay of Vision, sections 122—5, as one of the sources of the (erroneous) view that there were ideas of shape, for example, in common between touch and sight. His strategy, both in the Essay and the Introduction, was to show the theory's absurdity by criticizing its most distinguished proponent - namely, Locke. Berkeley's 'killing blow' was to quote from Locke's Essay IV. vii. 9, a now well-known passage which describes the difficulties of abstraction: For example, [writes Locke,] does it not require some pains and skill to form the general idea of a triangle, (which is yet none of the

George Berkeley

29

most abstract, comprehensive, and difficult) for it must be neither . . . equilateral, equicrural, nor scalene; but all and none of these at once. In effect, it is something imperfect, that cannot exist; an idea wherein some parts of several different and inconsistent ideas are put together ... In arguing that no one could have such a contradictory idea, Berkeley does little more than allow Locke's description to speak for itself. For Berkeley a word becomes general 'by being made the sign, not of an abstract general idea but, of several particular ideas, any of which it indifferently suggests to the mind' (sect. 11); and this, Berkeley says, is sufficient for communication as well as demonstration. Berkeley continues his attack on the dogma that every significant name stands for an idea by showing, more positively, how words can be used meaningfully which do not satisfy this semantic condition. Thus most of the time we use words like letters in algebra, or counters in a game, not thinking of their particular values or meanings, although we can do so, when — as in a card game we encash the counters. There are also words which are used meaningfully that never inform or stand for ideas. Berkeley specifies three functions in section 20: non-cognitive words can evoke (1) emotions, (2) attitudes and (3) actions. I shall be saying more about this far-reaching thesis below, particularly when I consider its main deployment in Alciphron. Now we need to consider Berkeley's chief claim to fame, his rejection of matter. Why, then, does Berkeley think that matter does not exist? Because, very briefly, every apparently feasible conception of it can be shown, according to him, to be either meaningless or selfcontradictory. This is a very strong claim, which Berkeley tries to justify throughout the body of the Principles, but especially in sections 3-24, where he examines various theories of matter. Thus, matter is sometimes understood to be an inert, senseless substance in which subsist the so-called primary or intrinsic qualities, such as

30


extension, solidity, shape, etc. (sect. 9). It is also defined as the substance that supports qualities, such as extension, where (unlike the previous case) the qualities are not part of the conception (sect. 16). Berkeley had many targets, because there were (and probably still are) many theories of matter. His strategy against matter differs radically from that against abstract general ideas. For it is not the case, as many historians of philosophy suppose, that his one target was Locke's theory of matter. Berkeley does not name his specific targets, either in the Principles or in the Dialogues. He is intentionally unspecific, as in section 9, where he speaks of 'some there are', or in section 16 where he describes the conception of matter considered there as 'the received opinion'. His aim was to refute all (seemingly plausible) theories of matter. As the concept of matter changes, so does Berkeley's criticism. Thus the conception in section 16 is charged with meaninglessness, since in what sense can matter (which is supposedly different from extension) support extension? How can a non-extended thing or substance literally support anything? In section 9, on the other hand, matter is understood to be an extended substance, i.e. an inert substance in which extension, figure, etc., 'do actually subsist'; so this criticism would be inappropriate. Instead, Berkeley says that the conception is contradictory, since it asserts that qualities like extension inhere in an inert, senseless substance. Why is this contradictory? Berkeley's answer brings us to his fundamental positive insight, summed up in his famous axiom 'esse is percipi' (sect. 3), that the existence of all physical things and qualities — extension, solidity, etc. — consists in being perceived. Berkeley traces the contrary belief - that one can separate the being of a physical thing from its being perceived — to the pernicious doctrine of abstraction, castigated in the Introduction. For Berkeley the physical world is composed entirely of things perceptible, imprinted on the senses, which he calls variously sensible ideas, sensible objects, sensations, or ideas. As he expresses this in section 1:

George Berkeley

31

By sight I have the ideas of light and colours with their several degrees and variations. By touch I perceive, for example, hard and soft, heat and cold, motion and resistance . . . Smelling furnishes me with odours; the palate with tastes, and hearing conveys sounds to the mind in all their variety of tone and composition. What else, after all, do we directly perceive? The widely accepted philosophical and scientific answer was: mind-dependent sensory states, resulting from the impinging of external bodies (corpuscles) on the sense organs. Berkeley agreed with the initial part of this answer, but he rejects the sophisticated causal explanation in favour of what he calls the 'vulgar' or common view: that the things immediately perceived are the real things. Putting the two notions together, he says, constitutes the essence of his position, a marriage of philosophy and common sense, according to which the real physical qualities and objects are mind-dependent entities, idea-things (see [5.3], ii: 262). Hence it follows that neither extension nor any physical quality can exist in a senseless or mindless substance any more than a thought or emotion can. However, materialism, as Berkeley well recognized, takes many forms — one of the most important of which he confronts in section 8. This grants that what we immediately perceive are ideas, but it none the less asserts that these ideas are 'copies or resemblances' of the physical qualities that exist externally in unthinking substances. This account, sometimes called the representative theory of matter, involves these components: (1) mind (2) ideas (3) physical objects. Prima facie, this theory seems to evade the difficulties I mentioned earlier in connection with the theories of matter in sections 9 and 16. Against this theory, Berkeley brings another of his principles: that 'an idea can be like nothing but an idea' (sect. 8). In short, if physical objects are like ideas, then they are mind dependent; and in that case the theory is contradictory, as was

32


that in section 16. If, on the other hand, a physical object is not like an idea, then what is it like? Can the materialist say anything meaningful? Berkeley thinks he cannot, since everything that he can say of physical objects must be drawn from what he perceives. But then the materialist's theory is empty, meaningless - as was that in section 9. And so Berkeley goes from target to target, arguing that every putative materialist theory is either meaningless or contradictory. As he puts it in section 24, 'Tis on this therefore that I chiefly insist, viz. that the absolute existence of unthinking things are words without a meaning, or which include a contradiction'. Of course, in saying that the word 'matter' can be meaningless, Berkeley is not saying that it lacks all meaning. For while 'matter' has no cognitive meaning, it does have, as he suggests in section 54, an emotive meaning: it makes people act as if the cause of their sensible ideas was material rather than spiritual. It also 'strengthened the depraved bent of the mind towards atheism1 ([5.3], ii: 261). 'Matter' is, in short, a perniciously emotive word, masquerading as a cognitive one. Berkeley's positive claim, that there are only two beings in the world — minds and ideas — is in the dualistic tradition of Descartes; although Berkeley's system is more economical in that there is only one substance: mind. Apart from sensible ideas, described above, there are also ideas of memory and imagination, which are formed by 'either compounding, dividing or barely representing' sensible ideas (sect. 1), and are fainter and less orderly than them. But all ideas, according to Berkeley, are entirely passive or inert. It is the other sort of being, spirits or minds, that are active. They cause, will, perceive, or 'act about ideas'; hence Berkeley's more complete formula in Commentaries,, 429: 'Esse ispercipi orpercipere, or velle, i.e. agere\ To be is to be perceived or perceive or will, i.e., act. Minds and ideas are 'entirely distinct'. As with ideas, there are two species of spirits: finite and infinite. Section 2 is devoted to finite, human spirits. God, the infinite spirit, is introduced gradually, later in the Principles. As matter

George Berkeley

33

is vanquished so God comes to the fore, as the being which produces sensible ideas in finite minds.

4 God replaces matter and nature Berkeley offers a more or less formal proof for the existence of God in sections 145-9. An even more succinct proof of the immortality of human spirits is presented in section 141. Neither proof should be regarded as an afterthought. For, as is generally accepted, Berkeley's philosophy is directed primarily towards theological ends, particularly proving the existence of a religiously meaningful God and awakening his readers to a vivid sense of His presence. Setting out Berkeley's proof will help us to gain a clearer understanding of the philosophical infra-structure upon which it is based. Briefly then: (1) (2)

Physical objects are collections of inert sensible ideas. Sensible ideas cannot produce or cause either themselves or other sensible ideas. Physical objects must have some cause. Matter cannot be that cause, since it cannot exist; and, in any case, matter is defined as an inert thing. (5) We finite spirits know that, although we can produce ideas of memory and imagination, we do not produce the world of physical bodies or collections of sensible ideas. (6) Hence, such a vast orderly world must be produced by an Infinite Spirit, God. Berkeley's proof may be regarded as an immaterialistic version of the (then) popular argument - used, for example, by Locke in Essay IV. x - wrhich combined the cosmological proof with the teleological. However, Berkeley gives his proof a distinctive twist by bringing to the fore, perhaps for the first time in the history of

34


philosophy, the problem of other minds. While Descartes had adverted to the problem in his Meditations, Berkeley accords it major importance. That is: (7)

(8)

(9)

(10)

We cannot directly perceive another human mind, since a mind is an active being which perceives and wills rather than something that can be perceived (sect. 27). I know that there are other human spirits by inferring their existence from their orderly physical motions, which are collections of sensible ideas that I recognize to be similar to my own. But these physical motions, which pick out finite spirits, are very slight compared with the orderly motions of the whole physical world. Hence I have greater justification for believing in the existence of the Infinite Other Mind than in any other finite mind.

In effect, Berkeley is placing his reader in a dilemma: he must either accept theism or solipsism. If he demands rigorous proof, then he must be solipsist, believing, in other words, that only he and his ideas exist. However, if he does believe in other minds, then he must also accept that God exists. God is very much at the centre of Berkeley's philosophy, replacing matter as the cause and orderer of the physical world, which is only a succession of ideas produced by God in finite minds. The orderly and regular appearance of sensible ideas displays God's wisdom and power, not that of matter or the laws of nature. Berkeley opposed the increasingly influential view, developed by Descartes and Newton, among others, that the world was a great machine, created and started by God but then left more or less to its own devices. Whereas this mechanistic world-view tended to marginalize God and spirits, Berkeley's idealistic world-view marginalizes the mechanistic, since for him physical objects are simply

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collections of inert sensible ideas. We impute activity to them in a way not dissimilar to the way that we seem to see action in a film or moving picture. Just as what we really see at the cinema are many independent, static frames or pictures; so what we really experience, according to Berkeley, are a succession of inert sensible ideas created and ordered in our minds by God. Hence it is altogether appropriate, Berkeley holds (sect. 107), to speak of purpose behind nature, since the physical world is constantly being created by a Mind, not unlike our own, in accordance with its own wise rules, generally called the laws of nature. On the other hand, it is inappropriate, according to Berkeley, to speak of an autonomous physical world, existing in space and time. Berkeley opposes Newton's theory of absolute space, time and motion (in sects 111—17). Minds do not exist in the great containers, space and time; if anything, it is space and time that exist in minds. For space and time considered as independent beings are fictions thrown up by the pernicious tendency to reify abstractions. So time is only the succession of ideas in minds. Hence (as against Locke, but in accord with Descartes) minds always think. Berkeley outlines his philosophy of science in sections 101-32. Earlier, in sections 34-84, he had examined sixteen objections to his immaterialist philosophy as well as displaying its advantages over materialism. Thus he argues that materialism encourages scepticism, since if we accept matter, we can never be sure whether or to what extent our sensible ideas resemble the external material bodies. Although the Principles is Berkeley's philosophical masterpiece, it was not well received. On the whole, it was either ignored or ridiculed. It was even suggested that its author was mentally unstable. As Berkeley's friend, John Percival, reported from London on 26 August 1710: 'A physician of my acquaintance undertook to describe your person, and argued you must needs be mad, and that you ought to take remedies'.' The New Theory of Vision had been somewhat more positively received. Believing

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that the Principles had failed mainly for reasons of presentation, Berkeley reformulated his case in the more accessible and elegant Three Dialogues, where Philonous defends Berkeley's immaterialism against the many-headed materialist enemy, represented by Hylas. The Three Dialogues was published in 1713. A year earlier Berkeley had issued his principal work on political theory, Passive Obedience, originally delivered as three sermons in the Trinity College Chapel. Here he tries to show that rebellion against the sovereign power is never morally justified, even if it exposes people to great suffering, hardship and death. Berkeley argues for this absolutist position on theological and utilitarian grounds. He felt obliged to publish the sermons (which he did by combining them into one discourse) because of rumours that they constituted an insidious Jacobite attack on the Glorious Revolution.

5 Varying perspectives In 1713 Berkeley left Ireland for London, where, in May, he published his Three Dialogues. The year 1713 brings to a close what may be seen as the first phase of his career. Although Berkeley was to publish other notable works - for example, on philosophical theology, mathematics, and economics - his fame and place in the history of philosophy are largely based on the three classics of this period. Hence it is worth trying to gain a deeper understanding of this work. Perhaps the safest approach here is to survey some of the major views, since, as with most great philosophers, there has been considerable disagreement. Although most commentators recognize that his non-materialist analysis of the physical world is Berkeley's main contribution, they differ in their interpretation and assessment of it. Thus it was held early on by Hume that Berkeley's position was sceptical, because his arguments 'admit of no answer and produce no conviction', but only produce 'momentary amazement and irresolution and confusion'.

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Of course, Hume recognized that this was not Berkeley's own view, indeed, that he was writing against scepticism, as even his titles show. Similarly, Thomas Reid maintained that despite Berkeley's intentions the logic of his position was to undermine not just matter, but also spirit, and hence that immaterialism represented an important phase in the disastrous movement towards Hume's scepticism and agnosticism — although, again, Reid realized that Berkeley would have been scandalized by such an accusation (see [5.16], 2: 166-7). But it was an accusation shared by later philosophers, some of whom - e.g. J. S. Mill, George Grote and A. J. Ayer - welcomed and applauded what they took to be the irreligious tendency of Berkeley's thought, the tendency towards phenomenalism, which one commentator has neatly characterized as 'Berkeley without God' ([5.29]). Probably the more popular view was (and still is) that immaterialism is essentially untenable, because it undermines the objectivity of the physical world, transforming real things into mere appearances, thereby locking each of us into his or her subjective world. This reading of Berkeley as a subjective idealist, as it came to be called, was influentially supported in the eighteenth century by Kant and, in our own century, by Lenin.6 Here again it was not supposed that 'the good Berkeley' actually intended or accepted this 'scandalous' position, but that this was where his theory logically led. However, not all commentators have been so hostile, construing immaterialism as such an extreme form of idealism. Thus Berkeley's most distinguished twentieth-century biographer and editor, A. A. Luce, has argued forcibly that there is no justification for reading Berkeley either as a sceptic or a subjective idealist. Indeed, Luce goes so far as to deny that Berkeley has any significant kinship with the idealist tradition. 'Today [writes Luce] they even call him "the father of modern idealism." What a remarkable accident of birth this is! Berkeley is the putative father of modern idealism, and the child does not take after its father in the slightest

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degree' ([5.47], 26). Rather, according to Luce, Berkeley was a robust common sense realist, both theoretically and practically. For Luce not only defended Berkeley's philosophy as commonsensical, but in his masterful biography ([5.13]) also defends Berkeley the man against the charge that he was a visionary or unbalanced dreamer. While Luce's picture of Berkeley, the man, as 'sane, shrewd, efficient', has been almost universally accepted, this is not the case with his common sense reading of Berkeley's philosophy; although there have been some recent sympathizers here. Yet even the critics, notably Geoffrey Warnock ([5.29]) and Ian Tipton ([5.49]), agree with the Luce interpretation in one respect: that Berkeley was deeply concerned to bring his philosophy into line with common sense and realism, and that this concern was perhaps as important to him as his religious aims. For Luce and Tipton common sense seems to be the main focus. For Harry Bracken, however, the best way of understanding Berkeley is to see him as an Irish Cartesian, rather than as the second figure in the triumvirate of British empiricists (see [5.22]). For G. M. Turbayne, however, it is Berkeley's commitment to the language model and his rejection of the Cartesian-Newtonian machine model that makes most sense of Berkeley's work ([5.57] and [5.36]). How is one to gain a fair, overall view of Berkeley's philosophy amidst such diverse perspectives? My general approach, following Berkeley's own suggestion, is to present his work chronologically, pointing out its design and connections, and then to criticize it. For as he writes to Johnson on 24 March 1730: 'I could wish that all the things I have published on these philosophical subjects were read in the order wherein I published them; once, to take in the design and connexion of them, and a second time with a critical eye'. Let us continue, therefore, where we left off: with Berkeley's publication at 28 of his Three Dialogues, which marks the end of the first and heroic phase of his career.

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6 Second phase: the 1732~4 synthesis In London in 1713 Berkeley soon became friendly with many of the leading literary and intellectual figures, among them Addison, Steele, Swift and Arbuthnot. For Steele's periodical, the Guardian (1713), Berkeley wrote a number of essays, mostly attacking the freethinkers in the interest of religion and morality. He also (as we now know) collaborated with Steele on the Ladies Library, a three-volume educational anthology, published in the following year (see [5.10], iv:4—13). In October 1713, he began his continental travels, as Chaplain to Lord Peterborough. He visited Paris where he probably met Malebranche — as well as Lyons and Leghorn. This first continental tour lasted about nine months. A second, more adventurous tour, extending from 1716 to 1720, was spent almost exclusively in Italy. Some of his travel diaries of this tour are still extant. Returning to London in 1721, Berkeley published his De Motu, a short but searching work in the philosophy of science, in which he emphasizes the operational or pragmatic value of terms such as attraction and force. Berkeley had apparently submitted the essay to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris, which had offered a prize for the best essay on motion. Although De Motu failed to win the prize, it has been commended by Sir Karl Popper and others for anticipating the views of Mach and Einstein (see [5.56] and [5.54]). By late 1721 Berkeley was again in Dublin, teaching at Trinity College. He was not, however, to remain there long, since it was at this time that he conceived his ambitious plan to establish a missionary College in Bermuda. The College, as he explained in his Proposal (1724), was to educate the American colonists and train missionaries to the native Americans, becoming 'a fountain or reservoir of learning and religion' that would 'purify' the illmanners and irreligion of the colonies ([5.3], vii: 358). He spent most of the period 1723-9 campaigning for his projected College.

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He received considerable private contributions; obtained a Royal Charter and was promised £20,000 by the British government. His financial position was also helped by his appointment in 1724 as Dean of Derry, one of the richest livings in Ireland. In 1729 Berkeley set sail with his newly married wife, Anne, for Rhode Island, which was to be the American base for his College. Purchasing a farm near Newport, he spent nearly three years there, waiting in vain for the promised grant. In late 1731 he returned to London, having been informed that the government grant would not be paid. During the next three years, he published a variety of works on theology and philosophy, as well as on vision and mathematics. Alciphron (1732), in seven dialogues, is the central work of this period. It is also Berkeley's main theological work, directed at what he saw as his principal enemy — irreligious freethinking. Dialogues Four and Seven are philosophically most important. Dialogue Four sets out a novel proof for the existence of God, which, though similar to that in the Principles, does not draw on immaterialism. Instead, it develops the position of the Theory of Vision. Having argued that we can only know other thinking persons by inferring them from their bodily effects - 'hair, skin . . . outward form' - Berkeley then states (through his spokesman, Euphranor) that our inference to God is no less sound. Alciphron, the atheistic freethinker, challenges this parity of reasoning: 'It is my hearing you talk that, in strict and philosophical truth, [says Alciphron,] is to me the best argument for your being' (sect. 6). Euphranor then argues, utilizing the main lines of the appended Essay of Vision, that God does indeed talk to us through the language of vision. Since it is accepted that language is 'the arbitrary use of sensible signs, which have no similitude or necessary connexion with the things signified' (sect. 7), Berkeley must prove that visual data and tangible things are entirely heterogeneous, which he tries to do in at least four different ways:

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(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

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He claims that it is confirmed by experimental evidence, citing, in section 15, the case of a boy made to see, 'who had been blind from his birth', reported in the Philosophical Transactions ^2 (1728). In the Theory of Vision Vindicated, published in 1733, Berkeley quotes from this now famous case, reported by Chesselden, who performed the operation. 'When [the boy] first saw, he was so far from making any judgement about distances that he thought all objects whatever touched his eyes (as he expressed it) as what he felt did his skin . . . He knew not the shape of anything'. This is quoted in section 71, where, it may be noted, Berkeley is more cautious than in his earlier claim in Alciphron IV. 15. Berkeley argues for the heterogeneity thesis by conceptual argument. Thus if two things cannot be added, then they must be qualitatively different. And while one can add a line of two colours to make one continuous line; one cannot, Berkeley maintains, add a visible and a tangible line together to form a continuous line (see Essay, sect. 131). Berkeley also, as we have seen above, makes use of an adhominem argument, namely, that those who wish to return a negative answer to Molyneux's question — as did Locke and Molyneux himself — are logically committed to the heterogeneity thesis. Probably his main argument is that we can become aware that what we immediately perceive by sight are light and colours - a field of minimum visual points - entirely different from what we touch.

Having established his thesis, at least to his own satisfaction, Berkeley then ingeniously points out the correspondences between vision and a language such as English or French, (a) Both languages contain a vast variety of signs that can be combined to inform us about innumerable things, (b) Both languages need

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to be learned, although we are less aware of learning the visual language, mainly because it is a virtually universal language. (c) As English is ordered and explained by grammar, so there are God's laws of nature which govern the orderly appearance of visual data, (d) And violations are possible in each case, (e) One can also be deceived in both languages: an illusion is like a lie. (f) Context is important in both languages, as Berkeley shows in the case of the moon illusion, (g) Both languages usefully direct our actions, evoke attitudes and emotions, and can be entertaining, (h) In both languages we pay more attention to what the signs mean than to the signs themselves; thus we are scarcely able to hear the sounds as such in language we understand, rather than what the sounds mean. Similarly, it is hard for us to appreciate that what we see is not the same as what we may touch. Berkeley's conclusion is that he has proven not merely a creator of the world, 'but a provident governor actually and intimately present and attentive to our interests'. For since we know that God speaks the 'optic language', we can know that He has 'knowledge, wisdom and goodness' (Alciphron IV. 14). In short, Berkeley's New Theory of Vision enabled him to go further than the God of Deism - the distant absentee God whose main function was to create or activate the world. But this was not evident in the first two editions of the Essay, where the optic-language theory remains implicit. The crucial theological conclusion only became clear in the revised 1732 edition and, particularly, in its reformulation in Alciphron IV. Thus in the early editions of the Essay, section 147, Berkeley writes vaguely of 'an universal language of nature', whereas in the 1732 editions this is changed to 'an universal language of the author of nature'; also see section 152. Berkeley probably had a strategic aim here. He thought that his readers would be more likely to accept his theories if he revealed them gradually, saving the more radical conclusions till later. We have already seen how he presented only part of his immaterialism in the Essay, which he then followed in the next year with the full

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immaterialism of the Principles. And the Principles itself was written with strategic intent, as we learn from Berkeley's revealing letter to Percival of 6 September 1710: . . . whatever doctrine contradicts vulgar and settled opinion had need be introduced with great caution into the world. For this reason [Berkeley says] I omitted all mention of the nonexistence of matter in the title-page [of the Principles], dedication, preface and introduction, so that the notion might steal unawares on the reader. By 1732, then, Berkeley was ready to reveal fully, or more fully, the significance of his New Theory of Vision. Dialogue Four also discusses the status of God's attributes. Here Berkeley shows himself to be a tough-minded rational theologian, opposed not only to the vague Deism of freethinkers, such as Shaftesbury, but also to the fideism and negative theology of fellow Christian philosophers, particularly his countrymen Archbishop King and Bishop Browne. In short, Berkeley attacked their position for basically the same reasons that he attacked materialistic representation (see [5.15], 162~3). His acute criticisms call into question the popular accusation, alluded to above, that he was strong-minded about the material world, but weak-minded about the spiritual world. Dialogue Seven is of considerable importance, as it contains Berkeley's most comprehensive and searching account of language. Here he reiterates (in the 1 732 editions) his critique of abstract general ideas. More innovative, however, is the deployment of his theory of emotive meaning - that words and utterances can be meaningful even though they do not stand for ideas or inform, since they can be used to evoke emotions, attitudes and actions. Although we find little application of the theory in the Principles, we know from his more elaborate (1708) draft of the Introduction that he was aware of how it could be significantly applied in the areas of religious and (probably) moral discourse

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(see [5.9]). His recognition that more needed to be published on this subject also comes out in his letter of 24 March 1730 (when he was, no doubt, at work on Alciphrori) in which, after asking his friend Johnson 'to examine well what I have said about abstraction, and about the true sense and significance of words', he adds: 'though much remains to be said on that subject' (see [5.3], ii:293). Here again we seem to see Berkeley's strategy of publishing his more radical theories by degrees or stages. In Alciphron he uses the emotive theory to show how words standing for Christian mysteries, such as 'Holy Trinity' are to be understood. Freethinkers, like John Toland, had argued that since mysteries do not stand for ideas, they must, according to the received theory of meaning, be meaningless. Hence, Toland maintained, Christianity either contained meaningless doctrines, or it was not mysterious. By showing that the received semantic theory, championed most notably by Locke, was narrowly restrictive, Berkeley was able to argue that doctrines such as the Holy Trinity were both meaningful and mysterious. For although, as he says in Alciphron VII. 8, a man can frame no 'distinct ideas of Trinity, substance or personality', the doctrine can 'make proper impressions on his mind, producing herein, love, hope, gratitude, and obedience, and thereby becomes a lively operative principle influencing his life and actions'. It is perhaps ironic (and not generally recognized) that Berkeley's emotive account of religious utterances anticipates the similar account of religious discourse given by the Logical Posivitists in our own century. The irony is that Logical Posivitists such as A. J. Ayer - in many respects a modern Toland - used emotivism to explain away religion (see [5.58], 229). Berkeley, however, explained only religious mysteries emotively. He was entirely clear that doctrines of natural theology were to be understood cognitively and justified in a rigorous way. This point, as I noted earlier, is emphasized in the latter part of Dialogue Four, where Berkeley attacks the theological representationalism of King and

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Browne. In the area of natural theology, particularly concerning the proof of God's existence and nature, Berkeley was a hardheaded rationalist. How, then, does Berkeley connect the cognitive statements of natural theology with the emotive utterances of religious mysteries? His approach is in line with the (at least then) orthodox view that natural religion forms the proper basis for revealed religion. In short, having accepted Berkeley's proof (or proofs) that a just and wise God exists, we should also recognize that it is right to respect Him; because He is good, it is also right to love Him. And the Christian mysteries, Berkeley believes, are the best ways of evoking these desirable attitudes and feelings. Thus the mystery of the future life is an excellent way of evoking fear of God's justice, and the symbolism of the Trinity of encouraging people to love God. The Christian mysteries are also justified, according to Berkeley, because they are to be found in the Bible, whose privileged status he defends in Dialogues Five and Six. More important philosophically is the way that Berkeley defends emotive mysteries in Dialogue Seven by trying to show that 'there is nothing absurd or repugnant in our belief of those points' (sect. 33). His method here is to argue by parity of reasoning that while there may appear to be difficulties, even perhaps contradictions, in mysteries such as the Trinity, there are similar difficulties in, for example, the received (Lockean) theory of personal identity, according to which personal identity consists in identity of consciousness. For suppose, Berkeley says in section 8, that we divide a person's conscious life into three parts - A, B and C. Suppose also that in B only half of A is remembered and in C half of B but none of A is remembered. Then it will follow according to Locke's theory (in Essay II. xxvii) that A is the same person as B and B is the same person as C, but A and C are not the same person. Is this any less mysterious, Berkeley asks, than the Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity?

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Berkeley presses this ad hominem defence of religious mysteries most effectively in his Analyst (1734), which examines, to quote its subtitle, 'whether the object, the principles, and inferences of the modern analysis are more distinctly conceived, or more evidently deduced, than religious mysteries and points of faith'. Berkeley's point is that mathematicians have no justification for rejecting mysteries, since the Newtonian account of infinitesimals can be shown to be equally obscure and contradictory. As he pointedly asks towards the end of the Analyst: Whether mathematicians, who are so delicate in religious points, are strictly scrupulous in their own science? Whether they do not submit to authority, take things upon trust, and believe points inconceivable? Whether they have not their mysteries, and what is more, their repugnances and contradictions? Berkeley had criticized the theory of infinitesimals in the Principles, sections 126-32, which he alludes to in the Analyst, section 50 as the critical 'hints' which he is now 'deducing' and applying in detail against Newton. His earlier claim was that the infinite division of a finite line, for example, is an absurdity generated by false abstraction, since we cannot perceive infinitely small points. His attack now is directed particularly against the consistency and proof of Newton's account of fluxions. The synthesis of 1732-4, which rivals that of 1709-13, is also supported by Berkeley's Theory of Vision Vindicated (1733), which elucidates the theory of vision that underpins his optic-language demonstration and also goes some way towards bringing the 1732~4 synthesis into line with the full immaterialism of the Principles and Three Dialogues. Two other works of the period, so far not mentioned, are Berkeley's Defence of Freethinking in Mathematics (1735) and his letter to Browne (c. 1733) on divine analogy. The first work responds to critics of the Analyst as well as continuing Berkeley's ad hominem defence of Christian mysteries. It concludes

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(as did the Analyst) with a series of'ensnaring questions', which look ahead stylistically to Berkeley's next work, The Querist (1735—7), composed entirely of queries. The letter to Browne develops points in Alciphron IV against Browne's extensive attack in his Divine Analogy (1733). Recently identified as by Berkeley see [5.63] - it shows his unwillingness to tolerate ambiguity in theological descriptions: God is either literally wise or (disastrously) He is not.

7

Final phase: the good bishop

In 1733 Berkeley was appointed Bishop of Cloyne, and in the following year he travelled with his family to Cloyne, in Co. Cork, where he was to reside until 1752. His main concerns were now with the spiritual, but also with the economic and physical needs of those under his care as well as with the wider population. Thus his main work on economics, the Querist, deals with the nature of wealth, the proper role of banks, credit and fashion. Perhaps its chief theoretical interest is the way Berkeley applies his emotive theory. For in the Queristhe regards money as a system of operative signs. And just as he rejected the Lockean theory that every meaningful word stands for an idea, so in the Querist he rejected the mercantilist theory (also championed by Locke), according to which money had value only if it was made of precious metal or had a necessary connection with it. For Berkeley it is the efficient recording and manipulation of economic transactions, which facilitate prosperity, that gives money its value. From social and economic matters Berkeley turned finally to medicine. In 1744 he published Siris, his last major work, in which he championed the drinking of tar-water, a medicine which he thought would cure or alleviate all physical ills. Siris is Berkeley's most puzzling and allusive book, moving from practical medical advice to pharmacology, then to chemistry, philosophy of

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science, metaphysics and finally to theology and speculations on the Trinity. The clear and close reasoning of the 1709-13 works has here given way to suggestive hints and allusive appeals to ancient authorities, particularly to Plato. (In this respect, Alciphron stands in a middle position between the 1709-13 works and Siris.) Some commentators, notably A. C. Fraser ([5.2]) and John Wild ([5.28]), have suggested that in Siris Berkeley abandoned his earlier empiricism and nominalism in favour of a more Platonic and pantheistic vision. One piece of evidence Fraser adduces to show that Berkeley relented on abstract ideas is his omission in the 1752 edition of Alciphron of the three sections (VII. 5-7) arguing against such ideas. Siris's final section (367) also suggests that Berkeley was reassessing his earlier work. Thus he uses the term 'revise' and concludes that 'He that would make a real progress in knowledge must dedicate his age as well as youth, the later growth as well as first fruits, at the altar of truth'. Yet, typically, Berkeley is not specific here. The claim that Berkeley changed his mind is also vigorously opposed by Luce, who has argued at length for the unity of Berkeley's work ([5.19]). Probably Siris's main theoretical interest, at least for recent commentators, is its statements on the philosophy of science and corpuscularianism. 8 In late 1752 Berkeley left Gloyne for Oxford, to supervise his son's education. His two last publications appeared in this year: A Miscellany, Containing Several Tracts — nearly all previously published — and a revised edition of Alciphron. Berkeley died in Oxford on 14 January 1753.

8

Criticisms

Having surveyed Berkeley's work chronologically, with the aim of seeing its 'design and order', we must now briefly look at his philosophy 'with a critical eye'. In doing so, we will also be able to appreciate that his immaterialism is deeper and more complex

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than my account above might suggest. It is also appropriate to see its complexity within a context of criticisms, since that is how Berkeley himself proceeded. Thus his response to the sixteen selfimposed objections or difficulties - in Principles, sections 34-84 fill in essential details of his account. Probably the chief criticism of Berkeley's immaterialist system has always been that it obliterates the real, objective, public world. If all I can perceive are my ideas, then am I not locked into my own subjective world? Hence - to take the most extreme and absurd possibility - will it not follow that only I (and my ideas) exist? That Berkeley would repudiate this solipsistic position is clear, but it is not so clear that the logic of immaterialism does not draw him towards it. For Berkeley is certainly and primarily anxious to prove that what we perceive is mind dependent. But what can mind dependent mean apart from being subjective in the way that emotions and pains are? But if all my sensible ideas are like pains, then am I not living in a world of'mere illusion', as Kant put it - vivid and orderly, but still subjective? Some of Berkeley's best-known arguments lend weight to this subjective interpretation - for example, his assimilation of the experience of heat and pain in the first of the Three Dialogues•, and his emphasis there on the relativity of our sensory experiences. His critique (mentioned above) of how matter supports qualities can also be turned against him here. For how can a sensible idea exist in a mind without being in the mind subjectively in the way that a pain is? Berkeley's response is to deny that such ideas exist in a mind in this 'gross, literal' sense, by way of mode or attribute, but only as they are perceived (see [5.3], ii: 250). But he does not clearly spell this out, or show that such a sense would not either undermine his arguments for the mind dependence of ideas, or provide the materialist with an equally vague way of explaining how matter supports its properties. Probably no interpretation is as anti-commonsensical as that of solipsism; but there are a range of less extreme positions with

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which Berkeley has been identified. Thus Andrew Baxter suggested as early as 1733 that Berkeley was logically committed to a world in which there was only me, my ideas and God as their cause (see [5.41] and [5.17]). Yet even if one allows Berkeley the existence of other finite minds, it does not follow that a common sense world is restored. For such a world seems to require independent, continuous, numerically identical objects. But that is a far cry from the 'fleeting and variable' sensible ideas which, according to the usual reading of Berkeley, constitute physical objects. Berkeley struggles to bridge the gap, particularly in the Three Dialogues, but it is complicated, uphill work. And the more he succeeds in showing himself to side with common sense, the more he seems either to bring his immaterialist thesis into question, or to lose its vaunted advantages over materialism. Thus he is sometimes inclined to preserve the independence and permanence of real physical objects by claiming that they exist archetypally in the mind of God. Thus, to quote the well-known limerick, the tree in the quad 'will continue to be, since observed by ... God' (see [5.6], 16). But this solution only raises other problems, most notably the spectre of scepticism. For if the real, reassuringly permanent objects in God's mind are different from the fleeting ideas that I experience, then do I really perceive or know the real world? Is Berkeley not simply substituting one objectionable form of representationalism for another? To resist this Berkeley needs to show that God's archetypal tree is the same as mine. But how, given esse ispercipi, could God's idea-tree be numerically the same as mine? In the Dialogues, Berkeley tries to play down this difficulty by maintaining that it is really verbal ([5.3], ii: 247-8). Yet if this problem can be dismissed so easily, then why can't the materialist dismiss esse is percipi itself as merely verbal? Surely there is something substantive at issue, as Berkeley himself appears to recognize when he advises us 'to think with the learned and speak with the vulgar' (Principles, sect. 51). In this mood he does seem to allow (as does his fellow immaterialist, Arthur Collier) that there is no

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(numerically) identical tree, but that each mind perceives a different idea-tree. Yet he might still insist that God's archetypal ideas are preferable to material bodies, because the former are meaningfully like human ideas. But are they? That God's idea of fire or salty food, for example, cannot be even qualitatively like mine seems to follow from Berkeley's argument in the Dialogues, according to which (1) experiencing the fire's heat cannot be separated from pain, and that (2) God, as a perfect being, does not experience pain ([5.3], ii:240). Hence God cannot perceive what we take to be heat. Furthermore, can we conceive what God's ideatree could be like, since it must presumably contain all possible perceptions of 'the' tree - large, small, tube-shaped, circularshaped, hard, soft - which makes it sound as incomprehensible as Locke's (impossible) triangle. Berkeley's concept of mind or spirit also raises difficulties which, if anything, are even greater than those afflicting his account of bodies. Here, prima facie, Berkeley seems to be his own worst enemy, since he constantly says that we can have no idea or experience of minds, and that they are altogether different from ideas. But if we have no idea of mind, then why believe that it exists? Is it not as indefensible as matter? Berkeley considers this objection at length in the third edition of the Dialogues, where he states that his objection to matter is not merely that it is meaningless, but that it is also contradictory. Yet, as I noted earlier, Berkeley does attack some materialist theories as simply meaningless - as, for example, 'the idea of being in general, with the relative notion of its supporting accidents' (sect. 17). Yet if our grasp of matter is no different from that of spirit, then are not the two equally plausible or implausible? Berkeley's main way of arguing for the greater plausibility of mind is by showing that it alone can be the source of activity or causality. (1) A sensible idea cannot cause either itself or other sensible ideas, since ideas are passive. (2) Yet sensible ideas must have some cause. (3) Imaginative ideas are crucial here; for we know

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that by willing we can produce them. (4) In doing so, we gain some notion of activity, and hence that minds (unlike material bodies) are active. (5) Thus Berkeley concludes that just as our (weak) imaginative ideas are caused by finite minds, so it is reasonable to infer that (vivid) sensible ideas are caused by the Infinite Mind. (3) and (4) are the decisive steps in this argument, and the question we need to ask is: how does Berkeley know that he produces imaginative ideas? There are two possibilities. He knows it by (a) direct experience, or (b) indirect inference. Although Berkeley occasionally seems to accept option (a), it is hardly tenable since it conflicts with his major principle that we can only directly experience passive ideas. While option (b) - which he generally prefers - is not in conflict with his major principles, it does not go far enough in justifying (4). For if I have no direct experience, then how do I know that my imaginative ideas are produced by my mind, rather than by my brain? Here again Berkeley's position does not seem any more intelligible or tenable than that of his materialist opponent.

Notes a.

1.

2.

b. 3.

This chapter was originally published in the Routledge History of Philosophy, vol. V, 1996. References in square brackets are to the Bibliography printed below. The authoritative biography is by Luce, [5.13]; my references are to the 1992 edition, which contains a new Introduction with addenda and corrigenda; see pp. vi, x, 22. All quotations from Berkeley are from the standard edition, edited by Luce and Jessop, of his Works, [5.3]; for convenience, I refer to entry or section number or (in the case of his letters in vol. viii) date. For a fuller discussion of this, see the following chapter, 'On Missing the Wrong Target'. See B. Rand, Berkeley and Percival (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914), p. 80.

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4 . For useful discussion of Berkeley's moral and political views, see [5.26], Broad in [5.31], Warnock in [5.39], and also [5.62]. 5. See Hume, Inquiry concerning Human Understanding [1777], ed. C. W. Hendel (Indianapolis: Liberal Arts Press, 1955), p. 163 n. 6. See [5.20] and Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism [1909] (Moscow, 1972), pp. 28 and 38. 7. See, for example, Pappas in [5.48] and [5.38]; also see [5.37] and [5.45]. 8. See Garber in [5.36], Wilson in [5.37], and [5.54]. I am grateful to Mr Ian Tipton for reading a draft of this chapter.

Bibliography Editions: complete and selected works 5.1.

5.2.

5.3.

5.4. 5.5.

5.6.

The Works of George Berkeley... To which is Added, An Account of His Life, and Several of his Letters. . . , ed. Joseph Stock, 2 vols (Dublin: John Exshaw, 1784;repr. 1820 and 1837). The Works of George Berkeley ... Including his Posthumous Works. With Prefaces, Annotations, Appendices, and An Account of his Life, by A. C. Fraser, 4 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901). The Works of George Berkeley, ed. A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop, 9 vols (London: Thomas Nelson, 1948-57; repr. 1964 and 1967; Kraus repr. 1979). Berkeley's Philosophical Writings, ed. D. M. Armstrong (London: Collier, 1965). Berkeley: Philosophical Works including the Works on Vision', introduction and notes by M. R. Ayers (London: Dent, 1975; repr. 1980, 1983, 1985, and 1989 with revisions and additions). (A useful volume, containing most of Berkeley's important works.) Principles and Three Dialogues, ed. R. Woolhouse (London: Penguin, 1988).

Editions: separate works 5.7.

Philosophical Commentaries, ed. G. H. Thomas, with notes by A. A. Luce (Alliance, Ohio, 1976; repr. New York: Garland, 1989).

54 5.8.

5.9.

Berkeley and Irish Philosophy George Berkeley Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher in Focus, ed. D. Berman, (London: Routledge, 1993). (Contains Dialogues 1, 3, 4 and 7 as well as critical commentaries from the eighteenth to the twentieth century.) George Berkeley's Manuscript Introduction, an editio diplomatica, ed. B. Belfrage (Oxford: Doxa Press, 1987).

Bibliographies and biographies 5.10. Berman, D. , Furlong, E. J. and O'Grady, P. (eds), Berkeley Newsletter (Dublin, 1977-). 5.11. Jessop, T. E. A Bibliography of George Berkeley, with an Inventory of Manuscript Remains by A. A. Luce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934; rev. edn 1973). 5.12. Keynes, G. A Bibliography of George Berkeley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). 5.13. Luce, A. A. The Life of George Berkeley (Edinburgh: Nelson, 1949; repr. 1969 and 1992 (with a new introduction by D. Berman)). 5.14. Turbayne, C. M. 'A Bibliography of George Berkeley 1963-1979', in [5.36].

Influences and reception 5.15. Berman, D. 'Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment in Irish Philosophy' and 'The Culmination and Causation of Irish Philosophy', \nArchivfurGeschichtederPhilosophies^) and 64(3) (1982), pp. 148-65 and 257-79. 5.16. Berman, D. (ed.) George Berkeley: Eighteenth-Century Responses, 2 vols (New York: Garland, 1989). 5.17. Bracken, H. M. The Early Reception of Berkeley's Immaterialism: 1710-1733 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1959; rev. edn 1965). 5.18. Luce, A. A. Berkeley and Malebranche (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934; repr. 1967 and by Garland 1988). 5.19. Luce, A. A. 'The Alleged Development of Berkeley's Philosophy', Mind 206(1943). 5.20. Walker, R. C. S. (ed.), The Real in the Ideal: Berkeley's Relation to Kant (New York: Garland, 1989). 5.21. Vesey, G. Berkeley: Reason and Experience (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1982).

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General surveys 5.22. Bracken, H. M. Berkeley (London: Macmillan, 1974). 5.23. Hicks, G. Berkeley (London: Ernest Benn Ltd, 1932). 5.24. Hone, J. M. and Rossi, M. M. Bishop Berkeley: His Life, Writings and Philosophy, with an introduction by W. B. Yeats (London: Faber and Faber, 1931). 5.25. Johnston, G. A. The Development of Berkeley's Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1923; repr. New York: Garland, 1988). 5.26. Pitcher, G. Berkeley (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977). 5.27. Urmson, J. O. Berkeley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982). 5.28. Wild, J. George Berkeley. A Study of His Life and Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936; repr. 1962). 5.29. Warnock, G. J. Berkeley (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1953; repr. 1969).

Collections of critical essays 5.30. George Berkeley Bicentenary, issue of The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 4 ( 1 3 } (1953). 5.31. George Berkeley: 1685-1753, in Revue Internationale de Philosophic 23-4. 5.32. George Berkeley, Lectures Delivered before the University of Californiaa (Berk--eley, 1957). 5.33. Steinkraus, W. E. (cd.) New Studies in Berkeley's Philosophy (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966). 5.34. Martin, C. B. and Armstrong, D. M. (eds) Locke and Berkeley (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967; repr. New York: Garland, 1988). 5.35. Turbayne, C. M. (ed.) Berkeley: Principles of Human Knowledge: Text and Critical Essays (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970). 5.36. Turbayne, C. M. (ed.) Berkeley: Critical and Interpretative Essays (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982). 5.37. Foster, J. and Robinson, H. (eds) Essays on Berkeley: A Tercentennial Celebration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). 5.38. Berman, D. (ed.) George Berkeley: Essays and Replies (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1986; repr. from Hermathena cxxxix (1985)). 5.39. Brykman, G. (ed.) George Berkeley: 1685-1985, Special Issue: History of European Ideas 7(6) (1986). 5.40. Creery, W. (ed.) George Berkeley: Critical Assessments, 3 vols (London: Routledge, 1991).

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Immaterialism 5.41. Baxter, A. An Enquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul (3rd edn, 1745), vol. 2, sect. 2: 'Dean Berkeley's scheme against the existence of matter . . . shewn inconclusive', repr. in [5.16]. 5.42. Bennett, J. Locke, Berkeley, Hume: Central Themes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971). 5.43. Broad, C. D. 'Berkeley's argument about Material Substance', in [5.34]. 5.44. Dancy, J. Berkeley: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987). 5.45. Foster, J. A Case for Idealism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982) (chap. 2 is on Berkeley). 5.46. Grayling, A. C. Berkeley: the Central Arguments (London: Duckworth, 1986). 5.47. Luce, A. A. Berkeley's Immaterialism: A Commentary on his A 'Treatise ...' (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1945; repr. 1967). 5.48. Pappas, G. 'Berkeley, Perception and Commonsense', in [5.36]. 5.49. Tipton, I. C. The Philosophy of Immaterialism (London: Methuen, 1974; repr. New York: Garland, 1988). 5.50. Winkler, K. P. Berkeley: An Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).

Vision, science and mathematics 5.51. Armstrong, D. M. Berkeley's Theory of Vision (Melbourne, 1960; repr. New York: Garland, 1989). 5.52. Atherton, M. Berkeley's Revolution in Vision (Cornell University Press, 1990). 5.53. Brook, R. J. Berkeley's Philosophy of Science (The Hague: Martinus NijhofF, 1973). 5.54. Moked, G. Particles and Ideas: Bishop Berkeley's Corpuscularian Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). 5.55. Pitcher, G. (ed.) Berkeley on Vision: A Nineteenth-Century Debate (New York: Garland, 1988). 5.56. Popper, K. 'A Note on Berkeley as Precursor of Mach and Einstein', in [5.34]. 5.57. Turbayne, C. M. The Myth of Metaphor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962).

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Theology, ethics and language 5.58. Berman, D. 'Cognitive Theology and Emotive Mysteries in Berkeley's Alciphron\ Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (1981). 5.59. Clark, S. R. L. (ed.) Money, Obedience, and Affection: Essays on Berkeley's Moral and Political Thought (New York: Garland, 1988). 5.60. Flew, A. 'Was Berkeley a Precursor of Wittgenstein?', in W. B. Todd (ed.) Hume and the Enlightenment (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1974). 5.61. Mabbott, J. D. 'The Place of God in Berkeley's Philosophy', in [5.34]. 5.62. Olscamp, P. The Moral Philosophy of George Berkeley (The Hague: MartinusNijhoff, 1970). 5.63. Pittion, J.-P. (with A. A. Luce and D. Berman) 'A New Letter by Berkeley to Browne on Divine Analogy', Mind (1969).

2

On Missing the Wrong Target 1 Bennett's Locke and Berkeley21 In his brief Preface to Locke, Berkeley, Hume: Central Themes (1971), Jonathan Bennett delineates the area covered: 'This book discusses three topics, in the company of three philosophers: meaning, causality, objectivity; Locke, Berkeley and Hume.' Bennett also disavows certain other aims: 'By focusing on just these three philosophers, I do not imply an historical judgement. I need not care, for instance, whether Hume read Berkeley.'1 But this is not really true. Bennett does make many historical judgements of just the type which he disclaims any interest in. While he may not attempt to forge any historical link between Berkeley and Hume, he does bring Berkeley into such an association with Locke. More specifically, Bennett claims that Berkeley misinterpreted Locke on such central topics as substance and the primary/secondary quality distinction. According to Bennett, Locke 'was the victim of exegetical and philosophical mistakes initiated by Berkeley and inherited by many later writers' (p. 58). Chapters 3, 4 and 5 are, to a not inconsiderable extent, concerned with exposing Berkeley's misinterpretations of Locke, and explaining how he went wrong. Although ingeniously defended, Bennett's indictments of Berkeley are, I shall argue, fundamentally questionable. My general reason for claiming this is that it is not at all clear that Berkeley was in fact interpreting or attacking Locke on substance or on the latter's view of primary and secondary qualities. Bennett assumes that Berkeley was, but I hope to show that this is a doubtful assumption. And if Berkeley was not interpreting Locke, then he could hardly have been misinterpreting him.

On Missing the Wrong Target

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Let us first consider Bennett's criticisms of Berkeley on Locke on substance and reality. According to Bennett, Berkeley misunderstood Locke's concept of substance because he conflated it with Locke's theory of reality: 'although these two concerns are as different as chalk from cheese ...' (p. 70). Briefly, Bennett claims that the former is a 'theory about what it is for a property to be instantiated . . . ' (p. 71). In any existential statement, for example, 'My tie is brown', a property-bearer is required, in order for us to speak of a thing which . . . is brown. Locke's concept of substance is the concept of a property-bearer. Substance, on this reading of Locke, is a purely logical and not a physical 'thing'. On the other hand, Locke's theory of reality, which Bennett names his 'veil-of-perception doctrine', specifies that real things lie beyond the veil of perception, and are known only through ideas or sensations. This theory, according to Bennett, sets 'the entire range of facts about sensory experience against the entire range of facts about the objective realm and then looks for empirical links between them' (p. 69). Although these two doctrines are separate in Locke, 'Berkeley welds the two together to form a single view about "material substance". He uses the word "matter" and its cognates to refer to Locke's purported "real things" which lie beyond the veil of perception. His use of the word "substance", on the other hand, connects with Locke only in respect of the substratum theory about what it is for a property to be instantiated' (p. 71). Now, the first point which must be made in dealing with Bennett's charge is that Berkeley does not, either in the Principles or in the Three Dialogues, refer to Locke in connection with substance, reality or material substance. Nor does he quote from, advert to, paraphrase, mention, or even, I believe, allude to Locke's Essay when discussing these subjects in his two famous works. Locke is referred to (although not named) and the Essay is quoted, only on the subject of abstract general ideas (Principles, Introduction, sects 13 and 18). If Berkeley meant to interpret Locke on substance,

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reality and material substance, why did he not mention or refer to Locke? Surely this should be considered a prima facie case against the view that Berkeley had Locke in mind on these subjects; and this case ought to be strengthened if we find that Locke's theories and Berkeley's alleged representation of these theories are widely different. Yet this is just what Bennett claims that he finds (see especially pp. 71-4). Berkeley did see a substance theory as fundamentally connected with a theory about physical reality, and he did attack a union of these two under the title of 'material substance'. But far from ascribing this doctrine to a particular philosopher, namely Locke, he persistently attributes the doctrine to a number of unnamed philosophers (see Principles, sects 17 and 35; Three Dialogues, in Works, ii, pp. 172 and 187). Why, however, should he refer to philosophers, if he has only Locke in mind? And why should we think that he had Locke, among other writers, in mind here, if his statement of the material substance doctrine is not to be found in Locke? Moreover, if we can find philosophers who wrote before 1710, and who held the view of material substance which Berkeley attacked, then should we not hold that it is more likely that Berkeley was attacking them rather than Locke? We do not have to search for obscure seventeenth-century philosophers who subscribed to the material substance doctrine which Berkeley attacked. Descartes subscribed to such a doctrine, and so, I think, did Hobbes. Descartes's general definition of substance runs as follows: 'Everything in which there resides immediately, as in a subject, or by means of which there exists anything that we perceive, i.e. any property, quality, or attribute, of which we have a real idea, is called a Substance; neither do we have any other idea of substance itself, precisely taken, than that it is a thing in which this something that we perceive or which is present objectively in some of our ideas, exists formally or eminently.' Substance, then, or the things themselves, lies beyond the veil of perception, and we perceive only its qualities. Descartes defines bodily substance as o


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'the immediate subject of extension in space and of the accidents that presuppose extension, e.g. figure, situation, movement in space .. .',3 thereby distinguishing extension from its substance. For Hobbes, bodily substance - for him the only substance - is 'a ground, a base, anything that hath existence or subsistence in itself. But we do not perceive bodily or corporeal substance; it has 'no dependence upon our thought', we know only its accidents, these being 'the manner by which any body is conceived'. Bodies lie beyond, and their effects or appearances lie within, the veil of perception.5 We see then that for Hobbes corporeal substances also lie beyond the veil of perception. Hobbes and Descartes, philosophers with longer established reputations than Locke, would seem to be more likely candidates than Locke for those unnamed 'philosophers' who held the theory of material substance which Berkeley attacked. We should, I maintain, take Berkeley at his word when he says that he is presenting and attacking the views of'philosophers', and not just a philosopher. Berkeley had targets, and not just a target, in mind when he attacked material substance. But if he was attacking a number of philosophers, then is it not likely that he was also attacking different conceptions of matter? I think that he was. In section 9 of the Principles Berkeley offers this definition of 'matter': 'By matter therefore we are to understand an inert, senseless substance in which extension, figure and motion, do actually subsist.' In section 17, however, Berkeley offers a different definition of'material substance', namely, 'the idea of being in general, together with the relative notion of its supporting accidents'. In the first definition the qualities are essentially linked to their substance; in the second, the substance is considered apart from its qualities. Berkeley seems to attack each definition differently. The first definition, according to him, involves a contradiction, because an unthinking thing cannot possess ideas. The second definition Berkeley charges with unintelligibility, i.e. there 'is no distinct meaning annexed to those words' (sect. 17).

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We have here, then, two distinct notions of matter, though one may be seen as a development of the other. The fact that Berkeley had more than one conception of matter, or a shifting notion of matter in view, becomes explicit in the Principles, sections 67-84. I think we should see him as attacking at least two conceptions of matter in the earlier sections of the Principles. Berkeley usually has his sights on the first, and he may have seen the second primarily as a defensive reaction to the charge of contradiction in the first notion. This reading is borne out by sections 67 and 68 where Berkeley considers a move from the first definition to a close relation of the second: It may perhaps be objected, that though it be clear from what has been said, that there can be no such thing as an inert, senseless, extended, solid, figured, moveable substance, existing without the mind, such as philosophers describe matter: yet if any man shall leave out of his idea of matter, the positive ideas of extension, figure, solidity and motion, and say that he means only by that word, an inert senseless substance, that exists without the mind, or unperceived, which is the occasion of our ideas, or at the presence whereof God is pleased to excite ideas in us: it doth not appear, but that matter taken in this sense may possibly exist, (sect. 67) By divesting material substance of all its sensible qualities this stratagem hopes to avoid the charge of a repugnancy within the concept of material substance, since there can now be nothing to conflict with bare unqualitied substance. In Chapter 8 Bennett quotes a passage from the Three Dialogues (Works, ii, pp. 232~3) which, according to him, shows that Berkeley was 'retroactively changing the whole structure and strategy of his attack on "material substance", asking the reader to ignore the attack on substrata as such [the second conception of matter] and to take him as having addressed himself solely to the


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veil-of-perception doctrine' (p. 218). This passage begins: 'I say in the first place, I do not deny the existence of material substance, merely because I have no notion of it, but because the notion of it is inconsistent...' (Works, ii, p. 232, my emphasis). But it is not at all apparent that Berkeley is here 'retracting his criticisms of the substratum analysis as such ...', as Bennett contends (p. 218). To begin with, it is not clear what Bennett means by Berkeley's 'retracting ...', since the bare-substance doctrine is undoubtedly, though obliquely, criticized in subsequent passages in the Three Dialogues (see especially pp.242 and 249 in Works, ii). Bennett might, however, mean - although he does not say it - that as the passage he quotes was added in the third edition of the Dialogues (1734), we should see Berkeley as retracting his views as stated in the earlier editions. As this is the more plausible reading, let us read Bennett's remark that way. But even then, only by deleting the word 'merely' (emphasized above) would we interpret this passage as Bennett does. For surely Berkeley is only saying that he has reasons for denying the existence of matter in addition to the fact that he has no notion of it. Berkeley may have had either Descartes or Hobbes in mind in his representations and criticisms of the two conceptions or definitions of matter. Both philosophers are prepared to speak of matter as an existing something, with modes or accidents. They might also be interpreted, although with less justice, as holding that this (bodily) substance can be considered apart from its modes. But, if we can believe Samuel Clarke and Malebranche, there were, in fact, philosophers who subscribed to a conception very close to definition (2) of matter. Clarke says that 'some have . . . meant by matter... Substance in general, capable of unknown powers or properties .. .V Malebranche also speaks of 'Many philosophers' who suppose that extension is 'only a Property of Matter, which Matter may be divested of as of the rest. Yet [continues Malebranche] if you make Demand to them, that they would please to explain that thing which they pretend to perceive in Matter,

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besides Extension; they offer to do it several ways, every one of which makes it apparent, that they have no other Idea of it, than that of Being, or of Substance in general'.7 Perhaps Berkeley had some of these philosophers in view in definition (2). But it is difficult to say with any certainty who Berkeley's target or targets 8 were, since he has not told us in his published works. He has, however, given us some valuable hints in his private notebooks, the Philosophical Commentaries. On the whole, the Commentaries support the view that, during the period when he was writing them, his criticisms of matter or material substance were aimed primarily at the Cartesians. But it should be noted that Berkeley probably completed writing the Commentaries in 1708, about two years before the Principles was published. Since a thorough discussion of all the possibly relevant entries would be beyond the scope of this paper, I shall examine only those entries which Berkeley marked 'M', i.e. those concerning matter. Sixteen of these name Locke, and fifteen name Descartes, Malebranche, or merely speak of'Cartesians'. Of those which mention Locke there is not one which conclusively justifies our thinking that Berkeley had Locke in mind in his published criticisms of material substance. Three of these entries, and a fourth which alludes to Locke without mentioning him by name, might indeed seem to provide some evidence that Locke was Berkeley's target. These are 89, 601, 700 and 724. Entry 89 reads: 'M Material substance banter'dby Locke b.2 c.13 s.19.' Now this is the only place in all of Berkeley's writings, published or unpublished, where Locke is said to speak about material substance. But in this crucial entry Berkeley does not say that Locke defended material substance, but rather that he bantered it. Yet if'to banter' is defined 'to amuse, to play upon, to jest, to jeer', then surely we should read Berkeley's remark as: 'Locke makes fun of material substance in Essay, b.2, c.13, s.19.' This would seem to be the most likely meaning, and it is supported by Locke's own marginal title, as well as Bishop 10 Stillingfleet's interpretation of that section. But if entry 89 is


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merely mentioning Locke's disparagement of material substance, then how is this to be reconciled with Bennett's view? Entries 601 and 724, it will be seen, must be examined in conjunction. 601 M Incongruous in Locke to fancy we want a sense proper to see substances withal. 724 M There is a Philosopher who says we can get an idea of substance by no way of Sensation or Reflection. & seems to imagine that we want a sense proper for it. Truly if we had a new sense it could only give us a new Idea, now I suppose he will not say substance according to him is an Idea: for my part I own I have no Idea can stand for substance in his or ye Schoolmen's sense of that word. But take it in the common vulgar sense & then we see & feel substance. These entries are puzzling, because it does not appear that Locke actually claimed that we want a sense to perceive substances. But supposing that he did and that Berkeley thought that he did, it would still not follow that these entries point to material substance. In fact, Berkeley used them on the subject of spiritual substance, in Principles, section 136. But even more to the point, these entries seem inconsistent with a theory combining substance with the veil-of-perception doctrine, which is what Bennett takes material substance for Berkeley to be about. For if substances can be the object of some new sense, then their ontological status is on our side of the veil of perception and not beyond it, as material substance is supposed to be. This leaves only entry 700, which runs as follows: 700 M M.S. We have assuredly an Idea of substance, twas absurd of Locke to think we had a name without a Meaning, this might prove Acceptable to the Stillingfleetians.

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It is difficult to say exactly what Berkeley is telling himself in this entry; but it would seem that Berkeley is defendingg the idea of sub -stance against Locke's sceptical treatment of substance: hence it would be acceptable to a follower of Stillingfleet, who claimed that Locke 'discarded substances out of the reasonable part of the world'. Yet if Bennett were correct, the roles should be reversed.11 The great majority of the 'M' entries that mention Descartes, Malebranche or the Cartesians are, as in the case of Locke, unhelpful - although they are far more aggressive than those mentioning Locke. However, the later entries: 785, 795 and 818, seem to support the view that the doctrine of material substance which Berkeley was attacking was a Cartesian one. Here are the entries: 785 M.S. Descartes in Med: 3 Calls himself a thinking substance & a stone an extended substance & adds that they both agree in this that they are substances. & in the next paragraph he Calls extension a Mode of substance. 795 M.S. Descartes owns we know not a substance immediately by itself but by this alone that it is the subject of several acts. Answer to 2d objection to Hobbs. 818 M. Say Descartes and Malbranche God hath given us strong inclinations to think our Ideas proceed from Bodies, or that Bodies exist. Pray wt mean they by this. Would they have it that the Ideas of Imagination are images of & proceed from the Ideas of Sense, this is true but cannot be their meaning for they speak of Ideas of sense themselves as proceeding from being like unto I know not wt. In the last statement of entry 785 we find Berkeley interpreting Descartes to mean that extension is a mode of (material) substance, and hence Descartes may be Berkeley's target in Principles,


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sections 16 and 17. Entry 818 seems to charge Descartes and Malebranche with making use of the veil-of-perception doctrine. Bodies lie beyond the veil of perception, and our ideas of sense somehow correspond with them because of certain strong inclinations which God has given us to believe this. The middle entry, 795, goes some way towards uniting Descartes's substance and veil-of-perception doctrine. Substance is not known by itself, but only as the subject of various activities or accidents, such as 'magnitude and figure' which, presumably, lie within the veil of perception. Berkeley uses the expression 'material substance' sparingly in the Commentaries, he mentions it only twice. The first, no. 89, I have mentioned; the second entry, no. 17, suggestively mentions Hobbism: M fall of Adam, rise of Idolatry, rise of Epicurism & Hobbism dispute about divisibility of matter &c expounded by material substances. We have seen then that Berkeley does not mention Locke in connection with material substance in the Principles or the Three Dialogues, and that the Commentaries offers little or no evidence that he intended to attack Locke on material substance. Add to this that Professor Bennett has strenuously argued that Locke had no theory of material substance, and that we have seen that other equally prominent philosophers (Descartes and Hobbes) had. Should we not conclude from this that Berkeley's target in the Principles and the Three Dialogues was not Locke, and that his shots at material substance were not off the target, as Bennett holds, since they were not directed to that target? The only reason, one would suppose, for thinking that Locke was Berkeley's target on material substance would be some evidence that Locke did hold a theory of material substance such as Berkeley attacked. At the beginning of Chapter 4, Bennett undertakes to do the following: T shall argue that the distinction [between primary and

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secondary qualities] is well-grounded and interesting, that Locke grasped an important truth about it, and that Berkeley's treatment of this matter is impercipient and unhelpful. Berkeley assimilated the primary/secondary quality distinction to that monolithic "theory of material substance" which he thought he detected in Locke's writings; and I shall argue that this is the dominating fact about his failure to deal competently with the distinction between primary and secondary qualities' (p. 89). Allowing Bennett to have succeeded admirably in his first undertaking - to show that the distinction is an interesting one - it must be doubted whether he succeeds in the following ones. For to the extent that Bennett's examination supposes that Berkeley assimilated Locke's primary/secondary quality distinction to a theory of material substance which Locke never held, one must doubt Bennett's claims. For if, as I have maintained above, Berkeley did not interpret or attack Locke on material substance, then it must be doubtful whether he assimilated it with a distinction which Locke did hold. But there is more to be sceptical about in Bennett's claims, since it is not clear if, or to what extent, Berkeley had Locke's distinction of primary and secondary qualities in mind at all in his Principles and Three Dialogues. It is also to be doubted whether Locke grasped the (or a) truth which Bennett thinks that he detects in Locke's writings. Let us start with this latter point. According to Bennett, Locke's '... general thesis [is] that the raw materials which constitute the concept of Body are to be found within the realm of primary qualities ...' (p. 90). Bennett thinks that Locke 'grasps' this, and that it is 'a good point'; he does think that Locke sometimes expresses it badly. Locke 'ought not to express it as though it were a prediction about the outcome of an experiment, for really it is a point about the meaning of the word body, or about the concept of a body or a physical thing' (ibid.). Despite the fact that Locke often expresses himself as he ought not to, according to Bennett, Bennett does produce one


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well-expressed quotation to justify our believing that Locke did grasp his general thesis. Here it is: 'People [mean] by body something that is solid and extended, whose parts are separable and movable different ways.' Since this is the only source which is adduced to prove that Locke held such a thesis, it is obviously crucial and worthy of scrutiny. It should be noted first that this quotation is taken from Locke's Essay II. xiii. 11, and therefore that it is not from the chapter in which Locke specifically deals with the primary/secondary quality distinction, namely Essay II. viii. Secondly, it must be noted that the words quoted by Bennett are extracted from a sentence and section whose purpose was to attack the Cartesian view that body and extension are the same thing. Locke says: 'If therefore they [the Cartesians] mean by Body and Extension the same that other People do, viz. by Boay, something that is solid and extended, whose parts are separable and moveable different Ways; and by Extension ...'. Now, I think it must be considered somewhat odd that Locke should express his general thesis only once, in the context of another point, and in a chapter on a subject other than primary/secondary qualities, if it were really his general thesis. But even allowing this, we must still ask whether Locke is one of those people who believe that the concept of body necessarily includes 'something that is solid and extended, whose parts are separable and moveable different ways'. That Locke did not believe that motion is an essential feature of body is evident from Essay IV. x. 10: 'Matter [which, in this context, may be read as an equivalent of "body"] by its own Strength, cannot produce in itself so much as Motion: the Motion it has must also be from Eternity, or else be produced and added to Matter, by some other Being more powerful than Matter; Matter, as is evident, having not Power to produce Motion itself.' (Also see Essay 11. i. 10.) Consequently, for Locke, motion is not essential to the concept of matter or body. If it has motion this is a contingent fact. That is, God might not have added it to matter. And if motion is not an

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essential feature of the concept of matter then it is hard to see how 'its parts being separable' is. Locke's discussions of primary qualities, then, are expressed just as he ought to have expressed them. For he cannot know conceptually whether body has motion; he can only know this from experience or by experiment. I conclude that Locke did not hold the general thesis, at least in the form that Bennett claims that he held it. As in the case of material substance, Bennett reads Berkeley's critical remarks on primary/secondary qualities as directed against Locke. The second of the triumvirate of British empiricists is again at war with the first. But as in the case of material substance, this historical connection is suspect. Despite Bennett's confident remarks, such as 'When Berkeley approves Locke's saying that secondary qualities are only in the mind, and deplores his refusal ...' (p. 114), Berkeley, in fact, never mentions Locke or refers to the Essay in the Principles'1 or Three Dialogues' discussions of the topic. In the Three Dialogues the primary/secondary quality distinction is said to be 'an opinion current among philosophers' (Works, ii, p. 188). In the Principles Berkeley speaks of'Some there are who make a distinction betwixt primary and secondary qualities ...' (sect. 9). As with material substance, he never names names, and he always refers in the plural to the defenders of the theory. For Bennett, however, Berkeley's blanks are neatly to be filled in with the name John Locke: 'Berkeley, then, sees Locke as having a view about secondary qualities which restricts or partly retracts the veil-of-perception doctrine, and a thesis about primary qualities which affirms a restricted version of the veil-of-perception doctrine' (p. 115). That is, Berkeley is said to interpret Locke's secondary qualities as sensory states, with no resembling real things on the other side of the veil of perception; while the primary qualities are features of real things which lie beyond the veil of perception. But, having filled in Berkeley's blanks, Bennett proceeds to criticize Berkeley for having misunderstood Locke's theory: 'This is a


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gravely wrong picture of how Locke's central claim about primary and secondary qualities relates to his veil-of-perception doctrine ...' (p. 115). But if the picture is a gravely wrong one of Locke's theory, and if Berkeley has not told us whose theory it is a picture of, then surely we should conclude that it is not meant to be a picture of Locke's theory. If Berkeley was not trying to paint a picture of Locke's theory then whose theory did he have in mind? Again the Commentaries must be consulted. The entries marked 'P' for primary and secondary qualities are now central. Dr Luce has summed up the evidence as follows: 'There are some 36 "P" entries. Of these eight mention Malebranche or the Cartesians, and another 10 or 12 also refer to the Search [after truth, by Malebranche]. Three "P" entries mention Locke and possibly four others refer to him' (Berkeley and Malebranche, p. 62). This alone might incline us to the conclusion that Berkeley had Malebranche chiefly in mind on primary/secondary qualities. I believe that our inclination would be right, especially since Malebranche's theory resembles Berkeley's picture in just those significant respects in which, according to Bennett, Berkeley's picture differs from Locke's theory, that is, Bennett thinks that Berkeley misinterprets Locke as holding that secondary qualities are ideas in the mind, rather than powers able to cause ideas. But Malebranche unequivocally holds that secondary qualities are mental states. They are 'modifications of the mind' (see Berkeley and Malebranche, pp. 63—7). 13 For Malebranche these modifications or secondary qualities do not resemble anything outside the mind; whereas we do have ideas of primary qualities and these qualities are independent of our minds. Consequently, if we are to fill in Berkeley's blanks with one name then it must, I think, be that of Malebranche. But Berkeley probably had other philosophers, perhaps even a composite target in mind. The question of Berkeley's targets has received less attention than that of the sources of his ammunition; yet both must be considered if we are to understand the philosopher.

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But what, one might ask, are the factors which have led interpreters to think that Berkeley had Locke in mind, and not Malebranche? Foremost, I imagine, is the fact that Locke speaks of 'primary' and 'secondary' qualities, while Malebranche uses a different terminology to talk about the same things. Berkeley follows Locke's terminology or, more correctly, Robert Boyle's. But there is nothing surprising in Berkeley's using the terms of his countrymen, as these terms were used nearly ten years before the Search (1675), and were probably in fairly common use around 1710.

Before concluding, I should like to make a final point, concerning the theories of meaning held by Locke and Berkeley. Bennett claims, I think wrongly, that Locke and Berkeley subscribed to the following view about meaning. This is the view that the unit of meaning is the individual word: not just that one understands a sentence by understanding its constituent words, but the much stronger, false view that the whole story about what a word means can be told without implying anything about how it can be put together with other words to yield meaningful sentences (p. 148). That Locke did not consistently hold to such a view is clear from his chapter on particles, Essay III. vii. Here he claims that particles such as 'but', 'and', and 'is', which make up a large part of our language, do not possess any meaning by themselves, but only as they are used within a certain linguistic context. A quotation from Berkeley's New Theory of Vision, section 73, will show that he also did not consistently hold the view attributed to him by Bennett: 'Now it is known a word pronounced with certain circumstances, or in a certain context with other words, hath not always the same import and signification that it hath when pronounced in some other circumstances or different context of words.' On the whole, however, Bennett's discussions of meaning

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in Locke, Berkeley and Hume are illuminating, although I think that he underestimates Berkeley's liberation from Locke's theory of meaning and the role of non-cognitive discourse in Berkeley's philosophy.

2

Pitcher on Locke and Berkeley

b

George Pitcher's Berkeley (1977) is a closely written, workmanlike study of Berkeley's philosophy. Pitcher is a skilful anatomist of Berkeley's arguments and thought, but this does not always make for engaging reading; indeed, much of the book seems to merit the title 'Berkeley made difficult.' Readers may also wonder whether some of Pitcher's fine distinctions and dissections are worth the fuss and the typographical disruption (see pp. 10—11, 26, 95-6). But Pitcher's chief weakness is his speculative and cavalier way of doing history of philosophy. His self-evident axiom is that 'Locke is the Philosopher for Berkeley .. . [indeed] the Enemy' (p. 90). Time and again we learn that Berkeley is 'attacking' Locke on matter. For example: 'Berkeley seeks to rectify the faults he finds in Locke's system ...' (p. 92), 'Berkeley bluntly contends, against Locke, that our ideas of sense cannot possibly resemble Lockean material objects .. .' (p. 115), 'The second of Berkeley's two parting shots against Locke is aimed .. .' (p. 122). But Berkeley mentions Locke neither directly nor indirectly in his published statements on matter and sense perception. (Locke's views on language are, of course, openly attacked in the Introduction to the Principles.} When Berkeley names his materialistic opponents, as he does in the Principles, section 93, and in the second of the Three Dialogues^ it is Hobbes, Spinoza and Vanini (and more generally the Hobbists and Epicureans) that he mentions. Hence Pitcher's expressions like 'the hated Lockean dualism' (p. 169) are little better than historical romance. Most of his Locke-Berkeley discussions are only barely based on fact, such as when he sees Berkeley objecting to

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Locke's philosophy on account of its (1) atheism and irreligion, (2) opposition to common sense and (3) scepticism (pp. 91-2, 134 and 142). But what of (1) Hobbes, Spinoza, (2) Malebranche and (3) Bayle? There is surely 'an air of unreality', to use Pitcher's own phrase, when Locke is commissioned to be Berkeley's irreligious and uncommonsensical target in preference to Hobbes or Spinoza. Unfortunately, Pitcher's historical boxing ring is large enough for only two contestants. I do not wish to claim, however, that Pitcher is the worst sinner in this respect, or that his discussions in Chapters 6 through 11 are fundamentally vitiated by the fictitious links he forges between Locke and Berkeley. But by artificially restricting Berkeley's targets, he does oversimplify and distort Berkeley's complex critique of materialism, which is not, as the title of Chapter 7 indicates, an 'attack against Lockean matter.' Rather, it is a many-sided attack against conceptions of matter drawn from the ancient materialists, the Schoolmen, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Malebranche and, probably, also from Locke. Pitcher's high-handed history of philosophy is in marked contrast, happily, to his careful and precise analysis of Berkeley's arguments in the classic works published between 1709 and 1713. Here he is illuminating; although on some topics, numerical identity (pp. 144-9) being one, I think he overstates and hence misrepresents Berkeley's position. Pitcher's concentration on the earlier works is understandable, but it sometimes leads to the omission of relevant evidence. Thus in his interesting discussion of Berkeley's concept of mind (pp. 212-22), he should certainly have examined Berkeley's assertion in De Motu, section 21, that we know our soul 'by a certain internal consciousness' (also see sect. 29). Pitcher's account of mind and time is also, I think, weakened by his failure to see the theological aims of Berkeley, whose subjective theory of time is hardly a 'desperate effort' against 'the spectre of scepticism' (p. 223). It is, in fact, at the heart of his novel proof for the immortality of the soul, which is for him an item of rational and not (p. 244) pragmatic theology.


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Notes a. This section originally appeared in Hermathenaiu 1972. 1. Jonathan Bennett, Locke, Berkeley, Hume: Central Themes (Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1971J. All page references, unless otherwise specified, are lo this work. References to Berkeley's Three Dialogues are to The Works of George Berkeley, vol. ii, ed. Professor T. E. Jessop (London: Thomas Nelson, 1948-57). 2. Definition 5, of'Arguments demonstrating the existence of God and the distinction between the soul and the body, drawn up in a geometrical fashion,' in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. E. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (New York: Dover Books, 1955), vol. ii, p. 53. Also see Kemp Smith's New Studies in the Philosophy of Descartes (1952), pp. 192-3. 3. The Philosopical Works of Descartes, definition 7. 4. The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, ed. Molesworth (1839), vol. iv, p. 308. Also see Richard Peters' Hobbes (London: Penguin, 1967), pp. 88 91, and 99-103. 5. The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, vol. i, pp. 103 and 389f.; and vol. iii, p. i. 6. A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes ofGod (sixth edn, 1725), p. 91. Clarke seems to suggest that 'Mr Hobbs and his followers' may be interpreted as asserting this definition of matter. 7. Treatise concerning the Search after Truth (1694), trans. T. Taylor, p. 128 (Bk iii, chap, viii, sect. 2). 8. Compare Berkeley's remarks in his 'Advertisement' to Alciphron (1732). 9. This is the way it is defined by N. Bailey in his An Universal Etymological English Dictionary, tenth edn (1 742). 10. Locke's marginal title is 'Substance and Accidents, of little use in Philosophy'. Stillingfleet had said that Locke's section was designed to 'ridicule the notion of substance' (quoted in The Works of John Locke (9th edn, London, 1794), vol. iii. p. 448). 11. Hume, it may be mentioned, saw Locke as sceptical about whether we mean anything when we talk about substance: see Hume's A Letter from a Gentleman (1745), p. 30. 12. The term 'corporeal substance' is used in entry 517. 13. On the importance of this point to Malebranche, see Dr Luce's Berkeley and Malebranche (1967), p. 63; compare this with Bennett, p. 113. 14. Boyle first developed the terminology in The Origin of Forms and Qualities according to the Corpuscular Philosophy (1666). Boyle, it should be noted,

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b.

Berkeley and Irish Philosophy considers secondary qualities as subjective, unlike Locke, but like Berkeley: see Professor R. I. Aaron's John Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 121-3. This section was originally published as a review of Pitcher's Berkeley (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977) in the Journal of the History of Philosophy in 1980.

Part II

THE GOLDEN AGE OF IRISH PHILOSOPHY


3

Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment in Irish Philosophya

About fifty years ago an able historian of philosophy, John Laird, opened a discourse in Belfast with the following caveat: I have called this lecture 'Ulster Philosophers', not 'Ulster Philosophy', because there is no such thing as Ulster Philosophy. That is to say, the red-handed province has no continuing philosophical tradition in it of any kind — nothing either auto1 chthonous or imported that was born, grew and died. I expect that most historians of philosophy and of Ireland would not only agree with this judgement, but would be inclined to pass a similar one on Irish philosophy in general. After all, there is neither book nor essay, nor even note, on the subject. b Yet for all that, the judgement is inaccurate: for there was a 'continuing philosophical tradition' in Ireland which flourished for about sixty years, from the 1690s to the 1750s. It was born with John Toland, grew with Peter Browne, William King, George Berkeley and Francis Hutcheson, and died with Robert Clayton and Edmund Burke. This tradition was largely autochthonous or indigenous, and it engaged most of the outstanding Irishmen of the time, as well as a host of lesser figures such as Edward Synge (father and son), Thomas Emlyn, Henry Dodwell (the elder), Philip Skelton and John Ellis. My aim in this and a second essay is not, however, to write a history of Irish philosophy, even less, of Irish philosophers, but to reveal the main themes and phases, the character and causation, of Irish philosophy.

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The primary impulse and bent of philosophy in Ireland is theological: its character and growth being constituted by the socalled Deist controversy and the play of Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment forces. In its three score years Irish philosophy produced works and ideas of considerable originality, influence and value. It also found lasting expression in the more popular literature of the period, notably in the writings of Jonathan Swift.

1

Background forces

John Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding (London, 1690) is, without doubt, the most important external influence on Irish philosophy. More than any other book, 'the Philosopher's Bible' as it is sometimes called assumed the role of authority in matters philosophical. The Essay achieved this position at a very early date in Ireland through the efforts of William Molyneux. Writing to his friend Locke on 22 December 1692, Molyneux points out that he . . . was the first that recommended and lent to the reverend provost of our university [of Dublin], Dr Ashe, a most learned and ingenious man, your essay, with which he was so wonderfully pleased and satisfied, that he ordered it to be read by the bacho elors in the college, and strictly examines them in their progress. Trinity College, Dublin was the first institution of learning to appreciate the importance of the Essay, and the character of Irish philosophy is indelibly stamped by it. Without Locke's Essay there would hardly have been a Berkeley, Browne, Hutcheson, or Burke; at least, they could not have been the philosophers we know them to be. Apart perhaps from Molyneux, no Irish thinker entirely accepted Locke's philosophy, or described himself as a follower of Locke. Indeed, the Hibernian contribution was in large measure to criticize creatively and reinterpret Locke's diverse

Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment

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philosophical investigations. Irish philosophy, following the lead of Locke, is essentially concerned with epistemology. And within this wide domain, its two main problems are the nature of perception and of language. Molyneux, Locke's Irish apostle, never wrote any philosophical work of his own. He did, however, write an influential book on optics, Dioptrica Nova (London, 1692), and one on Irish political theory, The Case of Ireland's being Bound (Dublin, 1698). He also set the most important Irish philosophical problem, rightfully named after him, and some of his philosophical views may be gathered from his personal letters to Locke, later to be published in Some Familiar Letters between Mr. Locke and several of his Friends (London, 1708). However, Molyneux remains in the background of Irish philosophy. This can also be said of Robert Molesworth, the author of the anti-clerical Account of Denmark (London, 1694) who stands beside Molyneux as the second important background figure. Viscount Molesworth, like Molyneux, was a politician, a man of practical affairs, who influenced more by his personal relations than by his writings. Around him gathered in the 1720s in Dublin the so-called Molesworth Circle. As Molyneux was Locke's apostle, so Molesworth was the apostle of Lord Shaftesbury, author of Characteristics (London, 1711), who was himself a pupil of Locke. There are two main tendencies in Irish philosophy: one liberal, the other traditional. Molesworth and Shaftesbury follow squarely in the former. They represent the Enlightenment, especially in their sympathy for toleration and in their criticism of the priestly and dogmatic aspects of religion. Locke, as I shall try to show, was employed by both tendencies or movements, but most imaginatively by the forces of tradition. The intricate play of these two tendencies or forces - Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightment - is essential in the development of Irish philosophy. Locke stands to Irish philosophy in a relationship not dissimilar to that which Hegel stands to nineteenth-century

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German philosophy. There are, I should like to say, left-wing Lockeans, such as Molesworth, Toland, Emlyn, Hutcheson and Clayton and right-wing Lockeans, such as Browne, Dodwell, King, Skelton and Burke. The left-wingers tend to be in favour of natural religion, rationalism and toleration; the right-wingers of extreme empiricism and fideism and intolerance. As with any such schema, there are exceptions and problem-cases. Berkeley, the greatest genius of Irish philosophy, is the major exception. He does not fit neatly into either group, for his philosophy contains important rationalistic and empiricistic elements; thus, while he has little or no sympathy for fideism, neither does he have much for religious toleration. Still, our schema is important and useful. Indeed, it serves to bring out the uniqueness of Berkeley's thought which is the centrepiece of Irish philosophy. Of course, there are other forces in the background of this exceptional flowering of philosophy, one of these being the Dublin Philosophical Society, which flourished intermittently between 1683 and 1708, and encouraged interest in the new learning and science. Some of those who were to make significant contributions in philosophy were, like King and Berkeley, active members of the Society, one of whose founders was Molyneux. Even more formative, however, were the extraordinary political, social and economic developments of the last two decades of the seventeenth century. It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of the victory of William III over James II, and the subsequent establishment of Ascendancy rule, based on the Penal Laws against the Roman Catholics. But this is a subject that I shall be dealing with in the sequel.0

2

The birth

It is appropriate that Irish philosophy should be born with John Toland, for he brings together nearly every one of its strands.


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Born a Roman Catholic in Co. Donegal — it was alleged that his father was a Popish priest — Toland became a Dissenter at the age of fifteen or sixteen years. He then left Ireland and became a protege of Shaftesbury, Molesworth and Locke. The publication of Toland's Christianity not Mysterious (London) in 1696 was the great seminal act in Irish philosophy. Indeed it brought Irish philosophy into being, and continued to haunt it until its demise in the late 1750s. If anyone can be described as the father of Irish philosophy, it is Toland; but he was, as we shall see, its hated and illegitimate father. In Christianity not Mysterious Toland applied the Lockean theory of meaning to religious mysteries. Toland argued that since mysteries such as the Holy Trinity do not stand for distinct ideas, Christianity must either employ meaningless doctrines, or else be non-mysterious. This radical line of argument is fairly evident even from the subtitle of Toland's book: 'a treatise showing, that there is nothing in the Gospel contrary to reason, nor above it: and that no Christian doctrine can properly be call'd a mystery'. The Christian mysteries were for Toland meaningless 'Blictri' words — as he called them - because like 'Blictri' they did not stand for any distinct ideas. Reason is supreme for Toland. There are no dark spots or mysteries. Toland is a militant rationalist. But he is not a rationalist in the manner of Spinoza or Leibniz. He is not a metaphysical but rather an epistemological rationalist. It is not that the world, or being, has no cognitive dark spots, but that our understanding need have none. We can be absolutely certain about our ideas or how things appear to us. Our assent, and its degrees, are a function of the evidence. And while our understanding does not know all that can be known of what is, we can be certain of what we perceive and conceive. We do not know the real inner nature of bodies, but we do know what we perceive of them - their nominal essence, as Locke called it. Hence there is no reason for scepticism or for regarding our understanding of the world as in any way

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mysterious. We must give our assent to that which we know, and that which we do not know is meaningless and should be of no concern to us. Hence Toland's epistemological rationalism vanquishes all mysteries or things above the understanding. His position is based on Locke's theories of meaning and nominal essence and his epistemological standpoint. But the synthesis and the shocking conclusion that Christianity is not mysterious are distinctively Toland's. As Pope put it in a suppressed couplet from the Essay on Man: What partly pleases, totally will shock: d I question much if Toland would be Locke. The reaction to Toland's book was fierce, and nowhere more so than in Ireland. In 1697 Toland paid a visit to the country of his birth, and within a short time, as we are informed by Molyneux, he had 'raised against him the clamour of all parties'; the clergy, especially, being 'alarmed to a mighty degree against him'.4 His book was burnt by the common hangman, and it was moved by someone in the Committee on religion in the Irish House of Commons 'that Mr. Toland himself should be burnt ...'. It was decided, however, that he should be taken into custody and prosecuted and that no more copies of that book be brought into the Kingdom. Toland fled to England in order to escape his Irish persecuters, who were applauded by Robert South for making the country too hot for him. There can be no doubt that Toland's effect on Ireland was traumatic, and I shall later attempt to explain why this was so. It is indicative of the fierceness of the traditional or right-wing tendency that the next person to express views similar to Toland's was not permitted to escape so easily. This was Thomas Emlyn, a dissenting minister in Dublin, who was imprisoned for more than two years for his rationalistic approach to the Holy Trinity. In 1702 he was indicted for his Humble Inquiry into the Scripture


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Account of Jesus Christ (1702), having made an unsuccessful attempt to flee to England. Archbishop King, we are told, 'gave warmth to the proceedings', which were 'severe and cruel', so much so that as Emlyn tells us - 'My case seem'd so odious, that I found it hard to get counsel'. Emlyn heard one person say that 'he had never seen such a persecution since he had been at the bar'. I think this 'rage and violence', this 'Dublin zeal' as Emlyn nicely put it was connected with the Toland escapade. In short, Toland waved the red flag in 1697 and five years later poor Emlyn was gored. A rationalistic clergyman was not to be tolerated, even though his views were more modest and Christian than Toland's. Emlyn is a moderate left-wing Lockean. This comes out not only in his specific rationalistic rejection of the Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity, but also in his statement of general principles. Thus he expressly opposes the basis of the answers to Toland's challenge, offered by Peter Browne and others - that as finite we cannot know the meaning of a term standing for an infinite object. Emlyn's succinct response is:'. . . at this rate [one will] believe nothing of God'. And again: 'No man can believe explicitly what he does not understand, for faith is an act of the understanding.' I want now to consider three of the most important Irish replies to Toland's challenge, for in their different ways they represent the other main tendency in Irish thought: that of the right-wing Lockcans. In 1697 appeared A Letter in Answer to . . . Christianity not Mysterious. As to all those who set up for Reason and Evidence in opposition to Revelation and Mysteries (Dublin) by Peter Browne who may be regarded as a leader of the right-Lockeans. In the following year Edward Synge published an Appendix (1698) to his urbane Gentleman's Religion, in which he criticized Toland from the viewpoint of the moderate right wing. Both Browne and Synge were to become prelates of the Irish Church; they were also to differ on fundamental issues embodied in their replies to Toland. Indeed, in an anonymous pamphlet of 1716, Browne accused Synge of giving in to Toland.7

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In responding to Toland's challenge that Christianity is not mysterious, both Synge and Browne employ a key illustration: a man born blind who is told about light and colours. About otherworldly objects we have, says Browne, 'no more notion than a blind man hath of light. And now that I am fallen into this metaphor [later changed to "similitude"] which seems well to explain the nature of the thing, let us pursue it a little ...' (Letter, p. 50). This Browne does, pointing out that the blind man must understand light in terms of some other sense; thus he might think that light is 'wonderous soft and smooth'. For Browne, we must trust that such representations are answerable to the things they are supposed to represent, even though we know that the two are of totally different natures. Browne was clearly taken with the similitude of the blind man, for in the General Introduction to his major work, The Procedure, Extent and Limits of Human Understanding (London, 1728), he quotes the above passage as containing the essence of his position. It is also central to Synge. In the 1698 Appendix he tells us of a conversation he had with a blind man who at one time did not believe that there were colours and light. The blind man initially thought that those who spoke of colours were imposing on him, just as Toland thought that priests were imposing their mysteries on the laity. But after certain simple experiments, Synge informs us, the blind man became convinced that other people could see light and colours. For example, the blind man was put at a distance from someone, who was able to tell him, without the use of touch, what he was doing. In this way he came to believe that there were indeed things existing 8 of which he had no direct or proper ideas. Synge and Browne have much in common in their use of the illustration. They both emphasize that it is reasonable to believe in things of which we have no direct ideas. They play on the fact that knowledge of colours is inaccessible to the blind man, although we know that colours do exist. Hence we feel that the blind man should believe that colours exist. The difference in their


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deployment of the illustration is that, whereas Synge tries to provide rational justification for the blind man's assent, for Browne it is largely a matter of trust and authority. For Browne we have evidence that the mysterious doctrines of Christianity are divinely inspired, are the words of God, but we have no direct or literal knowledge of what the words or doctrines mean. Whereas for Synge, our knowing that they are divine does also seem to reveal some hint of what the mysteries are in themselves. This constitutes an important but subtle difference, because both men must retain a very delicate balance in their use of the metaphor. The blind man must have no idea of colours as they actually are, because we have no understanding of religious mysteries. If we had, they would cease to be mysteries. But colours must in some way be knowable, for if they were not they would be mere Blictris. Toland's razor cuts both ways, and in the end Synge tends to make mysteries perhaps too rational and Browne tends to make them unintelligible. For although the blind man does not have an internal conception of colours - for Synge - he does know the effects of colours and light. The blind man can employ colour words in a more or less literal way, because he has an 'imperfect sort of representation': his concept of colour is imperfect but not vacuous, as it tends to be for Browne's blind man. Had Toland replied to Synge and Browne, he would no doubt have said that mysteries for Browne are meaningless, while for Synge they are faintly or slightly meaningful, and should (or could) to that extent be affirmed. The similitude of the blind man is more than a mere illustration. It is the root metaphor, as it were, of Irish philosophy. And it is hardly an accident that the Molyneux problem, with which it is clearly associated, was very much an Irish problem. It was the Irishman Molyneux who first asked whether a blind man made to see would recognize by sight alone objects which he had formerly known only by touch. Molyneux answered no; and two of the earliest known affirmative answers were given also by Irishmen,

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namely, by Synge and Francis Hutcheson. But the most important (negative) answer is given in Berkeley's New Theory of Vision (Dublin, 1709), which makes extensive use of Molyneux's problem and Dioptrica Nova. Be that as it may, in the critical account of our knowledge of God (not however of God's mysterious nature) Berkeley uses the root metaphor as a touchstone. Clearly alluding to Browne (and perhaps to Synge) he entreats those holding views like Browne's to . . . return to speak of God and his attributes in the style of other Christians, allowing that knowledge and wisdom do, in the proper sense of the words, belong to God, and that we have some notion, though infinitely inadequate, of those divine attributes, yet still more than a man born blind from his birth can 10 have of light and colours. In 1709 Archbishop William King preached a Sermon on Predestination and Fore-Knowledge in which he too employed the key similitude (sects XII—XIII); his Sermon must be seen, in part at least, as a delayed response to Toland's rationalist challenge and the more recent one of Emlyn.e King's position is similar to that of Synge and Browne. Indeed, Browne called attention to this similarity, in order to rebuke King for not having given him credit for the first formulation in 1697. I have described their common theory as theological representationalism, and it will be necessary to dwell on it in some detail, since it is the most widespread, influen11 tial and central theory in Irish philosophy. From this theory issued by reaction or extension most of the significant contributions of Hibernian philosophy.

3 Theological representationalism and pragmatism Browne, Synge and King should be seen, I suggest, as presenting the traditional fideistic negative theology (which goes back to


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Tertullian and the Pseudo-Dionysius) through a theory of perception drawn from the New Learning, namely, the representative theory of perception. This theory or model had been and was being developed by Descartes, Boyle and, most notably, Locke; and one of its main purposes was to explain how and why certain experiences of objects, e.g. pains, illusions and odours do not adequately (or at all) reflect actual qualities of the objects, while accounting for how these experiences allow us, nonetheless, to deal successfully with physical objects. Now the representative model supposes that our perception of the physical world involves three terms: (1) the mind, (2) its immediate experiences, called ideas, or perceptions and (3) the physical object and its qualities. Furthermore, the mind's experiences of (2) are caused by (3). Perception is the effect of a physical cause. Hence, in experiencing the fire as painful, we are not obliged to attribute pain to the object (3), the fire, but only to our immediate idea or experience (2), the pain. In a realist account, on the other hand, we seem obliged to locate pains, odours, colours in the object. But this was contrary to the theory of the physical world - developed by Descartes, Newton and Boyle, which held that physical objects really only possessed quantitative qualities, such as extension, solidity, motion and weight. This is not to say that, according to the representative theory or model of perception, the non-quantitative qualities — sometimes called secondary qualities - are not connected with the physical world. According to this model, the quantitative qualities — called primary qualities — are powers in the object which cause the secondary qualities. So solid and extended particles cause in sentient beings ideas, such as pains, colours and odours. And experiencing secondary qualities can help us to deal with the actual physical objects, which are composed of primary qualities. For example, smelling gas will probably make me leave the room before the primary qualities of the gas produce changes in my heart and lungs, thereby terminating my life. Furthermore,

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my ideas of the quantitative qualities, such as solidity and extension, may provide me with more or less adequate representations of those qualities, depending on how precise my instruments for detecting the qualities are. This, in short, is representationalism. I am not, of course, claiming that this composite outline captures the whole or most of the representative model; nor would I claim that any one thinker developed it in just this way. But the outline does, I believe, identify the new model of perception developed by Locke; and it is this model which King, Browne and Synge use to explain the nature of man's knowledge of God. For this reason, I argue that their common theory should be described as theological representationalism. Like that of the physical representationalists, this theological theory has three terms: (1) the mind, (2) what it knows of God's attributes, and (3) God's attributes as they are in God. Like that of the physical representationalists, it supposes that (3) is known through (2), and that (2) represents (3); and it also tends to see a causal relationship between (3) and (1), which is productive of (2). Again, like physical representationalism, there is a problematic relationship, qua resemblance, between (2) and (3). But, nonetheless, our knowledge of (2) can help us to deal with (3). Browne and King emphasize the problematic and tenuous relationship between the second and third terms: they cast doubt on whether there is any sort of resemblance between (2), our conceptions of the divine attributes and (3), the attributes in themselves. On the other hand, Synge and King magnify the utility of (2) as a surrogate for (3), suggesting also that such utility is sufficient. In his 1709 Sermon King takes the particular case of gravity and compares it with divine anger: We all of us feel a Tendency to the Earth, which we call Gravity., but none ever yet was able to give any satisfactory Account of its Nature or Cause: Yet inasmuch as we know, that falling down a


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Precipice will crush us to Pieces, the Sense we have of this Effect of it is sufficient to make us careful to avoid such a Fall, and in like Manner, if we know, that breaking God's Commands, will provoke him to destroy us, will not this he sufficient to oblige us to Obedience, though we be ignorant what it is we call Anger in him? (xvii) Our knowledge of gravity, like our knowledge of the divine anger, is different from the thing itself. The thing itself, in both cases, is unknown at least according to King. Our conceptions of the divine anger and of gravity are inferred from the effects of each. Although our conception differs from the thing itself, the two are often called by the same name. And although our conception does not resemble but only represents the real thing, this conception is extremely useful for this life; and our representations of the divine attributes may, in addition, be useful for the life to come, King uses this representative model with some ingenuity, and our ideas of secondary qualities provide him with a particularly fruitful way of explaining and justifying our knowledge of God. Our idea of colour, for example, is unlike colour as it is in an external body, but we nonetheless say that a body is coloured. In the same way, King maintains, it is permissible to use the term 'wisdom' in speaking of the divine attribute; although our conception of it and the thing in itself are entirely different, w;e may say that God is wise or has foreknowledge. I think it is agreed by most Writers of Natural Philosophy;, [says King] that Light and Colours are but the Effects of certain Bodies and Motions on our Sense of seeing, and that there are no such Things at all in Nature, but only in our Minds; [and] of this at least we may be sure, that Light in the Sun or Air, are very different Things from what they are in our Sensations of them, yet we call both by the same Names, and term what is only perhaps a Motion in the Air, Light, because it begets in us that conception

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[i.e. sensation] which is truly Light. But it would seem very strange to the Generality of Men, if we should tell them there is no Light in the Sun, or Colours in the Rain-Bow. And yet strictly speaking, it is certain, that which in the Sun causes the Conception of Light in us, is as truly different in Nature from the Representation we have of it in our Mind, as our Fore-know ledge, is from what we call so in God. (xv) Because God's attributes are entirely different from what we can understand, our theological statements cannot be true in the sense of correspondency. This impossibility is, as we have seen, built on traditional negative theology and is illustrated or confirmed by a problematic or sceptical interpretation of representationalism. But if we cannot know that any of our theological statements are true, qua correspondence or cognitively, it does not follow that they are false, or in no sense true. There is just no point in talking about them as true (or false) in the cognitive sense. When we say that we have knowledge of God we mean, King holds, such 'Knowledge [as] is sufficient to all [the] Intents and Purposes of Religion. The Design whereof is to lead us in the Way to eternal Happiness, and in Order thereunto, to teach and oblige us to live reasonably, to perform our Duty to God, our Neighbours, and our selves, to conquer ... our Passions, and Lusts, to make us beneficient and charitable to Men...' (xiv). If theological statements can effect these things, i.e. produce practical theism, then they are true. They are not cognitively, but pragmatically true which is the valid sense of true for human beings in this life. It is upon this basis that King argues that God has foreknowledge. It is not that we cognitively know this to be the case. We do not. But our faith that it is so generates the right sort of results. Believing that God does possess foreknowledge 'at once stops our Mouths, and silences our Objections, obliges us to an absolute Submission and dependance ...' (xxiv); and King goes on to say that 'This is plainly the design and effect of this terrible


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Representation ...'. That is, the meaning of foreknowledge or predestination lies in its capacity to produce feelings and actions expressive of a complete dependence on God. If such desirable results can best be brought about by apparently contradictory descriptions of God, then they are to be welcomed. For it is the pragmatic and not the logical success of religious descriptions that matters. It is in this way that King justifies apparent contradictions not only in Scripture but also in mysteries such as the Holy Trinity, and, of course in foreknowledge and free will. Although divine foreknowledge and human free will are not logically compatible, they are pragmatically compatible: and that is what matters. Our conceptions of the former 'are not so much designed to give us Notions of God as he is in himself, as to make us sensible of our Duty to him, and to oblige us to perform it.' (xxviii). Again, 'When we hear these Things [e.g. that God foreknows] we are not so much to enquire, whether this Representation exactly suits, with what really passeth in the Mind of God, as how we ought to behave ourselves in such a Case ...' (xxviii). King's sensitivity to models appears also in his own use of them to justify his general thesis that our knowledge does not reflect the world but enables us to deal with it. So a map is different from the land it represents (viii); a line is used to represent time but is different from time (ix); we speak of the mind and its operations by means of sensible things — e.g. we say someone is bright, depressed, buoyant — but the mind is not sensible, i.e., it is not bright, depressable, etc. (xxii). Yet in all these cases the models or representations are highly useful. King tries to put his readers into the state of mind of someone who is confronted with a representation that appears to him totally different from what it is supposed to represent. He wants us to appreciate that the incredulous person, who does not try to see the utility of the theological representation or model, is only standing in his own way. Thus King deserves credit for his pragmatic or conventionalist interpretation of the representationalist model of perception and for its

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application to theology and, to a lesser extent, science. And as an anticipator of pragmatism, King's claim is at least as strong as Locke's, Berkeley's or Hume's.

4

Browne's sensationalism

Where King and Synge stressed the pragmatic aspect of our theological representations, Browne emphasizes what he calls their 'analogical' aspect, their unknown correspondence to the divine archetypes. It was for this reason that Browne accused King of transforming analogy into metaphor and Synge of changing the analogical into the literal and thereby assimilating faith to reason. Browne's main contribution, however, is his sensationalism. More than Locke, he deserves credit for being the first fullblooded sensationalist with regard to the mind and its acts. In the Procedure, he attempts to prove, by means of his sensationalism, that we have no direct, proper or literal knowledge of anything purely mental or spiritual. King largely takes this for granted, that is, he assumes the truth of negative theology although there are some hints of sensationalism in his Sermon (especially in xxii). Browne argues that all our ideas are derived from sensation. Thus our ideas of the emotions and operations of our minds are not essentially different from our ideas of colours and odours. There are not, as Locke and others claimed, two original sources of experience — sensation and reflection — but only sensation. For Browne, anger is not something which we experience or know directly and distinctly from a source other than sensation, as Locke held; rather it is composed of sensations, such as a feeling of warmth, gritting of teeth, reddish face, increased pulse, scowling face, etc. We conceive 'sorrow by a down look and contraction of our features' (Procedure, p. 389), and these ideas are clearly 'borrowed from sensation' (p. 388). Also important for our idea of emotion is the 'object which occasioned' the feeling (p. 389).


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Having provided what he considers to be an adequate account which does not resort to ideas of reflection, Browne challenges his (Lockean) opponents to produce or find a mental idea which is not sensational. (See pp.64, 387, 414.) Having issued the empiricist challenge, Browne musters the following specific arguments. He criticizes the Lockean theory for postulating an unnecessary entity: we do not require both the mental acts and the ideas of these mental acts, particularly since we can never, by hypothesis, perceive the mental acts (or emotions) themselves. Occam's razor demands, therefore, that they be cut (pp. 413-14). But the theory is not just uneconomical, it is also incoherent, according to Browne, for it supposes that 'The same thing shall be an idea, and the operation of the mind upon an idea at the same time; and thus we have a new idea for another second operation, and so on about an idea, there will be an idea of that operation, and an idea of that operation, and so on. The theory leads to an infinite multiplication of ideas and operations. Browne also uses what might be called the familiarity argument against Locke: 'Had we simple original ideas [of reflection] of other objects beyond that of sensation, we should all indifferently and readily acquiesce in our opinions about them; a peasant would have as clear and distinct ideas of them, of the intellect for instance . . . [as a psychologist]' (p. 416). There is a certain irony in Browne's use of this (familiarity) argument against Locke, for it is likely that he borrowed it from Book I of the Essay, where Locke uses it against the doctrine of innate ideas (see chap, ii, sect. 27). The mind is, therefore, incapable of any 'such unnatural squint, or distorted turn upon itself (Procedure, p. 97). 'An idea of reflection is an empty sound, without any intelligible and determinate meaning' (p. 412). '. . . all the ideas we attempt to form of the manner of its [the mind's] acting, and the expressions we use for it, are borrowed from sensation' (p. 67). And this applies also to the mind's knowledge of mind as such. For Browne, we have no idea of a

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purely mental mind in a corporeal body. He was one of the first philosophers to react against what Gilbert Ryle has called the dogma of the ghost in the machine. Thus he writes that 'Men commonly speak of [spirit] as of something within us, and not of us; as if it thought and reasoned in the body, and not together with any part of it; as if the body were a mere box, or case, or place of residence for it' (p. 149, also see pp. 77, 153, 367—8). For Browne, it is the man, and not some immaterial substance, which thinks (pp. 150, 153). If it were really a soul (independent of the body) that thought, then our thinking should be instantaneous, nor should it tire us. Browne's concept of mind may well owe something to Henry Dodwell the elder, who in 1706 issued his Epistolary Discourse Droving ,.. that the soul is a principle naturally mortal,.. (London), in which he denied the natural or philosophical immortality of the soul and inclined to a materialistic account of it. Both King and Browne were on friendly terms with the Irish born Dodwell, who was a student and fellow of Trinity College Dublin. According to King, Dodwell had held the theory of conditional immortality for more than thirty years prior to publishing it. Dodwell was a scholar and theologian of considerable European stature in the early part of the eighteenth century. It is noteworthy that William Warburton speaks of him and of Toland as 'two Hibernians, the heroes of their several parties.' * The anti-dualistic accounts of mind offered by Dodwell and Browne are, in many respects, in advance of their time. Yet although the theories were progressive, their end or purpose was traditional, even reactionary. By arguing that the mind neither is nor can be known to be immaterial, or naturally immortal, they hoped to force theologians to return to Scriptural and fideistic ideas of the afterlife. Thus Browne's sensationalism provides the philosophical justification for the negative side of theological representationalism - its denial that we can literally understand things divine


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and supernatural. In his Sermon, King develops the pragmatic aspect of the representationalist model, as well as providing the most succinct and articulate statement of theological representationalism itself. Synge's contribution — the slightest of the three — is his collateral experiment which helps to knit together the approaches of Browne and King as well as a specific application of the model to the Trinity. In this way did the three prelates ingeniously argue, against Toland (and perhaps Emlyn), that Christianity was indeed mysterious, and that it was reasonable to hold that it was.

5 Berkeley The most formidable opponent of theological representationalism was another Irish bishop, namely Berkeley, who was well acquainted with the triumvirate: King, Browne and Synge. Berkeley first expressed his disapproval of the theory (in its Kingian form) in a private letter of 1709, and then publicly in Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher (London, 1732), IV. 16—22. Believing (wrongly, I think) that Berkeley's criticisms were aimed at him, Browne responded in the long and often harsh eighth chapter of Things Divine and Supernatural Conceived by Analogy with Natural Things and Human (London, 1733); to which Berkeley replied in a restrained but forceful letter which was sent to Browne 'soon after 14 the publication of his Divine Analogy\ Berkeley's firm and persistent criticism of theological representationalism is not at all surprising, although it may appear so to those who accept the popular image of him as a philosopher who was strong-minded against the material world, but weak-minded about the spiritual world. He opposed representationalism in its materialistic form in his masterpiece, The Principles of Human Knowledge (Dublin, 1710), for essentially the same reasons as

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those which led him to attack it in its theological form. For the prelatal triumvirate had assigned to God the same epistemological position to which Berkeley endeavoured to assign matter. Thus, our (supposedly representative) notions either do or do not resemble their objects. If they do, then they give us proper knowledge of God. If they do not, then it is contradictory to say that the one is like the other. There is, Berkeley urges, no third possibility, no medium between likeness and non-likeness. As Berkeley saw it, the prelates had 'protected' God's mysterious nature from attack by transforming Him into an unintelligible being. Their theory amounted to saying that God is an 'unknown subject of Attributes absolutely unknown* (Alciphron IV. 17), a position which is hardly very different from that into which he had driven the materialists in Principles, section 77, where matter is shown to be 'an unknown support of unknown qualities'. I am not claiming that Berkeley came to his immaterialism (or sensationalism applied to the physical world) by way of reaction to the writings of Browne, King or Synge. The main influences here, it is generally agreed, are Locke, Malebranche and Descartes. Yet it is, I think, worth bearing in mind that in the formative years (c. 1707) when Berkeley was working out his immaterialist epistemology the most prominent philosophical writers in his vicinity were committed representationalists. Browne was his provost, King his archbishop, and Synge the father of a friend. (We know that Berkeley read and commented upon King's De Origine Mali (London, 1702) and that he added an Appendix to his New Theory of Vision (Dublin, 1709) to meet certain of King's objections.) Thus it is not out of the question that his concerted opposition to materialistic representationalism was, in some measure, influenced by Browne, Synge or King. And his positive account of mind as a purely immaterial and naturally immortal substance may also have been reached, at least partly, by way of reaction to Browne, Dodwell and King; see especially Principles', sections 141 and 144.


6

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Materialism not mysterious f

One way that Berkeley can be seen to be answering Toland's challenge concerns the real essence of physical things. Whereas for Locke and Toland as well as Browne and King, physical things have a real essence that we don't know; for Berkeley physical things have no real essence, since they are only appearances, only ideas. This, in other words, is Berkeley's main contribution to philosophy, namely, his immaterialism, according to which lesse is percipi\ the being of physical things consists in being perceived (Principles, sect. 3). In effect, then, immaterialism undermines Toland's second philosophical support, since Toland would no longer be in a position to argue, by parity of reasoning, that the afterlife, for example, is no more mysterious than a blade of grass. For if immaterialism is true, a blade of grass has no inner constitu16 tion; it is only what is perceived — its green colour, shape, etc. In this respect, Berkeley can be seen as going further in the process of demystification than Toland, for what Berkeley is saying is that material things are utterly non-mysterious, since matter has no inner, hidden nature, no cognitive dark spots. Here, too, a caveat is in order. In offering this latter interpretation, we are not claiming that it captures how Berkeley actually moved to immaterialism. That would require a textual examination that is beyond the scope of this essay. However, it is worth mentioning that when the young scholar Berkeley was discovering and working out his immaterialism at Trinity College, around the years 1706 to 1708, his provost was Browne, whose reputation was based on his 1697 Letter against Toland. 18 For Berkeley, then, Toland and Browne were both fundamentally wrong. They were both locked into the same false presuppositions, especially concerning real and nominal essence. Berkeley's strategy, we suggest, was to attack their common Lockean core, while preserving what was valuable in the two positions. Toland vanquishes mysteries, either as meaningless or non-pragmatic.

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Browne and King think that there are mysteries, indeed that virtually all religion is intractably mysterious (at least in this life), and that the best approach is to use pragmatic representations (King) or analogies drawn from Revelation (Browne) to grasp them. Berkeley agrees with Browne and King that there are mysteries, but not that all our understanding of God is mysterious. Here he is closer to Synge, who though a theological representationalist with regard to mysteries, such as the Holy Trinity, did not extend it (as Browne and King did) to our entire understanding of God - as, for example, to His wisdom and justice.

7

Emotive mysteries

What was Berkeley's distinctive answer to Toland's challenge that Christianity is not mysterious? How, in short, does he explain religious mysteries? Here, too, I shall argue that the best way of appreciating Berkeley's position is to see it as mediating between the left-wing Lockeanism of Toland and Emlyn and the rightwing Lockeanism of Browne and King. Whereas the latter had converted all knowledge of God into representational knowledge (ultimately, for Berkeley, into no knowledge), the former had assimilated and transformed all religion into rational theology. So for King, God's wisdom became mysterious, and for Toland, God's incarnation became scientific. As a committed Christian, Berkeley of course agreed with the bishops that Christianity was meaningfully mysterious, but he was not prepared to treat all talk of God as mysterious. For this would lead, he urged, to atheism a position which King and Browne did not really take seriously. To use Swift's image in the Tale of a Tub (London, 1704): it was feasible that some should be overdressed (Roman Catholics), and others underdressed (Dissenters), but it was not feasible that some should go naked (be atheists). Berkeley, however, was strongminded enough to see that both atheism and immaterialism were


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feasible (although the former was, in his view, false). But if theological representationalism is accepted, then, he believes, it will logically end in atheism; just as the acceptance of materialistic representationalism truly led, as he argued in the Principles, to immaterialism. Now a fundamental assumption of both sides in the mysteries dispute - among the left- as well as among the right-wing Lockcans - was that the cognitive is the only legitimate kind of meaning. This assumption Berkeley brilliantly criticizes in section 20 of the Introduction to the Principles: ,.. the communicating of ideas marked by words is not the chief and only end of language, as is commonly supposed. There are other ends, as the raising of some passion, the exciting to, or deterring from an action, the putting the mind in some particular disposition . . . I entreat the reader to reflect with himself, and see if it does not oft happen either in hearing or reading a discourse, that the passions of fear, love, hatred . . . arise immediately in his mind upon the perception of certain words, without any ideas coming between . . . May we not, for example, be affected with the promise of a. good thing, tho' we have not an idea of what it is? In Alciphron VII. 5—16 Berkeley restated and applied this insight to theology. Mysteries, he maintained, are to be understood emotively.8 Talk of the Holy Trinity, for example, is designed to foster feelings or dispositions of piety, devotion and awe; it is not meant to communicate ideas or to describe.19 Thus Berkeley reinterprets the traditional division between rational theology and mysterious or revealed religion as the distinction between cognitive statements (which are informative) and emotive utterances (which are not). Faith, therefore, is not as Emlyn claimed, an 'act of the understanding'; it is an emotional act. But neither is God's wisdom unknowable in itself, as Browne had argued. We know

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that God is wise, according to Berkeley, in the same way as we know that our fellow humans are wise: by an analogical inference from their associated sensible effects. For just as orderly human effects imply a human mind, so the infinite orderliness of nature implies an infinite, divine mind. And this Mind is required to both cause and perceive the sensible ideas; for as they are entirely inert, they could not exist without a mind to produce and sustain them. Nor does the crucial fact of language distinguish our knowledge of human minds from our knowledge of the divine mind. For God, too, Berkeley argues, speaks a language: vision being a system of conventional signs which help us to grasp the tactile world (see especially Alciphron IV. 3-15). In this way did Berkeley answer Toland by mediating and synthesizing left- and rightLockeanism; thus he accepts the rationalism of the former in the area of rational theology, and the pragmatism of the latter in mysterious religion. 20 ^ $ * Clearly there is a great deal more that might be said about Berkeley, but I have focused on his place in the fabric of Irish philosophy. With Berkeley's works of the 1730s the most creative period may be said to end. In the 1740s or 1750s we find nothing as inventive as Browne's sensationalism, or Berkeley's immaterialism and emotivism. Yet the culmination of Hibernian philosophy in the 1740s and 1750s was, as I hope to show, attended with exciting developments, particularly in the splendid synthesis of Edmund Burke.

Notes a. 1.

This essay was first published in the Archivfur Geschichte der Philosophic in 1982. Proceedings of the Belfast Natural History and Philosophy Society (1923),

pp. 4-26.

Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment b.

2.

3. c. d. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

e.

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Since the original publication of this essay in 1982 a number of works have been published on Irish philosophy, most recently A Dictionary of Irish Philosophers (Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004) edited by Thomas Buddy, who has also published A History of Irish Thought (London: Routledge, 2002). For other publications on Irish philosophy since 1982, see Chapter 7, below, note 10. In An Essay on the Ancient and Modern State of Ireland (Dublin, 1760), the anonymous writer states that 'The Newtonian Philosophy; the excellent Boyle's experimental Philosophy, and Mr. Locke's metaphysics, prevail much in the college of Dublin . . .' (p. 62). For literary evidence of the importance of Locke's Essay at Trinity College, see Thomas Amory, The Life of John Buncle (London, 1770), pp. 67-8. The Works of John Locke (9th edn London, 1794), vol. viii, pp. 298-9. See the following chapter, 'The Culmination and Causation of Irish Philosophy', section 3. Works of Alexander Pope, ed. William Warburton (London, 1757), vol. 3, p. 32. Works of Locke, vol. viii, p. 421. John Toland, An Apology for Mr. Toland, in a Letterfrom Himself. .. to which is Prefixed a Narrative (London, 1697). The Works of Air. Thomas Emlyn (London, 1746); see Memoirs of Emlyn, in vol. 1, p. 29; also see pp. 30-9. Faith Distinguished from Reason (n.p., 1716), pp. 48-9; Browne was attacking Synge's Plain and Easy Method (Dublin, 1715), sects xxxiii-xlvi. Gentleman's Religion: in three parts . . . (6th edn, Dublin, 1730), especially pp. 229-31. See my 'Francis Hutcheson on Berkeley and the Molyneux problem', Pro ceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. 74, sect. C, no. 8 (1974), pp. 259-65. The Theory of Vision Vindicated and Explained (London, 1733), sect. 6. With regard to religious mystery, however, we are in a position similar to Molyneux's blind man, according to Berkeley; for we cannot understand what the signs mean: they are like words 'wholly new or unknown' (sect. 45); see below, section 5. The metaphor of the man born blind was also at the centre of a theological debate between Thomas Emlyn and Charles Leslie; see especially Emlyn's Vindication of the Remarks upon Mr. Cha. Leslie's First Dialogue on Socinianism (c. 1707), p. 13, and Leslie's Reply to the Vindication (London, 1708), pp. 4-8. Thus in a revealing letter to Henry Dodwell, the elder, dated January 1710, King writes: T did expect that the Deists and Socinians would be

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11. 12.

13.

14.

15.

f.

16.

17.

Berkeley and Irish Philosophy alarmed at the [ 1709] Sermon, for it seemed to me to take away the foundations of their objections against the mysteries of religion ...'; Trinity College Dublin, ms. no. 2531. See my Introduction to Archbishop King's Sermon on Predestination (Dublin, 1976). Much of the following section is taken from this Introduction. See King's letter to Dodwell of 17 August 1709, Trinity College Dublin, ms. no. 2531. King, I should note, strongly disapproved of DodwelPs book on immortality; although Dodwell expressed a high regard for King's 1709 Sermon. On Browne and Dodwell, see A. R. Winnett, Peter Browne: Provost,Bishop, Metaphysician (London, 1974), p. 220, note 25. The Divine Legation of Moses (3rd edn, London, 1742), vol. 1, p. 8. In his Diary of 1711, Thomas Hearne wrote of 'the great' Mr. Dodwell: T take him to be the greatest scholar in Europe when he died ...', Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne, ed. C. E. Doble (Oxford, 1889), vol. 3, p. 176. A Literary Journal ed. J.-P. Droz (Dublin, 1745), vol. 2, pt. 1, pp. 153-67. The letter is reprinted in Mind (July 1969), pp. 385-92, with an introduction by A. A. Luce, J.-P. Pittion and D. Berman, pp. 375-85. For a detailed discussion of the similarities between Berkeley's criticism of material and theological representationalism, see my George Berkeley: Idealism and the Man (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), chap. 6. This section is taken from the Introduction by D. Berman and P. O'Riordan to The Irish Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2002), pp. xvi—xvii. See Berkeley's Philosophical Commentaries, no. 34: 'Extension it self or anything extended cannot think these being meer ideas or sensations whose essence we thoroughly know' (emphasis added). We don't know exactly when or how Berkeley first came to the theory that matter does not exist. In his Philosophical Commentaries, c. 1707—8, our most relevant extant document, the theory seems already to have been reached by entry 19, where he speaks of'ye immaterial hypothesis'. One early suggestion, offered by James Oswald in 1766, was that 'It is probable, that the disproving the reality of matter, was first entertained by the Bishop of Cloyne, in the gayety of his heart, and with a view to burlesque the refinements of infidels' (An Appeal to Common Sense in Behalf of Religion, vol. 1, p. 96). Now one way of developing Oswald's suggestion is to imagine that Berkeley's original idea was to write a work with something like the title Materialism not Mysterious, which was


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meant to go further than Toland, in the way typical of satires in the Swiftean mode, but that in the course of working it out, Berkeley actually became convinced by it. 18. About Browne, Swift wrote: 'you must flatter him monstrously upon his learning and his writings; that you have read his book against Toland a hundred times'. Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. Harold Williams (Oxford, 1963), vol. Ill, p. 66. g. For an examination of how Berkeley first reached this position, see my George Berkeley: Idealism and the Man, chap. 1. 19. See my 'Cognitive theology and emotive mysteries in Berkeley's Alciphrorf, in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. 81, sect. C (1981), pp. 223-7. 20. There are also instructive points of agreement in the wider philosophical positions of Berkeley and Browne, the most striking of which is their remarkably similar attacks on the received Lockean theory of abstraction. Berkeley's critique of abstraction is to be found in the Introduction (sects 6-20) to the Principles, Browne's is in the Procedure, Bk. II, chap. 4. Both men also employ the empiricist familiarity argument to defend free will; here Browne precedes Berkeley; see Procedure, pp. 226—7 and AlciphronV11.2l-2.

4

The Culmination and Causation of Irish Philosophy'

The two main forces in Irish philosophy, as I have argued in the previous chapter, were those of the Enlightenment and CounterEnlightenment, or left- and right-wing Lockeanism. Having exhibited the genesis of these opposing forces, most notably in the thought of Toland and Browne as well as in Berkeley's masterly via media, I shall now consider their culmination.

1 Later rationalism After Thomas Emlyn's incarceration in 1704 there seems to have been little or no freethought in Ireland until the 1720s, when it revives with the Molesworth Circle. The most important joint production of this group, which included James Duncan, Francis Hutcheson, James Arbuckle and Edward Synge the younger, is the collection of essays and letters originally published in the Dublin Journal in 1726, and reprinted by James Arbuckle in A Collection of Letters and Essays (London, 1729). Here we find numerous Spectator-like essays on ethics, politics, aesthetics, manners, religion, written in the Shaftesburian spirit and manner, reflecting his moderate anti-clericalism and sympathy for natural religion and religious toleration - in short, Enlightenment values. Earlier in the 1720s, the leading figure of the group, Molesworth, issued a pamphlet Some Considerations for the Promoting of Agriculture and Employing the Poor (Dublin, 1723), which may be taken as representative of the views of the Circle. His sympathy for liberty and latitude in religion is apparent; thus he remarks: 'to expect to have a numerous people, without allowing the exercise of a religion, is

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both tyrannical and unpolitick ...' (p. 30). He proposes schools for teaching agriculture, but notes that 'In these schools, I would not have any precepts, differences or distinctions of religion taken notice of, and nothing taught, but only husbandry and good manners, and . . . the children should daily serve God, according to their own religions . . . ' (p. 31). Molesworth was a cautious man in print, and we are entitled, I think, to believe that the friend and patron of Toland would have been happy to apply the principles of his agricultural school to society at large. The conversation of the Molesworth Circle is bound to have been more radical than its published utterances. Yet even these were warmly attacked, as we can see from the reception given to Edward Synge's 1725 Sermon The Case of Toleration Considered with Respect both to Religion and Civil Government (Dublin) which advocated a very limited toleration. The orthodox reacted so violently against it that, apart from a 1726 Vindication of his position, Synge refrained from any further liberal pronouncements. Not surprisingly, his Sermon was defended by a member of the Circle in the Dublin Journal of 29 October 1726. Synge's unexpressed views were, as we are told, very close to those of Francis Hutcheson, the most important philosophical member of the Circle. Hutcheson, a son of Irish philosophy who left Ireland around 1730 to become father of Scottish philosophy, wrote and published most of his notable philosophical works while he was teaching in a Dissenting Academy in Dublin in the 1720s. He also published in Arbuckle's Collection three essays attacking Mandeville's Fable of the Bees (2nd edn, 1723) as well as three essays on laughter. (As Hutcheson's distinctive views are in the area of ethics and aesthetics, they will be discussed below in section 4.) Between the demise of the Molesworth Circle in the late 1720s and the last notable effort of Irish freethought with Robert Clayton in the 1750s, one finds almost no published freethought or left-wing Lockeanism in Ireland. There is, however, much rumour of extreme freethinkers, even of atheists. Thus in a curious book by Wetenhall Wilkes we find an intriguing account of an alleged

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atheist, called J--h T--r, and his 'dissolute associates', who are said to have been active around 1729. It is interesting that two of these 'gentlemen', according to Wilkes, 'had taken their degrees in the College of Dublin', since Lord Orrery, writing in the late 1740s, also tells of Trinity freethinkers and atheists: Blasphemy reigns triumphantly at Dublin College . . . One young gentleman is banished from the Society, two or three more are admonished. Some have publicly denied the belief of Jesus Christ, others have abjured the being of a God: but prudence, or want of sufficient testimony against the offenders, has hindered any violent proceedings upon the occasion. Q

Even more elusive is the so-called 'impious society of Blasters', who created a stir in the late 1730s, and provoked Berkeley's one appearance in the Irish House of Lords as well as his Discourse Addressed to the Magistrates (Dublin, 1738). It seems clear that most of those described and alluded to by Orrery, Berkeley and (perhaps) Wilkes were less theoretical freethinkers than libertines and blasphemers, and their groups more Hell-fire clubs than freethinking debating societies. However, it is certainly likely that there were strong-minded Irish infidels in the 1730s and 1740s who were too prudent to put their freethought into print; and there are even a few very mildly deistic letters in A Literary Journal (Dublin), between 1746 and 1749. Irish freethinking was timid and slight when compared with that in England, Scotland and France; but there was plainly a continuing spectre of freethought which frightened Irish philosophers into producing some of the most inventive and weighty defences of religion published in the eighteenth century. Robert Clayton may be called the Irish counterpart of Benjamin Hoadly, a man whom Leslie Stephen has aptly described as 'the best-hated clergyman of the [18th] century amongst his own order. [He is, Stephen continues, like] a trade-unionist who should defend the masters, or a country squire who should protect


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poachers' (English Thought X. 27). As Hoadly was an English bishop writing against sacerdotal power, so Clayton was an Irish bishop writing against orthodoxy. When his Essay on Spirit (1750) was first published, Clayton held one of the richest bishoprics in Ireland, that of Clogher, and he had been an Irish bishop for nearly thirty years. This may partly explain the furious reaction to the Essay, which advocated substantial changes in the Thirtynine Articles of subscription. The Essay was originally printed in a small edition of about thirty copies, each of which was sent to a fellow bishop or leading Irish statesman. In the Essay Clayton advances a curious theory of spirits. He accepts the dualism of active mind or spirit and passive body or matter. In his view every piece of matter has — united to it - a spirit, which governs and effects its movements. This follows because 'nothing can act where it is not, [hence] that power whereby any body continues in [or resists] motion is ... the effect of some concomitant spirit'. The degree of intelligence and power of a spirit depends, it would seem, on the kind of material system to which it is united. It is even possible, Clayton thinks, that all the innumerable created spirits are 'equally perfect'. The difference in their actual degree of intellect and power may only be the result of the particular 'formation of their bodily organs'. But, although it is possible that the spirit associated with a speck of dust is as perfect as that of a man or angel, it is certain that not even God can 'produce any being, equal in power to, or independent on, himself; because two All-powerful, two Supremes, would imply a Contradiction.' (sect. XXVIII). I have called Clayton's system a pluralistic version of occasionalism, because like the occasionalist writers, Clayton makes much of our (supposed) total ignorance of how our bodily organs move (see sect. XXIII). However, his imaginative metaphysical system was probably of less importance to him than his Arian conclusions and his plea for religious toleration, a plea that is eloquently made in the Essay's long Dedication to the Primate of Ireland. A

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Irish left-wing Lockeanism culminates in Clayton, and there is much that is admirable in him - e.g. his broad range of interests, his intellectual honesty and (what may be called) his ecumenism. Thus he wrote pamphlets in a tolerant and reconciliatory spirit, not only to those of his own Church, but to the Quakers, Jews and Roman Catholics. But there is also much that is half-hearted and unoriginal in him. He embraces Toland's rationalism, Emlyn's Arianism, and the polished aestheticism and toleration of the Molesworth Circle; yet he also clings to some of the weakest and most naive parts of Revelation. With Clayton we have the impression (in more than one way) of history's repeating itself, and there is a sense (as Marx has put it) of tragi-comedy in such repetitions: the new Toland is no brilliant enfant terrible but a wealthy bon vivant, perhaps grown bored with too much comfort. The Clayton controversy strongly recalls the two earlier heresy hunts - of Toland and of Emlyn. As the victims were becoming more and more respectable, they were also suffering more acutely. Dublin zeal frightened Toland, imprisoned Emlyn and killed Clayton. In 1756 [as Stephen reports] Clayton tried to carry his principles into effect by moving in the Irish House of Lords for an omission of the Athanasian and Nicene Creeds from the Liturgy of the Church of Ireland. 5 ... a prosecution was commenced against him in 1757. A meeting of the Irish prelates was summoned; but before the appointed time he died of a nervous fever; his illness being universally attributed to the excitement by the prosecution.6 Clayton's rationalism comes out clearly in his 1753-6 defences of the Essay, and especially in (1) his employment of an equivalent to Toland's 'Blictri' and (2) his stand against theological representationalism. (1) In his Vindication ... of the Old and Mew Testament (pt. Ill, Dublin, 1757), against Bolingbroke Clayton introduced the nonsense word 'Abdolubeden', telling us that if an


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accredited angel informed us that there was an Abdolubeden in Heaven, we should believe that the angel said it and that it is so, 'but our belief cannot reach the mystery any more than our knowledge can' (pp. 23-6). Talk of mysteries above our reason, or of Abdolubeden, is like talk of absolute secrets, Clayton acutely remarks. And 'while anything continues to be an absolute secret, it is impossible for any one to believe anything about it' (p. 26). (2) One of Clayton's many critics was Thomas McDonnell, formerly a Fellow of Trinity College (1737) and then Rector of Derryvullen (1744), a parish in Clayton's own diocese of Clogher. In two pamphlets McDonnell sought to defend the Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity against Clayton by means of theological representationalism. Clayton replied in Some Remarks on McDonnell's Essay ..., published in the year of Berkeley's death; and in some respects his criticisms are similar to Berkeley's (see pp. 39-45). But Berkeley by no means approved of his old friend and former associate in the Bermuda project; for in a letter to McDonnell (his last extant), he speaks of'the weakness and presumption' of the Essay. In his Essay (sect. IX) Clayton had mildly criticized Berkeley's Siris (1744), as well as distinguishing his own pluralistic version of occasionalism from what he took to be Berkeley's monistic position (sect. I). The philosophical connection between Clayton and Berkeley is of some literary interest, since for his notorious novel Chrysal: or, the Adventures of a Guinea (London, 1762), Charles Johnston quotes and uses the theories in Clayton's Essay and Berkeley's Siris as scaffolding. There is a spirit associated with the bit of gold that becomes a guinea, is passed from person to person, and narrates his (sometimes blasphemous) experiences.

2 Later theological representationalism Clayton opposed the theological representationalism of McDonnell, rightly seeing it as a threat to rational religion. He also

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seems to have been aware that in the 1740s and 1750s a school of theological representationalism had developed which was inspired by Browne's sensationalism. For in his Some Thoughts on Self-love (Dublin, 1753), Clayton writes that . . . some late Writers* had asserted that we have no ideas but of sensible objects, which alone are capable of making any impressions on our minds . . . * Brown on the Procedure, Extent, and Limits of human Understanding. And from him the Authors of the Natural State of Man', and of Deism revealed, (p. 9) The author of An Enquiry into the Natural State of Man (Dublin, 1743), was William Thompson, who dedicated his handsomely printed but rather dull book to the Provost and Fellows of Trinity College. Thompson himself had been a Fellow (1713) and Archbishop King Lecturer (1728), before becoming Rector of Aghalwicker in 1729. Clayton certainly knew of Thompson's book, since from the List of Subscribers it appears that he ordered ten copies. (Clayton was a generous patron of Irish printed books.) Thompson's allegiance to Browne's theological representationalism is most noticeable in the Introduction, which contains a number of sensationalist dicta: e.g. 'all human knowledge is originally derived from sensation ...' and 'what, therefore, are usually called ideas of reflection, can only, if they mean anything, be reflex acts of the intellect upon ideas of sensation ...'. Of considerably more interest is Philip Skelton, the author of Ophiomaches: or Deism Revealed (London, 1749), who like McDonnell, held a living in Clayton's diocese of Clogher. Apart from his many theological tracts, Skelton also wrote works of more general literary interest. Although he was not an original thinker, he was a vigorous, independent writer, and, at the same time, somehow representative of the right-wing Irish philosopher. Skelton had not always been unreservedly partial to Browne. As a relatively


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young man, in 1733, he issued A Letter to the Authors ofAlciphron and Divine Analogy (Dublin) in the guise of an old soldier, attempting to conciliate the dispute between Berkeley and Browne in the interests of Christian solidarity against the infidel enemy. When he wrote Ophiomaches, however, he had firmly committed himself to the author of the Divine Analogy. His endorsement of Browne's sensationalism and theological representationalism is typical of his confident and peremptory manner: It is vain to say we have any proper or immediate idea of spirit, and its operations, or that we have any other source of notions than sensation. If Brown's [sic] Procedure and Extent of the understanding had not clearly demonstrated this, the trials every man may make in his own mind would do it effectually. When we look into ourselves with a sharp and unprejudiced eye, we plainly perceive spirit represented there analogically by our idea of subtil matter, its operations by those of body . . . (vol. l,p.83) In the British Library there is a copy of Skelton's collected works (1824), which were formerly owned by S. T. Coleridge. On the blank page opposite the title-page of volume one, Coleridge has written the following perceptive character-sketch of Skelton (and perhaps of Irish right-wing Lockeanism in general): 'By the bye, the Rev. Phil. Skelton is of the true Irish Breed - i.e. a brave fellow but a Bit of a Bully. "E.g. by Patrick but I shall make cold mutton of you, Mister Arian".' Skelton employs theological representationalism in an interesting little pamphlet entitled The Censor Censured (Dublin, 1750, p. 14), in which he defends his Ophiomaches against a critical review by the editor of A Literary Journal (Dublin, 1749, vol. 5, pt. 2, art. 3), John Peter Droz, a moderate left-winger, who published the first limited edition of Clayton's Essay in 1750. On the whole, Skelton accepts theological representationalism without

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bothering to justify it; but he is blunter in his use of it, e.g. on the question of the immortality of the soul. Theologians like Samuel Clarke and Berkeley had laboured to prove that because the soul is immaterial and indivisible, it is therefore impossible to conceive its dissolution. Skelton on the other hand, uses theological representationalism to argue that the soul may (in some way inconceivable to us) dissolve. In this he is aligning himself with the earlier Dodwellian position; but he also comes dangerously close to the freethinking position of those like Anthony Collins and David Hume who effectively denied immortality altogether. Here extreme right-wing fideism meets extreme left-wing scepticism. This is even more apparent in the case of John Ellis, a Dublin clergyman, who may be called the Irish fideistic Hume. In his Knowledge of Divine Things from Revelation and not from Reason or Mature (London, 1743), Ellis pushes theological representationalism to its boldest and most logical conclusion. Like Browne, he is a rigorous sensationalist with regard to the mind: 'our senses ... are the entire ground-work of our knowledge both human and divine' (p. 86). But his main influence is Locke, whom he takes to be the greatest philosophical authority. At the centre of Ellis's thought is a linguistic argument for the truth of Relevation and the God of Revelation. The argument moves as follows: (1)

There is no natural way in which we could come to a knowledge of God or things spiritual. Ellis carefully goes through such sources as (a) innate ideas, which he rejects on Lockean lines, (b) instinct, (c) sensation, (d) ideas of reflection and (e) reason. Because we have only sensationalist knowledge we could never naturally come to 'a notion of an immaterial object' (p. 300). Reason can or would never have suggested that the world was created, 'because the intermediate relations between a created effect and a creative cause, are no way apparent or discernible by us ...' (p. 99).


(2) (3)

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We cannot move from a creature to creator because they 'are infinitely distant'. But it is plainly the case that we do know of God and things spiritual. But if we could not have come by this knowledge naturally, then we must have derived it supernaturally, i.e. from Revelation. Ellis ingeniously drives his point home with an (often) acute examination of the question of how man first learned language. He takes it that 'we cannot think but by the help of language' (p. 105). But without language, he maintains, we could not think. 'It is by the help of words, at least in great measure, that we even reason and discourse within ourselves ...' (p. 106). Therefore language could not have developed naturally. Just as language is imparted by parents and teachers, so man must have been taught language supernaturally at the beginning, and this is indeed confirmed by the book of Genesis, where we learn that God instructed Adam and Eve in language. Therefore the God of Revelastion exists. -+-10

This may appear a crude argument (and in some respects it is), but Ellis's keen grasp of the alternatives catapults him from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. For example, he writes: Man could not of himself have discovered the knowledge of fixing sounds to signify objects, ideas, or conceptions, so as to be signs... Or, if this were possible, ... it must have been the work of many ages, during which time man had been neither an intelligent nor sociable creature, and so sent into the world to no purpose . . . (p. 104) Thus ' . . . men without language would be a species of apes, than rational creatures...' (p. 107). There is a comparison to be drawn between Ellis's linguistic argument for the existence of God and that of Berkeley. Both

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make use of language for a theological conclusion; both see God as talking, or having talked, to man; but whereas Berkeley's sophisticated argument depends on an appreciation of the wide range of meaning and language, Ellis's argument requires a narrow conception of language. The two philosophers are worlds apart in their method but united in their end. They are both anxious to justify belief in a God that is less distant and more personal than the God of Deism. It is interesting to note that Berkeley's son George became a follower of Ellis. 11 There is almost total agreement between Ellis and Skelton, not merely in their commitment to theological representationalism, but on its application to such matters as our knowledge of immortality and the creation of the world. There was, I believe, a definite school or movement of theological representationalists in Ireland in the 1740s and 1750s. In addition to Skelton, Thompson, Ellis and McDonnell (already considered), I might mention an anonymous writer on Analogy in the Dublin Supplement to Chamber's Cyclopaedia (1753), who is sympathetic to King. And of the three original proponents, Synge (who became Archbishop of Tuam in 1716), was still alive and still defending his version of theological representationalism in 1734. The vigour and popularity of the school can be seen also in the statements of its critics. Thus a writer in A Literary Journal (Dublin, 1745, vol. 2, pt. 1) speaks of 'the Dangers I apprehend to all religion, either natural or reveal'd, if the Bishop's [Browne's] system of analogy should be received, and from the intelligence I have ... it is by many industriously defended.' (p. 146, my emphasis). The fact of there being in the 1740s and 1750s a school of theological representationalists grounded on sensationalism is important both in itself and also for an appreciation of Edmund Burke. Burke was a student at Trinity College in the 1740s and he wrote his chief philosophical works in the late 1740s and early 1750s. I shall now briefly show that he also was sympathetic to this dominant school; then in section 4 I shall consider how his 1 C\

i O


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work on aesthetics is deeply indebted to this school of Trinity College sensationalists. Burke's commitment to theological representationalism can be detected in his earliest work, the periodical paper called the Reformer, published in 1747 and 1748 in thirteen numbers. Religion, he writes in no. 12 (14 April 1748), 'exceeds all systems of philosophy . . . by fastening our thoughts on something indeed past our comprehension, but not our hopes'1 (my emphasis). Like Skelton and Ellis, Burke lashes the freethinkers and Deists (in no. 11, of 7 April 1748), whom he describes as 'a set of men not infrequent in this city' (Dublin). It is, however, in his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautifu( logical allegiance to the School of Browne, King, Ellis and Skelton: 'the Scripture alone [he writes] can supply ideas answerable to the 15 Majesty of this subject'. Burke's use of the term 'answerable' is important, in that along with 'represents' and 'analogy', it is the favourite term of the theological representationalists.

3 A causal account of Irish philosophy Why was there such a unique flowering of Irish philosophy between 1696 and 1757? Why did it happen then, and not before or after? No doubt this is a complex question, part of whose answer will be that extraordinary individuals, like Toland, King, Browne, Berkeley, Hutcheson and Burke, produce extraordinary results. But I should like to propose a deeper and less facile answer, which will at the same time add another dimension to our study. Let us first briefly consider the political and economic background. By 1691 the Glorious Revolution had been concluded. Irish Anglicans were thereby saved from the dominance of James II and their Roman Catholic countrymen. The previous fifty years had been stormy indeed. First the Irish Anglicans were

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buffeted by the Roman Catholics during the 1641 Rebellion, then by Cromwell and the Presbyterians, and again by the Roman Catholics under Tyrconnell and James II. There was now to be a period of political stability and calm, which would last for more than a century. Initially, at least, the Irish Anglicans were in an insecure and precarious position. They were faced with a hostile dispossessed majority, and a treaty (of Limerick) that did not seem to go far enough in restricting the Catholic majority. The Presbyterians also seemed a dangerous minority, as William III was known to favour them. Yet from this insecure position the Irish Anglicans developed a remarkably successful modus operandi, whose foundation was the Penal Legislation against both Catholics and Presbyterians. This legislation, which came into being in the 1690s and 1700s, established the Ascendancy, just as it repressed the two other religious classes politically, economically and socially. Consider now the birth of Irish philosophy in Toland. He was christened Janus Junius, and appropriately enough, for his background posed a two-faced threat to the Ascendancy. Born a Roman Catholic, he became a Dissenter at sixteen. But Toland's most threatening face was shown in Christianity not Mysterious. His attack on Christian mysteries and his defence of natural or deistic religion represented a fundamental challenge to the Ascendancy establishment. For if there were no Christian mysteries, then there could be nothing to separate the rival Christian religions or sects. And then there could be no basis for the Penal Laws. The success of Deism or natural religion would be fatal to the Ascendancy. Deism's belief in a few fundamental religious doctrines and little or no ritual, and its emphasis on morality and toleration, could hardly fail to soften or erode the Penal Code. At any rate, historians have agreed that this is what did happen, but that it happened late in the eighteenth century in Ireland. 'An attitude of scepticism was fatal to the Penal Code'. 16 6 6 6 6 6 6m


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If we suppose that Toland's deistic thinking represented a threat to the material well-being of the Ascendancy, then we can explain the fury unleashed against him. The same applies to the persecution of Emlyn and Clayton. Dublin zeal was an expression of Dublin dominance and a reaction against the danger of deistic and latitudinarian thinking. This also explains why Irish philosophy is so massively and distinctively opposed to Deism: why an Irish writer, John Leland, wrote the first extensive, critical history of Deism, i.e. the View of the Principal Deistical Writers (3 vols., London, 1754-7), and why Berkeley and Skelton also composed in Alciphron and Ophiomaches encyclopaedic refutations of Deism; and why one of the briefest, but most popular and effective anti-Deistic works, A Short and Easy Method with the Deists, wherein the certainty of the Christian Religion is demonstrated by infallible proof from four rules ... (London, 1699) was written by the Irish non-juror, Charles Leslie, who converted thereby the notorious freethinker, Charles Gildon. There were also numerous anti-deistical pamphlets by Irish writers of less philosophical distinction, e.g. by Skelton's Trinity College tutor, Dean Patrick Delany, and by William Doyle of Narraghmore, who wrote against Thomas Woolston. The picture I am painting is, it must be admitted, neither attractive nor pleasant. But as Hegel has said: 'The history of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it . . .'. The years 1696-1757 in Ireland were in the history of philosophy very far from being blank pages, but they must have been most unhappy years for the Roman Catholics and Dissenters. (No doubt thinking of his fellow-Catholics, Eamonn De Valera once described 'the eighteenth century [as] the most terrible period that Ireland has ever known'. ) My thesis is that much of Irish philosophy was an indirect expression and justification of the Irish Anglican Ascendancy. The case of Archbishop King is especially instructive. Seven years before King delivered his 1709 Sermon he had published De Origine Mali, a work which

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earned him considerable reputation, as it was criticized by Leibniz and used by Pope for the Essay on Man. In his Preface to the English translation (1739), Edmund Law published King's summary of the treatise (pp. XVIII-XXIV). Two of King's principles for explaining evil are of interest here: (1)

(2)

'An equality of perfection in the creatures is impossible ...' (p. XIX); therefore, even granting an all good and wise God, it is not possible that everyone or thing can be in a superior position. However, since there are a limited number of superior positions in the great chain of being, this does not cast doubt on God's justice or goodness. If man has lost a superior position, then it must have been lost through some folly of the agent. One's fall is not God's, but one's own, fault. God 'is not to be blamed for suffering one to degrade himself by his own act ...' (p. XXII). Therefore 'He that is in a less convenient situation has no room for complaint ...' (p. XXIV). Consequently, to move from a superior to an inferior position implies that one has committed some folly. So King tried to justify the ways of God to man, that is, to explain the existence of apparent evil in a world said to be created by an all good and powerful God.

Now ten years earlier King had published another influential work called the State of the Protestants of Ireland (London, 1691). It, too, was a work of vindication. As King puts it in the Conclusion: [What has] moved me to say what I have said [is] that I might vindicate ourselves [the Irish Anglicans] by speaking Truth in a matter that so nearly concern'd us, both in our temporal and eternal interest, (p. 239)


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That is, the Irish Anglicans were justified in rebelling against James II and justified, too, in trying to gain and then maintain a superior position over the Roman Catholics. Upon the whole, the Irish [Catholics] may justly blame themselves and their Idol, the Earl of Tyrconnel, as King James may them both, for whatever they have, or shall suffer in the issue of this matter, since it is apparent that the necessity was brought about by them, that either they or we must be ruin'd. (p. 239) In the course of his work, King details the acts of folly committed by the Catholic supporters ofJames. Either the Irish Catholics or the Irish Anglicans were going to occupy the dominant position in Ireland. It could not be both. Again, either James II or William III was to be King. This does not detract from God's justice. The fact that a monarch was deposed is a regrettable and an apparent evil, but it should not reflect on God or His Protestant Church. And the fact that it is William III and the Irish Anglicans who are in the superior position implies that James and the Catholics have committed follies: they deserved to change places. Thus the Origin of Evil provides the theoretical framework for the State of the Protestants: the justification for the justification of the Protestants. As the Origin seeks to vindicate God's ways, so the State seeks to vindicate the ways of the Protestants. But as the Origin provides the basis for the State, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that its origin was also ideological. That is, it was prompted in part as a justification of the ruling elite in Ireland, of which King was to be such a prominent member. King was indeed a bulwark of the Ascendancy. The Christian mysteries were needed by the Irish Anglicans to divide, explain or (as some would say) mystify. I am not claiming, however, that the Irish philosophers were clearly aware of this, or

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that this genetic analysis in any way invalidates the truth of their philosophical writings. It merely reveals the underlying cause or occasion. Sometimes, in an impulsive writer like Skelton, the ideological motivation comes out in a most disarming manner. Arguing against Droz's liberal and tolerant Christian position, Skelton asks in the Censor Censured: 'If your latitude is allowed of, why may not a Papist subscribe and take orders with us, as well as a Socinian?' (p. 21). The unstated absurdity is 'Would not your sort of latitudinarianism destroy our privileged position?' I do not believe that Skelton actually thought, or clearly thought, in these terms; rather it was at the very back of his mind and that of the Ascendancy. Perhaps the most suggestive and compelling evidence for my genetic thesis is to be found in An Argument against Abolishing the Christian Religion (London, 1711), where Swift gives as his last reason that abolishing the Christian religion 'will be the readiest course we can take to introduce Popery'. Swift suggests that the freethinkers are really disguised 'Popish missionaries'. He mentions Matthew Tindal who was for a time a convert to Catholicism and, not surprisingly, Toland 'the great Oracle of the Anti-Christians . . . an Irish Priest, [and], the son of an Irish Priest'. Not only the biographies of freethinkers but also their 'reasoning' shows that freethinking is bound to lead to Popery: 'For supposing Christianity to be extinguished the People will never be at ease till they find out some other Method of worship; which will as infallibly produce Superstition, as this will end in Popery.' It is difficult to say how seriously Swift took this conspiracy theory. But the inner meaning of it should be clear. Deism or freethought will, if it is successful, favour the Irish Catholics, by undermining the privileged position of the Protestant Ascendancy. In accordance with the then accepted idea of historical causation the freethinkers are seen as intending, or aiming at, a certain goal. But what goal? This perplexed Skelton, who also believed that the freethinkers were really disguised Catholic


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missionaries. In Ophiomaches he provides us with the most elaborate account of the conspiracy theory. Since the freethinkers do not seem to be aiming at any open end or purpose, their purpose must be hidden: it must be conspiratorial. He then musters in detail various kinds of circumstantial evidence, and most ingeniously answers apparent difficulties in the theory (see vol. 2, pp. 400—10). This conspiracy theory is even presented by Berkeley (in Aldphron II. 26), whose account is more detailed than Swift's but less so than Skelton's. It is plain from verbal parallels that he was influenced by Swift. Thus, where Swift mentions 'the constant practice of the Jesuits to send Emissaries, with instructions to personate themselves members of the several prevailing sects amongst us', Berkeley says that 'The Emissaries of Rome are known to have personated several other sects, which from time to 18k mnknknkbk time have sprung up amongst us ...'. A slighter and less conspiratorial version also appeared in an anonymous Dublin pamphlet A Protestant's Address to the Protestants of Ireland (1757, p. 53). The earliest statement, curiously, is given in An Apology for Mr, Toland. Here the writer details the Irish campaign of vilification against Toland around the time of his visit to Dublin in 1697: At length comes from the North [of Ireland?] a finish'd master of such [slavish or devious] politics, and he doubts not but Mr. Toland after all is a Jesuit. But his Book utterly destroys all the Principles of Popery and Superstition. That's nothing; for Jesuits to unsettle us will preach against their own Religion, (p. 14) The same writer also notes that 'the last effort ... to blast him [Toland], was to make him pass for a rigid Nonconformist' (p. 16). Toland's Deism or freethought was, in a sense, the reconciliation or cancellation of his being an 'Irish Priest' and a 'rigid Nonconformist'. The Irish Anglicans could happily tolerate one or the other, but not both, and not Deism. Hence it is understandable

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that Toland 'was dreaded in Ireland as a ... second Goliath' - as P. Des Maizeaux put it in his 1726 memoir of Toland (p. XXII). Whether or not Swift took his conspiracy theory from An Apology for Mr. Toland, or from the Northerner, or whether he himself was the Northerner, is not known. What we have is a fantastic theory expressed at various times between 1698 and 1757 by at least three writers of repute, all suggesting that the purpose and drift of the writings of Toland and his followers were to advance the cause of the Roman Catholics. In my opinion, the conspiracy theory reveals as fantasy the very real fear of the ruling class that freethought, as a tolerant, de-mystifying and counter-divisive force, could insidiously undermine the privileged status of the Ascendancy. It would be wrong, however, to suggest that there are no difficulties in this psycho-historical explanation. Thus it might be asked why the Dissenters were so active in persecuting Toland and Emlyn, since, according to our explanation, they stood to gain little or nothing by such persecution. My brief and general response to this is two-fold: (1) the Dissenters were afraid of being associated with Toland, and so over-reacted against him in order to show that he was not one of them, and (2) they were simply mystified into accepting the authenticity of the distinctions by which they were tyrannized; they were, to use Marx's metaphor, mystified into accepting the reality of the ideological chains that restricted them. With the Christian mysteries intact, the division between Anglican and Catholic, Anglican and Dissenter, could be maintained. The Ascendancy did not wish to eliminate Irish Catholicism or Presbyterianism, for '... the essential purpose of the penal laws ... was not to destroy Roman Catholicism, but to make sure that its adherents were kept in a position of social, economic, and political inferiority'.1 96j Then the Irish Anglicans could - to use Swift's image in the Tale of a Tub - suffocate the Catholics and freeze the Dissenters. Theological representationalism, supported by King's


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pragmatism and Browne's sensationalism, provided a plausible and coherent justification for Christian mysteries as did Berkeley's emotive theory of language. Swift seemed to remain aloof from these theological speculations. He did, however, use his own admirable skills against freethought in his vigorous satire on Anthony Collins's Discourse of Freethinking (London, 1713). Swift's lack of sympathy for theological representationalism may be gathered from his remarks on Browne and also, perhaps, from his comments on what I have called the root metaphor of Irish philosophy, the blind man trying to cope with visual shapes and colours. In Gulliver's Travels (part III, chap. 5) Swift ridicules the idea that a blind man can effectively deal with colours by means of touch or smell. 'There was [in the Academy of Lagado] a man born blind, who had several apprentices in his own condition; their employment was to mix colours for painters, which their master taught them to distinguish by feeling and smelling. It was indeed my misfortune to find them at that time not very perfect in their lessons . . . . Similarly in the Memoirs ofScriblerus (written partly by Swift) the hero-pedant, Martinus, is said to have 'first found out the Palpability of Colours', and by the delicacy of his Touch, [he] could distinguish the different Vibrations of the heterogeneous Rays of Light.' If Swift followed Berkeley in regarding the colour ability of a blind man as a touchstone for distinguishing the two opposed theological positions, then we may infer that he also sided with Berkeley against King, Browne and Synge on our knowledge of God. Whether he was sympathetic to Berkeley's emotive account of mysteries is not clear, but there is some evidence in Gulliver's Travels III that he shared Berkeley's opposition to the restrictive referential theory of meaning - that a word is essentially a name which stands for a particular idea, which is the full meaning of the word. Thus another of the absurd Lagado projects was the 'leaving out of verbs and participles, because, in reality, all things imaginable are but nouns'. This noun-theory is developed at length by Locke

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in Essay III, and was wholeheartedly accepted by nearly all theological representationalists, but it is rejected by Berkeley in his emotive and operational theories of meaning. Another Irish philosopher who followed Berkeley's non-restrictive theory of meaning, and Swift's approach to the Deists, was Edmund Burke, to whom I shall now turn. 0

4 Ethics and aesthetics Burke's two most important philosophical works are A Vindication of Natural Society: or a view of the miseries and evils arising to mankind from every species of artificial society (London, 1756) and the even more remarkable A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful; with an Introductory Discourse concerning Taste (London, 1757). The later work was begun while Burke was still in Ireland, and he published it at the precocious age of twentyseven. (Compare Toland and Berkeley, who published their greatest works at twenty-six and twenty-five years, respectively.) The Vindication and especially the Philosophical Enquiry should be viewed, I shall argue, in the Irish context, as the culmination, if not the consummation, of Hibernian philosophy. The Vindication was meant to be taken as a posthumous work of Lord Bolingbroke's. Its apparent thesis is that the natural state of man is virtuous and that government is a corrupting force. Burke's satire is at least two-sided, in that it is directed not only at the political doctrine that exalted natural man, but also at the deistic doctrine that exalted natural religion. Both the form and content of the satire are similar to Swift's Mr. Collins's Discourse ... put into plain English by way of Abstract for the Use of the Poor (London, 1713). Both Swift and Burke speak as if freethinkers and in the words, or the alleged words, of their real antagonists, in order to crystallize the sophistry and weakness of the originals. The irony in both is at times exquisite. Compare, for example, the way that Collins opens his


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Discourse of Freethinking with Swift's parody: 'Apologys for selfevident truths can never have any effect on those who have so little sense as to deny them? (Collins). 'I send you this apology for freethinking, without the least hopes of doing good, but purely to comply with your request; For those truths which nobody can deny, will do no good to those who deny them.' (Swift). In one way, Burke seems to take irony one step further than Swift. For he ironically has Bolingbroke ironically denying the actual purpose and drift of his reasoning: . . . far am I from proposing in the least to reflect on our most wise Form of Government; no more than I would in the freer Parts of my philosophical Writings, mean to object to the Piety, Truth, and Perfection of our most excellent Church. Both I am sensible have their Foundations on a Rock. No Discovery of Truth can prejudice them. On the contrary, the more closely the Origin of Religion and Government are examined, the more clearly their Excellencies must appear. They come purified from the Fire. My Business is not with them. Having entered a Protest against all Objections from these Quarters, I may the more freely . . . (p. 10) It is not surprising that such subtle irony within irony was misunderstood by many in England. The moral of Burke's Vindication is that man stands in need of help from both religion and government. Thus Burke asks: Tf you say, that natural religion is a sufficient guide without the foreign aid of revelation, on what principle should political laws become necessary?' Remove political laws or revelation and anarchy will ensue; for the 'professors of artificial law have always walked hand in hand with the professors of artificial theology'. Because of man's flawed nature he cannot be self-sufficient. The religious part of this theme is repeatedly emphasized in Ellis's Knowledge of Divine Things and also in Thompson's Natural State of Man (as, indeed, its title suggests) and

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in Skelton's Ophiomaches. Skelton stressed this also in his Proposals for the Revival of Christianity (Dublin, 1736), a pamphlet written in the manner of Swift's Argument, whose programme Skelton (i.e., the putative freethinking author) says that he wishes to improve and extend. The right-wing Lockeans all fervently subscribed to what may be called the orthodox position with regard to religion and morality: that solid morality requires religion. Of course, this was a position accepted by most thinkers of the time, but it is noticeable that Irish philosophers held it in its most extreme forms. Thus Berkeley believed that not only do morality and social order depend on a belief in God and otherworldly sanctions, but that if there were no God, there would be no real distinction between good and bad. It is against this background that we must see Hutcheson's works on ethics, most of which were written and published while he was teaching in Dublin. By means of the Shaftesburian moralsense theory, Hutcheson went some way towards making morality autonomous, naturalistic and non-theological. For him, as for most of the Molesworth Circle, a man could be moral without religious belief. For we act virtuously because virtue is seen to be the right or beautiful thing; and we see this very much as we see that a painting is beautiful. In Alciphron III, Berkeley reacted strongly against these ethical views (although it is not clear whether he had Hutcheson in mind). He attacked the moral sense by means of what I have called the familiarity argument, an argument that Skelton also used against the same target in Ophiomaches. 'This is most amazing', writes the pugnacious Skelton, 'that every man should have a clear and powerful light within himself; and yet . . . there should be controversy about [its] source ...' (vol. I, p. 138) Later in Ophiomaches Skelton bemoans the fact that many allegedly Christian clergymen edify 'their hearers, not with a discourse founded on the Scriptures . . . but with a fine philosophical essay about moral C\ 1


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beauty, and the internal senses, wire-drawn from the writings of Mr. Hutcheson, who only refines on those of Lord Shaftesbury' (vol. II, p. 304) In the fourth edition (London, 1738) of his An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, Hutcheson made some response to Berkeley's criticism of his ethical views in Alciphron. However, his primary concern was to answer Berkeley's objections to his views on aesthetics. Irish aesthetics begins in the 1720s with Hutcheson, and it may be said to end in 1757 with Burke. But in its brief thirty or so years its performance is impressive indeed. For Hutcheson the aesthetic sense immediately and passively perceives proportions in works of art. As the eye immediately sees colour so the inner aesthetic sense instantly appreciates the symmetry and balance of a statue - its uniformity in diversity - and thereby, or therein, its beauty. The estimation of beauty is not a matter of reasoning or training, nor is it connected with the utility of the art object. Berkeley criticized this theory in Alciphron III. 8-9, again without naming Hutcheson. Berkeley tries to show that the beauty of proportion is not a matter of immediate experience, as is the perception of an odour or patch of colour. Rather, our appreciation of proportion depends on our awareness of its utility. Thus a chair which was not a suitable height for sitting on would not be regarded as beautiful, whatever its proportions. Neither would a door be admired if it were inverted 'making its breadth become the height, and its height the breadth . . .' Here 'the figure would still be the same, but without that beauty in one situation, which it had in another'. Thus the appreciation of beauty is not perceived by an inner sense, rather it is 'the work of reason' (III. 9). In 'Additions and Corrections' to the 1738 edition of his Inquiry Hutcheson responded to 'the ingenious author of Alciphron',23 Beauty, Hutcheson argued, is not a matter of utility perceived; for 'the feet of a chair would be of the same use, tho' unlike, were they equally long'. But we should hardly regard as beautiful a

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chair with one leg straight, one bent inwards, and two bent outwards. Similarly a 'coffin-shape for a door would bear a more manifest aptitude to the human shape', but we should hardly find such a door beautiful. And why, asks Hutcheson, do we find such useless objects as flowers beautiful, but such useful animals as oxen ugly, if, as Berkeley thought, '... beauty riseth from the appearance of use ...' (Alciphron III. 9)? Burke's Philosophical Enquiry is the last great work of Irish philosophy. There is much that is fitting in this, for it draws heavily on what is distinctively Irish in philosophy. Thus it makes notable use of the Molyneux-type problem in part III, section xxiv, where Burke emphasizes the intrinsic connections between the senses of sight and touch, and the role this synaesthesia plays in aesthetic appreciation: . . . there is such a similitude in the pleasures of these senses, that I am apt to fancy, if it were possible that one might discern colour by feeling, (as it is said some blind men have done) that the same colours, and the same disposition of colouring, which are found beautiful to the sight, would be found likewise most grateful to the touch. Even more important for the achievement of the Philosophical Enquiry is its deployment of two of the most novel theories of the earlier Irish philosophy, namely, Browne's sensationalism and Berkeley's emotivism. In part III, section xii, on 'the real cause of beauty', Burke writes: 'we must conclude that beauty is some merely sensible quality in bodies ...'. Beauty is not for Burke, as it was for Hutcheson, a matter of proportion or harmony; rather it concerns the sensible features, the secondary rather than the primary qualities of the objects. Nor is beauty something immediately perceived by an inner sense. Burke is, like Berkeley, opposed to both the moral and aesthetic sense theories; and he agrees with Berkeley that we reason ourselves into judgements of beauty. But this is not to say that Berkeley and Burke concur in what


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constitutes beauty; for Burke is even more scornful than Hutcheson of the utilitarian theory of beauty. (See part III, sect, vi.) It is interesting that a number of Burke's counter-examples are drawn from ugly but useful domestic animals. Thus he notes that if the utility theory were correct 'the wedge-like snout of a swine, with its tough cartilage at the end, the little sunk eyes, and the whole make of the head, so well adapted to its office of digging and rooting, would be extremely beautiful'. For Hutcheson, as we have seen, also used such a counter-example (the ox) against Berkeley's utilitarian theory of beauty. Neither Hutcheson nor Berkeley was very far from the mind of Burke in his first years in England. In 1752/3 he thought of following in Hutcheson's footsteps by trying for the Professorship of Logic at the University of Glasgow; and he sought to strengthen his chances by composing a refutation of Berkeley's metaphysics; indeed, we are told that he 'had at the time sketched the outline of ,i the essay, . 24 Writers on Burke have looked everywhere but to his countrymen for likely sources of his sensationalism, which J. T. Boulton sees as the first of Burke's three important departures from the orthodox aesthetics. Burke, he asserts, 'is alone in his uncompromising sensationalism'. (Editor's Introduction, p. Ixxii.) But Burke was far from being the only sensationalist in Ireland, where there was, as we have seen, an active school inspired by Browne. There was Ellis, Skelton, Thompson and McDonnell, most of whom were closely associated with Burke's College. And the fact that Burke was sympathetic to theological representationalism in the Reformer and Enquiry further compels us to see his sensationalism as derived (at least partly) from Browne or some other Trinity sensationalist. Burke's debt to Berkeley's emotive theory of language has been recognized, at least since Dixon Wecter's 'Burke's theory of words, images and emotion' (PMLA, 55). In applying the emotive theory to aesthetics in Part V, Burke anticipates the work of

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I. A. Richards. Indeed, it is appropriate that the future inspiring orator should be the one to declare how 'little does poetry depend for its effect on the power of raising sensible images', and how much it depends on 'affecting words' and 'the contagion of our passions'. Like Berkeley, Burke defends by appeals to experience the thesis that our 'passions are affected by words from whence [we] have no ideas'. Burke even justifies the non-cognitive emotive theory by means of religious words. He writes: 'Besides, many ideas have never been at all presented to the senses of any men but by words, as God, angels, devils, heaven, and hell, all of which have however a great influence over the passions' (sect. vii). This strongly recalls Berkeley's own application of the emotive theory to religious utterances (although Berkeley would have stressed that the term God is fundamentally a cognitive and not an emotive word). Wecter sees Burke as having derived his emotive theory from section 20 of the Introduction to the Principles, and he may well be right; yet I think it is more likely that Alciphron VII was Burke's source. First, the emotive theory is developed at greater length there, and it is applied specifically to religious language. Secondly, Wecter himself notes that Burke's ideas about optics in IV. ix were probably influenced by Berkeley's New Theory of Vision. Now although the New Theory was published in 1709, it was also appended to the first three (1732) editions of Alciphron. And the Dublin edition of 1732, with the New Theory appended, was offered as a Trinity College premium prize in the 1730s. By 1757 Alciphron had gone through no less than half a dozen editions; whereas the Principles had passed through only two. Finally, in Alciphron, particularly III and VII, Burke would have found much of interest on aesthetics, and indeed most of the elements which make his aesthetic theory that unique departure from classical formalism to romanticism. 26lfjkgkmhbl;fdsa A last Irish aesthetical act may be noted. In his review of Burke's Philosophical Enquiry in the Monthly Review (May 1757, XVI,


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pp. 473-80), Oliver Goldsmith criticized Burke's criticism of the utility theory, thus casting his lot with Berkeley, whose life he was to write some two years later.

The Golden Age of Irish philosophy comes to a decisive end in 1757. Why? It is difficult to say with certainty. But times had plainly changed when Irish philosophy's two last important representatives - Clayton and Burke - were both sympathetic to religious toleration, and when Clayton, the last significant left-wing Lockean, was a Bishop of the Established Church, and the last great right-winger (Burke) particularly well-disposed to his Catholic countrymen. It is probably no accident that at this time the Penal Laws were becoming less viable and the Irish Catholics were reviving from a sleep of nearly sixty years, during which Irish philosophy blossomed for the first and only time. In 1757 the first Roman Catholic Committee was formed by Burke's friends, Charles O'Conor and John Curry, who in the following year published Historical Memoirs of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 (London), the first important Catholic work to question the Protestant version of Irish history and justification of the Penal Laws. Curry was later to complete this process of historical revision in his An Historical and Critical Review of the Civil Wars in Ireland (Dublin, 1775), in which he subjects Archbishop King's 1691 Vindication of the Protestants to extensive and forceful criticism. 27

I shall conclude this account of Irish philosophy with a final comment on the great ally and friend of Curry and O'Conor Edmund Burke. I have described Burke as a right-wing Lockean because of his commitment to sensationalism, theological representationalism as well as revealed (and established) religion; and his hostility to freethinkers is also typically right-wing. But Burke, like Berkeley, does not fit neatly into the schema of left- and rightwing Lockeans. Thus, as a right-wing empiricist, he should have

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given a negative answer to the Molyneux problem; but he does not. Nor should he have been so sympathetic to his Catholic countrymen. However, one must, I suppose, expect extraordinary developments at the end of an age. A fascinating indication of the typical but unique nature of Burke's right-wing Lockeanism can be seen in his distinctive use of the conspiracy theory developed by Swift and used by Berkeley and Skelton. In Burke's account most of the familiar elements appear; but in a very different form or whole. Freethought is to be most feared because 'some uncouth, pernicious, and degrading superstition might take place of it.' (p. 135). In this, Burke is in entire agreement with Swift, Berkeley and Skelton. But he does not associate this superstition with 'the Roman system of religion' (to which he refers with respect). And while he is prepared to accept that there is a (French) freethinking 'cabal' (p. 132), he does not believe that it is inspired by Roman Catholics. However, we are now far away from the end of Irish philosophy; indeed, we are almost in another era, for the book in which this transformation of the old Swiftean conspiracy theory appears is Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (8th edn, Dublin, 1791).

Notes a. b.

1.

This essay originally appeared in Archiv fiir Geschichte der Philosophic in 1982. On Synge, see my article in the Thoemmes Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century British Philosophers, ed. J. W. Yolton, J. V. Price andj. Stephens (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1999). See W. R. Scott, Hutcheson: his Life, Teaching and Position in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge, 1900), pp. 28~9. J. M. Robertson, History of Freethought (London, 1936), runs into difficulty by conflating the father and son; see p. 768, note 4. According to Anthony Collins's Library Catalogue (in King's College, Cambridge), Molesworth was the author of 'Extraordinary Free-thinker f° London 1717' — a publication which I have been unable to locate.

Culmination and Causation 2.

3. 4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

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An Essay on the Existence of God, particularly in Answer to two atheistical letters of Mrl—T-- (Belfast, 1730). I have not been able to identify T--r, and it is possible that he is an impious fiction. The Orrery Papers, ed. the Countess of Cork and Orrery (London: Duckworth, 1903), vol. 2, p. 34. See my 'Berkeley, Clayton and An Essay on Spirit', Journal of the History of Ideas (July-September 1971), pp. 367-78. The only Bishop to speak in Clayton's favour was Edward Synge, now of Elphin, formerly of the Molesworth Circle. It is not known whether Clayton was directly associated with Molesworth or Hutcheson or other members of the Circle in the 1720s. See English Thought in the Eighteenth Century viii. 53. For a somewhat different and more dramatic version of Clayton's death, see S. Burdy, The Life of Philip Skelton (Oxford, 1914), reprinted from the 1792 edition; p. 138. An Essay towards an Answer to the Essay on Spirit (Dublin, 1753), pp. 256-60, and A Short Vindication of the Essay towards an Answer .. . (Dublin, 1754), pp. 43-54. Clayton succeeded Browne as Bishop of Cork and Rosse in 1735. In a letter of 20 March 1736/7, Lord Orrery nicely contrasts the styles of the two bishops: 'Under the reign of Dr Browne . . . we were strangers to mirth even by Analogy. Under the reign of Dr Clayton we sing catches, read Pastor Eido, and talk of love. Thus if one road does not lead to Paradise, we try another'. Orrery Papers, vol. 1, p. 207. Ellis was born in England, but came to Dublin in his twenty-sixth year to become Vicar of St James'; he held this position from 1 716 to 1752, when he became Vicar of St Catherine's; he remained at St Catherine's until his death in 1 764. Little is known of Ellis's life. Much of Ellis's position is summarized in a work published in 1 757 with the informative title: An Enquiry whence cometh wisdom and understanding to man? in which it is attempted to shew, 1 that religion entered the world by Revelation, and that language was from the same original. 2 that without the aid of Revelation, man had not been a rational, or a religious creature. 3 that nothing can oblige the conscience, but the revealed word of God. 4 that a state religion, or law of nature, never existed but in the human imagination (London). From a letter of the American Samuel Johnson to George (dated 10 December 1756), it appears that the Bishop's son had expressed his great admiration for Ellis's sensationalist position. Johnson, who was one of the Bishop's earliest philosophical followers, advised the son to reconsider his father's writings; see Samuel Johnson: His Career and

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12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19. 20.

Berkeley and Irish Philosophy Writings, ed. H. and C. Schneider (New York, 1929), vol. II, p. 338. It seems likely that after the Bishop's death, young George lent Ellis some of the Bishop's papers, and that it was Ellis who 'revised' Berkeley's 1751 Sermon on the will of God. For the person who did the revising wrote the note: 'mem. Leave out all those passages wch relate to the light of reason', and just above this is a rather illegible signature, which I am confident is 'J Ellis DD' (British Library, add. ms. 39306, p. 200). Certainly the fideistic revisions are entirely from Ellis's point of view. I mention this, partly because of the debate on the source and significance of the revisions between John Wild and A. A. Luce; see the former's George Berkeley (Cambridge, Mass., 1936) Appendix and the latter's 'Two sermons by Bishop Berkeley', in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xlii, sect. C, no. 8 (1936). From Burdy's Life of Philip Skelton, it appears that Skelton was on friendly terms with Thompson and McDonnell; see pp. 98, 101 and 118. Synge was almost certainly the author of the anonymous 'Sober thoughts of analogy in thinking and speaking of God', Gentleman's Magazine (London, 1734), p. 441. The title 'Sober' and frequent use of the term 'internally' are entirely in his manner. A. P. I. Samuels, The Early Life and Correspondence and Writings of ... Edmund Burke ... (Cambridge, 1923). The Reformer essays are reprinted in Appendix II, pp. 297-329. I shall be using J. T. Boulton's scholarly edition of the Philosophical Enquiry (London, 1958), which contains an extensive (130 page) introductory essay as well as notes on Burke's text; see p. 69. R. Dunlop, Cambridge Modern History (1934), vol. vi, p. 486; also seej. C. Beckett's Making of Modern Ireland (London: Faber, 1972), p. 213, and Robertson's History ofFreethought, pp. 747—8. President De Valera: Recent Speeches and Broadcasts (Dublin, 1933), p. 51. De Valera's attitude to eighteenth-century Ireland may help to explain why eighteenth-century Irish philosophy has not been given the recognition it deserves. On Swift and Berkeley's common attitude to the freethinkers, see T. E. Jessop, Appendix 2 to his edition of Alciphron, in vol. iii of The Works of George Berkeley (Edinburgh, 1950), pp. 336-7. Beckett, Making of Modern Ireland, p. 159; also see I. Ehrenpreis, Swift, the Man,his Works,and Age (London, 1967), vol. 2, p. 155. Chapter XIV; see the Works of Alexander Pope (London, 1751), vol. VI, pp. 157-8.

Culmination and Causation c.

137

For further discussion of Swift's connection with Irish philosophy, see R. Kearney (eel.), The Irish Mind (Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1985), pp. 135-6. 21. See Works of Skelton (London, 1824), vol. 5, pp. 265-7. 22. See my 'The theoretical/practical distinction as applied to the existence of God from Locke to Kant', in Trivium 12 (1977); pp. 96-8 are on Berkeley. 23. Hutcheson had referred to 'our' Dr Berkeley in a letter written in Dublin ten years earlier, which comments on Berkeley's immaterialism and answer to the Molyneux problem; see my 'Francis Hutcheson on Berkeley . ..', Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (1974), p. 263. 24. J. Prior, Life of. . . Edmund Burke (5th edn, London, 1854), p. 47. Burke never published a critique of Berkeley's philosophy; although it is possible that the essay 'Concerning the perceptive faculty' is by him, for it appeared in the Annual Register in 1763 (pp. 182-5), at a time when Burke was writing for the Annual. The essay is signed 'A. B.', and criticizes Berkeley's rejection of external bodies. 25. For one such copy, see Peter Murray Hill (Rare Books), Catalogue no. 139 (London, 1977), item 6. 26. It is worth noting that Berkeley's emotive theory elicited virtually no response in the eighteenth century; and that one of the only writers to take any notice of it was Burke's College friend, Thomas Leland (best known as a historian), who in his Dissertation on the Principles of Human Eloquence (2nd edn, Dublin, 1765) quotes from section 20 of Berkeley's Introduction, and with evident approval (p. 9). 27. See Book 10, especially Chapters 1 and 13 and my 'David Hume on the 1641 Rebellion in Ireland', in Studies (1976), especially pp. 101—2.

5

Francis Hutcheson on Berkeley and the Molyneux Problema

Introduction If a philosophical problem can be assigned a nationality, then the Molyneux problem, more than any other, can be called an Irish problem. It is true that it first saw the light in the second edition of John Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding (London, 1694). But Locke was only the editor or publicizer of the problem. It was devised by an Irishman, William Molyneux, the founder of the Dublin Philosophical Society. Molyneux also gave the first negative answer to his question, an answer with which Locke concurred. Locke, as we can see, added very little to either the problem or its solution:

. . . I shall here insert a Problem [he says] of that very ingenious and studious Promoter of real Knowledge, the learned and worthy Mr Molineux, which he was pleased to send me in a Letter some Months since; and it is this; Suppose a man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his Touch to distinguish between a Cube and a Sphere of the same Metal, and nighly of the same Bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and t'other, which is the Cube, which the Sphere. Suppose then the Cube and Sphere placed on a Table, and the blind Man to be made to see; Quaere, Whether by his Sight, before he touched them, he could now distinguish and tell which is the Globe, which the Cube? To which the acute and judicious Proposer answered, Not. For tho' he has obtained the Experience of how a Globe, how a Cube affects his Touch; yet he has not yet attained the Experience, that what affects his Touch so

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or so, must affect his Sight so or so; or that a protuberant Angle in Cube, that pressed his Hand unequally, shall appear to his Eye as it does in the Cube. I agree with this thinking Gentleman, whom I am proud to call my Friend, in his Answer to this his Problem; and am of Opinion, that the blind Man, at first Sight, would not be able with Certainty to say which was the Globe, which the Cube, whilst he only saw them; though he could unerringly name them by his Touch, and certainly distinguish them by the Difference of their Figures felt. This I have set down, and leave with my Reader as an Occasion for him to consider how much he may be beholden to Experience, Improvement, and acquired Notions, where he thinks he has not the least Use of, or Help from them; and the rather, because this observing Gentleman farther adds, that having, upon the Occasion of my Book, proposed this to divers very ingenious Men, he hardly ever met with one, that at first gave the Answer to it, which he thinks true, till by hearing his reasons they 26 545 were convinced. It would be interesting to know who these 'divers very ingenious men' were (one supposes that some of them must have been fellowmembers of the Dublin Philosophical Society), and also to know more of Molyneux's reasons for answering his question as he does. But, despite his having both a practical concern with blindness — his wife became blind shortly after their marriage — and a strong theoretical interest in vision, which can be seen in his influential Dioptrica Nova (London, 1692), we have no evidence that Molyneux went any further into his 'jocose problem', as he refers to it. The first positive answer was also given by an Irishman, i.e. Edward Synge, author of the Gentleman's Religion (Dublin, 1693) and later Archbishop of Tuam (1716). Synge's answer appears in a letter dated 6 September 1695, which was transmitted by Molyneux to Locke and published in Some Familiar Letters between Mr. Locke and several of his Friends (London, 1708). Synge supposes that the man made to see will immediately identify the globe he

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sees as different from the cube in one respect: the globe will be seen as 'alike on all sides'. And as this is just the idea of the globe which the man formed by touch alone, he 'might be able to know [Synge suggests] which was the globe, and which the cube' (my italics). Hence Synge's affirmative answer depends on there being a common feature in what we see and touch. The outstanding negative answer, however, and the answer which is of the widest philosophical importance, was given by Berkeley in his Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (Dublin, 1709). Indeed, Berkeley goes even further than a negative answer. He thinks the blind man made to see will be unable even to understand what is being asked of him, because he will not be able to refer his familiar tangible ideas of the globe and cube to his new, 365 6 and entirely different, visual ideas. Admittedly, the famous early positive answer was returned by a non-Irishman, namely Leibniz;4 but even this brief account shows the considerable Irish part in the early history of the problem. And the early Irish participation does not end there. Unnoticed by scholars, there is another prominent eighteenth-century Irish philosopher who also tackled — and in a manner remarkably similar to Leibniz's — the problem: this is Ulster-born Francis Hutcheson, the exponent of the moral sense. Hutcheson's answer occurs in a letter addressed to a Mr William Mace, of Gresham College; it is dated 6 September 1727. It was written in Dublin where Hutcheson had been, since 1722, conducting an academy for Dissenters. It was published in the European Magazine and London Review of September 1788, pp. 158-60, with the editorial comment that it was 'never before printed'. As far as I am aware, it has never been reprinted. I reprint here only about two-thirds of the letter, i.e. those three paragraphs on Berkeley and the Molyneux problem. The letter also deals with such topics as volitions, desire and activity. Hutcheson's answer to the Molyneux problem follows some remarks touching on Berkeley and immaterialism. The remarks

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are of interest because they throw some light on questions raised by Hutcheson's biographer, W. R. Scott, about the relationship between Hutcheson and Berkeley.5 These are: (1) did the two philosophers meet in Dublin between 1722 and 1724, and (2) did Hutcheson study Berkeley's works during the period he was teaching at the Dublin Academy, i.e. until 1730? No concrete evidence was available to Scott, but our letter suggests a probable 'no' to the first question and a nearly certain 'yes' to the second. For Hutcheson says that he knows Berkeley's doctrines from his books and from conversations with certain friends - and this seems to imply that Berkeley was not of this group. It is not, however, only the first paragraph printed below which concerns Berkeley; for Hutcheson's solution to the Molyneux problem is, I believe, at least in part a reaction against Berkeley's negative answer. For Hutcheson, perhaps surprisingly, gives an affirmative answer. Although he does not mention Berkeley by name, Hutcheson is clearly replying to the New Theory of Visio, especially section 133. In this section Berkeley sums up his answer to the Molyneux problem with the following challenge: 'We must therefore allow, either that visible extension and figures are specifically distinct from tangible extension and figures, or else that the solution of this problem given by those two thoughtful and ingenious men [Locke and Molyneux] is wrong'. In Hutcheson's letter the challenge is taken up: 'Messrs Locke and Molyneux are both wrong about the cube and sphere ...'. For Hutcheson will not accept that visible and tangible extension are distinct: 'visible and tangible extension', he says, are 'really the same idea, or have one idea common'. A second indirect reference to Berkeley runs as follows: If one should allege that the two extensions, abstracted from the colours, are different ideas, but that by long observation we find what changes in the visible arise from any change of the tangible extension, and vice vera; and hence from groping a figure we

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know what its visible extension shall be; I think upon this scheme, it would be impossible . . . This 'one' must surely be Berkeley; for this is just what he holds, as we can see from the following: . . . there is no discoverable necessary connexion between any given visible magnitude and any one particular tangible magnitude; but that it is intirely the result of custom and experience, and depends on foreign and accidental circumstances that we can by the perception of visible extension inform our selves what may be the extension of any tangible object connected with it.7 For Berkeley the connection between visual extension and tactile extension is contingent. Hence our being able to predict 'by our touch, with our eyes shut . . . what the visual extension of a body shall be when we shall see it' cannot, in Berkeley's view, prove that they have 'an idea common', as Hutcheson claims, because the relationship might be otherwise; nor does experience reveal an intrinsic connection. And although Berkeley would accept Hutcheson's twice-repeated assertion that a blind man can learn mathematics or geometry, he would deny that this can be achieved by someone with the sense of sight (or smell) alone; see New Theory of Vision,ections 153-9, where, "for the fuller illustration' of his thesis, Berkeley considers 'the case of an unbodied spirit' who can see but not touch. Hutcheson's solution to the problem is remarkably similar to that of Leibniz. (1) They both answer it affirmatively, while allowing that the man made to see will not, at first view, be able to recognize the sphere and cube. (2) They both hold that a side view is important for the affirmative answer. (3) They both hold that a negative answer implies that blind men could not learn geometry, and that this implication is untenable. (4) They both

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introduce a thought-experiment involving a paralytic person for the same purpose: to show that there are common ideas provided by the different senses, which form the basis of geometry. From these similarities one might almost suspect imitation; but that is out of the question. Both solutions were published posthumously, Leibniz's in 1765, almost twenty years after Hutcheson's death, and Hutcheson's seventy-two years after Leibniz's death in 1716. The last paragraph of Hutcheson's letter, as printed below, might seem to be unconnected with the Molyneux problem; but this is not really the case. The theory of duration and number briefly considered there explains Hutcheson's imaginative, although rather too compactly expressed, thought-experiments in the previous paragraph. The reason why someone with only a keen sense of smell would be able to talk about mathematics with someone with the sense of sight is because duration and number accompany all senses, including smell and sight. So the two per sons can have mathematics in common, because they have number in common. 8 One would like to know more about Hutcheson's correspondent Mace, who was appointed Gresham lecturer on civil law and who died in 1767/ He seems to have been not only a very early follower of Berkeley, but even something of a Humean before Hume.1 Unfortunately he never published his philosophical views, at least not in any book in his own name.

Francis Hutcheson to William Mace, 6 September 1727 From the European Magazine, September 1788, pp. 158-9 I was well apprized of the scheme of thinking you are fallen into, not only by our Dr Berkly's[sic] books, and by some of the old acqdemics, but by frequent conversation with some few speculative

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friends in Dublin. As to your notion of our mind as only a system of perceptions, I imagine you'll find that every one has an immediate simple perception of self\ to which all his other perceptions ar some way connected, otherwise I cannot conceive how I could be any way affected with pleasure or pain from any past action, affection, or perception, or have any present uneasiness or concern about any future event or perception; or how there could be any unity of person, or any desire of future happiness or aversion to misery. My past perceptions or future ones are not my present, but would be as distinct as your perceptions are from mine: that it is otherwise I believe every one is conscious. As to material substrata, I own I am a sceptic; all the phenomena might be as they are, were there nothing but perceptions, for the phenomena are perceptions. And yet, were there external objects, I cannot imagine how we could be better informed of them than we are. I own I cannot see the force of the arguments against external objects, i.e. something like, or proportional, to our concomitant ideas, as I call extension, figure, motion, rest, solidity. Figureand bounde colur are not to me the same. Figureaccom-panies bounded colour, but the same or perfectly like idea may arise by touch, without any idea of colour, along with the ideas of hard, cold, smooth. A man born blind might learn mathematics with a little more trouble than one who saw, had he figures artfully cut in wood. Messrs. Locke and Molyneux are both wrong about the cube and sphere proposed to a blind man restored to sight. He would not at first view know the sphere from a shaded plain surface by a view from above; but a side view would discover the equal uniform round relievo in one, and the cubic one in the other. We can all by touch, with our eyes shut, judge what the visible extension of a body felt shall be when we shall open our eyes; but cannot by feeling judge what the colour shall be when we shall see it; which shews visible and tangible extension to be really the same idea, or to have one idea common, viz. the extension; though the purely tangible and visible perceptions are quite disparate.

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If one should allege that the two extensions, abstracted from the colours, are different ideas, but that by long observation we find what changes in the visible arise from any change of the tangible extension, and vice versa]nd hence from groupingafigure we know what its visible extension shall be; I think upon this scheme, it would be impossible that one who had only the idea of tangible extension could ever apprehend any reasonings formed by one who argued about the visible; whereas blind men may understand mathematics. To illustrate this, suppose a person paralytic and blind, with an acute smell, who had no idea of either extension; suppose there were a body whose smell continually altered with every change of its figure; one man seeing the several figures changing in a regular course foresees which shall come next, so the other knows the course of smells; he agrees with the blind man about names; the one noting by them the various figures, the other the various smells. The seer reasons about the figures, or forms one of Euclid's propositions concerning the proportion of the sides; is it possible the blind man could ever assent to this, y sonow his meaning from the smell?13andd yet men may so far agree, one of whom had only the idea of tangible extension. Or suppose a man had never seen sounding strings, but heard the several sounds, not knowing anything of length or tension, that he was taught names for notes, such as dupla, sesquialtera: should one who saw the strings say, 'the square of the cause of the octave was but a quarter of the square of the other cause,' could the other ever apprehend him in this point from his ideas of sounds? And yet a man born blind could perceive this point, and agree with one who only had ideas of sight. Duration and number seem to me as real perceptions as any; and I can have no other idea of your words for explaining duration, [viz. the order of our ideas}14than this, a perception of the connexion or relation of our several ideas to several parts of duration. What is order or succession of our ideas, unless duration be a real distinct idea accompanying them all? or how could the

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succession of ideas give us ideas of duration, if a part of duration were not connected with each of them? Number is also a real idea; the words are artificial symbols about which different nations differ, but agree in all their reasonings about the ideas of number, which are really the same. Numbers are the clearest ideas we have, and their relations are the most distinct, but often have nothing to do with wholes or parts, and are alike applicable to heterogeneous as homogeneous quantities.

Notes a. 1.

2.

This paper originally appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Acade in 1974. Essay II. ix. 8. Locke does add the additional qualification to Molyneux's formulation, that the man made to see should identify the cube and sphere 'at first sight'. John W. Davis in his useful article 'The Molyneux problem' (Journal of the History of Ideas, xxi (I960)), takes Locke to mea by this qualification that the man made to see should not be allowed to walk and view the sphere and cube from different sides (p. 394). Locke also, with typical caution, qualifies his negative answer to a considerable extent by stipulating that the man made to see would not distinguish the sphere and cube 'with certainty'. It is hard to imagine that immediately after such an extraordinary alteration and new experience, the patient would be certain of anything. Two recent accounts of the problem that print Molyneux's earlier formulation of it, as sent to Locke in 1688, are K. T. Hoppen's The Common Scientist in the Seventeenth Century (Londo 1970), pp 172-5, and D. Park's 'Locke and Berkeley on the Molyneux problem', Journal of the History of Ideas, xxx (1969), pp. 253-60. See The Works of John Locke (London, 1794), viii, 371-3. The problem which put Synge's 'brains in such a ferment', as he puts it, seems to have had at least an indirect influence on his ideas of faith and mystery. In the Appendix to the Gentleman's Religion he considers the case of a blind ma who for a time did not believe that there was anything answering to the words 'colour' and 'light'. But after certain simple experiments the blind man became convinced that other people could see light and colours. For example, he was put at a distance from someone, who was able to tell him, without touching him, what he was doing. So the blind man came

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to believe that there were things existing of which he had no ideas. By means of his sense of touch he was able to gain some notion of things visible. In the same way we can believe in mysteries, Synge holds, even though we have no idea of them; see the Gentleman's Religion: in three par . . (6th edn, Dublin, 1730), especially pp. 229 31. The Appendix was first published in 1698; it is primarily an attack on John Toland's Christianity not Mysterious (1696). 3. See the New Theory of Vision, especially sects 135—6. For references to te Molyneux problem, see the general index to The Works of George Berkele Bishop ofCloyne, vol. ix, edited by Luce and Jessop, under 'sight - Molyneux problem'. 4. In G. W. Leibniz, New Essays concerning Human Understanding,ix. 8. b. The entire letter is reprinted in D. Berman and A. Carpenter (eds), 'Eighteenth-Century Irish Philosophy', in The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writings, gen. ed. S. Deane, vol. 1. 5. W. R. Scott, Francis Hutcheson, his Life, Teaching and Position in the Hist Philosophy (Cambridge, 1900), pp. 29-30, 99. 6. I say 'surprisingly' because Hutcheson is usually thought to be an empiricist, and not a rationalist; but those who give an affirmative answer are, on the whole, supposed to be rationalists; see Davis, 'The Molyneux problem', pp. 392—3; also however see David F. Norton's valuable article 'Francis Hutcheson on perception and moral perception', Archivfur Geschichte derPhilosophic (1977), pp. 181-97. 7. See New Theory of Vision, sect. 104, also see sects 46-51 and 127—36, and see Dr Luce's introduction to the New Theory of Vision in The Works of George Berkeley,lkhfakjhfdjhklhf 8. Number and duration Hutcheson elsewhere calls 'universal concomitant ideas'; see An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions ... (London, 1728), p. 3 note. One might depict Hutcheson's theory as follows: whichever sense-windows we look out of (whether inner or outer), the thing that we see will always be numerated. While the different sense-windows affect the thing of sensation differently, they all depict the thing quantitatively. For Berkeley, however, the sense-windows do not give us a view of a thing; looking through them we see nothing in common, not even number; see New Theory of Vision,esfgdgbfdfxbh 9. DNB (1908-9) article on Daniel Mace. In the European Magazine of October 1788, pp. 245 6, there is another letter to Mace, this one from Dr Colson, dated February 1725-6. From it we learn of Mace's interest in mathematics, and also of his association with Ephraim Chambers,

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Berkeley and Irish Philosophy compiler of the Cyclopaedia, or an Universal Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences

(London, 1728). This is of some interest in that the Cyclopaedia was one of the earliest English works to show an interest in Berkeley's philosophy. For a careful examination of the use made of Berkeley's writings in the Cyclopaedia, see H . M. Bracken's Early Reception of Berkeley's Immaterialism

10.

11.

12.

13.

(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965), chap. iv. Compare Hutcheson's characterization of Mace's 'notion of our mind as only a system of perceptions' with Hume's view on the same subject as stated, e.g. in the Appendix to his Treatise of Human Mature: 'When I tur my reflexion on myself [writes Hume], I never perceive this self without some one or more perceptions; nor can I ever perceive anything but the perceptions. 'Tis the composition of these, therefore, which forms the self (Selby-Bigge edition, Oxford, 1967, p. 634). This would be the Molesworth Circle, consisting of Lord Molesworth and, among others, James Arbuckle, Edward Synge, the son of the Archbishop of Tuam, James Duncan, William Bruce and, of course, Hutcheson himself; see Scott's Francis Hutcheson,dgbfkjl Compare Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge (Dublin, 1710) se 18: ' . . . it is possible we might be affected with all the ideas we have now, though there were no bodies existing'. Swift ridicules a somewhat similar idea in Gulliver's Travels (part hi, chap. 5): 'There was [in the Academy of Lagado] a man born blind, who had several apprentices in his own condition: their employment was to mix colours for painters, which their master taught them to distinguish by feeling and smelling. It was indeed my misfortune to find them at that time not very perfect in their lessons ...'. There is, of course, an important difference between this and Hutcheson's thought-experiment. Hutcheson is not saying that a blind man will be able to deal with colours by means of odours (or touch); but rather that odours necessarily suggest something of a quantitative nature, which is also suggested by the visible. In the Memoirs of Martinus Scrib ler us (written partly by Swift) the hero pedant, Martinus, is said to have 'first found out the Palpability of Colours and by the delicacy of his Touch, [he] could distinguish the different Vibrations of the heterogeneous Rays of Light' (Works of Alexander Pop (London, 1751) VI, 157-8). It is quite likely that this satirical shaft, and the above from Gulliver's Travels, were directed - at least in part against William Derham's popular Physico-theology... (the Boyle lecture of 1711 and 1712). In book IV, chap. 6, Derham claims that 'Although

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the Eye be the usual Judge of Colours, yet some have been able to distinguish them by their Feeling'. He supports this claim with the story of someone who was able to determine, by his touch alone, colours uniformly woven in silk. But the theoretical basis for Derham's claim would seem to be that ' . . . the other Senses (performed by the Nerves) are a Kind of Feeling'; hence someone may feel colours. (Physico-theolo (4th edn, London, 1716), p. 144.) The square brackets are Hutcheson's.

6 The Impact of Irish Philosophy on the American Enlightenment21

My primary aim in this essay is to examine the impact of Irish philosophy on the American Enlightenment. But first a caveat. The phrase 'Irish philosophy' is not meant to suggest 'Celtic twilight' but something hard-edged; for Ireland, as I have elsewhere argued, did have one especially great age of philosophy.l It was born in the 1690s with John Toland, William Molyneux and Robert Molesworth; grew into adulthood in the early eighteenth century with George Berkeley, Francis Hutcheson, William King, Peter Browne; and died in the late 1750s with Edmund Burke and Robert Clayton. Neither before this sixty-year period, nor after, has Ireland produced such continuous creative philosophy. Having briefly countered those who may doubt whether there has been any notable Irish philosophy, I should also say a word to those who may take offence at the idea that Ireland has had only one flowering of philosophy. To these I would point out that many countries, for example, Spain, Poland, Portugal, Hungary, most of Africa and South America, have not even had one. What is extraordinary is not that Ireland had only one golden age of philosophy, but that (given its size) it managed to have one period when its ideas were at the cutting edge of history. Although I cannot hope to justify this point here, I do hope to defend it on a limited front as I describe the Irish impact on, for example, Jonathan Edwards and the American revolutionary ideology. First, however, I must fill in my genealogy of Irish philosophers. Briefly, then, there were two main tendencies in Irish philosophy: one liberal, the other traditional. Irish philosophy begins in

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earnest with one of the most radical works of the Enlightenment: Christianity not Mysteriousdjkghskjgfslkfghkhgksfgsgflkhkhksgdsxs native of Go. Donegal. In this book, Toland argued for a liberal Deism by showing that alleged Christian mysteries are nonsense - 'Blictris', as he put it. Toland's subversive work produced, by way of reaction, some of the most original ideas in Irish philosophy, including Berkeley's emotive theory of language, Peter Browne's sensationalism, William King's pragmatism and, less directly, Burke's theory of the sublime and beautiful. In Ireland, Enlightenment called forth creative Counter-Enlightenment. Irish philosophy is largely constituted by the play of the Enlightenment left-wingers and Counter-Enlightenment right-wingers: those on the left (such as Toland and Hutcheson) favouring natural religion, rationalism, toleration, secular ethics and political revolution; those on the right (for example, King and Browne) favouring revealed religion of a fideistic and fundamentalist variety, empiricism, intolerance, religious ethics and unqualified obedience to the supreme political power. In the background of Toland's classic deistic work are two other Irish Enlightenment figures: William Molyneux, author of The Case of Ireland (1698), inventor of the Molyneux problem, and cele brated friend of John Locke; and Robert Molesworth, author of The Account of Denmark (1694), and friend of Lord Shaftesbury. Molesworth and Molyneux are background figures of both the Irish and American Enlightenments. In America, we find appreciative references to Molesworth's Account and Molyneuxscase in writers such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson and Arthur Lee. Yet the influence of Molyneux and Molesworth lies more in the tone they set and the encouragement they gave to others. Such indirect influence is difficult to delineate, particularly in a short space; fortunately, it has been examined by Caroline Robbins, J. G. Simms and Bernard Bailyn, among others. A hint of Molyneux's influence may be gleaned from the Belfast 1776 edition of his Case,kjsfkjafds gg fgfsfggfgfgfgfgfgsdfd

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linking the cases of Ireland and America against Britain's 'lust of domination', a connection which would not have been lost on Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who, we know, owned copies of this edition.2 Molesworth's inspiration is evident in such Enlightenment figures as Toland, John Trenchard - whom I shall speak about later — and Francis Hutcheson. Hutcheson was the most distin guished member of the so-called Molesworth Circle which flourished in Dublin in the 1720s. It is generally recognized that Hutcheson had an important influence on American colonial thought, but what is not recognized is that Hutcheson was primarily an Irish thinker. Nearly all historians classify him as either English or Scottish. But Hutcheson was, after all, born in Ireland, in Co. Down. He taught in Dublin in the 1720s; he wrote nearly all Q

of his famous books in Ireland; and he died in Ireland. It seems that no man is a hero in his own country, and Hutcheson achieved fame while teaching in Scotland in the 1730s and 1740s. It is also true that Hutcheson's main inspiration comes from Lord Shaftesbury; yet the Irish influence is also evident. Thus, in the Preface to his Inquiry into Beauty and Virtue (1725), Hutcheson's first and probably most famous work, he stresses his debt to Molesworth (p. xviii) and to Edward Synge (p. xix), another member of the Molesworth Circle, whose moderate liberalism is evident in the sermon he delivered before the Irish Parliament in 1724, calling for limited religious toleration.13 Hutcheson's impact on Colonial America was wide-ranging, and I shall limit my discussion to two effects: first, Jonathan Edwards, unquestionably the most eminent philosopher of the period, and, secondly, the Declaration of Independence. Edwards' moral and aesthetic philosophy is developed in his 'highly important' Dissertation on the Nature of True Virtue (1765), a

work, according to his editors, which 'is directly built upon . . . Hutcheson's (1725) Inquiry', which Edwards paraphrases, mentioning its author three times by name,4 more important still,


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Edwards accepts Hutcheson's identification of virtue with disinterested benevolence and his contention that virtue is the highest type of beauty. But unlike Hutcheson, Edwards combines these optimistic Hutchesonian components with a pessimistic belief in the essential depravity and self-interest of natural man. Like his Irish counterparts - Berkeley, Browne and King - Edwards uses Enlightenment theories for Counter-Enlightenment ends. By depicting virtue as a naturally - i.e. without grace — unattainable ideal, Edwards hopes to engender Christian conversion and regeneration. Edwards also seems to be exploiting the debate between Berkeley and Hutcheson on utility and beauty, a central question in Irish aesthetics, which also engaged the attention of Burke and Goldsmith. In Alciphron (1732), Dialogue Three, Berkeley had argued that 'beauty ariseth from the appearance of use', in short, that aesthetic delight depends upon our perception of an object's utility. Hutcheson, whose Inquiry may have been Berkeley's target here, then criticized 'the ingenious author of Alciphron"'dfbhc fourth edition of his Inquiry (1738). For Hutcheson an object's utility detracts from its beauty. Now in the Dissertation Concerning Virtue Edwards accepts the

idea of beauty which 'Mr. Hutchinson [sic] in his Treatise on Beauty expresses by [the phrase] uniformity in the midst of variety'. However, Edwards then comments: 'The beauty which consists in the visible fitness of a thing to its use, and unity of design, is not a distinct sort of beauty from this'.6 Professor Aldridge, in his helpful article, 'Edwards and Hutcheson,' is perplexed by this comment which he calls 'misleading, if not absolutely mistaken'. Yet, I suggest that it ceases to be either perplexing or misleading if we see it as Edwards' way of combining Berkeley and Hutcheson in order to use the former against the latter. By showing that the beauty of physical things involves utility, Edwards is able to prove that such beauty is (by Hutcheson's own standards) adulterated and secondary. The only true beauty

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(and virtue) for Edwards is to be found in love being itself God - which involves no utility or interest. One of Edwards' main (negative) arguments for this position seems, on both stylistic and conceptual grounds, to be drawn directly from Dialogue Three, section 8, of Berkeley's Alciphron, where Berkeley argues that proportion is only aesthetically pleasing when the parts are 'so related and adjusted to one another, as they may best conspire to the use and operation of the whole'. Similarly, Edwards argues in Chapter 3 of the Dissertation tha what 'contributes to the beauty of . . . proportion of various things, is their relation to one another . . . [the] adaptedness of a variety of things, to promote one intended effect ...' (Works, i, p. 128). Edwards' one example may well be continuing the Berkeley/Hutcheson debate. In Alciphron Berkeley had used th example of a chair which, he maintained, would not 'be reakoned well proportioned or handsome' if its parts were not perceived to be directed to making it 'a convenient seat' (Dialogue III, sect. 8). Against this Hutcheson pointed out that 'the feet of a chair would be of the same use, tho' unlike, were they equally long'; but we should hardly regard as beautiful a chair with one leg straight, one bent inwards, one made of wood, the other of metal. Edwards' example involves pillars rather than chair-legs. He writes: Thus the uniformity of two or more pillars, as they may happen to be found in different places, is not an equal degree of beauty, a that uniformity in so many pillars in the corresponding parts of the same building. So means and an intended effect are related to one another, (p. 127) Berkeley would have welcomed this defence of functional beauty and also Edwards' opposition to those 'writers on morality', who, like Hutcheson, 'do not wholly exclude a regard to the Deity out of their schemes of morality, but yet mention it so slightly, that they leave me room . . . to suspect they esteem i t . . . a subordinate part


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of true mortality .. .' {Works, i, p. 125). For the humanist Hutcheson, the primary part of morality is benevolence to mankind. Edwards brings his morality into theocentric line with Berkeley's not by accepting Berkeley's theological utilitarianism, but by pushing Hutcheson's idea of disinterested benevolence to the breaking-point. Therefore, only benevolence or love towards existence itself (which is largely composed of God) can, according to Edwards, be truly virtuous, truly disinterested. On the other hand, the Hutchesonian moral sense underpins disinterested benevolence towards only limited parts of being, not to being itself. Edwards does not refer to Alciphron or directly to Berkeley in th Dissertation, but we know from Edwards' Catalogue that he hada copy of Alciphron. Correspondingly, he would have come acros Hutcheson's criticisms of Berkeley in the 1738 and later editions of the Inquiry. I might also mention that Edwards' opposition to Hutcheson's this-worldly, optimistic view of human nature would have been enforced, if it needed enforcing, by a number of Irish right-wingers, among them Philip Skelton, whose ophiomaches (2nd edn, 1751) Edwards approvingly quotes in his Miscellanies. Like his mentor, Molesworth, Hutcheson was a zealous opponent of passive obedience and a defender of rebellion. Writing in 1725, Hutcheson's justification of rebellion is based partly on natural rights (probably inspired by Locke) and partly on the idea of the general well-being of society (possibly derived from Archbishop King's State of the Protestants in Ireland (1692). Thus, 'wh ever any invasion is made upon unalienable Rights, [writes Hutcheson], there must arise either a perfect, or external Right t resistance'; and when a need 'to avoid Ruin requires it, the Subjec may justly resume the Powers ordinarily lodged in the Governors, or may counteract them'. 10 Hutcheson's eloquent defence of revolution emerged, fairly plainly, from the English Glorious Revolution of 1688/9, but it would be used nearly a century later for the American Revolution, particularly through the mediation of Hutcheson's disciple, the

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Ulster-born Francis Alison, who preached and taught Hutcheson's views to students at his New London and Philadelphia Academies in the 1760s. Working with a sample of 46 known students, one Hutcheson scholar, David Fate Norton, has summarized the evidence as follows: Of these 46 [students] five signed the Declaration of Independence [and one of these was] the President of the Continental Congress in 1781; [and another designed] the American flag . . . Included in the 46, in addition, were: Charles Thomson, the Secretary of the Continental Congress from 1774-1789, whom John Adams called the . . . 'life of the cause of liberty'; John Dickinson, author of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylva and his equally prominent patriot brother, Philemon Dickinson; General John Cadwalader, who dueled with General Conway when the latter sought to supplant Washington as Commander-in-Chief; Thomas Mifflin, President of the Continental Congress when the war ended in 1783; three Chaplains to the Continental Congress; the first Director-General of the Medical Service of the Continental Army; the Secretary of the Continental Board of War in 1776; at least four generals of the Continental Army. In summary, 15 of the 46 served in the Continental Congress between 1776 and 1783; 25 served in the Continental Army; 16 held office in the newly independent states; five received important executive appointments from the Continental Congress. On the other hand, only five of the 46 were loyalists. 11 Norton's conclusion is that 'Hutcheson's political philosophy provided the foundation for revolution and independence, and that, through . . . Alison, he was a contributory cause of the American war of independence'. Berkeley, I might mention, was Hutcheson's antithesis with regard to rebellion; for, according to Berkeley, there is never any justification for rebellion, even if a tyrant


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were guilty of the most heinous acts. Berkeley would therefore have condemned the American Revolution unreservedly. Indeed, there is evidence that he hoped his projected American missionary college would strengthen the British hold on the Colonies; for, in the first biography of Berkeley published in 1776, the author says that had Berkeley's project been successful it 'would have planted such principles of religion and loyalty among [the colonists], as might have gone a good way towards preventing the present unhappy troubles in that part of the world'. Stirring words in the year 1776!

Having examined two different spheres of Hutcheson's influence and one sphere of Berkeley's non-influence, I shall now consider a notable American figure, Samuel Johnson of Connecticut, and, in this case, work from the American effect to its intellectual causes. Although by no means a philosopher of the first or even second order, Johnson had an acute and active mind and a passion for synthesis. He was also an important cultural influence as the first President of King's College, now Columbia University; as Jonathan Edwards' tutor at Yale; as a leading Anglican intellectual after his conversion from Congregationalism in the 1720s; as the author of Elementa Philosophica,hgitpykmvjkgfjkfkfgjhsghjhsfl textbook in America, printed by Benjamin Franklin in 1752. There is abundant evidence of Berkeley's deep and wide-ranging influence on Johnson. Thus in his Autobiographyqualityyy written in the third person, Johnson states: In the year 1729 in February came that very extraordinary genius Bishop Berkeley, then Dean of Derry, into America, and resided two years and a half at Rhode Island . . . he wrote many letters which were kindly answered and made him several visits ... This was of vast use to Mr. Johnson and cleared up many difficulties in his mind. 14

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This judgement is amply supported by Johnson's extant reading list for the years 1719 to 1756, which, from 1727, is dominated by 15 Berkeley's works. But the most interesting evidence is in Johnson's published works. Beginning with his 'Introduction to the Study of Philosophy', published in 1731, which shows the clear influence of Berkeley's De Motu, Johnson became one of Berkeley's earliest philosophical supporters. In his Short System of Morality (1746, a work that draws heavily on Berkeley's Three Dialogues (1713), Johnson uses Berkeley's distinctive argument for God's existence, namely, that the passivity and orderliness of sensible things requires an almighty and intelligent cause, as well as Berkeley's even more novel, optic-language argument, although Johnson's statement of this argument is more guarded than his mentor's. It is by means of vision, says Johnson, that 'the great Author of nature appears to be continually present with me, discoverin his mind and will . . . and, as it were, speaking to me' (II, p. 466; my emphasis). Six years later Johnson published the Element his main work, , containing his most whole-hearted endorsement of Berkeley's immaterialism. Here Johnson supports Berkeley's views on representationalism (p. 375), the heterogeneity of sight and touch (p. 376), and Molyneux's famous problem (p. 423); and he refers to nearly all of Berkeley's published works. Johnson was encouraged to publish the Elementa, as he tells Berkeley in a letter of 12 August 1752, by Benjamin Franklin, who wished it to be used as a textbook in the new College of Philadelphia (on whose formation Berkeley gave advice in 1750).16theee elementawas dedicated to Berkeley 'from the [author's] deepest sense of gratitude'; and in the Advertisement, Johnson says that 'whoever is versed in the writings of Bishop Berkeley, will be sensible that I am in particular manner beholden to that excellent philosopher' (II, p. 360). Although the influence of Berkeley (here briefly reviewed) has been generally appreciated by scholars, the wider Irish influence


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has not. But consider the section in the Elementa on 'Signs, meta phors and analogy', where Johnson refers approvingly to Berkeley's Alciphron and also to the Procedure, Extent, and Limits of Huma

Understanding1728) by VBgbsffsss sdfgdfg ggggffdfffffrtgrwrhrtdd later Bishop of Cork, whose theological position Berkeley attacks in Alciphron, an attack which led to a heated debate between th two Irishmen. Later in the Elementa, Johnson refers with approva to Hutcheson's 'moral sense' theory (p. 449) which, once again, Berkeley had attacked in Alciphron. Even before Johnson met Berkeley in 1727, his life and thought had been profoundly influenced by another Irish philosopher, this time Archbishop King of Dublin. Thus in his Autobiography, Johson tells how In 1715 [he] happened to light on Archbishop King's book of the Inventions of Man in the Worship of God, which . . . seemed to

carry demonstration with it that the extempore [Congregationa ist] way in which he had been brought up was very wrong, and preconceived, well-composed forms were infinitely best... [Mr. Johnson] had also been bred up in much prejudice against the Church of England but next year 1716 [the influence of] a good religious man (one Mr. Smithson) of that Church . . . together with Bishop King caused all his prejudices against the church to vanish like smoke, (p. 11) The Irish influence on American thought shows itself in strange ways. There has been considerable scholarly debate as to whether the youthful idealistic system of Jonathan Edwards was inspired by Berkeley. Edwards confided his idealistic views to his private notebooks around the year 1718; and although, as I have mentioned, Johnson was Edwards' tutor at Yale in 1716, Johnson himself did not become acquainted with Berkeley's works until the 1720s, and, as D. J. Elwood states in his The Philosophical Theolo of Jonathan Edwards (1960): 'It has been rather firmly established

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that there is no trace of Berkeley's writings in New England prior to 1719' (p. 169). But this judgement, although endorsed by all recent Edwards scholars, is not quite true. Indeed, there is now very firm evidence, which emerged only a few years ago, that in 1718 or 1719 Edwards read and was confessedly influenced by a work published by Berkeley. For on the cover of Edwards' 'Notes on Natural Science', there is the following stylistic note: 'In writing, let there be much compliance with the reader's weakness, and according to the rules laid down in the Ladies Library vol. 1 p. 340 and sequel ...' . Although the Ladies Library (1714) is signed 'By a Lady' and was thought to be the work of Mary Wray, granddaughter ofjeremy Taylor, we now know that Berke1 ley was responsible for it. Of course, I should mention that the Ladies Library does not include any of Berkeley's philosophic views. It was an educational miscellany. Still I would claim that Edwards was indirectly influenced by Berkeley without even knowing it.

So far, I have been trying to indicate the impact of Irish philosophy by tracing its effects on American thinkers. I have, perforce, said little about the views of the Irish philosophers themselves. Yet there is one Anglo-Irish philosopher, John Trenchard, who was not included in my previous surveys, but who deserves to be mentioned here because his Cato's Letters (1720) played a major part i the ideology of the American Revolution. Bernard Bailyn describes Cato's Letters as 'colorful, slashing, superbly readable ...: . . . a searing indictment of eighteenth-century English politics and society . . . [its] libertarian [essays] . . . left an indelible imprint on the 'country' mind everywhere in the English-speaking world. In America, where they were republished entire or in part again and again, 'quoted in every colonial newspaper from Boston to Savannah,' and referred to repeatedly in the


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pamphlet literature, the writings of Trenchard and [his collaborator Thomas] Gordon ranked with the treatises of Locke as the most authoritative statement of the nature of political liberty and above Locke as an exposition of the social sources of the threats it faced. 19 I have another reason for discussing Trenchard here, namely, that an early American interpretation of Cato's Letters can, I shall argue help us to appreciate their deep and subversive meaning, which has been overlooked by scholars. First a brief word on the man. Although John Trenchard was born in England, he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. The Dictionary of National Biography (1908-9) gives his birth year as 16 but this is an error as one can see from the Trinity College Entrance Book, which shows that he entered College in 1685 at the age of sixteen. His tutor was Dr Edward Smith, later Bishop of Down, who, we are told, 'used to say, that "Mr. Trenchard's talent of reasoning was owing to his having been so good a Logician"; a character for which his was eminent at the University [of Dublin]'. It is noteworthy that among Trenchard's College contemporaries were three prominent right-wingers: Peter Browne, Jonathan Swift and, also, Thomas Wilson who, as Bishop of Sodor and Man, publicly attacked Trenchard's views. After leaving Trinity College, Trenchard became a commissioner for forfeited estates in Ireland. According to his biographer: He is said to have thought too much, and with too much solicitude, to have done what he did too intensely, and with too much vigour and activity of the head, which caused him many bodily disorders, and is supposed at last to have worn out the springs oflife.22 If Hutcheson was a moderate Enlightenment figure, Trenchard was a radical, who, not surprisingly, left Ireland (as did Toland,

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Thomas Emlyn and Hutcheson). In 1719 Trenchard met Thomas Gordon, a Scotsman, who assisted him with some of Cato's Letters. However, the letters that I shall be examining were written by Trenchard alone. They were published in 1723, the year he died, and probably contain his most extreme views. Like most eighteenth-century irreligious writers, though, Trenchard was obliged to disguise his true meaning - to what extent, however, is a matter of debate. For J. M. Robertson, he was a Deist; for Samuel Johnson, he was a crypto-atheist. By way of concluding this discussion, I shall try to use Johnson's interpretation to illuminate Trenchard's position. Johnson's gloss occurs in A Letter to Mr. Dickinson (1747), in th context of Johnson's criticisms of Mr Dickinson's Galvinistic determinism. Johnson had heard from Berkeley that Anthony Collins, a friend of Trenchard's, had said 'in conversation . . . that he had found out a demonstration against the being of a God'. Johnson connects this demonstration with Gollins's well-known determinism. By demonstrating, writes Johnson, that there is no liberty, and all is fate . . . [Collins shows] sure enough that there is no God; for by a God we must mean, if we mean any thing, an infinitely free, intelligent active being, who is the great creator and moral governor of the world. You may find the same absurd cause pleaded in the celebrated Cato's letters, written by Mr. Trenchard, another of those famous authors of the Independent Whig, [who] uses just the same argu ments as you [Dickinson] do . . . , and with the same inconsistency and self-contradiction. (Ill, p. 192) In short, an unfree God can be no God. Of course, Trenchard does not openly say this. Prima facie, he is an orthodox Christian. Thus in no. 110 of Cato's Letters which, with no. I l l , develops his deter minism, he writes:


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We cannot enter into the Rationale of God's punishing all Man kind for the Sin of their first Parents, which they could not help; nor for his punishing all Israel with a Pestilence for the private sin of David, which, without doubt, many of them condemned; nor for [God's] bringing Plagues upon the Egyptians, because h had hardened Pharaoh's Heart; no more than for his destroyin all Mankind at the Deluge, for Crimes which he could have prevented; and [there are] Multitudes of the like Instances in holy Writ besides, which we cannot account for by our weak Reasonings, . . . But we are very sure that these Things were done, and rightly done; and all conduced to some superior, wise and just End. 25 Now given Trenchard's other published statements, particularly in no. 120 (which is virtually an abstract of Toland's Christianit not Mysterious) and his known freethinking associates, I find it diff cult to believe that this choice catalogue of Biblical puzzles was meant to be taken literally rather than ironically. It was designed to suggest (to put it bluntly) that the God of the Bible is absurd. Trenchard was a skilful practictioner of what I have called the ar 26

of theological lying.

The theological liar aimed to do three things in his writings: (1) signal his true irreligious position to other knowing unbelievers, (2) insinuate this position to open-minded and unwary believers while, at the same time, (3) protecting himself against legal prosecution. But the crucial question is: to what extent did Trenchard lie theologically? Was he a Deist, the opinion of his contemporaries and most modern scholars; or was he an atheist, as Johnson claimed? The question is worth addressing, given as Bernard Bailyn notes - how very 'popular and influential had Cato's Letters become in the colonies within a decade and a ha of their first appearances ...' (p. 44). To be sure, most of the American colonists read Cato's Letters for their political philosophy

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or, as in the case of Benjamin Franklin, for their style. Still, they read them. My point is that once we accept Johnson's suggestion that Trenchard was an atheistic determinist, we will be able to account not only for many of Trenchard's most curious assertions but also for the excitement and hostility his writings generated. Central to Trenchard's theological position is the denial that we can know anything about God except that he exists necessarily; this comes out clearly in Trenchard's most interesting essays, no. I l l and no. 137. This negative-theological view, that God is 'incomprehensible' (p. 298), was probably drawn from Hobbes's Leviathan, from which Trenchard may also have derived his determinism. Of course, Spinoza was also a notorious determinist. There is much in Trenchard which may be traced to Spinoza, particularly the naturalistic remarks on animals in essay no. 108 where Trenchard presents an amusing dialogue between a lion and the Pope. Trenchard's unwillingness to limit the power of matter (pp. 89f.) is also reminiscent of Spinoza {Ethics III. 1) as are his acute criticisms of teleology in no. 110 (compare Ethics I Appendix). The theoretical picture that emerges from these elements is of a pantheistic materialist. Although Trenchard flourished in the eighteenth century, his roots lie in the radical soil of the seventeenth century. Like most Irish philosophers, Trenchard strongly adhered to the Lockean theory of meaning: 'A word not standing for an idea', he states, 'is only a bare sound' (p. 118). But the word 'God', Trenchard holds, stands for no idea but existence: 'As to the substance, Essence, the manner or sensorium of his Existence we neither know . . . nor can have any conception about it' (p. 275). Hence Trenchard's attentive reader may infer either that God (taken in the usual theistic sense) does not exist or that the necessary being that does exist is probably matter rigorously determined. Such an inference is in line with Trenchard's hints about the efficacy of matter (see pp. 89f.) and with his statement of what we can safely say about God, namely, 'that He has existed


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from all Eternity, and must for ever exist; and that He has made or produced everything else' (p. 275). If we accept this idea of God, then, says Trenchard, 'there are very few, if there be one atheist, in the world' (p. 275). Trenchard likes this conclusion because he is against those who call others by the odious name 'atheist' (p. 276). Trenchard is on of many freethinkers, including David Hume, who try to show there are no atheists, that no one can or should be vilified as an atheist. The aim of this denial, however - as I have argued following Berkeley - was in fact to reveal, protect and insinuate 27 atheism.

Notes a. 1.

This essay originally appeared in Eire-Ireland in 1989. See my 'Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment in Irish Philosophy' and 'The Culmination and Causation of Irish Philosophy', in Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophic 64 (1982), 2, pp. 148-65, and, pp. 257^79. For an examination of the political dimension, see my 'The Jacobitism of Berkeley's Passive Obedience' ithee fournal of the historyof IdeasXL (1986), pp. 309-19. 2. J. G. Simms, Colonial Nationalism: 1698-1776 (Cork, 1976), pp. 70-1. 3. See W. R. Scott, Francis Hutcheson: His Life, Teaching and Position in thestory of Philosophy (Cambridge, 1900), chaps 1-2. b. See my article on Synge in the Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century British Ph losophers (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2002), pp. 864-5. 4. C. H. Faust and T. H.Johnson, Jonathan Edwards: Selections (New York, 1962), Introduction, p. civ. 5. See my 'Culmination and Causation', section 3. 6. Works of Jonathan Edwards, with a memoir by S. E. Dwight, revised and corrected by E. Hickman (Edinburgh, 1974), vol. I; p. 127. 7. A. Owen Aldridge, 'Edwards and Hutcheson', Harvard Theologicial Review (1951), p . 44. 8. See Douglas J. Elwood, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwar (New York, 1960), pp. 29, 167-8.

166 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26.

27.

Berkeley and Irish Philosophy See my 'Jacobitism of Berkeley's Passive Obedience', pp. 315-16. Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (3rd edn, London, 1729), pp. 294, 298. D. F. Norton, 'Francis Hutcheson in America,' Studies on Voltaire and th Eighteenth Century CLI-CLV (1976), pp. 1567-8. See my 'Jacobitism of Berkeley's Passive Obedience1', pp. 312-13. [Joseph Stock], An Account of the Life of George Berkeley (London, 1776 pp. 22-3. See Samuel Johnson: His Career and Writings, ed. H. and C. Schneider (Ne York, 1929) vol. I, p. 24. Ibid., vol. I, pp. 506-24; all quotations from Johnson's writings are from the edition of H. and C. Schneider. Ibid., vol. II, p. 329, and vol. I, p. 136. See Faust and Johnson, p. cii. See E. J. Furlong and D. Berman, 'George Berkeley and The Ladies Library', Berkeley Newsletter (1980), pp. 4-7. Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (16th printing, Cambridge, Mass., 1982), p. 36. See Thomas Gordon's memoir of John Trenchard in Cato's Letters (5th edn, London, 1748), vol. I, p. xlix. See Independent Whig (8th edn, London, 1753), vol. 1, pp. xxxv-lxxii. New and General Biographical Dictionary (London, 1762), vol. XI, p. 227. J. M. Robertson, A History of Freethought (London, 1936), p. 719; also see J. McCabe, A Rationalist Encyclopedia (London, 1948), p. 591. See my 'Anthony Collins and the Question of Atheism in the Early Part of the 18th Century,' Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 75 (1975) pp. 87-9. Cato's Letters (1748), vol. IV, pp. 38-9. All further references to Trenchard will be to this volume. See 'Deism, Immortality and the Art of Theological Lying', in J. A. Leo Lemay (ed.), Deism, Masonry and the Enlightenment: Essays Honoring Alfr OwenAldridge (Delaware, 1987), pp. 61-78. 'David Hume and the Supression of "Atheism",' Journal of the History of Philosophy (1983), pp. 375-87.

7

Irish Ideology and Philosophy

1

Philosophy and ideologya

In an address widely reported in the Irish media, Bishop Jeremiah Newman of Limerick expressed indignation at 'what is going on at present in our country by way of changing or trying to change our Catholic inheritance'. The first of Bishop Newman's examples was The Irish Mind: Exploring Intellectual Traditions (Dublin:

Wolfhound Press, 1985), edited by Richard Kearney, and, in particular, a chapter that I contributed entitled 'The Irish CounterEnlightenment'. If by 'ideology' is meant 'false ideas that direct social action', then, I suppose, the Bishop would see my chapter as ideological. Of course, that is how I see his statement. Whose ideas, then, are false? Here are the Bishop's own words: It [The Irish Mind] purports to explore the intellectual traditions of the Irish people, that is us - yes us. Who else could claim to be Irish? But, apart from one chapter on the medieval Catholic scholar, John Scotus Erigena, this book is devoted almost entirely to a type of thinking that is anything but typically and traditionally Irish. In the sphere of philosophy, it manages to concentrate on figures with names such as Molesworth, Hutcheson, Clayton, Dodwell, Skelton and Toland. One has only to consult any thorough history of English philosophy to find most of these names included in it, which means or should mean that they do not exactly represent the Irish mind as such. Indeed, I could not but find annoying as well as quite unscholarly, the statement by a non-Irish contributor to the

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book to the effect that the 18th century rationalist John Toland 3 is, quote, 'the father of modern Irish Philosophy'. In my chapter I not merely stated but tried to show in detail how John Toland's Christianity not Mysterious (1696) initiated the on and only epoch of Irish philosophy. Here I can give only the barest genealogy. Briefly, Toland's rationalist rejection of Christian mysteries was promptly attacked in Dublin by Peter Browne, whose Letter (1697) contains the first formulation of what I have called theological representationalism, a theory around which the dominant School of Irish philosophy developed. Among the leading theological representationalists were Edward Synge — whose reply to Toland appeared in 1698 — William King, John Ellis, Philip Skelton, William Thompson, Thomas McDonnell and, finally, Edmund Burke. Against Toland's claim that we can only believe what we can literally understand, they argued that our theological conceptions represent but do not resemble God's real but unknowable nature. To justify this thesis, members of the School developed such important theories as, for example, Browne's sensationalist account of mind (pp. 126—8) and King's pragmatic theory of theological truth (pp. 124—6). Although the theological representationalists dominated the sixty years of Irish philosophy, there were also Irish philosophers, notably Thomas Emlyn, Francis Hutcheson and Robert Clayton, who followed in the rationalistic tradition of Toland, without, understandably enough, acknowledging the Donegal heretic; for as I noted in my chapter: 'Though the father of Irish philosophy Toland was neither beloved nor gratefully acknowledged' (p. 120). I argued, too, that Berkeley's precocious emotive theory of meaning was developed by way of reaction to the Toland challenge. Christian mysteries, Berkeley argued in Alciphrongggggg are emotive, not cognitive. Edmund Burke (who, typically, sneers at Toland) used Berkeley's emotive theory and Browne's sensationalism in his Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful


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(1757), arguably the last great work of Irish philosophy. Neither before 1696, nor after 1757, has Ireland seen such continuous creative philosophy. During this period her ideas were at the cutting edge of history. How did it happen? I suggest that much of Irish philosophy was not merely a response to Toland, but a theoretical expression of the Penal Laws against the Catholics and Dissenters. In short, Toland's non-mysterious, tolerant Deism threatened the sectarian basis of the Ascendancy (pp. 136—40); hence Dean Swift vilified Toland as 'the son of an Irish priest' and 'the great Oracle of the Anti-Christians'. And he continues to attract odium theologicum. Bishop Newman objects not only to my description of Toland as 'the father of modern Irish philosophy' but also to my concentrating on 'Molesworth, Hutcheson, Clayton, Dodwell, Skelton and Toland'. Why? Because 'most of the names', the Bishop says, are included in 'any thorough history of English philosophy', and this 'means or should mean that they [Molesworth, Hutcheson, etc.] do not exa&tly represent the Irish mind as such'. Yet is Bishop Newman really prepared to allow English histories to determine who is and who is not Irish? I hope not. But, then, how shall we decide whether the thinkers I examined 'represent the Irish mind as such' and are 'typically and traditionally Irish'? Although my first impulse is to dismiss such questions as either transparently ideological or spurious, I should like to press the modest claim that a philosopher may be Irish (or Swedish, or Chinese) without being typically or traditionally so. Indeed most important philosophers are, almost by definition, atypical; that is why they make a mark on the history of philosophy. (Can Bishop Newman seriously believe that 'the medieval Catholic scholar, John Scotus Erigena' was typically either Irish or Catholic?) In fact, the thinkers the Bishop names were all born and raised in Ireland: Henry Dodwell, Robert Molesworth and Robert Clayton in Dublin; Philip Skelton in Co. Antrim. The case of Francis Hutcheson, who was born in Co. Down, illustrates

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how exclusivist Catholic nationalism can go hand in hand with English cultural expropriation. Thus in Thomas Fowler's Shaftesbury and Hutcheson (1882), Hutcheson is described in the first se tence as an 'English' philosopher, while later Fowler blithely states that 'Hutcheson's philosophical reputation rests on the four essays, and perhaps the letters, all published during his residence in Dublin'. As that plain fact did not make Hutcheson an Irish philosopher for Fowler, neither, it would seem, did Toland's being a Gaelic speaker and scholar from Donegal redeem his Irishness in the eyes of Bishop Newman. 6 Something more was needed, and that brings us to the real cause of the Bishop's annoyance, namely, that none of the figures I concentrated on were part of'our Catholic inheritance'. Most of them were Irish Anglicans; some, like Hutcheson, were Presbyterians; Toland was even worse — an apostate Catholic. What th Bishop wished his listeners to believe, in short, is that to be 'typically and traditionally' Irish a man must necessarily be Roman Catholic. That is the ideological import of his statement, and it is worth exposing because it helps to explain why eighteenth-century Irish philosophy - unlike Scottish philosophy — has been s neglected. For if being Irish means being Roman Catholic and if Hutcheson, Toland, Clayton, etc., were really English, as the Bishop and his supposed English authorities suggest, then Ireland has had little or no philosophy. 'Whose fault is it if poor Ireland o

still continues poor?'

2 A tale of two treaties

b

Having given a sketch of the main lines of the Irish Enlightenment/Counter-Enlightenment, it may be useful to ask: why, if this really was the one period that Ireland was at the cutting edge of world thought, is this not widely known and accepted, or why is it only in recent years that this has gained any degree of


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acceptance? The question is of scholarly significance, but it may also be of wider interest, as possibly throwing light on the important political changes that are now taking place in Ireland and especially in Northern Ireland. One way of posing the question is to ask: why has Irish philosophy been submerged but not German, Scottish or American philosophy? The answer, we think, is the fundamental break that occurred in Ireland in 1922, when Ireland ceased to be part of the United Kingdom, when a new regime was established, Gaelic Catholic Ireland — at least for th 26 counties — which represented the final and decisive defeat o the old regime, the Protestant Ascendancy, which, we suggest, had started dying by the 1750s. And yet it was not until the 1798 Rebellion that the Ascendancy was seriously challenged by arms. Although that Rebellion was put down, the following century, beginning with the Union of Ireland and England in 1801, can be compared to the seventeenth century as a time of upheaval and militant protest — from Fenians Land Leaguers, etc., as well as attempts at appeasement in the form of Catholic emancipation, Disestablishment, etc. The Catholic majority were becoming increasingly more militant. By the end of the nineteenth century, it was clear that British/Ascendancy rule was going to end. The question was would the change be violent or peaceful, revolutionary or evolutionary. In the event it was largely violent and revolutionary, which was consequential for Irish thought. Why? Because the new regime had little or no sympathy with either the Irish Enlightenment or the Counter-Enlightenment. It had no sympathy with the Enlighteners, because its ideology was conservative Catholic. So Toland, as we have seen above, even though a Catholic by birth, as well as an Irish speaker and scholar, was unacceptable because he was a freethinker. But neither were the heroes of the Counter-Enlightenment any more acceptable, because although they were religious and conservative, they were seen as Anglicans or British and still remembered, even in the

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1960s, as the hated overlords of the downtrodden Catholics. In short, because of the sharp political/cultural break of 1922 there was little or no sympathy in Ireland for its golden philosophical age — the natural place one would expect to find such sympath. When Eamonn De Valera described 'the eighteenth century [as] the most terrible period that Ireland has ever known' he was giving expression to this feeling. To be sure, all the important figures — Berkeley, Burke, Hutcheson, Toland, Molyneux, King an Browne — had since the nineteenth century figured in philosoph books. But then they were either seen as rootless, free-floating individuals, or incorporated into the history of English or Scottish philosophy or the history of idealism, Deism, or of ideas. It is only in recent times that they have been seen to be part of an Irish story. 10

Notes a. 1.

This section originally appeared in the Crane Bag in 1985. Address at Mass for the Youth of the Diocese of Limerick ... on the occasion of the International Year of Youth (Sunday, 12 May 1985), nine-page typescript distributed to the press; for a published report, see the Irish Independent 13 May 1985, p. 7.1 shall be quoting from the typescript Address; see p. 5. 2. See Irish Mind, pp. 119—140, 335—7; all references, unless otherwise stated, are to this chapter, which was largely a reworking of parts of chaps 3 and 4 above, originally published in the Archivfur Geschiche d Philosophie in 1982. 3. Address, pp. 5-6. A forceful 'Defence of the Irish Mind', by Richard Kearney against Bishop Newman's Address, appeared in the Sunday Ind pendent, 26 May 1985, p. 16. 4. See Swift's Argument [against] the Abolishing Christianity (1711), in Works Swift (1883), vol. VIII, p. 75. 5. Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, p. 181. Nowadays Hutcheson would be mo likely to be (mis)described as Scottish. 6. For Toland's work as a Gaelic scholar, see his 'The Relation of an Irish manuscript of the Four Gospels, and likewise a summary of the Ancient Irish Christianity, and the reality of the Keldees . . . ' in Nazarenus (1718), and 'A specimen of the . . . history of the Celtic Religion and Learning . . .


7.

8. b. 9. 10.

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in three letters to . . . Lord Molesworth' in A Collection of Several Pie of Mr. Toland (1726). Also see A. Harrison and D. Berman, 'John Toland and Keating's History of Ireland (1723)', in Donegal Annual (1984), pp. 25-9. Father Gopleston errs when he states that Toland 'was for a short time a convert to Catholicism' [A History of Philosophy (1964) vol. 5, pt. 1, p. 175). In the Preface to Christianity not Mysterious, Toland himself writes that he was 'educated from my cradle in the grossest superstition and idolatry'. This is the last question of Berkeley's The Querist (1735-7). The following section is reprinted from the Introduction to The Irish Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 200 President De Valera: Recent Speeches and Broadcasts (Dublin, 1933), p. Probably the first major work to see a history of Irish thought was The Irish Mind (Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1985), edited by Richard Kearney. For other recent interest, see Seamus Deane, 'Swift and the AngloIrish Intellect', Eighteenth-Century Ireland, vol. 1 (1986), pp. 9—22; Kev Barry, 'James Usher (1720-72) and the Irish Intellect', EighteenthCentury Ireland, vol. 3 (1988), pp. 115—22; D. Berman and A. Carpent (eds), 'Eighteenth-Century Irish Philosophy', in The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writings (Derry: Field Day, 1991), gen. ed. S. Deane, vol. 1; Richard Kearney, Postnationalist Ireland: Politics, Culture, Philosop (London, 1997), chaps 9 and 10; Terry Eagleton, Crazy John and the Bishop and Other Essays in Irish Culture (Cork, 1998), pp. 17-67.


Part III NEW BERKELEY LETTERS AND BERKELEIANA


8 An Early Essay Concerning Berkeley's Immaterialism'

The item, which I shall describe and comment on here, constitutes an interesting event in the early reception of Berkeley's immaterialism. It has not been noticed by Berkeley scholars. It is the third of five unrelated articles in an anonymous pamphlet entitled: The Touchstone: or Paradoxes brought to the Test of a Rigorous and Fair Examination, for the Settling of Dubious Points to the Satisfaction of the 1

Curious and Conscientiousinted for j . Noon in chheapside, 1732) The titles of these articles — the fourth of which I will say a wor about later — are as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Lord's Supper to whom to be administer'd? Washing one another's feet a sacrament instituted by Christ. Body exists in the mind only. Sailing in the air not impracticable. The deluge occasion'd by the world's rejecting the Government of God.

The pamphlet also contains an introductory dedication to a 'John White Jun. Esq.; of Walling-Well' and a concluding advertisement. In the former, the writer of the pamphlet signs himself 'An honest free-thinker', and, for the most part, expands on the pamphlet's full title; in the latter, he invites 'any gentleman to join issue' with him. Though the title-page announces the pamphlet to be only part one, I have not been able to find other parts, nor do I know of any writing which took up the challenge of this, purported, first part. As its title indicates, the third article — which I shall refer to a 'the essay' - is concerned with proving the central proposition of

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Berkeley's immaterialism; though I must clarify this description below. The essay consists of fourteen pages - more than half of the whole pamphlet - and is arranged in a loose dialogue form. I have described it as an essay concerning Berkeley's immaterialism, but this description requires qualification for two reasons. First, because Berkeley is neither mentioned by name, nor even alluded to, in the essay. Second, because one of the arguments of the essay is taken from Arthur Collier's Clavis Universalis (1713) In Clavis, Collier rejected matter along somewhat similar lines as did Berkeley in his Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) anhis Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713). Collier, like Ber-

keley, is not acknowledged in the essay. In spite of these two qualifications, I have called the third article an essay concerning Berkeley's immaterialism, because it is composed almost entirely of extracts, from Berkeley's Principles and to lesser extent his New Theory of Vision (1709), stitched together wit some occasional paraphrasing (see list below). And the single argument drawn from Claviskdhdajkgakjhgsfgjkhllkjhsfggflkhjsgl significance. It is one argument of a number, by which Collier tries to prove that the ' . . . visible or apparent externeity of an object, is no argument of its real externeity'. It may be of interest to quote this argument, as a sample of the essay's plagiarism, since it is the only one from Clavis, a work not as readily available as the writings of Berkeley (see also note 3). The first quotation is taken from Clavis', the second version is taken from the essay i Touchstone.

Let a man whilst he looks upon any object, as suppose the moon, press or distort one of his eyes with his finger; this done, he will perceive or see two moons, at some distance from each other; one, as it were, proceeding or sliding off from the other. Now both of these moons are equally external, or seen by us as external; there being but one external; and yet one at least of these is not external, there being but one moon supposed to be

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in the heavens, or without us. Therefore an object is seen as exter nal, which is not indeed external, which is again the thing to be shewn. (Clavis, p. 24) Again let a man, while he looks upon any object, as suppose the moon, press or distort one of his eyes with his finger; and he will perceive two moons, some distance from each other. Now, both of these moons are equally external, or seen by us as external; and yet one, at least of these, is allowedly not external, there being but one moon supposed to be in the heavens, or without us. And hence, indeed it follows that neither of them are external; since there is not any one mark or sign of the externeity of 3 the one, which is not in the other. (Touchstone, p. 18) Though the writer of the essay presumably had Clavis before him, it is notable how little he drew from it, in proportion to what he took from Berkeley. The contents of the essay, even though plagiarized, are of some interest. Indeed, the essay might be described as the first and perhaps not the worst abridged edition of Berkeley's writings. It can also be considered as an early abstract of Berkeley's immaterialism; though, as an abridged text, the essay presents only a certain aspect of Berkeley's thought, filtered, as it were, through the editor. And an editor's selection can be influential. Apart from the essay, there is one other early statement of Berkeley's immaterialism, besides his writings themselves. In Chambers' Cyclopaedia, or an Universal Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences

(1728), Berkeley is quoted at length, with proper, if not always accurate, acknowledgement. Professor H. M. Bracken has called attention to the misleading presentation of Berkeley's position in some of the Cyclopaedia's articles. Chambers' quotations fro the Principles contain virtually no mention of the role of God i Berkeley's philosophy, and as a consequence, Bracken asserts, 'initiated a pattern which has persisted in English philosophy of

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emasculating the Principles'. This sin of omission, however, the essay does not commit; see the table given below, sections 2, 3, 16 and especially section 14. Bracken notes that in Chambers' article 'External', 'there is one interesting omission, the last sentence in section 19 [of Berkeley's Principles]vcxmzxfglkjxblkjh cbcjkldsf in any of the sections from which this article is made up that contains the word "God" '. 7 But the essay includes this sentence.8 The one outstanding omission in the essay is Berkeley's criticism of abstract ideas. Yet on the whole, the selection is not, I think, a bad one. It shows that the plagiarist did some work in choosing 9 and arranging his extracts. The essay is made up of sixteen numbered sections. The following list shows the corresponding places in the writings of Berkeley and Collier, which were drawn on for these sections. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Berkeley, Principles, sect. 30 sects 18, 19, 20 sect. 8 sect. 73 sect. 10 sect. 14 sect. 3 sects 34, 35 sect. 37 sect. 38 sects 58, 59 sects 60, 61,62, 65, 66 Collier, Clavis, p. 24; Berkeley, New Theory of Vision, sects 44-51 Principles, sects 92, 94

The only two sections, it will be observed, which do not draw on material from Berkeley are one and nine. Section nine, however,

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contains the phrase 'delusion of words', which appears in the Introduction to the Principles, section 25; and nine is largely a tran sitional section. The case of section one, I think, provides a clue to what most likely prompted the composition of the essay. On 20 January 1731, the Grub-Street Journaprintedd some doggerel verses 'On the Reverend Mr Arthur Collier's Clavis Universalis\ The poem was accompanied by an anonymous covering letter, which linked Berkeley with Collier. I suspect that this letter evoked the essay. Here are the first two of the letter's three paragraphs. Mr Bavius, Some years ago, Mr Berkeley of Trinity College, Dublin and Mr Collier of Langford-Magna, near Sarum; without having communicated their thoughts to each other, hit upon a new scheme of the principles of philosophy: which, notwithstanding the

character of the authors, and the importance of the thing, has not yet been publickly canvass'd. The titles of the essays are, The principles of human knowledge and The impossibility of an external world [part of the subtitle of

of the cursors pray just informClavis].to engage the attentiorm the Public, that the great point they advance, is, that IN NATURE THERE IS, THERE CAN BE, NOTHING BUT SPIRIT AND IDEAS. From this letter the writer of Touchstone would have bee supplied with two of the three sources of his essay, as well as the names of the two authors he plagiarized. And I take it that the plagiarist was acquainted with the Grub-Street Journal, becaus Touchstone was advertised in that journal on 22 June 1732. Furthe the statement t h a t ' . . . the thing, has not yet been publickly canvass'd' (i.e., examined or discussed) fits in well with the title of Touchstone and the manner of the essay. But what seems to me th

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most conclusive reason for thinking that the Grub -Streetiece occasioned the appearance of the essay is the striking similarity between the conclusion of the letter as I quoted it and the first section of the essay. The 'great point', in the Grub-Street letter, whic was calculated 'to engage the attention of the curious', is just the note on which the essay opens; and the wording in both is nearly identical. Section one of the essay reads: ' 1 . What is that you say? Is there nothing in nature but spirit and ideas? Nothin If the Grub-Street letter did evoke the essay, then such a conne tion raises a question about the seriousness of the essay. The GrubStreet Journal was a humorous periodical, that ran from 1730 t 1733. Whether or not the essay was composed 'tongue in cheek', I am inclined to believe that it would be taken that way by a contemporary reader, if only on account of the curious article which followed it. The fourth article tries to show how flying in the air, by means of a brass balloon, is possible. As in the case of the essay on immaterialism, it is plagiarized, almost certainly from Francesco Lana's Prodromo overo Saggio di alcune inventione nuove premesso aW

maestro (1670). n Now, in fact, Lana is credited with being one of the fore-fathers of aeronautics; but for the informed reading public of the middle eighteenth century - and indeed until the first successful balloon flight in 1783 — flying in the air was a popular subject for ridicule. It seems likely that a reader, 'in an age of so much ludicrous humour' would take the essay and the article on flying as written in the same comical vein. And if he missed the essay's association with flying, and consequently with satire, one of its few original passages would make him suspect that the essay was a piece of badinage. The closing words of the essay are: ' . . . and, for the better fixing the principles of knowledge, I wish you A SOUND MIND IN A SOUND BODY; or to speak more acc rately, A SOUND BODY IN A SOUND MIND'. As Professor Bracken has clearly shown, the first twenty-two years in the reception of Berkeley's immaterialism were not

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'doldrum years'; but neither were they appreciative years. As far as I am aware, the Touchstone essay was the first published 'defenc of Berkeley's rejection of matter, though, as we have seen, it is less a defence than a conflated, plagiarized anthology of extracts. Still, the essay reads as a defence of immaterialism. And I have suggested that it would also be read with suspicions about its seriousness. Pretending to be a defence yet looking like a satire, the essay might well have made a contemporary reader wonder whether the denial of matter was not a tour de force of irony. Indeed, such a surprising opinion concerning the inception of Berkeley's immaterialism was seriously held. In his Appeal to Common Sense (176 James Oswald solemnly reported: 'It is probable, that the disproving the reality of matter, was first entertained by the Bishop of Cloyne, in the gayety of his heart, and with a view to burlesque the refinements of infidels'. The essay in Touchstone probably d not start such rumours, but I believe that it would be likely to support them.

Notes a. 1.

This essay originally appeared in Hermathena in 1969. It is not listed in Halkett and Laing, Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseu

2.

nymous English Literature (Edinburgh, 1926—62). Clavis Universalis, or a New Inquiry after Truth. Being a Demonstration of the Non -Existence or Impossibility of an External World (London, 1713), p. 27.

3.

In chap. 1, Collier again employs the 'double image argument', this time to prove the more far-reaching thesis 'that a visible world is not, cannot be external', pp. 29f. Hume, in his Treatise of Human Nature, book 1 (1739) makes use of a very similar argument, to 'convince us, that our perceptions are not possest of any independent existence' (Selby-Bigge's edition, p. 210). His argument, which should be compared with Collier's, is as follows: When we press one eye with a finger, we immediately perceive all the objects to become double, and one half of them to be remov'd from

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Berkeley and Irish Philosophy their common and natural position. But as we do not attribute a continu'd existence to both these perceptions, and as they are both of the same nature, we clearly perceive, that all our perceptions are dependent on our organs, and the disposition of our nerves and animal spirits.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

10. 11.

The same argument, much abbreviated, reappears in the Enquiry concer ing Human Understanding (1748), where Hume introduces it, and a fe others of the same type, as ' . . . the more trite topics employed by the skeptics in all ages against the evidence of sense . . . ' (Hendel's edition p. 159). In his note to this passage (p. 160), Hendel states: 'This is a reference to arguments discussed by George Berkeley in his Principls and Three Dialogues.' But this is not quite correct. The 'double imag argument' does not appear in either of those two works. (Did Hume read Collier?) See, for example, A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. By Dr Berkley [sic] since Bishop of Cloyne. With remarks on each section (London, 1776). H a r r y M . Bracken, The Early Reception of Berkeley's Immaterialism 1710— 1733 (1965), chap. iv. Ibid., pp. 57f. Ibid., p. 56. I must note a coincidence (if indeed it is a coincidence) between Chambers' abridgement of section 3 of the Principles and the essay's treatmen of that section. After quoting part of Chambers' version of section 3, Bracken remarks that 'Berkeley's text, however, reads: "minds or thinking things" rather than "Mind" [and] Chambers also omits the phrase, " . . . or that some other spirit does perceive it" ' [op. cit., p. 54). The essay makes identical deletions. Regarded, however, as an abstract of Berkeley's principal philosophical work, the essay must be judged greatly inferior to Sir G. Gilbert's Abstract o/[Locke's] Essay of Human Understanding (1728) and, of course, Hume own Abstract o/[his] Treatise of Human Nature (1740). A portion of the poem together with part of the covering letter (see below) was reprinted in the Gentleman's Magazine (1732), p. 567. The relevant chapters are translated in the Aeronautical Classics, edi by Hubbard and Ledebber (London: Aeronautical Society of Great Britain, 1910-11); see no. 4, 'The aerial ship'.

An Early Essay 12.

13. 14. 15.

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See, for example, Richard Steele's Guardian (1713), no. 112, The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus (1741), book 1, chap. 17, Pope's Dunciad (1743), book iv, lines 451-2 and note, a n d j . E. Hodgson's The History of Aeronautics in Great Britain, p. 81. Berkeley, Reasons fornot replying to Mr Walton'sfull answer (1735), section 2. Bracken, op. cit., especially pp. 8 1 - 4 . An Appeal to Common Sense in Behalf of Religion, vol. 1, p. 96.

9 Mrs Berkeley's Annotations in An Account of the Life of Berkeley (1776) a

1 Introduction The Library of Trinity College, Dublin has recently purchased, with the help of a generous contribution from Dr Luce, an important new source for the life of George Berkeley: an interleaved copy of An Account of the Life of George Berkeley (London, 1776), with

manuscript corrections and additions by Berkeley's wife, Mrs Anne Berkeley. To be sure, some of Mrs Berkeley's comments have long been known from her 'corrigenda and addenda' in the third volume of Andrew Kippis's Biographia Britannica (2nd ed London, 1784) to the memoir of Berkeley that appeared in the previous, second volume (1780). However, even in the case of the comments duplicated, there are variations. Still more interesting, some of Mrs Berkeley's manuscript notes were not published by Kippis at all, and a few of these seem to contain hitherto unknown information relating, for example, to Berkeley's Bermuda scheme. We also learn that Berkeley's father was from Staffordshire, and that Berkeley first heard about tar-water from a letter he received while at Cloyne. According to a note prefaced to the 'corrigenda and addenda', Mrs Berkeley communicated her comments through the Rev Mr J. Duncombe, one of Kippis's helpers. Duncombe also seems to have been a friend of the Berkeley family, for among the Berkeley papers (in the British Museum) there is a letter by Mrs Duncombe to Mrs Berkeley in which she says: 'The life of Bp Berkeley is also inserted in Kippis, ye materials communicated chiefly by ye Bps

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brother and one of ye fellows of Dublin College: We wish to see the said life from the hands and heart of Dr. B-', i.e., the bishop's son, George.4 In the same letter - of 12 February 1780 - Mrs Duncombe mentions that her husband has 'contributed some materials' to the Biographia. It is more than likely that Kippis compose the corrigenda and addenda from material provided by Duncombe and drawn primarily from Mrs Berkeley's annotated volume. But it is also likely that there was a fourth party involved. From inscriptions inside our copy we find that on 23 June 1777 Mrs Berkeley gave her annotated copy to one Elizabeth Ketchersyde, who wrote her name at the top of the first blank page. From a comparison of handwritings it seems that this lady also wrote probably at the dictation of Mrs Berkeley - the comment on the verso of page 39 (see below), as well as the following note on the second blank page: 'Had Bishop Berkeley's Biographer consulted Mm Berkeley or Dr. Berkeley, this work would have been more copious & correct than it is'. It is probable that Mrs Berkeley's annotations were originally written for Elizabeth Ketchersyde; since in her note on the bottom of verso 19 and the top of recto 20, Mrs Berkeley addresses someone on the subject of Berkeley's plans for the proposed town and college of St Paul. She says: 'You should have the plans I mention had they not unfortunately been lost'. ° The fellow of'Dublin College', mentioned above, was Joseph Stock, FTCD (1763) and Bishop of Killala (1798), who, it is generally agreed, wrote the Account of the Life of George Berkeley, whic

was reprinted in the second volume of Kippis's Biographia. Hence Mrs Berkeley's annotations could be considered as addenda and corrigenda to either the Account or the memoir in volume two o the Biographia. As I have suggested above, most of the publishe comments were probably drawn by Duncombe (and, perhaps, by Elizabeth Ketchersyde) from our annotated copy, although the others must have come from some other source, or directly from Mrs Berkeley in response to the appearance of the memoir in

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volume two. This suggestion is supported by the fact that most of the printed comments are to be found in our ms. volume less elegantly expressed, and some others nearly verbatim. I assume that Mrs Berkeley annotated her interleaf copy of the Account sometim between late 1776, its publication date, and 23 June 1777, when she gave the volume to her friend Elizabeth. This dating is also confirmed by internal evidence. In her annotations, Mrs Berkeley refers to W. S. Johnson, the son of Berkeley's American friend, Samuel Johnson, as having been in England five or six years ago. Hence, as Johnson left England in 1771, we may assume that 1776/7 is the period in which Mrs Berkeley annotated her copy of the Account. She was at the time about 76 years of age. In hi Life of George Berkeley, Dr Luce quotes two contemporary descr tions of Mrs Berkeley in old age. In 1767, W. S.Johnson wrote to his father that 'She [Mrs Berkeley] is the finest old lady I ever saw, sensible, lively, facetious and benevolent...'; and Tn 1780 her son wrote that her powers of mind were "as great as ever, and few persons have exceeded her in this respect" '. To these may be added as a final bit of testimony Bishop Home's remark to this same son, George, in a letter of 24 July 1784: 'I have just read her [Mrs Berkeley's] sensible and excellent remarks, in Kippis's addenda to the 2d vol. of ye Biographid }10

Some problems arise concerning this new source: for example, (1) why were some of Mrs Berkeley's comments omitted from the Biographia, (2) how are we to explain the discrepancies between her annotations and the published addenda in the Biographia, an (3) where there is a discrepancy, which source is to be given primacy? I have drawn attention to omissions and discrepancies in the notes, where I have also attempted (in some measure) to deal with these problems. (But since the printed comments are relatively well-known, it is the ms. deviations that I have described in detail.) While specific problems must, no doubt, be dealt with specifically, it is not out of the question that some of Mrs Berkeley's comments were omitted because Duncombe (or someone else)


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found them difficult to decipher, and that some of the discrepancies arose from the same cause. In this transcription I have tried to follow Mrs Berkeley as closely as possible, although I have not reproduced her erasures. In most cases, her comments can be appreciated apart from what they are a comment on; but in a few instances - e.g., in the first note it was necessary to place her remarks in the context of Stock's statements. This has been done by means of, and within, square brackets, which at all times enclose words not by Mrs Berkeley. For the most part, the square brackets contain references to the page and position of her annotations. I have tried, however, to confine any clarification to the notes. I am grateful to the Board of Trinity College for permission to publish Mrs Berkeley's annotations. I am also grateful to Dr Jill Berman for reading over my transcriptions and notes, and making helpful suggestions about both.

2 Mrs Berkeley's annotations [bottom of p. 1 ] [Stock had written that Bishop Berkeley was the 'son of William Berkeley . ..' to which Mrs B. adds] Esqr formerly of Salt in Staffordshire. [verso of p. 3] The Bishop of Cloyne pursues Mr Locks own way of reasoning & thereby proves that the first qualities of matter must from th mutability be rejected as well as the secondary qualities - And he

saith that if Matter hath neither first or secondary qualities it is nothing. He only presses his (Locks) Argument as far as truth and experience leads[ ] -

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And yet what two of the Bps friends said on this subject seemeth to be true — This is what can neither be believed or co futed — it therefore shows the shortness of mans knowledge evn in what is sensible was Necessary there must Revelation be to reason in regard unto things Spiritual. [right margin of p. 3 ] the Bp of Gloyne could not endure Romances — [recto of p. 4 ] I have heard the Bp say that his Idea of passive Obedience, was obedience to the lawful power. There must be lawful power som where) and passive obedience to that power is a duty, when noth required contrary to duty — [recto of p. 6 (but intended for p. 5) ] The Bp of Gloyne thought Sr Richard Steele the best Mature man, & the most witty in Conversation, he had ever met with - b he did not Celebrate him as Learned and great [recto of p. 14 (but intended for verso of p. 13 ] he never dined with Mrs Vanhomrig, or saw her but once 7

[recto of p. 14 } I have heard the Bp of Cloyne say — that all Swifts letters whic came into his hands did the highest honor to the Dean - as they all tended to damp — not to encrease the flame of Vanessa--


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the poem of Cadenus and Vanessa he never would have published - ; & its consequence justified his delicacy on that subject, for that poem caused the death of Stella — as Dr. Delany informed me — but Mr Marshal published it unknown to him. [recto of p. 18 ] I have seen the plan of the College & town of Bermuda drawn by the Dean - in the Midst of a large Circle stood the College and this circle was formed by the houses of the fellows at proper distances to allow a good garden to each house Another circle without this one was formed of houses for gentleman who had requested of the Dean to build such & such housesfor them the models of these houses I have also seen in various tastes of truest architecture — An Outward circle was composed of shops & houses for artificers of various denominations - he had a great dislike to the contaminating Churches with dead bodies - & for this reason a walk called the walk of Death planted with Cypress trees was appropriated for the purpose of internment, where Monuments & urns might be erected The private subscriptions had this scheme [verso of p. 19] succeeded were vastly greater than what the houses of Lords & Commons had twice granted with only one dissenting voice — but Sr Robert Walpole would not suffer the money to be paid - Numbers of the first quality & fortunes in England unto whom the Bp was personally known for that reason had chose to have villas in those little islands where in a fine climate they might renew their lives & pass the remnant of their time in an Elegant & Learned and a Religious society where the fine arts were to have flourished - and where Luxury & enriching trade could not be practised for the small stipend of the President & Fellows forbad the first & these little islands were chiefly pitched upon by the Bp because the fellows could never in after times turn

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traders^ * — You should have the plans I mention had [recto of p. 20] they not unfortunately been lost'-10-' - it may be thought that the great & rich who retired to Bermuda would have brought their Luxury with them - but they retired from luxury to true taste - it likewise may be supposed that fine arts could not thrive where luxury by reason & fashion & religion were excluded - but in proof of the contrary an eminent Painter of the first Note went to America with the Bp^ ^ & one of the first composers & performers in Music of that time had engaged to come there so soon as he was settled ^ J - This place was therefore to be the retreat for Men of fine taste & Learning who had seen much of the world & therefore was tired of it And yet intended to carry everything laudable & lovely with them & do as much good as they could both to themselves & others 1 *-?

[right margin of p. 19 ] the sum granted [for the Bermuda project] was £20000 — [verso of p. 21 ] it seems to be a very poor Account of the Deans usefulness in America, that he assisted the Minister of New Port — he preached every Sunday either in the Church of New Port in Rhode Island, or on the Continent and the Missionaries for 70 miles around agreed amongst themselves to meet at his house twice a year & receive his instructions - which they did for the two years he resided in that Island - part of these instructions I have heard — and they were, that by all the offices of Kindness they should conciliate Men of different sects unto themselves: And never begin to argue upon controverted points, but preach upon those in wch all must agree, for the love of God & men - and not provoke by trifles of no moment - such as


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walking about in Pudding Sleeve Gowns - which they detested but dress in black or grey except when they went into Church — to hear all men patiently — and answer them from Scripture — [recto of p. 2215] When D- Berkeley left Rhode Island - he gave an hundred acres of land on wch there was an house, to keep 4 Scholars at the two Colleges of Tale & Harvard.

he avoided going to Boston because at that time there was a dispute between the governor & people — and when he did go there in order to embark for England he was received with every mark of honor & distinction And Unknown to him all things provided for him and stowed in the ship that was necessary for his voyage at the public expense — When he put into Virginia by stress of weather - the Governor & principal inhabitants showed every mark of concern in their power — [verso of p. 2316] The College of Bermuda would have been chose preferrably to the Universities in Old England — because the price was to have been very moderate for Education there & the morals of the youth there educated as well as secured as care & situation could preserve them besides the Bp had so far gained the love & respect of the Americans that it was not posible to shew greater signs of both than he met with everywhere he went from his personal merit & noble disinterested views - this would have been the way to have removed their prejudices against the Church of England by nipping & not tearing them away And the fact is certain that where there was one church when the Bp

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[top margin of p. 23] went to America there were 21 before the civil war began of this I was informed by an Agent for the Colonies who was in England six years ago — a man of learning & great parts & veracity. [right margin of p. 2317] £20000 [recto of p. 24] The Bp had taken his whole Library to Rhode Island out of which he gave £500 of Greek & Latin Books to a Disenting College — and disposed of £500 more wch had been given him to lay out in charity in presenting the other disenting College with as many books — probably he was the only man of whom these presents would have been accepted by the members of these colleges — for they tended to reunite all disenters unto the Church of England as the Bps maxim was to nip - & not to snatch and tare-away mens prejudices — and this was the consequence of these presents for Dr. Johnson the agent for the Collonies [sic] who was in England about five years ago - informed us that where there was one Church in America when Dean By was there — at present there were twenty — One Scotch man (a Disenter) said to me: I do no much like the present of the Deans — methinks it will prove a Trojan Horse^- * — Out of this money he sent a very fine organ to the Church at Newport in Rhode Island in order to draw people to Church[19] [verso of p. 2520] And Numbers came wherever he preached — he spoke freely & clearly & without Books & I may add kindly to them — For his Rule was to Conciliate men to the preacher by every friendly Christian art as St. Paul became all things unto all Men that he might gain some — he drew them by the Cord of Love & esteem


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& ever continued his Love to them & they returned their veneration for him & for his memory — [bottom of p. 2521] No man courted the great so little as did Bp Berkeley. The Honor here mentioned was tiresome to him & if he could he would have avoided it. [recto of p. 2622] His maxim was that nothing very good or very bad could be done until a man entirely got the better of fear of the que dira ton — but when a Man has overcome himself he overcomes the world & then is fitted for his Masters use — [recto of p. 3223] The Bp of Cloyne had no high Idea of the beauties of Cloyne; nor did it proceed from warmth of temper that he declined accepting of the see of Glogher - he told his wife that as she shared his Fortune he would not refuse the Bprick of Glogher without her consent, but said he was desirous to shew the world, a Clergyman superior to Covetousness & ambition [verso of p. 33] it is not surprising that the Author of the Bps life should mistake his motive for not accepting of the Bpick of Clogher — for probably he had not told thiis reason to his brothers [24 - nor would he he had not told this reason to his Brothers^ * — nor would he the least ostentatious man alive — [recto of p. 3425] It was owing to a letter from Rhode Island to the Bp at Cloyne that he thought of tar Water in this letter his Correspondent said yr neighbor Clarke is entirely cured of a Cancer in his Mouth by a strange medicine Tar & water —

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This made the Bp suppose that tar water might be of use in several other disorders he made experiments of various kinds first to proportion the quantity of tar unto the water — so to be effectual & not offend the stomach & to this purpose he found 1 quart of Tar to five of water and stirred five minutes was sufficient then let it stand 24 hours and filter it off for use — after having tried this innocent medicine for three years in his family & neighbourhood with a success that surprised him - he recommended this medicine to the public — and [verso of p. 35] the Siris hath never been answered or any one of the cases mentioned by Mr. Prior in his Narrative confuted — [recto of p. 3626] [Stock had said that Berkeley's bishopric was worth 'at least £1400' in 1752; Mrs Berkeley puts the figure at] 1800 £ [verso of p. 3927] The Biographer is mistaken as to hour of the Bps levee, & of his concert — after tea, to keep out cards, he had a concert: & his Hour for rising was generally two hours later than that here mentioned [verso of p. 8028] he took great Pains to settle the linen manufacture in Cloyne supplying the inhabitants with flax and paying for all they spun how bad so ever he gave an house for this purpose hired a mistress to teach the girls to spin and brought a linen weaver but all to no purpose - they chose to spin wool - and thought he meant to raise a great fortune by their works during the time of the hard frost he gave £20 a week for a considerable time to the poor^ -* -


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Notes to the Introduction a. 1.

2. 3.

4. 5.

b.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

This article originally appeared in Hermathena in 1977. In the company of Dr Luce I have compared the handwriting in this volume (now ms. 5936) with manuscripts known to be in Mrs Berkeley's hand, and there can be little doubt that the comments — with the exception of that on the verso of p. 39 — are in her handwriting. On Mrs Berkeley's printed comments, see Dr Luce's Life of George Berkeley (1949), pp. 8-9; on Mrs Berkeley herself, see pp. 180-2. 'Mr. Buncombe, by permission of Mrs. Berkeley, the worthy relict of the Bishop of Gloyne, has favoured us with that Lady's remarks on his article, and with some fresh anecdotes concerning him' (Biographia, vol. iii). In the preface to volume i of the Biographia (1778), 'the Rev. Mr. Duncombe . . . [is mentioned as one of those to whom] we stand obliged on various accounts'; p. xx. Additional ms. 39312 f. 17. What we know of the provenance of the book and notes is derived from the various inscriptions in our copy. On the second blank page Mrs Berkeley wrote: 'A Madamoiselle Madamoiselle [sic] Ketchersyde — de Son Amie tres [sic] AfFectionee Anne Berkeley-Peckham Juin 23 1777'. On the inside front cover is the signature 'J. Elsambier', with the date '1812'. The College purchased the book from Dawson's of Pall Mall in 1972. In the British Library, add. ms. 46688, there is a note by Mrs Berkeley, 21 December 1776: 'My dear M—K: this vol: having amused me, I send it to amuse you'. See Dr Luce's The Life of George Berkeley, p. 7; referred to hereafter as Life. The Account is mentioned in the Gentleman's Magazine and the London Magazine in their issues of December 1776. See Samuel Johnson: His Career and Writings, ed. H. and C. Schneider (New York, 1929), vol. I, p. 482. See Life, pp. 111-12. Berkeley papers, in the British Museum, add. ms. 39312 f. 27.

Notes to Mrs Berkeley's annotations 1.

Not in Biographia; of Berkeley's father Dr Luce says that he 'may have been born in England' (Life, p. 22). See also 'Berkeleian studies in

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America and France, with an appendix on a new letter about Berkeley's father', by Dr Luce; HermathenaQ^ (1960), pp. 53-5. 2. The Biographia prints only to this point. The order of clauses in the rest of her note is not certain. I do not know who the bishop's two friends were; but Mrs Berkeley's point - in the latter part of this note - seems to be that, as we cannot be certain whether matter exists, we must recognize that our knowledge is very limited and especially in need of revelation in religious matters. Berkeley uses a similar approach in the Analyst (1734), where he calls attention to mysteries in science to support mysteries in religion; but he never, I think, uses the question of the existence of matter to cast doubts on human knowledge. 3. Substantially the same in the Biographia. 4. Not in Biographia. On Berkeley's Passive Obedience (1712) adverted to here, see Prof Jessop's editorial introduction, in Works of George Berkeley, vol. vi, pp. 3-11. 5. Substantially the same. 6. Substantially the same but somewhat enlarged. On Berkeley's connection with Swift's Vanessa and the legacy, see 7. There is a curious difference here. In the Biographia this comment reads: 'All Dr. Swift's letters to this lady Vanessa tended greatly to her honour. Dr Berkeley disapproved extremely of the publication of "Cadenus and Vanessa"; which step, however, was resolved upon, and executed, by Mr Marshall, the other executor. Dr Delany said, that this publication put an end to poor Stella's life'. Se 8. First two paragraphs are substantially the same. The rest, apart from the fact that the scheme was passed with only one opposing vote, is not in Biographia; and some of this is not to be found in any other source. The Biographia does, however, contain additional material relating to the Bermuda scheme and its passage through Parliament. 9. This was the English Dr Johnson's objection to Berkeley's scheme, i.e., 'the fellows of St. Paul's College would soon have degenerated into farmers or merchants; the love of money would have proved too strong for the love of learning.' (See my 'Some new Bermuda Berkeleiana', Hermathena (1970), p. 29.) 10. Berkeley's plan of the City of Bermuda was reproduced in the first collected edition of his works (1784, vol. ii, p. 419). But the plan of the College seems to have been lost. In the extant plan, the College is said to be situated 'in a peninsula a quarter of a mile from the town'. This description seems at variance with Mrs Berkeley's claim that the College


11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21.

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was in 'the midst of a large circle'. It is possible that she was confusing the steeple and church which are, roughly, in the centre of the town (in the extant plan). It is also possible that there were a number of plans. This is John Smibert, the 'pioneer of portrait painting in America' (see Life, p. 113). This is no doubt John Christopher Pepusch, who composed the music to Gay's Beggar's Opera. In the early 'Some original memoirs of the late famous Bishop of Cloyne', published in the Weekly Magazine in 1759/60, the writer states: 'Doctor Pepusch, an excellent Musician, and some others of great ability were engaged in this design to establish a College in Bermuda, and actually embarked in order to put it into execution, but the ship being cast away the design unhappily was discontinued and Berkeley was left to contrive something else to the advantage of his country' (the 'Memoirs' are reprinted in the Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith (Oxford, 1966), edited by Arthur Friedman; see vol. iii, p. 37). Because the latter part of this statement was known to be untrue, the first part has also been dismissed. But in the light of Mrs Berkeley's information the first part must, I think, be accepted; and the 'Memoirs', as a whole, must now be taken to be a somewhat more reliable source. The 'Memoirs' were thought to be the work of Dr Johnson. They have recently been attributed to Goldsmith by his editor; see Collected Works, p. 35, and my 'Some new Bermuda Berkeleiana', pp. 28-31. In Biographia. Although largely the same there are a few minor variations; in the printed account the distance is given as 100 miles, and the 'pudding sleeve gowns' are not mentioned. No mention of the four scholars, nor anything below the line. Not in Biographia. See above text to note 13. The printed version of this paragraph runs as follows: 'He gave of his own property to one of these colleges [Harvard or Yale] and to several Missionaries, books to the amount of five hundred pounds. To the other College he made a large donation of books purchased by others, and trusted to his disposal.' The printed account does not mention for what purpose the organ was given. Not in Biographia. In Biographia as follows: Tt was from a hope of advancing the interest of this college, that Dr Berkeley submitted to the drudgery (for such he

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esteemed it) of bearing a part in the fruitless weekly debates with Clarke and Hoadly, in the presence of the Princess Catherine.' 2 2. No tin Biographia. 23. Substantially the same, although the printed account is more extensive. In the Biographia Berkeley's remark to his wife is said to be: 'I desire to add one more to the list of Churchmen who are evidently dead to ambition and avarice'; and the last phrase - he was the least ostentatious man alive' - is omitted. 24. One brother was Robert Berkeley, Rector of Middleton in the Diocese of Cloyne. He is referred to in the Biographia memoir as the 'brother, yet living [who communicated] most of the following particulars ...' (vol. ii, p. 247). Little is known of Robert, or his relationship with his famous brother. We have, e.g., none of the letters which must undoubtedly have passed between them. Hence it is worth quoting the following unnoticed obituary of Robert, from the Dublin Chronicle, 30 Aug.1 Sept. 1787: 'The late Dr [Robert] Berkeley was upwards of 87 years of age - he had been more than forty years Rector of the Union of Middleton. He was bred at the school of Kilkenny under the same master with Tho. Prior, Congreve, and others eminent in literature and nobility. He had been twice a candidate for Fellowship: at his first sitting, his brother George (the Bishop) who was then a senior Fellow, would not vote for his election, on account of his youth. The second sitting there were six vacancies in the year 1724, when Clarke, Cartwright, Grafton, Bacon and Dobbs, were elected with him.' 25. This addition, which was not included in the Biographia, may help to answer one of the questions Mr Ian Tipton asks in his 'Two questions on Bishop Berkeley's panacea', namely, when and how did Berkeley find out about tar-water as a medicine? Mrs. Berkeley's remarks confirm Tipton's suggestion that, despite popular opinion, Berkeley did not discover tar-water while he was in America, in 1728—1731 (see Journal of the History oj'Ideas30 (1969), pp. 204-7). However, as Tipton pointed out to me, Mrs Berkeley's statement that Berkeley heard about tar-water from a Rhode Island correspondent, and as a cure for a cancer, 'presents a bit of a puzzle because in his letter to Linden, Berkeley says quite explicitly that he never heard of tar-water as being used in any part of America he had visited and that it was its use in Carolina against smallpox which encouraged him to try it, cf. Siris 2' (from a private letter). For Berkeley's letter to Linden, see Works, vol. viii, pp. 274-5.


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How the puzzle is to be resolved, I am not certain; but it is to be noted that Berkeley first mentions tar-water in a letter to Thomas Prior dated 8 February 1740/41 (in Works, vol. viii, pp. 248-9). Here he speaks of tar-water as a medicine which might prevent or cure a 'phlegmon', i.e., a tumour. There is no mention of smallpox. Consequently, if Berkeley heard of tar-water within a month or two of that letter, and the letter indicates that he had heard of it some months previously, and if he understood a phlegmon to be similar to a cancer, then we seem to have some evidence in support of Mrs Berkeley's claims. But this still does not explain Berkeley's remarks to Linden. It should be noted also that Berkeley in his letter to Linden was remembering something which had happened at the most some ten years earlier; while Mrs Berkeley is remembering something which has happened at least thirty-five years earlier. The question also arises as to why her comment on tar-water was not printed in the Biographia. 26. Not in Biographia. See Life, p. 218, where Dr Luce quotes and criticizes the passage in which Stock states the value of the bishopric of Cloyne. 27. Stock had written: 'At Cloyne he constantly rose between three and four in the morning ...'. In the Biographia his hours of rising are given as 'six or seven'. As noted above, this comment was probably written by Elizabeth Ketchersyde, to whom Mrs Berkeley gave her annotated copy (see my Introduction, note 5). 28. Not in Biographia. 29. following two addenda by Mrs Berkeley are to be found in the Biographia but not in our volume: (i) that Berkeley died while listening to a passage from Corinthians, and (ii) that his favourite authors were Plato and Hooker.

10

Some New Bermuda Berkeleiana

1 Berkeley's Bermuda projecta Berkeley's attempt to plant 'a seminary of religion and learning' in Bermuda, even though it was unsuccessful, still impressed many of his contemporaries. 'His eminent talents, by which he shines in the learned world, will not give him so much lustre and distinction in the annals of future times, as that apostolical zeal with which he is so confessedly endowed.' This prediction about Berkeley's fame was made in 1734, in the Gentleman's Magazine (vol. iii, p. 443). It has not been fulfilled. But Berkeley's Bermuda project has by no means been ignored by 'future times', as the number of academic institutions in America, which are named after Berkeley, bears witness. I have three new items to present, relating to that project. Through them, we are able to glimpse the Bermuda project in process, miscarriage and retrospect. The first item is a petition addressed by Berkeley to King George I. The second is a previously unpublished letter, written by Berkeley to Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London. The third is a letter written by Berkeley's son, recounting a conversation which he had with Dr Johnson about his father's proposed college. I deal with these three items seriatim. /

Berkeley's petition to the King records the steps already taken, and asks for the issue of a warrant to make provision for the

Mew Bermuda Berkeleiana

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President and Fellows of St Paul's College, Bermuda, The petition is in the Public Records Office in London, among the Treasury Papers, vol. cclvii (1727), no. 2. It was published, in part, in the Calendar of Treasury Papers 1720—1728 (London, 1889). But it has never been reprinted, either in part or whole, in any collection of Berkeley's writings. The petition is written in a fair hand - probably not Berkeley's; it is however signed by him. A portion of the manuscript is defective. Where there is any doubt about the reading, I have enclosed the doubtful words in brackets. To the Kings Most Excellent Majesty. The humble petition of George Berkeley Doctor of Divinity Dean of Derry and President of Saint Pauls College in Bermuda. Sheweth That your Majesty was graciously pleas'd by your Letters Patent bearing Date the third day of June in the Eleventh Year of your Majesties Reign to Erect and found a College in Bermuda consisting of a President and Nine Fellows for the Education of American Missionaries and supplying the British Plantations with Clergy. That your Majesties Pious Intentions having been communicated to the Commons of Great Britain, they did in the last Sessions of Parliament humbly Address Your Majesty That Your Majesty would be graciously pleased to make [such] Provision for the Maintenance of the said President and Fellows as your Majesty shou'd think proper out of the Lands in the Island of Saint Christophers yielded by France to Great Britain by the Treaty of Utrecht, to which Address Your Majesty was pleased to return [a most] Gracious Answer. May it [please your] Majesty to give Directions for the passing of [a warrant for such provision out of the said Lands as

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Your [Majesties Honjour Grfaciousness] and Goodness shall think fit for the [Maintenance of the [President and Fellows And your Petitioner as in Duty bound shall ever pray &c George Berkeley This seems to be the only extant document in which Berkeley used the title 'President of Saint Pauls College'. The petition is not dated; but it must have been written between 16 May 1726 and 12 June 1727. It could not have been written before 16 May 1726, because on that date the King returned his 'Gracious Answer' (see above); and the death of George I on 12 June 1727 fixes the latest date. Although I have placed the words 'a warrant for such provi' in brackets, I think that we can be reasonably certain that these are the correct words. This is the reading given in the Calendar of Treasury Papers', and indirect support for this reading can be drawn from Berkeley's letter of 1 December 1726. In this informative letter to his friend Thomas Prior, Berkeley writes: . . . his Majesty hath ordered the warrant for passing the said grant to be drawn. The persons appointed to contrive the draught of the warrant are the Solicitor-General, Baron Scroop of the Treasury, and (my very good friend) Mr. Hutchenson. . . . The method agreed on is by a rent-charge on the whole crown lands [in St Christopher's] redeemable upon the crown's paying twenty thousand pounds, for the use of the President and Fellows of St. Paul's and their successors. Sir Robert Waipole hath signified that he hath no objection to this method; and I doubt not Baron Scroop will agree to it; by which means the grant may be passed before the meeting of Parliament, after which o we may prepare to set out on our voyage in April, [italics mine] The warrant, referred to in this letter, Tor passing the said grant', was almost certainly what Berkeley requested the King

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New Bermuda Berkeleiana

'to give directions for the passing of ...', in the petition printed above. This particular warrant, however, was never in fact passed, apparently because of the death of George I. A new warrant was eventually passed under Georg Q

//

We pass on now three or four years, and come to Berkeley's letter to Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London. The letter was written in Rhode Island, and is now among the Fulham papers (vol. xvii, ff. 19-20) in Lambeth Palace Library. I am obliged to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Trustees of Lambeth Palace Library for permission to publish it. The circumstances surrounding the letter are briefly these. By May 1730, Berkeley had been in the New World for well over a year, and was anxiously awaiting payment of the £20,000 grant, which had been promised him, for establishing St Paul's College in Bermuda. His anxiety is revealed in a letter to Prior, dated 7 May 1730: ' . . . I wait only the King's grant to transport myself thither [to Bermuda]. I am now employing the interest of my friends in England for that purpose; and have wrote in the most pressing manner either to get the money paid, or at least to get a positive answer that may direct me what course I am to take'. Edmund Gibson would have been the most likely person to obtain 'a positive answer'. He was Sir Robert Walpole's friend, as well as Waipole's adviser on ecclesiastical matters; he was also Berkeley's friend, and, as Bishop of London, his diocese included the West Indies and also Bermuda. It has long been known that Gibson was successful in obtaining this positive answer for Berkeley. In An Account of the Life of George Berkeley ... (London, 1776), we are informed that Gibson applied to Sir Robert Walpole, then at the head of the treasury [and] was favoured at length with the following very honest answer: Tf you put this question

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to me', says Sir Robert, 'as minister, I must and can assure you, that the money shall most undoubtedly be paid, as soon as suits with public convenience: but if you ask me, as a friend, whether Dean Berkeley should continue in America, expecting the payment of 20,000^ I advise him by all means, to return home to Europe, and to give up his present expectations.' The Dean being informed of this conference by his good friend the bishop, and thereby fully convinced that the bad policy of one great man had rendered abortive a scheme, whereon he had expended much of his private fortune, and more than seven years of the prime of his life, he returned to Eur Before returning to England, Berkeley wrote Gibson the following letter. It is undoubtedly a reply to the one alluded to above by which Berkeley was 'informed of this conference'. My Lord, I beg leave to return my humble thanks to your Lordship for the favour of a letter just come to my hands wherein you have been pleased to send me Sir Robert Walpole's answer which leaves no room to deliberate what I have to do. I shall therefore prepare to get back as soon as possible. I was prepared for this event by advices from other hands particularly some from Ireland which informed me that all my associates to a man had absolutely abandoned the design upon which I came and betaken themselves to other views having been tired out with discouragement and delay which hath proved as fatal to our College as an absolute refusal. I have waited these two months in expectation that vessel from Bermuda might possibly have touched at this island which wou'd have better enabled me to send your Lordship an account of the present state of the Church and Clergy there: But none having come I can only say what I formerly had upon the information of some credible persons, viz: that there are eight

Mew Bermuda Berkeleiana

207

churches in those islands that are alternately served by three clergymen who have each of them a small glebe and two forty pds pannum, the third who is minister in the town of St. Georges having fifty pds pannum in that countrys mony which I think is thirty per cent worse than English. I had heard that one of these three clergyman had left Bermuda for a living on the Continent but if I mistake not his place hath been since supplied by another provided by the present Governor. Some years ago there was a Conventicle set up there by a very troublesome man one Smith who brought a dissenting Teacher from Carolina, but it seems upon the rumour of our College they both thought fit to leave those Islands. So that I believe the people there are now generally well affected to the Church. Your Lordship will please to accept of this which is the best account can be given by My Lord Yr Lordship's Most dutiful & Most obedient servt. Geor. Berkeley Rhode Island March 15. 1730-1 It should be noticed that Berkeley's opening statement in the second paragraph of the letter suggests that the first paragraph was written about January 1730/1, that is, two months before the date at the end of the letter.7 ///

We now take a long leap of some fifty years and look at the Bermuda scheme in retrospect. The following letter by George Berkeley Jr, the Bishop's second son, was addressed to George Gleig, who printed it in the general preface to his edition of A Voyage to

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Abyssinia, by Father Jerome Lobo ... translated by Samuel Johnson . . . to which are added other tracts by the same author ... (London, 1789), pp. 4-6. The letter may be termed a new item, in that it has received little or no notice. It is a lively piece of writing, bringing two great names together, and throwing light on an early source for Berkeley's life, namely, 'Memoirs of Bishop Berkeley'.8 This short composition had been printed by John Stockdale in The Works oj'Samuel Johnson LL.D. (London, 1788), vol. xiv. Gleig, suspecting from internal evidence that Johnson was not, in fact, the author of the 'Memoirs', wrote to his friend George Berkeley Jr, now Canon Berkeley, 'for information' on the question. Here is Canon Berkeley's answer to Gleig's letter. Cookham, Berks, 19th Nov. 1788 My dear Sir, Your letter having lain at my house in town, it reached me only this morning: and I delay not a day to inform you, that the wonderfully absurd thing in Stockdale's fourteenth volume, called Memoirs of Bishop Berkeley., was not written by Dr Johnson. That great man had a wish to be my father's biographer; but when applied to long after these memoirs had made their first appearance, I declined to furnish him with materials for the purpose. You may be sure I had some cogent reason for acting thus: it was as follows. At the chambers of the worthy master of University College, I had spent an evening with Johnson, the present Dean of Canterbury, Dr Vansittart, and Sir Robert Chambers. Johnson brought upon the carpet the subject of my father's plan for erecting St Paul's College on the island of Bermuda; and lamented, in his grand-iloquous style, that so pious and beneficent a design had not been concerted with more prudence. 'For (said he) had not a corrupt administration defeated the bishop's design, it must in a short time have defeated itself. The fellows of St Paul's College would soon have degenerated into farmers or merchants", the love of money would have proved too strong for


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the love of learning.' Young as I was, and prepossessed with the highest veneration for Johnson, to whom I had just been introduced for the first time, I instantly threw behind me every consideration, which regarded not truth and my father's fair fame, and asked my antagonist, Whether he had ever read Bishop Berkeley's proposal for founding that American university? and whether he was accurately acquainted with the extent, produce, and situation of Bermuda? To the former part of rny question he replied in the negative; to the latter he answered nothing. On this I admonished him to be in future less ready to censure venerable characters, or to impute his own nescience to others as imprudence; for that had he read the pamphlet published thrice on this subject, he must have seen the bishop's consummate wisdom guarding against every inconvenience which commerce or agriculture might occasion. Farmers the fellows could hardly have become, as their estates were all of them to be purchased on the continent of North America, at the distance of a week's voyage; and the island of Bermuda, blessed as it may be with a fine climate, is so begirt with rocks, and its harbours so ill calculated for shipping, that it could never be the seat of such commerce as to call the minds of tutors from the nobler pursuits. Johnson was surprised and silenced; and on my leaving the room, being asked why he so rudely attacked my father's scheme? he replied, / thought the young man might be vain, as well he may, of such a father; and so I resolved to keep him humble by discussing the plan in that manner. When Mr Allen, late vice-principal of Magdalene-hall, Oxford, applied to me for materials to enable his friend Johnson to write the life of a man who did honour to human nature, I gave this relation of that rough conversation as my reason for declining to comply with his request. I have often wished that I had acted otherwise, as Johnson, in the progress of his biography, might have been led to examine, and give a fair view7 of some of my father's works, which I am persuaded he never read, and which have been strangely misrepresented

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by many who have read them, especially among your countrymen. My grandfather Berkeley was no clergyman; nor is there any truth in that strange anecdote of my father when at college, and which I remember to have read in these fictitious memoirs when first published. As you say you are to send your miscellany to the press by the end of next week, I write to you currente calamo', and you may make what use you like of the intelligence now sent you by, Dear Sir,

Your affectionate and obedient Servant, GEO. BERKELEY On (Bishop) Berkeley's precautions against the fellows 'degenerating into farmers or merchants', see A Proposal for the Better Supplying of Churches in our Foreign Plantations (1725), in Works, vol. vii, especially pp. 349 and 353. By 'that strange anecdote of my father when at college', Berkeley is apparently alluding to the story that his father (with the help of his student friend, Thomas Contarine) went through the motions of hanging himself, in order to experience 'the pains and symptoms... felt upon such an occasio Gleig, it should be noted, was Scottish; and so Canon Berkeley's remark, that 'my father's works . . . have been strangely misrepresented by many who have read them, especially among jour countrymen' (italics mine) alludes, no doubt, to philosophers of the Scottish Commonsense School, of which James Beattie and Thomas Reid were prominent member Canon Berkeley's letter gives us little indication about when his confrontation with Dr Johnson took place. We learn only that he was a young man at the time. I am, however, almost certain that the meeting took place in the summer of 1754. My reasons are these. (1) We know from Boswell that Johnson was visiting Oxford during the months of July and August (1754). -i r (2) There is in the British Museum a short diary kept by (Canon) Berkeley, which shows that he was also staying at Oxford in July and


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August of 1754.14 (3) Finally, according to Canon Berkeley's widow, the meeting occurred when he 'a little turned twenty on my July/August 1754 dating, young Berkeley was twenty years old. This would put the meeting just nine years before Johnson's famous stone-kicking refutation of Bishop Berkeley's immaterialism, which Boswell witnessed on 6 August 1763.

2 Berkeley's departure for America: a new letter The letter printed below was on 10 May 1979 auctioned by Swann Galleries of New York City, who printed part of it in their catalogue, item 28, and kindly allowed me to make a transcript of the whole. The ALS, which has never been published in any work on Berkeley, outlines his plans and reasons for going to Rhode Island rather than to Bermuda. It was probably written to Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London and Visitor of Berkeley's projected College of St Paul's. We have two similar epistolary farewells — to Percival and to Prior (Works, vol. viii, pp. 190-2) - but neither of them is as informative. It confirms, for example, that Berkeley planned to use Rhode Island as his base on the American mainland; but it does not suggest that he thought of changing the location of his College from Bermuda to Rhode Island. Gravesend, Sept: 5, 1728. My Lord The small time I have been in London since my return from Ireland was Spent in such hurry of business, that I could wait on none of my patrons or friends, which must be my apology for taking this method of paying my duty to your Lordship whom I beg leave to inform that to morrow with the blessing of God I shall set sail to Rhode Island near new England. It is a place abounding in provisions where I design to purchase a piece of

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land with my own mony in order to supply our college with such necessaries as are not the product of Bermuda, which will in good measure remove one principal objection to the success of our design. The mony contributed by Subscribers is left in Mr Hoare the Banker's hands and made payable to Dr Clayton with whom I have also left the patent for receiving the 20,000 [pounds] from St. Christopher's. I propose to continue at Rhode Island till such time as Dr Clayton hath received that mony and is come to Bermuda with the rest of my associates where I intend to join them. Going to Bermuda without either mony or associates I cou'd not think of. I shou'd have made a bad figure and done no good. Staying here wou'd have been no less disagreeable and to as little purpose, since all I could do here was finished except receiving the mony which may be done by others. It shou'd seem therefore that the intermediate time may be passed with more advantage in America where I can see things with my own eyes and prepare matters for the rendering our college more useful. I humbly recommend the undertaking & my self to your Lordship's protection & prayers and remain with all duty and respect, My Lord Yr. Lordship's most obedient & most devoted humble Servt G. Berkeley

Notes a. 1. 2. 3.

This section was originally published in Hermathena in 1970. 1725. The Works of George Berkeley, edited by Luce and Jessop (referred to as Works], vol. viii, pp. 174—5. Ibid., vol. viii, p. 182.


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4. 5.

Ibid., vol. iii,p. 208. Gibson is alluded to in Berkeley's A Proposal for the Better Supplying of Churches in our Foreign Plantations (London, 1725) as 'that great Prelate' (Works, vol. vii, p. 347). Gibson took a particular interest in Berkeley's project. A letter of 23 September 1725 (Fulham papers, vol. xvii, ff. 910) addressed to Gibson and signed 'G X G', is a fairly detailed critique of Berkeley's Proposal. Gibson's correspondent argues that 'the fittest place in America for this design [Berkeley's proposed college], and that in my opinion is the garrison of Albany up hudsons [sic] River more than 100 miles from the City of New York.... Albany is the center of his Majesties Dominions on that Continent...'. 6. See pp. 23^4; Dr Luce attributes this work to Joseph Stock; see Luce's The Life of George Berkeley (referred to as Life), p. 6. Stock had access to many of Berkeley's letters, and he may therefore have learned of this conference, between Gibson and Walpole, from Gibson's letter to Berkeley. 7. Writing to his friend, Lord Percival, on 2 March 1730/1, Berkeley says: 'I am fairly given to understand that the money will never be paid.' Works, vol. viii, p. 211. 8. The 'Memoirs' was first published anonymously in the Weekly Magazine, 29 December 1759 and 5 January 1760, with the title, 'Some original memoirs of the late famous Bishop of Cloyne'. It was then reprinted, with a few changes, in the British Plutarch (London, 1762), vol. xii, pp. 160—71. The 'Memoirs' has been attributed to Goldsmith by his editor Arthur Friedman; see Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith (Oxford, 1966), vol. iii, p. 35. 9. This letter by Gleig, who became Bishop of Brechin in 1808, is among the Berkeley papers in the British Museum, add. ms. 39312, pp. 84—6. In replying to Gleig, Canon Berkeley made use of some of the information in this letter. For example, Gleig writes: ' . . . a strange anecdote is told [in the 'Memoirs'] of your father, when at College, which, if true, should have been suppressed, though among thinking men it would not lessen his character; and if not true, should be publickly denied'. 10. See Life, p. 34. 11. But I suspect that Canon Berkeley is also alluding to David Hume. This suspicion arises from an interesting letter by Gleig to Canon Berkeley, dated to December 1785. The letter begins as follows: Your packet found me plunged in the depth of metaphysics, . . . I had acquired what I believe to be a clear and just view of Bishop

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Berkeley and Irish Philosophy Berkeley's philosophy, and was just preparing to study the treatise of human nature to discover if possible by what art Mr Hume had extracted poison from such a system. Dr Beattie and his followers have misrepresented the principles of human knowledge, because they do not comprehend those principles, Mr Hume misrepresented the same principles not because he did not understand them (for I suspect that few readers understood them so well) but because he wanted such a support to his own system.

12. 13. 14. 15.

b.

This letter is also among the Berkeley papers in the British Museum, ms. 39312, p. 43.1 have not been able to trace Canon Berkeley's reply. He was born on 28 September 1733. The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (Dublin, 1792), vol. i, pp. 22 If. This diary is in add ms. 46688. Eliza Berkeley, Preface to Poems by the Late George Monck Berkeley Esq. (London, 1797), p. ccl. In this Preface, Mrs Berkeley gives a somewhat different account of her husband's meeting with Johnson; see pp. ccl—ccliii. This section originally appeared in the Berkeley Newsletter in 1980.

11 The Good Bishop: New Letters

1 A new letter on tar-water a This letter, or more probably an extract from a letter, is to be found in the Newcastle Journal, no. 292, 10 November 1744. It has escaped the notice of Berkeley's editors. The Journal attributes the letter to Berkeley, and its style and contents confirm the attribution. On 8 September 1744, the Journal carried an article entitled: 'Remarks by a gentleman in Dublin on a late advertisement concerning the effects of tar-water in Stephens Hospital'; an editorial note appended to the article provides the fullest account of the circumstances surrounding the letter's publication: N.B. The above remarks [states the editor] are extracted from the Dublin Journal, lately sent over to Mr. William Ward, esq; of Cockerton, by the Bishop of Cloyne; who observes, in his letter to Mr. Ward, that the gentleman has set the affair of the affidavits in a fair light. Mr. Ward has long been afflicted with a most grievous hereditary asthma, and having lately tried the effects of tar-water, and found considerable benefit by it, is willing, for the good of the publick, that his literal correspondence with the Bishop should be printed; which, therefore, by his leave, we shall insert in our next; containing the state of his case, by himself, with the Bishop's answer; in which he gives his opinion of it, and full directions for using tar-water in so remarkable a case. Ward's letter was not, however, published till 3 November; Berkeley's answer appeared in the following number: both are reprinted, verbatim, in the Scots Magazine, November 1744, pp. 515—16.

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Neither Ward's letter nor Berkeley's reply is dated in the above publications. However, Thomas Prior, Berkeley's life-long friend, prints portions of four letters by Ward, in his Authentick Narrative of the Success of Tar-Water (Dublin, 1746). The first of these letters is, with minor variations, identical with that in the Newcastle Journal; it is dated 8 June [1744]. The following three are dated respectively, 27 July, 18 September and 16 January, and deal with Ward's improving health resulting from his steady use of tarwater. It seems very likely therefore that Berkeley's letter is to be dated some time in July, since it is, we are informed, an answer to Ward's first letter of 8 June. In his first letter to Berkeley, Ward enumerates his ailments; for which, he says. T have had and followed the advice of many of the most eminent physicians: the methods I have been put into, and the medicines I have taken, are innumerable; and all without benefit'. He concludes his account by mentioning that 'For a fortnight past I have been induced to try the virtues of tar-water ... but my fits visit me as often and as violently as ever'. Much of what Berkeley says is in response to Ward's letter; for example, Ward writes: T have not the least ease when I do not smoak'. Berkeley prescribes tar-water and gives instructions for its use, but also makes broader medical recommendations. As we have it, the letter might not inaptly be described as a kind of medical prescription. In this respect, it resembles two other extant letters, one to Sir Thomas Hanmer, 21 August 1744, the other to the Duke of Newcastle, 5 March 1746/1747; in The Works of George Berkeley, edited by Luce and Jessop, vol. viii, pp. 272~3 and 294-5. I have been unable to find any other link between Berkeley and Ward who is, according to Prior, from Durham than tar-water. All three of these letters by Berkeley (see also note 3), as well as the editorial note quoted above, clearly bear out his remark to his American friend Samuel Johnson, that 'My correspondence with patients who drink tarwater obliges me to be less punctual in corresponding with my friends', ibid. p. 302. o

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This 'meddling out of my profession', to use Berkeley's phrase in the 'Advertisement' to The Querist, won for him a good deal of animosity amongst the profession trespassed on. As a contemporary couplet (1744) entitled 'Tit for tat, or divinity and physick at war', amusingly relates: The bishop's book annoys the learned tribe, They threaten hard; we'll preach, if you prescribe. But in the war of verse about tar-water, there was a ready defence:^ [For] if he is a soul's director, Be of the body no protector? as well as a more sustained one, in a larger compass: Is B-rkel-y's reas'ning, sense and diction, To pass for nought but cant and fiction, And 'cause thou can'st not understand him, Do'st thou with incoherence brand him? I have printed Berkeley's letter without modernizing either spelling or capitalization; 'matelas', it may be noted, is a mattress. Paragraph three contains, as Dr Luce has pointed out to me, an echo of Berkeley's words in Siris, sect. 217, ' ... to warm without heating, to cheer but not inebriate . ..', which, when applied to tea, were made famous by Cowper.

Text In common Asthmas Tar-water hath been very successful; but so old, hereditary, and violent a Case as yours, is extremely difficult to cure: And yet I am not without Hopes of your being

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relieved by it, if the Tar-water be regularly and constantly taken for a length of Time. Drink it copiously, little and often; for this will less offend your Stomach, and mix better with your Blood. For a few Weeks take a Pint a day, at four Glasses, and at such Distance from your Meals, as not to create a nauseating; and as soon as your Stomach is reconciled to it, proceed to drink more, till you arrive at 8 Glasses, or a Quart, in 24 Hours; which you must continue or lessen as your Stomach can bear. See your Tarwater made, cover it close till it is quite clear, keep it bottled and well cork'd for Use. Take no other Medicines along with it. Tobacco is an Anodyne, I would not dissuade the Use of it. Be temperate in Meats and Drinks, both in Quantity and Quality. I believe you should beware of Salt Meats, or enflaming Sauces or Liquors. I apprehend, that Food which warms, but not enflames, may be good, viz. Onions, Celery, and the like, dress'd; particularly eat Garlick, and season your Meat with it. Beware of Evening or Night Air. Go to bed betimes; and rise early. I imagine it may be worth your Trial to get made a sloping or steep Bedstead, from the Head towards the Foot, with a Foot-board at the lower End; and also to provide a Leathern Matelas, stuffed with curled Hair, to lie on, as being much cooler than a Feather Bed.

2 Berkeley's letter to H. Clarke0 The following letter by Berkeley to Dr Henry Clarke, Vice Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, has never been completely published. It was first published in part - from 'I would not suppose ...' to ' . . . being with sincere regard' — by J. H. Bernard in Peplographia Dublinensis (London, 1902), p. 77 note, and reprinted by Dr Luce in volume viii of The Works of George Berkeley, p. 276. According to Bernard the letter was 'in the possession of the Bishop of Ripon and

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was written in 1745 . . .'. From the precise date of this letter (now available) we can see that the intended visit to Dublin, discussed in our letter, is the same as that alluded to by Berkeley in a letter to Isaac Gervais of 24 February 1746 (Works, vol. viii, pp. 283-4). The autograph letter to Clarke is now in the Lambeth Palace Library (ms. 1719, f. 67). I am grateful to the Archbishop of Canterbury and Trustees of the Library for permission to publish it.

Text Cloyne

March 24 1745-6

Revd Sir, It is now several weeks since I received a letter from you which supposed my going to Dublin. I had indeed for some time past projected such a journey. But an illness gotten by cold had left me so tender that I could not venture my self on the road. The same cause still renders my journey doubtful. But I would not suppose your affairs are at all the worse for my not being in towne; for, to speak the truth, I could have been of no use with my Lord Lieutenant, unless he had given me a decent opportunity of speaking to the point, by consulting or advising with me about it: a thing which I had no right to expect. I have been told his excellency expressed a particular esteem for you publickly at the castle, on occasion of the compliment you made him on his first arrival. This personal prepossession in your favour, grounded on his own sense of your merit, is in my opinion worth twenty recommendations, even to those great men in power who alone have a right to make them. To conclude I wish you all success in your undertakings being with sincere regard Revd Sir, Your faithful & Obedient Servt George Cloyne.

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3 Berkeley's letter to Lord Orrery This letter by Berkeley was addressed to John Boyle, Lord Orrery (1707-1762), the friend and biographer of Swift. It has never been included in any collection of Berkeley's correspondence, although about two-thirds of it was printed by the Countess of Cork and Orrery in The Orrery Papers (London: Duckworth, 1903), vol. 2, pp. 4-5. A copy of the whole letter is at Harvard University, among the Orrery papers, and is here printed by permission of the Houghton Library. I have enclosed in square brackets the portions of the letter omitted by the Countess of Cork and Orrery.

Text Cloyne, July llth, 1747 MY LORD, A letter should be natural and easy, and yet I must confess I write with no small concern, since your Lordsp is pleased to say you expect improvement from my letters, that same improvement which in good earnest I should myself have hoped for from corresponding with a person so conversant in the classics as well as the grand monde, did not my years, and the nature of my studies, stand in the way. Your Lordsps lott is fallen in a pleasant land. For my part, I admire the belles letres without possessing them (A truth I need not mention), my studies having been of the dry and crabbed kind, which give a certain gouty stiffness to the style. [Give me leave to say, your Lordsp is a little unreasonable, who, not content with the management of an ample fortune, and a share in the great councils of both Kingdoms, must needs invade the provinces of private men, and be at once, the best husbandman, and the politest scholar, in the nation. In hopes your children will take after you, I do most sincerely congratulate your Lordship on their recovery, from a distemper

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so often fatal, and, that hangs like a general doom, over all that come into the world.] I have just now read over Mr. West's book, a performance worthy your Lordsps recommendation, and in the reading thereof I have been much edified, instructed and entertained. To me it seems extremely well wrote, and if it had been worse wrote, it could not have failed of doing good among many who do not consider what is said so much as who it is that said it. Certainly, men of the world, courtiers and fine gentlemen, are more easily wrought on by those of their own sort, than by recluse and professed divines. [The Christian religion, since its first planting in these islands, hath been never so openly and profanely insulted, as in these our days, which call loudly for information or for punishment.] But it is to be hoped the public, by a timely and serious reflexion (whereof I take this gentleman's attempt to be a noble specimen and leading step), will recover their lost sense of duty, so far as to avert that vengeance which the posture of our affairs abroad and the plague hovering round our coasts, do threaten. But, come what will, that your Lordsp and family may safely ride out the storm is the sincere wish of my Lord, your Lordsps most obedient, GEORGE CLOYNE The work by Gilbert West to which Berkeley refers is Observations on the History and Evidence of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (London, 1747). West's 'excellent book' - as Berkeley calls it in a letter to Percival of 10 October 1747 — was prompted by Peter Annet's notorious The Resurrection of Jesus considered (London, 1744); hence Berkeley may have had Annet in mind as someone who 'openly and profanely insulted' the Christian religion. In the Dictionary of National Biography (1908-9) article on Lord Orrery it is stated that 'He was filled with literary aspirations, and, as Berkeley said of him, "would have been a man of genius had he known how to set about it." '

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4 Berkeley's Letter on Clayton's Essay on Spirit^ The letter printed below was addressed to a Dr Thomas McDonnell, FTCD, who was at the time a clergyman in Bishop Clayton's own diocese of Glogher. McDonnell published the letter in 1754; it has never been reprinted. The battle of books which led to its publication is briefly as follows. In 1753 McDonnell issued An Essay towards an Answer... to the Essay on Spirit in which he criticized Clayton's Essay section by section; he also made some complimentary references to Berkeley. Clayton rejoined with Some Remarks on Dr. McDonnell's Essay towards... (1754). Two passages in this tract are noteworthy, because they figure in McDonnell's reasons for printing Berkeley's letter. Here is one passage: As to the doctrine of the Platonick or Pythagorean Trinity etc. the author of the Essay on Spirit would never have troubled his head with such a rhapsody of nonsense, if some great names, such as Cudworth and Berkeley, had not first produced them in confirmation of the Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity. Here is the other passage: As to those compliments which the doctor [McDonnell] is pleased to pay the Bench of Bishops at the expense of the author of the Essay on Spirit, I shall only say at present, that those bishops, who have hitherto shewed themselves most virulent against the Essay on Spirit, are those, who are confessedly the least knowing of the whole Bench, either in, or out of, their profession . . . 7 In the same year, 1754, McDonnell replied with A Short Vindication of the passages in the Essay towards an answer... (Dublin) in which Berkeley's letter is included. McDonnell's own statement provides a good commentary on how the letter came to be published. Berkeley's letter follows McDonnell's statement.

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If a strong contempt [writes McDonnell] and an avowed disapprobation of the Essay on Spirit be what its author means by virulence, I know of none of the bishops, who then adorned the Bench, that expressed himself so strongly against it, as that confessedly learned and ingenious prelate, the late bishop of Cloyne: one whom even this gentleman allows to be a person of great name, and whose letter, therefore, which I had the honour to receive from him, upon my application for leave to lay my labours before him, I shall take the liberty to make publick, the rather, as it can in no sort appear to redound to my own praise, or in the least injure the memory of that great man. Text **Sir, The Weakness and Presumption of the Book stiled an Essay on Spirit, render it undeserving of any serious Answer. I find there are some anonymous persons who have treated it in a ludicrous Manner. But if you are minded to confute it seriously, I make no Doubt of your being singly an Over-match for such an Adversary. I shall therefore leave him to yourself, and wishing you good success remain, Sir, Your Faithful, Humble Servant, G. CLOYNE Cloyne, May 7, 1752 ** The Original lies in the bookseller's hands for the satisfaction of those who may desire to see it. 10

This letter was written three months before Berkeley left Cloyne for Oxford. It is apparently the last extant letter that we have by him.

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Notes a. 1. 2.

b.

3.

This section originally appeared in Hermathena in 1968. I wish to acknowledge the help I received from Professor Luce and Professor Furlong, in presenting this letter. In his Authentick Narrative, p. 1, Prior admitted authorship of this piece. For information concerning the affidavits, see Berkeley's letter to Prior, 19 June 1744, in Works, vol. viii, pp. 271—2, and Professor Luce's note in vol. ix. Since we now know that Ward's letters in the Authentick Narrative were addressed to Berkeley, rather than Prior, it is possible that other letters in the Authentick Narrative were also sent to Berkeley - a fact which would be useful in the event of an edition of Berkeley's correspondence, with letters not only from but also to him. Part of this second letter is included in an anonymous communication, which appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine, February 1745, pp. 77—8. Since Prior's Narrative came out in the following year, this communication, it would seem, is either by Berkeley, or, which is more likely, by Prior. Whichever case, as it paraphrases another letter by Berkeley, I quote the relevant section: Mr. Urban, Permit me, to inform the public, that tho' some physicians suppose that tar water is hurtful in inflammatory cases and sanguin constitutions, the bishop of Cloyne has lately written to a gentleman, that he never knew one instance of it; and further says, that he had just before given to his own son [William?] not eight years old, who had a fever, five quarts of tar water (which had been stirred six minutes) in the space of nine hours, and that the next day the child was well without any other medicine; an effect which he had often experienced. A gentleman in the North of England has also written, that after he had taken the tar water a month, he received much ease in a dreadful asthma... .

4. 5.

See London Magazine, December, p. 614. The following lines are extracted from: 'To the author of a late piece of versify'd railing, intitled Tar-Water', in the London Magazine, August 1744, p. 406. For other poems about tar-water, of which I have not seen previous mention, see Gentleman's Magazine, 1745, p. 160; 1747, p. 146; 1752, p. 578; London Magazine, 1744, p. 303; Universal Magazine, 1748,

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c. d. e. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

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p. 223; and the Newcastle Courant, 1744, numbers 2646 and 2648. The contemporary magazines were very attentive to Berkeley's medical interests; one finds in them numerous reprints of his shorter letters to Prior. In the Magazine of Magazines (1752), there is also a reproduction of his Farther Thoughts on Tar-water which I have not seen noticed; see pp. 267-72 and 458-61. This section originally appeared in the Berkeley Newsletter in 1977. This section originally appeared in the Berkeley Newsletter in 1979. This section originally appeared as the Appendix to my 'Berkeley, Clayton and An Essay on Spirit', Journal of the History of Ideas, 1971. See pp. 9, 11 and 235-6. About Clayton's assertion in section one of the Essay, which connected Berkeley with Malebranche and Spinoza, McDonnell says: "Whether he [Spinoza] yet lives in the writings of P. Malebranche or Bishop Berkley [sic], it is not my present purpose to enquire. But if they have adopted any thing valuable in him, (as what is there so depraved, that hath not in it something worthy of preservation?) he, of those two learned men, who is amongst us, will doubtless be able to maintain and defend it' (p. 2). See Clayton, Some Remarks (Dublin, 1754), pp. 14 and 33, respectively. See first long quotation above. This would be An Essay towards an Answer . . . ( 1 7 5 3 ) . Berkeley is probably alluding to: A Friendly Conference, between Matter and Spirit, in the Characters of Somebody and Nobody: being a Compleat Illustration of a learned. . . treatise, entitled an Essay on Spirit (Dublin, 1752), and A Modern Preface [to the Essay] put into plain English by way of Abstract, for the use of the poor. And made plain to vulgar capacities (Dublin, 1752). This, and the first sentence, might refer to McDonnell's statement in his An Essay . . . , quoted above (note 6), or perhaps to a request in McDonnell's letter, that Berkeley also answer Clayton's Essay. McDonnell's comments run from pp. 20-1; Berkeley's letter is on p. 21.

12

Beckett and Berkeley'

It is tempting to connect Beckett and Berkeley. They studied and taught at the same university; both are recognized masters of a prose whose content still baffles and provokes. Berkeley was also the object of considerable literary interest in the 1930s in Ireland: in 1931 Yeats's enthusiastic Introduction to Bishop Berkeley, by Hone and Rossi, appeared; and in 1935 Padraic Colum wrote in the Dublin Magazine on 'George Berkeley and the Modern Artist'. More specifically, Beckett's tutor at Trinity College was the late A. A. Luce, the most eminent Berkeley scholar of the twentieth century. Nor, perhaps, should it be forgotten that Beckett's middle name is Barclay (which Berkeley sounds the same as, at least in Great Britain). Finally — to move beyond this catalogue of external parallels — Beckett is on record as comparing his viewpoint with that of Berkeley. Speaking with Lawrence E. Harvey about his sense of 'being absent' and 'existence by Proxy', he made an association between this feeling and the idealist philosophy of Berkeley. Perhaps it was an Irish thing, basically a skepticism before nature as given, complicated by a skepticism about the perceiving subject as well. Three works - Murphy (1938), Waiting for Godot (1954), and Film (1969) have been singled out by writers on Beckett for Berkeley glosses. But how Berkeleian are they? To answer this I propose to examine Beckett's explicit references to Berkeley; from this safe area I shall then comment on possible indirect allusions. That

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caution is warranted may be shown by the claim that Beckett 'largely inherited' his enthusiasm for Berkeley from his tutor A. A. Luce, a claim which must be dismissed, I think, since Beckett has asserted that he '. . . was not influenced by Luce's work on Berkeley.'' Consider the following from Murphy, Chapter six: Murphy's conception of mind 'did not involve Murphy in the idealist tar. There was the mental fact and there was the physical fact, equally real if not equally pleasant.' Berkeley's advocacy of tar-water in later life clearly identifies him as the target of this repudiation of idealism or immaterialism. Now there is a similar dismissal of Berkeley's idealism in the first act of Waiting for Godot, although I am not sure that commentators have seen it. Three lines after Lucky utters'... since the death of Bishop Berkeley being', he says: . . . in a word for reasons unknown no matter what matter the facts are there . .

These 'facts [that] are there' I take to be 'There was the mental fact and . . .'. The dismissive jest, which turns on a pun on 'matter', may have its source in Lord Byron's jibe: When Bishop Berkeley said 'there was no matter'. And proved it — 'twas no matter what he said. But Byron was not the originator of the jest. It has a good AngloIrish provenance in Oliver Goldsmith. In the first (but very littleknown) biographical essay on Berkeley, published in 1759/60, Goldsmith writes: ' . . . walking one day in one of the squares [in Trinity College], and intent upon something else he ran his nose against a post, which stunned him for some time; never mind it Doctor [Berkeley], says a Sophister who was by, there's no

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Matter in it'. 7 Beckett's dismissal of Berkeley's immaterialism is like Dr Johnson's - any kick will show that matter is a plain fact, although not so indignant. Earlier in Murphy there is another Berkeleian passage (p. 36), both less dismissive and less easy to interpret. Wylie mentions 'the young Fellow of Trinity College' which is taken up by Neary as follows: 'I don't wonder at Berkeley, ... He had no alternative. A defence mechanism. Immaterialize or bust. The sleep of sheer terror. Compare the opossum'. Immaterialism, it would seem, was Berkeley's way of protecting himself from certain of life's terrors. (This interpretation of immaterialism as a defence mechanism would fit in with the Logical Positivism which used psychoanalysis to explain the pathology of metaphysics.) But what is 'The sweated sinecure' which Berkeley was supposed to be suffering from? At first I thought it was a contradiction. Now I believe it stands for a Trinity College fellowship, which in Berkeley's day, and even in Beckett's, was won by an arduous examination; the successful candidate, however, was assured of free College rooms and commons for life. Here Beckett may have been identifying himself with Berkeley, who also abandoned teaching at Trinity ('the sleep of sheer terror'?). In Murphy and in Godot there are other passages which may be Berkeleian. But it is hard to pin these to Berkeley. Some sentences which sound Berkeleian, and have been glossed as such, are really most un-Berkeleian. One can deal with these in two ways: firstly, by reclassifying them as relating really to Malebranche or to Schopenhauer, say, philosophers doctrinally close to Berkeley, who are known to have interested Beckett. Secondly, one may suppose that Beckett did have Berkeley in mind, but that he intentionally (or unintentionally) misunderstood him. For example, in A Student's Guide to the Plays of Samuel Beckett, the authors provide a Berkeleian gloss for the following two lines in Godot': 'Do you think God sees me?' (p. 76) and 'At me someone is looking' (p. 91). The authors comment: 'According to Berkeley, that which is not perceived

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cannot be held to exist; God however perceives everything and thus ensures its existence'. But they interpret Berkeley wrongly; for he holds that God cannot perceive me, or any other person or mind. Minds can perceive only the passive sensations, such as blackish hair, smoothish flesh, which make up the 'bodies' that are concomitant with the persons or minds. A Malebranchean gloss would be more feasible. Consider, however, the opening sentence of Film: (Esse est per dpi \ Surely everyone knows that Berkeley said it. So Becke must have Berkeley in mind. Yet in Film Beckett once again portrays the self as perceived, which, according to Berkeley, it cannot be, by either God or finite minds. (See Principles, sect. 27.) We know minds, Berkeley holds, by an analogical inference; from intelligent sensations (effects) we infer an intelligent cause, that is, a mind. Consider also the third sentence of the 'script' for Film: 'Search of non-being in flight from extraneous perception breaking down in inescapability of self-perception'. This strikes me as Schopenhaurian rather than Berkeleian. On the other hand, Beckett may be wishing to apply to mind Berkeley's notion of the relativity and dependency of the sensible object. There is evidence in Murphy, in Godot and in Film to support this, and it is also in line with the quotation (above) from Lawrence Harvey. One way of briefly bringing out what Beckett may be doing in the un-Berkeleian but Berkeley-sounding lines is to see them against Yeats's view of Berkeley, the Berkeley who proved All things a dream That this pragmatical preposterous pig of a world, its farrow that so solid seem, Must vanish on the instant, if the mind but change its theme. l l Beckett, in short, goes further than Yeats's Berkeley; he casts down the imperious mind; it, too, becomes a 'pragmatical preposterous pig' which 'so solid seem[ed]'. Minds become dependent, vulnerable beings; they need the support and comfort of being perceived.

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Notes a. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8.

9.

10. 11.

This article was originally published in the Irish University Review (Samuel Beckett issue) 1984. Samuel Beckett: Poet and Critic (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1970), p. 247. See John Pilling, Samuel Beckett (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), p. 2; also see pp. 116—17. In a private note to the present writer, 26 May 1983. Murphy (London: Picador, 1973), p. 63. Waiting for Godot (2nd edn, London: Faber and Faber, 1965), p. 44. In the original French edition Beckett had: 'depuis la mort de Voltaire'. In the 1954 (Grove Press) edition he changed this to: 'since the death of Bishop Berkeley'; 'Samuel Johnson' replaced 'Bishop Berkeley' in the London edition, but 'Bishop Berkeley' reappeared in the 1965 edition. Don Juan, canto XI, i. See Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), edited by Arthur Friedman, vol. iii, p. 36. B. Fletcher, J. Fletcher, B. Smith and W. Bachem, A Student's Guide to the Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1978); see p. 70; also see p. 194. In fact, Berkeley never wrote (Esse estpercipi'\ the closest he ever came is in section 3 of his Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), where, of 'unthinking things', he says: 'Their esse is percipi.,.'. Film (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), p.l 1. Quoted in J. M. Hone and M. M. Rossi, Bishop Berkeley (London: Faber and Faber, 1931), p. 22.

INDEX

abstraction 10-12, 28-30, 43, 46, 48, 51, 105n20 active mind 14-15, 32, 51-2 aesthetics, Irish 153-4 air travel 182 Aldridge, A. O. 153 Alison, F. 156 ArbuckleJ. 106-7 asthma 215, 217 atheism 100-1, 107-8, 163-5 Aver, A. J. 37, 44 Bailyn, B. 160 -3 Baxter, A. 50 Beattie,J. 210, 214 n11 Bayle, P. 22 Beckett, S. 226f Bennett, J. 59f Berkeley, Mrs A. 2, 40, 186f Berkeley, Bp G. Alaphron 40-1, 48, 129, 153-5 Analyst 46-7 his Bermuda project 2, 193, 202f and luxury 191-2 and trade 191-2, 208-9 bibilography of 53-7 criticisms of his philosophy 49-52 De Motu 39 and Irish philosophy 82,97-102 early reception 177, 182f, 190, 209-10,213nll, as eidetic imager 6,8-10, 13 Essay of Vision 23-7, 40-1, 72, 132, 140-2, 178 influences on 22 and Ladies Library 160 his letters 2, 211-12, 217-19, 222-3 his life 16n5 his maxims 194-5

Passive Obedience 27-32, 190 Philosophical Commentaries 64, 71, 104 nn16, 17 Principles 27-32 Proposal 39 Querist 47 Siris 47-48, 196 his strategy 24, 42-44, 192-4 Berkeley, G., Jnr 48, 116, 136nl2, 187-8, 207-8 Berkeley, R., Rev. 187, 195, 200 n24 Berkeley, W. 189, 210 blasphemy 108 Blasters 108 blictri 83, 87, 110 blind man 86-7, 130, 138-9, 144, 146n2, 148nl3 Boswell,J. 211-12 Boyle, R. 72, 75nl4, 89 Bracken, H. M. 38, 179-83, 184 n8 Browne, Bp P. 23, 47, 79-80, 82, 85, 94, 97,99-101, 114, 159 his sensationalism, 94-96, 112, 130-1 Burbridge, D. 17nl2, 17nl3 Burke, E. 4, 23, 79-80, 126-7, 129-34, 137n24, 168, 116-17 Chambers, E. 147n9, 179-80, 184n8 Chesselden, W. 41 Clarke, DrH. 218 Clarke, S. 63, 200n21 Clayton, BpR. 1,23,79,82,109-12, 117, 212, 222-3, 133n8 Cloy Collier, A. 50, 178, 183n2, 183n3 Collins, A. 162 commonsense 38, 49-50 conspiracy theory 122-24, 134

232

Index

Cowper,W. 217 Curry, J. 133 Declaration of Independence 152, 156 deism, opposition to 42-43, 117 Descartes, R. 24, 34-5, 60-4, 69, 74 Devalera, E. 119, 136nl7, 172 Dodwell, H. 79, 96, 98 DrozJ. P. 113, 122 Duddy,T. 103nb Duncombe, J. 186-7, 197n3 Dunmore cave 9-11 Edwards, J. 152-4, 159-60 Ellis, J. 114-116, 127 135n9, 135-6nll Emlyn, T. 79, 84-85, 88, 97, 101 emotive words 32, 43-44, 130, 132, 137n26 emotive mysteries 45 Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment 81, 85, 100, 150—1, 171; see also Lockeanism Epicurus 23, 67, 73 epistemological rationa Erigena, J. S. 167, 169 experiment 3-4, 41, 68, 70, 86 J. Ferrier 4 Franklin, B. 157-8, 164 Fraser, A. C. 48 Galton, F. 4,5,7,12-15 George I, King 202-4 Gibson, BpE. 202, 205-7, 211 Gleig, G. 207-10, 213nll God 14-15, 26, 32-37, 43, 52, 62, 90-1, 180, 229 optic-language proof of 26, 102 Goldsmith, O. 132-3, 199nl2, 213n8 his Berkeley joke, 227-8 gravi Grote, G. 37 Grub -Stree Herschel, Major J. 6-7, 12 Hobbes, T. 4, 23, 60-61, 63-66, 73, 164

Hume, D. 4, 13, 23, 36-7, 114, 143, 165, 183n3, 213nll Hutcheson, F. 4, 23, 79, 107, 128-9, 137n23, 140, 144-5, 152-3, 170 Idealism 37-8, 226-7 ideolo Irish philosophy 79f causes of 117-25 recent work on 103nb, 173nlO imagination 32—3, 66 images 4-6, 9f, 51-52 eidetic 9, 17nl7 Irish philosophy, aesthetics 129-133 recent writing on 103nb typical 167, 226 James II, King 117-18, 121 James, W. 5, 12 Jefferson, T. 152 Johnson, Dr S. 202, 208-10, 228, 230n5 Johnson, S. (American) 27, 38, 44, 157-8, 188, 216 Johnson, W. S. 188, 194 Kant, I. 37 Kearney, R. 156 King, AbpW. 2, 23-4, 44, 82, 85, 88-91, 94, 98-9, 119-21, 133, 159 his pragm Ketchersyde, E. 187-8, 197n5, 201n27 Kippis, A Laird, J. 79 Leibniz, G. 140,142-3 Leland,T. 137n26 Leslie, C. 103nl0, 119 Locke, J. 4, 13, 23, 26, 28, 30, 33, 41, 44-6, 58-9, 60f, 72-4, 80, 99, 114, 138-9, 189 Lockeanism, left and see also Enlightenment and Counterenlightenment Luce, A. A. 2, 16n5, 22, 37, 48, 71, 136nll, 188, 197nl, 217, 226-7 Lucretius 23

233

Index Luria, A. R. 9, 17nl7 lying, theologically 163-5 Mace, W. 140, 143, 147n9, 148nlO Madison, J. 152 Malebranche, N. 22, 39, 63-4, 71, 225n6, 228-9 McDonnell, T. 111-12, 116, 136nI2, 222-3 matter 29-30, 62, 144, 189-90 contradictory 31-2, 51,61 meaningless 30, 32, 51, 61 Mill, J. S, 4, 37 Molesworth, R, 81, 106-7, 134nl Molesworth circle 106-7, 110, 128, 135n5, 152 Molyneux, W. 80-81, 146n2, 151-2, 158 Molyneux problem 23-27, 41, 87, 103nlO, 134,138-41 moon illusion 24-5, 42 motion 69-70 mysteries 87, 101, 147n2 negative theology 88, 92 Newman, Bp J. 167-9 Newton, I. 23, 34, 89 non-cognitive words 29 Norton, D, F. 156 number 145-6, 147n8 number forms 7-8 O'Conor, C. 133 Orrery, Ld 108, 133n8 220, 220-1 Oswald, J. 104nl7, 183 penal laws 118, 133 PepuschJ.G. 199nl2 Percival, J. 35, 43 Petrie, F, 6-10 Pitcher, G. 73-4 Plato 23, 28, 201n29 Pope, A. 84,120 Popper, K. 39 prejudices 193-4

primary-secondary qualities 29, 67—72, 89, 91, 189 Prior, T. 196, 201 n25, 205, 211, 216, 224nb Psychological philosophy 3-4 Reid, T. 37 representationalism 89-92, 97-8; see also revolut Rhode Island 192-5, 200n25, 211 Russell, B. 2-3 Ryle, G, 96 Skelton, P. 79, 112-13, 116-17, 122, 128, 136, 155 smell 145, 148nl3 Smith, Dr E. 161 smoking 216, 218 Spinoza, B. 22-3, 73, 83, 164 solipsism 34, 49 space and time 35 Steele, R. 39, 190 Stephen, L. 108-10 Stillingfleet, Bp E. 64-5, 75nlO Stock, Bp J. 187, 213n6 substance 58-61, 65-7, 144 Swift, J. 39, 80, 100, 105nl8, 122, 125-6, 134, 148nl3, 169, 190-1 synaesthesia 130, 148nl3 Synge, Abp E. 79, 85-7, 94, 97, 100, 116, 136nl3, 139, 140 Synge, Bp E. 107 tar-water 2, 47-48, 186, 195-6, 200n25, 215f, 224n3, 227 theological representationalism 44, 88, 96, 111-16, 124-5, 168 Thompson, W. 112, 116, 127, 136n12 Tipton, I. 38, 200n25, Toland, J. 2, 23, 44, 82-7, 96-7, 106, 110, 118, 119, 122-4, 168-9, 172n6 Touchstone

177-183

Trench Trinity College, Dublin 96, 103n2, 111-12, 119, 131, 161, 181, 189, 200n24, 226

234

Index

Turbayne, C. M. 38 typical mind fallacy 11-13 Tyrconnell, Earl of 118, 121 veil-of-perception 59, 60, 63-6, 70; see also representationalism visual language 41-2

Walpole, SirR. 191,205-6 Ward, W. 215f, 224nb Warnock, G. 38 Wecter, D. 131-2 West, G. 221 Wild,J. 48, 136nll Wilks, W. 107-8

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