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Rebel Realities

Berkeley’s Suitcase

Hugh Hunter unpacks the sources of Berkeley’s idealism.

You will be familiar, in these days of inelegant travel, with the exercise of trying to fit everything you might plausibly need into a very small suitcase. It sometimes happens that there is one thing which frustrates the process, an object with awkward contours that ensure it cannot be packed along with the other necessities. It is of some value to identify the troublesome object. Would it not be a small triumph if you not only identified it, but realized that you didn’t need it after all?

It was a similar realization in the realm of metaphysics that led the young unpublished George Berkeley (1685-1753) to breathlessly write in his private philosophical journal, “I wonder not at my sagacity in discovering the obvious tho’ amazing truth, I rather wonder at my stupid inadvertency in not finding it out before. ‘tis no witchcraft to see.

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