Berkeley Newsletter

Number 12	1991/92
Second edition

Editor:

David Berman
Philosophy Department, Trinity College, Dublin

Editorial Consultants
Bertil Belfrage, Lund, Sweden
Harry Bracken, Montreal, Canada
Phillip Cummins, Iowa, USA
Ian Tipton, Aberystwyth, Wales

Contents

Bertil Belfrage: A Response to M. A. Stewart’s
     “Berkeley’s Introduction Draft” 	   1
William Lyons:
     Dysart Castle: George Berkeley’s Childhood Home 	 11
John Stephens:
     Berkeley and Lady Burlington: A Footnote	 16
Review:
Geneviève Brykman:
     George Berkeley, De Motu, a cura di Mariapaola Fimani 	 17
Recent Publications on Berkeley	 18

© Contributors 1992

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

A Response to M. A. Stewart’s
“Berkeley’s Introduction Draft”
Bertil Belfrage
Lund University (Sweden)

In a review recently published in the Berkeley Newsletter,1 Dr. M.A. Stewart was critical of my Editor’s Commentary to George Berkeley’s Manuscript Introduction (“MI” for short).2 His criticisms can be grouped around three topics: (I) When, was it written? (II) Does it represent Berkeley’s first attempt to write an Introduction? (III) Is there any significant doctrinal difference between the manuscript version and that published in Berkeley’s Principles (PI)?
Of the three questions the last is the most important. In my Editor’s Commentary I argued that Berkeley offers a position in the Manuscript Introduction which is abandoned or denied in the published Introduction to the Principles. If I am right, then this earlier neglected manuscript provides us with important information towards a deeper understanding of Berkeley’s early development. Stewart is convinced that I am wrong and that T. E. Jessop was right when he wrote in 1949: “Compared with the printed Introduction [the Manuscript Introduction] neither adds nor omits anything of substance” (Works II 117). I find the arguments marshalled in support of this claim and for Stewart’s answers to the other two questions inadequate; in what follows I shall

present what I take those arguments to be and my reasons for dismissing them.

I. When was it written?

There are dates written in the margin of the manuscript from Nov. 15 to Dec. 18 1708. The question is: (a) Did Berkeley write these dates in order to remember when he first started to write the Introduction to his magnum opus? Or (b) did he write them when revising or rewriting the text in order to indicate where to begin the next day’s work without having to go through already revised material? As I did not find the evidence available sufficient to justify any definite choice between the alternative interpretations of the dates, my conclusion was: “We are unable at present to give an exact date to the Manuscript Introduction” (Editor’s Introduction, p. 23). Stewart goes to the other extreme. He not only is confident that the issue can be settled, but confident that he has the correct answer: the first alternative, (a), is correct, he argues; the manuscript was written in its first composition within the time frame of the marginal dates.3
His dating is based on the following, very plausible, assumption:

(1)	If the marginal dates mark daily portions of the original writing (not of a later revision of the text), then they match as a rule observable “changes of ink or pen” in the running text.

At line 26 of folio 19, for example, there is a date in the margin which matches a clear break in the running text. Convinced that this was no coincidence, Stewart maintains:

“These [marginal dates] too often match changes of ink or pen to be anything but the dates of the original writing” (10). Thus, he assures us:

(2)	There is a positive correlation between dates in the margin and “changes of ink or pen” in the running text.

This is a straightforward argument which, if correct, makes it reasonable to interpret the dates in accordance with Stewart's suggestion.
Assumption (1) is plausible, because if this was the first thing Berkeley wrote in the morning, then he could not start that day’s writing with a dry or empty pen. There are, moreover, fairly regular, rather frequent, changes in the pigmentation of the ink throughout this manuscript, probably telling us when Berkeley dipped his pen in his ink-pot as he was writing. Therefore, if Stewart’s hypothesis is correct, then all dates in the margin should correlate with ink changes in the running text (except perhaps in a few uncertain cases).
From a scholarly point of view, Stewart’s presentation of his hypothesis suffers from one serious defect. He only mentions a few supporting instances. He does not mention those cases where his hypothesis fails. He does not inform us that, in most cases when there is a date in the margin, there is not the slightest sign of an ink break in the running text. It is true, he mentions some cases, where the break comes in mid-sentence. His ad hoc explanation is that it is now in mid-sentence as a result of “Berkeley’s extending his writing next day” (11). But even here he presents a biassed selection. We are not told, for instance that some breaks come in mid-word. And we are not informed about such cases as the one in MI 5, where Berkeley is supposed to have stopped on Nov. 18 after “... discern that which had escaped far” and waited until Nov. 19 to continue: “better Eyes.” Stewart does not mention that, according to his hypothesis, Berkeley would have stopped on Dec. 17 after “By this means it will” (MI 64) without finishing the rest of

the sentence (“be easy for him ...”) until the next day.4 Et cetera, et cetera. One of Stewart’s own examples of “Berkeley’s extending his writing [the] next day” (11) is Nov. 25, where it is not easy to see what break he has in mind. Does he mean that Berkeley wrote “From which it must” and took a day off before he added “necessarily follow” (MI 19)? Or does he mean that Berkeley stopped in mid-word after “necessari” not adding “ly” in “necessarily” until the next day?5
How to explain the ink break in, say, MI 37 matching Dec. 7 on folio 23, line 21? If Stewart is right, then Berkeley started on Dec. 8 in mid-word with the “d” in “had” writing:

d frequently heard those Words (MI 37).

The more simple explanation of the very clear ink break between “ha” and “d” in “had” is that this is another instance of all those natural breaks that we find throughout the manuscript, even in mid-word,6 or in mid-sentence, apparently because he had run out of ink and therefore had to dip his pen in his ink-pot. If so, Berkeley wrote at first in

MI 37: “When he was a Child he has,” but ran out of ink, so the “s” in “has” is almost illegible (I did not even see it when I transcribed the ms.). Therefore he had to dip and then he continued writing, changing “has” to “had” — without taking a day off in mid-sentence. All Stewart’s cases are natural breaks of this kind, except two (out of twenty-eight) where a date in the margin matches a definite break in the running text (Nov. 20 and Dec. 4). But even if we accept all instances which Stewart mentions in support of his hypothesis, it is nonetheless the case that:

(3)	Stewart’s description of the manuscript is erronous: the dates in the margin do not as a rule “match changes of ink or pen” in the running text.

It is worth noting that the consequence of (1) and (3) is:

(4)	The marginal dates do not mark daily portions of the original writing, but of a later revision of the text.

Therefore, if anything, Stewart produced an argument in support of the view he tried to attack.

II. Was it the First Draft?

E. J. Furlong and A. A. Luce were convinced that there were earlier drafts of the Manuscript Introduction.7 One of Stewart's main points is, however, that there were no earlier drafts. This was Berkeley's very first attempt to write an Introduction, according to him. He even asks us to change its name to his own invention: Berkeley's Introduction Draft.8
Stewart observed some stylistic changes in the first stratum of the manuscript, arguing: “they are living record of Berkeley’s struggle to get something down first time” (11). It is true, there are a few such changes. But his conclusion that, therefore, this must be the very first draft, is based on the mistaken assumption that Berkeley never made stylistic changes in later strata of a manuscript. Anyone who has a copy of my edition or access to the manuscript can easily see that Berkeley continuously made stylistic changes, even in the latest stratum of the text.
Stewart continues: “Although he [Berkeley] was phrasing as he went along, he might of course have been revising from an earlier draft. But there is an argument against this too” (12). He reasons that since Berkeley probably copied directly from Locke when he quoted him in MI 21, this cannot possibly have been intended as the final copy — hence it was the first (11-12). Besides the logically unsound conclusion, one wonders how Stewart discovered that Berkeley never checked quotations against the original when preparing what was intended to be the final version of a text (which seems to me to be a very good habit).
Apart from the somewhat peculiar logic in Stewart’s arguments: What is the point in making this a major issue at all? Suppose Stewart is right: then the Manuscript Introduction is the first version. Or suppose he is wrong: then it may be the tenth or the fiftieth version. It is not clear what Stewart thinks should follow from such speculations.

III. Are there doctrinal differences between MI and PI?

My contention, as noted above, is that Berkeley stated a philosophical position in the Manuscript Introduction which was not only not in the Principles Introduction, but was repudiated in the sense that in the latter he took a position contrary to that asserted in the former. Stewart rejects my claim, but he overlooks both evidence for the position in MI and evidence of a contrary position in the Principles. I confine myself to points emphasized by Stewart.

A. Representation

In the Manuscript Introduction one of the main questions is (to use Berkeley’s own terms):
How do “Words represent Ideas, & Ideas things” (MI 20)?
In the manuscript, the answer is that words and ideas represent in “different manners” (MI 20); an idea (not a word) represents a thing “by the likeness it beares” to it (MI 20). But, according to the published works, words and ideas represent, or “signify,” (idea)things “after the same manner” (P 43, PI 12), which is not “by any likeness” (NTV 147, P 9, 56, 87-91, my emphasis). This indicates an important doctrinal difference between the two Introductions, which however Stewart does not accept.
Stewart chooses the radical line. He goes as far as to say that the thesis answering the problem whether or not:
ideas represent things “after the same manner that words of any language suggest the ideas they are made to stand for”... this thesis... isnot so much as considered in the ms. (14, my emphasis)
That it is considered can be seen from the quotations in my summary account above. On Stewart’s part this is probably no more than a slip of memory, because he comments on this not-so-much-as-considered thesis thirty lines above (on the same page).

B. General conceptions

Jessop, whom Stewart defends, was convinced that Berkeley always argued “the obscurity of all general conceptions” (Works III 291n, emphasis original). Berkeley deals with this issue, that is to say, with the obscurity, or non-obscurity, of universal notions in PI 15, where we read:

(1)	It is I know a point, much insisted on, that all knowledge and demonstration are about universal notions... (PI 15, my emphasis)
In the Manuscript Introduction, the passage correlating with PI 15 continues:
(2)	I can by no means bring my self to comprehend this Doctrine. (MI 24, my emphasis)
If — as Stewart argues — there is no substantial difference between the two Introductions, then Berkeley would say, even in the Principles: I do not comprehend, or I totally disagree with, this view. But he actually says:
(3) ... to which I fully agree. (PI 15, my emphasis)
There is a striking difference between (2) and (3). It is true, in MI 24 Berkeley comments on the thesis “that all Knowlege is about Universals.” But given the target which he undertakes to reject (see below), he denies both the possibility of universals and of universal notions or universal ideas in MI, whereas in the Principles he affirms that all knowledge and demonstration is “about universal notions” (PI 15) or “universal ideas” (P 126).

C. Berkeley’s target in MI

According to Stewart, I missunderstood what is Berkeley’s target in the Manuscript Introduction (14). As Berkeley is very clear about this, however, it is sufficient, I think, to quote what he actually says. He tells the reader that he decided:
to take notice of one very Powerfull & Universal Cause of Errour & Confusion & that is the Opinion that there are Abstract Ideas or General Conceptions of Things (MI 6)

To deny this, moreover, is, as noted above, to deny the view “to which [Berkeley] fully agree[s]” in PI 15.

D. Berkeley’s universe of discourse

Having presented the target in MI 6, Berkeley goes on to define “abstract ideas” as:
(1)	 Ideas which equally represent the Particulars of any Sort (MI 7).
Thus what Berkeley denies in MI 7 is the possibility of
(2)	an Idea... being made to represent or stand for all other particular Ideas of the same sort (PI 12),
whereas this latter passage is quoted from the view he affirms in the Principles. That is to say, the target of the one Introduction is part of the accepted doctrine of the other. Such an obvious clash between the two Introductions is however not acceptable to Stewart.
I have misunderstood not only what is Berkeley’s target, Stewart argues (13-14), I made two additional mistakes in comparing (1) and (2): (a) no-one in Berkeley’s days could have mistaken MI 7 for a definition; and, he says, (b) Berkeley does not even speak about the same kind of thing in (1) and (2).
(a) Thus, Stewart argues (emphasis original):
The trouble begins over fol. 3 lines 22ff., where Berkeley is credited with a definition (of “abstract ideas” as “Ideas which equally represent the Particulars of any Sort”) which no-one in that period would have seriously mistaken for a definition. (13)
The passage which no-one “would have seriously mistaken for a definition,” according to Stewart, is this one:

By Abstract Ideas, Genera, Species, Universal Notions all which amount to the same thing, as I find those terms explain’d by the best and Clearest Writers, we are to understand Ideas which equally represent the Particulars of any Sort... (MI 7)
If this is no definition according to Stewart, then surely we use this term in different senses.
(b) Berkeley speaks about different kinds of thing in MI 7 and PI 12, Stewart maintains, because in MI 7 Berkeley uses the term “particulars,” not “particular ideas,” whereas in PI 12 he speaks of “particular ideas,” not of particulars. From this one observation (which is correct) — but without noting that “particulars” always means “particular ideas” in the manuscript (see MI 17, 19, 30, 34, 36, 50, 50a, and 61) — Stewart produces the following argument:
Even at a formal level this [that Berkeley denies in MI 7 ff. what he affirms in PI 12] is not right, since the first quotation was about ideas representing particulars whereas the second is about ideas representing ideas. (14, my comment within square brackets, my emphasis).
This criticism presupposes that the particulars Berkeley mentions in MI 7 are understood not to be ideas. It is clear, however, from the pattern of use in this section and in the passages cited above that “particulars” and “particular ideas” are used interchangeably.
If, on the other hand, Berkeley would speak in the Manuscript Introduction about particulars which are not ideas, as is Stewart’s main point here, then surely there would be a remarkable doctrinal clash between it and the immaterialist doctrine of the Principles where he does regard, no doubt, the objects of experience and thought as ideas. I wonder, what interpretation of Berkeley is there in the back of Stewart’s mind?

Dysart Castle:
George Berkeley's Childhood Home
William Lyons
Trinity College (Dublin)

Alongside this short article is a reproduction of an early nineteenth century watercolour painting of Dysart Castle which, almost certainly, was the home of George Berkeley during his childhood (though it is thought that he was born in the townland of Kilcrin (or Kilcrene) St. Patrick’s parish, County Kilkenny, Ireland).
Until recently, it was believed (at least by philosophers interested in Berkeley’s life and times) that the only extant pictures of Dysart Castle were the more or less contemporary photographs of the little that now remains of the tower section of Dysart Castle. However, fueled by my incredulity, and under the expert guidance of my colleague at Trinity College, David Berman, and Con Manning of the Office of Public Works in Dublin, the pictures reproduced here (and others in the same series) came to light.
Dysart Castle is some two miles downstream from Thomastown in Kilkenny, set in a picturesque valley beside the River Nore in an area which is a mixture of farmland and deciduous woodland. The property is currently owned by the Kilkenny artist, Ramie Leahy, who welcomes philosophical pilgrims. Nowadays the Castle should be approached by the back road to Inistioge. While even less now remains of the Castle and other buildings than is depicted in the illustrations here, the surrounding countryside itself is worth a visit.
Recent excavations (in 1989 and 1991), under the direction of Ben Murtagh and for a short period involving, fittingly, the Archeology Department of the University of California, Berkeley, have revealed that the site of Dysart Castle has been inhabited at least since early Christian times, and an early Christian cross slab, reused as a lintel, can still be seen today in the ruins of the tower house. The fortified

tower house or castle itself is probably of fifteenth century origin but the church, whose gable is clearly depicted on the right in the watercolour (and on the left in the drawing) is of twelfth century origin with thirteenth century additions and most likely was part of an outfarm of nearby Kells Priory, an Augustinian foundation of the twelfth century. The other gable would have been part of a barn attached to the original fifteenth century tower house. It was probably in this barn, attached to the southwest side of the tower, and converted into a dwelling house in the seventeenth century, that the Berkeley family lived. For recent excavations of the site have revealed the remains of a dwelling, which dates back to the seventeenth century, inside the remains of the earlier barn-like building. This dwelling house constructed in the second half of the seventeenth century had clay bonded masonry walls, except for the south gable which was mortar bonded, a cobbled floor and the remains of a large fireplace.
The watercolour and pen and ink sketch of Dysart Castle repoduced here are part of a series by the Irish landscape artist, George B. Miller, and produced during the years 1815-1816. The series, mainly architectural landscapes in watercolour, pen and ink, or pencil, was commissioned by the Kilkenny architect, William Robertson, with a view to producing a volume of etchings taken from the originals. Such a volume was eventually published in 1851, after William Robertson’s death, by his assistant and student, James Robertson, ( who appears to have been no relation of William.) The volume does not include any pictures of Dysart Castle. However Wiliam Robertson should be considered something of an architectural hero in Ireland, or at least Kilkenny, as he restored many of the buildings he commissioned Miller to record, most notably Kilkenny Castle, St John’s Abbey, and St Canice’s Cathedral. Perhaps if he had lived longer he would have got round to restoring Dysart Castle.
Little is known of Miller himself except that he was born in Dublin, exhibited briefly in the Royal Hibernian Academy (around 1815-1819), and seems to have gone to live in Bath, in Somerset, England, from about 1827 onwards. Neither the date of his birth nor that of his death is known.

However, from viewing the watercolours, pen and ink sketches, and pencil drawings, it is possible to infer his working methods in regard to his Kilkenny assignment. He seems to have made the drawings and sketches al fresco, usually remaining at a site one or two days (he puts “Thursday,” say, on one drawing of a particular building, and “Friday” on another of the same building). He also made notes about colours on some of the pages which leads me to believe that he transformed the selected sketch into a watercolour in his studio (for he usually made sketches or drawings of a particular building from many angles but produced a watercolour of only one view of the building, though, sometimes, in regard to major buildings, he produced a second watercolour of the building from a different angle or even a third or fourth depicting features of the building.)

Bibliography

A. A. Luce, The Life of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, with a new introduction by David Berman; London, Routledge-Thoemmes Press, 1992, espec. ch.1. (This is a reprint of the original 1949 edition.)
George B. Miller, bound portfolios of watercolours, pen and ink sketches, and drawings in possession of The Royal Society of the Antiquaries of Ireland, Merrion Square, Dublin 2, Ireland.
Ben Murtagh, “Kilkenny - 78. ‘Dysart’, Dysart,” in Excavations, 1991, pp. 27-28.
James G. Robertson, Antiquities and Scenery of the County of Kilkenny, intro. Margaret Phelan; Kilkenny, Boethius Press, 1983. (This is a facsimile reprint of the original 1851 edition.)
Strickland, A Dictionary of Irish Artists, intro. Theo J. Snoddy; Dublin, Maunsel & Co. Ltd. , 1913, Vol.2, p.115.

[Reproduction in colour, to be scanned.]

[Reproduction in blach and white to be added.]

Berkeley and Lady Burlington:
A Footnote
John Stephens

In 1750 Berkeley wrote a letter to Lady Burlington: it is brief so I shall reproduce it here.

“Madam/ Permit me to thank your Ladyship for a present / very valuable in it self, and much more so on account / of the giver, who is so good as to remember an humble / servant in this remote corner; where to my sorrow, I / am, haunted with a taste for good company and / fine arts that I got at Burlington house, the worst pre- / parative in the world for a retreat at Cloyne. But / wherever I am, your Ladyship and my good Lord / Burlington may alwaies count upon the best / respects and most sincere good wishes of / Madam / Yr. most obedient / and most obliged / Servant / G: Cloyne / [on the left] / Cloyne April 2. 1750/”1

It is a rather sad letter: he may then have been depressed but worse was to happen. In February 1751 his son William died and the following October his friend Thomas Prior followed. The next year he sailed for England, never to return to Ireland. Berkeley shared Burlington’s interest in architecture but he had certainly not been in Burlington House since he had last been in London in 1734. It has very much the tone of someone pleasantly surprised that he should be remembered after so long an absense.

When G. N. Cantor first published the letter in 1980 he was unable to identify the gift. It is now possible, through sheer chance, to clear the matter. Dorothy Burlington was the daughter of the second Marquis of Halifax — the Trimmer — and in 1750 she published for the first time her father’s Character of King Charles the Second. It was this, almost certainly, she sent to Berkeley in Cloyne. Berkeley’s copy survives with her presentation inscription and on the title page in Berkeley’s hand the intitials “G. C.” The inscription, on the recto of a free front end-paper, reads “To the Bishop of Cloyne / from his most humble / Servant / D Burlington”; (she does not punctuate nor does she use the long “s”). The book is bound in contemporary calf, later rebacked with marbled endpapers. It does not feature in the 1796 sale catalogue of the Berkelely family. The book was later in the possession of the architect Marshall Sisson and is now in a private collection.

George Berkeley, De Motu, a cura di Mariapaola Fimiani (Salerno, 1989). 211p.

Mariapaola Fimiani, who has already written a book on Berkeley — George Berkeley, il nome e l’immagine (Salerno, 1979) — and has published with T. E. Jessop a translation of Berkeley’s journals in Italy — Viaggio in Italia (Napoli, 1979), now gives us a very handy translation of De Motu in Italian. We have the unusual privilege of a bilingual edition and a rich critical apparatus for historical information (pp. 135 - 202). An introduction by the translator — Moto senza Materia (pp. 5-45), which suggests a link between De Motu and immaterialism, may be thought arguable at some points, but gives a new start to this not enough considered work by Berkeley.

Genevieve Brykman
Université de Paris X

Recent Publications on Berkeley

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

Recent Publications on Berkeley (cont.)

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

Recent Publications on Berkeley (cont.)

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

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