2 - Locke, roles, and passion

Summary

In section 9 of the Introduction, Berkeley subjects Locke's theory of mental abstraction to irony. He tries, as we have seen, to formulate an abstract idea of man, and then attempts the even more general term animal:

The constituent parts of the abstract idea of animal are body, life, sense, and spontaneous motion. By body is meant, body without any particular shape or figure, there being no one shape or figure common to all animals, without covering, either of hair or feathers, or scales, &c. nor yet naked: hair, feathers, scales, and nakedness being the distinguishing properties of particular animals, and for that reason left out of the abstract idea. Upon the same account the spontaneous motion must be neither walking, nor flying, nor creeping, it is nevertheless a motion, but what that motion is, it is not easy to conceive.

(II.29)

As section 9 unfolds, the absurdity of Locke's proposition reveals itself. In the draft of the Introduction, this passage was much less subtle and its irony, consequently, much less effective. There, between his examples of the abstract man and the abstract animal, Berkeley included some openly critical comments made in the first person:

Suppose now I should ask you whether you comprehended, in this your abstract idea of man, the ideas of eyes, or ears, or nose, or legs, or arms this might perhaps put you to a stand for an answer, for it must needs make an odd & frightfull figure, the idea of a man without all these.

(II. 123–4)