أعمال جورج بيركلي، المجلد 1 من 4: الأعمال الفلسفية، 1705-21

outcome of a mind indisposed to take things upon trust, resolved to inquire freely, a rebel against the tyranny of language, morally burdened with the consciousness of a new world-transforming conception, which duty to mankind obliged him to reveal, although his message was sure to offend. Men like to regard things as they have been wont. This new conception of the surrounding world—the impotence of Matter, and its subordinate office in the Supreme Economy must, he foresees, disturb those accustomed to treat outward things as the only realities, and who do not care to ask what constitutes reality. Notwithstanding the ridicule and ill-will that his transformed material world was sure to meet with, amongst the many who accept empty words instead of genuine insight, he was resolved to deliver himself of his thoughts through the press, but with the politic conciliation of a persuasive Irish pleader. The _Commonplace Book_ steadily recognises the adverse influence of one insidious foe. Its world-transforming-Principle has been obscured by “the mist and veil of words.” The abstractions of metaphysicians, which poison human language, had to be driven out of the author’s mind before he could see the light, and must be driven out of the minds of others before they could be got to see it along with him: the concrete world as realisable only in percipient mind is with difficulty introduced into the vacant place. “The chief thing I pretend to is only to remove the mist and veil of words.” He exults in the transformed mental scene that then spontaneously rises before him. “My speculations have had the same effect upon me as visiting foreign countries,—in the end I return where I was before, get my heart at ease, and enjoy myself with more satisfaction. The philosophers lose their abstract matter; the materialists lose their abstract extension; the profane lose their extended deity. Pray what do the rest of mankind lose?…