SOURCE: “Berkeley's Existence in the Mind,” in Locke and Berkeley: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by C. B. Martin and D. M. Armstrong, Anchor Books, Inc., 1968, pp. 184-95.

In the following essay, Luce examines the use of the term “in the mind” in Berkeley's works, arguing that Berkeley refers to perceivable existence rather than mental existence.

We find existence in the mind asserted and existence outside the mind denied scores of times, probably more than a hundred times, in the Principles.² In the earlier portion of the work there is scarcely a section without a reference to the doctrine. The term in the mind is clearly a hinge of Berkeley's system, and it has been persistently misunderstood, in my opinion, from his day to ours.

Kant took it to mean that ‘the objects in space are mere products of the imagination’.³ Critics to-day are reluctant to attribute...