1 TO BISHOP EVERY VIRTUE UNDER HEAVEN

“I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation. Between us and everybody else on this planet.” — Ouisa, in John Guare’s “SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION”

1. Cf. Pope’s line “To Berkeley every Virtue under Heaven.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1677

The Reverend Cotton Mather, the Reverend Ezra Stiles, and George Berkeley have all tried to decipher the messages chiseled into the 55-square-foot westward-facing flat surface of a 40-ton piece of feldspathic sandstone, a glacial erratic noticed at this timeperiod upside down at the tidewater line on the left bank of the Taunton River at Berkley, Massachusetts, that would become known as the Dighton Rock. Although the sandstone chunk was above water only four hours per day, Stiles of Yale College would convince himself that the inscription on the seventy-degree sloping flat surface was made up of ancient Phoenician petroglyphs.

“Dighton Rock is like the rocks you see along the highways, filled with graffiti,” says Jim Whitall. “It’s where everyone wanted to leave a message, and it’s the first stone in America that anyone paid any attention to. It was a bulletin-board for ancients, Native Americans, and colonials alike.” The rock with the mysterious hieroglyphs was moved to dry land a few years ago by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and a building was built around it to preserve the inscriptions. Winter ice and constant submergence at high tide under the Taunton River began obliterating some of the older markings. Also, in case one of the great scholars who deciphered the stone over the past 300 plus years is right, it’s best to preserve what may be a most important piece of history. Even if the hodgepodge of scratches and scribblings can’t ever be deciphered, Dighton Rock is a unique rock of ages. Sam Morison said, “if the history of the Dighton Rock is nothing else, it is a remarkable demonstration of human credulity.” Right on, Sam! -Campbell Grant, ROCK ART OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN, 1967

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1685

March 12: George Berkeley was born at Dysert Castle in Kilcrin near Thomastown, Ireland, the son of William Berkeley of Thomastown, in the county of Kilkenny, whose father had gone over to Ireland after the Restoration (the family having been loyal to King Charles I) and there obtained the collectorship of Belfast. A LIFE OF GEORGE BERKELEY

1704

After an education at Kilkenny school under Dr. Hinton, George Berkeley had been admitted a pensioner of Trinity College, Dublin, at the age of fifteen, under the tuition of Dr. Hall. In this year he received his Bachelor’s degree. PHILOSOPHICAL COMMENTARIES, printed in 1871, amounts to his COMMON-PLACE BOOK from these undergraduate years and indicates the formative influence of John Locke’s AN ESSAY CONCERNING THE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, which was being used as a text book.

BERKELEY THE COLLEGE LAD

According to the catalog of Henry Thoreau’s personal library that has come down to us, his copy of AN ESSAY CONCERNING THE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, acquired presumably during his formal education, had been printed in Philadelphia in one volume. I can offer you, however, as a one-volume edition, only something prepared by Google Books, that had been printed in 1849 in London by William Tegg & Co., Cheapside. HUMAN UNDERSTANDING

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1705

From the preface to George Berkeley’s ARITHMETICA ABSQUE ALGEBRA AUT EUCLIDE DEMONSTRATA, this writing would appear to have been in existence at this point, though he would not have it published until 1707. The volume is dedicated to Mr. Palliser, son of the archbishop of Cashel, and is followed by a MATHEMATICAL MISCELLANY containing some observations and theorems inscribed to his pupil Mr. Samuel Molyneux.

1707

June 9: George Berkeley obtained his MA at Trinity College in Dublin and became a fellow of that college. He would fill various college offices including tutor, Junior Dean, and Junior Greek Lecturer.

A LIFE OF GEORGE BERKELEY June 23, Monday: In the Boston News Letter: Dateline Piscataqua, June 20 [Friday]. “The Indians are Sculking every where on our Frontiers; and on Monday last 7 of them came to Spruce Creek in Kitters, and kill’d Philip Carpenter, his Wife & two Children, but had not time to pillage the House. A Party of our Forces went in pursuit of the Enemy.”

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1709

George Berkeley’s ESSAY TOWARD A NEW THEORY OF VISION, an examination of visual that concludes that it offers no proof for the existence of any object apparently viewed.

BERKELEY ON VISION

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1710

George Berkeley’s TREATISE CONCERNING THE PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, which presents the theory of for which he is now chiefly remembered.

BERKELEY’S TREATISE

1712

The principles inculcated in John Locke’s TWO TREATISES OF GOVERNMENT seem to have turned George Berkeley’s attention to the doctrine of passive obedience; in support of which he printed the substance of three “Common-place” discourses delivered by him that year in the college chapel. Lord Galway heard of this and presumed somehow that the author must be a Jacobite. This would turn out to help him rather than harm him, for upon being defended by others upon the evidence, as indeed no Jacobite, he would become known to Queen Caroline. A LIFE OF GEORGE BERKELEY

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1713

February: George Berkeley’s THREE DIALOGUES BETWEEN HYLAS AND PHILONOUS, a popularized account of his theory of idealism as it appears in his PRINCIPLES. Having taken holy orders, he abandoned Dublin for London.

BERKELEY’S 3 DIALOGUES

November: The Earl of Peterborough, upon being appointed Ambassador to the King of Sicily and to the other Italian states, took George Berkeley along with him to Europe as a chaplain and secretary. A LIFE OF GEORGE BERKELEY

1714

August: George Berkeley returned from Europe to England.

A LIFE OF GEORGE BERKELEY

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1716

For the next four years George Berkeley would be again traveling in Europe, this time as the traveling companion of a Mr. Ashe who stood to inherit a great fortune. While traveling he would be working on a 2nd part to his PRINCIPLES, but then would lose this manuscript during the sea passage from Sicily to Naples — and abandon the effort. Let the fishes be alone ideally wise!

REV. BERKELEY’S TRAVELS

1717

July: In absentia, George Berkeley was elected a senior fellow of his college in Dublin.

A LIFE OF GEORGE BERKELEY

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1721

George Berkeley’s treatise in Latin, DE MOTU, which he had drafted while staying in Lyon and presented to the royal academy of sciences at Paris, was printed in London. BERKELEY’S DE MOTU

Also, his anonymous ESSAY TOWARDS PREVENTING THE RUIN OF GREAT BRITAIN, a reaction to the collapse of the South Sea bubble.

BERKELEY RECOMMENDATION

November 14: George Berkeley received the degrees of bachelor and doctor in divinity of his college in Dublin and began again to fill college offices including Divinity Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Hebrew Lecturer, Proctor, Dean of Dromore, and Dean of Derry. A LIFE OF GEORGE BERKELEY

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1722

A lady who discovered that she had been cheated by her lover left the whole of her fortune, amounting to nearly £8,000, to be divided between her lawyer, a Mr. Marshal, and the Reverend Doctor George Berkeley, S.F.T.C.D., whom she had never met, evidently on the basis of his position. —Well, at least since she had never met him, he was a man who had done her no harm.

A LIFE OF GEORGE BERKELEY

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1724

The Reverend Dr. George Berkeley was back in London talking up his project for a university in the New World.

A LIFE OF GEORGE BERKELEY

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May 18: Having been promoted by his patron, the Duke of Grafton, to the deanery of Derry, with a substantial annual income, the Rev. Dr. George Berkeley resigned his fellowship at Trinity College.

A LIFE OF GEORGE BERKELEY

1725

Dr. Christopher Witt (1675-1765) had been with the German Pietists at Wissahickon. Two decades before Friend John Bartram, he started the 1st botanical garden in America. He corresponded with Peter Collinson and discoursed with Bartram.

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1728

August 1: George Berkeley and Anne Forster, the eldest daughter of the Right Honourable John Forster, Esq; speaker of the Irish house of Commons, were wed. (Presumably she didn’t know that after becoming a married man he was going to become such a couch potato.) A LIFE OF GEORGE BERKELEY

Here, in an image by John Smybert presently held at Yale University, is what the Berkeley family would look like after it had had a chance to develop for awhile. The image is curious in that, ordinarily, when such scenes are painted, the artist will go to great pains to avoid any appearance that any of the male figures are staring at the breasts of any of the female figures — and although probably the intention of the artist was that the second dude from the left was merely glancing down at the inscription being made in the ledger, that definitely was

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not done here:

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Mid-September: George Berkeley of the Church of England embarked for America, where he would land at Newport in the Rhode Island colony as the mainland port most convenient to the island of Bermuda, attempting to induce the course of empire westward to wend its weary way to that Shakespearean isle. On arrival he would purchase farmland near Newport and build “Whitehall,” named grandiloquently after the English palace.2 The shoreline about a mile from the house had a cleft in the rocks which would become his retreat for writing and reflection. Either while aboard ship on his way here, or at some point previous to 1726, the peripatetic coal-tar philosopher/theologian penned his famous poem “On the Prospects of Planting Arts and Learning in America.” A great university in Bermuda he would not succeed in founding, nor would he make it across the isthmus of Panama or around the Horn to Berkeley in California, which anyway didn’t exist yet, but while here in Rhode Island, marking time until into the year 1731, waiting for royally promised funds, waiting for his ship to come in, he would help to form a philosophical (which is to say, scientific) society at Newport3 and would preach regularly in the old wooden Trinity Church that had been established by, among others, the former

2. You can visit this building to see a portrait of the personage. You can visit only from July 1 to Labor Day; the stricture is that the structure is presently being utilized by the National “Help, I’ve descended and can’t get up!” Society of the Colonial Dames. 3. Newport, Rhode Island’s Redwood Library at 50 Bellevue Avenue, the oldest library building in continuous use in the USA, would be a legacy of this Philosophical Society. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 15 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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pirate Captain Thomas Paine.

Westward the course of empire takes its way; The first four acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day; Time’s noblest offspring is the last.

A LIFE OF GEORGE BERKELEY

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Bishop George Berkeley in his alcove by the Rhode Island shore

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1729

In his diary, the Baptist Reverend John Comer of Newport indicated that he had been visited by George Berkeley.

A REPORT OF THE VISIT

SOME PAGES OF THE DIARY He also provided an account of the experience of Captain Robert Gardner, who while on a voyage to Antigua had been led by a dream to rescue some shipwrecked sailors.

Over the following years, the Reverend Berkeley would be preaching a number of sermons in Rhode Island, and he did keep notes of his subject matter.

REVEREND BERKELEY

The inhabitants are of a mixed kind consisting of many sorts and subdivisions of sects. There are four sorts of Anabaptists, besides Presbyterians, Quakers, Independents and many of no profession at all. Notwithstanding so many differences here are fewer quarrels about religion than elsewhere, the people living peaceably with their neighbors of whatever profession. The climate is like that of Italy and not at all colder in winter than I have known it everywhere north of Rome. The town of Newport contains about 6,000 souls and is the most thriving, flourishing place in all America for its bigness. It is very pretty and pleasantly situated. I was never more agreeably surprised than at the sight of the town and its harbor.

READ EDWARD FIELD TEXT

April 9: George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne wrote in French to Gabriel Bernon.

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May 30: George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne wrote again in French, presumably to Gabriel Bernon.

1731

George Berkeley was painted by Alfred Hart:

A LIFE OF GEORGE BERKELEY His new residence near Newport, Rhode Island, which he designated “Whitehall”:

READ EDWARD FIELD TEXT

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1732

February: Finally having become aware that his quest for funding for a New World university was pointless, George Berkeley returned from Newport, Rhode Island to London, where he would preach before the society for the Propagation of the Gospel in foreign Parts a sermon entitled VERSES ON THE PROSPECT OF PLANTING ARTS AND LEARNING IN AMERICA. ABOUT RHODE ISLAND

Later in this year he would produce a pseudo-Platonic dialog entitled, ALCIPHRON OR THE MINUTE PHILOSOPHER, as a polemic against deistic free-thinkers — whom he identified with atheists, libertines, enthusiasts, scorners, critics, metaphysicians, fatalists, and sceptics, and designated as “minute philosophers”

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because of their inability to take large views of things.

The Berkeley residence in Rhode Island, “Whitehall”

BERKELEY’S ALCIPHRON

1733

George Berkeley’s THEORY OF VISION, OR VISUAL LANGUAGE VINDICATED AND EXPLAINED.

BERKELEY’S THEORY OF VISION

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Bishop George Berkeley in his alcove by the Rhode Island shore

1734

George Berkeley’s THE ANALYST, in which he criticized the positions of the new mathematics as entangled in a materialistic conception of the world. This would prompt many pamphlets in response. Through the patronage of the royal family he became bishop of Cloyne.

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1735

Bishop George Berkeley’s THE QUERIST, containing proposals intended for the good of Ireland.

THE BISHOP AS QUERIST

1736

Bishop George Berkeley’s A DISCOURSE ADDRESSED TO MAGISTRATES AND MEN IN AUTHORITY OCCASIONED BY THE ENORMOUS LICENSE AND IRRELIGION OF THE TIMES.

THE BISHOP’S DISCOURSE

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1744

Bishop George Berkeley’s SIRIS, A CHAIN OF PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS, AND INQUIRIES CONCERNING THE VIRTUES OF TAR-WATER, in which in addition to touting the virtues of a patent nostrum, by which he had obtained relief of a nervous cholic brought on by his sedentary course of living, he revised his earlier Idealist views.

BERKELEY’S SIRIUS

Over the following few years, the Bishop would be publishing additional letters about tar-water. MORE ON TAR WATER

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1745

During the Scots rebellion, Bishop George Berkeley published a letter to the Roman Catholics of his diocese.

A LIFE OF GEORGE BERKELEY

1747

Bishop George Berkeley’s SIRIS, A CHAIN OF PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS, AND INQUIRIES CONCERNING THE VIRTUES OF TAR-WATER was reissued in an expanded 2nd edition.

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1749

Bishop George Berkeley published a second letter in regard to the Roman Catholics of his diocese, this one addressed to their priests and entitled A WORD TO THE WISE.

THE BISHOP’S SAGE ADVICE

1750

Bishop George Berkeley’s MAXIMS CONCERNING PATRIOTISM.

BERKELEY ON PATRIOTISM

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1752

Bishop George Berkeley’s FARTHER THOUGHTS ON TAR-WATER.

July: In poor health, Bishop George Berkeley was carried from a landing on the English shore in a horse-litter to Oxford to live with his son, who was a senior student at Christchurch.

A LIFE OF GEORGE BERKELEY

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October: Bishop George Berkeley laid out his final thoughts on the subject of tar water. BERKELEY ON TAR WATER

1753

January 14, Sunday evening: George Berkeley was lying on a couch listening to his spouse read a sermon by Dr. Sherlock, when his daughter attempted to serve him some tea and noticed that his body had grown cold. The body would be interred at Christchurch, Oxford, and a monument erected to his memory: GRAVISSIMO PRAESULI, GEORGIO, EPISCOPO CLONENSI: VIRO, SEU INGENII & ERUDITIONIS LAUDEM, SEU PROBITATIS & BENEFICENTIAE SPECTEMUS, INTER PRIMOS OMNIUM AETATUM NUMERANDO. SI CHRISTIANUS FUERIS, SI AMANS PATRIAE, UTROQUE NOMINE GLORIARI POTES BERKLEIUM VIXISSE. OBIIT ANNUM AGENS SEPTUAGESIMUM TERTIUM NATUS ANNO CHRISTI M.DC.LXXIX. ANNA CONJUX

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L.M.P.

A LIFE OF GEORGE BERKELEY

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1802

December 22, Wednesday: John Quincy Adams’s AN ORATION DELIVERED AT PLYMOUTH, DECEMBER 22, 1802, AT THE ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATION OF THE FIRST LANDING OF OUR ANCESTORS, AT THAT PLACE (Boston: Russell and Cutler, 1802, 31 pages), ADAMS’S ORATION

from which Henry Thoreau maybe would derive the “Westward the Star of empire takes its way” that he would utilize in his 1851 lecture “WALKING”. Here, for instance, is an “ngram” of the relative usage of the 18th- Century expression “Westward the course of empire” originated by Bishop George Berkeley (blue line), as opposed to the expression “Weftward the Star of empire” here being initiated by Adams (red line):

In a bare-knuckle event on Wimbledon Common in London, Jem “The Napoleon of the Ring” Belcher (who on August 20th had defended his title as English champion against Joe Berks in 13 rounds at London’s Hanover Spa), defeated Andrew Gamble.

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1782

On account of an anonymous review of the CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON that he had prepared for the Zugabe zu den Gottischen Anzeigen von Gelehrten Sachen, Christian Garve found that he was dragged into an extended argument with Herr Professor Immanuel Kant. He had committed the major sin of interpreting Professor Kant’s position as the same as the one that had been taken by Bishop George Berkeley, which was of course quite preposterous — Professor Kant the system-builder was not the fellow to merely repeat somebody else’s ! However, what Professor Garve had prepared had been shortened by about two-thirds prior to the publication of this, and had then been considerably augmented by the Göttingen philosopher Johann Georg Heinrich Feder, and in consequence his controversial review would need to be republished in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, this time in full and without those supplemental materials that had actually been supplied by Feder. Professor Kant would be, however, still so much displeased, as to author an Anti- Garve response — which response would then after a time be expanded by Kant until eventually it would become his renowned PROLEGOMENA TO ANY FUTURE METAPHYSICS THAT WILL BE ABLE TO PRESENT ITSELF AS A SCIENCE (1783).

x

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1833

Timothy Flint, in INDIAN WARS OF THE WEST, found an exceedingly complicated way to say simultaneously two simple things which are simply incompatible with each other, to wit that we’re no better than they are and that we should exterminate them:

It is of little importance to inquire, which party was the aggressor.... Either this great continent, in the order of Providence, should have remained in the occupancy of half a million of savages, engaged in everlasting conflicts of their peculiar warfare with each other, or it must have become, as it has, the domain of civilized millions. It is in vain to charge upon the latter race results, which grew out of the law of nature, and the universal march of human events.

John Adolphus Etzler’s THE PARADISE WITHIN THE REACH OF ALL MEN, WITHOUT LABOR, BY POWERS OF NATURE AND MACHINERY had been published in Pittsburgh and was in all the American bookstores,

PARADISE WITHIN REACH telling the people who wanted to believe this sort of stuff and who were able to buy and read books –which of course was, mainly, white people, since there were no schools for red people and since black people had long been punished for attempting to learn to write and now were even being punished for attempting to learn to read as well– that they could have utopia if they would merely organize to achieve it. So it really didn’t matter in the great scheme of things if some poor populations of people had to be sacrificed, or left behind, in the great march forward into the beautiful future. And August Friedrich Pott, advancing the white Aryan myth of an Urfolk which had advanced westward out of Asia to vitalize the West, declared that

Ex oriente lux: the march of culture, in its general lines, has always followed the sun’s course.

Clearly, religious leaders who desired to “pull a Bishop George Berkeley” for the 19th Century, and publicists like Horace Greeley and authors like Henry David Thoreau who believed that they needed to speak of westering,

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and popular writers like William Cullen Bryant whose “The Prairies,” written after his first visit to Illinois in 1832, had just hit the bookstores, were going to need to be exceedingly careful so as not being misunderstood by their audiences to be recommending empire, or civilizationism, or ethnic chauvinism, or the myth of Nordic racial superiority.4

With missionary zeal, Etzler traveled in Pennsylvania and Ohio off and on for the next seven years (the period referred to in TWO VISIONS OF J.A. ETZLER) as a kind of itinerant secular evangelist preaching the possibility of a new kind of Millennium to be brought about through human reason and effort. Not surprisingly, his views on economic and social reform were rejected; and “the more they were rejected ... the more strident

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and offensive became his rhetorical appeals.” FUTURE-WORSHIP

4. A factoid of interest to those of us who find this sort of thing interesting is that neither Bishop Berkeley nor Editor Greeley exercised any such caution, never went on record with a disclaimer about westering, never distanced themselves from authors such as Etzler and Pott and Flint. Only Thoreau did so:

It is perfectly heathenish –a filibustering toward heaven by the great western route. No; they may go their way to their manifest destiny, which I trust is not mine.

And he is remembered fondly for having had the courage and foresight to do so, say I with tongue in cheek.

Etzler is known today almost solely through the review of his book written by Henry David Thoreau, the influential writer and critic. Thoreau was fascinated by Etzler’s ideas ...

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1842

Samuel Bailey’s A REVIEW OF BERKELEY’S THEORY OF VISION, DESIGNED TO SHOW THE UNSOUNDNESS OF THAT CELEBRATED SPECULATION. BY SAMUEL BAILEY, AUTHOR OF “ESSAYS ON THE FORMATION AND PUBLICATION OF OPINIONS.” &C (London: James Ridgway). GEORGE BERKELEY

BERKELEY ON VISION

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June: In Blackwood’s Magazine, James Frederick Ferrier responded to Samuel Bailey’s REVIEW OF BERKELEY’S THEORY OF VISION, DESIGNED TO SHOW THE UNSOUNDNESS OF THAT CELEBRATED SPECULATION.

GEORGE BERKELEY

October: In the Westminster Review, responded to Samuel Bailey’s REVIEW OF BERKELEY’S THEORY OF VISION, DESIGNED TO SHOW THE UNSOUNDNESS OF THAT CELEBRATED SPECULATION.

GEORGE BERKELEY

1843

Samuel Bailey responded to his critics John Stuart Mill and James Frederick Ferrier by means a pamphlet, ALETTER TO A PHILOSOPHER, IN REPLY TO SOME RECENT ATTEMPTS TO VINDICATE “BERKELEY’S THEORY OF VISION,” AND IN FURTHER ELUCIDATION OF ITS UNSOUNDNESS. BY THE AUTHOR OF “A REVIEW OF BERKELEY’S THEORY OF VISION,” “ESSAYS ON THE FORMATION AND PUBLICATION OF OPINIONS,” &C. (London: James Ridgway). –That’s not the pamphlet, which is 68 pages in length, but merely its title. GEORGE BERKELEY

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1849

In The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, Eugene Lies recast the first line of a poem by Bishop George Berkeley as a motto for expansionism, “Westward Ho!”5 Westward, ho! since first the sun Over young creation shone, Westward has the light progressed. Westward arts and creeds have tended, Never shall their march be ended, Till they reach the utmost West. ... Is it that all earthly things Westward ply their restless wings, Problems of their being to solve? Faith and Knowledge, Commerce, Wealth, Valor, Strength and manly Health Do they, like the stars, revolve? ... Europe’s noon hath long been past; All her vain insignia cast Lengthening shadows on her brow; Soon she’ll mourn, in darkness shrouded, For her blue sky, dimly clouded, Ev’n as Asia mourneth now. Westward, ho! the morning breaks; Lo! a younger world awakes; There the day-god long shall rest; Nor can wild Hesperian dreams, Dreams of golden earth and streams, Lure him to a further west.

5. We notice that Henry Thoreau would use this line also, on April 23, 1851 in his essay “Walking.” “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 39 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1851

April 23, Wednesday, 7PM: Henry David Thoreau delivered a lecture “Walking, or the Wild” for the Concord lyceum, in the vestry of the Unitarian Church. TIMELINE OF ESSAYS ECOLOGY

In this lecture, we note, he quoted from the work of Bishop George Berkeley, someone he is not known to have read, the famous line “Westward the star of empire takes its way.” He may possibly have plucked this one-liner from an article in a magazine some issues of which we know he did read — or he may have studied Berkeley in his entirety and we simply have never become aware of this.

The Boston police made a sweep of Ann Street, detaining some 160 persons for such offenses as “piping, fiddling, dancing, drinking, and attending crimes.”

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1861

Emmanuel Leutze finished and installed his “Westward Ho!” oil on canvas, re-titled “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way,” which graces a stairwell in the Capital in Washington DC, as one faces toward the West:

Fit To Grace a Capitol Stairwell (Hang Slightly Askew)

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The story of this painting involves the idealistic Bishop George Berkeley (BARK-ly), after whom the city of Berkeley (BURK-ly) CA is named:

Westward, ho! since first the sun Over young creation shone, Westward has the light progressed. Westward arts and creeds have tended, Never shall their march be ended, Till they reach the utmost West. . . . Is it that all earthly things Westward ply their restless wings, Problems of their being to solve? Faith and Knowledge, Commerce, Wealth, Valor, Strength and manly Health Do they, like the stars, revolve? . . . Europe’s noon hath long been past; All her vain insignia cast Lengthening shadows on her brow; Soon she’ll mourn, in darkness shrouded, For her blue sky, dimly clouded, Ev’n as Asia mourneth now. Westward, ho! the morning breaks; Lo! a younger world awakes; There the day-god long shall rest; Nor can wild Hesperian dreams, Dreams of golden earth and streams, Lure him to a further west. –Bishop George Berkeley’s “Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America”

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1866

May 24: The city of Berkeley in California was named in honor of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, and his scheme for a New World university.

What happened was that a bunch of the guys who were founding the University of California were standing around at a boulder that is today referred to as “Founders Rock,” trying to dream up a good name, when the lawyer-financier Frederick Billings (a whole city in Montana is named after him) recited Bishop Berkeley’s “empire” snippet (or, possibly, the whole stanza). One of the other guys went “Who said that?” A LIFE OF GEORGE BERKELEY

They would decide upon “Berkeley” after considering some other candidate names, such as “Villa Pagoda.” (However, this new California city would never dedicate a monument to their eponymous prize philosopher. The only representation of the man would be a painting of him that Billings would commission and would donate to the university in 1873 — a painting which would make your eyes sore, which seems always to have

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 43 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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been kept carefully locked away from public view.)

44 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

GEORGE BERKELEY GEORGE BERKELEY

1871

PHILOSOPHICAL COMMENTARIES, the first appearance in print of George Berkeley’s undergraduate COMMON- PLACE BOOK.

BERKELEY’S COMMONPLACES

45 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

GEORGE BERKELEY GEORGE BERKELEY

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2013. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: March 5, 2013

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GEORGE BERKELEY GEORGE BERKELEY

ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, upon someone’s request we have pulled it out of the hat of a pirate that has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (depicted above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of data modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture. This is data mining. To respond to such a request for information, we merely push a button.

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GEORGE BERKELEY GEORGE BERKELEY

Commonly, the first output of the program has obvious deficiencies and so we need to go back into the data modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and do a recompile of the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process which you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place your requests with . Arrgh.

48 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith