Berkeley’s Notion of Spirit

Charles McCracken

[McCracken, Charles (1999). Berkeley's notion of Spirit. In Margaret Atherton, ed (1999). The Empiricist: Critical Essays. Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham MD.]

Ideas and spirits are the two great categories of Berkeley’s ontology. Part One of the Principles of Human Knowledge examined ideas. Part Two was to examine spirits. But Part Two never appeared. "I had made a considerable progress in it; but the manuscript was lost . . . and I never had leisure since to do so disagreeable a thing as writing twice on the same subject," Berkeley explained to his friend Johnson. [1] Nor was he ever to give a detailed account of his concept of mind or spirit in any later work. His notebooks, however, reveal a good deal about his struggle to get clear about the nature of spirit. His notion of spirit there underwent some notable changes. I want here to trace those changes, then suggest a problem in the view of spirit he finally settled on.

Berkeley’s initial concept of mind was fairly Cartesian. Descartes held that the mind has two faculties: the understanding, by which I passively perceive (percipio) ideas, and the will, by which I actively assent to or deny them. Further, thoughts and ideas, according to Descartes, are but "modes of thinking" (facons de penser), i.e. of that thinking substance that is the mind (Meditations, III and IV; Principles of Philosophy, I, 17). Early in his first notebook, Berkeley seems to have accepted much in this view. Thus, he took the mind to have active and passive powers, which he described as ‘powers to cause thoughts’ and ‘powers to receive thoughts’, or as those "interior operations of the mind, wherein the mind is active, [and] those that obey not the acts of volition, and in which the mind is passive, [which] are more properly called sensations or perceptions" (228, 286). [2] And rather than taking ideas to be distinct from minds, Berkeley at first supposed them, as

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had Descartes, to be modifications of minds (or of ‘persons’ as he called minds, until it occurred to him that by so doing he might needlessly embroil himself in controversy about the Trinity). Thus, an early entry declared, "Nothing properly but persons, i.e., conscious things, do exist; all other things are not so much existences as manners of the existence of persons" (24). Berkeley’s early ontology, then, countenanced only one kind of thing: minds -- things having active and passive powers (which he later regularly called ‘will’ and ‘understanding’, as Descartes had done), while the ideas minds perceive he took to be but modifications or ‘manners of the existence’ of minds. It is thus not surprising that in many early entries he used ‘thoughts’ and ‘ideas’ as synonyms (e.g. 164, 228, 280, 299). Even as late as entry 474, he could still write that "according to my doctrine, all things are entia rationis, i.e. solum habent esse in intellectu" (a claim he later repudiated on the verso page, at 474a).

Gradually, however, Berkeley began to see in this division of spirit into active and passive components the basis of a new dualism -- one that would divide things into two radically unlike species: wholly active beings and wholly passive beings. He first effected this division in a surprising way: He divorced the understanding from the will, and identified the understanding wholly with its ideas, the spirit wholly with its will. He first ventured on this view in this notable set of entries:

This passage brings to mind, of course, Hume’s view that the self is "nothing but a bundle or collection of perceptions." But Berkeley was here speaking, I think, not of spirit per se, but only of that passive aspect of spirit that he called ‘the understanding’. When he uses ‘mind’ in this passage, he seems to use the word as Malebranche sometimes did, viz, as a synonym for the understanding and in contrast to the will. That it is only the understanding, not the spirit as a whole, that he is here identifying with its ideas is suggested by the fact that only a few entries later he wrote , ‘‘The understanding seemeth not to differ from

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its perceptions or ideas. Qu: what must one think of the will and passions?" (587).

Berkeley effected this identification of ideas with the understanding by denying any distinction between three things Locke had kept separate: the understanding, the understanding’s perception of ideas, and the ideas the understanding perceives. For Locke, our idea of a white spot is an "idea of sensation"; but our idea of our perception of a white spot is "the first and simplest idea we have from reflection" (Essay Concerning Human Understanding II, 9, 1). Now Berkeley grew suspicious of this distinction, asking himself "if there be any real difference betwixt certain ideas of reflexion and others of sensation, e.g. ‘twixt perception and white, black, sweet, etc.? Wherein I pray you does the perception of white differ from white?" (585, emphasis added). The idea and the perception of the idea, it seemed to him, are the same. And further, "the understanding seemeth not to differ from its perceptions and ideas" (587).

Here, then, we find him suggesting, albeit in a tentative way, the identity of an idea with our perception of it, and of the understanding with (the sum of) its ideas or perceptions. A few entries later, tentativeness gave way to conviction: "The distinguishing betwixt an idea and perception of the idea has been one great cause of imagining material substances. ... The understanding [is] not distinct from particular perceptions or ideas" (609, 614). Understanding, perception of ideas, ideas: these are but several expressions for the same thing (cf. 578, 656, 681).

Only two further steps were needed for Berkeley to reach a thorough-going dualism of idea and spirit: namely, to separate the will from the understanding and to identify the spirit wholly with the will. He soon took both steps. Entries 614-615 already hint at some notable distinction between understanding and will: "The understanding not distinct from particular perceptions or ideas. The will not distinct from particular volitions." At 643, he more definitely proclaimed the will "toto coelo different from the understanding, i.e., from all our ideas. If you say the will, or rather a volition, is something, I answer there is an homonymy in the word ‘thing’ when applied to ideas and volitions and understanding and will. All ideas are passive, volitions active" (643). A bit later he put it more simply: ‘‘The will and the understanding may very well be thought two distinct beings" (708; cf. 362a, 681).

With will and understanding divorced and the understanding identified wholly with its ideas, all that Berkeley had to do to reach his new

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dualism was to identify the spirit wholly with the will; and this he now proceeded to do: "The soul is the will properly speaking and, as it, is distinct from ideas" (478a -- this was Berkeley’s response to his query at 478, "How is the soul distinguished from its ideas?"). "The spirit, the active thing, that which is soul and God, is the will alone" (712). This identification of spirit with the will alone is stated or implied in many other entries, e.g., 706, 788, 814, 828, 829. Thus he arrived at a fundamental dualism of wholly active beings and wholly passive beings.

But this early version of his dualism was untenable. For if the will and the understanding are separated, then the will will perceive nothing and so will be blind. Berkeley at first embraced this odd conclusion. "I say nothing which is perceived or does perceive wills" (659, emphasis added). But he soon began to see its untenable consequences. For if the will is the spirit, and yet perceives nothing, then the spirit perceives nothing -- which is contrary to the very doctrine Berkeley wants to prove, viz, that the existence of a thing depends on its being perceived by some spirit. A will that perceived nothing would be blind, for it would have no idea of what it was willing; and a passive understanding -- separated from the will -- would have no power to direct its attention from one idea to another. Berkeley can be seen mulling these problems over in several entries in which he wonders whether there can be perceptions without volitions or volitions without perceptions (cf. 611-13, 624, 645). At length, he concluded that "without perception there is no volition" (674) and that "there can be no perception, no idea, without will" (833). The upshot seemed clear: "It seems to me that will and understanding, volition and ideas, cannot be severed, and that either cannot be possibly without the other" (841).

These reflections led Berkeley to see that the understanding must be distinguished from its ideas and restored to the spirit. But, eager to preserve his doctrine that spirit is "altogether active and not at all passive" (706), he now sought to construe the understanding as itself active: "Understanding in some sort an action" (821). And what is its activity if not thinking and perceiving? "Thought itself, or thinking, is no idea; ‘tis an act, i.e., volition, i.e., as contradistinguished to effects, the will" (808; cf. 777). Of perception he now wrote, "There is somewhat active in most perceptions, i.e., such as ensue upon our volitions" (672a). Where he had once written, "The understanding [is] not distinct from particular perceptions or ideas" (614), he now corrected himself on the verso page: "The understanding, taken for a faculty, is not really distinct from the will’’ (614a).

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Earlier he had spoken of will and understanding as "two distinct beings." But now he held them to be the same thing, differing only in the objects they are directed toward: "Will, understanding, desire, hatred, etc., so far forth as they are acts or active differ not; all their difference consists in their objects, circumstances, etc." (854). At the end of his notebooks, then, Berkeley took spirit to be an essentially active being, with will and understanding distinguished not even as different faculties or kinds of action, but only by differences in the relations that the spirit, in acting, stands in to its effects. "‘Tis one will, one act, distinguished by the effects. This will, this act, is the spirit, operative principle, soul, etc." (788) [3]

This view, however, was implausible for two reasons. First, the difference between willing and perceiving cannot be explained solely by differences in the things that I will and that I perceive -- for one and the same thing (e.g. the motion of my arm) may on occasion be the object both of my volition (I move it voluntarily) and my perception (I see it move). And second, perceiving something, in an important sense, is not an action at all. Berkeley himself stressed this in the Three Dialogues. When Hylas sought to distinguish "the act of the mind perceiving" from the object perceived, Philonous asked whether there can be any "act of the mind" save an "act of will" and Hylas allowed that there cannot be. But what act of the will, asks Philonous, is involved when I smell a smell or see a colour? I act, to be sure, when I pick the flower, put it to my nose, and inhale: but it is not in these acts that the perception of the flower’s smell consists but in what follows upon them. And in that "I do not find my will concerned any farther. Whatever more there is, as that I perceive such a particular smell or any smell at all, this is independent of my will, and therein I am altogether passive." In the same way, opening and focusing your eyes often depends on your will. "But doth it in like manner depend on your will, that in looking on this flower, you perceive white rather than any other colour?" Hylas grants that it does not. "You are then in these respects altogether passive," concludes Philonous.

Note here that it is you who are "altogether passive," and not just the rose you perceive. To be sure, that too, on Berkeley’s view, is altogether passive, for it produces no effects, including your perceptions of it. But you too are not the cause of your perceiving this smell, this colour; you too are passive in perceiving them. "Since therefore you are in the very perception of light and colours altogether passive, what

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is become of that action you were speaking of, as an ingredient in every sensation?" [4]

There are really, then, on Berkeley’s view, two things that are passive in sense-perception: the idea and the perceiver of the idea -- for neither is the cause of the spirit’s perceiving of this colour, this smell. But Berkeley blurs these two distinct passivities -- of the idea perceived and of the mind insofar as it is perceiving by sense -- by calling them both "passions or sensations in the soul." [5] But, in fact, the ‘passion in the soul’ is not the same as the passive idea: for though the idea is not, for Berkeley, the cause of my perceiving it, I am not the cause of my perceiving it, either. Both ideas and I (insofar as I perceive by sense) are passive. Berkeley’s final view of spirit, therefore, is not that of the notebooks, where he sometimes called spirit ‘pure act’ (701, 828; but cf. 870). Instead, it is that a spirit is in some ways active (when willing things), and in some ways passive (when perceiving them by sense).

Berkeley himself later put it thus: "That the soul of man is passive as well as active, I make no doubt." [6] But if so, what kind of thing are we to take spirit to be? It cannot simply be that "the substance of a spirit is that it acts, causes, wills, operates" (829) -- for that will not explain how a spirit can passively perceive. Nor can it simply be that a spirit is a thing that perceives (whose existence is ‘percipere’, as Berkeley declared at 429) -- for that will not explain its capacity to act and will. Shall we say that a spirit is the being or thing that has the ‘faculties’ or ‘powers’ of willing and perceiving? Or, as Berkeley himself put the question when he still believed in abstract ideas, "Qu: whether being might not be the substance of the soul; or whether being, added to the faculties, complete the real essence and adequate definition of the soul?" (44; at 154 he answered this question affirmatively). On that view the spirit itself would be a bare particular -- one that would take 'perceives such and such’ and ‘wills such and such’ as predicates. But once Berkeley gave up abstract ideas, any talk of mere ‘things’ or ‘existents’ became anathema; to speak of a "positive abstract idea of quiddity, entity, or existence" was now seen as "a downright repugnancy and trifling with words" (Principles, 81).

For a while, Berkeley replaced the view that the soul is a bare particular that has the faculties of willing and perceiving -- "a complex idea made up of existence, willing, and perception," as he himself put it when he still accepted this notion (154) -- with a ‘‘bundle’’ view of the self. Thus, as we’ve seen, he at one point proclaimed ‘‘the will not distinct from particular volitions’’ (615). ‘‘You ask, do these volitions

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make one will? What you ask is merely about a word, unity being no more [than that]" (714). And he said the same of the understanding. But this view too he abandoned. "I must not say that the understanding differs not from the particular ideas, or the will from particular volitions. The spirit, the mind, is neither a volition nor an idea" (848-9). The unity of an apple, to be sure, is merely nominal, merely a unity imposed by the mind on a bundle of ideas (Principles, 1). But the unity of the spirit is a real, not merely a nominal, unity. Berkeley came repeatedly to insist that "a spirit is one simple, undivided, active being," an "indivisible substance" (Principles, 27, 89, 141).

But if spirit is not simply a thing that wills, nor again simply a thing that perceives, nor an indeterminate thing or bare particular of which ‘volitions’ and ‘perceptions’ can be predicated, nor finally a mere bundle of particular volitions and perceptions, what is it? The one alternative that remains, it seems, is to say that spirit is a thing whose very essence consists in willing and perceiving, that willing and perceiving are not faculties or powers of the soul but its very substance -- or, as Berkeley himself put it, that the existence of the soul is percipere and velle (429a). But how much light does this shed on the nature of spirit? Spirit, for Berkeley, is a simple, indivisible thing, yet one that can be in very different states, and the problem is to understand what sort of thing it is that, though perfectly unitary, can be the subject of these different states, or can exercise these different faculties.

Berkeley himself had a nominalist’s profound distrust of attempts to distinguish a thing from its states or faculties. It was this that led him, at 614-615, to try to reduce will and understanding to collections of particular volitions and ideas; this that led him to reject talk of ‘a being which wills’ or ‘a thing which perceives’ as "vague, empty words without a meaning" (499a, 581; cf. 829); this that made him loath to speak of spirit as "a thinking substance.., which perceives and supports and ties together the ideas" (637). This same suspicion caused him, late in the notebooks, to resolve not to mention understanding and will as faculties at all but simply to say they are included in ‘all that is active’ (848), and still later to write, "I must not say will and understanding are all one, but that they are both abstract ideas, i.e., none at all; they not being even ratione different from spirit, qua faculties, or active" (871). This same distrust of the distinction between a thing and its faculties led him, in the Principles, to denounce the attempt to ‘‘frame abstract notions of the powers and acts of the mind, and consider them

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prescinded, as well from mind or spirit itself, as from their respective objects and effects" (Principles, 143).

But once he allows, as in the Dialogues, that willing is an active state, perceiving a passive state, he can no longer hold that spirit is nothing but "one will, one act" (788). Instead, he needs to show how a thing that is perfectly simple and unitary can be simultaneously in such radically different states as those of actively willing and passively perceiving. To say it can because its nature consists in willing and perceiving amounts to no more than saying that a spirit can will and perceive because it is the kind of thing that wills and perceives. But that bare tautology goes no way towards revealing what, on the one hand, the source of a spirit’s unity and indivisibility is, nor, on the other, what it is in spirit that allows it, though one, to be qualified by very different sorts of predicates.

Perhaps, had Berkeley written Part Two of the Principles, he would have shown how to solve this puzzle. But it is interesting that, after losing the unfinished manuscript, he never again tried to write that second part. Was it really that he "never had leisure ... to do so disagreeable a thing as writing twice on the same subject"? He did write twice on the same subject (in the Principles and the Three Dialogues), and he did find leisure to write works on the topics of the other projected parts of the Principles (in De Motu and The Analyst). Of the topics the unwritten parts of the Principles were to treat of, the only one he never devoted a detailed study to was the nature of spirit. Maybe his prudent good sense suggested to him that about this topic it was as well to say no more.

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