Revue Internationale de Philosophie

HUME'S INFLUENCE ON BERKELEY

Author(s): Colin M. TURBAYNE
Source: Revue Internationale de Philosophie, Vol. 39, No. 154 (3), BERKELEY (1685-1985) (1985),
pp. 259-269
Published by: Revue Internationale de Philosophie
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23946540
Accessed: 06-03-2016 07:41 UTC

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 HUME'S INFLUENCE ON BERKELEY

Colin M. TURBAYNE

1. Hume's Direct Influence on Berkeley ?

On an evening early in March, 1734, George Berkeley and David Hume

met at a dinner party at the home of the celebrated physician and author
of John Bull, Dr. John Arbuthnot, in Cork Street, Burlington Gardens,
London. Berkeley was aged 49, Hume 23. The occasion was a célébration
in honor of, and a farewell to, Dean Berkeley who, a few weeks earlier,
had kissed the King's hands for the bishopric of Cloyne. Dr. Arbuthnot,
Berkeley's friend and physician, had been attending him for a persistent
malady finally manifesting itself as gout. But on 2 March his gout had left
him. The reasons for the presence of Hume at the party were that Hume,
now recuperating from a mysterious psychosomatic disorder, was also
being treated by the same Dr. Arbuthnot, and that Hume had expressed
a strong desire to meet Dean Berkeley whose works he had studied and
admired.
In the course of the evening, Dr. Arbuthnot, himself an amateur
philosopher and mathematician, and Berkeley's first convert in England
to Immaterialism, drew Berkeley out and questioned him on his philoso
phy — presently a lively topic of conversation in court circles and in the
coffee houses of London ever since Berkeley's recent return from America
and his publication of Alciphron written in that country. The discussion
however, as always happens when Berkeley is the subject, did not take
long to revert to that time-worn topic, the déniai of the existence of matter
or material substance, about which Arbuthnot acknowledged he could
object nothing.
At this point one member of the group did object strongly. The objector
was David Hume. A debate ensued of which the following is a summary :

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260 C. M. TURBAYNE

Hume. You admit nevertheless that there is spiritual substance although you
have no idea of it, while you deny there can be such a thing as material
substance because you have no notion or idea of it. Is this fair dealing ? To
act consistently, you must either admit matter or reject spirit. What say you
to this ?

This objection, so trenchantly phrased and voiced as it was with a strong

Scottish burr by an exceptionally sturdy, robust, and ruddy faced young
man, appeared to startle Berkeley. He hesitated in delivering an answer as
if the objection were new to him. After a short time he collected himself
and replied quietly :

Berkeley. I say in the first place, that I do not deny the existence of material
substance merely because I have no notion of it, but because the notion of
it is inconsistent. I say, secondly, that, although we believe things to exist
which we do not perceive, yet we may not believe that any particular thing
exists without some reason for such belief ; but I have no reason for
believing the existence of matter. I have no immediate intuition thereof,
neither can I mediately from my sensations, ideas, notions, actions, or
passions infer an unthinking, unperceiving, inactive substance. I say, lastly,
that I have a notion of spirit, though I have not, strictly speaking, an idea
of it. I do not perceive it as an idea, or by means of an idea, but know it
by reflection.

Hume renewed his attack with considérable verve. Displaying intimate

knowledge of Berkeley's principles, he deduced the next apparently
devastating step and administered what seemed to some members of the
party that evening the coup de grâce of the debate :

Hume. Notwithstanding ail you have said, to me it seems that, according to

your own way of thinking, and in conséquence of your own principles, it
should follow that you are only a system of floating ideas without any
substance to support them. Words are not to be used without a meaning.
And, as there is no more meaning in spiritual substance than in material
substance, the one is to be exploded as well as the other.

Here one could observe that Berkeley appeared a little embarrassed and
confounded. Once again he hesitated and then replied with some exas
pération :

Berkeley. How often must I repeat that I know or am conscious of my own

being, and that I myself am not my ideas, but somewhat eise, a thinking
active principle that perceives, knows, wills, and operates about ideas ? I
know that I, one and the same self, perceive both colors and sounds, that

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 HUME'S INFLUENCE ON BERKELEY 261

a colour cannot perceive a sound, nor a sound a color, that I am therefore

one individual principle distinct from color and sound, and, for the same
reason, from ail other sensible things and inert ideas. But I am not in like
manner conscious either of the existence or essence of matter. On the
contrary, I know that nothing inconsistent can exist, and that the existence
of matter implies an inconsistency. Further, I know what I mean when I
affirm that there is a spiritual substance or support of ideas, that is, that a
spirit knows and perceives ideas. But I do not know what is meant when it
is said that an unperceiving substance has inherent in it and supports either
ideas or the archetypes of ideas. There is, therefore, upon the whole no
parity of case between spirit and matter.

All looked in Hume's direction and waited for his reply. But Hume, as
some thought, out of deference to the great man, conceded :

Hume. I own myself satisfied in this point.

Over the port Berkeley said that he was much impressed with the
philosophical acumen of the young Scotsman and asked him whether he
belonged to the Rankenian Club in Edinburgh with the members of which
he had corresponded, finding them to be his best students. Berkeley
repaired to his home in Green Street and, before retiring, wrote up the
night's debate preparatory to sending it to his publisher for inclusion in
the second édition of his Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous
due to corne out that year. By 30 April 1734 Berkeley had left London,
and on 19 May was consecrated in Dublin.
Hume was elated and flattered by the respectfiil way in which his views
had been treated by Berkeley. Such was the psychological lift he received
from this brief encounter with the great philosopher that within two or
three days he was completely cured of his psychosomatic disorder. By
mid-March he was in Bristol where, in keeping with his newly discovered
independence, the remission of his malady, and the enormous boost given
to his ego, he changed his name from "Home" to "Hume". Throughout
the summer memories of the great debate filled his mind, and also the urge
to create his own book. By the end of August he was on his way to France.
In September he was at Rheims, preparing to work on his Treatise... An
important part of this préparation was to read over again Berkeley's own
Treatise ..., usually called for short the Principles.

*
**

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262 C. M. TURBAYNE

The preceding account of the meeting of Berkeley and Hume is, of

course, only a likely story. It does provide, however, a satisfactory
explanation of the peculiarly Humean objection exposing the traditional
Achilles' heel of Berkeley's system that Berkeley added to the second
édition of his Three Dialogues C) and published in the same year — the
same year also that Hume began his own book containing a theory of mind
that is a development from the objection anticipated by Berkeley : "The
Mind is a system of différent perceptions." If this is so, then the lengthy
addition made by Berkeley to his book, the largest he made to any of his
major works, constitutes the only instance of Hume's direct influence on
Berkeley.
While external evidence is lacking, the story nevertheless is grounded
in the following factors : that Berkeley and Hume were in London in early
March, 1734 (2) ; that Dr. Arbuthnot had attended Berkeley in early life,
and may have been "the physician" who attended him in February
1734 (3) ; that Berkeley claimed Arbuthnot as "the first proselyte I have
made by the treatise I came over to print" (4) ; that the "physician" in
Hume's psychoanalytical letter found in his papers was, most likely, the
same Dr. Arbuthnot (5) ; and that the two philosophers were tackling the
same problem of the nature of the human mind at roughly the same time,
but coming up with opposite answers.
Before considering further Hume's influence on Berkeley, let us consi
der something much more certain, viz., Berkeley's influence on Hume.

(1) Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, (second édition, 1734) III, sec. 4.
Citations from this work, also A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
are from Colin M. Turbayne, ed., Principles, Dialogues, and Correspondence (Indiana
polis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1965). In my édition I have sectioned the Dialogues in conformity
with Berkeley's other works. Citations from Essay on Vision are from Works on Vision,
ed. Colin M. Turbayne (Connecticut, Greenwood Press, 1981). Those from Alciphron are
from Works of George Berkeley, ed. A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop (London, Thomas
Nelson, 1950), Vol. III.
(2) See Ε. C. Mossner, The Life of David Hume (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1980),
p. 83. Hume may have arrived in London in late February.
(3) Berkeley's letter to Prior, 19 Feb. 1734 : "... my friends and physician think it [the
gout] will be of... service to me in carrying off the dregs of my long disputation," in Works,
Vol. VIII, p. 228.
(4) Letter to Percival, 16 April, 1713. Works, Vol. VIII, p. 64. On August 7 (p. 70),
aller hearing of Jonathan Swift's déniai that Arbuthnot was a convert to Immaterialism,
Berkeley writes that against his "main point", the non-existence of matter,, Arbuthnot "has
acknowledged he can object nothing".
(5) See Mossner, "Hume's Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, 1734 : The Biographical Signi
ficance ", in Huntington Library Quarterly, VII (1944), pp. 135-152.

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 HUME'S INFLUENCE ON BERKELEY 263

2. Berkeley's Influence on Hume

It is stränge that perhaps the most controversial question in Berkeleyan

studies in recent years has been whether Hume read Berkeley (6). The
question has been conclusively settled by the discovery of two letters by
Hume. On 29 September 1734 Hume wrote from Rheims to his friend
Michael Ramsay : "It is my pleasure to read over again today Locke's
Essays and The Principles of Human Knowledgeby Dr. Berkeley" (7). On
26 August 1737 Hume wrote from Tours to Ramsay : "I desire of you, if
you have leisure, to read over once le Recherche ... of Pere Malebranche,
the Principles by Dr. Berkeley, some of ... Baile's Dictionary, and
Descartes' Méditations ... These books will make you easily comprehend
the metaphysical parts of my reasoning" (8). Seen in the light of these two
letters, one written just before Hume composed his Treatise, the other just
after completing it, the relation between Berkeley and Hume takes on a
new significance. The question becomes : How much did Hume learn from
Berkeley ?
Early in his Treatise Hume confirms Berkeley's rejection of the doctrine
of abstract ideas, calling it "one of the greatest and most valuable
discoveries that has been made of late years in the republic of letters" and
refers to Berkeley as "a great philosopher" (Part I, sec. 7). This is his only
reference to Berkeley throughout the Treatise. This is stränge, for there are
several parallels in the philosophies of the two men just as significant as
the rejection of the doctrine of abstract ideas. These are : the rejection of
the doctrine of material substance, the rejection of the two time-worn

(6) The debate was begun by Richard H. Popkin, "Did Hume Ever Read Berkeley?"
Journal of Philosophy 56, 12 (June 4, 1959) : 535-545. It continued with Philip P.
Wiener, same title same issue : 533-535, also 58, 8 (Apr. 13, 1961) : 207-209, and 58,
12 (June 8, 1961): 327-328; Ernest Campbell Mossner, 56, 25 (Dec. 3, 1959):
992-995 ; and Antony Flew, 58, 2 (Jan. 19, 1961) : 50-51. It ended with the publication
of two new letters by Hume. See notes 7 and 8 below.
(7) Michael Morrisroe, Jr., "Did Hume Read Berkeley ? A Conclusive Answer",
Philological Quarterly, 52 (1973), pp. 314-315. Hume reports also that the Abbé
Noël-Antoine Pluché "has opened his fine library to me," and that the Abbé "received new
works of Learning and Philosophy from London and Paris each month". My italics. The
letter is reprinted in Mossner, Life, pp. 626-627.
(8) Tadeusz Kozanecki, "Dawida Hume'a Nieznane Listy w Zbiorach Muzeum
Czartoryskich (Polska)", Archiwum Historii Filozofl i Mysli Spolecznej, 9 (1963) (Religie
Racjonalne. Studio ζ filozofl religii xv-xvii w) ■. 127-141. The letter is reprinted in Richard
H. Popkin, "So, Hume Did Read Berkeley", Journal of Philosophy, 61 (Dec. 24, 1964) :
773-778, and Mossner, Life, p. 627.

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264 C. M. TURBAYNE

distinctions of primary and secondary qualities and of things from the

perceptions of them, the rejection of the notion that efficient causes in the
physical world have any "efficacy" or power in them, as well as the
acceptance of the views that everything that exists is particular, that
external objects, so called, are nothing but collections of qualities, that the
existence of such entities consists in their being perceived, and of the
Principle of Association. It might be argued that these parallels are merely
coincidental and that the two recently discovered letters just quoted fail
to reveal any influence of Berkeley on Hume.
There are, however, numerous parallels throughout Hume's Treatise in
which Hume uses, not only the same ideas as Berkeley's, but the same
words. They suggest that Hume not only read several of Berkeley's works
but had them on his desk before him as he composed the Treatise C).
Here is a small selection :

Berkeley and Hume are as one on the principle of Association. They use
the same model, that of words and their meanings, both maintaining the
difficulty of disuniting the one from the other in our thoughts :

Berkeley Hume

This, indeed, in a complété degree Nothing is required but the hearing of

seems scarce possible to be perfor
med ... Though he endeavour to disu
nite the meaning from the sound, it
will nevertheless intrude into his
thoughts (Essay on Vision, 159).
that word to produce the correspon
ding idea ; and 'twill scarce be possible
for the mind, by its utmost efforts, to
prevent that transition ( Treatise III, 6).

Berkeley uses this relation to elucidate the relation between visual and
tactual objects. Both men use it to illustrate the relation between cause and
effect. Berkeley, however, keeps the metaphor overt in the two cases, using
the words "sign" and "thing signified", while Hume does not. Hume says
that this relation "is the very same with that betwixt the ideas of cause and
effect" (ibid.) What précédés is a most significant révélation of Berkeley's
influence on Hume because here we are at the heart of one of Hume's own
discoveries in the Republic of Letters : that the relation in question is not
one of rational judgment but of feeling. The same basic relation of the

(9) See Roland Hall, "Hume's Actual Use of Berkeley's Principles", in Philosophy
XLIII (1968), 278-280, and "Did Hume Read some Berkeley Unawares ?" in Philosophv
XLII (1967), 276-277.

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 HUME'S INFLUENCE ON BERKELEY 265

Stoic suggestive signs is exhibited in the next two parallels (10). Hume's
grammatical gentility (so to speak) is affected by Berkeley's uncouth
coinage.

Berkeley Hume

Distance or outness is neither immedia
tely of itself perceived by sight, nor yet
apprehended or judged of by Unes and
angles (Principles, 43).
That food nourishes, sleep refreshes,
and fire warms us ... - ail this we
know, not by discovering any neces
sary connexion between our ideas
(Principles 31).
Who sees not that ail the dispute [con
cerning identity] is abolit a word (Dia
logues III, 18).
Even our sight informs us not of dis
tance or outness (so to speak) imme
diately, and without a certain reasoning
and experience ( Treatise IV, 2).
If we believe that fire warms or water
refreshes, 'tis only because it costs us
too much pain to think otherwise
( Treatise IV, 7).
Ail the disputes concerning the identity
of connected objects are merely verbal
( Treatise IV, 6).

In the next parallel we see how Berkeley, if the debate I envisaged did not
take place, anticipated Hume's view of the mind :

Berkeley Hume

It should follow that you are only a The true idea of the human mind is to
system of floating ideas (Dialogues consider it as a system of différent
III, 4). perceptions ( Treatise IV, 6).

As they approach the end of their respective works Berkeley's opponent,

Hylas, and Hume as well, but not Berkeley himself, are plunged into the
deepest skepticism :

Berkeley Hume

You are plunged into the deepest and I begin to fancy myself in the most
more deplorable skepticism that ever deplorable condition imaginable, invi
man was ( Three Dialogues III, 1). ron'd with the deepest darkness (Trea
tise IV, 7).

Having reached the end of their works both men resort to using the
metaphor of the voyage to illustrate their metaphysical investigations.
While Berkeley returns to the harbor of common sense, Hume remains
aboard the same "leaky weather-beaten vessel" of skepticism (?), and
contemplâtes "compassing the globe" ;

(10) The flrst of these parallels was noticed by Roland Hall. See note 9.

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266 C. M. TURBAYNE

Berkeley Hume

This return to common sense ... is like
coming home from a long voyage : A
man reflects with pleasure on the many
difficulties and perplexities he has pas
sed through, sets his heart at ease, and
enjoys himself with more satisfaction
for the future ( Three Dialogues, Pré
facé).
Before I launch out into those im
mense depths of philosophy which lie
before me, I find myself inclin'd to ...
ponder the voyage ... My memory of
past errors and perplexities makes me
diffident for the future ( Treatise I,
Conclusion).

Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, written 1749-1751, also

reflect Berkeley's influence in content as well as in use of words. Berkeley's
Alciphron, 1732, is now more readily available to Hume. Here is a small
selection :

Berkeley Hume

This great truth which lies so near and
obvious to the mind [viz. the existence
of God] (Principles, 149).
lipon the common principles of philo
sophers ... sense is fallacious, reason
defective ( Three Dialogues, Préfacé).
A sincere belief of a future State, al
though it be a mystery, although it be
what eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
nor hath it entered into the heart of man
to conceive (Alciphron, VII, 10).
What truth so obvious, so certain as the
being of a God ...? (Dialogues, Pré
facé).
Our senses, you say, are fallacious-,
our understanding erroneous (Dialo
gues, I).
We ought t ... adore in silence his
infinite perfections which eye hath not
seen, ear hath not heard, neither hath it
entered into the heart of man to con
ceive (Dialogues, II).

The interest of the preceding item lies, among other things, in the fact that
although Berkeley takes it from Corinthians (I, ch. 2, 9), the last part of
the sentence, "nor ... to conceive" is apparently Berkeley's own, and that
Hume reproduces it.
The next five parallels exhibit once more the use by both men of the
language model so dear to the heart of Berkeley and which he made
peculiarly his own. Coming originally from the Essay on Vision where the
suggestive signs (e.g., fire is a sign of heat) are stressed, it is developed
in Alciphron where the indicative signs (e.g., words are a sign of a speaker
or author) are stressed. Hume, it seems, found Berkeley's language model
most acceptable :

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 HUME'S INFLUENCE ON BERKELEY 267

Berkeley Hume

One single sentence heard once in his
life from the sky... (Alciphron IV, 15).
If there was one only invariable and
universal language in the world ( Essay
on Vision, 66).
The arbitrary use of sensible signs ...
whether they enter by the eye or the
ear, they have the same use and are
equally proofs of an intelligent, thin
king, designing cause (Alciphron
IV, 7).
Author of Nature (Principles, etc.
throughout).
Suppose, therefore, that an articularte
voice were heard in the clouds (Dialo
gues, III).
Suppose that there is a natural, univer
sal, invariable language, common to
every individual of the human race
(Dialogues, III).
Whatever cavils may be urged, an
orderly world, as well as a coherent,
articulate speech, will still be received
as an incontestable proof of design and
intention (Dialogues, IV).
Author of nature ( Dialogues, IV).

The final item is also characteristically Berkeleyan, for it is a corollary of

his language model according to which "the communicating of ideas by
words is not the chief and only end of language" ("). Other ends are to
rouse emotion, to direct and to regulate action :

Berkeley Hume
[Theological terms] serve to regulate The proper office of religion is to regu
and influence our wills, passions or late the heart of men, humanize their
conduct (Alciphron, VII, 8). conduct... (Dialogues, XII).

The preceding account shows the remarkable influence of Berkeley's

four major works on Hume while he was composing his own two most
important works. Two questions arise. First, why did not Hume acknowl
edge these borrowings which are substantive as well as stylistic ? A
possible answer is that Hume, like Kant (l2) after him, found it difficult to
associate his contribution with a clergyman notorious for his outlandish
ideas. Moreover, perhaps Hume thought his borrowings would go un
detected. If so, he was right, at least until this paper and that of Roland

(11) Principles, Introduction, sec. 20.

(12) See my "Kant's Refutation ofDogmatic Idealism", Philosophical Quarterly, 5 (July
1955), 225-244, reprinted as "Kant's Relation to Berkeley" in Kant Studies Today, ed.
Lewis White Beck (LaSalle, Open Court, 1969), 88-116.

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268 C. M. TURBAYNE

Hall (l3). Secondly, why did Hume want to use Berkeley's writings at ail ?
The most likely answer belongs to the final section of this paper to which
I now turn.

3. Hume's Indirect Influence on Berkeley

To the question, Why did Hume use Berkeley's writings ?, Hume

himself provides the answers. In a footnote at the end of the Inquiry he
writes :

Most of the writings of that ingenious author form the best lessons of
skepticism which are to be found either among the ancient or modem
philosophers, Bayle not excepted (sec. 12).

Having found such a rich store of skeptical arguments in Berkeley, Hume

incorporated many of them in the Treatise. One can imagine that Hume
enjoyed writing this for he knew that Berkeley, who was still alive, was
utterly opposed to skepticism. Hume, of course, is correct in finding many
skeptical arguments in Berkeley. This is because Berkeley's method of
refuting his main opponents, the skeptics, is to try to anticipate skeptical
objections to his own views. By anticipating such objections Berkeley
envisages a central part of Hume's skeptical system of philosophy. But this
method is dangerous. It can recoil on the user. So powerfully does he
press these objections against himself that he hands to his objectors a set
of weapons forged by himself that can be used to destroy him. He presents
these objections as apparent but mistaken conséquences of his principles
which, when put together, constitute the skeleton of a skeptical system.
To take one example, in the debate between "Hume" and "Berkeley"
recorded in section 1 above, so plausible and convincing does Berkeley
make the argument of "Hume" that it is now widely held that Berkeley
is forced by his own principles to accept the Humean view of the mind
as "only a system of floating ideas". A. J. Ayer, looking at Berkeley
through Humean spectacles, draws the same Humean conclusion : "The
considérations which make it necessary, as Berkeley saw, to give a
phenomenalist account of material things, make it necessary, as Berkeley

(13) See note 9.

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 HUME'S INFLUENCE ON BERKELEY 269

did not see, to give a phenomenalist account of the self' (14). Similar
analyses may be given of other objections raised by Berkeley.
There were, of course, others who helped form the traditional inter
prétation of Berkeley well before the end of the eighteenth Century. These
were Andrew Baxter, Thomas Reid, and James Beattie, ail of whom
confounded Berkeley with skepticism. The most influential was Reid who
presented the Locke-Berkeley-Hume sequence as a reductio-ad-absurdum
argument.
But the most influential of them all was Hume who, with the script
already largely written by Berkeley himself, taught us how to read it. It is
now difficult to read the original with an unbiassed eye. If this is so, then
Hume's influence on Berkeley, that is, on the notion of Berkeley belonging
to posterity, has been enormous. Hume was obeying the principle that
"every writer creates his own precursors" (15).
Although is is difficult to read Berkeley with un unbiassed eye, a feat
at times seemingly "scarce possible to be performed", nevertheless, it is
possible to discard the Humean spectacles that we have been wearing for
so long. In the second édition of the Three Dialogues, 1734, if not as a
resuit of a 1734 meeting with Hume, Berkeley anticipated and met
head-on the Humean criticism of his account of spiritual substance.
Although sound, these arguments in defense of the principle that the mind
is other than a system of perceptions are not Berkeley's strengest argu
ments. The Three Dialogues was a populär work, presented, he said, in
"the most easy and familiar manner". Had he resorted to using the more
technical Principles he could have shown, with more logic but with less
expédition and despatch, that his main principles of Distinction, Inhé
rence, and Identity do not entail the skeptical conséquences so adroitly but
mistakenly drawn by Hume. I liave argued for this in my recent "Lending
a Hand to Philonous" (16).

University of Rochester.

(14) Language, Triith and Logic (1936 : reprinted New York : Dover, 1946), p. 126.
(15) Jorge Luis Borges, "Kafka and his Precursors", in Labyrinths, p. 91.
(16) See Colin M. Turbayne, "Lending a Hand to Philonous : The Berkeley, Plato,
Aristotle Connection", in Berkeley, Critical and Interpretive Essays, ed. Colin M. Tur
bayne (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1982), pp. 295-310.

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