EDITOR'S PREFACE

TO THE

TREATISE CONCERNING THE PRINCIPLES OF

HUMAN KNOWLEDGE.

BERKELEY'S Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge is the most systematically reasoned exposition of his peculiar philosophy which his works contain.

Like the New Theory of Vision, its pioneer, it was composed at Trinity College, Dublin. The first edition, 'printed by Aaron Rhames, for Jeremy Pepyat,' appeared in Dublin in 1710. The next, which contains some additions and other changes, was published in London in 1734, 'printed by Jacob Tonson,' the Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous being conjoined with it in the same volume. This The variations in these edition was the last in the author's lifetime.

are carefully marked in the present edition.

An edition of the Principles appeared in London in 1776, more than twenty years after Berkeley's death, with Remarks on each section, in which his doctrines are carefully examined, and shewn to be repugnant to facts, his principles incompatible with the constitution of human nature, and the reason and fitness of things.' To this edition, likewise, the Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous are appended, followed by 'A Philosophical Discourse on the Nature of Human Being, containing a defence of Mr. Locke's Principles, and some remarks on Dr. Beattie's Essay on Truth,' by the author of the Remarks.

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To the edition of 1776 the following Advertisement' is prefixed:'Bishop Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge, and his Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous on the same subject, being out of print, and both being much inquired for, the Editor thought a new edition of them, with an Answer thereto, might not be unacceptable to the public. The tenets maintained in the Dialogues are precisely the same with those in the Principles, and the arguments are the same, though put into a different form; but it was thought quite unnecessary to make any Reply to them, as the Remarks on the former are equally applicable to the latter.

'How far the author of the Remarks is right in believing they contain a full refutation of the doctrines of the Bishop must be left to the judgment of the candid reader; he has, however, the satisfaction of knowing the rectitude of his intentions, and the pleasing hopes he entertains that his endeavours may be attended with some success in the cause of truths of the greatest importance.'

The Remarks are printed on the right-hand page of the 1776 edition, in sections corresponding in number and length to those of the Principles. Their acuteness and conclusiveness, however, is by no means proportioned to their bulk: many of the glaring and ludicrous misrepresentations of which Berkeley's philosophy has been the subject are here gathered and served up.

Although this Treatise is the fullest explanation of Substance and Power, the two central conceptions of Berkeley's philosophy, that he has given, it bears the marks of an unfinished work. It is expressly designated 'Part I,' and in the Preface to the Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous the author promises a Second Part, which never appeared. Passages in the work itself, as well as allusions in Berkeley's Commonplace Book, suggest that only a portion of what is required to complete his conception is here executed. In referring Dr. Samuel Johnson, of New York, many years after their publication, to this and his two other early metaphysical essays, Berkeley thus describes their character:'I had no inclination to trouble the world with large volumes. What I have done was rather with the 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."

The contents and language of the Principles of Human Knowledge prove that Berkeley had been a careful student of Locke's Essay, published twenty years previously, and dedicated, like the Principles, to the Earl of Pembroke. This was to be expected, for the Essay, partly through the influence of William Molyneux, the friend and correspondent of Locke, had become an authority in Trinity College in Berkeley's undergraduate days. The Principles are proposed as a refutation of leading doctrines in the Essay. The term 'idea' is as characteristic of the former as of the latter; in both it stands for the immediate object of consciousness-alike in external and internal intuition-in memory, imagination, and generalization. With both, the only objective universe of which we are directly aware consists of the 'ideas' that we are conscious of, and by both this is assumed as a self-evident truth. Both appeal exclusively to this experience as their final test. Locke's classification of ideas as simple and complex, with some of his divisions and sub-divisions in each class, re-appear, sometimes in altered phraseology, in the Principles. Berkeley's whole theory of Substance and Cause, Matter and Mind, Space and Time, is a bold and subtle modification of Locke's theory of ideas.' A distinguishing feature in Berkeley is, that he recognises signs of independent reality in one order of Locke's 'ideas'-those given in the senses, and is thus able to dispense with the reasonings in the Fourth Book of the Essay on behalf of a real material world. Then, the meaning of the word 'Substance,' which perplexes Locke, is resolved by Berkeley into the concrete and familiar meaning of the word 'I' (ego)—the permanent syntheses of ideas perceivable in sense being, according to him, substances only in a secondary meaning of that term. Cause' or 'Power' he finds exclusively in voluntary activity. Finite 'Space' is with him experience in unresisted organic movement, which is capable of being symbolised in the visual consciousness of coFinite Time' is the apprehension of changes in existing colours. our ideas, length of time being measured by the number of changes. 'Infinite Space' and 'Infinite Time,' because inapprehensible by intelligence, are dismissed from philosophy, as terms void of meaning, or which involve contradictions.

Next to Locke, the influence of Malebranche is apparent in the following Treatise; but Berkeley is not so much at home in the 'Divine vision' of the French metaphysician as among the 'ideas' of the English philosopher. The mysticism of the Récherche de la Vérite was repelled by the transparent clearness of Berkeley's thought. The slender hold that is retained by Malebranche of external substance, as

well as the theory of merely occasional causation of matter, common to him and Des Cartes, naturally attracted Berkeley, however, to the Cartesian school, then dominant in France, and reproduced in its mystical form in England by Mr. Norris.

The Platonism which pervades Malebranche perhaps tended to encourage the Platonic thought and varied learning that appear in Berkeley's own later writings; but Locke, Malebranche, and Des Cartes are almost the only philosophers directly or indirectly recognised in the Principles of Human Knowledge. In fact, this juvenile Treatise moves, as it seems on the surface, towards the opposite pole from Platonism and a Platonic idealism; for, Berkeley by 'ideas' means phenomena and sensible things, not supersensible realities and Divine Reason of Ontology.

The Introduction' to the Principles proclaims war with Universals, and more immediately war with Locke. Its remedy for the disorders of philosophy is the expulsion of abstract ideas-which, as understood by Berkeley, involve a contradiction; and the restriction of philosophers to the intelligible, concrete objects of which mind can be conscious. The metaphysician is here required to resolve the meaning of such terms as Matter, Substance, Space, and Time into ideas, relations of ideas, and mind which is the one necessary condition on which all ideas and their relations depend; and he is promised that, as the consequence of this, the real world, hitherto obscured by abstractions, will become intelligible. All ideas-in other words, all phenomena or objects of which we can be conscious—must, it is argued, be concrete and particular. It is relations among objects of which we can be conscious, and not pretended abstractions, that can be signified by universal terms. Abstract Matter, abstract Substance, abstract Space, abstract Time-that is Matter, Substance, Space, and Time which are supposed to be what cannot be resolved into particular ideas, and relations among such ideas-are thus in the sequel proved to be absolutely unintelligible. Berkeley's reformed doctrine of abstraction, and of the office of language, virtually banishes them all. With him, 'abstract ideas' are absurdities, resulting from an unlawful analysis, which attempts to penetrate beneath perception or conscious experience -that essence or ground of existence; and the lesson of the 'Introduction' is virtually, that objective existence must consist exclusively of what is particular and concrete. The only lawful kind of abstraction is, that through which we have what Berkeley calls notions of relations among ideas, as distinguished from ideas themselves. And, as names