BOOKS.

DR. FRASER'S " BERKELEY."* To say that Professor Fraser is thoroughly master of his sub- ject—that the successive steps in the progress of Berkeley's mental history have acquired for him well-nigh the reality of personal experience—is to say no more than one who is ac- quainted with his edition of that philosopher's works would naturally expect. But there is more—a great deal more than this—to be said for the little book before us. No one, we imagine, could lay this book down without feeling that some real additional light has been thrown upon his conception of the relative significance of the groat figures in the philosophy of the eighteenth century. " Berkeley's immediate starting- point was without doubt in Locke," as Hume's immediate starting-point was without doubt in Berkeley. This every one knows. But to the delineation of the growth by antagonism of the three systems, the one out of the other, Professor Fraser brings an ease of expression and a lucidity of thought that, we venture to think, can hardly fail to throw the general scheme of eighteenth-century thought into clearer relief, even for the professed student of philosophy.

Of George Berkeley's early years, our information is sadly limited. When we have said that he was born in his father's cottage, situate in the pleasant valley of the Nore, in the county of Kilkenny—that though Irish-born, he was English by descent, and that his school-days were spent at the old Kilkenny school, which boasts Swift also amongst its alumni— we have said nearly all there is to say about his life previous to his matriculation at Trinity College, Dublin, in March, 1700. Berkeley was fifteen years of age when he came into residence, and it was during the thirteen years spent in Dublin that he wrote and published that first series of philosophical works— including both the Essay on Vision and the Essay on the Prin- ciples of Human Knowledge—which have won for him the place he occupies in the history of philosophy. Like Hume, and unlike Locke, it was by the first-fruits of his mind that the world knew him.

Of Berkeley's warm and imaginative mind, "labouring under the consciousness of the new, world-transforming conception" which had dawned upon it, we have a vivid and intensely inter- esting picture in his Common-place Book, published for the first time by Professor Fraser in 1871. There we have the earliest expression, worded with all the earnestness of genuine inspiration, of that ultra-phenomenal theory of the so-called realities of sense which, "by a recognition of the fact that things are ideas or phenomena, and that the truest way of look- ing at the world we see and touch is when it is looked at as ideal or phenomenal only," strives, in rejecting the existence of matter, to dispense with all secondary causes for our thoughts and feelings, and so to leave the human mind iu direct, con- stant, and all-pervading communion, by every avenue of thought and sense, with the One Cause alone,--a doctrine which Berke.

Beviteley. By A. Campbell Fraser, LL.D., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics the University of Edinburgh. London ; Black wood and Son.

ley never tiros of enforcing by St. Paul's words, "For in him we live, and move, and have our being."

How complete was the mastery which Berkeley's " new

thought " had thus early acquired over him, one short quotation from the Common-place Book will suffice to show :— " The philosophers talk much of a distinction between absolute and relative things,—i.e., things considered in their own nature, and the same things considered in respect to us. I know not what they mean by things considered in themselves. This is nonsense,—jargon. Thing' and idea' are words of much about the same extent and moaning."

In Berkeley's early use of the word "idea," we must remember that we see summed up, as it were, the total of his debt to

Locke. " Idea," Professor Fraser reminds us, " is Locke's dis- tinctive word to express the essential dependence of what is

known on the power of knowing." This wide Cartesian use of the term " islea,".to signify whatever we apprehend, any state

or mode of consciousness, had become familiarised to English readers in Locke's Essay ; and in this sense we naturally find Berkeley using the term in his early works, though in his later Platonising works, and notably in the &iris, he employs the term " phenomenon " to express the " idea " of Locke. It was in perusing and discussing Locke's Essay that Berkeley im- bibed his master-principle, viz., that all our knowledge is based upon phenomenal foundations, that whatever is known is neces- sarily dependent upon the sensations and thoughts of some one who knows ; that, in fine," body can make no appearance apart from the conscious life of mind, in which alone things can be realised:' Starting from the position thus emphasised by Locke, Berkeley pushes on to a very different conclusion..

Despite the persistent sensationalism, or, rather, pheno- menalism, of Locke, that philosopher never reached the point of questioning the reasonableness on sensational principles of the received dualism of mind and matter.

It was left to Berkeley to perceive that Phenomenalism, pushed to its legitimate issue, emptied extra-phenomenal knowledge of all its real contents ; that the primary qualities,. or mathematical essence, of matter are as sense-dependent as the secondary qualities (such as colour, smell, &c.) ; and that matter itself is thus, to a consistent phenomenalist, no more than an empty metaphysical abstraction. Here it is that Locke and Berkeley so widely diverge. Tho former, when he quits the secondary qualities of colour, smell, &c., and comes to con- sider the primary qualities of extension, &c., can no longer hold consistently to his phenomenal doctrine, cannot away with his conviction of the externality of extended matter, and so fall& between the two stools of a sensationalist view of the develop- ment of knowledge and a materialist account of the origin of sensation. It is this adoption by Locke of an abstract, unphe- uomenal matter as the origin of sensation that fathers upon him the doctrine of those materialists who, still (to use Professor Eraser's words) adopting abstract and unintelligible dogmas,.

fancy that they find iu dead, unconscious phenomena " the promise and potency of all self-conscious life."

This was the position that Berkeley set himself with his whole heart and mind to controvert. What is the need, he asks, of this "dark, metaphysical abstraction E"' Why regard ideas (i.e., phenomena) of whatsoever kind, as manifestations of powers and permanent beings substantially different from the percipient mind ? Why interpose this veil of matter between active and percipient spirit P The things we see and touch are only superficial shows, which themselves disappear in revealing the Eternal Spirit or Universal Reason wherein we live and have our being. In the Common-place Book we find, "Nothing, nothing properly but persons, i.e., conscious things, does exist.

All other things are not so much existences themselves, as manners of the existence of conscious persons." Berkeley's first reality is identical with Descartes' first reality, viz., the reality

of the conscious self,—Cog i to, ergo suns. But Berkeley so carefully tests all subsequent candidates for the title of " real " by the touchstone of his own spiritual essence, that his external world.

in its deepest meaning consists of spirits external to his own spirit. This new conception of what external reality means—a conception springing from Locke's phenomenalism as its root, but nursed to its full growth by an intense spirit of religions

opposition to the fashionable materialism of Locke's French disciples—animates every page of Berkeley's early treatises. The essay on Vision was published when Berkeley was only twenty-four years of age, and in the following year appeared the first part of his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, its author being by that time in Orders, and occupy-

lug the position of tutor, as well as that of junior Dean in bis College. In this fragment (for The Treatise purports to be but a first instalment of a longer work), Berkeley unfolds that theory of " Universal Immaterialism " with which his name is now identified, and for which he had endeavoured to prepare the world by a particular application of the same principle in his beautiful theory of visual language, published about a year previous to the Treatise. With the Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous, in which imaginary objections to the new theory are stated and replied to with exquisite literary art, the first part of Berkeley's philosophical activity was brought to a close.

In 1713, Berkeley had made his way to London, ostensibly for

the publication of his Dialogues, and we find him on a footing of intimacy with his countrymen Steele and Swift, whose intro- duction secured him a ready admission to the best literary .society of the capital. Ho had but to be known to be appreci- ated, and Berkeley's indescribable fascination of manner, says Professor Fraser, and goodness of heart had charmed the world of London, so that even Attenbury, after an interview with him, could say, " So much understanding, so much knowledge, :so much innocence, and such humility, I did not think had been the portion of any but angels, till I saw this gentleman."

This visit to London was the beginning of a long course of

restless movement, which, with occasional relapses into studious seclusion, marked the middle period of Berkeley's life. He paid two long visits to the Continent, the second of four years' dura- tion, to which latter period his probably mythical interview with Malebrauche has been assigned. Professor Fraser thinks that the story of their tragical interview may very possibly have grown out of the superficial resemblance of their doctrines. This resemblance—though never admitted by Berkeley — appears, upon Professor Fraser's own showing, to be too close to merit the description of superficial. The Cartesian doctrine of"Occasional Causation" seems to have developed in Male- branche's mind into something very like Berkeleiau idealism— at least, iu its later stage as exemplified in the Stria. For in the &rig, Berkeley, like Malebrauche, seems to be tending towards a Platonising theory of archetypal ideas of the sensible world over present iu the mind of God.

On Berkeley's return to England, his enthusiasms led him

farther and farther away from the quiet pursuits of his youth, and many years of stirring activity were to leave their impress upon his mind before the seclusion of his Transatlantic retreat .should give him leisure for the utterance, in his Minute Philosopher, of his deeper and more mature opinions. So true it is, that,- " Two desires toss about

Tho poet's feverish blood ; One drives him to the world without, And one to solitude,"

Berkeley's mind, with its inward glow of intense spiritual life,

was essentially poetic iu its character; and it is in his pages, as Professor Fraser points out, that we feel at times the " first faint prophetic hours " of that returning spring of poetry which the last decade of the century was to behold in its full glory. Berkeley's temperament, however, was too entirely free from egotism to find an outlet for itself iu poetry,—life was to him an all-absorbing poem. We get a glimpse, however, of what he might have achieved as a poet in the Platonic grace and lightness of his seven dialogues, entitled, Alciphron, or The Minute Philosopher ; and to our ear, there is a certain grandeur in the single stanza quoted by Professor Fraser from some ' Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America ;"— " Westward the course of empire takes its way, The four first acts already past ; A fifth shall close the drama with the day : Time's noblest offspring is the last."

In these few stanzas, we see literary expression given to that strenuous struggle with the bad elements of the eighteenth century in which On strength of Berkeley's mature age was spent. Quiet philosophical meditation was an impossibility to the fervent social idealist. Nay, his early metaphysical works were the outcome of far other motives than a calm love of abstract truth. Berkeley's was essentially a positive mind. It was because he felt the reality of the spiritual world with such burning intensity, that the material world shrank like a withered -scroll before his gaze. The starting-point of the philosophy of the man " who had been distrustful at eight years " was essentially a belief, and not a scepticism. Thus far, and thus far only, can Berkeley be justly said to argue with the theological bias so

often objected to him. With such a temperament as this, it is not surprising that, on Berkeley's return to England, shortly after the bursting of the South Sea Bubble, we should find him endeavouring to stem the tide of national corruption and ruin.. in the sorrowful Cassandra tones of his " Essay towards Pre- venting the Ruin of Great Britain." We can but give a passing mention hero of the vain attempt which he made to realise his ideal in the New World, the noble but chimerical notion of a great missionary station and college in the Bermudas or Summer Islands, whence was to issue forth a new Race of Gold,-

" Not such as Europe breeds in her decay,— Such as she bred when fresh and young, When heavenly flame did animate her clay," to spread Christian doctrine and the blessings of civilisation. over the two Americas. The whole scheme, as conceived by Berkeley, is touching in its naivete. Writing to Lord Percival

on the subject, he says Iu the same seminary a number of young American savages may also be educated till they have taken the degree of Master of Arts," and then proceeds to enlarge upon the prodigies to be effected by these academico- barbarian prodigies in the cause of Christianity and civilisation. Bearing such language as this in mind, and remembering that the Bermuda's lie some 600 miles out in the Atlantic, nothing, as Professor Fraser most justly observes, shows more the magic of Berkeley's presence and influence than the comparatively favourable reception his scheme met with in a generation represented by Sir Robert Walpole.

This naive simplicity which so often to the vulgar eye appears to.be more folly, but which is found to be an almost universal concomitant of the finest imaginative powers—this failure, as it were, to assign fixed limits to the spiritual and temporal factors of which our life is compounded—shows itself again and again iu Berkeley's writings. Of the temporary enthusiasm felt for Berkeley's project, the almost unanimous vote of the House in favour of a grant of £20,000 affords ample proof, and though this vote bore no fruits, the amount of the private subscriptions was sufficient to justify Berkeley in crossing the Atlantic, possessed as he now was of some private fortune of his own, from the legacy of Swift's unhappy Vanessa and other sources. The ultimate success of the scheme was impossible, with what- ever resources it might have been set on foot, and the single, though to posterity quite adequate, result of all Berkeley's high and glowing hopes was his Alciphron, prepared during his re- tirement in Rhode Island, prolonged in fond expectation of the arrival of the £20,000. His return home in the autumn of 1731 was followed by upwards of two years of controversial author- ship in London, initiated by the publication of the Alciphron, in which, perhaps, some of the bitterness of disappointment is discernible.

Of his retirement, now in broken health, to the study of medicine and philosophy on his bishopric of Cloyne; of the great Tarwater controversy and its wonderful offspring, Siris—that closely woven tissue of naivete and profundity— and of the final removal to Oxford in a fit of " academical idealism," we can here say no more than that these episodes are so treated by Professor Fraser that they serve to throw a calm light, as of sunset, over the close of a life of peculiar vividness and beauty.