"Treatise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Berkeley George)

view includes all these particulars, but then there is not the least
mention made of them in the proof of the proposition. It is not said
the three angles are equal to two right ones, because one of them is a
right angle, or because the sides comprehending it are of the same
length. Which sufficiently shows that the right angle might have
been oblique, and the sides unequal, and for all that the
demonstration have held good. And for this reason it is that I
conclude that to be true of any obliquangular or scalenon which I
had demonstrated of a particular right-angled equicrural triangle, and
not because I demonstrated the proposition of the abstract idea of a
triangle And here it must be acknowledged that a man may consider a
figure merely as triangular, without attending to the particular
qualities of the angles, or relations of the sides. So far he may
abstract; but this will never prove that he can frame an abstract,
general, inconsistent idea of a triangle. In like manner we may
consider Peter so far forth as man, or so far forth as animal
without framing the fore-mentioned abstract idea, either of man or
of animal, inasmuch as all that is perceived is not considered.

17. It were an endless as well as an useless thing to trace the
Schoolmen, those great masters of abstraction, through all the
manifold inextricable labyrinths of error and dispute which their
doctrine of abstract natures and notions seems to have led them
into. What bickerings and controversies, and what a learned dust
have been raised about those matters, and what mighty advantage has
been from thence derived to mankind, are things at this day too
clearly known to need being insisted on. And it had been well if the
ill effects of that doctrine were confined to those only who make
the most avowed profession of it. When men consider the great pains,
industry, and parts that have for so many ages been laid out on the
cultivation and advancement of the sciences, and that
notwithstanding all this the far greater part of them remains full
of darkness and uncertainty, and disputes that are like never to
have an end, and even those that are thought to be supported by the
most clear and cogent demonstrations contain in them paradoxes which
are perfectly irreconcilable to the understandings of men, and that,
taking all together, a very small portion of them does supply any real
benefit to mankind, otherwise than by being an innocent diversion
and amusement- I say the consideration of all this is apt to throw
them into a despondency and perfect contempt of all study. But this
may perhaps cease upon a view of the false principles that have
obtained in the world, amongst all which there is none, methinks, hath
a more wide and extended sway over the thoughts of speculative men
than this of abstract general ideas.

18. I come now to consider the source of this prevailing notion, and
that seems to me to be language. And surely nothing of less extent
than reason itself could have been the source of an opinion so
universally received. The truth of this appears as from other
reasons so also from the plain confession of the ablest patrons of