Wednesday, October 20, 2010

The World in the Soul

Extraordinarily busy, so although I have more substantive posts coming, they will be after a bit. It's been a long time since I've had anything from this blog's namesake, though.

Naturalists, whose proper province it is to consider phænomena, experiments, mechanical organs and motions, principally regard the visible frame of things of corporeal worlds supposing soul to be contained in body. And this hypothesis may be tolerated in physics, as it is not necessary in the arts of dyalling or navigation to mention the true system or earth's motion. But those who, not content with sensible appearances, would penetrate into the real and true causes (the object of theology, metaphysics, or the philosophia prima) will rectify this error, and speak of the world as contained by the soul, and not the soul by the world.

George Berkeley, Siris, #285. The "art of dyalling" is another name for horology, the art of measuring time (i.e., dial as in 'sundial' or 'the dial of a watch'). Of course, it follows from Berkeley's immaterialism and idealism that the world quite literally is in the soul, rather than vice versa.