The Works of George Berkeley. Vol. 1 of 4: Philosophical Works, 1705-21

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 That edition, which contains many of his writings previously unpublished, appeared in 1871.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 Classics.”

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; [pg vi] 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 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 HÖffding 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 [pg vii] 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 circumstance 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 association 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 [pg viii] number of letters which passed 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, illustrating 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 [pg ix] 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, [pg x] 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, associated 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 Analyst 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 mediÆval 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 God 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 [pg xi] 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 Passive 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 associated with Berkeley, is recognised in Appendix C. Illustrations 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 [pg xii]on Human Understanding, perhaps Locke ought to have had more prominence in the editorial portion of this book. Limitation of space 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 Theism1.

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 One is therefore not without hope that a fresh [pg xiii] 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.

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