Theory of Knowledge.% (a) %Berkeley%.George Berkeley, a native of Ireland, Bishop of Cloyne (1685-1753; An Essay toward a New Theory of Vision, 1709; A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710; Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, 1713; Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher, 1732, against the freethinkers; Works, 1784.

From this point Berkeley advances a step further, the last, indeed, which was possible in this direction, by bringing into question the possibility even of abstract ideas.

[Footnote 1: Cf. also Fraser's Berkeley (Blackwood's Philosophical Classics) 1881; Eraser's Selections from Berkeley, 4th ed., 1891; and Krauth's edition of the Principles, 1874, with notes from several sources, especially those translated from Ueberweg.

[Footnote 1: Cf. also Fraser's Berkeley (Blackwood's Philosophical Classics) 1881; Eraser's Selections from Berkeley, 4th ed., 1891; and Krauth's edition of the Principles, 1874, with notes from several sources, especially those translated from Ueberweg.

Berkeley looks on the refutation of these two fundamental mistakesthe assumption of general ideas in the mind, and the belief in the existence of a material world outside itas his life work, holding them the chief sources of atheism, doubt, and philosophical discord.

The pantheistic conclusion of these principles, in the sense of Geulincx and Malebranche, which one expects, was really suggested by Berkeley.

In the philosophy of nature Berkeley prefers the teleological to the mechanical view, since the latter is able to discover the laws of phenomena only, but not their efficient and final causes.

[Footnote 1: The example of Arthur Collier shows that the same results which Berkeley reaches empirically can be obtained from the standpoint of rationalism.

Following Malebranche, and developing further the idealistic tendencies of the latter, Collier had, independently of Berkeley, conceived the doctrine of the "non-existence or impossibility of an external world "; but had not worked it out in his Clavis Universalis, 1713, until after the appearance of Berkeley's chief work, and not without consideration of this.

In contrast to the fearlessness with which Berkeley propounds his spiritualism, his anxious endeavors to take away the appearance of paradox from his immaterialistic doctrine, and to show its complete agreement with common sense, excite surprise.

Here Berkeley cannot be acquitted of a certain sophistical play upon the term "idea," which, in fact, is ambiguous.

The reality of an idea in us is different from the idea of a real thing, or from the reality of that which is perceived without us by means of the idea, and it is just this last meaning which common sense affirms and Berkeley denies.

Both of these agree with Berkeley that spiritual beings alone are active, and active beings alone real, and that the being of the inactive consists in their being perceived.

But while in Berkeley the objective ideas are impressed upon finite spirits by the Infinite Spirit from without and singly, with Leibnitz they appear as a fullness of germs, which God implanted together in the monads at the beginning, and which the individual develops into consciousness, and with Fichte they become the unconscious productions of the Absolute Ego acting in the individual egos.

In several respects he does not go so far as Berkeley, in others very much farther.

In agreement with Berkeley's ultra-nominalism, which combats even the possibility of abstract ideas, he yet does not follow him to the extent of denying external reality.

The points in Locke's philosophy which seemed to Hume to need completion were different from those at which Berkeley had struck in.

Lord Camden, when pressed by Dr. Berkeley (the Bishop's son) to appoint a Scotchman to some office, replied: 'I have many years ago sworn that I never will introduce a Scotchman into any office; for if you introduce one he will contrive some way or other to introduce forty more cousins or friends.' G. M. Berkeley's Poems, p. ccclxxi.

Lord Camden, when pressed by Dr. Berkeley (the Bishop's son) to appoint a Scotchman to some office, replied: 'I have many years ago sworn that I never will introduce a Scotchman into any office; for if you introduce one he will contrive some way or other to introduce forty more cousins or friends.' G. M. Berkeley's Poems, p. ccclxxi.

By Claire Huchet Bishop, illustrator: Berkeley Williams, Jr.

Bath (Berkeley Springs): Washington's land at, 28; Patty Custis taken to, 223.

Some (e.g. Berkeley, Hume, Ferrier, &c.), usually called Idealists, maintain not merely that all we can possibly know of anything is the manner in which it affects the human faculties, but that there is nothing else to be known; that affections of human or of other minds are all that we can know to existthat the difference between the ego and the non-ego is only a formal distinction between two aspects of the same reality.

TANNER, SLINGSBY, 1046, Mount Street, Berkeley Square, London.

WARNER & SONS, Newgate Street, E.C. WATKINS, REV. H. G., Lilliput Hill, Parkstone, Dorset. WATNEY, VERNON J., Berkeley Square, London.

No. 6 (Berkeley, September, 1907), pp.