EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THE THREE DIALOGUES BETWEEN HYLAS AND PHILONOUS. THIS work is the gem of British metaphysical literature. Berkeley's claim to be the great modern master of Socratic dialogue rests, indeed, upon Alciphron, which surpasses the conversations between Hylas and Philonous in expression of individual character, and in general dramatic effect. Here the conversational form is adopted. merely as a convenient way of treating the chief objections to the theory of Matter which is contained in the Principles of Human Knowledge. But the clearness of thought and language, the occasional colouring of fancy, and the glow of practical human sympathy and earnestness that pervade the subtle reasonings by which the fallacies of metaphysics are inexorably pursued through these discussions, place the following Dialogues almost alone in the modern metaphysical library. Among those who have employed the English language, except perhaps Hume and Ferrier, none approach Berkeley in the art of uniting deep metaphysical thought and ingenious speculation with an easy, graceful, and transparent style. Our surprise and admiration are increased when we recollect that this charming production of reason and imagination. came from Ireland, at a time when that country was scarcely known in the world of letters and philosophy. The Essay on Vision and the Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge may be said to comprehend between them the early metaphysical doctrine of Berkeley. But it appears in these works in a form more suited to scholars and logicians than for obviating popular objections, and promoting the moral purpose their author had in view. His R Essay on Vision was the precursor of the New Theory of Knowledge contained in his Principles. The doctrine regarding sight and touch propounded in the former was meant to be the first movement in a war against the abstractions of metaphysics that was openly proclaimed in the latter. In the preliminary analysis of visual consciousness, the abstraction commonly called Space or Extension was resolved, by psychological analysis, into its original elements, as given in sense, and especially in the sense-symbolism of Sight. But Abstract Space is only a part of the structure of abstractions, reared by metaphysicians, in which Berkeley believed that the current scepticism of his day was finding shelter, and which he wanted to break up, alike in the interest of religion and philosophy. An abstract idea is, with him, a contradiction in terms; and the abstract idea of Matter is, of all others, the parent of doubt and confusion. He argues that the existence of absolute or unperceived Matter is impossible; that all real Matter must be sensible Matter, as all real extension must be sensible extension; that Matter which is neither seen, nor touched, nor heard, nor tasted, nor smelt of which we are in no way conscious in any of the senses— must be at the best a mere word, an empty abstraction. Whatever actually exists, accordingly, must be either an object of which a mind is conscious-that is to say, an idea; or else a self-conscious mind, capable of exerting power over ideas. All actual Existence must be dependent on conscious mind, finite or Divine; abstract Existence involves a contradiction in terms, or rather it is a term which contains no meaning. According to Berkeley, the popular and the philosophical conception of Matter are both absurd—the former because adulterated by the latter. The unreflecting have a confused belief (which can be explained), that what they perceive in the senses exists whether it is perceived or not. The philosophers, granting that what they immediately perceive in the senses is dependent on (embodied) mind, indulge in the irrational hypothesis, that sense-ideas are for us representatives of, or at least substitutes for, an unperceived and unperceivable material world, which exists per se, in absolute independence of any perception or imagination of its contents. Berkeley argues against both; against the former for assuming the absolute existence of the objects of which we are conscious, which, so far as we know, must be ideas, inasmuch as they can be known to exist only while they are perceived or imagined; against the latter for assuming the abstract or absolute reality of unintelligible material substance, existing, as it were, behind the immediate objects or ideas of our conscious experience. He infers that sense-ideas them selves, or at least the established combinations of them, are the real things the only material world; while he warns us that these are not to be confounded with transient personal fancies, in which the real world may be either represented or misrepresented. They are parts in an orderly system. They may be called external, if we choose; but not because they have an absolute, that is to say, an unperceived and unconceived existence. Their 'externality' consists in their arrangements of perceived co-existence and succession being independent of the will of the finite percipient; and in the fact that, unlike our personal feelings and imaginations, they are virtually objects common to a plurality of minds, and the medium of intercourse between one mind and another. Our sense-consciousness is, on Berkeley's principles, the only material world to which our actions have any reference, or with which either practically or speculatively we can have any concern. Abstract Matter disappears, as Abstract Space or Extension had previously disappeared in the New Theory of Vision. Sensible Space and Sensible Matter take their place; and the esse of Sensible Space and Sensible Matter is percipi, because both are dependent on a percipient. The paradoxes and paralogisms of pure and mixed mathematics, with regard to Space, Time, Number, Motion, and Infinity, disappear from sciences confined to sensible extension and matter; and the investigation of nature becomes simply an attempt to interpret the arbitrarily established order of co-existence and succession among ideas, in the symbolical world of sense-experience. The prospect of our personal immortality is brightened; for, on these principles, it is metaphysically impossible that the sensible world, whether organic or extra-organic, can exist without a conscious mind, while it is at least metaphysically possible | that created minds may maintain their consciousness of objects without any sense-objects to be conscious of. Organisms, along with the whole. world of the senses of which our organisms are part, are thus substantially dependent on mind; but minds are not in like absolute dependence on organisms or on any other sensible things-for it is conceivable that the matter of our experience might be exclusive of all sense-objects, and composed of other objects altogether. And, as the common reason of men, tested by their actions, demands the permanence of sensible things, even though they are not permanently present to the senses of any one embodied mind, it follows that the very existence of the things of sense (apart from any marks of design' in their collocations) implies the permanent existence of Supreme Mind, by whom all real objects are perpetually conceived, and in whom their orderly appearances, disappearances, and reappearances in finite minds may be said to exist |