The Works of George Berkeley Part 1

The Works of George Berkeley.

Vol. 1.

by George Berkeley.

PREFACE

[Frontispiece]

More than thirty years ago I was honoured by a request to prepare a complete edition of the Works of Bishop Berkeley, with Notes, for the Clarendon Press, Oxford. That edition, which contains many of his writings previously unpublished, appeared in 1871. It was followed in 1874 by a volume of annotated Selections from his philosophical works; and in 1881 I prepared a small volume on "Berkeley" for Blackwood's "Philosophical Cla.s.sics."

The 1871 edition of the Works originated, I believe, in an essay on "The Real World of Berkeley," which I gave to _Macmillan's Magazine_ in 1862, followed by another in 1864, in the _North British Review_. These essays suggested advantages to contemporary thought which might be gained by a consideration of final questions about man and the universe, in the form in which they are presented by a philosopher who has suffered more from misunderstanding than almost any other modern thinker. During a part of his lifetime, he was the foremost metaphysician in Europe in an unmetaphysical generation. And in this country, after a revival of philosophy in the later part of the eighteenth century, _idea_, _matter_, _substance_, _cause_, and other terms which play an important part in his writings, had lost the meaning that he intended; while in Germany the sceptical speculations of David Hume gave rise to a reconstructive criticism, on the part of Kant and his successors, which seemed at the time to have little concern with the _a posteriori_ methods and the principles of Berkeley.

The success of the attempt to recall attention to Berkeley has far exceeded expectation. Nearly twenty thousand copies of the three publications mentioned above have found their way into the hands of readers in Europe and America; and the critical estimates of Berkeley, by eminent writers, which have appeared since 1871, in Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, Holland, Italy, America, and India, confirm the opinion that his Works contain a word in season, even for the twentieth century.

Among others who have delivered appreciative criticisms of Berkeley within the last thirty years are J.S. Mill, Mansel, Huxley, T.H. Green, Maguire, Collyns Simon, the Right Hon. A.J. Balfour, Mr. Leslie Stephen, Dr.

Hutchison Stirling, Professor T.K. Abbott, Professor Van der Wyck, M.

Penjon, Ueberweg, Frederichs, Ulrici, Janitsch, Eugen Meyer, Spicker, Loewy, Professor Hoffding of Copenhagen, Dr. Lorenz, Noah Porter, and Krauth, besides essays in the chief British, Continental, and American reviews. The text of those Works of Berkeley which were published during his lifetime, enriched with a biographical Introduction by Mr. A.J.

Balfour, carefully edited by Mr. George Sampson, appeared in 1897. In 1900 Dr. R. Richter, of the University of Leipsic, produced a new translation into German of the _Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous_, with an excellent Introduction and notes. These estimates form a remarkable contrast to the denunciations, founded on misconception, by Warburton and Beattie in the eighteenth century.

In 1899 I was unexpectedly again asked by the Delegates of the Oxford University Press to prepare a New Edition of Berkeley's Works, with some account of his life, as the edition of 1871 was out of print; a circ.u.mstance which I had not expected to occur in my lifetime. It seemed presumptuous to undertake what might have been entrusted to some one probably more in touch with living thought; and in one's eighty-second year, time and strength are wanting for remote research. But the recollection that I was attracted to philosophy largely by Berkeley, in the morning of life more than sixty years ago, combined with the pleasure derived from a.s.sociation in this way with the great University in which he found an academic home in his old age, moved me in the late evening of life to make the attempt. And now, at the beginning of the twentieth century, I offer these volumes, which still imperfectly realise my ideal of a final Oxford edition of the philosopher who spent his last days in Oxford, and whose mortal remains rest in its Cathedral.

Since 1871 materials of biographical and philosophical interest have been discovered, in addition to the invaluable collection of MSS. which Archdeacon Rose then placed at my disposal, and which were included in the supplementary volume of _Life and Letters_. Through the kindness of the late Earl of Egmont I had access, some years ago, to a large number of letters which pa.s.sed between his ancestor, Sir John (afterwards Lord) Percival, and Berkeley, between 1709 and 1730. I have availed myself freely of this correspondence.

Some interesting letters from and concerning Berkeley, addressed to his friend Dr. Samuel Johnson of Stratford in Connecticut, afterwards President of King's College in New York, appeared in 1874, in Dr.

Beardsley's _Life of Johnson_, ill.u.s.trating Berkeley's history from 1729 till his death. For these and for further information I am indebted to Dr.

Beardsley.

In the present edition of Berkeley's Works, the Introductions and the annotations have been mostly re-written. A short account of his romantic life is prefixed, intended to trace its progress in the gradual development and application of his initial Principle; and also the external incidents of his life in their continuity, with the help of the new material in the Percival MSS. and the correspondence with Johnson. It forms a key to the whole. This biography is not intended to supersede the _Life and Letters_ of Berkeley that accompanied the 1871 edition, which remains as a magazine of facts for reference.

The rearrangement of the Works is a feature in the present edition. Much of the new material that was included in the 1871 edition reached me when the book was far advanced in the press, and thus the chronological arrangement, strictly followed in the present edition, was not possible. A chronological arrangement is suggested by Berkeley himself. "I could wish that all the things I have published on these philosophical subjects were read in the order wherein I published them," are his words in one of his letters to Johnson; "and a second time with a critical eye, adding your own thought and observation upon every part as you went along."

The first three volumes in this edition contain the Philosophical Works exclusively; arranged in chronological order, under the three periods of Berkeley's life. The First Volume includes those of his early life; the Second those produced in middle life; and the Third those of his later years. The Miscellaneous Works are presented in like manner in the Fourth Volume.

The four little treatises in which Berkeley in early life unfolded his new thought about the universe, along with his college _Commonplace Book_ published in 1871, which prepared the way for them, form, along with the Life, the contents of the First Volume. It is of them that the author writes thus, in another of his letters to Johnson:-"I do not indeed wonder that on first reading what I have written men are not thoroughly convinced. On the contrary, I should very much wonder if prejudices which have been many years taking root should be extirpated in a few hours'

reading. I had no inclination to trouble the world with large volumes.

What I have done was rather with a view of giving hints to thinking men, who have leisure and curiosity to go to the bottom of things, and pursue them in their own minds. Two or three times reading these small tracts, and making what is read the occasion of thinking, would, I believe, render the whole familiar and easy to the mind, and take off that shocking appearance which hath often been observed to attend speculative truths."

Except Johnson, none of Berkeley's eighteenth-century critics seem to have observed this rule.

_Alciphron, or The Minute Philosopher_, with its supplement in the _Theory of Visual Language Vindicated_, being the philosophical works of his middle life, a.s.sociated with its American enterprise, form the Second Volume. In them the conception of the universe that was unfolded in the early writings is applied, in vindication of religious morality and Christianity, against the Atheism attributed to those who called themselves Free-thinkers; who were treated by Berkeley as, at least by implication, atheistic.

The Third Volume contains the _a.n.a.lyst_ and _Siris_, which belong to his later life, _Siris_ being especially characteristic of its serene quiet.

In both there is a deepened sense of the mystery of the universe, and in _Siris_ especially a more comprehensive conception of the final problem suggested by human life. But the metaphysics of the one is lost in mathematical controversy; that of the other in medical controversy, and in undigested ancient and mediaeval learning. The metaphysical importance of _Siris_ was long unrecognised, although in it Berkeley's thought culminates, not in a paradox about Matter, but in the conception of G.o.d as the concatenating principle of the universe; yet this reached through the conception of Matter as real only in and through living Mind.

The Miscellaneous Works, after the two juvenile Latin tracts in mathematics, deal with observations of nature and man gathered in his travels, questions of social economy, and lessons in religious life.

Several are posthumous, and were first published in the 1871 edition. Of these, perhaps the most interesting is the _Journal in Italy_. The _Discourse on Pa.s.sive Obedience_ is the nearest approach to ethical theory which Berkeley has given to us, and as such it might have taken its place in the First Volume; but on the whole it seemed more appropriately placed in the Fourth, where it is easily accessible for those who prefer to read it immediately after the book of _Principles_.

I have introduced, in an Appendix to the Third Volume, some matter of philosophical interest for which there was no place in the editorial Prefaces or in the annotations. The historical significance of Samuel Johnson and Jonathan Edwards, as pioneers of American philosophy, and also advocates of the new conception of the material world that is a.s.sociated with Berkeley, is recognised in Appendix C. Ill.u.s.trations of the misinterpretation of Berkeley by his early critics are presented in Appendix D. A lately discovered tractate by Berkeley forms Appendix E. In the Fourth Volume, numerous queries contained in the first edition of the _Querist_, and omitted in the later editions, are given in an Appendix, which enables the reader to reconstruct that interesting tract in the form in which it originally appeared.

The present edition is thus really a new work, which possesses, I hope, a certain philosophical unity, as well as pervading biographical interest.

As Berkeley is the immediate successor of Locke, and as he was educated by collision with the _Essay __ on Human Understanding_, perhaps Locke ought to have had more prominence in the editorial portion of this book.

Limitation of s.p.a.ce partly accounts for the omission; and I venture instead to refer the reader to the Prolegomena and notes in my edition of Locke's _Essay_, which was published by the Clarendon Press in 1894. I may add that an expansion of thoughts which run through the Life and many of the annotations, in this edition of Berkeley, may be found in my _Philosophy of Theism_(1).

The reader need not come to Berkeley in the expectation of finding in his Works an all-comprehensive speculative system like Spinoza's, or a reasoned articulation of the universe of reality such as Hegel is supposed to offer. But no one in the succession of great English philosophers has, I think, proposed in a way more apt to invite reflexion, the final alternative between Unreason, on the one hand, and Moral Reason expressed in Universal Divine Providence, on the other hand, as the root of the unbeginning and endless evolution in which we find ourselves involved; as well as the further question, Whether this tremendous practical alternative _can_ be settled by any means that are within the reach of man? His Philosophical Works, taken collectively, may encourage those who see in a reasonable _via media_ between Omniscience and Nescience the true path of progress, under man's inevitable venture of reasonable Faith.

One is therefore not without hope that a fresh impulse may be given to philosophy and religious thought by this reappearance of George Berkeley, under the auspices of the University of Oxford, at the beginning of the twentieth century. His readers will at any rate find themselves in the company of one of the most attractive personalities of English philosophy, who is also among the foremost of those thinkers who are masters in English literature-Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes, George Berkeley and David Hume.

A. Campbell Fraser.

GORTON, HAWTHORNDEN, MIDLOTHIAN, _March, 1901_.

GEORGE BERKELEY, BY THE EDITOR

I. Early Life (1685-1721).

Towards the end of the reign of Charles the Second a certain William Berkeley, according to credible tradition, occupied a cottage attached to the ancient Castle of Dysert, in that part of the county of Kilkenny which is watered by the Nore. Little is known about this William Berkeley except that he was Irish by birth and English by descent. It is said that his father went over to Ireland soon after the Restoration, in the suite of his reputed kinsman, Lord Berkeley of Stratton, when he was Lord Lieutenant. William Berkeley's wife seems to have been of Irish blood, and in some remote way related to the family of Wolfe, the hero of Quebec. It was in the modest abode in the valley of the Nore that George, the eldest of their six sons, was born, on March 12, 1685.

There is nothing in the recorded family history of these Dysert Berkeleys that helps to explain the singular personality and career of the eldest son. The parents have left no mark, and make no appearance in any extant records of the family. They probably made their way to the valley of the Nore among families of English connexion who, in the quarter of a century preceding the birth of George Berkeley, were finding settlements in Ireland. The family, as it appears, was not wealthy, but was recognised as of gentle blood. Robert, the fifth son, became rector of Middleton and vicar-general of Cloyne; and another son, William, held a commission in the army. According to the Register of Trinity College, one of the sons was born "near Thurles," in 1699, and Thomas, the youngest, was born in Tipperary, in 1703, so that the family may have removed from Dysert after the birth of George. In what can be gleaned of the younger sons, one finds little appearance of sympathy with the religious and philosophical genius of the eldest.

Regarding this famous eldest son in those early days, we have this significant autobiographical fragment in his _Commonplace Book_: "I was distrustful at eight years old, and consequently by nature disposed for the new doctrines." In his twelfth year we find the boy in Kilkenny School. The register records his entrance there in the summer of 1696, when he was placed at once in the second cla.s.s, which seems to imply precocity, for it is almost a solitary instance. He spent the four following years in Kilkenny. The School was in high repute for learned masters and famous pupils; among former pupils were the poet Congreve and Swift, nearly twenty years earlier than George Berkeley; among his school-fellows was Thomas Prior, his life-long friend and correspondent.

In the days of Berkeley and Prior the head master was Dr. Hinton, and the School was still suffering from the consequences of "the warre in Ireland"

which followed the Revolution.

Berkeley in Kilkenny School is hardly visible, and we have no means of estimating his mental state when he left it. Tradition says that in his school-days he was wont to feed his imagination with airy visions and romance, a tradition which perhaps originated long after in popular misconceptions of his idealism. Dimly discernible at Kilkenny, only a few years later he was a conspicuous figure in an island that was then beginning to share in the intellectual movement of the modern world, taking his place as a cla.s.sic in English literature, and as the most subtle and ardent of contemporary English-speaking thinkers.

In March, 1700, at the age of fifteen, George Berkeley entered Trinity College, Dublin. This was his home for more than twenty years. He was at first a mystery to the ordinary undergraduate. Some, we are told, p.r.o.nounced him the greatest dunce, others the greatest genius in the College. To hasty judges he seemed an idle dreamer; the thoughtful admired his subtle intelligence and the beauty of his character. In his undergraduate years, a mild and ingenuous youth, inexperienced in the ways of men, vivacious, humorous, satirical, in unexpected ways inquisitive, often paradoxical, through misunderstandings he persisted in his own way, full of simplicity and enthusiasm. In 1704 (the year in which Locke died) he pa.s.sed Bachelor of Arts, and became Master in 1707, when he was admitted to a Fellowship, "the only reward of learning which that kingdom had to bestow."

In Trinity College the youth found himself on the tide of modern thought, for the "new philosophy" of Newton and Locke was then invading the University. Locke's _Essay_, published in 1690, was already in vogue. This early recognition of Locke in Dublin was chiefly due to William Molyneux, Locke's devoted friend, a lawyer and member of the Irish Parliament, much given to the experimental methods. Descartes, too, with his sceptical criticism of human beliefs, yet disposed to spiritualise powers commonly attributed to matter, was another accepted authority in Trinity College; and Malebranche was not unknown. Hobbes was the familiar representative of a finally materialistic conception of existence, reproducing in modern forms the atomism of Democritus and the ethics of Epicurus. Above all, Newton was acknowledged master in physics, whose _Principia_, issued three years sooner than Locke's _Essay_, was transforming the conceptions of educated men regarding their surroundings, like the still more comprehensive law of physical evolution in the nineteenth century.

John Toland, an Irishman, one of the earliest and ablest of the new sect of Free-thinkers, made his appearance at Dublin in 1696, as the author of _Christianity not Mysterious_. The book was condemned by College dignitaries and dignified clergy with even more than Irish fervour. It was the opening of a controversy that lasted over half of the eighteenth century in England, in which Berkeley soon became prominent; and it was resumed later on, with greater intellectual force and in finer literary form, by David Hume and Voltaire. The collision with Toland about the time of Berkeley's matriculation may have awakened his interest. Toland was supposed to teach that matter is eternal, and that motion is its essential property, into which all changes presented in the outer and inner experience of man may at last be resolved. Berkeley's life was a continual protest against these dogmas. The Provost of Trinity College in 1700 was Dr. Peter Browne, who had already entered the lists against Toland; long after, when Bishop of Cork, he was in controversy with Berkeley about the nature of man's knowledge of G.o.d. The Archbishop of Dublin in the early years of the eighteenth century was William King, still remembered as a philosophical theologian, whose book on the _Origin of Evil_, published in 1702, was criticised by Boyle and Leibniz.