The Works of George Berkeley. Vol. 1 of 4: Philosophical Works, 1705-21 — John Shaqi
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
Soul of the Universe; as you and I are the living souls that keep our
bodies and their organs in significant motion. We can interpret the
character of God in the history of the universe, even as we can interpret
the character of our neighbour by observing his words and outward actions.
This overwhelmed Alciphron. “You stare to find that God is not far from
any one of us, and that in Him we live and move and have our being,”
rejoins Euphranor. “You who, in the beginning of this conference, thought
it strange that God should leave Himself without a witness, do now think
it strange the witness should be so full and clear.” “I must own I do,”
was the reply. “I never imagined it could be pretended that we saw God
with our fleshly eyes, as plain as we see any human person whatsoever, and
that He daily speaks to our senses in a manifest and clear dialect.”
Although this reasoning satisfied Alciphron, others may think it
inconclusive. How one is able to discover the existence of other persons,
and even the meaning of finite personality, are themselves questions full
of speculative difficulty. But, waiving this, the analogy between the
relation of a human spirit to its body, and that of the Omnipresent and
Omnipotent Spirit to the Universe of things and persons, fails in several
respects. God is supposed to be continually creating the world by constant
and continuous Providence, and His Omniscience is supposed to comprehend
all its concrete relations: a man’s body is not absolutely dependent on
the man’s own power and providence; and even his scientific knowledge of
it, in itself and in its relations, is scanty and imperfect, as his power
over it is limited and conditioned. Then the little that a man gradually
learns of what is going on in the surrounding universe is dependent on his
senses: Omniscience comprehends Immensity and Eternity (so we suppose) in
a single intuition. Our bodies, moreover, are visible things: the
universe, this organism of God, is crowded with _persons_, to whom there
is nothing corresponding within the organism which reveals one man to
another.
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