THE DEVELOPMENT OF BERKELEY'S ETHICAL THEORY.
THOUGH Berekeley wrote no systematic ethical treatise, it is clear from the Commonplace Book that he at one time intended to write in detail on morals. In the sanguine pages of the Commonplace Book, the "new principle" is destined to solve all problems and simplify all sciences. All previous thinkers had been "embrangled in words," and Berkeley regards it as his God-appointed task "to remove the mist and veil of words."[1] It was his hope that the exposition of the new principle would do this, and enable men to see things as they really are. Even in the Principles his claims for his new doctrine are as insistent as ever. His principles "abridge the labor of study and make human sciences more clear, compendious, and attainable than they were before."[2] After making this claim, he goes on to state some of the consequences in mathematics and natural philosophy. But as to the consequences in ethics only a few hints are given. "If the principle be applied to morals, errors of dangerous consequence to morality may be cleared, and truth appear plain, uniform, and consistent." "But," says Berkeley, "the difficulties arising on this head demand a more particular disquisition than suits with the design of this treatise."[3] It is a sign that Berkeley regarded this as tantamount to a promise to deal specially with ethics that in the second edition of the Principles, published in 1734, when he had abandoned the project of this special dissertation, this sentence is omitted. Again, in the Commonplace Book he remarks that there are three kinds of truth natural, mathematical, and moral.[4] These three kinds of truth are to be found in the three departments of useful knowledge, natural philosophy, mathematics and ethics. He
