Introduction

After discussing science and mathematics, Berkeley devotes the remaining sections of the Principles to topics relating mostly to spirit. PHK §§135–44 considers how we know our own spirits or selves, and §§144–9 focus on our knowledge of other spirits. In discussing this second topic, Berkeley argues that we are surer of the existence of God than we are of other finite spirits. After reconciling the existence of evil in the world with the existence of God, the final sections of the Principles exhort the reader to appreciate the manifest presence of God in the world. The Principles would be ‘ineffectual’, Berkeley writes, ‘if by what I have said I cannot inspire my readers with a pious sense of the presence of God’ (PHK §156).

I will let the reader judge whether the work is ‘ineffectual’ in this regard. In this chapter we shall concern ourselves with Berkeley’s account of spirit or self. The brief discussion in the Principles of the knowledge we have of ourselves invites further questions that Berkeley does not address within the pages of that work. Or, to put it more dramatically, his brief remarks touch only upon the tip of a large and treacherous iceberg. Spirit is absolutely vital to his system and so we need an account of it – and also how we know it – if we are to be persuaded by Berkeley’s philosophy. But he offers no systemic account of spirit, and we have to piece together what we can about spirits from both his notebooks and the brief discussions in his published work.