58 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path
out a mind, that theirbeing is to be perceived or
known; that, consequently, so long as they are not
actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my
mind or that of any othercreated spirit, they must
either have no existence at all,or else subsist in the
mind of some Eternal Spirit.^3
From this point of view, nothing remains of the percept
if we exclude the process of its being perceived. There is
no color when none is seen, no sound when none is heard.
Outside the act of perception, categories such as exten-
sion, form, and movement exist just as little as color and
sound. Nowhere do we see extension or form alone; rath-
er, we always see these in conjunction with color or other
qualities indisputably dependent on our subjectivity. If
the latter disappear with our perception, then so must the
former, which are bound to them.
To the objection that, even if figure, color, sound, and
so forth do not exist outside the act of perception, there
must still be things that exist without consciousness and
are similar to the conscious perceptual images, the Berke-
leyan response would be to say that a color can only be
similar to a color, a figure similar to a figure. Our percepts
can be similar only to our percepts, not to any other kind
- George Berkeley (1685–1753),A Treatise Concerning the Princi-
ples of Human Knowledge(1710). Berkeley was an Irish philosopher
and a lecturer in divinity, Greek, and Hebrew at Dublin University,
who lived in America (1728–31) before being made Bishop of
Cloyne (1734) and retiring in Oxford (1752). He was the philosopher
of immaterialism and (subjective) idealism epitomized in the phrase
esse est percipi that is, to be is to be perceived.
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