The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 11 (of 12)Hazlitt, William
Philosophy
The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 11 (of 12)
Hazlitt, William
English essays -- 19th century
‘It is evident,’ says Bishop Berkeley, ‘to any one who takes a survey of
the objects of Human Knowledge, that they are either ideas actually
imprinted on the senses, or else such as are perceived by attending to
the passions and operations of the mind, or, lastly, ideas formed by
help of memory and imagination; either compounding, dividing, or barely
representing those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways. By sight
I have the ideas of light and colours, with their several degrees and
variations. By touch I perceive hard and soft, heat and cold, motion and
resistance, &c. and of all these more and less, either as to quantity or
degree. Smelling furnishes me with odours: the palate with tastes; and
hearing conveys sounds to the mind in all their variety of tone and
composition. And as several of these are observed to accompany each
other, they come to be marked by one name, and so to be reputed as one
thing. Thus, for example, a certain colour, taste, smell, figure, and
consistence, having been observed to go together, are accounted one
distinct thing, signified by the name _apple_. Other collections of
ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book, and the like sensible things;
which, as they are pleasing or disagreeable, excite the passions of
love, hatred, joy, grief, &c.
‘2. But besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of
knowledge, there is likewise something which knows and perceives them,
and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining, remembering, &c.
about them. This perceiving, active being is what I call _mind_,
_spirit_, _soul_, or _myself_. By which words I do not denote any one of
my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist,
or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived, for the
existence of an idea consists in being perceived.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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