BERKELEY AND EFFICIENT CAUSALITY

Paul Gerard Horrigan, Ph.D., 2019.

The foundational error of the empirical idealist1 immaterialism of George Berkeley

(1685-1753) lies in its acceptance of Locke’s immanentism wherein ‘ideas’ are the immediate

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In his critique of Berkeley’s idealism founded upon the principle of immanence, R. P. Phillips writes in the second
volume of his Modern Thomistic Philosophy: “…the principle ‘esse est percipi’ would lead us to deny reality to
spirit to the same extent as we do to body, and even to a greater extent, since what we directly sense is body,
whereas we know spirit indirectly, and by means of our knowledge of bodies (Berkeley’s theory is discussed at
length by Dr. Coffey in his Epistemology, Longmans, London, 1917, vol. II, pp. 109-124, where the inconsistency of
denying reality to the material, and allowing it to the spiritual world is clearly pointed out.)…we cannot maintain
that the only realities in the real trans-subjective world are spirits, but must affirm also the reality, and existence on
their own account, of bodies or materially extended things; for the same arguments which would lead us to exclude
bodies from reality would also lead us to exclude spirits from it.
“The mention of the principle ‘esse est percipi’ leads us to examine its truth. It is indeed, as Professor Moore
points out (G. E. MOORE, The Refutation of Idealism, in Philosophical Studies, Kegan Paul, London, 1922), the
fundamental principle of Idealism, and if it is found not to be true, in the sense in which it is used by Idealists, we
shall have a negative proof of the reality of the trans-subjective world. If the basic principle on which the denial of
the existence of an extra-mental world rests is not valid, the denial itself will not be able to be maintained, and with
no rival left in the field, the realist view, based as it is on reason and supported by common sense, cannot fail to be
adopted.
“The principle of immanence, of which ‘esse est percipi’ is one formula, has always been, and still is, the chief
support of the Idealistic contention that there can be no reality outside the mind. It has naturally received many other
formulations. Berkeley applied his – ‘esse est percipi’ – only to the world of sensible things; and argued that since
what the sense knows is its own sensations, and such sensations can evidently not exist except when we are sensing
or perceiving them, nothing which we know by the senses can exist except in so far as it is being perceived; i.e., its
existence is constituted by its being perceived. He regarded this as a self-evident truth and writes: ‘Some truths there
are so near and obvious to the mind, that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one
to be, to wit, that all the choir of heaven and furniture of earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty
frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind, that their being (esse) is to be perceived or known.’(G.
BERKELEY, Principles of Human Knowledge, Sec. VI.). The reason why he finds it so obvious is given in the
preceding paragraph (no. IV). ‘What are the forementioned objects’ (i.e. all bodies or ‘sensible objects’), ‘but the
things we perceive by sense, and what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations; and is it not plainly
repugnant that any one of these or any combination of them should exist unperceived?’(Italics are Berkeley’s).
“The notion contained in this passage may be put in a generalized form by saying: Perception, since it is a fact of
consciousness, cannot have any contact with what is outside the consciousness, and so knowledge of ‘the thing in
itself’ is a contradiction in terms. Or again: Perception is consciousness, and consciousness is knowledge of that
which is internal, and it is therefore contradictory to pretend to grasp through perception any external thing.
“It is claimed that there is no escape from this objection, and that it is a principle which, if once grasped, will
never be abandoned.
“Now there is a sense in which these and similar statements are true, and indeed truisms, but this is not the sense
in which the Idealists mean them to be taken. For to take them to mean ‘we can only think thoughts’ is a
commonplace which leads us nowhere, unless we interpret it as meaning ‘nothing but thoughts can exist.’ In this
case we should be forced to conclude that our thoughts are indeed ‘without content’ and so ‘empty,’ as Kant says.
Happily we are not in this state of intellectual aridity, since, in fact, there is ambiguity in all the terms used in
arriving at the principle of immanence. Thus those who argue: ‘no idea is capable of existing apart from a mind, but
every known entity is an idea, therefore no known entity can exist apart from a mind,’ are using the term idea in two
senses. In the major it is taken to express a mental state; in the minor, an object of thought. If this distinction is
introduced into the argument we see at once that though we can agree that no mental state is capable of existing
apart from the mind we cannot allow that no object of thought is so, since this is precisely the proposition which the
Idealist is trying to prove; and he does so by introducing it surreptitiously under the cloak of a truism. In fact all the

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object of our knowledge (a methodological denial of gnoseological transcendence which will
lead, as the history of modern and contemporary philosophy has tragically shown us, to the
denial of ontological transcendence e.g., Humean and Kantian agnosticism, Feuerbach’s,
Nietzsche’s and Sartre’s open, militant atheism. For a history of this tragic outcome grounded in
the principle of immanence, consult Cornelio Fabro’s monumental thousand-page masterpiece,
God in Exile: Modern Atheism, translated into English by Arthur Gibson from the original Italian
first edition with the title Introduzione all’ateismo moderno, and published by Newman Press,
Westminster, Maryland, in 1968). In spite of his spiritual realism of intention, Berkeley’s
gnoseological method is definitely not realist but firmly rooted in the principle of immanence.
“Berkeley’s own position grew out of an attempt to describe experience from the accepted
starting point in the mind, having its own ideas as its direct objects…Berkeley did not challenge
the accepted mentalistic starting point of philosophical inquiry.”2 “La teoria gnoseologica di
Berkeley è estremamente radicale…l’unica realtà che è oggetto immediato della nostra
conoscenza sono le idee. Berkeley sopprime le cose reali come termine dell’atto di conoscere, e

formulae of the principle of immanence can be taken in two senses, of which one is a truism, the other an absurdity.
The truism is: we can only know that objects exist when they are known; the absurdity, we know that objects cannot
exist except when they are known. So the principle: ‘only what is known to me, or is in my consciousness, can
exist,’ is a confusion of these two propositions, the absurdity being accepted for the sake of the truism. In general all
the terms which refer to knowledge, viz., thought, idea, judgement, and above all consciousness or experience, are
ambiguous, being in the first place applicable to mental acts, and then by metonymy, i.e. the transference of the
name, applied to the objects of these acts. Such a procedure is clearly sophistical; and moreover we have no right to
identify knowledge and consciousness, for though consciousness always accompanies knowledge it in no way
follows that all knowledge is consciousness. What we can assert is that when I know, I know that I know, which is a
wholly different proposition from: when I know, I know only myself. Thus, to the assertion: ‘all cognition is
internal,’ we reply: entitatively, as a kind of being, viz., a state of mind, I concede: intentionally, i.e. in its direction
and activity, I deny.
“As Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. points out (Dieu, son existence et sa nature, Beauchesne, Paris, 1928, p. 135), the
idealist conception of ideas is entirely spatial and materialistic; for the Idealists think of them as if they were
portraits or statues, situated in space, and so capable of being considered as objects. St. Thomas, on the contrary,
shows us that the idea, or mental presence of the object in the mind, is a living quality, which, being immaterial, is
not enclosed and complete in itself, as a photograph is, but is essentially relative to something other than itself. It is,
as it were, transparent, so that the mind does not know the idea, but the object through it, and by its means. This
relativity constitutes its very nature, for without it, it becomes unintelligible. An idea which is an idea of nothing is
not an idea.
“Though novelty has been claimed for the principle of immanence, so that it was regarded by Idealists as the
great discovery and crowning achievement of modern philosophy, in fact it is no new notion, for we find it put
forward and refuted by St. Thomas when he asks whether ideas are ‘what we know.’ In the first objection in this
article (Summa Theologiae, I, 85, a. 2) it says that whatever is actually understood must be in the subject which
understands. Now in this subject there is nothing but ideas, and no extra-mental realities, so that we must conclude
that we can only know our own ideas. Aquinas replies that those things which are actually understood need not
necessarily be present in the knowing subject themselves, they may be present in a species or form abstracted from
themselves, which is identical with them in nature, though differing from them in its mode of being. Thus, though
extra-mental realities cannot be present in the knowing subject in themselves, they can be there by means of their
forms or natures which are called the intentional species, and which, being intentional, i.e. relative to the extra-
mental reality, essentially lead to knowledge of it, and not of themselves; as a telescope is relative to the stars which
it makes visible, enabling one to see them, and not the telescope itself.
“The principle of immanence, then, far from being self-evident and axiomatic is really false in the only sense in
which it could be useful as a foundation of Idealism”(R. P. PHILLIPS, Modern Thomistic Philosophy, vol. 2, The
Newman Bookshop, Westminster, MD, 1935, pp. 59-63).
2
J. D. COLLINS, A History of Modern European Philosophy, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1961, p. 368.

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il loro posto viene occupato dalle idee.”3 “Sulla traccia del pensiero di Cartesio e di Locke,
Berkeley afferma che l’unico oggetto dell’umana conoscenza è costituito dalle idee. Queste sono
«o idee impresse presentemente nei sensi, o quali sono state percepite ponendo attenzione alle
passioni e operazioni della mente, o infine idee formate con l’aiuto della memoria e
dell’imaginazione».”4 Although he repeatedly critiques his empiricist predecessor John Locke
(1632-1704) on abstract ideas (Locke is too conceptualist for the radical nominalist Berkeley,
who denies abstract ideas, and says his predecessor’s empiricism suffers from inconsistencies, is
not thoroughly empiricist) and the objectivity of primary qualities (for the philosopher of
immaterialism both secondary and primary qualites are subjective), the foundation of Berkeley’s
immanentistic esse est percipi is none other than Locke’s gnoseological immanentism. “Insieme
a Locke, Berkeley sostiene che la nostra conoscenza è conoscenza di idee e non di fatti. Quindi,
gli oggetti della nostra conoscenza sono idee.”5 “For Locke the idea is the immediate object of
perception, of thought and of the intellect.6 If we know only the ideas, we are not capable of
knowing if these ideas are similar or not to the things themselves.”7 Locke’s adherence to the
principle of immanence is clear from his Essay where he explicitly states that “since the mind, in
all its thoughts and reasonings, hath no other immediate object but its own ideas, which it alone
does or can contemplate, it is evident that our knowledge is only conversant about them.
Knowledge, then, seems to me to be nothing but the perception of the connection of and
agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our ideas. In this alone it consists.”8 Juan
José Sanguineti notes that “if the mind initially were not to comprehend anything outside of its
own ideas, or if the primary object of the intelligence were the idea and not the reality through
the idea, then reality could never be reached, not even with a pretended reasoning based on
causality. In fact, both causality and those real beings that would cause the ideas cannot be
thought of without concepts, and then the circle of thought would be closed within itself.”9
Alejandro Llano notes that “the denial of the extra-subjective scope of our knowledge of
qualities completely compromises gnoseological realism since intellectual knowledge starts, in
the final analysis, from the grasping of proper sensibles…The external senses immediately know
their object as something trans-subjective: this is unquestionably evident. Immediately, and
without hesitation, we know that the known is something real and distinct from our knowledge.
External sense knowledge is the intuition of an object which is physically present, without the
mediation of an expressed species. Like all knowing faculties, the external senses are active;
however they are not productive of their objects but – in this respect – receptive: they produce
their object neither according to its matter nor according to its form, nor according to its presence
(as the different idealisms would have us believe), but rather know their object in its objective
reality. They produce only their own proper cognitive action, which is a praxis by which they

3
M. FAZIO and D. GAMARRA, Introduzione alla storia della filosofia moderna, Apollinare Studi, Rome, 1994, p.
172.
4
P. DE VECCHI and F. SACCHI, Compendio di storia della filosofia, vol. 2, Bignami, Milan, 1974, p. 173. Cf. M.
FRASCHINI, Filosofia 2 dall’Umanesimo a Kant, Mursia, Milan, 1992, p. 113.
5
G. REALE and D. ANTISERI, Storia della filosofia, vol. 2, La Scuola, Brescia, 1997, p. 436.
6
Cf. J. LOCKE, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, 2, 8.
7
J. J. SANGUINETI, Logic and Gnoseology, Urbaniana University Press, Rome, 1987, p. 160.
8
J. LOCKE, op. cit., vol. 2, book 4, ch. 1, p. 167.
9
J. J. SANGUINETI, op. cit., p. 227.

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attain their proper object. And this complete trans-subjectivity of sense objects is not only
apparent, but real, true.10”11

Berkeley’s foundational error rooted in the principle of immanence affects his ‘spiritual
realist’ views on efficient causality, making them inconsistent, and will logically lead to his
empiricist successor David Hume’s (1711-1776), subjectivist, sceptical, phenomenalist denial of
the affirmation that objective efficient causality actually operates in the external, extra-mental
world of real things or beings. Berkeley’s system of empirical idealist immaterialism involves a
less extreme form of occasionalism than the rationalist Nicolas Malebranche’s, namely, the
affirmation that there is no efficient causality operating among the material, corporeal universe
of things or beings in the universe. For Berkeley, the universe of things that we sensibly perceive
can be but a system of ideas which are symbols and occasions of the activities of finite spirits
and the Infinite Spirit. For Berkeley, corporeal material things are not efficient causes since they
are only collections of ideas; only finite spirits and the Infinite Spirit can be efficient causes.
Berkeley’s acceptance of Locke’s empiricist formulation of the principle of immanence, that of
‘ideas’ being the immediate object of our knowledge, locks him up in a prison of ‘ideas’12 and
the logical outcome of his acceptance of the principle of immanence is not objectivist spiritual
realism but Hume’s agnostic and sceptical pan-phenomenalism. James Daniel Collins explains
that, for Berkeley, the world of bodies (collections of ideas) “is an inert world of effects,
containing no intrinsic, causal power. Natural laws are neither causal nor necessary.13 They are
not causal, since their content is restricted to ‘corporeal motions,’ i.e., to the ideas of motions.
But even ideas of motions must submit to the general law that all ideas are inert, inactive objects
of perception. One idea may follow regularly upon another, so that in an accommodated sense
one may speak of the sequence as being one of natural cause and effect. But philosophically
regarded, this sequence of ideas expresses only the relation between sign and thing signified.
Hence there is no intrinsic, necessary connection between prior and subsequent things, in the
series of natural events.

“Berkeley was willing to concede to Malebranche that the sign or prior event may be
called an ‘occasional cause,’ but it receives this name, only because it determines our mental
expectation of the event that regularly follows it. Because our practical expectations depend upon
the sequence of ideas of sense, God communicates these ideas to our minds according to a settled
pattern, called the order of nature. Having deprived the Newtonian world of its autonomy and
causal efficacy, Berkeley was now ready to defend its regularity. The stability of the order of
nature consists entirely in the regular way God follows, in giving ideas to finite minds. The only
kind of necessity attributable to natural laws is this derived necessity, imparted by God’s
customary action. And since the order of nature is intended as an aid to our practical planning,

10
Cf. J. GREDT, Unsere Aussenwelt. Eine Untersuchung über den gegenständliche Wert der Sinneserkenntnis,
Tyrolia, Innsbruck, 1921, pp. 165-184.
11
A. LLANO, Gnoseology, Sinag-Tala, Manila, 2001, p. 77.
12
For a defense of methodical realism against the principle of immanence, varieties of immanentism, and forms of
mediate ‘realism,’ see: É. GILSON, Methodical Realism, Christendom Press, Front Royal, VA, 1990 (Ignatius Press
of San Francisco has published a new edition of the book and is currently available) ; É. GILSON, Thomist Realism
and the Critique of Knowledge, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1986 (Ignatius Press has republished the book and is
currently available).
13
G. BERKELEY, The Principles of Human Knowledge, I, 30-32, 62-66, 150 (Works, II, 53-54, 67-70, 109); Three
Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, III (Works, II, 230-231); Siris, 254 (Works, V, 120-121).

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scientific laws have a utilitarian import for Berkeley: they are sufficiently probable to serve the
purposes of human foresight and conduct. Berkeley followed Malebranche in making this
appraisal of natural science, but he did not limit causal power to God. Having made no critical
examination of cause as such or of its transcendental application to God, he was untroubled
about the causal power of finite minds over their own ideas or about the stability of the natural
order. But Berkeley’s principles cut much deeper than he realized. For, they led him to strip
sensible things of all real causal power and to reduce our conviction in natural causation to a
subjective, probable expectation, aroused by custom and practical needs. These consequences led
Hume to remark that, from Berkeley, one may glean ‘the best lessons of scepticism…That all his
arguments, though otherwise intended, are, in reality, merely sceptical, appears from this, that
they admit of no answer and produce no conviction.’14 Although there is some elegant satire
behind this comment, it does convey accurately the actual effect which a reading of Berkeley’s
account of the order of nature and natural causation had upon the young Hume.”15

Berkeley denied that objective efficient causality truly operates among the extra-mental,
corporeal things in an external world, since, for him, matter does not exist and that what we
experience as sensible things are in fact collections of perceived ideas and only immaterial spirits
that perceive these ideas exercise efficient causality. For Berkeley, sensible things, which are
reduced to collections of ideas, whose esse is percipi, are efficiently caused by the infinite
immaterial Mind or Spirit, God. For Berkeley, the sensible things that we perceive, which are
reducible to collections of ideas, are effects of a cause external to finite immaterial spirits (the
human person for Berkeley), their efficient cause being the infinite immaterial Spirit or Mind,
God. A. A. Luce writes that, for Berkeley, “there are no material or unthinking causes; the only
true causes are spirits or minds; God is the sole cause of change in nature; you and I have a
derived and limited power of the cause. ‘Nature’ is an ordered system of effects which are not
true causes; in virtue, however, of the order, the regularity, and the uniformity of natural events,
one effect serves as a sign of another effect with which it is customarily conjoined…All sensible
things are passive effects, entirely devoid of passive of causal activity of their own…Berkeley’s
contention is that nature is an ordered scene of passive realities moved by an agency not their
own, and is not a collection of animated objects able to act and cause…The faculty of the
imagination furnishes Berkeley’s proof of finite causality…‘I find I can excite ideas in my mind
at pleasure, and vary and shift the scene as oft as I think fit. ’Tis no more than willing, and
straightway this or that idea arises in my fancy: and by the same power it is obliterated, and
makes way for another. This making and unmaking of ideas doth very properly denominate the
mind active.’…I imagine; therefore I act. I act; therefore I cause...Now for the contrast. With my
activity in fancying compare my passivity in sensing; with my few little brief idea-images
compare the vast system of idea-things; my imaginings are active; my sense perception is in
large measure reception. Ideas of the imagination prove my activity, for I am their cause, and I
know it; ideas of sense prove the activity of God; for I am not their cause, and He is. For ‘when
in broad daylight I open my eyes, ’tis not in my power to choose whether I shall see or no, or to
determine what particular objects shall present themselves to my view; and so likewise as to the
hearing and other senses, the ideas imprinted on them are not creatures of my will. There is
therefore some other will or spirit that produces them.’”16

14
D. HUME, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, XII, 2 (Selby-Bigge edition, 155, n. 1).
15
J. D. COLLINS, op. cit., pp. 398-399.
16
A. A. LUCE, Berkeley’s Immaterialism, Thomas Nelson and Sons, London, 1945, pp. 91, 93, 95, 99-101.

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Alexander Campbell Fraser explains that, for Berkeley, as material substances are merely
bundles of qualities, so ‘causes’ among these material substances reduced to bundles of qualities
“are only natural signs of coming changes. My habitual observation of apples enables me to
forsee the taste of an apple before I eat it. Experience of the motions of heavenly bodies, those
huge material substances, enables science to forecast the times of sunrise and sunset centuries in
advance.”17 “Nella concezione immaterialistica di Berkeley, la scienza diventa necessariamente
una pura e semplice descrizione e misurazione dei fenomeni. Infatti i fenomeni, sostiene
Berkeley, possono essere spiegati anche senza l’ipotesi della materia. «I fenomeni naturali sono
solo apparenze naturali. Essi sono, quindi, quali li vediamo e percepiamo. La loro natura reale e
la loro natura oggettiva è quindi la stessa: passiva senza niente di attivo». Ma se l’unione dei
fenomeni non è determinata dalle sostanze, scompaiono nel mondo della scienza i caratteri della
sostanzialità, dell’assolutezza, della necessità, e insieme con essi anche il nesso di causalità.
Infatti le leggi della natura, ossia i rapporti costanti tra le idee, sono contingenti e poste dalla
libera volontà divina, senza alcuna necessità razionale, e sono pure connessioni empiriche di
successione, e non connessioni di causa ed effetto.”18 “Berkeley mirava in tal modo a contestare
l’intera impostazione dell’analisi matematica della natura, per rifugiarsi in una metafisica
dell’ineffabile. Ogni articolazione razionale o intellettuale dell’esperienza è distrutta; attraverso i
dati dei quinque sensi (essi soli concreti, individuali, carichi di significato) ci è comunicata la
vivente presenza di Dio. Da questo punto di vista, ciò che i matematici, gli studiosi di ottica, gli
astronomi, definiscono ‘leggi di natura,’ appaiono semplici collezioni di fenomeni, dei quali noi
dobbiamo limitarci a registrare la regolare sequenza e continuità. Le scienze esatte (e la critica
riguarda particolarmente le leggi, gli assiomi e le definizioni che Newton aveva posto alla base
dei suoi trattati) debbono deporre ogni pretesa di necessità e universalità. Esse sono
semplicemente descrittive; esprimono relazioni di fatto, non rigorosi nessi di causalità; giovano
soltanto a farci prevedere eventi futuri, per inferenza dagli eventi passati. Alla luce dell’esse est
percipi la somma regolarità e razionalità del cosmo newtoniano, opera di un «Dio geometra», si
discioglieva nell’arcano arbitrio di un Dio imperscrutabile.”19

Copleston describes Berkeley’s position on efficient causality as follows: “Berkeley gives

an empiricist or phenomenalistic analysis of the causal relation as far as the activity of sensible
things is concerned. In fact, we cannot properly speak of them as active causes at all. If B
regularly follows A in such a way that, given A, B follows and that, in the absence of A, B does
not occur, we speak of A as cause and of B as effect. But this does not mean that A acts
efficiently in the production of B. The latter follows the former according to the disposition of
God. Ideas, being ideas, are passive and cannot, properly speaking, exercise efficient causality.
The occurrence of A is the sign of the occurrence of B. ‘The connexion of ideas does not imply
the relation of cause and effect, but only of a mark or sign with the thing signified. The fire
which I see is not the cause of the pain I suffer upon my approaching it, but the mark that
forewarns me of it.’20

17
A. C. FRASER, Berkeley and Spiritual Realism, Archibald Constable and Co., London, 1908, pp. 22-23.
18
P. DE VECCHI and F. SACCHI, op. cit., pp. 176-177.
19
P. CASINI, George Berkeley, in Storia della filosofia, vol. 8 (La filosofia moderna / il Settecento), diretta da
Mario dal Pra, Vallardi, Milan, 1975, pp. 51-52.
20
G. BERKELEY, The Principles of Human Knowledge, I, 65; II, p. 69.

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“There are, therefore, as one would expect, two elements in Berkeley’s analysis of the
causal relation as far as sensible things are concerned. There is first the empiricist element. All
we observe is regular sequence. There is secondly a metaphysical element. A is a God-given
prophetic sign of B; and the whole system of Nature is a system of signs, a visual divine
language, speaking to our minds of God. Moreover, it is not that God established a system in the
beginning and then left it to operate ‘as an artist leaves a clock, to go thenceforward of itself for a
certain period. But this Visual Language proves, not a Creator merely, but a provident
Governor…’21 God produces each and every sign: He is constantly active, constantly speaking to
finite spirits through signs. Perhaps it is not very easy to see why God should act in this way. For
visual signs can be of use only to spirits with bodies; and bodies, on Berkeley’s principles, are
themselves congeries of ideas, and so visual signs. But this difficulty is not cleared up.

“In the Third Dialogue Hylas objects that if God is made the immediate author of all
events in Nature, He is made the author of sin and crime. But to this Philonous answers, ‘I have
nowhere said that God is the only agent who produces motions in bodies.’22 Human spirits are
truly active efficient causes. Further, sin does not consist in the physical action ‘but in the
internal deviation of the will from the laws of reason and religion.’23 The physical action of
committing murder may be similar to the physical action of executing a criminal; but from the
moral point of view the two actions are unlike one another. Where there is sin or moral turpitude
there is a departure of the will from the moral law, and for this the human agent is responsible.

“Thus Berkeley does not say that causality is nothing but regular sequence. What he says
is that only spirits are truly active efficient causes. Nor does he say that God is the only true
cause. What he says is that the only truly active causes are spirits.”24

Étienne Gilson and Thomas Langan explain that, for Berkeley, “I notice that I can excite
ideas in my mind at pleasure, varying and shifting the scene as often as I wish, simply by
willing.25 Such ideas are fanciful and arbitrary. But whatever may be the power I have over my
own thoughts, I find the ideas actually perceived by sense do not depend in this way on my will.
When I open my eyes in broad daylight, it is not in my power to choose whether I shall see or
not, or to determine what particular objects will present themselves to my view. ‘The ideas
imprinted by [my senses] are not creatures of my will. There is therefore some other will or spirit
that produces them.’26

“This receptivity of the ideas of sense, in contrast to the activity that characterizes ideas
called up by the will in the imagination, is accompanied by other indications of their ‘reality.’
‘The ideas of sense are more strong, lively and distinct than those of the imagination; they have
likewise a steadiness, order and coherence, and are not excited at random, as those which are the
effects of human wills are, but in a regular train or series, the admirable connection whereof
sufficiently testifies the wisdom and benevolence of its Author.’27 Later on, Edmund Husserl,
21
G. BERKELEY, Alciphron, 4, 14; III, p. 160.
22
G. BERKELEY, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, 3; II, p. 237.
23
Ibid.
24
F. COPLESTON, A History of Philosophy, Book II, vol. 5, Image Doubleday, New York, 1985, pp. 248-249.
25
G. BERKELEY, Principles of Human Knowledge, I, 28.
26
Ibid., 29. The argument is Descartes’.
27
Ibid., 30. Cf. Descartes’ Sixth Meditation.

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also seeking from within an analysis of the givens of consciousness, to awaken in his readers a
feeling for the reality of that stream of experience, will likewise fall back on the consistency, the
order, the sense of a temporal flow of representations. The phenomenologists will push their
analyses much further than Berkeley in seach of details of that logic, that ‘unity of style,’ which
provides so much internal evidence of the fact that our experience has a meaning far
transcending the mere fact of its appearance-in-consciousness. Berkeley indeed at once gives a
characteristically eighteenth-century turn to what we have called his encouraging discovery of
the fact that experience really needs to be considered as a sense-bearing whole if we are ever to
understand its ontologic significance. He immediately thinks of this unity of style, if we may so
term it, as a ‘set of rules’ or ‘established methods’ which he hastens to label the laws of nature.
These we learn by experience, which teaches us that such and such ideas are attended with such
and such other ideas, in the ordinary course of things. Berkeley is obviously in a rush to turn his
discovery into a quick guarantee for the usefulness of some sort of science. This regularity with
which idea follows idea (how Humean a way of putting it!) gives us, he announces, ‘a sort of
foresight which enables us to regulate our actions for the benefit of life.’28

“Admitting even this much regularity in the way one idea follows another risks
reintroducing into the ideas themselves, precisely as other, a certain independence, a certain
causal necessity, as though one idea worked upon another. Berkeley will not permit such a
dangerous opening in his anti-materialist offensive line; but in closing it, he leaves his flank
utterly unprotected against Hume. We must not attribute ‘power and agency’ to the ideas
themselves, he says, as though one were the cause of another, ‘than which nothing can be more
absurd and unintelligible.’29 Berkeley does not go to the trouble of elaborating in this text a non-
causal explanation for the phenomenon of this regularity. The suggestion from the whole context
seems to be that the will of the Infinite Spirit is responsible for the regularity. Hume will provide
a much less metaphysical, indeed a thoroughly psychological, explanation for this regularity, as
we shall in due course see.”30

28
Ibid., 31.
29
Ibid., 32.
30
É. GILSON and T. LANGAN, Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Kant, Random House, New York, 1964, pp.
236-238.