A new theory of vision : and other writings / [George] Berkeley ; introduction by A. D. Linsay.

  • George Berkeley
Date:
[1910]
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Credit: A new theory of vision : and other writings / [George] Berkeley ; introduction by A. D. Linsay. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    spirit is an active being, whose existence consists not in being perceived, but in perceiving ideas and thinking. It is therefore necessary, in order to prevent equivocation^ and confounding natures perfectly disagreeing and unlike, that we distinguish between spirit and idea. See Sect. XXVII.] CXL. Our idea of spirit.—[In a large sense indeed, we may be said to have an idea, or rather a notion of spirit^ that is, (i) we understand the meaning of the word, otherwise we could not affirm or deny any thing of it. Moreover, (2) as we conceive the ideas that are in the minds of other spirits by means of our own, which we suppose to be resemblances of them: so we know other spirits by means of our own soul, which in that sense is the image or idea of them, it having a like respect to other spirits, that blueness or heat by me perceived hath to those ideas perceived by another.] ^ CXLI. The natural immortality of the soul is a neces- sary consequence of the foregoing doctrine.^—[It must not be supposed, that they who assert the natural immortality of the soul are of opinion that it is absolutely incapable of annihilation, even by the infinite power of the Creator who first gave it being : but only that it is not liable to be broken or dissolved by the ordinary laws of nature or motion.^ They, indeed, who hold the soul of man to be only a thin vital flame, or system of animal spirits, make it perishing and corruptible as the body, since there is nothing more easily dissipated than such a being, which it is naturally impossible should survive the ruin of the tabernacle wherein it is enclosed. And this notion hath been greedily embraced and cherished by the worst part of mankind, as the most effectual antidote against all impressions of virtue and religion. But it hath been made evident, that bodies, of what frame or texture soever, are barely passive ideas in the mind, which is more distant and heterogeneous from 1 Vide Reid on the Intellectual Powers. Essay ii. ch, x. sect. 13. —Edit. 1843. 2 But before we attempt to prove that, it is fit that we explain the meaning of that tenet.—Original edition.