external material world. He overlooks what with Berkeley is the only question in debate, namely, the meaning of the term external; for, Reid and Berkeley are agreed in holding the existence of a sensible world that is external to, in so far as it is independent of, the will of finite percipients, and a sufficient medium of social intercourse among them. With Berkeley, as with Reid, this external existence of sensible things is practically self-evident; and also their sufficiency as symbols for the conveyance of meaning from one mind into another. The same objection, more scientifically defined-that we have a natural belief in the independent existence of Matter, and in our own consciousness of its qualities-is Sir W. Hamilton's assumption against Berkeley; but Hamilton does not define the independent existence thus claimed for it. Men naturally believe,' he says, 'that they themselves existbecause they are conscious of a Self or Ego; they believe that something different from themselves exists - because they believe that they are conscious of this Not-self or Non-ego.' (Discussions, p. 193.) Now, the existence of a Non-ego that is independent of each finite Ego (which alone is affirmed by Hamilton, in his belief of something different from themselves') is deeply rooted in Berkeley's principles; though I do not know that he would say that we are conscious of it. According to both, we are conscious of solid and extended phenomena or ideas; but with Berkeley these ideas are dependent on, at the same time that they are 'entirely distinct' from, the percipient. The Divine and finite minds we can infer from our ideas of sense with their respective ideas, are Berkeley's Non-ego proper.

That Berkeley's doctrine contains the seeds of Universal Scepticism; that it is virtually a system of Pan-egoism, which deprives us of reasonable belief in a universe of matter and minds external to the phenomena of our individual consciousness; that it is virtually a system of Pantheism, inconsistent with all individuality—these are probably the three most comprehensive objections that have been alleged against it. They are in a measure due to Berkeley's imperfect conception of the distinction between sense and imagination, notwithstanding the numerous passages which he has devoted to the illustration of this distinction; and to the obscurity in which he has left his doctrine regarding the permanence of sensible things on the one hand, and of persons or minds on the other, as well as the dualism thus involved in his system. Is existence, with Berkeley, the antecedent condition, or is it only the consequence, of being conscious? The empirical basis of the earlier Berkeleian metaphysics, with the mystery which it leaves around the answer to this question, separate his conception of the

universe from the Egoistic Idealism of Fichte, and from the logical evolution of mind and matter out of the primitive Hegelian identity of subject and object.

In England the Berkeleian theory, on its negative side, as was natural, received a countenance among the sensational psychologists, which was denied to it in Scotland and Germany. Hartley and Priestley shew various signs of affinity with Berkeley. An anonymous Essay on the Nature and Existence of the Material World, dedicated to Dr. Priestley and Dr. Price, which appeared in 1781, is a sceptical argument, on empirical grounds, for the purely sensational nature of Matter. The tendency is now more fully and profoundly developed in the writings of Mr. J. S. Mill.

The Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous were published in London in 1713, printed by G. James, for Henry Clements, at the Half-Moon, in St. Paul's Churchyard.' The Essay towards a New Theory of Vision and the Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge first appeared in Dublin. Berkeley's subsequent works were published in London.

The Dialogues apparently attracted more readers than either the Essay or the Treatise. The second edition, which is simply a reprint, appeared in 1725, 'printed for William and John Innys, at the West End of St. Paul's.' A third edition, the last in the author's lifetime, 'printed by Jacob Tonson,' which contains some important additions, was published in 1734, conjointly with a new edition of the Principles. The Dialogues were reprinted in 1776, in the same volume with the edition of the Principles which then appeared.

Of Berkeley's earlier metaphysical works, the Dialogues alone have been translated into French and German.

The French version appeared at Amsterdam in 1750. The translator's name is not given in the work itself, but it is attributed to the Abbé Jean Paul de Gua de Malves', by Barbier, in his Dictionnaire des Ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes, tom. i. p. 283. It contains a Prefatory Note by the translator, along with three curious vignettes (given in the note below) meant to symbolise what, according to the translator, was the leading thought in each Dialogue2.

1 For some information relative to Gua de Malves, see Querard's La France Littéraire, tom. iii. p. 494.

2 The following is the translator's Prefatory Note on the objects of the Dialogues, and in explanation of three illustrative vignettes :

L'Auteur expose dans le premier Dia

logue le sentiment du Vulgaire et celui des Philosophes, sur les qualités secondaires et premieres, la nature et l'existence des corps; et il prétend prouver en même tems l'insuffisance de l'un et de l'autre. La Vignette qu'on voit à la tête du Dialogue, fait allusion à cet objet. Elle représente un Philosophe dans son cabinet, lequel est distrait

A German translation, by John Christopher Eschenbach, Professor of Philosophy in Rostock, was published at Rostock in 1756. It forms

Quae noscere cumque Deus det,
Esse puta.

the larger part of a volume entitled Sammlung der vornehmsten Schriftsteller die die Würklichkeit ihres eignen Körpers und der ganzen Körperwelt läugnen. This professed Collection of the most eminent authors who deny the (absolute) existence of their own bodies and of the whole material world consists of Berkeley's Dialogues, and Arthur Collier's Clavis Universalis, or Demonstration of the Non-existence or Impossibility of an External World. The volume contains some annotations, and an Appendix in which a counter demonstration of the existence of Matter is attempted. Eschenbach's principal argument is indirect, and of the nature of a reductio ad absurdum. He argues (as so many others have done) that the reasons produced for the merely ideal or dependent existence of Matter are equally conclusive against Mind or Self, assuming, as he does, that we have a like consciousness or intuitive conviction of the independent existence of each.

A curious circumstance connected with the first publication of the Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous was the appearance, in the same year, of this Clavis Universalis, or Demonstration of the impossibility of Matter, of Arthur Collier, in which a theory is maintained similar to Berkeley's, as regards the merely ideal or phenomenal existence of the sensible world. A more curious coincidence is not to be found in the history of speculative thought than the production, simultaneously, without concert or apparently even knowledge on the part of either author of the opinions of the other, of a theory which implies so great a revolution

qu'étant bien entendu, il revient aux notions les plus communes. Et comme l'Auteur exprime à la fin du livre cette dernière pensée, en comparant ce qu'il vient de dire, à l'eau que les deux Interlocuteurs sont supposés voir jaillir d'un jet, et qu'il remarque que la même force de la gravité fait élever jusqu'à une certaine hauteur et retomber ensuite dans le

bassin d'où elle étoit d'abord partie; on a pris cet emblême pour le sujet de la Vignette de ce Dialogue; on a représenté en conséquence dans cette dernière Vignette les deux Interlocuteurs, se promenant dans le lieu où l'Auteur les suppose, et s'entretenant là-dessus, et pour donner au Lecteur l'explication de l'emblême, on a mis au bas le vers suivant :'

Urget aquas vis sursum, eadem flectitque deorsum.

in the philosophical point of view for such questions. It goes to prove that the intellectual atmosphere of the Lockian epoch in England contained elements favourable to such a result. They are both the genuine produce of the age of Locke and Malebranche. Neither Berkeley nor Collier, both at the time young men, were, when they published their theory, familiar with ancient Greek speculation; that of modern Germany had not even begun to loom in the distance. The Kantian, still more the post-Kantian German philosophy, with its negation of Absolute Matter or things in themselves,' and its substitution of an Absolute Knowledge identical with Absolute Existence; the Phenomenalism of Auguste Comte; the advance of the modern interpretation of nature; and the revived study of Plato, have now changed the conditions under which the problem is studied, and are making intelligible to this generation a manner of conceiving the Universe which, for nearly a century and a half, the British critics of Berkeley were unable to realize.

Although Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge appeared three years before the Clavis Universalis, Collier tells us that it was 'after a ten years' pause and deliberation,' that, ' rather than the world should finish its course without once offering to inquire in what manner it exists,' he had 'resolved to put himself upon the trial of the common reader, without pretending to any better art of gaining him than dry reason and metaphysical demonstration.' Mr. Benson, his biographer, says that it was in 1703, at the age of twenty-three, that Collier came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as an external world;' and he attributes the premises from which Collier drew this conclusion to his neighbour, Mr. Norris. Among Collier's MSS., there remains the outline of an essay, in three chapters, dated January, 1708, on the non-externality of the visible world.

The coincidence between the publication of Berkeley's theory of the relativity of sensible things, and Collier's demonstration of the impossibility of an external or absolute world, is not more curious than the coincidence in their way of unfolding what they taught. Berkeley virtually presented his New Theory of Vision as the first instalment of his New Theory of Knowledge and Existence-thus teaching that visible Matter, at any rate, is not, and cannot be, external or independent of perception. Now, the first of the two Parts into which Collier's Clavis is divided, consists of experimental proofs that the visible world is not, and cannot be, external. Berkeley, moreover, in his Principles of Human Knowledge, and in these Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, disposes of the externality not of visible things only but of Matter in general; and maintains that the hypothesis of absolute or external Matter, in every