Berkeley Newsletter

Number 3	December 1979

Editors:

E. J. Furlong and David Berman
Philosophy Department, Trinity College, Dublin

Contents

Bertil Belfrage: A Summary of Berkeley’s Metaphysics
     in a Hitherto Unpublished Berkeleian Manuscript 	   1
R. S. Woolhouse: Berkeley and “A Famous Man of Modern Times” 	   5
Geneviève Brykman: The Close Inspection of Words and Ideas
     in Berkeley’s Writings 	   9
George Berkeley in America:
     A Commemorative Conference 1729-1979 	   11
David Berman: Berkeley’s Letter to Lord Orrey 	 12
Charles Benson: Prior’s Authentic Narrative 	 14
T. J. Howell: The Bond of Society: Berkeley’s Theory of Social Reality 	 16
“bär ḱ li” or “bũrḱ li”? 	 16
Bertil Belfrage: Review 	 17
Maxims Concerning Patriotism 	 19
Recent Articles on Berkeley 	 20

© Contributors 1979

The Berkeley Newsletter is sponsored by the Royal Irish Academy
and the Philosophy Department, Trinity College, Dublin

A Summary of Berkeley’s Metaphysics
in a Hitherto Unpublished Berkeleian Manuscript

Bertil Belfrage
Lund University (Sweden)

During a recent visit to Columbia University I was shown the Samuel Johnson Papers. This collection includes a copy of the very rare first edition of Berkeley’s De Motu. According to the dedication in Latin, Johnson received this book from Berkeley on June 2, 1730. On page three of the book, there is a manuscript passage which I quote below. The passage itself is undated. By comparison with other documents in the collection I conclude that the passage quoted is in Johnson’s hand. I use the term “Berkeleian” in the title of this contribution as the manuscript is not in Berkeley’s own handwriting. I wish to thank Columbia University for permission to quote the passage. All details are original except what occurs within “[...].” Here it is:*

A Summary of the Authors Opinion
as I found it expressd in a MSS. [sic]
It is my Opinion, 1. That There is an Infinite Omnipresent, Incorporeal Being, which comprehends & contains all things: He is present every where; not that He is coextended with the Universe, but after the manner of a Spirit, by Thought & Power, perceiving all things & actuating all things: He comprehends every Created Being in the Imensity of His Intellect, & the Influence of His Power reacheth to all real [or natural] Effects; Insomuch that there is no Created Thing or Part of the senisble World whatsoever which existeth out of the Divine Mind.
2. That the things perceived by Sense are the true & real Things; That these things do really exist out of our Minds, but then it must be in the Mind of God, — which, as hath been said includeth all things.

*[The text has been corrected in accordance with the Corrigenda published in Berkeley Newsletter 4 (1980), 19.—Ed.]

3. That it is repugnant to the very nature of sensible things that they should exist independently of, or without a mind; That therefore, from the very being of Sensible or Corporeal Things, it must necessarily be inferred, That there is a mind wherein they exist.

	A MSS. [sic] not printed.

Who is the author mentioned in the phrase “A Summary of the Authors Opinion”? As the passage occurs in a book written by Berkeley, it can hardly be anyone else but Berkeley. Indeed, the opinions expressed in the Summary strongly support this conclusion.
"A Summary of the Authors Opinion as I found it expressed in a MSS." is an ambiguous phrase, however. What does “it” refer to? If to “A Summary,” (1) this is Berkeley’s own summary of his Metaphysics; if to “the Authors Opinion,” it could well be the ease that (2) this is Johnson’s summary of Berkeley’s views in some (presumably extensive) manuscript; that is to say, it would in this latter case be no more than another interpretation of Berkeley’s philosophy — this time by Samuel Johnson.
If Johnson intended to formulate his own interpretation, however, it is hard to explain why he wrote “my opinion” when he should have written “Berkeley’s opinion.” As long as the opening phrase — “It is my Opinion...” — cannot possibly refer to an other writer than to Berkeley, I presume that the first alternative, (1), is correct. In other words, this is in my opinion an original Berkeleian manuscript copied by Johnson.
An observation of some importance is that Berkeley often uses square brackets in order to mark what should be deleted.1 The square brackets around “or Natural,” therefore, strengthen the impression of a faithful transcription of a Berkeleian manuscript. The final remark that this is “A MSS. not printed” further adds to this impression.
What does the curious term “a MSS.” mean? My suggestion is that “a MSS.” means “a (volume, or collection, of) MSS.” The more important question is however: Where and when did Johnson find the manuscript he copies?

Why should Johnson copy a manuscript, if he already had the original? And, if it was not his private property, Where is the most natural place to find some by Berkeley in those days, if not in Berkeley’s own house? My conjecture is that Johnson was shown this Summary and copied it when he visited Berkeley at Newport sometime in 1730.
This fits in very well with what we know about the two philosophers. In the important philosophic correspondence Johnson and Berkeley (Works, ii, 271ff), Johnson presses Berkeley in both his letters to state more fully Berkeley’s view concerning t relation of God to the world. Berkeley in fact was slow to add much to what he had published already. Possibly then this Summary was written for the benefit c Johnson. Johnson did make, as we know from his autobiography, “several visits” to Berkeley during the latter’s stay at Newport. In fact, their philosophical correspondence forms an organic unity — with this Summary as a natural end.
The most important question is: When did Berkeley write the original? >From what I have said, the most natural answer is, maybe, that he wrote it in 1730 as a reaction to Johnson’s letters, or as a preparation for one of Johnson’s visits to Newport. But it should be carefully noted that we do not have at present enough evidence to settle this particular matter. If it is true that Johnson saw the Summary in one of Berkeley’s notebooks in the summer or autumn of 1730, we are entitled to say no more than that Berkeley wrote it some time before he showed it to Johnson. But on this basis alone, we cannot say how long before — it could well have been decades earlier.
Finally, must not fail to remark that the Summary may have an important bearing on a current debate between Berkeleian scholars. The debate concerns the topic of intermittency, discussed by Berkeley in Principles §§ 45-48. Some scholars have recently argued that Berkeley did in fact accept intermittency, that is to say, that when, for example, all finite observers in this room depart from it, the tables and chairs etc. cease to exist. The

more traditional view is that the objects continue to exist, because — according to Berkeley — they are perceived by the Infinite Spirit.2 If this debate could be reduced to a question the answer to which is simply a yes or a no; and if the Summary is relevant for the interpretation of the Principles; then, surely, the sentence “that these Things do really exist out of our Minds, but then it must be in the Mind of God” would seem to strongly support the traditional view.

Notes
1 For evidence, see George Berkeley’s Manuscript Introduction, edited with a commentary by Bertil Belfrage [forthcoming].
2 See Jonathan Bennett, “Berkeley and God” in Engle & Taylor, Berkeley’s s Principles of Human Knowedge, Belmont, California, 1968: Wadsworth Publishing Co., pp. 146-160. Criticized in E. J. Furlong’s “Berkeley and the tree in the quad” (op. cit., pp. 161-176). Bennett returned to this problem in Chapter 7 of his Locke, Berkeley, Hume. Central Themes, Oxford 1971: Oxford University Press. Also see George H. Thomas, “Berkeley’s God does not perceive” in Journal of the History of Philosophy, 14 (1976), pp. 163-8, and Chapter 10 in George Pitcher, Berkeley, London 1977: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Berkeley and “A Famous Man of Modern Times”
R. S. Woolhouse
University of York

In Paragraph 43 of De Motu Berkeley scorningly cites “the saying of a famous man of modern times, who asserts that ‘there is nothing real in motion except that momentary thing which must be constituted when a force is striving towards a change’.” A. A. Luce notes in his and T. E. Jessop’s standard edition that “Editors attribute this assertion to Newton, but they give no reference,” and adds that he has “looked in vain for the words or their substance in the Principia.”1 Luce’s caution here does contrast rather with the earlier confidence of A. C. Fraser2 and C. Sampson3 who without further ado identify the “famous man” as Newton. Indeed it forms something of a watershed, for D. M. Armstrong, the only editor later than Luce to make an identification, plumps not now for Newton but for Leibniz.4 He too, however, gives no reference. But unlike Luce’s search in the work of Newton, a search in that of Leibniz does show him to be the “famous man.”
Further to the one in question (paragraph 43) De Motu makes five references to Leibniz — on these occasions by name (paragraphs 8, 16, 17, 19, 20).5 Three (8, 20, 43) of this possible total of six at least pretend to give actual quotations. But only the first (8) gives any bibliographical information. Here Berkeley, having (purportedly by direct quotation) reported Leibniz as holding “active primitive force which is ἐντελέχεια ἡ πρώτη corresponds to the soul or substantial form,” refers the reader to “Acta Erudit. Lips.”
Now besides anonymous reviews Leibniz published more than one hundred and twenty articles in Acta Eruditorum Lipsensia.6 In fact in the original latin of De Motu the words from paragraph 8 turn out to be an almost exact quotation from Leibniz’s Specimen Dynamicum, published in the Acta for April 1695.7 Moreover, this same piece provides a source

for all the other references: compare Berkeley’s
paragraph 16 with L. page 437, lines 25-28 (GM.VI, p.237, II.24-30);
paragraph 17 with L. page 438, lines 6-10 (GM.VI, p.238, I1.18-23); 
paragraph 19 with L. page 435, lines 13-15 (GM.VI, p.235, II.11-13);
paragraph 20 with L. page 435, lines 8-9 (GM.VI, p.235, 11.6-8).
Finally, the latin of what Berkeley gives as “the saying of a famous man,” viz. “nihil in motu esse reale praeter momentaneum illud quod in vi ad mutationem nitente constitui debet,” corresponds closely with Leibniz’s “Nihilque adeo in ipso (motu) reale est, quam momentaneum illud quod in vi ad mutationem nitente constitui debet.”8
Having mentioned his search for these words in Newton’s Principia Luce adds that “The Preface sharply distinguishes true motion from apparent, but Newton does not, so far as I can find, resolve all motion into change.” Actually the Preface(s) of Principia makes no distinction between different sorts of motion, though of course the Scholium to Definition VIII makes one between absolute or true, and relative or (on occasion) apparent motion.9 Newton’s absolute motion is “the translation of a body from one absolute place into another”10 and as such Leibniz, not holding with absolute space, has no room for it. Even so, for Leibniz “there is a difference between an absolute true motion and a mere relative change of its situation with respect to another body. For when the immediate cause of the change is in the body, that body is truly in motion.”11
However the “saying” Berkeley quotes from Leibniz does not make this point. If anything it presupposes it and develops a further point to the effect that even true motion is “not something absolute and real in itself”12 and so involves force even more intimately: “motion is a transitory thing which strictly does not exist, because all its parts are never all together. Thus, in addition [to]... motion... there is

something else in corporeal nature: namely, force.”13 Thus, immediately prior to saying what Berkeley quotes, Leibniz says that “like time motion taken in an exact sense never exists because a whole does not exist if it has no co-existing parts.14 So despite Luce’s suggestions the “famous man” is not particularly concerned at the point where Berkeley quotes him either to distinguish true from apparent motion or to reduce motion to change.

Notes

1 A. A. Luce & T. E. Jessop (eds.), The Works of George Berkeley (London, 1951), vol. IV, p. 22, n.1. The Latin to English translations of Berkeley are from this edition.
2 Berkeley’s Complete Works (Oxford, 1901), vol. I, p. 517.
3 The Works of George Berkeley (London 1965), p. 263.
4 Berkeley’s Philosophical Writings (London, 1965), p. 263.
5 G. A. Johnston (The Development of Berkeley’s Philosophy, London 1923, p. 229, n. 1) points out that De Motu “is the only one of Berkeley’s works in which much attention is paid to Leibniz” but adds that Fraser is mistaken that he is first mentioned here. (The reference is presumably to Fraser’s edition of Berkeley, vol. I, p. 490.)
6 See Emile Ravier’s Bibliographie des Oeuvres de Leibniz (Hildesheim, 1966). According to Johnston (op. cit.) Berkeley had access to the Acta in Trinity College. (Though of course De Motu was written in Lyons.)
7 See C. I. Gerhardt (ed.), G. W. Leibniz: Mathematische Schriften (Berlin & Halle, 1849-55) (= GM.), vol. VI, p. 236, 11.21-3. (For translations see L. E. Loemker, G. W. Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters, 2nd ed. (Dordrecht-Holland, 1969) (= L), p. 436, 11.35-6.)
8 GM. VI, p. 235, 11.24-5.
9 For these different terms see F. Cajori (ed.), Sir Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles, etc. (Berkeley, California, 1934), pp. 7, 10, 12. Perhaps Luce was remembering and misunderstanding Berkeley’s statement (Principles 110) that Newton makes the distinction “in the entrance of” Principia.
10 Scholium to Definition VIII (Cajori, ibid., p. 7).
11 L. p. 706; see also pp. 315, 393.
12 L. p. 301 (GM. VI. p. 123).
13 Closing remarks of Essai de Dynamique. (Text and translation in R. E. W. Maddison’s translation of Costabel’s Leibniz and Dynamics, London 1973.)
14 L. p. 436.

The Close Inspection of Words and Ideas in Berkeley’s Writings
Geneviève Brykman
C. N. R. S. France

In the second half of the 17th century, the topic of a “close vision” or “narrow inspection” of objects seems to have been given prominance with the use of microscopes. In the Preface to his Micrographia, Hooke himself insisted that the minute scrutiny of material things should be a model for a careful inspection of mind and ideas. There are many traces of this advice n Berkeley, in whose writings “close vision” is a major underlying theme.
First, one finds a consideration of the real use of microscopes, which displays the complete heterogeneity between sight and touch; second, one finds an analogical transposition of the close examination of things to the examination of mind and ideas.
Then, a metaphorical purblind person changes places with the microscope: as he makes the empty words vanish, leaving particular sense-data, so the microscope makes polished and homogeneous objects (a drop of blood for instance) disappear, leaving heterogeneous parts and wrinkles. Thus the minute inspection of the abstract idea “matter” was supposed to stand for, leads to the conclusion that this word is void of meaning. It is this way that, hoping to free philosophers from the intricate mazes in which they are imprisoned, Berkeley states his main methodological principle at the beginning of the Principles:

How difficult and discouraging soever this attempt may seem .., yet I am not without some hopes, upon the consideration that the largest views are not always the clearest and that he who is shortsighted will be obliged to draw the object nearer and may perhaps by a close and narrow survey, discern that which had escape far better eyes. (Introd. § 5)

Consider also entry 742 of the Commentaries:

I	A man of slow Parts may overtake truth etc, Intr. Even my short-sightedness might perhaps be aiding to me in 	this matter, twill make me bring the object nearer to my thoughts. A Purblind Person etc Introd.

The above-mentioned note has to be related to the two following: the more time and pain some men have consumed in the study of philosophy, the more they look upon themselves to be ignorant (747). Then:

I	These Men with a supercilious Pride disdain the common single information of sense. They grasp at Knowledge by sheaves & bundles... They in the depths of their understanding Contemplate Abstract Ideas. (748)

In the Defence of Free-thinking in Mathematics (1735), one finds a similar point. Exposing the blind allegiance of mathematicians to Newton, Berkeley declares: “because I am not guilty of your mean idolatry, you inveigh against me as a person conceited of my own abilities; not considering that a person of less abilities may know more on a certain point than one of greater; not considering that a purblind eye, in a close and narrow view may discern more of a thing than a much better eye in a more extensive prospect;... not considering that this is in fact converting the republick of letters into an absolute monarchy, that it is even introducing a kind of philosophic popery among a free people.” (Sect. 16)
But as the defence of free thought and liberty has to be distinguished from free-thinking and anarchy, one should not be surprised at Berkeley’s varying views on myopia/shortsightedness between 1707 and. 1735. Similarly as the microscope (Berkeley denounces its use and power in N.T.V. § 85-86), myopia may be a very dangerous instrument; for example, to see many details makes it impossible to take a large survey of things.1

1 For a fuller treatment of this subject, see Genevieve Brykman, “Microscopes and philosophical method in Berkeley,” communication for the Berkeley Commemorative Conference, Rhode Island, September 1979.

George Berkeley in America:
A Commemorative Conference 1729-1979

This Conference was held in Newport, Rhode Island, from September 27-30, 1979. It was a climax to several events organised by the International Berkeley Society (founded 1976), designed to mark the 250th anniversary of George Berkeley’s arrival in Rhode Island, on route to Bermuda.
Some twenty papers on various aspects of Berkeley’s philosophy were read. Because of the number of papers they were divided into two streams. This aspect of the Conference was ably arranged by Professor Colin Turbayne of the University of Rochester. Contributors came from a number of countries in Europe and America.
There was no lack of recreation for the Berkeley scholars. Tours, concerts, dinners were much enjoyed. On the Sunday morning members attended Morning Prayer in Trinity Church, Newport, where Berkeley had often preached. The sermon was delivered by the Dean of Cloyne, the Very Rev. J. K. S. Ridley-Barker. On the Sunday evening members of the Conference attended Evening Prayer in the Old Narragansett Church, where Berkeley sometimes preached. They were entertained afterwards to supper by members of the Church Committee.
The whole event was excellently arranged by Professor Raymond Houghton, President of the International Berkeley Society, together with the Society’s officers and a committee which included the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, a member of whom provided hospitality.

Berkeley’s Letter to Lord Orrery
David Berman
This letter by Berkeley was addressed to John Boyle, Lord Orrery (1707-1762), the friend and biographer of Swift. It has never been included in any collection of Berkeley’s correspondence, although about two-thirds of it was printed by the Countess of Cork and Orrery in The Orrery papers (London: Duckworth 1903), vol. 2, pp. 4—5. A copy of the whole letter is at Harvard University, among the Orrery papers, and is here printed by permission of the Houghton Library. I have enclosed in square brackets the portions of the letter omitted by the Countess of Cork and Orrery.

	Cloyne, July 11th, 1747
MY LORD, — A letter should be natural and easy, and yet I must confess I write with no small concern, since your Lordsp is pleased to say you expect improvement from my letters, that same improvement which in good earnest I should myself have hoped for from corresponding with a person so conversant in the classics as well as the grand monde, did not my years, and the nature of my studies, stand in the way.
Your Lordsps lott is fallen in a pleasant land. For my part, I admire the belles letres without possessing them (A truth I need not mention), my studies having been of the dry and crabbed kind, which give a certain gouty stiffness to the style.
[Give me leave to say, your Lordsp is a little unreasonable, who, not content with the management of an ample fortune, and a share in the great councils of both Kingdoms, must needs invade the provinces of private men, and be at once, the best husbandman, and the politest scholar, in the nation.
In hopes your children will take after you, I do most sincerely congratulate your Lordship on their recovery, from a distemper so often fatal, and, that hangs like a general doom, over all that come into the world.]
I have just now read over Mr. West’s book, a performance worthy your Lordsps recommendation, and in the reading thereof I have been much edified, instructed and entertained. To me it seems extremely well wrote, and if it had been worse wrote, it could not have failed

of doing good many who do not concider what is said so much as who it is that said it. Certainly, men of the world, courtiers and fine gentlemen, are more easily wrought on by those of their own sort, than by recluse and professed divines.
[The Christian religion, since its first planting in these islands, hath been never so openly and profanely insulted, as in these our days, which call loudly for information or for punishment.] But it is to be hoped the public, by a timely and serious reflexion (whereof I take this gentleman’s attempt to be a noble specimen and leading step), will recover their lost sense of duty, so far as to avert that vengeance which the posture of our affairs abroad and the plague hovering round our coasts, do threaten. But, come what will, that your Lordsp and family may safely ride out the storm is the sincere wish of my Lord, your Lordsps most obedient,
	GEORGE CLOYNE

The work of Gilbert West to which Berkeley refers is Observations on the history and evidence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ (London 1747). West’s “excellent book” — as Berkeley calls it in a letter to Percival of 10 October 1747 — was prompted by Peter Annet’s notorious The Resurrection of Jesus considered (London 1744); hence Berkeley may have had Annet in mind as someone who “openly and profanely insultet” the Christian religion.
In the Dictionary of National Biography article on Lord Orrery it is stated that “He was filled with literary aspirations, and, as Berkeley said of him, ‘would have been a man of genius had he known how to set about it’.”

Prior’s Authentic Narrative
Charles Benson
Trinity College Library

An authentic narrative of the success of Tar-water. To which are subjoined two letters from the author of Siris. By Thomas Prior, Esq.
The second edition. Dublin: Printed for William Williamson, bookseller, at Mecaenas’s Head in Bride-Street, 1758.

8̊: A 2 (±A1) B-214 χ1; pp. 1-2 3-4 1-239 240 241-248 [2];
127 leaves.

The Department of Older Printed Books in TCD recently bought a copy of the work described above. This issue of An authentic narrative has not been noticed by either Jessop or Keynes. Unfortunately it is not a second edition of the work as stated but merely a re-issue, with a cancellans title leaf, of sheets of the first edition, printed in Dublin by Margaret Rhames for R. Gunne in 1746. The verso of the cancellans title carries a list of books being sold by Williamson at “low prices” as compared with the original prices which are also given. Prior’s An authentic narrative was sold, bound, by Williamson at 1/7½ as against 2/8½. The list includes re-issues (each with a cancellans title leaf) of two philosophical works, Berkeley’s Alciphron, which T. Watson had issued in 1755, reduced to 2/- from 2/8½, and T. Church’s Analysis of the philosophical works of the late Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, which T. Watson had issued in 1756, and which was now offered at halfprice.
The interval of twelve years between the issues of An authentic narrative is not unduly long, but indicates that Prior’s work was hardly a best-seller, more a drug in the market.

[Facsimile of the title-page]

The Bond of Society: Berkeley’s Theory of Social Reality
T. J. Howell
Rhode Island College

Professor T. J. Howell, Chairman, Department of Philosophy and Foundations of Education, Rhode Island College, has sent a paper with the above title to the Newsletter. The policy of the Newsletter is at present to publish, inter alia, Berkeleian notes of not more than about four pages in length. Professor Howell has agreed that only a précis of his paper should accordingly be published.
Professor Howell’s article mainly stresses that Berkeley was concerned not only with theoretical questions about knowledge and existence: he had also a lively interest in contemporary social problems, particularly those of the Irish peasantry. Here the Querist, Alciphron, the Guardian essays are particularly relevant to Professor Howell’s thesis. The project for an Irish national bank, the reproofs to grasping landlords, witness to Berkeley’s idealism. His respect for experience, is shown, alike in his philosophy of perception and in the Analyst. He was an “empirical idealist.”

“bär ḱ li” or “bũrḱ li”?

Which is the correct pronunciation of the name “Berkeley”? There must be very few persons now interested in Berkeley’s thought who have not at some time informally discussed this question. The subject is by no means new, as one can see from an editorial note in the Letters of eminent men, addressed to Ralph Thoresby, F.R.S. Now first published from the originals (London: Henry Colburn, 1832), vol. 2, p. 129. In a letter of 3 December 1708 to Thoresby, the Archbishop of York writes of “my Lord Barclays* eldest son”; to which Thoresby’s editor has appended the following note: “Berkeley; the Archbishop’s orthography is worth preserving, as it shows that the pronunciation of this name was the same then as now.”

George Berkeley, Philosophisches Tagebuch. German translation of Berkeley’s Philosophical Commentaries in “Philosophische Bibliothek” (Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg): Volume No. 196, translated by Andreas Hecht (Leibzig 1926). Volume No. 318, translated by Wolfgang Breidert (Hamburg 1979).

Wolfgang Breidert’s German edition of Berkeley’s Philosophical Commentaries is a revision of Andreas Hecht’s famous 1926 translation. The format is similar to Luce’s edition in Works, i, 9ff. Thus it is not — as it is in a scholarly edition such as Luce’s diplomatic edition (1944) — possible to follow the different strata through which particular notes may have passed. As a rule, Breidert follows Luce’s numbering. Sometimes, however, as in 21a, he follows Hecht’s — or rather Erdmann’s — numbering and includes the addition on the verso page in the body of the recto entry without separate numbering. In a few cases, he has preferred en entirely new numbering.1
Hecht did not know about the interesting marginal apparatus. On this point, therefore, Breidert is able to add information unavailable in Hecht’s translation. Breidert even aims to include struck out signs, but he misses some struck out I’s (at 163 and 730); he overlooks the struck out “S” at 222 but adds one at 163 that is not there in the manuscript. He has a curious “lo” instead of “Mo” at 730a, and has also overlooked one of the two “1” at 302a. Unfortunately, he has left out the insertion mark, “∧,” in 429, 727, and 793.
Breidert has introduced a new sign to indicate “a thick cross” at 370 and 376. It is true, a photocopy — misleading as any photocopy would be on this and several other points — could give the wrong impression of some peculiar sign repeated at these two entries. But an inspection of the manuscript itself shows that accidentally the pages where we find 370 and 376 came into contact before the “+” at 376 was dry, thereby unintentionally reproducing at 370.

How can we explain such pointless passages as the following verso comment, supposed to be a translation of 475a? (I quote the corresponding passage in 475 to the left):

(that-and-that) verhindert nicht ihre Zählbarkeit...
[(that-and-that) hinders not their numbrableness...]
d. h. verhindert nicht ihr Zählbar-sein
[i.e. hinders not their being numer-able]2

Of course, “their numbrableness” is an odd term for “the being numerable.” But, after all, Berkeley wrote “nameable” in 475a, not “numerable.” Is the explanation simply a careless reading of the English original? The mistake is not unimportant. If translated literally, this verso comment could well he connected with the important theme in Principles 120-122, and with the discussion on Berkeley’s technical use of “names,” “words,” etc. This is not the only case when information on Berkeley’s interesting development on this point disappears on its way from original to translation. When Berkeley says in 546a, for example:

	Words there not so foolish neither;

he may indicate another, maybe interesting, use of words. But in Breidert’s version, this is reduced to the following nonsense:

	sie sind beide keineswegs so dumm
	[they are both in no way so foolish]

Hecht’s translation was a remarkable contribution. In fact, it was the best edition of the Commentaries available when published in 1926 (four years before Johnston’s and almost two decades before Luce’s first edition). It was a natural completion of Theodore Lorenz’s and Benno Erdmann’s great contributions to Berkeleian scholarship; indeed, though incomplete and sometimes defective, it has its due place in the history of Berkeley studies. But — the Commentaries being confined to the study of experts only — What is the point today in publishing another German translation?

Notes

1 The discussion to which Breidert refers in this context is, on one hand, my own paper called “George Berkeley’s Philosophical Commentaries. A Review of Professor A.A. Luce’s editions” in Logik, rätt och moral (Lund 1969), pp. 19-34, and, on the ether hand, Dr Luce’s (critical) answer in “Another look at Berkeley’s notebooks,” Hermathena 110 (1970), pp. 5-23.
2 The “Zählbar-sein” implies a potential situation when the things at issue could actually be given an exact number.

Bertil Belfrage
Lund University (Sweden)

Maxims Concerning Patriotism
Dublin
Trinity Closet Press
Trinity Closet Reprint series I.
Limited edition of 250 numbered copies.
Obtainable from The Library Shop, Trinity College, College Street, Dublin 2 at £1.00 including postage.
Berkeley’s pamphlet Maxims concerning patriotism was first issued in Dublin in 1750 and has never until now been separately reprinted. It has been suggested that Berkeley wrote the Maxims with the help of his wife. He acknowledged the authorship by incuding the work, with some additions, in A Miscellany, Dublin: 1752.

Recent Articles on Berkeley

[Included in the Bibliography of Berkeley Newsletter No. 16.]

The Berkeley newsletter lists items of Berkeley interest which have not been included in Jessop’s Bibliography of George Berkeley (2nd ed. revised and enlarged, The Hague, 1973), or in “A bibliography of George Berkeley, 1963-1974” by Turbayne and Appelbaum (Journal of the History of Philosophy, January, 1977), or in the present number.
Authors wishing to have their books, articles or notes listed should send a copy of the requisite information to the editors, who would be grateful for any other information relating to Berkeley publications.
It also includes notes on Berkeley topics. Because of production costs a note should normally not exceed 1000 words. Contributions should be type-written.
The Berkeley newsletter appears once a year in late autumn.