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 That edition, which contains many of his writings previously unpublished, appeared in 1871.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