The Works of George Berkeley. Vol. 1 of 4: Philosophical Works, 1705-21Berkeley, George
Philosophy
The Works of George Berkeley. Vol. 1 of 4: Philosophical Works, 1705-21
Berkeley, George
Philosophy -- Early works to 1800
Berkeley, that many of those which appear to us at present to be
instantaneous and primitive, can yet be shewn to be acquired; that most of
the adult perceptions of sight are founded on the previous information of
touch; that colour can give us no conception originally of those qualities
of bodies which produce it in us; and that primary vision gives us no
notion of distance, and, as I believe, no notion of magnitude.” Sir James
Mackintosh, in his _Dissertation_, characterises the _New Theory of
Vision_ as “a great discovery in Mental Philosophy.” “Nothing in the
compass of inductive reasoning,” remarks Sir William Hamilton (Reid’s
_Works_, p. 182, note), “appears more satisfactory than Berkeley’s
demonstration of the necessity and manner of our learning, by a slow
process of observation and comparison alone, the connexion between the
perceptions of vision and touch, and, in general, all that relates to the
distance and magnitude of external things(281).”
The New Theory of Vision has in short been generally accepted, so far as
it was understood, alike by the followers of Hartley and by the associates
and successors of Reid. Among British psychologists, it has recommended
itself to rationalists and sensationalists, to the advocates of innate
principles, and to those who would explain by accidental association what
their opponents attribute to reason originally latent in man. But this
wide conscious assent is I think chiefly confined to the proposition that
distance is invisible, and hardly reaches the deeper implicates of the
theory, on its extension to all the senses, leading to a perception of the
final unity of the natural and the supernatural, and the ultimate
spirituality of the universe(282).
Dedication
TO THE RT. HON. SIR JOHN PERCIVALE, BART.(283),
ONE OF HER MAJESTY’S MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNCIL
IN THE KINGDOM OF IRELAND.
Sir,
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