Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-6587cd75c8-vfwnz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-23T11:46:02.047Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Alciphron: or, the Minute Philosopher [excerpts]

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Desmond M. Clarke
Get access

Summary

In Seven Dialogues, Containing an Apology for the Christian Religion, against those who are called free-thinkers.

3rd edition 1752

[Excerpts from Dialogues IV and VII]

The Fourth Dialogue

1 Early the next morning, as I looked out of my window, I saw Alciphron walking in the garden with all the signs of a man in deep thought. Upon which I went down to him.

Alciphron, said I, this early and profound meditation puts me in no small fright. How so? Because I should be sorry to be convinced there was no God. The thought of anarchy in nature is to me more shocking than in civil life, inasmuch as natural concerns are more important than civil and the basis of all others.

I grant, replied Alciphron, that some inconvenience may possibly follow from disproving a God; but as to what you say of fright and shocking, all that is nothing but prejudice, mere prejudice. Men frame an idea or chimera in their own minds, and then fall down and worship it. Notions govern mankind; but of all notions, that of God's governing the world has taken the deepest root and spread the farthest. It is therefore in philosophy an heroical achievement to dispossess this imaginary monarch of his government, and banish all those fears and spectres which the light of reason alone can dispel:

Non radii solis, non lucida tela diei

Discutiunt, sed naturae species ratioque.

Type
Chapter
Information
Berkeley: Philosophical Writings
, pp. 269 - 314
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Accessibility information

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×