Quote

And what are these fluxions? The velocities of evanescent increments. And what are these same evanescent increments? They are neither finite quantities, nor quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them the ghosts of departed quantities...?

George Berkeley

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George Berkeley
Age: 67 †
Born: 1685
Born: March 12
Died: 1753
Died: January 14
Anglican Priest
Epistemologist
Metaphysician
Philosopher
Philosopher Of Science
Writer
Bishop Berkeley
Bishop George Berkeley
Neither
Calculus
Small
Departed
Call
Ghosts
May
Infinitely
Velocities
Nothing
Finite
Increments
Quantity
Evanescent
Math
Quantities
Ghost
Velocity

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Upon the whole, I am inclined to think that the far greater part, if not all, of those difficulties which have hitherto amused philosophers, and blocked up the way to knowledge, are entirely owing to our selves. That we have first raised a dust, and then complain, we cannot see.
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Whatever is immediately perceived is an idea: and can any idea exist out of the mind?
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He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave.
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I had rather be an oyster than a man, the most stupid and senseless of animals.
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I might as well doubt of my own being, as of the being of those things I actually see and feel.
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[Christianity] neither enjoins the nastiness of the Cynic, nor the insensibility of the Stoic.
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[Tar water] is of a nature so mild and benign and proportioned to the human constitution, as to warm without heating, to cheer but not inebriate.
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The same principles which at first view lead to skepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense.
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Religion is the centre which unites, and the cement which connects the several parts of members of the political body.
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The world is like a board with holes in it, and the square men have got into the round holes, and the round into the square.
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To me it seems that liberty and virtue were made for each other. If any man wish to enslave his country, nothing is a fitter preparative than vice and nothing leads to vice so surely as irreligion.
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What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.
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But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine trees, for instance, in a park [. . .] and nobody by to perceive them. [...] The objects of sense exist only when they are perceived the trees therefore are in the garden [. . .] no longer than while there is somebody by to perceive them.
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The eye by long use comes to see even in the darkest cavern: and there is no subject so obscure but we may discern some glimpse of truth by long poring on it.
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The method of Fluxions is the general key by help whereof the modern mathematicians unlock the secrets of Geometry, and consequently of Nature.
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From my own being, and from the dependency I find in myself and my ideas, I do, by an act of reason, necessarily infer the existence of a God, and of all created things in the mind of God.
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Truth is the cry of all, but the game of few.
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